Are Brazil and Venezuela's economic models applicable to the EU and USA?
Austerity? There is an alternative – a new project for Europe's left
Our initiative aims to show there is an alternative analysis of the present situation rather than the misery and injustice of austerity
Europe stands at a crossroads. Successive waves of fiscal austerity have been imposed by European and domestic elites on the people of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, with Spain, Britain and Italy following suit. These programmes, almost without precedent in their severity, were barely debated either against alternative policy options or accounts of the nature of the crisis, both of which were certainly available. Governments, bureaucrats and pundits of dubious expertise simply declare that "there is no alternative", and instruct the public to take their medicine.
Neoliberalism – audaciously, given the historic humiliation suffered by its market fundamentalist dogma in the autumn of 2008 – is on the comeback trail, with a renewed and reinvigorated assault on the fundamental democratic principle of economic governance in pursuit of the common good. The public itself – with its "generous" pensions, social safety nets and other unaffordable luxuries – is now portrayed as a burden on the economy.
Across Latin America, various novel and interesting forms of socialism have been emerging and evolving for some time, since an earlier generation experienced the miseries resulting from the imposition of the Washington Consensus.