Crucible Of Resistance: Greece, The Eurozone And The World Economic Crisis

by Christos Laskos and
Euclid Tsakalotos

(Pluto Press, £14)

The then Chancellor Nigel Lawson tells how he persuaded Margaret Thatcher to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in the 1980s.

He did so by explaining that although more cuts in the government budget were needed, in order to avoid too much blame the Tories could simply join the ERM, the forerunner of the single currency, whose stringent convergence criteria would do the job for them.

This remains the purpose of the single currency, now euro, project, which is in effect a European version of the structural adjustment programmes the World Bank and IMF have forced on much of the global south with equally devastating effects.

The poor, working or not, are once more paying the consequences of an economic crisis they did nothing to cause.

There is much for the left to consider in this excellent analysis of the Greek experience of the crisis by Christos Laskos and Euclid Tsakalotos.

The question they pose but do not answer is why the financial collapse of 2008 did not lead the traditional social democrats to reassess their commitment to finance capitalism.

The most disturbing feature of the Greek crisis is the authors' argument that the austerity programme there is a cruel and deliberate attempt by the Euro Establishment and its supporters to see just how far austerity can be pushed, gambling on the eventual sheer exhaustion of the street protests.

Much hope is placed by the authors on the rise of Syriza, whose success they attribute to its ready identification with the street protests, unlike the more "traditional" left parties, be they communist or socialist.

Pro-EU membership Syriza has emerged dramatically in recent elections but whether this ad hoc alliance of an essentially Marxist party and a mixed bag of anti-austerity extra-parliamentary protesters can really be a new anti-capitalist force remains to be seen.

So far, determined ruling elites have seen off the occupations of Wall Street or Paternoster Square.

Michael Hindley