The author explains how European capitalists are benefiting from the current crisis there which, of course, they created with their reckless gambling. (Of course, given the globalized nature of capitalism it is clear that all capitalists with investments in Europe are benefiting.) After securing the safety of their banks with government bailouts and other schemes, they are now benefiting from the misery of most working populations. Economic crises that are devastating for workers provide many opportunities for these owners of economies to reap big profits and steal more properties from the public sector.
...one of the lessons they have learned from the absorption of East Germany at the beginning of the 1990’s is that important wage disparities between employees can be greatly exploited to the advantage of employers. The massive East German privatisations, the attacks against the job security of ex-GDR workers, along with an augmentation of German public debt due to the costs of this absorption (which have been used as the pretexts for austerity programmes) have permitted the employers to greatly erode the situation of East as well as West German workers. The present German leaders see the eurozone crisis, and the brutal conditions imposed on the Greek people, as an opportunity to push further and to reproduce at the European level, the gains they have made at home.He also explains the difference between relative and absolute surplus-value and how capitalists gain from each method of appropriation of worker-created wealth.
After several decades of neoliberal offensives, increases in absolute surplus-value have become, once again, a major element in the extraction of surplus-value and add to the relative surplus-value. The employers, using crisis based campaigns are now gaining on both surplus values, thus showing the magnitude of the current offensive.
