Costas Lapavitsas is a professor of economics at SOAS, currently at the New School for Social Research, and former member of the Greek Parliament.
The rising bloc conflict shows the fallacy of the idea that there is a single “world” capitalist class. Not every flare up is driven by crude economic calculation — but the rivalry between states has deep material roots.
Syriza’s surrender to the troika in 2015 continues to hang over Greece’s radical left. With general elections coming this spring, it needs to break out of its impasse — and create a real alternative to the country’s permanent austerity regime.
The establishment of the first Amazon union in the US is a historic breakthrough for organized labor. The successful union drive shows how the Left can best build real grassroots power: by organizing in the workplace.
Social democratic parties across Europe have suffered “Pasokification,” the fate of the Greek center-left party that lost three-quarters of its voters in just three years. If Britain’s Labour Party wants to avoid similar disasters, it needs an economic radicalism that can show the working class that it’s really on their side.
Big pharma firms like Pfizer are marketing COVID-19 vaccines for a profit, yet the research behind them would have been impossible without universities and public funding. The lack of an international public health response has placed capitalist profit over human need — and will leave billions of people unvaccinated.
The coronavirus shock has shaken the world’s stock markets, imposing the need for massive state bailouts. But the measures to deal with the crisis risk spurring an authoritarian controlled capitalism — one that protects corporate interests while offloading the costs onto the rest of us.
Alexis Tsipras’s government imposed years of suffering on Greeks, only to let the conservatives back into power. Rebuilding the fight against austerity could take years — and will be impossible without a direct confrontation with the European Union.
Jeremy Corbyn faces increasing calls to turn Labour into the “party of Remain.” But thwarting Brexit would embolden the EU and its neoliberal dogmas — with disastrous consequences for the Left across Europe.
In 2015 the international left invested its hopes in Syriza and its promise of a break with austerity. Today, it must call out the repression of social movements in Greece by Alexis Tsipras’s government.
Alexis Tsipras’s government promised to end austerity. Now it’s defending the banks against people evicted from their homes — and persecuting those who protest.
If the next Labour government is to be truly transformative, it has to free itself from the constraints of the single market.
Syriza continues to oversee the implementation of austerity. But all is not hopeless in Greece.
Brexit wasn’t the first time Europeans rejected the EU, and it won’t be the last. Here’s what the Left should do.
Alexis Tsipras claimed there was no realistic alternative to austerity for Greece. He was wrong.
An interview with Greek MP Costas Lapavitsas on Popular Unity and the case for a progressive Grexit.
Syriza MP Costas Lapavitsas on what’s next for Greece after Sunday’s resounding vote against austerity.
The European “institutions” are seeking a public defeat of Syriza and the closing off of any alternative.
Greek MP Costas Lapavitsas on the economic barriers ahead for Syriza and the challenges of eurozone exit.