An interview with Greek MP Costas Lapavitsas on Popular Unity and the case for a progressive Grexit.
Costas Lapavitsas has been vindicated — not that there’s much comfort in that.
From the beginning he argued that Greece leaving the eurozone was the only way Syriza could carry out its election program. The Syriza leadership instead stuck to their “good euro” policy, with disastrous results. The party recently split, with Lapavitsas and other members of Syriza’s parliamentary group, along with a coalition from across the Greek left forming Popular Unity to contest in the elections later this month.
In the conversation below, building on his March interview with Jacobin, Lapavitsas looks back at the tumultuous events of the past year, evaluates Popular Unity’s prospects going forward, and discusses what a Grexit from below would look like.Also discusses Corbyn.
Jacobin
Awakening the European Left
Sebastian Budgen & Costas Lapavitsas
ht SomeGuy in a comment at Bill Mitchell's billyblog
Sebastian Budgen & Costas Lapavitsas
ht SomeGuy in a comment at Bill Mitchell's billyblog
Grexit works because it is a form of devaluation. Indeed Grexit comes to the same thing in theory as internal devaluation. Another option which comes to the same as those two is import tariffs – advocated by Heiner Flassbeck, a German economist.
ReplyDeleteBoth grexit and import tariffs would enable Greece to return fairly quickly to full employment. Spending less on imported Mercedes cars and more on stuff produced in Greece seems to me a good idea. But seems very few people are interested.
Of course tariffs go against the grain of the EU. But which is worse: disastrous levels of unemployment or a temporary suspension of EU rules?