In: Critical Review, 1-21

The German Wirtschaftswunder was not the result of economic expertise applied by Ludwig Erhard to postwar West Germany. There is no universally applicable theory-cum-practice of a “social market economy.” A capitalist economy is a political economy that requires an – always fragile – political settlement between capital and labour, one that needs to be re-negotiated on a current basis in the light of changing relations of power between the classes. To the extent that this requires expertise, it is the expertise of political practitioners, not of economists.“The economy” is not a second nature but a social battlefield..

François Godard’s book Germany, France, and Postwar Democratic Capitalims: Expert Rule – based upon his doctoral dissertation at the University of Geneva – could not be more ambitious: a history of post-1945 economic policy, indeed political-economic state-building, or democracy-building, in the two largest West European countries, Germany and France, complemented by two shadow cases, the UK and Italy, stretching out over nearly three decades. What we have here is, in short, high-grade historical institutionalism, driven by a dual program: empirically-historically, to show that West European postwar prosperity was owed, not to political compromise between capital and labor, but to states and governments applying expert knowledge on the economy to the economy; and theoretically-paradigmatically, to suggest that what counts in the world of democratic capitalism, and presumably not just there, are expert ideas, or “ideational models,” adopted and realized by government, rather than economic interests or the deals struck with and between them. (…)

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In: New Left Review, issue 152: On the German election of February 2025.

A high-turnout election, sharply polarized around immigration, has brought another centrist coalition to power in Berlin. Wolfgang Streeck offers an unsparing analysis of Germany´s political situation as its hardline incoming Chancellor rams through an expansive fiscal revolution and the far-right AfD doubles its seats..

In early march 2025, as Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz laid the groundwork for a massive German military build-up, sidelining the newly elected parliament to push through fiscal reforms that would double the annual defence budget to €100 billion, the Euro-establishment was in celebratory mood. Merz’s rearmament drive was ‘a stroke of commendable boldness’ and ‘a fantastic start’, declared the Economist. ‘From Paris to Warsaw, Brussels and beyond’, Merz’s move had understandably produced ‘giddy excitement’. The Guardian hailed it as a ‘bold and necessary leap’, a ‘chance to renew mainstream politics’ and ‘unleash the radical centre’. For the FT, it represented nothing less than ‘the reawakening of Germany’; for Le Monde, a ‘major and welcome turning point’. The measures may have required certain ‘democratic gymnastics’ to bypass the freshly elected Bundestag, Le Monde conceded, but ‘the times call for boldness’, and ‘the new dynamic in Berlin should be encouraged’. For El País, ‘“Germany is back” means “Europe is back”!’ Merz’s leadership ‘points the way for the rest of Europe.’ (…)

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In: Society, July 18, 2024.

The paper explores the role of the European Union (EU) in the war in Ukraine, from the run-up of the war to its impact on the EU’s future structure and functions, within Europe and globally. It begins with an account of the condition of the EU before the war, which it describes as overextended and stagnant with respect to the EU’s proclaimed finalité, the “ever closer union of the peoples of Europe.” Next, it recounts the use of the EU in early American attempts to include Ukraine in the East European enlargement of NATO, with EU membership as a reward for Ukrainian Westernization. To the EU leadership, this presented an opportunity to revive older, by then largely failed attempts at supranational unification and centralization, by offering to the United States to serve as its transatlantic base for its Ukrainian strategy. Following this, the paper explores the consequences for the EU and its stronger member states of the impending American withdrawal from the Ukrainian war theater, as the US turns to its conflict with China. The final section discusses the conditions under which Europe, the European states, and the EU can hope for some kind of strategic and political autonomy in the emerging new New World Order.

By the time the war over Ukraine broke out, the European Union (EU) was a disorderly assortment of the remnants of various incomplete attempts at what had been called “European integration” — a vast supranational would-be state that had become practically ungovernable due to overextension and the extreme internal heterogeneity that had come with it. Rather than a supranational superstate ending the separate existence of the European nation-states, the EU had become a battlefield, or negotiating arena, for its member states pursuing their individual interests, both directly and indirectly: directly by negotiating deals with each other, indirectly by trying to control each other via the EU’s supranational institutions. Among the integration projects that had got stuck during the lifetime of the EU and its two predecessor organizations — the European Economic Community (EEC; 1957–1972) and the European Community (European Commission; 1972–1993) — we may list the so-called Social Dimension of the 1970s and 1980s, which fell victim to the turn towards a neoliberal supply-side economic policy during the long Delors presidency (1985–1994); the Internal Market of 1992, which remained unfinished; the European Monetary Union of 1999, which includes only some of the EU’s member states and has remained without a banking union, a fiscal union and, above all, a political union; the economic convergence of member states’ growth models, or varieties of capitalism; the political and social convergence of new member countries on the liberal “rule-of-law” constitutional model of Western Europe; etc. etc. (…)

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Versión española:
La Unión Europea en guerra: dos años después

Diario Red, 22 de julio 2024.

Para Estados Unidos una larga guerra de desgaste librada en el centro de Europa a lo largo de la frontera occidental rusa, tendría el efecto de atar corto y de modo conveniente a los europeos.

Este artículo analiza el papel de la Unión Europea (UE) en la guerra de Ucrania, desde los prolegómenos de la misma hasta sus repercusiones en la futura estructura y funciones de la UE, tanto en el seno de Europa como globalmente. Comienza con una descripción de la situación de la UE antes de la guerra, que describo como sobredimensionada y estancada con respecto a la proclamada finalité de la UE, la «unión cada vez más estrecha de los pueblos de Europa». A continuación relato la utilización preliminar de la UE por parte de Estados Unidos en su plan de ampliación de la OTAN hacia Europa Oriental, iniciativa que contemplaba la incorporación de Ucrania y su ingreso en la UE como recompensa por su occidentalización. Para los dirigentes europeos, ello representaba una oportunidad de revivir antiguos intentos de unificación y centralización supranacionales, por entonces en gran medida fallidos, para lo cual ofrecieron a Estados Unidos la Unión Europea como base transatlántica para su estrategia ucraniana. A continuación, el artículo explora las consecuencias para la UE y para sus Estados miembros más fuertes de la inminente retirada estadounidense del escenario bélico ucraniano a medida que Estados Unidos se concentra en su conflicto con China. La sección final analiza las condiciones en las que Europa, los Estados europeos y la UE pueden aspirar a algún tipo de autonomía estratégica y política en el Nuevo Orden Mundial emergente. (…)

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