For the Workshop Discussion – Theses of the Speakers

The mainstream debate on core and periphery should not distract us from the really important questions on the causes and the causers of the crises and on how ruling policy deals with them. In this context we shall have to take note of the fact that the term “peripherisation” cannot adequately express the real challenges we face. More

Sergio Tzotzes: The Case of Greece: Labour Market Reforms as Neoliberal Discipline in the European Periphery

This paper examines the dismantling of labour market institutions in Greece along neoliberal imperatives that was explicitly imposed by the loan conditionality of the IMF/EU/ECB adjustment programme. The mainstream public and academic discourse presents Greece as an exceptional isolated incident or a Greek disease where harsh adjustment was required to save the country from bankruptcy. Failing, to elucidate the structural aspects and the contradictions underlying the capitalist crisis, mainstream accounts also obscure the true nature, the aims and the implications of the labour market restructuring ongoing in Greece. More

Workshop Organisers: „Wrap Up“

1. A short introduction

We have used and use our international RLF Conference on Rosa Luxemburgs “Accumulation of Capital” http://kapacc.blog.rosalux.de/2013/05/19/100th-anniversary-of-the-accumulation-of-capital-a-contribution-to-an-economic-explanation-of-imperialism-a-century-old-work-remains-current-provocative-and-eminal/ for the preparation process of the 4th EU experts’ discussion. More

Workshop Organizers: About Structural Similarities in the Development of former European Colonies, CEE Countries and “Euro-Crisis-Countries”

In our previous “ papers from the organizers” we have highlighted the term and the issue of “regions”, and have explained some additional terms and their connections. Furthermore, we have promised to discuss the structural similarities referred to in the title. The following discussion paper is another draft for further debate – it continues the previous paper sand remains a rough sketch for the time being. More

Aris Chatzistenaou: How the IMF Destroyed Greece: The Reality of the Greek “Success story”: On Its Way to Become a Third World Country

In Greece we are living a financial and social genocide and it’s a huge lie from Greek Prime Minister to characterize people who are committing suicide because they don’t have enough for food and the don’t have enough to support their families to characterise this as a success story. We couldn’t imagine that something like that could happen. More

Marica Frangakis: Inequality and Financialisation: The Case of the EU

After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the elimination of the system of fixed exchange rates, global finance made new inroads into the world economy, while the deregulation of financial services marked the beginning of the era of financialisation. Inequality in the distribution of income and wealth feeds the process of financialisation and is fed by it. It is a two-way relationship, which has favoured the meteoric rise of the More