The Union and the SPD are pushing to allocate a massive sum, equivalent to almost the entire federal budget, for military spending. Only the debt brake is standing in the way of these planned war credits. In the absence of a majority in the new Bundestag, the old parliament is to be convened again to partially relax the debt brake. This sudden shift in attitude has turned those who have been holding on to the “brake” into peace advocates. However, this simplification is misleading.
Initially, the anchoring of the debt brake in the Basic Law never served the interests of the majority of the population, but was an instrument to manage German imperialism in the US sphere of influence. With the resulting argument of an allegedly “overburdened social welfare state” it is easy to justify continued social cuts. Whether it’s youth welfare, healthcare, or housing: everything is woefully underfunded.
The result is increasingly visible on the streets of German major cities: social misery, wherever one looks. This, in turn, leads to an increase in crime, which the state responds to with an expansion of its repression regime, affecting everyone in the form of increased surveillance and police violence, demonstration bans and restrictions on freedom of speech, among others.
Self-destructive social austerity
From a capitalist logic, the debt brake’s social austerity is also problematic. Where a restrained housing market drives up rents, social benefits are cut and pensioners are left poor, a growing mass of people rigorously loses purchasing power. Consequently, the domestic market shrinks. Companies must compensate for this artificially created profit crisis through exports, relocation and wage pressure. The latter, of course, exacerbates the domestic market crisis.
This, in turn, leads to a decline in state revenue and emptying of the tax coffers. The neoliberal unity front typically responds to this by imposing more social cuts and reducing investments in the common good, leading to a vicious cycle of more poverty, more crime, more repression and further decline of schools, hospitals and the rail network and so on.
Arming for the profit rate
Western capital has been struggling with declining profit rates for years. The neoliberal policy, to which the debt brake belongs, exacerbates this crisis even more. Monetary policy, wage dumping and social cuts are no longer effective solutions. The only option left for the imperialists is expansion, in order to gain a lucrative grip on new resources and markets. In other words, war.
A significant part of the capitalist fractions is currently betting on war. Meanwhile, the state-financed rearmament will generate lucrative side profits for the bosses of the arms and finance industries – arming for the profit rate, so to speak. At the same time, it weakens the economic competitors, who are also forced to rearm. This, of course, affects the working masses, regardless of whether the debt brake is relaxed or not.
The problem is the massive, imperialist rearmament itself. As the scale of the war machine grows, so does the risk of its deployment. Destroying rival capital and subsequent reconstruction are, from an imperialist perspective, not only particularly lucrative profit sources, but also ensure long-term control of new markets.
Greed for war, green and naive left
The Greens initially strongly criticized the planned debt brake relaxation. However, they have since fallen in line. The Union, under the future Chancellor Friedrich Merz (BlackRock), has easily bought them off: in exchange for their approval of war credits, they received a “climate fund” of 100 billion euros as part of a total of 500 billion euro infrastructure package. This, of course, is likely to be primarily aimed at war infrastructure.
The Left wants to relax the debt brake exclusively for the common good. It is naive to assume that they will now not rigorously block the brakes to avert the worst. This is, in fact, what the AfD, FDP and BSW are doing, albeit with different intentions. The AfD and FDP have no interest in criticizing Western imperialism, while the BSW, as it is falling out of federal office, is not concerned with criticizing anything at all.
Only the BSW and the newly reinvigorated Left are currently fundamentally opposed to Germany’s military rearmament. Even if the notion of the latter is a manifestation of, pardon, utter foolishness, they are trying to convince the war enthusiasts to use the debt brake not for the military, but for the social welfare state. This cannot succeed, as the war readiness and “defensive capabilities” remain the primary objective.
War credits instead of peace and social policy
The fact that the debt brake, still, stands in the way of war credits makes it not a positive element for the population. As previously mentioned, it primarily brakes the social welfare state and fosters poverty, thereby also political repression. The war enthusiasts under the future Chancellor Merz have simply realized that their rearmament plans cannot be financed solely through social cuts. Besides, it is astonishing how easily the money for war is available, while the social welfare state is always portrayed as a burden on the economy by the Union.
If the policy were to allocate credits for social welfare and the common good, as the Left demands, it could indeed increase purchasing power, foster investments, strengthen the domestic market and dampen the costs of poverty. The tax coffers would also likely refill in the long run. This, however, would require a shift in priorities, with a focus on cooperative peace policies that involve all states, including those considered economic or political competitors.
Securing power: strife over methods
This would, of course, mean a departure from the imperialist goals of the US, which is not wanted. The beneficiaries and apologists of the capitalist system care only about one thing: eliminating economic competition to dominate new markets and boost the rate of return. The disagreements within the capitalist fractions only concern the methods of securing imperialist power: which companies to favor, which competitors to weaken and which means to use and so on – in a nutshell.
The fact that there are warring factions within the capitalist system, disagreeing over the methods of securing imperialist power, quickly leads to the misconception that one or the other fraction stands on the side of the normal population or, indeed, of peace. Imperialist capitalism is never peaceful, but always seeks the option to secure its dominance with force.