This is a polished version of my talk at the Plan B conference in Madrid on Saturday 20 February 2016 (theme section “Alternatives to the regime of trade and inversion”; workshop 1: “How to regulate transnational corporations, put an end to fraud, tax havens, and the power of lobbies?”). The workshop can be seen at Youtube; while my talk is in English, the workshop is mostly in Spanish.
Preparing for Plan B in Paris
Terrorist attacks postponed the European Left’s “Plan B” summit from November to January. The meeting during the weekend of 23-24 January 2016 attracted more than 300 participants and a large number of media people. [This is a translation of my report from Paris and analysis of the options of the Left in our historical conjuncture, published in the weekly People’s News 4/2016].
Beyond Plan B and C: On the use of citizens’ initiative and referenda
After Syriza’s surrender in July 2015, the European left has been struck by an aporia. It is now widely believed, on the one hand, that the EU is undemocratic and non-reformable; and on the other hand, that the plan B, a withdrawal from the euro or the EU, would boost disintegration into nationalist and possibly hostile states. Is the Left, therefore, doomed to merely criticizing the latest austerity measures and attempts at narrowing down democracy, without being able to shape overall developments?
A comment on Harari’s Sapiens: On the geo-historical emergence of language and social complexity
Yuval Noah Harari is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind (2011 in Hebrew; and 2014 in English) has been an international bestseller and translated into 30 languages. It has been compared positively to the most famous works in global and big history and reviewed favourably in many of the best-known newspapers in the world. Some people even claim to have changed their worldview because of the book.
