The Left Case Against the EU

The Left Case Against the EU

by Costas Lapavitsas (Author), Costas Lapavitsas (Author)

Synopsis

Many on the left see the European Union as a fundamentally benign project with the potential to underpin ever greater co-operation and progress. If it has drifted rightwards, the answer is to fight for reform from within.

In this iconoclastic polemic, economist Costas Lapavitsas demolishes this view. He contends that the EU's response to the Eurozone crisis represents the ultimate transformation of the union into a neoliberal citadel, which institutionally embeds austerity, privatisation and wage cuts. Concurrently, the rise of German hegemony has divided the EU into an unstable mixture of wealthy core and dependent peripheries. These related developments make the EU impervious to meaningful reform, particularly as its institutions are fundamentally designed to uphold the interests of capital against labour. The solution is therefore a direct challenge to the EU project that stresses popular and national sovereignty as preconditions for socialism and true internationalism.

Lapavitsas's powerful manifesto for a socialist opposition to the EU upends the wishful thinking that often characterises the debate and will be a challenging read for all on the left interested in the future of Europe.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Edition: 1
Publisher: Polity
Published: 19 Oct 2018

ISBN 10: 1509531068
ISBN 13: 9781509531066

Media Reviews
For those wanting a clear and concise summary of the left case against the euro and of the misrepresentation of German European hegemony as the consummation of the European idea, there is no way around this book. Nowhere has the political economy of the common currency and of German ascendancy in Europa been more clearly exposed. There is now no excuse anymore for denying or ignoring the disastrous consequences of German predominance, as established through the euro, for the unity of Europe and for the great majority of its citizens. Wolfgang Streeck, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Costas Lapavitsas is the most important commentator on the EU and its current crises, including Brexit. This is one of the most significant books on modern politics to appear in the last decade, and virtually the only one fully to grasp the nature of our present situation. Richard Tuck, Harvard University