Industrial restructuring and the State in Greece: national developments within an international setting

Abstract

The conceptual premise of the present thesis is that the international restructuring of industrial capitalist production is actualized within specific national social contexts and at an individual enterprise level. A very fundamental dimensionof the ongoing process of global integration of production is the way the national setting of the firm's operations reflects and adapts to the changing international environment. Within this framework, two central issues are being addressed: (a) How the national and international settings interact and interpenetrate at a firm level, and(b) What the mediating effect of the state is in this process as a regulator of the industrial crisis nationally. These issues are concretely explored in the case of the Greek state and its involvement in the process of capitalist accumulation. The main argument of the thesis is that increasingly since the recession, and especially with the accentuation of the crisis in the 1980s, the Greek state has assumed the pivotal role in sustaining the nationally-based industries in their process of restructuring along lines defined by international developments. The empirical investigation exposes the ways in which the Greek state has crucially shaped this process through direct and indirect means of public sector intervention and through its subsidization policy for industrial and regional development. Case studies of individual firms highlight the ways in which the crisis of over accumulation is experienced as an intensification of competition, and provide insights as to the variety of ways in which the nationally based firm attempts to adjust and integrate to a changing international environment.