The core periphery model, which belongs to the language of the pre 1980 era, has recently returned to the academic and political language in the context of the Euro‐zone-crisis. The model, which was originally developed against the modernisation school and Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantages, was aiming to reveal the structural processes and mechanisms which consistently disfavour primary producer countries of the periphery against the industrial western core. More
Archiv der Kategorie: crisis
Joachim Becker: Enlarging the EU Sphere of Influence Eastwards – Or: The Dialectics of Integration and Disintegration
In the face of the austerity-induced depression of the domestic markets in the EU, the EU and its main powers bank on the expansion of economic relations beyond the EU and free trade agreements. The coalition agreement of social democrats and Christian democrats in Germany, the dominant EU power, is characteristic of this thinking. It is extremely brief and unimaginative in its paragraphs on the EU, but dedicates detailed and highlighted paragraphs on the Germany’s economic relationship with so-called emerging economies and on EU free trade agreements More
Workshop Organizers: Why is the Left so Weak?
Let us quote from our starting working paper: “The central challenge is and will be to work on strategies against competition, for organizing solidarity. Here we have to recognize that we were and are not successful regardless all Social Forum Processes, many conferences, workshops and so many activities. It means, we have to ask about the reasons of our failures.“ The point was critisised. More
Judith Dellheim, Frieder Otto Wolf: On Industrial Policy
Kees van der Pijl: The Financial Crisis and the War for Global Governance
This paper argues that in the transition from corporate liberalism to neoliberalism, the projection of global governance by the West replaces the previous recognition of bloc formation of non-Western states. The military build-up and counterrevolutionary interventions under Reagan, and the revolt of the capital markets against Keynesianism coupled with unregulated finance, were the relays in this projection. In the same period the Israeli Far Right and their supporters in the United States re-baptised national liberation as terrorism. This made it possible to continue with record defence outlays and arms exports to Middle East and Asian clients. In the early nineties the US military-industrial complex More
Some More Statistics on Inequality
In addition to our statistics from 31.5. we would like to recommend two some more: 1) Eurofound’s fifth annual yearbook, Living and working in Europe, based on the Agency’s research from 2013, and 2) a special coverage on the financial crisis.
Jan Toporowski: Kalecki and the Political Economy of Trades Unions
‘There are certain “workers’ friends” who try to persuade the working class to abandon the fight for wages, of course in its own interest. The usual argument used for this purpose is that the increase of wages causes unemployment, and is thus detrimental to the working class as a whole… Our investigation… has shown that a wage increase… tends to reduce the degree of monopoly and thus to raise real wages… If viewed from this standpoint, strikes must have the full sympathy of “workers’ friends”. For a rise in wages tends to reduce the degree of Weiterlesen
Jan Toporowski: Debt, Class and Asset Inflation
The mainstream view of household consumption and saving is based on the idea of a ‘representative’ household endowed with more or less perfect foresight, according to whether the theory is New Classical or New Keynesian. The traditional Keynesian view had household saving and consumption determined by income, with Post-Keynesian innovations in the form of differentiated propensities to consume on the part of workers or capitalists and, following Minsky, increasing indebtedness of firms. More
Jan Toporowski: Fascist Spectre Looms over Stagnant Europe
A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of fascism, born of economic Stagnation and the very apparent ability of democratic governments to eliminate mass employment.
There are two main reasons for the alarming prospect: First, Exchange rate stability has come to be regarded as a precondition for European economic and monetarian union. More
Jan Toporowski: Eastern Europe: Post-Communist Assets in Crisis
During the 1980s, in the final years of communism, Eastern European economists and politicians were easily persuaded by the myth that removal of the petty restrictions on private business would allow private enterprise to flourish. The idea of a permanent state of capitalist dynamism is rooted in the notion that finance spontaneously backs industrial enterprise. Many economists assume, at least in their abstract theories More