European Union

By Martin Thomas On Monday 31 October, a New Political Economy Network (NPEN) seminar for academics, journalists, and political figures, at the offices of the Guardian, discussed the eurozone crisis. Larry Elliott, economics editor of the Guardian, introduced, arguing that the eurozone project has come to the end of its road and that the answer is “to rip this up and start again”. Costas Lapavitsas from the School of Oriental and African Studies put it more sharply: the left must campaign for debtor-led default (Greece stopping payment on its debts) and exit from the eurozone. Greece will then...

The Tory right mobilised on 24 October, with the help of the right-wing tabloid press, to demand a referendum on British withdrawal from the European Union. They recorded 81 votes against the government. The Tory right resents the limited legal rights which British workers get from European Union legislation driven by countries where labour movements are stronger and less legally shackled than in Britain. They would like to see Britain become “offshore” from Europe economically as well as geographically, offering transnational corporations a low-cost production site close to Europe where...

In the 1930s, when the Stalinised Communist movement responded to the rise of National Socialism in part by competing to out-do its nationalism, Leon Trotsky explained what was wrong with that “national communism” - developing themes he had written on earlier, during World War One. We publish extracts below. Trotsky's explanations are relevant today, with such things on the left as the Socialist Party promoting the “left” nationalist “No2EU” project... In response to the fascist slogan of the “people’s revolution” to win “national liberation” for Germany, the German Communists said that they...

What’s behind the series of crises in the eurozone? As Karl Marx explained over 100 years ago, a developed credit system both gives greater elasticity to capitalist production and accentuates capital’s tendencies to overproduction and overspeculation. From the early 1980s to 2008, global credit markets expanded enormously. They developed a dizzying variety of new forms of credit, and a dizzying speed at which different forms of credit could be exchanged with each other. That expansion helped propel the expansion and restructuring of capitalist production known as “globalisation”. It set the...

On Sunday 23 October European Union leaders hold a summit conference where they will try again to patch up the eurozone economic crisis. Patching up — at the expense of working people across Europe — is about the best they can hope for. The whole laboriously-constructed edifice of the eurozone is in danger of disintegration. The threatened collapse of big banks in 2008, averted by big government interventions, has worked its way through into a crisis of European states’ debts. Greece’s government has now long fallen off the wheel of borrowing, repaying, and even more borrowing on which all...

In June 2011 the Greek government agreed a four-year cuts programme of €28 billion, and was told by the EU that was €5.5 billion too little. Italy’s latest cuts total €70 billion, again over several years. Ireland’s, about €8 billion. Portugal’s, the same. Spain’s, €15 billion. In total the governments reckon €135 billion of cuts might get them straight. The Financial Times (16 September) reckons €230 billion for the one-off loss if the governments don’t meet their IOUs. Suppose those €135 billion cuts are represented by one apple, and €230 billion is one orange. The European Union’s economy...

“The People’s Pledge” is an all-party campaign that seeks a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union by asking voters to promise to only back MP's who support a referendum. The Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union (RMT) has become the first union to formally back the campaign. RMT leader Bob Crow was already an individual supporter. By supporting The People’s Pledge, unions enter into a deal with the devil. Backing the campaign, which is focused exclusively on the single issue of the referendum, means getting into bed with some very unsavoury characters. Let’s look at...

In autumn 2008 big banks in the world’s richest countries went bust. Governments bailed them out or nationalised them. The sharp end of the crisis was swivelled to point at governments, and their ability to manage debt, rather than at the banks. The governments have managed the sequel by giving priority to getting banks profitable and independent again, and making the working class pay. That is the story behind the “bail-outs” of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, and Greece’s second “bail-out”, currently being negotiated. On the estimate of most economists, the “bail-outs” of Greece will not stop...

Click here to download article as pdf . International round-up: PLO goes for two states; Yugoslavia's "market socialism" crumbles; aftermath of the economic crash; crisis in Nicaragua; gains for PT in Brazil; EEC's "single market"

Martin Thomas reviews "Europe without America", by John Palmer. Clive Bradley reviews "Revolutionary Rehearsals", published by the SWP's Bookmarks. Stan Crooke reviews "Ireland, the case for British disengagement", by Conor Foley. Neil Stonelake reviews "Community Architecture", by Nick Wates and Charles Knevvit. Belinda Weaver reviews "State of the Art", by Pauline Kael. Rhodri Evans reviews "Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: the Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860-1912", by Lance Davis, Robert Huttenback, and Susan Gray Davis. Gerry Bates reviews "Leninism Under Lenin", by Marcel...