Please come to an event with the above title in Thursday 16 February 2012, 6p.m., room B33, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Registration is free but required. You can register here.
The financial crisis, the subsequent economic crisis and the crisis in the Eurozone have multiple facets that highlight and, in some respects, exacerbate social democracy's malaise. They are crises of values, programmatic beliefs, policies, leadership and institutions. They raise in the most pressing manner the issue of the real contemporary meaning of reformism, internationalism and solidarity, the relationship between the political sphere and the economic sphere, the boundary between the public and the private, the appropriate level(s) of action (national, European, global), and the search for leadership and effective institutions. However, the ongoing crisis is above all a crisis of neo-liberalism and not enough (as well as a particular kind) of Europe. Yet, it was the Centre-Right and its allies that won the 2009 European elections. Crucially, they did so on the basis of a theme and slogan with clear social democratic overtones: to help create “l'Europe qui protège”.
What lessons have Europe's social democrats drawn from this ongoing crisisand, above all, how would they deal with it? What are their proposals and their strategies in that respect? How do they propose to meet the challenge of building the broad alliance that would enable them to return to power and what is to be done if they succeed? The purpose of this event is to bring together speakers from a range of spheres and offer them a chance to begin to sketch out current social democratic thinking at both the national and the European level on the crisis in the Eurozone and the associated ensemble of issues, including the regulation of financial services and the demand for the explicit politicization of the European Union. Is more integration the answer and if so, what kind of Europe should emerge from this crisis? How can democratic politics be brought to bear on unfettered markets and what is the appropriate level of action?
Chair: Dr Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos (Birkbeck)
Speakers:
- Lord Wood of Anfield (Member of the Shadow Cabinet, Strategic Adviser to Ed Miliband, Tutorial Fellow in Politics, Magdalen College, Oxford)
- Michael Dauderstädt (Director, Division for Economic and Social Policy, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung)
- Will Straw (Associate Director, Institute for Public Policy Research)
- Richard Murphy (Director, Tax Research LLP and founder, Tax Justice Network)
The event is supported by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, theLondon Office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Birkbeck's Department of Politics and it is organised in association with the MSc programme in European Politics and Policy.
Registration is free but required. You can register here.
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It is indeed disturbing how democracies in Europe have been so easily usurped on the pretext of urgently paying off the debt countries like Greece and Italy apparently owe. It seems the IMF/EU/ECB have let banks totally disregard democratic institutions. Depite continued propping up of the financial system at taxpayers expense tp the tune of billions of £’s, $’s and euro’s, there has been little attempt at regulation or any attempt to break the banks up.
Europe either needs to:
a) Cancel a large portion of EU debt, much of which will be odious debt anyhow.
b) Allow countries to borrow from the ECB like a proper central bank, that is, allow countries to borrow according to their needs, not imposed restrictions.
c) Allow countries to borrow, invest and grow.
Government’s around the world need to wrench back democracy from the banks, financial institutions and corporations and impose regulations and restrictions on banks, have a progressive tax policy and take back the economic reins to borrow and spend to create demand. This is the only real way to end the economic insanity that is prevailing at the moment.
James Robertson has produced a paper http://www.jamesrobertson.com/managingthe moneysupply.pdf in which he proposes the ECB issues the euro, not the private banks, and as such could supply member states with a calculated amount of new money debt-free. This might replace the national contributions.
I applaud the sentiment Stevo . What do you envisage happening if the ‘EU debt’ was cancelled? All the productive capacity would remain but what effect would it have on the banks? Would they have to be nationalised?
Oh No RM, not another left wing talking heads event. Appreciate the sentiments (yes I do) , but no “practical” people again. As you know the Quaker movement had a fine tradition of
philanthropic industrialists, where are they now? I’d like to see more of actual working people whether at the top middle or bottom of the commercial sphere talking at these events.
Its the doers that will build a fair Europe, not the talkers.
I think you’ll note I am a “practical” person
I think my track record is precisely the sort you say you want to hear from
A Quaker too