Die Schuldenfrage und die neue Stufe der neoliberalen Transformation der Europäischen Union.

The Debt Issue and a New Stage of Neoliberal Transformation of the European Union. Consequences for the Left, Alternatives of the Left.

The workshop is the first highlight of the project “Debt”, “land grabbing” and “property”. The strategic question to be tackled here will be, if the left will be able to use the political debate on the debt issue for

• enlightening the multitudes of people about social and political contexts and connections behind the processes they are exposed to,
• critically dealing with neoliberal ideologies and mainstream economics and developing our own understanding and thinkingdeveloping and improving our political strategies, especially by empowering, activating and organizing the multitudes of people for resistance and for autonomous work for realizing alternatives,
• promoting the discussion about global justice and about what kind of future we really want, connected to the work on alternatives.

In a scientific dimension, we shall enquire into and spell out the role of debt for changes in actor configurations and individual behaviour patterns, for changes in social and gender relations, for changes in economic patterns and social structures, for changes in territorial and global disparities (including, especially, the re-emergence of neo- colonialism), for changes in the dimensions of ecological destruction, violence, etc. …

The discussion should focus on the following issues: 

• The debt issue as a promoting factor of financialisation, representing a systemic transformation of the capitalist mode of production and living (in the sense of a new stage of the dialectic of productive forces and relations  of production ) as well as of the role and function of finance;
•  the current financial and Euro crisis as a promoting factor of financialisation of natural resources, of public finance and of the public dimension as a whole;
• Strategies and alternatives proposed by the left wing (with particular concern given to the orientation to be given to the development of the productive forces).

We want to deal with five questions:

1. What is new in the EU after "entering into the complex crisis" and what does this mean for the approach of modern left/modern socialist politics? 
2. What is the connection between debt and financialisation and how does it work - in relation to centre-periphery relations within the EU and the relations between the EU and the poor/developing countries?
3. The "case of Greece" as a challenge for the European Left - what does it mean in terms of politics?
4. Which are the criteria for defining left wing alternatives to the ruling politics and to the dominating types of development?
5. Which conclusions to draw for further research to be carried out and for redefining left/socialist politics?

Lectures:

Jan Toporowski: Rosa Luxemburg Lecture for the honor of Tadeusz Kowalik
«Finance Capital and the Political Economy of Rosa Luxemburg»:

Gabriel Sakallaridis: So and Now? What is a left alternative?

Leonidas Vatikiotis: The «Greek Case» of social and ecological struction

Ignacio Alvares: The Financialization of the Spanisch Economy

Gabi Zimmer: A left comment from a member of the European Parliament