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Symptoms of Euro-Denial

Robin Blackburn on Will Hutton, The World We’re In. Does a critique of the Anglo-American version of capitalism have to appeal to a stumbling European variant, as sentimental antithesis?

Heirs of Tangentopoli

John Foot on Paul Ginsborg, Italy and Its Discontents. Micro and macro history of sea changes in Italy over the last twenty years.

The 'Progressive' Restoration

A Franco-German exchange between novelist and sociologist on the success of neoliberalism in transforming political regression into the standard of social progress; and the fate of the Enlightenment in the two leading cultures of the European Union.

Europe’s New-Old Order

Alan Milward on David Calleo, Rethinking Europe’s Future. Parallels with the epoch after 1873, as the EU seeks its role between the single currency and enlargement, America and Russia.

Why Europe Needs a Constitution

Germany’s leading philosopher argues that further development of the European Union requires both a mobilizing political project—positively differentiating the Old World from the New—and a formal Constitution, submitted to a popular referendum.

Globalized Finance

Can stakeholder variants of capitalism in east Asia or Europe resist the rise to global dominance of Anglo-American shareholder value? John Grahl argues that ‘exit’ trumps ‘voice’—disembedded forms of corporate finance are inherently more capable of spreading uniformly round the world than embedded ones, which remain particular to local settings. The misfortunes of the euro as a portent of US pressures to come.

Why We All Love to Hate Haider

What is the significance of the EU’s boycott of the new Austrian government? Beyond the Tartuffery of official reactions to Haider in the West, Slavoj Žižek dissects the political function of the new rectitudes of the Third Way.

Europa and Utopia: How Cultural History Deals with the Paradox of Modernity

“In the light of Luisa Passerini’s new book on the cultural and political discourse on Europe in Britain in the 1930s, it is tempting to draw a number of parallels between that decade and our own. The inter-war years, Passerini shows, were a period of much speculation and . . .” read more

The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalization

“This article originally appeared in Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, April 1999, pp. 425–436.” read more

A Reply to Norberto Bobbio

“Dear Norberto Bobbio,” read more

A Sense of the Left

“Norberto Bobbio’s book on the Right and Left marks a significant moment in the author’s long and distinguished career as a political thinker. Published during the Italian electoral campaign of 1994, Destra e Sinistrais one of his most topical and personal writings, whose popular success in Italy is . . .” read more

Questioning Eurocentricism: A Reply to Gregor McLennan

“Gregor McLennan says he is replying to my article on ‘Eurocentrism and its Avatars’. It seems to me what he is doing is taking off from my article to criticize ‘post-colonial theorists’, who are also characterized as ‘maximal anti-Eurocentrics’. The justification seems to be that ‘in places Wallerstein . . .” read more

At the Beginning of History

“Dear Perry Anderson,” read more

The Question of Eurocentricism: A Comment on Immanuel Wallerstein

“In his critique of Eurocentrism, Immanuel Wallerstein has provided a useful discussion of a major issue for contemporary left politics and critical social science. By contrast with the higher-profile subject of ‘multi-culturalism’, to which it is of course related, the Eurocentrism question has received less considered debate. Wallerstein’s . . .” read more

Unemployed Europe and the Struggle for Alternatives

“On 19 January, Tony Blair gave an interview to the European newspaper. He made plain his belief that ‘not just socialism but social democracy as practised in most of Europe is past its sell-by date’. The reason for this judgement is said to be that social democracy has . . .” read more

Sterilization and Propaganda

“Late in August this year, a message was widely broadcast by the international media. Filing their reports out of Stockholm, journalists from around the world presented their readers and viewers with the news that between 1934 and 1976, tens of thousands of people—more than 90 per cent of . . .” read more

The Theory of Post-Communist Managerialism

“The most distinctive characteristic of post-communist social structure in East Central Europe is the absence of a capitalist class. Private property rights are in place, markets in labour and capital exist, these economies are open to world markets, and they have strong relationships with international financial institutions. However, . . .” read more

Bosnia and the Revival of US Hegemony

“The primary concern of us policy-makers, Democrats and Republicans, since the Second World War has been ‘world leadership’. Where necessary and possible domestic issues have been subordinated to the overarching goal of constructing and sustaining us hegemony over allies, confrontation with adversaries and domination of clients. . . .” read more

The Left’s Advance in Italy

“The Left’s victory in the Italian general election on the 21 April is likely to have a large impact on popular consciousness. It has revived a sense of collective hope and once more made concrete that fading but never totally obliterated belief that change is possible. This is . . .” read more

Approaching Reality: Euro-Money and the Left

“What has happened to the once relatively democratic and humane national governments of Western Europe that they now contemplate the harshness in present circumstances of monetary union? Why is France, a society as socially unjust as Britain and with an ever higher unemployment rate contemplating putting yet more . . .” read more

Eastern Europe, Western Power and Neo-Liberalism

“John Lloyd’s article is helpful, above all, in revealing more fully his forms of thought. He appears to think my article was a piece of Marxist economics. Unfortunately it was entirely pre-theoretical: an attempt to introduce the claims of neo-liberals like Lloyd to some pertinent facts, with the . . .” read more

Fundamental Values for a Third Left

“Since 1988 I have been engaged in the launching of a new party of the Left in Finland. It was established in 1990 under the name of Vasemmistoliitto/ Vänsterförbundet (the Left-Wing Alliance). lwa continued the tradition of skdl/dfff (the People’s Democratic League) which included the Communist . . .” read more

Eastern Reformers and Neo-Marxist Reviewers

“Peter Gowan has written an ambitious article. In it, he aims to show that the Group of Seven major industrial states (g7) and the international financial institutions (ifis) have, with a good deal of success, sought to impose at least an economic imperialism over the post-communist . . .” read more

Neo-Liberal Reform and Popular Rebellion

“Tenacious and combative strikes in the public services, millions of demonstrators on the streets, broad support from public opinion: last December’s events in France were a lot more than a strike, indeed it is no exaggeration to call them an uprising by the working, producing, caring, teaching population. . . .” read more

Neo-Liberal Theory and Practice for Eastern Europe

“Eastern Europe’s market for policy ideas, suddenly opened in 1989, was swiftly captured by an Anglo-American product with a liberal brand name. This policy equivalent of fast food erected barriers to other new entrants and established a virtual monopoly on advice in most target states in the region. . . .” read more

The Crisis of Government in Italy

“In the last few years Italy has undergone an unusually profound and open political crisis, which is still very far from having settled down into a largely accepted, or even moderately viable, political arrangement. The crisis had been building for a long time, but broke—this is the conventional . . .” read more

Social Democracy and Full Employment

“‘The voters, now convinced that full employment, generous welfare services and social stability can quite well be preserved, will certainly not relinquish them. Any Government which tampered seriously with the basic structure 0f the full-employment Welfare State would meet with a sharp reverse at the polls’ (Antony Crosland,1956). . . .” read more

Making Europes

“The double celebration of 1992, Maastricht and Columbus, spawned a double debate, each prolonged way beyond its intrinsic interest by media attention and its acolyte, academic scrutiny: it may be years before any of us will be able to read with enthusiasm another book or article on either . . .” read more

The New Politics of the Irish Republic

“In the last two years, a series of events has occurred which, taken together, seemed to signify developments of such importance that even those observers of Irish politics most prone to relish or lament its apparent barren continuities have begun to contemplate the possibility of a radical opening . . .” read more

Nationalism and the Left in Germany

“A new/old spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of nationalism. Everyone underestimated its force and potential before 1989, and in the post-Cold War world, almost everyone is struggling to come to terms with it. There is a long history of the Left, in Germany in particular, being accused of . . .” read more

The Return of the Great Powers

“On the surface, the situation in the Balkans may look rather optimistic at the moment: the Croats and Muslims have ceased fighting; some sense of normality has been restored to Sarajevo; and the crisis around Gorazde has been defused. In a broader context of European security, however, it . . .” read more

The Modern Women’s Movement in Italy

“Modern Italian feminism established itself in the early 1970s, expanding with remarkable strength and radicalism from its middle-class base to become a popular mobilization with an extensive network of activists throughout the organized labour movement. By the end of the decade, however, feminism was in decline; and the . . .” read more

European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy

“An old axiom in urban sociology considers space as a reflection of society. Yet life, and cities, are always too complex to be captured in axioms. Thus the close relationship between space and society, between cities and history, is more a matter of expression than of reflection. The . . .” read more

Reinventing Federalism: Europe and the Left

“Europeans have lived for so long in the warm cocoon of the Community system that we have almost forgotten what our history was like before the astonishing burst of institutional inventiveness that culminated in the Rome Treaty a generation ago. If present trends are allowed to continue we . . .” read more

Western Europe’s Economic Stagnation

“At the beginning of the 1990s, Western Europe is clearly facing more acute economic problems than are the other major countries of the oecd area. Both the United States and Japan seem to be hesitantly recovering in 1993 from their earlier, and relatively modest, slowdowns. Europe, on . . .” read more

The Rise of Masculinism in Eastern Europe

“In the recent literature on gender relations in Eastern Europe, it is quite often said that democratization has ‘opened up a space’ within which women can now seek to identify their interests and organize. That is undoubtedly the case. At the same time, however, as offering a space . . .” read more

From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation

“the nation-building process in Europe” read more

Taking Women’s Work for Granted

“Lucio Magri’s article on the European Left, in nlr 189, presents an unusually positive and encouraging perspective for radical politics in the coming years, discussing with welcome realism the most disastrous aspects of recent history. It is a valuable aid in what for some of us is . . .” read more

The Danish No to Maastricht

“June 2nd 1992 was a remarkable day in the history of Denmark, and perhaps in the history of post-World War II Europe. In a referendum a majority of Danes rejected the Treaty of Maastricht, which a few months earlier had so laboriously been knit together by the” read more

Confronting the New Europe

“The Maastricht Summit of December 1991 displayed a European Community poised to assume a central role in the first decades of the twenty-first century. There is, nonetheless, great uncertainty about the deeper logic of the process of Europeanization that is upon us. What kinds of new economic regulation . . .” read more

Nationalism and Politics in Eastern Europe: A Response to Gellner

“‘Nationalism’ is a much-abused concept that can be used to explain everything—hence, nothing at all. Unless rooted in concrete analysis of the national and class politics of a given state or area, it runs the risk of becoming analytically vacuous. Ernest Gellner’s work has long been distinguished by . . .” read more

The European Left Between Crisis and Refoundation

“Today we cannot understand anything of Europe, the European Left or any other problem in the world unless we start out, in a spirit of truth, from the epochal shift of the last few years that has resulted in the political, ideological and economic collapse of the Communist . . .” read more

Nationalism and Politics in Eastern Europe

“In Eastern Europe, nationalism has since 1915 passed through five stages:” read more

Es Gibt Keinen Staat in Europa: Racism and Politics in Europe Today

“I would like to start by explaining how I came to modify the agreed theme and, to some extent, focus of this contribution. There were some general reasons for doing so, which occurred to me as I was reading the Congress programme, but recent political events provided a . . .” read more

Eastern Europe’s Republics of Gilead

“Why is the West so fascinated by the recent events in Eastern Europe? The answer seems obvious: what fascinates the Western gaze is the re-invention of democracy. It is as if democracy, which in the West shows increasing signs of decay and crisis, lost in bureaucratic routine and . . .” read more

What Does Socialism Mean Today? The Rectifying Revolution and the Need for New Thinking on the Left

“There has recently been a spate of articles about the end of the socialist illusion, about the failure of an idea, and even about West European or German intellectuals finally coming to terms with the past. In them, rhetorical questions always prepare the way for the refrain that . . .” read more

Western Economic Diplomacy and the New Eastern Europe

“Hobbes once remarked that if you are forced at gunpoint to go through a door, you are still free to go through it: you can be forced and be free. For most of us today this is a perversity that smacks of Stalinism. But what if someone throws . . .” read more

Germany—A Binary Poison

“A brilliant invention. Two containers holding two chemical substances. Each in itself almost harmless. Only when the shell strikes do they react with one another and together turn into a deadly chemical weapon.” read more

Enzensberger’s Europe

“Martin Chalmers: We would like to begin with Europe, Europe. Although there are any number of paths which lead out of this work, we were interested first of all in how the book came about.” read more

Beyond 1992: The Left and Europe

“The wave of publicity in preparation for the broad internal market of 1992 has struck a powerful chord throughout Western Europe, including in a traditionally introverted country such as Britain where opinion polls suggest that large sections of the population are considerably more enthusiastic than their government about . . .” read more