The Left Case Against the Eu

ISBN-13: 9781509531059 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 160 str.

Costas Lapavitsas

Opis

Many on the left see the European Union as a fundamentally benign project with the potential to underpin ever greater co-operation and progress. If it has drifted rightwards, the answer is to fight for reform from within. In this iconoclastic polemic, economist Costas Lapavitsas demolishes this view.

Recenzje

'For those wanting a clear and concise summary of the left case against the euro and of the misrepresentation of German European hegemony as the consummation of the "European idea", there is no way around this book. Nowhere has the political economy of the common currency and of German ascendancy in Europe been more clearly exposed.' Wolfgang Streeck, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies 'Costas Lapavitsas is the most important commentator on the EU and its current crises, including Brexit. This is one of the most significant books on modern politics to appear in the last decade, and virtually the only one fully to grasp the nature of our present situation.' Richard Tuck, Harvard University "Important and timely" E-International Relations

Spis treści

• Contents
• Ch. 1. The European Union and the Left
• 1.1 Fragmentation and retreat of democracy
• 1.2 The challenge for the Left
• Ch. 2. The evolution of the EU since Maastricht
• 2.1. Neoliberalism and hegemony in the EU  drawing on Hayek
• 2.2. Neoliberalism and state monopoly over money
• 2.3. Creating the euro: A lever of neoliberalism and conditional German hegemony
• 2.4. The architectural flaws of the euro
• 2.5. The broader context of conditional German hegemony
• Ch. 3. The ascendancy of Germany and the division of Europe
• 3.1. A distinctive financialised economy
• 3.2. The defeat of German labour in the 1990s
• 3.3. The competitive advantage of Germany and the creation of the Southern periphery
• 3.4. The unstable core of the EMU and the Central European periphery
• Ch. 4. The Eurozone crisis: Class interests and hegemonic power
• 4.1. Crisis erupts
• 4.2. Imposing a neoliberal agenda
• 4.3. An unstable and fraught equilibrium
• Ch. 5. Greece in the iron trap of the euro
• 5.1 The proximate causes of the Greek crisis
• 5.2 Long–term weaknesses of the Greek economy
• 5.3. The lenders impose bail–outs and bring disaster
• 5.4. Class and national interests in the Greek disaster
• 5.5 The political debacle of SYRIZA
• Ch. 6. Seeking democracy, sovereignty, and socialism
• 6.1. Democracy and sovereignty in the EU, once again
• 6.2 The impossibility of radical reform
• 6.3. A class–based stance for the Left
• 6.4. What to do?

O autorze

Costas Lapavitsas is Professor of Economics at SOAS University of London.