Crisis in the Eurozone, Part II – progressive ways out of the crisis!

Costas Lapavitsas and his colleagues show in their book Crisis in the Eurozone (Verso, 2012) that it is not German people, who have to pay for Greek excesses as a result of the sovereign debt crisis. Rather, it is workers in Germany and Greece alike, who are squeezed in order to continue the transfer of profits from workers to employers across the European Union (EU) (see Crisis in the Eurozone, Part I). In this second part of my review of the book, I will engage with the authors’ suggestion for a progressive way out of the crisis; a way, which empowers labour at the expense of capital.

Crisis in the Eurozone, Part I – the fundamental unevenness between core and periphery!

With their book Crisis in the Eurozone (Verso, 2012) Costas Lapavitsas and his colleagues have accomplished an impressive assessment of the underlying dynamics of the Eurozone crisis as well as provided an insightful analysis of potential ways forward. In this post, the first part of a two-part review of the book, I will focus on their discussions of the underlying dynamics.

Karl Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

The notion of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is widely vilified. Often linked to Stalin’s authoritarian rule in the Soviet Union, there is little positive said about it. Moreover, the negative evaluation is also regularly linked back to Lenin and his idea of a vanguard party taking over state power in order to change society for the better. As John Holloway argued, ‘you cannot build a society of non-power relations by conquering power. Once the logic of power is adopted, the struggle against power is already lost’ (Holloway 2002: 17). And yet, these reflections overlook Marx’s own discussion of what the dictatorship of the proletariat may entail in practice. Most importantly they neglect his analysis of the Paris Commune in The Civil War in France (1871). For as Engels pointed out in 1891, ‘well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’.

In this post, I will look more closely at Marx’s discussion of the Paris Commune and his ideas about how to organise popular government.

Samir Amin, Global Capitalism and the impossibility of developmental catch-up – Part II.

Is developmental catch-up within the global capitalist system possible? ‘The current success of emerging countries in terms of accelerated growth within globalized capitalism and with capitalist means reinforces the illusion that catching-up is possible’ (Amin 2011: 12). In this post, I will critically engage with (neo-) liberal promises of catch-up by looking more closely at Samir Amin’s book The Law of Worldwide Value (2010).

The precariat – a new class agent for transformation?

In this blog post, I provide a critical engagement with Guy Standing’s powerful book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). While it provides important insights into the conditions of the increasingly large informal sector of the economy, I will argue that several conceptual as well as empirical problems ultimately undermine the analytical significance of the book.

Samir Amin, free trade in agriculture and the impossibility of developmental catch-up.

Free trade in agriculture has increasingly become a focus for discussions about a potential path of development for countries in the Global South as well as a solution to the problem of how to feed the ever expanding global population. Drawing on the contribution by Samir Amin to the workshop ‘Trade unions, free trade and the problem of transnational solidarity’, held at Nottingham University on 2 and 3 December 2011, I will critically engage with this argument.  

The global economic crisis and the challenges for trade unions in the UK!

The financial market crisis has led to global economic recession. While many banks were bailed out by governments at high costs, it is now working people and society more generally, who are made to pay for the crisis. In this post, I will assess the challenges for British trade unions in their attempts to resist welfare state cuts and austerity.