Auður Lilja Erlingsdóttir, Iceland
From the middle of the 19th century, the question of Iceland’s independence from Denmark dominated the Icelandic political scene. With sovereignty in 1918 and full independence in 1944, the Icelandic society began to change. Iceland moved from being an agricultural society to a more industrialized one, causing swift changes in settlement, life style and living conditions. The Icelandic party system was not immune to these changes in the social structure.
By Edgardo Lander, Venezuela – With the recognition of the deep civilization crisis and the limits of the planet, any project for a democratic transformation of society necessarily has to include radical alternatives to the predatory logic of this society of progress and of subjugation/exploitation of so-called “nature”. This requires, in the first place, an anticapitalist option.
Acuerdos de Asociación Europa-América Latina: Socios privilegiados o tratados de libre comercio? – RLF Brussels, 2010
Association Agreements with Latin America are increasingly pushed by the European Union. The brochure “Association Agreements European Union – Latin America – Privileged partnerships or Free Trade Agreements?” gives insights into impacts of Association Agreements with the EU on specific sectors, such as agrofuels, water and energy, investments and services, analyses the negotiation processes between the European Union and the Andean Region, and explaines the political context of the probably soon be signed EU-Central American Association Agreement.
The authors are academic researchers and/or associated with civil society organisations that are active in the Hemispheric Social Alliance, a network that originated in the opposition to the American Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA, span. ALCA).
The studies in detail: El Savador (context of EU-Central American Association Agreement and study on anticipated outcomes for micro and meso enterprises), Costa Rica (legal and institutional changes for energy and water), Nicaragua and Guatemala (changing role of agrofuels and impact on association agreements), Colombia and Peru (negotiation processes of association agreements and general overview on experiences with trade agreements in Latin America), Bolivia (role of social movements in the negotiation process), Chile and Mexico (experiences with free trade agreements, impact on investments and services).
Nicolás Muzi (Brussels) – Exceeding all expectations, a critical mass of over 50 people (a milieu of left-wing social actors, academics, politicians, radical intellectuals and employees of the European Institutions) got together on 1st March 2010 to discuss a key issue of the European Left political agenda: fighting poverty in the European Union. Under the framework of the 2010 European Year against poverty sponsored by the European Commission, the Transform! Working Group Brussels organised a debate to explore Left alternatives for the fight against poverty in the “First World”, held in the Garcia Lorca Centre, a historic gathering place of the critical Left in Brussels (home of Spain’s Communist Party during Franco’s dictatorship).
On the 31st of March 2010 the European Commission adopted its long expected “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the citizens’ initiative“. Advocates of the Lisbon-Treaty pointed to this one element as a great step forward towards a truly citizen centered European integration. Now the question raises: what about “the small print”, the administrative implementation rules?
A detailed critical analysis of this policy instrument
by Michael Efler: PDF-file
Related Blog: http://www.citizens-initiative.eu/
Proposal by the European Commission: PDF-file
The liberal theory of the political system resembles the neo-classical concept of the market: If all act in their interests, the public good will in the end emerge strengthened from the process. Of course, general rules must apply, but basically, everyone should be allowed to promote his or her own interests to their best ability. Looking at the reality in the centre of European politics one might have second thoughts about this. The European Parliament and, even more so, the European Commission, have become the main targets of a gigantic lobby industry. Washington is the only place where more lobbyists are to be found.
Anna Striethorst (Brussels) – “Why Seems the Crisis to Favour Rather the Right than the Left?” In March 2010, the leftist network Transform!Europe invited experts from all over Europe to Palma de Mallorca to discuss strategic options for the left during the crisis.
The debate first of all addressed the question of an analysis as to whether the crisis has in fact strengthened the position of right-wing political forces, as assumed at the outset. A study by the Austrian Barbara Steiner, who had compared the results of the elections in a number of European countries, arrived at no clear conclusion. Many took issue with the thesis of the Czech Jiri Malek that crises always help the rightists: Ruurik Holm from Finland pointed out, for example, that the Finnish economic crisis during the nineties has led to a landslide victory of the left. Other participants argued that the right, too, had been caught unprepared by the crisis and would now have to reconsider its neo-liberal positions. Some even went as far as Richard Detje of the magazine Sozialismus, who noted a vacuum of hegemony, in view of the obsolescence of deregulation and depoliticising. In his opinion, the situation has seldom been as open as now; the left, he said, must make use of this.
Not long ago, the columnists of the major newspapers would not in their wildest dreams have been able to imagine the events happening today. The taxpayers of the two largest European countries, Germany and France, are to help Greece out of its macroeconomic mess. But no! The word “macro-economics” is quite wrong here, because that makes it sound like rational policy. But: Greece necessarily reacts to its “social environment”, which is the international community. And that is structured by rules and by relationships of power and exchange. Here, certain groups with their institutions rule over other groups – be they the lower classes of their own countries, or other countries which have a lower level of technological development in the international division of labour.
Birgit Daiber (Brussels) and Cornelia Hildebrandt (Berlin) – The old socialist model imploded in 1989. The perversion of the idea of socialism by Stalinism, the democratic deficits inherent in its system, the failure of the planned economy, the bureaucratic paralysis of the societies subjected to its claim that political leadership belong to the communist parties… not much was left of the wealth of ideas of the left’s history; the hope of humankind had worn itself out in “real existing socialisms”.
By Dieter Klein – My point of departure is the question as to the historical locus of the present multidimensional crisis. The difficulty in answering it is that the historical significance of a situation is as a rule difficult to grasp for those living within it. All the greater is the responsibility of intellectuals to address such a question.
My thesis is: the most recent societal crisis, which has not at all ended with the abatement of the financial crisis and the overcoming of the world economic crisis, could be seen as the beginning of a fundamental watershed in global development. Following on “The Great Transformation”, which Karl Polanyi analysed in his work with that title, nothing less than a Second Great Transformation is now entering onto the historical agenda, a transformation which will revolutionise all spheres of societal life on earth.
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