Zelena akademija / zimski seminar

Seminar:

 

New Economic Thought, Policies and Practices for Green-Left Alliances

Discussion framework

 

Green Academy winter seminar aims to depart from analysis of current economic situation in Europe and present a landscape of current theoretical, political and practical alternatives which are being proposed, designed or developed by variety of European left and green actors.

 

With new era of austerity in Europe, prescribed role of states to negotiate between citizens and capital accumulation has been significantly weakened thus leading to suspension of democracy and erosion of trust which was basis for social contracts across Europe. Furthermore, it became evident that tensions between economy and society have been increased and that it is more and more difficult to manage them within national frameworks thus increasing tensions between the states themselves and leading to re-nationalisation of politics and aggressive competition. At the same time, whilst climate instability is increasing, in the peripheral economies traditional and novel extractivist practices and externalization of environmental costs are enhancing the rift between societies and environments that support them. Moreover, adverse transformation of economy that complies blindly with financial interests and it alienates it from the people and labour, leads to a new sort of economic constitutionalism, which has become a significant concern for a number of actors.

 

However, there are emerging initiatives at many levels across Europe that aim to introduce redistribution or reduce raging inequalities, as well as redress the seemingly unavoidable opposition between dignified life and environmental sustainability. From Universal Basic Income to immediate anti-austerity measures, from degrowth to green economy, from commoning to democratization of public services, there are different but not always connected and mutually supported proposals emerging across Europe. They aim to prevent the radical neoliberalisation of Europe that is emerging from new institutional arrangements like TTIP or TISA.

 

Recognising that both Nature and Labour are challenged by identical systemic forces that led us to the present deep multiple crisis we are also aware that the political framing of these answers requires at least some of mutual support and common understanding between the Greens and the Left.

 

Our overall exercise aims to identify the forces of gravitational pull that different alternative policies and proposals that currently co-exist on green-left spectrum possess, and to detect both interpretative and political convergences that can lead to a denser and more impactful cooperation among the respective actors, so as to enhance the achievability of their projects.

 

In our discussions, we would like to find out which qualities new economy needs to contain in order to secure dignity and restore ecological balance ¬while being emancipative from current system?

 

• What are the main and original ingredients of the economic policy of new left? Which ideas, narratives and solutions can deliver success and reduce pressure on people and nature?
• Which theoretical concepts can prove efficient in designing new economic policy?
• What kind of political economy within the current restrictions can be emancipative ? How it can ensure reproduction of life?
• How economy can become more generative rather than accumulative/exctractive?
• How does it increase chances and conditions for reproduction of life?
• How it relates to organisation of labour within time (working hours)?
• How to prevent further devastating impacts of expropriation of the commons and bring commons back to the citizens?
• How actors belonging to new left and green spectrum see future of economic relationships in Europe within the current constraints imposed by austerity and financialisation?

 

Our main objective is to outline most original and achievable ideas of the new economic thought and to bring them in dialogue or debate with similar or complementary ideas that exist at European and local level.

 

At the seminar we aim to host around 50 scholars, activists and researchers from the Balkans but also from different European countries to discuss about the different ideas that exist at the moment in green/left circles.

• Vedran Horvat (Croatia)
• Danijela Dolenec (Croatia)
• Jagoda Munić (Croatia)

Presentations by:
 

• Andreas Novy (Austria)
• Zoltan Pogatsa (Hungary)
• Vincent Liegey (Hungary/France)
• Dražen Šimleša (Croatia)

Moderated by:
 

• Vladimir Cvijanović (Croatia)

Presentations by:
 

• Yiannis Bournous (Greece)
• Pablo Sanchez Centellas (Spain)
• John Barry (Ireland)
• Eugenia Pires (Portugal)

Moderated by:
 

• Tomislav Tomašević (Croatia)

Presentations by:
 

• Daniel Chavez (Uruguay/Holland)
• Lyda Fernanda Forero (Colombia)
• Hilary Wainwright (UK)
• Mislav Žitko (Croatia)
• Jagoda Munić (Croatia)

Moderated by:
 

• Vedran Horvat (Croatia)