We now propose the following workshop parts:

• I. Global Context, Experience and Theoretical Basics
• II. Financialisation and Transnationalisation; Social and Production Structures
• III. Case Studies in Regard to Countries
• IV. More specifically on Alternatives

“IV. More specifically on Alternatives” should underline that our analyses are oriented toward identifying and clarifying possible and existing alternatives and that we invite you to actively take part in that central idea.  We also want to invite all speakers to formulate a few main theses (1-3-5) of their contributions. We would like to get them until October 10^th.

Looking on the four parts we want to start our debate by formulating some provocative theses:

1. We face the attempt of the US to reclaim apparently lost global positions and new or renewed of the US-American hegemonic roleby th Eu. Globally, the most violent forces try to win new positions and to strengthen and to expand those they have already won. The global threat of war is increasing. Looking on the new EU discussion on core and periphery we think that “peripherisation” is a strongly misleading term to express the challenges we face: neither when dealing politically with social hierarchies, their causes and their causers, nor when protesting against the punishment of people in specific regions and countries whom banks, governments, the EU and the Bretton Woods’ institutions have made responsible for the very acts of precisely these same institutions. A better term might be “marginalising globalisation”.
2. Financialisation and transnationalisation are going hand in hand: Financialisation is a method to mobilise the necessary minimum of transnationalised capital for gaining profits “from globalization” and dealing with the “challenges of globalization”. It is a special form of accumulation of finance capital. A so-called 4+2 connection has grown in societal production that penetrates all structures of production and consumption and has created the corresponding structural relations of societal power and continues to support the corresponding consensus in society. This 4+2 connection consists of the mutually penetrating energy, transport and agriculture/agri-business, the military-industrial-complex/the security sphere, finance and high-tech industry. It is highly destructive, socially and ecologically – nd it tends to exacerbate conflicts in ways which make war a real possibility.
3. The neoliberals believe or declare that a linear economic and social progress unites the different areas involved in reciprocal trade relations and that this would lead to an increasing and enlarging spread of well-being. The dependency theorists agree that the global capitalist system has created a group of rich, developed, technologically sophisticated core countries and poor exploited and disadvantaged peripheries.Our work on collective analyses and conceptions focuses upon the relations among peoples, social groups, classes, generations, women and men of different ethnic origin, which may be the basis for common Action. Another dimension concerns the analysis of capital accumulation: People lives in territories – in municipalities, regions and countries. Their living conditions depend on the role of the concrete territories for (or in specific) capital accumulation processes, as well ason their concrete role in these accumulation processes.  This role is connected with the 4+2 connection, as it has emerged and is still developing, alongside with oligarchisation, financialisation and transnationationalisation of capital.
4. The central challenge is and will be to work on strategies against competition, and for organizing solidarity. Privatisation is a main political “heaven” to force competition, financialisation and capital power. So working for solidarity means also working against privatization.  Such a kind of work has to deal with and to make use of contradictions: On the one hand, the EU institutions are officially oriented towards reducing social and territory gaps and inequalities and have been declared to be interested in processes bringing poor regions into the line with the richer and rich. So they developed special instruments and funds. On the other hand, the EU institutions have focused and continue to focus upon competition among the territories and their inhabitants. But the ensuing development of contradictions threatens the security and the successful development of the EU as a global agency. So the question is how to change the EU as a global agency starting from the regions and being based in the regions.