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Austerity
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  1. Age of Austerity
    Capital, the Financial Crisis and the State in Canada
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    The financial and economic crisis of 2008 has left a continuing legacy on social welfare, showing up in slow economic growth, unemployment and underemployment, and increasing social conflict. In the debate over the future of the world economy, many foresee a long depression, and the intensification of neoliberal austerity. Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman's new book is concerned with Canada's unique economic and social history over the period of neoliberalism, including the financial and economic crisis of 2008.
  2. An ageing population isn't the reason for stunted economic growth - austerity is
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    In the 2015 World Economic Outlook, for example, the IMF says: "Potential employment growth is expected to decline further in advanced and emerging market economies compared to pre-crisis rates. This is a result of demographic factors negatively affecting both the growth of the working population and trend labour force participation rates."

    But the reality is somewhat different. The IMF analysis is based on 16 countries that excludes more than one billion people from the African continent where half of the population is either 20 years of age or younger.
  3. Analyzing the Failures of Syriza
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    Examines the failture of Syriza, The Coalition of the Radical Left, since their election in Greece.
  4. Austerity Against Democracy
    An Authoritarian Phase of Neoliberalism?
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
  5. Austerity and Resistance: Lessons from the 2012 Quebec Student Strike
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    The student strike in Quebec has ended, in a rather clear victory. After a seven month-long struggle — the longest of its kind in Quebec history — students have won a cancellation of the proposed tuition hike, a pledge to repeal the infamous Law 78 that had criminalized demonstrations, and the ouster of Premier Jean Charest and his Liberal government.
  6. Austerity Britain, 1945-1951
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2008
    A review of the period immediately after World War Two in Britain illustrating the measures taken to rebuild the country and its economy.
  7. Austerity chokes Canada's down-and-out, as Harper, Flaherty look the other way
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    The exceedingly aggressive austerity cuts carried out by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty over the past seven years have come home to roost as millions of Canadians, depressed and without hope, are succumbing to its worst consequences.
  8. Austerity U
    Preparing Students for Precarious Lives
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    Policy-makers are introducing big changes to university systems under the banner of an austerity agenda. Globally common themes in this agenda include rapid increases in tuition fees, new models of university governance, new ways of teaching, a significant shift in subject matter, an attempt to depoliticize campuses, and major alterations in employment relations.
  9. Austerity vs. the Planet:The Future of Labour Environmentalism
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Last December members of the International Trade Union Confederation joined other civil society activists in a mass sit-in at the COP21 talks in Paris. Unionists and their allies, some 400 strong, filled the social space adjacent to the negotiating rooms for several hours, in defiance of a French ban on protests that remained in effect in the wake of the November 13 terrorist attacks. The ITUC delegation demanded the negotiators go back to the table and make a serious effort to incorporate labour's demands for a just transition – which, at its heart, is concerned with making sure workers in environmentally unsustainable industries are retrained and put to work building a new, sustainable economy.
  10. Australia: Socialist Alliance's 'International Political Perspectives' Resolution

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    Resolutions adopted by the 10th National Conference of the Socialist Alliance, June 7-9, 2014.
  11. Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, and Contempt for Democracy
    Introduction to the July 2, 2016 issue of Other Voices
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    A constant theme in elite reaction to the Brexit referendum, expressed especially through the mainstream media, has been a visceral contempt for democracy. Ordinary working people are portrayed as stupid and reactionary, incapable of understanding how wonderful the European Union project is. Again and again, one hears the comment that the great unwashed should not be allowed to vote on issues which they are incapable of understanding. This reaction is not new: ruling classes for centuries have loathed democracy, which is seen as an existential threat to the wealth and privileges of the elite.
  12. Burdened with Debt Reloaded: The Politics ofr Devaluation
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    A series of defensive and sectional struggles at workplaces in the private sector reveal that the Greek industrial capital has already taken advantage of the new institutional framework of the “state of emergency” now ruling in Greece to prop up its profitability or just transfer its own debts and losses onto the workers.
  13. Canada After Harper
    His Ideology-fuelled Attack on Canadian Society and Values, and How We Can Resist and Create the Country We Want
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2015
    Essays documenting the breadth and depth of the Harper government's attack on institutions, policies, and programs that embody values and principles shared by most Canadians: education, health care, women's rights, science and research, the economy, labour unions, water and natural resources, and Aboriginal affairs.
  14. Canada's Austerity Agenda: It's About the Taxes
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Austerity policies pose major threats to the public's health. Ronald Labonté argues that the austerity agenda in Canada stems not from a crisis in finances, but from a crisis in fair taxation.
  15. Crisis in the Eurozone
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2012
    A controversial call to break up the Eurozone and stop the debt crisis.
  16. A Diet of Austerity
    Class, Food and Climate Change
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2015
    Deals with the reasons why the working class is blamed for climate change, and what it can actually do about it.
  17. Disabled People in UK Lead Fight Against Austerity
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2018
    In July 20,2018, John Clarke represented the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) at the International Deaf and Disabled People’s Solidarity Summit, in Stratford, east London that had been convened by one of our key allies in the UK, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC). This powerful gathering was an important moment in the building of a resistance by disabled people as part of a broader international struggle against the forces of neoliberal austerity.
  18. Doctors and Lawyers to Duncan: Tax us. Ontario is worth it.
    Sources News Release
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    Doctors and lawyers join forces to object to Ontario's budget.
  19. Europe's Moment of Truth
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras' acceptance of an "austerity package" on July 13, which contained measures rejected by the Greek people in a referendum barely a week before, represents not just an abject surrender by the Syriza government, or a sign of contempt on the part of German finance capital for the Greek electorate; it marks a decisive turning point for Europe (and indeed for the rest of the world), and the end of the road for a whole way of thinking on the Left, especially the European Left.
  20. From mobilisation to resistance: Portugal's struggle against austerity
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Portugal has been subjected to increasingly harsh austerity policies that have led the country into a recession of historic proportions, the result being mass impoverishment.
  21. GovernmentSources.ca
    Resource Type: Website
    A portal with information about government, Canadian and international, with articles, documents, books, websites, and experts and spokespersons. The home page features a selection of recent and important articles. A search feature, subject index, and other research tools make it possible to find additional resources and information.
  22. Greece: A no vote against blackmail
    Now is not the time for academic debates. It is time for struggle
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Our response to the blackmail of the lenders is that the struggle against austerity will not be governed by concerns about the euro system or by the consent of the rulers of Europe. the response should include stopping debt repayments to the lenders, with the goal of cancelling a majority of the debt; carrying out measures to improve the life of workers and poor; and financing all of this with heavy taxes on corporations and the rich, renationalizing large public enterprises and putting the banks under social control.
  23. Greece again Can Save the West
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The 'Greek crisis' is not about debt. Debt is the propaganda that the Empire is using to subdue sovereignty throughout the Western world.
  24. Greece's solidarity movement: 'it's a whole new model - and it's working'
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Citizen-run health clinics, food centres, kitchens and legal aid hubs have sprung up to fill the gaps left by austerity – and now look set to play a bigger role under a Syriza government.
  25. Greek Debt and the New Financial Imperialism
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Describes how the Greek goverment is forced to extract income and wealth from its workers and small businesses resulting in a new form of financial imperialism that smaller states and economies, planning to join larger free trade zones and 'currency unions' should avoid at all cost.
  26. How Inequality Kills
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    The Global March of Neoliberalism: The World Inequality Report 2018
  27. In Spain they are all indignados nowadays
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    The indignado protests that flared up two years ago have become a Spanish state of mind.
  28. Killing the Host
    How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2015
    In Killing the Host, economist Michael Hudson exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate (the FIRE sector) have seized control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and governments.
  29. Manoeuvres from above, movements from below: Greece under Tsipras
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The Syriza left is at a crossroads. For all the belief that Syriza is a different kind of party, one that transcends the division between reform and revolution and therefore should be the home for the entire left, its left faces exactly the same problem as the reformist left in social democracy -- the trap of impotence. This article is written in the spirit of offering an alternative, around which the left as a whole can unite.
  30. A Marxist History of the World part 106: The Second Great Depression
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    Four years after the beginning of the crisis, the neoliberal elite is trapped by the contradictions of the system on which its wealth depends.
  31. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - January 29, 2015
    Land seizures and land take-overs
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2015
    This issue of Other Voices focuses on the issue of land seizures and land take-overs. Also included: Greece's solidarity movement, and the challenges and opportunities it faces after the election of a Syrizia government. From the archives, there are interviews about the 1974 occupation of Anicinabe Park, an article about anti-dicrimination fighter Viola Desmond, and the publication, in 1929, of All Quiet on the Western Front.
  32. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - August 21, 2015
    Canadian federal election, mining and the environment
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2015
    Featuring the Canadian federal election, mining and the environment, failure of Syriza in Greece, refugees, veterans of India's struggle for independence.
  33. People's Assembly: we need unity to beat austerity
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Argues that the People's Assembly is not merely a nice idea or a worthwhile event, but the main basis for co-ordinating resistance to cuts for some time to come.
  34. A People's Manifesto: Let's Roll Back Austerity and Claim Real Democracy!
    Urgent common priorities for a democratic, social, ecological and feminist Europe
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Europe stands on the edge of a precipice, looking into the abyss. Austerity policies drive the peoples of Europe into poverty, undercut democracy and dismantle social policies. Rising inequalities endanger social cohesion. Ecological destruction is worsening while acute humanitarian crises devastate the most affected countries.
  35. Poisoned Fruits of Austerity
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The most dramatic advance of the far right is that of the National Front in France. It is not unusual that such forces prosper, with some working-class support, in the absence of well-articulated progressive alternatives.
  36. Portuguese Workers vs. Austerity
    Against The Current vol. 158
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    The General Strike of March 22, 2012 was the second called by the Portuguese trade unions since the IMF/European Commission/European Central Bank (“Troika”) intervened a year ago to impose austerity measures that almost forced the country to its knees. This is the third strike since the financial crisis took hold.
  37. The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    According to John Pilger, the leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind - but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as “liberal” or even “left”, Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, schooled in postmodernism.
  38. Public Safety
    Introduction to the June 26, 2017 issue of Other Voices
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    It is becoming increasingly clear that we have been witnessing a drastic rolling back of the systems and structures which Western societies developed over the past century or more to safeguard public health and safety. Politicians and business leaders, permeated with free-market ideology, have been jettisoning, with little thought or understanding of the consequences, the apparatus previous generations built, piece by piece, to mitigate the most dangerous aspects of industrial civilization.
  39. The Silence of the Left: Brexit, Euro-Austerity and the T-TIP
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    The media in the United States have treated the British vote against remaining in the European Union (EU) as if it is populist “Trumpism,” an inarticulate right-wing vote out of ignorance at being left behind by the neoliberal economic growth policy. What is left out of this picture is that there is a sound logic to oppose membership in the EU.
  40. Socialist Register 1994
    Volume 30: Between Globalism and Nationalism
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 1994
  41. Socialist Register 2012
    Volume 48: The Crisis and the Left
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2012
  42. Spokes on the Anti-Austerity Wheel: Building Movements That Can Move Beyond Reform
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    When it comes to fighting the crisis of austerity cuts and financial recession, we need to focus on how to build fighting communities rather than simply reacting to the attacks.
  43. Syriza and Sanders: "Just Say 'No'" to Neo-liberalism
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Hopes for Syriza's negotiations with the banking troika in the EU simmered and even boiled over among elements of the left, especially after the vaunted "No" referendum vote suggested that the Greeks would not succumb to another wave of austerity measures but would instead stand firm, even if this meant potentially leaving the EU. We have seen these hopes dashed by the subsequent "negotiations," in which Tsipras seemed to have negotiated backwards, arriving at an agreement that was worse than the one rejected by the Greek voters in the referendum vote.
  44. The Syriza Wave
    Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2016
    An account of the rise and fall of the Greek left party Syriza.
  45. The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left - Book review
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    A book review of The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left by author Helena Sheehan.
  46. Toolkit for a New Canada - 2013 Edition
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    A pamphlet providing a snapshot of what the contributors, brought together by Canadian Dimensionmagazine, believe are the big issues facing Canada in the second decade of the 21st century. The articles are short and offer concrete suggestions for the way forward.
  47. Trade Unions: The Difficult Path to Solidarity in One's Own Interest
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    In both the ideals and the rhetoric of trade unions international solidarity plays a major role. Trade union practice, however, is first and foremost focused on the context of those nation-states, in which they were able to achieve their most important victories in the 20th century. It is those achievements within the national framework which are being undermined with the help of the EU and its institutions.
  48. What austerity has done to Greek healthcare
    "What I witnessed appalled me - and brought tears to my eyes"
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The shocking 'austerity'-imposed destruction of Greece's once proud healthcare system is a key reason Greeks have turned to Syriza, finds London GP Louise Irvine in an eye witness account.
  49. Why Greece Doesn't Matter
    We have to stop talking about Greece. What must emerge from the calamity of SYRIZA-ANEL is a renewed call for democracy
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Change in Greece will not come from short-term strategies and tactics of seeking power, but from a long process of coordinated and planned immanent critiques. This political organization will not aim to represent itself in the machinery of parliament -- where the watchful eyes of the IMF and ECB will determine policy -- but will emerge from an organized movement comprising the disenfranchised, the working class, and the intellectual vanguard. It will not compromise. It will instead operate under an ideology for an emancipatory alliance of humanity removed from the spreadsheet, removed from the NATO, and removed from free-market directives. It will not seek to claim power in an election, it will be given it by the people themselves when the movement is ripe.

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