Greek Capitalism In Crisis: Marxist Analyses (routledge Frontiers Of Political Economy)

Despite the depth of the Greek crisis, the exorbitant burdens placed upon the working people and the massive popular resistance movement to capitalist policies, there is a definite lack of consistently Marxist analyses of the Greek problem. International debates regarding the Greek crisis have been dominated by orthodox (Neoclassical and neo-Keynesian) approaches. The heterodox side of these debates has been occupied by Radical Political Economy approaches (usually radical post-Keynesian or Marxo-Keynesian perspectives). Moreover, they are dominated by the 'financialisation' thesis which is quite alien to Marxism, neglects the sphere of production and professes that the global crisis is simply a financial crisis that has nothing to do with 'real' accumulation and the profit rate. This book argues that by emphasising the sphere of production and profitability, classical Marxist analysis better explains the Greek crisis than its orthodox and heterodox competitors. The contributors present critiques of the prevalent approaches and offer studies of the Greek crisis that use the methodology and the analytical and empirical tools of classical Marxist Political Economy. In particular, it is shown that the Greek crisis was caused by falling profitability and the ensuing overaccumulation crisis. The 'broad unequal exchange' existing between the euro-center and the euro-periphery contributed to Greek capital's falling profitability. This book enriches the debate about the Greek economic crisis by demonstrating the insights that can be drawn by considering the Marxist alternative to the dominant mainstream and heterodox approaches. Stavros Mavroudeas is a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Macedonia, Greece. Publisher's note Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 14 Copyright Page 15 Table of Contents 16 List of figures 18 List of tables 20 Notes on contributors 22 List of abbreviations 26 Introduction 28 Part I Critiques of Mainstream and Heterodox analyses of the Greek problem 34 1 Mainstream accounts of the Greek crisis: more heat than light? 36 2 The fiscal crisis in Greece: whose fault? 60 3 Explaining the rising wage-productivity gap in the Greek economy 78 4 The Greek EU-IMF Memoranda: a problematic strategy for Greek capitalism 94 5 Financialisation and the Greek case 109 Part II Marxist explanations of the Greek crisis 130 6 The law of the falling rate of profit in the post- war Greek economy 132 7 Profitability and crisis in the Greek economy (1960-2012): an investigation 157 8 The Greek crisis: a dual crisis of overaccumulation and imperialist exploitation 180 Part III Crisis, poverty and the labour market 204 9 Economic crisis, poverty and deprivation in Greece: the impact of neoliberal remedies 206 10 A comparative study of aspects of employment and unemployment in Greece before and after the crisis 223 11 Recession and atypical employment: a focus on contemporary Greek metropolitan regions 239 Index 259