Europe: A German colony

Last summer, during a telephone interview with his American counterpart, German Minister for Economic Affairs, Wolfgang Schäuble, thought he was being funny by suggesting that they should swap Puerto Rico (which has nearly gone bankrupt) for Greece! In fact, the overwhelming majority of Germans have been convinced by the narrative which claims that their hard labour has produced a “real” economy whose surpluses might in some way be legitimate. This tall tale about such healthy activity that is entirely oriented towards exports has after all been consistently maintained by German media, with everyone having been delighted by the prospect of Greek islands going up for sale at the height of the crisis last spring.

However, this German tall tale ignores that the successes of their economy and the size of their commercial surpluses have relied on a certain mechanism – of the neo-colonial kind – which consists of driving people into the ground. This Schäuble economy is only prospering due to a good and proper exploitation of other European peoples by the Germans. In fact, without the Euro there would be no German surplus because the dogfight for goods produced in the country would obviously – due to a surge in the Deutschmark – have been hit by an increase in their prices and an alignment with a rise in German wages, whose combined effect would have cancelled out the surpluses. These notorious commercial surpluses which have made Schäuble so proud are merely the consequence of wages being cheaper than machine labour. The robots – which make production lines more expensive – are therefore simply being replaced by humankind in a clockwork system which allows for economies to be rich in capital. Moreover, the statistics prove this German move beyond doubt because, in comparison with its GDP, its level of investment is the lowest of all the industrialised nations.

This anaemic European growth is therefore the direct consequence of the shortfall in German investment and, as it so happens, the Schäuble economy is turning out to be a poison for the whole continent. A genuine scourge, these resources, underexploited by Germany, are condemning the Union to being forever trailing in terms of growth, and they are also imposing austerity on the rest of Europe. We must get to grips with this: the German surpluses reflect an inefficient German economy which is also suffering a dearth of investment. In the meantime, it is nearly the entirety of the other European peoples who are paying dearly the price of German obsessions, all the while as Schäuble calmly rewrites History. This History was, however, originally penned by the massive influx of workers from East Germany and the infamous Hartz reforms, which have stifled and constricted all European wages to an intolerable extent.

Once the only ones to be ailing, Germany has now contaminated the other 28 countries that share its currency.