Julian Germann

Unwitting Architect

German Primacy and the Origins of Neoliberalism

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

"This book asks how Germany-a country long thought to be irrevocably European and committed to a more social market economy-could have emerged at the center of neoliberal restructuring in Europe"--

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 304
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Januar 2021
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 158mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 559g
• ISBN-13: 9781503609846
• ISBN-10: 1503609847
• Artikelnr.: 59411704

Autorenporträt

Julian Germann is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Department of International Relations, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Introduction
chapter abstract
The introduction asks how Germany-a country long thought to be irrevocably
European and committed to a more social market economy-could have emerged
at the helm of a punitive program of neoliberalism within Europe. To
resolve this puzzle, we need to revisit the crisis of the 1970s, when
neoliberalism first appeared, and rethink the role of the German state in
light of newly available archival material. From this viewpoint, Germany is
revealed to be the "unwitting architect" of neoliberalism. Its parochial
attempts to manage the crisis domestically promoted a regressive form of
capitalism internationally that soon boomeranged back upon it, and which it
promotes across Europe today so as not to practice at home. After a
chapter-by-chapter summary of this argument, the Introduction lists the
archival sources consulted for this book and discusses how an archival
method can be integrated into critical International Political Economy.
1The Origins of Neoliberalism and the Role of the German State
chapter abstract
This chapter reviews the most prominent explanations of the global rise of
neoliberalism provided within critical International Political Economy: (1)
a state-centered argument, which holds that neoliberalism was imposed by
the United States in a bid to reassert its global dominance; (2) a
class-based argument, which sees neoliberalism as the project of
globalizing elites who sought to restore their corporate profits and power;
and (3) an ideational argument, which describes the rise of neoliberalism
as a paradigmatic shift in economic ideas. The chapter argues that these
accounts share a common bias: they pivot unduly on the Anglo-American world
and are unable to capture the peculiar German contribution to the origins
of neoliberalism. As a result, they misread the rise of Germany to the apex
of a neoliberal Europe as a belated repetition of the same global movement
spearheaded by the US and the UK.
2Foreign Economic Policy and Advanced Unevenness
chapter abstract
This chapter develops an alternative framework to understand Germany's role
in the global rise of neoliberalism. Eschewing a comparative approach, it
interrogates the German political economy as not only different from but
fundamentally entwined with other national political economies. The lens of
uneven and combined development is used to conceptualize this
interconnectedness, emphasizing the co-evolution of national capitalisms,
the systemic pressures that arise from their coexistence, and the
interactive context of foreign economic decision making. This heuristic
characterizes neoliberalism as an interactive process involving several
states and diverse ideas, rather than an Anglo-American project writ large.
Neoliberalism, in this view, did not arise from the domestic conditions
prevailing in the US or the UK alone, but within a wider international
environment structured by the German state for particular reasons that
precede the Anglo-American turn and continue to shape its crisis management
today.
3Embedding Liberalism: The German Social Model and Its International
Supports
chapter abstract
This chapter traces the long-term development of German capitalism from the
vantage point of uneven and combined development. It argues that Germany's
postwar social market economy was built upon an externally oriented
developmental model inherited from its belated insertion into the world
market, and used to enroll capital and labor in a global export offensive.
The underlying vision of Germany as the workshop of an advanced industrial
and newly industrializing world coincided with the postwar plans of the
United States for an open, multilateral global economy. And yet the chapter
cautions that the prevailing image of Germany as a liberal "trading state"
(Handelsstaat) that had traded power for wealth as its prime objective
fails to capture the novel ways in which the German state, from the crisis
of the 1970s onward, has come to exert its influence internationally to
sustain this export-led social model.
4Unwinding Bretton Woods: The Deutsche Mark Float and the Renewal of
Stability Politics
chapter abstract
This chapter asks how German policymakers responded to the monetary
turbulences that signaled the end of the golden age of capitalism from the
mid-1960s onward. To address this question, the chapter challenges the
popular view that Bretton Woods died at the hands of a declining US hegemon
and zooms in on the actions of its allies: while French attempts to push
the US toward monetary reform destroyed the dollar-gold standard as early
as March 1968, German efforts to protect themselves from the abuse of
dollar seignorage upended the regime of fixed exchange rates three years
later. The chapter argues that, unlike elsewhere in the advanced
industrialized world, the shift toward floating enabled the German state to
double down on price stability and restabilize its embedded liberal
compromise-an experience that framed how German policymakers would respond
to the wider economic turmoil of the 1970s.
5Defeating Alternatives: German Grand Strategy and the European Left
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the development of a grand economic strategy pursued
by the German state from the mid-1970s onward. Its primary objective was to
shore up the domestic compact between capital and labor internationally,
which required maintaining stable prices and open markets for its exports.
To German policymakers, this meant that Germany could not afford to turn
inward, or to expend its resources on lofty visions of solidarity. Instead,
Germany mobilized its monetary and financial power in order to counter the
threats of protectionism and imported inflation posed by leftist crisis
responses. The chapter details how German officials, through European
exchange-rate cooperation and financial interventions coordinated with the
US, sought to commit its European partners to an anti-inflationary program
that would complement their own. The result, the chapter explains, was to
frustrate progressive resolutions of the crisis and move the world closer
toward the neoliberal counter-revolution.
6Disciplining the Hegemon: German Monetary Power and the Volcker Shock
chapter abstract
This chapter argues that in order to protect its export model from the
dangers of imported inflation, Germany strove to commit the US to monetary
and fiscal rigor. To this end, German officials blocked the attempts of the
Carter administration to organize a global Keynesian expansion, and scaled
back their foreign exchange interventions in support of a weakening dollar.
Both actions helped push the US into the Volcker Shock, which deflated the
world economy and launched the attack on organized labor. The chapter
concludes that the neoliberal experiment in the US, paralleled and
reinforced by similar attempts in the UK, was late and lucky. Rather than
the outcome of a decade-long domestic shift-seamless and sealed off from
the world outside the Anglo-American heartland-the neoliberal
counter-revolution was driven in part by the external pressures imposed by
Germany, and subsequently sustained by a bout of Japanese investment.
7Deflecting Neoliberalism: Power and Purpose in Germany's Eurocrisis
Management
chapter abstract
This chapter explores how the German political economy was transformed by
the global rise of neoliberalism and how this change feeds into Germany's
approach to the eurocrisis. Rather than being pushed down an Anglo-American
road, German policymakers still seek to preserve what is left of the
domestic compromise between capital and labor. The chapter argues that
China's massive demand for German exports informs the long-term vision of a
neoliberal Europe structurally adjusted to support the global position of
German manufacturers. At the same time, the perceived threat of US interest
rates rising out of step with economic conditions in Europe and emerging
markets hardened the German stance on austerity during the fever-pitched
policy battles at the height of the eurocrisis. Together, these
international pressures and opportunities have produced the predicament of
German primacy as a transformative and yet destabilizing force within the
EU.
Conclusion: Conclusion
chapter abstract
The conclusion places Germany's current position in the EU within a global
context and draws out the wider implications of this study. It advances a
conception of neoliberalism as a multifaceted process in which actors draw
upon, and contribute to, an ever wider array of available techniques to
deconstruct or reconfigure the social, economic, and political gains
working people had wrought from capital and invested in the postwar welfare
state. While in this respect neoliberalism is the indispensable marker for
a new era of capitalism, it is too amorphous a term to serve as a guide to
the emerging frontiers and faultlines of the global political economy.