Düsseldorf and the Vicinity

On Friday I didn't go to work because, in the full glare of the sun, the temperature was nearing 40 degrees. And, also, I haven't received any post in over a month because DHL workers have been on strike and will remain so indefinitely. Based on that information, where would you assume I was living? Germany or Greece? Most people, I think, would say Greece. Mediterranean weather and industrial action sounds more Hellenic than it does Germanic. But it is Germany where I am living, and the two countries -- Germany and Greece -- have more in common with each other than the press would, currently, have people believe.

In his book 'Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present', Brendan Simms suggests that during the middle ages the ß in the German language was added as a deliberate and concious effort to de-Frenchify, de-Latinise the language (and culture) and make it more Greek. This is also true to the 'verb sent to the end of the sentence' rule. As French influence increased, the impulsive reaction in the German speaking lands was to become more Greek.

Over the course of the last century -- during the period where a US backed military dictatorship ruled Greece -- it was to Germany where most Greek immigrants fled. This is apparent simply by observing the sheer number of Greek restaurants there are in Germany (the picture is of a Greek restaurant, Mythos, in the centre of Düsseldorf). I don't recall ever seeing a Greek restaurant in the UK.

So given this history, it is more than a little depressing to see the political elites in both countries tearing chunks out of each other as they have been doing now for the past six months. Firstly, it was cheap of Alexis Tsipras -- upon being elected and sworn in as prime minister of Greece -- to make his first act a visit to the Kaisariani Memorial. That and to call for war repatriations from Germany. To deliberately try and draw parallels between how the Nazis treated Greece and the current Troika situation, as if there is moral equivalence, was both wrong and counter-intuitive. Germany is not the only Eurozone country and the German government is not all-powerful.

For one thing, the domestic situation in Germany leaves the German government with less room for manoeuvre vis-a-vis Greece than it would like: how, for example, can Merkel et al justify taxpayer funded bailouts for Greece, whilst at the same time insisting that the striking postmen must take a 25% pay cut? All Tsipras achieved from demanding war repatriations was a hostile German press, who have been doing a hatchet job on him and government ever since. He must have known he was never going to get then, and that even if he did, he'd have known that they would equate to a drop in the ocean. It was needlessly provocative.

On the central issues, though, the Greeks are right: 1. Greece needs debt forgiveness. And 2. austerity doesn't work, has never worked and will never work. Not as a means of growing an economy or of rebalancing an economy; not as a way for a government to pay down its debts and become solvent.

It was Tsipras and Varoufakis who put the guns to their own heads by calling the referendum, and they need an Oxi vote in order to stay on as prime minister and finance minister respectively. But even a few days ago, it didn't look like they would achieve anything even should they win. That was until the appalling institution that is the IMF came out and admitted, finally, and for the first time, that Greece needs debt relief. Should the 'no' vote win the referendum (which it currently looks likely) it appears that debt forgiveness is now a very real possibility, which it certainly wasn't this time last week. That would be a victory for both Greece and common sense.

Certainly, though, for Greece to return to growth and become functional again, it does need to make reforms. It needs to seriously tackle the issue around tax collection; it needs to increase the retirement age to that of the European norm; etc. But it certainly does not need to make all the reforms which the IMF demands. Austerity is not the answer, it is a neoliberal trojan horse.Les mer