WPU may-day school interventions part 1:Domagoj Mihaljević and Mislav Žitko
Channel: Inštitut za delavske študije
Date: 2012-04-27

Domagoj Mihaljević: The Making of Capitalism with European Characteristics

The Keynesian "Modest Proposal", written by Yanis Varoufakis and Stuart Holland, represented the most comprehensive proposal which could had shown (or it still can?) the way out of the European crisis. In contrast to this plan, the politicians have chosen the policy of harsh economic austerity and of imposing fiscal discipline, which completely unmasked the European reality: the political mechanisms of the EU are completely in the hands of bankers willing to dismantle what little remained of democratic institutions and to destroy entire economies, as in the case of Greece, only to maintain their profits. In this context, it is necessary to answer the following questions about the future of the EU: will the agreement on fiscal discipline really take hold? will the political integration be sustainable under such conditions? does the collapse of Eurozone imply the disintegration of the EU? and, most importantly, will there be resistance on the streets strong enough to prevent the transformation of the capitalist models of the EU into a unified model with particular features distinctive of Chinese capitalism? Reconstruction of the European economy based on Varoufakis/Holland plan would represent the most developed alternative to the path into the "postmodern 30s", but the logic of capitalist reproduction is blocking any possibility of changing the current economic direction that is leading Europe into collapse. My intervention will try to provide answers to these questions, and to anticipate the sequence of events arising from the ruthless implementation of fiscal austerity.

Domagoj Mihaljević holds a BA in Economics from the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, where he is also preparing his MA thesis on the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
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Mislav Žitko: Reclaiming Underdevelopment:  Financial Liberalization and Export- led Growth Strategy in Croatia

The crisis of the eurozone has brought severe pressure on the Eastern European countries and reinforced their socio-economic trajectory that had been put in place at the beginning of the post-socialist transition. After a period of illusive prosperity the global economic turmoil has laid bare the vulnerabilities that have been building up through the entire period of the post-socialist transition. The imperatives of price stability and financial liberalization had an adverse effect on the post-socialist countries, as they exposed their economies to the mechanism of international competition while at the same time reducing the maneuvering space for the implementation of monetary and fiscal policy.

Constructing a more profound narrative of the last two decades of the post-socialist economic history requires an analysis of the institutional features and political practices in the context of the process of financialization. Investigating the link between the central bank policies, the privatization of the banking sector and the growth of private and public debt is a prerequisite for the understanding of the specific form of "peripheral capitalism". In this paper I shall look at the Croatian economy in the period between 2000 and 2012 more closely and, comparing it with other post-socialist countries (Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania), I shall try to specify some prevalent shortfalls that the left has to take into account in order to achieve a sustainable exit from the dominant policy arrangements.

Mislav Žitko is a student of Croatian studies and philosophy, and an activist and associate of the Centre for Labour Studies in Zagreb.
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