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The Greek turmoil commenced as a balance of payments, or "sudden stop," crisis induced by large current account and primary government deficits. It became an economic and social disturbance of historic proportions. Its proximate cause was loss of competitiveness within the Eurozone due in large part to domestic German wage policies. The bailout policies, imposed by the lenders primarily for reasons of Eurozone stability and adopted by Greece, have had disastrous effects on both economy and society. The "historical bloc" that dominates Greek society willingly submitted to the bailout strategy, losing sovereignty, for reasons including fear and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the eurozone crisis much of the Left argued in favor of remaining in the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the European Union, often in the name of internationalism, while developing a broad alliance against austerity and neoliberalism. However, the EMU has functioned in practice as a mechanism of ascendancy for German manufacturing capital, based on suppressing German workers. As the eurozone crisis is pacified, an entrenched division in Europe has emerged between an unstable core dominated by Germany, a Southern periphery withno growth prospects, and a Central European periphery dependent on German industry. Faced with this harsh reality, a class-based strategy for the Left must include rejecting the EMU, clashing with the eu, and demanding popular sovereignty. That would provide a true basis for internationalism in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current crisis is one outcome of the financialisation of contemporary capitalism. It arose in the USA because of the enormous expansion of mortgage-lending, including to the poorest layers of the working class. It became general because of the trading of debt by financial institutions. Th ese phenomena are integral to financialisation. During the last three decades, large enterprises have turned to open markets to obtain finance, forcing banks to seek alternative sources of profit. One avenue has been provision of financial services to individual workers. Th is trend has been facilitated by the retreat of public provision from housing, pensions, education, and so on. A further avenue has been to adopt investment-banking practices in open financial markets. Th e extraction of financial profi ts directly out of personal income constitutes financial expropriation. Combined with investment-banking, it has catalysed the current gigantic crisis. More broadly, financialisation has sustained the emergence of new layers of rentiers, defined primarily through their relation to the financial system rather than ownership of loanable capital. Finally, financialisation has posed important questions regarding finance-capital and imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]