Michael Calderbank — Costas Lapavitsas: Socialism starts at home

Michael Calderbank speaks to Marxist economist Costas Lapavitsas ahead of the publication of his provocative new book The Left Case Against the EU

Costas Lapavitsas  The book is obviously a critique of the EU as it stands. It’s an assessment of where the union is, what it has become, and its likely direction. It is an attempt to say that the left should have nothing to do with defending this set of institutions. It should assume a critical, rejectionist position. I am asserting that this is the only way you can develop radical politics in Europe, a radical and internationalist economic and social programme....

Red Pepper
Costas Lapavitsas: Socialism starts at home
Michael Calderbank | Red Pepper co-editor and parliamentary researcher for trade unions

Will Denayer — Why Varoufakis’ DiEM2025 is fighting the wrong fight

As Lapavitsas explains, the Syriza leadership convinced itself that if it rejected a new bailout, European lenders would buckle in the face of financial and political unrest. The mastermind of this strategy was Yanis Varoufakis. He negotiated with the lenders for more than six months. But Greece could not negotiate effectively without an alternative plan, including the possibility of exiting the euro zone. Creating its own liquidity was the only way to avoid the Troika’s headlock. That would be far from easy, of course, but at least it would have offered the option of standing up to the catastrophic bailout strategies. The Syriza leadership would have none of it (see here).

‘SYRIZA failed,’ writes Lapavitsas, ‘not because austerity is invincible, nor because radical change is impossible, but because, disastrously, it was unwilling and unprepared to put up a direct challenge to the euro. Radical change and the abandonment of austerity in Europe require direct confrontation with the monetary union itself. For smaller countries this means preparing to exit, for core countries it means accepting decisive changes to dysfunctional monetary arrangements….

The post argues that Varoufakis is a utopian (which he admits) and also a poor strategist in spite of being an expert in game theory.

While the post is a bit long, the latter part summarizes Bill Mitchell's argument, so it is worth reading to the end. Thomas Fazi, who is also mentioned, is co-author with Bill of a forthcoming book on globalization and the nation state.

flassbeck economics international
Why Varoufakis’ DiEM2025 is fighting the wrong fight
Will Denayer

Sebastian Budgen & Costas Lapavitsas — Awakening the European Left

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

Dirk Ehnts — Lapavitsas on Grexit

I have recently reviewed the book by Flassbeck and Lapavitsas, who is a member of Syriza, for the International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education. The book review, which can be downloaded for free, was very interesting because it merged political economy with economics. The authors argued that Greece does not hold any ace while Europe would be able to cut access to liquidity to both government and banks. Hence a credible threat of Grexit would be needed. I thought and I still think, after the last”bail-out” of Greece, that this analysis is basically correct. The problem with the euro zone is that it is deflationary. Whenever a crisis comes up, spending is cut. This can only lead to less demand during times of crisis, which is bad. Economists have learned that lesson in the Great Depression, when Germany’s unemployed voted a man to power who promised bread and jobs in 1933. It is sad that German politicians of today do not seem to understand that money buys goods and that there is something like a monetary circuit which is very important. Instead, they believe in morality and think that Germany is a victim.

econoblog 101
Lapavitsas on Grexit
Dirk Ehnts | Berlin School for Economics and Law

Costas Lapavitsas — The Syriza strategy has come to an end

In a joint interview with German daily Der Tagesspiegel and ThePressProject International, Syriza MP and economist Costas Lapavitsas says that the time has come for Greece and its partners to understand that “they are flogging a dead horse”. Instead, they should work together on “an exit that will be negotiated and consensual”. The first step? “After 5 years of scaremongering and misinformation, there has to be at last a genuine public debate”.

The Press Project
Costas Lapavitsas: The Syriza strategy has come to an end

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard — Greek deal poisons Europe as backlash mounts against 'neo-colonial servitude'

International inspectors will have the power to veto legislation. The radical-Left Syriza government will be forced to repeal a raft of laws passed since it took power in January, stripping away the last fig leaf of sovereignty.

“It is unconditional surrender. We get serious austerity with no debt relief. We will have foreign supervisors crawling over everything,” said Costas Lapavitsas, a Syriza MP and one of 40 or so rebels who plan to abstain or vote against the deal, mostly from the Left Platform.

“They are telling us that from now on, they are going to govern the country. I am afraid there is going to be a real fight about this. There is a groundswell of anger and it is now perfectly clear to a lot of people that the only way out of neo-colonial servitude is to break free of monetary union,” he said.

The Telegraph
Greek deal poisons Europe as backlash mounts against 'neo-colonial servitude'

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Interesting that Ambrose is covering this so intently. I suspect it is sewing the seeds of Brexit. The Brits saw through the euro from the get-go and are now perceiving that the European project is over. There is no going forward.

Britain is not about accommodate the migration of European workers resulting from EZ policy. There are no advantages of staying in the EU for Britain in comparison with the disadvantages. Especially with UKIP rising and Nigel Farage one of the few heroes in this dismal saga after his rousing speech castigating Tsipras.

Bill Mitchell — Greece has only one viable path – exit

Neoliberalism is a political theory based on economics and bad economics at that. This is all about politics, that is distribution of power, rather than economics, in that economic distribution is based on economic power that flows from political power, which in term flows from social power, that is, is class structure and interest.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Greece has only one viable path – exit
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Verso — Costas Lapavitsas: The Syriza strategy has come to an end (Interview)

In a joint interview with German daily Der Tagesspiegel and ThePressProject International, Syriza MP and economist Costas Lapavitsas says that the time has come for Greece and its partners to understand that “they are flogging a dead horse”.....

So what should the Greek government do in your opinion?

Greece needs to consider the true alternative path which is to leave this failed monetary union....

Do you think Syriza has the mandate for it?

A straight answer is no.

Must-read. Frank and spot on.

Verso
Costas Lapavitsas: The Syriza strategy has come to an end

ht Dan Lynch in the comments

Greece: Phase Two — Sebastian Budgen interviews Costas Lapavitsas

Much — too much — has been written in a journalistic, superficial vein about Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and last month’s negotiations with the European Union. But now that the lines have hardened and are clearer for us all to see, a new situation has opened up. 

The scenario of Greece leaving the eurozone (“Grexit”) is more frequently and explicitly posed as the only way that Syriza’s government can avoid backtracking on its campaign promises. 

To discuss this question in greater depth, we spoke with Syriza Member of Parliament Costas Lapavitsas. Lapavitsas is, in many ways, the anti-Varoufakis, not only in style and personal trajectory but, more importantly, in terms of political line — he has become the figure most identified with a clear and frank break with the Syriza leadership’s “good euro” policy. 

Previously based at the SOAS in London, Lapavitsas is not a member of Syriza (although he was elected on the party list) and is a newcomer to parliamentary politics. However, he has been a socialist activist for most of his life and is known for his incisive and challenging theoretical work on the political economy of money, credit, and financialization (work that he commenced with Makoto Itoh while studying Japanese Marxism). 

Lapavitsas has also worked with the Research on Money and Finance group in London to produce concrete analyses of the origins and trajectory of the European crisis and, most recently, published together with the German neo-Keynesian economist Heiner Flassbeck a kind of manifesto proposing a radical break from the euro. 

He was interviewed for Jacobin by Sebastian Budgen, an editor for Verso Books who serves on the board of Historical Materialism. 

Key Questions 

• Was the coalition government necessary?
• How should we understand Varoufakis?
• Have the Marxists gone Keynesian?
• What happened in the negotiations?
• What do the next few months hold?
• How would a "negotiated" exit look?
• What kind of capital controls are needed?
• Isn't eurozone exit risky?
• And the impact of devaluation?
• What of the social movements?
• Does Syriza need uncritical support?

Jacobin

Greece: Phase Two
Sebastian Budgen & Costas Lapavitsas

ht Malmo's Ghost in the comments

Matias Vernengo — Costas Lapavitsas on Greexit

Read the whole interview here. My guess is he is assuming that it would give competitive advantage to domestic production, and allow for growth without increasing imports too much. Costas seems to be less hopeful about the effects on exports, which would seem reasonable. I would suggest that relying on the exchange rate would not be sufficient, and that some sort of import substitution would be necessary too.

Naked Keynesianism
Lapavitsas on Greexit
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University