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First published online October 6, 2010

Germany’s Agenda 2010 reforms: Passive revolution at the crossroads

Ian BruffView all authors and affiliations
Volume 34, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816810378153

Abstract

This article examines Germany’s Agenda 2010 reforms, passed in 2003, with regard to Antonio Gramsci’s discussions of passive revolution. It does so via a consideration of the inherently expansionary nature of passive revolution as a concept, for in its genesis lie both comparative and international dimensions. Nevertheless, one consequence of the realisation of passive revolution’s conceptual potential is the need to redefine hegemony as the granting of active consent by the led to the leading—a move I view as untenable. Agenda 2010 is a useful test case, for it can be analysed successfully with regard to either passive revolution or hegemony, although I consider hegemony to be better placed for analysing this period in Germany’s contemporary history. I conclude with some suggestions for how to utilise more effectively the concept of passive revolution, and with some reflections on the impact of the current crisis on Germany.

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1.
1 This phrase is particularly significant since it is Robespierre’s, articulated in 1792 during debates on the future of the French Revolution, when he argued for its continuation rather than the proposed (passive revolutionary) conclusion of the process.
2.
2 Sara Motta (2008: 307—9) comes close to my position when discussing the disarticulation of dissent, but she tends to implicitly equate active consent with contained dissent.
3.
3 Space prevents a more detailed consideration of this issue. Nevertheless, although it is clear that the ‘Anglo-Saxonisation’ of the supply of credit is of considerable significance (see Grahl and Teague, 2004: 561—4), the twin processes of falling workforce numbers in high-value manufacturing and the export of capital had already been underway for some years. The growing financialisation of German capitalism thus complemented and intensified these prior developments because the impact was similar: the progressive tightening of the screws on labour.
4.
4 The labour market reforms strengthened protection against dismissal and increased the rights of part-time and temporary workers; the taxation reforms abolished capital gains tax on the sale of cross-shareholdings and lowered corporation and income taxation.
5.
5 See Bruff (2008b) on the significance in the early 2000s of the New Social Market Economy Initiative’s contributions to the debate on economic reform.
6.
6 Nor will the Greens contest the broad thrust of this shift. Despite its radical beginnings, ‘The party has become an increasingly tame prop of the establishment, its ranks filled with politically correct yuppies competing with the FDP as a softer-edged version of German liberalism’ (Anderson, 2009: 18). This explains the party’s support for Agenda 2010 and its recent entrance into a coalition with the once-reviled CDU in the Hamburg Land and with the CDU and FDP in Saarland, the latter of which entailed the rejection of a viable coalition with the SPD and the Left Party.
7.
7 For details, see Benoit (2006); Watt (2008).

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Published In

Volume 34, Issue 3
Pages: 409 - 428
Article first published online: October 6, 2010
Issue published: October 2010

Keywords

  1. passive revolution
  2. hegemony
  3. Gramsci
  4. Germany
  5. Agenda 2010

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Ian Bruff
University of Manchester, [email protected]
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