The Left Case Against the EUMany on the Left see the European Union as a fundamentally benign project with the potential to underpin ever greater cooperation and progress. If it has drifted rightward, the answer is to fight for reform from within. In this iconoclastic polemic, economist Costas Lapavitsas demolishes this view. He contends that the EU’s response to the Eurozone crisis represents the ultimate transformation of the union into a neoliberal citadel that institutionally embeds austerity, privatization, and wage cuts. Concurrently, the rise of German hegemony has divided the EU into an unstable core and dependent peripheries. These related developments make the EU impervious to meaningful reform. The solution is therefore a direct challenge to the EU project that stresses popular and national sovereignty as preconditions for true internationalist socialism. Lapavitsas’s powerful manifesto for a left opposition to the EU upends the wishful thinking that often characterizes the debate and will be a challenging read for all on the Left interested in the future of Europe. |
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Contents
From Maastricht to | |
The Ascendancy of Germany and the Division of Europe | |
Figures | |
Class Interests and Hegemonic Power | |
Greece in the Iron Trap of the Euro | |
Seeking Democracy Sovereignty and Socialism | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aggregate AMECO data bail-out capital capitalist central bank Central European periphery collapse conditionality Constructed from AMECO core countries country’s created current account debt relief decades decline default and exit democracy domestic emergence employment euro Europe European Commission European Integration European Left European Union Eurosystem Eurozone crisis exchange rates exports favour France German German FDI German hegemony German industrial global Greece Greek banks Greek crisis Greek debt Greek economy Greek historical bloc growth Hayek hegemony ideological imposed institutions interest rates International Monetary Fund investment Italy Lapavitsas 2013 lenders liquidity loans Maastricht Maastricht Treaty Mariolis mechanisms monetary union neoliberal nominal unit labour ordoliberalism peripheral countries political private debt productivity programme public debt quantitative easing reforms sector single market social Southern periphery Spain Stability sudden stop surpluses SYRIZA trade transnational Treaty Troika Tsipras unit labour costs Varoufakis wages weak workers
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Left Case Against the EU |
| Author | Costas Lapavitsas |
| Publisher | John Wiley & Sons, 2018 |
| ISBN | 1509531084, 9781509531080 |
| Length | 160 pages |
| Subjects | › › Business & Economics / Economics / General Political Science / Public Policy / Economic Policy |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |