As a first step, the Futures Commission has now published the booklet Challenging Corporate Capital: Creating an Alternative to Neo-liberalism. It includes proposals for labour and tax justice, a fair trade regime, a democracy-driven, public sector transformation as well as a response to the climate crisis. In this blog post, I will provide brief overviews of the contributions as well as links to the larger versions of the papers, freely available on the website of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Johannesburg/South Africa.
Showing posts with label alternatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alternatives. Show all posts
Thursday, 13 October 2016
Proposals for Alternatives to Neo-liberalism: SIGTUR's Futures Commission.
As a first step, the Futures Commission has now published the booklet Challenging Corporate Capital: Creating an Alternative to Neo-liberalism. It includes proposals for labour and tax justice, a fair trade regime, a democracy-driven, public sector transformation as well as a response to the climate crisis. In this blog post, I will provide brief overviews of the contributions as well as links to the larger versions of the papers, freely available on the website of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Johannesburg/South Africa.
Wednesday, 28 September 2016
Standing Up For Education!
On
Tuesday, 20 September, Standing Up For
Education, the latest publication by Spokesman Books, was launched in the Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham.
It provides an excellent compilation of insights from different perspectives
including students, teachers, trade unionists and parents into the devastating processes of
destruction of primary and secondary education. Emphasising the situation in
Nottingham, the volume provides a snapshot into processes affecting also other
local communities across the UK. In this blog post, I will report on the
contributions by four of the authors, who were present at the book launch.
Sunday, 21 August 2016
Fighting for the heart and soul of Labour!
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Photo by Jason |
Wednesday, 27 April 2016
Killing TTIP - The struggle against corporate power!
While
Obama is visiting Europe to drum up support for the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP), the 13th round of negotiations of the
treaty is currently taking place in the US. As John Hilary, the Executive
Director of War on Want and one of the key
initiators of the Stop-TTIP campaign in
Europe, declared, TTIP is not only important in itself covering the EU and US.
It is also significant, because it is regarded as a blueprint for all future trade deals. In this blog post, I will report on the key themes of his
public lecture at Nottingham University, delivered on 26 April.
Thursday, 21 April 2016
Towards principles of an alternative fair trade regime
Multilateral
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), praised as engines of development by their
supporters, have experienced a revival recently in a number of multilateral negotiations
including the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In this blog post, I will critically
discuss the record of FTAs and suggest potential key principles of an
alternative trade regime from a workers’ perspective, including one set of
principles around national sovereignty and another against the increasing structural power
of transnational capital. I will, thereby, draw on my freely downloadable paper
‘From
‘free trade’ to ‘fair trade’: proposals for joint labour demands towards an
alternative trade regime’, published by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Johannesburg/South Africa.
Friday, 26 February 2016
The Corbyn Factor: What does it mean in practice?
When discussing the revitalisation of the Labour Party, many people
refer to the Corbyn Factor. And indeed, the rise of the left-wing, rebellious
back bencher Jeremy Corbyn to become the leader of the Labour Party, elected by
a clear majority of party members and sympathisers only a few months after the
party’s defeat in general elections in May 2015, has been an astonishing
development (see Corbyn’s
Campaign). In this blog post I will assess the dynamics of this development
in practice by comparing two local Labour Party meetings in the area of
Nottingham, one in Beeston North in September 2014 and one in West Bridgford in
February 2016.
Thursday, 28 January 2016
Corbyn’s Campaign: The story of a remarkable summer.
Only a few months after the Labour Party’s
defeat in national elections in May 2015, the socialist, left-wing Jeremy
Corbyn was elected as the party’s new leader carried by a wave of enthusiasm in-
and outside the party. The book Corbyn’s
Campaign (Spokesman, 2016) provides interesting insights in crucial
aspects of this campaign and reflects on the possibilities for a socialist
renewal in Britain today. In this blog post, I will report on the book launch
with three of the authors, Tom Unterrainer, Adele Williams and Tony Simpson,
which took place at the Five Leaves
Bookshop in Nottingham on 27 January 2016.
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
Fighting for Public Water in Europe: The ECI Water is a Human Right.
Jan Willem Goudriaan, General Secretary
of the European Federation of Public Service
Unions (EPSU), has written regular updates (see 1,
2
and 3)
on where the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) Right2Water fits in the broader
struggles of the European Water Movement and how it links with the struggle for
Another Europe. In this latest guest post, he gives an update following the European Parliament vote on the ECI report.
Monday, 21 December 2015
After the election of Jeremy Corbyn – Where next for the Labour Party?
The
election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party so shortly after the
defeat in the general elections of May 2015 came for many as a surprise. The
electoral campaign had not been too far to the left, as Blairites tried to
claim immediately after the elections. Party members' and supporters' verdict was
that it had not been left and anti-austerity enough. In this post, I will
reflect on the chances of Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John
McDonnell of bringing about significant change in Britain.
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
“Sic Vos Non Vobis” (For You, But Not Yours): The Struggle for Public Water in Italy.
Monday, 5 October 2015
Working for an Alternative Economic Policy in Europe: the EuroMemo Group meeting in Roskilde.
Further
austerity imposed, democracy attacked – the third bailout of Greece in July
2015 has demonstrated the brutal face of neo-liberalism in Europe. Refugees in
need at the doors of Europe and the governments of the European Union (EU)
member states are squabbling over the allocation of small numbers of refugees
across the EU, numbers which the comparatively wealthy EU should easily be able
to accommodate. These events provided the dramatic background to this year’s EuroMemo
Group’s
conference Addressing Europe’s Multiple Crises: An agenda for
economic transformation, solidarity and democracy, held at
Roskilde University/Denmark, 24 to 26 September. In this blog post, I will make
some personal observations.
Tuesday, 29 September 2015
Alternatives to privatising public services!
‘What
we are for is equally important as what we are against’, declared Dexter Whitfield in his
presentation ‘Capitalist dynamics reconfiguring the state: alternatives to
privatising public services’ to a packed audience at Nottingham University on
Wednesday, 16 September. Hence, when contesting privatisation of public
services, it is not enough simply to resist these processes. It is also
necessary to put forward concrete alternatives of how to organise and deliver
these services differently from within the public sector. In this post, I will
summarise some of the key points of the presentation, which was jointly
organised by the Bertrand Russel
Peace Foundation,
the local University and College Union association and
the Centre for the
Study of Social and Global Justice.
Friday, 18 September 2015
Resisting Privatisation: Assessing the impact of the ECI 'Water is a Human Right'.
The
first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human
Right’ was an enormous success. Between May 2012 and September 2013, an
alliance of trade unions, social movements and NGOs succeeded in collecting
close to 1.9 million signatures across the European Union (EU), thereby
reaching the required quota in 13 EU member states (see Against the
grain: The European Citizens’ Initiative on ‘Water is a Human Right’). In this post,
I want to evaluate the outcomes, the concrete impact this campaign has had on
EU policy-making drawing on interviews with key activists as well as documentary research from
November 2014 to July 2015.
Thursday, 10 September 2015
Against the grain: The European Citizens’ Initiative on ‘Water is a Human Right’.
Between
May 2012 and September 2013, close to 1.9 million signatures were collected throughout
the European Union (EU) and formally submitted to the Commission for the
European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’. While impressive
in itself, it is not only the large number of signatures, which is a sign of
success. The ECI, based on a broad alliance of trade unions and social
movements, was successful at a time, when austerity policies were enforced
across the EU. It, therefore, went completely against the grain and in
opposition to dominant forces pushing for further neo-liberal restructuring. In
this blog post, I will discuss the main factors underlying this success: (1)
the long history of water struggles; (2) the unique quality of water; and (3)
the broad alliance of participating actors.
Saturday, 5 September 2015
Analysing Global Capitalism: the centrality of class.
The
recently published collection of essays by Hugo Radice on Global Capitalism (Routledge, 2015) represents impressive global political
economy scholarship across three decades from the 1980s to 2011. Radice makes
two key contributions. First, he successfully re-asserts the importance of
focusing on class and class struggle in analysing the global political economy.
Second, he provides insightful criticism of ‘progressive nationalism’, which is
highly relevant for the upcoming debate over UK membership in the European
Union (EU).
Monday, 3 August 2015
Food sovereignty and Fair Trade: a link between alternatives to the neo-liberal food regime.
The multiple global economic, financial,
food and ecological crises are deepening. And yet, neo-liberal capitalism
continues to reign supreme. Every crisis is responded to by further
marketization and commodification. ‘Free’ trade is deepened in negotiations of
the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific
Partnership Agreement (TPPA). In this post,
Jacklyn Cock and I suggest that the links between the concepts of
‘food sovereignty’ and ‘fair trade’ could promote connections between labour
and community struggles and foster labour solidarity at both the transnational
and local levels. Both concepts present challenges to the neo-liberal food
regime.
Friday, 15 May 2015
Austerity and Resistance – Greece in the Eurozone crisis.
Concerns over Greece’s ability to pay back its debt continue
unabated, with another crisis meeting of Eurozone finance ministers having taken
place in Brussels on Monday, 11 May. While the media focuses on Greece’s
ability to meet the conditions by the European Union, in this post Jamie Jordan and I have
another look at some of the key underlying dynamics of the crisis.
Monday, 13 April 2015
Challenging Corporate Capital: Creating an Alternative to Neo-Liberalism.
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
We make our own history – A call to action!
‘As we become political subjects on our
own behalf, recognise ourselves in each other and see the connections between
our different movements, we come closer to being able not only to articulate
the hope of “another world”, but also to bring it about’ (P.209). With these
words, Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen conclude their latest book We make our own history: Marxism and Social
Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto Press, 2014). In this
blog post, I will provide a critical appraisal of this important book.
Friday, 21 November 2014
Forget a ‘fair wage for a fair day’s work’?
Struggles between trade unions and employers are first and foremost
about wages. What constitutes a ‘fair wage for a fair day’s work’? Indeed, one
of trade unions’ biggest success has been to obtain higher wage levels by
organising workers into a collective social force, ready to go on strike
together if needed. Calls for an increase in the official minimum wage or a
living wage are equally over concerns of what constitutes proper remuneration
for particular services of labour offered. In this post, I will critically
examine the potential of struggles for higher wages for broader changes to
inequality and injustice in society.
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