Europe’s Political Economy: Brilliant Eurozone analysis from inside Die Linke

Delighted to stumble on outstanding piece on Lexit argument on German left by Bernd Riexinger co-chair of Die Linke with Katja Kipping.

http://www.prager-fruehling-magazin.de/de/article/1322.gegen-macht-und-linke-eu-kritik-statt-exit-illusionen.html

Wish I had seen this before I launched the critique of Streeck. I am entirely on same page as Riexinger. He even has the line “there is no exit from societal relations of force”. It’s in German, but highly recommended. Even more remarkably Riexinger is drawing on a range of important analytical work being done by researchers at the Rose Luxemburg Stiftung on the political economy of the Eurozone. This is some of the best stuff I have seen in German. Key researchers are Frederic Heine and Thomas Sablowski. They have a great paper on class fractions within German business and the Eurozone crisis which is  Poultanzian in inspiration. But most importantly and in English they have an outstanding paper on the “imbalances” in the Eurozone ahead of the crisis and their origin in transnational capital flows, not differences in “competitiveness” etc.

https://www.rosalux.de/publication/42288/monetary-union-unravelling.html

This is where the rubber really hits the road in the political economy of the EU right now and they are pushing the argument from the left beyond the “labour cost, export competitiveness” stories that have been so influential and focusing instead on cross border capital flows as drivers of macroeconomic imbalance. The fact that this kind of analysis is making its way into the top levels of the Die Linke and that people like Riexinger can articulate its implications as clearly as he does, is simply fantastic. 

One for Danilo Scholz

https://www.rosalux.de/publikationen/autorenprofil/profil_detail/frederic-heine.html

https://www.rosalux.de/publikationen/autorenprofil/profil_detail/thomas-sablowski.html

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