Lecture Entitled “The Euro-zone Crisis, the World Economic Crisis and Social Protests”

On Thursday October 4th, 2012, The Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies hosted Professor Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies (social theory and international political economy) at Kings College, University of London for a lecture offered within the European Union course. He discussed the issue of the Euro-zone crisis, placing it in the context of the broader world crisis and ensuing social protests.

Professor Callinicos explained that the economic crisis erupted more than 5 years ago in August 2007, and that, contrary to those which hit Latin America or East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, it affected the core zones of advanced capitalism; namely Western Europe and North America. it started as a financial crisis. Yet when we look at the world economy since the early 1970s, there have been a large number of financial crises, whereas there were very few from 1945 to 1973.

 Regarding the crisis in the Euro-zone, Professor Callinicos explained that when the Euro was launched as a currency in 1999, there was tremendous optimism that the Euro would be the main currency and might even replace the dollar as the major reserve currency in the world.  Today that optimism seems thoroughly refuted by events. He added that the formation of the European Union had been intended to mark the end of the old national rivalries between different European states, but that this idea had not been realized, because a pan-European governance system had not emerged comparable to the fiscal and monetary union found within the United States, and because market-based neo-liberalism had become the order of the day throughout Europe.  He ended the lecture advising Palestinians not to follow the economic model established in the West, but rather learn from the mistakes of the Europeans and other Western countries.