Kees van der Pijl: The United States and Europe—Bolstering the Infrastructure of Atlantic Unity in a Time of Crisis, Overcoming Rivalry

In these notes[1] I will address the issue of how the United States and the European Union are responding to what is now increasingly recognised as an existential crisis of Western hegemony and liberal capitalism. As George Soros wrote on 23 October 2014 in The Guardian newspaper, the West must keep up its pressure in Ukraine, because if not, the system that has been built up over decades and which includes NATO and the EU, may begin to unravel and as it does, eastern Europe may again come under the influence of a resurgent Russia. More

 

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: 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