LEXIT NETWORK

For a Left Exit from neoliberal integration and and the Euro-system

European Forum of Leftist Euro exiteers to take place in Italy mid-September

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by Wilhelm Langthaler

European Forum of Leftist Euro exiteers to take place in Italy mid-September

From 16-18 September the No Euro International Forum is scheduled to take place in Chianciano Terme, Siena province. It is already the third such meeting organised by a European coalition of different political forces advocating the urgent exit from the single currency while not fearing the break with the single market and the European Union altogether as a consequence.

The previous meeting took place in Athens just one week prior to the historic resistance referendum which could have been interpreted as a popular mandate for the break with the Euro oligarchy but instead was turned into submission to the liberalist dictate.

The initiative had been launched by an “International Leftist Co-ordination against the Euro” founded in Assisi, Italy, in August 2014 by a core group from the countries suffering most from the Euro straitjacket, namely Italy, Greece, Spain and France. In some place even several factions have been participating spanning different political milieus. Forces or personalities from Germany, Austria, Finland, Portugal, Slovenia and Britain have been joining in gradually.

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The EU is destroying Europe

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by Fabio De Masi

There’s a crisis in the EU. First Brexit, now stress with Italy’s banks. Meanwhile, former EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso sets off to work at Goldman Sachs, while his country buckles under the penalties resulting from its budget deficit, despite Portugal’s obedient implementation of the Troika’s reforms. In France, Italy and Sweden, too, there is growing support for leaving the EU. So it’s not enough to point fingers across the Channel. The EU clearly is in deep trouble.

There is no doubt that the Brexit campaign was marked by racism, lies and migration fears. This is nothing new. It happens during every election. What is new is the left’s helplessness in the face of this. In Austria, almost every second vote in the presidential elections went to the FPÖ. Hence, it is of little use insulting your audience. [Read more…]

Documentary: This is not a Coup!

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Infowar productions, creator of the documentaries Debtocracy (2011), Catastroika (2012) and Fascism Inc. (2014) is preparing its fourth project on the role of the EU, and particularly ECB, in undermining democracy in Europe The new documentary describes ECB’s financial interventions in states like Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus and Greece.

Featuring well known academics, politicians and journalists, it analyses the relation of EU institutions with big corporations and banks. In order to guarantee full independence from private companies and interests, the project is financed through crowdfunding – namely donations from citizens, trade unions and independent organizations and foundations across the globe.

The euro is breaking up Europe

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Review on: Stefan Hinsch and Wilhelm Langthaler, Europa zerbricht am Euro. Unter deutscher Vorherrschaft in die Krise (‘The euro is breaking up Europe. Into crisis under German sway’). Promedia Verlag, Vienna, 2016, 204 pp.

Although the title refers to Europe, this work is essentially about the European Union, its crisis and the probable unhappy outcome, the “collapse of a historic project”. The volume contains profound analyses of the economic and monetary processes that led to this situation but also valuable historical, political and sociological exposés which make the background and the general context easily comprehensible.

The authors’ fundamental finding is that in the EU we have an ‘imperfect monetary union’. As long as each EU Member State had its own separate currency, the others, though under pressure from Germany’s exporting power, the deutschmark and the interest policy of the Bundesbank, could ease that pressure by means of monetary adjustments, devaluations and interest-rate changes and could avail themselves of compensatory mechanisms. With the irrevocable fixing of euro exchange rates for the participating currencies on 1 January 1999, the creation of the European Central Bank and the adoption of the Stability and Growth Pact, the individual countries lost these instruments. The ‘EU convergence criteria’ prescribed fiscal and monetary performance targets but essentially disregarded productivity growth. The only way in which countries that are now caught in the euro trap can offset competitive disadvantages – provided that they exercise budgetary discipline – is by engaging in ‘internal devaluation’, in other words lowering prices, which is not really feasible, and cutting wages and salaries, welfare benefits and pensions – the programme implemented in Greece, Ireland and Portugal in the name of ‘debt reduction’. [Read more…]

The Left faces a popular uprising called “Brexit”

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by Christophe Ventura

The final chapter of a story is being written with Brexit. It is the story of the EU as symbolic incarnation of Europe. Whatever the outcome of the impending negotiations between the EU and the British government, the political involution called Brexit puts an end to the Europe built by the founding fathers. It also delivers a painful message: the integration of societies in the Old Continent through the primacy of markets, economics, currency and geopolitical servitude to the United States will guarantee neither peace nor prosperity to these societies. And it won’t set them on the path to their union either.

Of course Brexit must be evaluated in the particular historical, political and geopolitical context of the United Kingdom (its ancestral relationship to Europe). But it must also be understood for its deeply systemic nature, beyond its own geographic boundaries. The British voted all at once against EU policies (including perceived immigration and enlargement policies – or absence thereof), against its institutions, its treaties, its governments, its Establishment, and against the Establishment of every European country taken separately.

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