GREECE: AUSTERITY OR BUST? Kostas Vergopoulos and David Harvey in Discussion

GREECE:   AUSTERITY OR BUST?  Kostas Vergopoulos and David Harvey in Discussion, moderated by Michael Pelias.

April 20th
Segal Theater
6-8pm

(Space in the Segal theater is is limited to 70 seats. Admission is first come, first serve. Livestream viewing (40 seats) will be available in room 5318.05).

To view LIVESTREAM: Go to videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu  and click on the link in the “Live Videos” box on the upper right hand side of the page.

Reception to follow in room 5318 (ARC lounge)

Greece Elections

With the recent election of Syriza and the formation of a new government, Greeks have declared they will not tolerate more austerity.  But they cannot get relief without help from the other countries within the Eurozone. The only other option is to leave the Euro.  Help seems not to be forthcoming. Talk of a Grexit (as it is called) is increasing.  What are Greece’s prospects now?  And what might the global implications be of the momentous choices to be made in the next few months?

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Kostas Vergopoulos is a founding member of Syriza, and Professor of Political Economy at the University of Paris VIII. His many books include the foundational works “The Agrarian Question in Greece” and (with Samir Amin) “The Peasant Question and Capitalism” as well as the more recent “The Love of Wealth: Money, Power, and Corruption in Greece”, “After the End: The Economy of the Catastrophe and the Next Day” and “The Incongruous Relation: Greece-Europe”.

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David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography, and Director of Research at the Center for Place Culture and Politics, at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books, articles, and lectures. He is the author of Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (Profile Books, 2014), one of The Guardian’s (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/02/books-christmas-presents-economics-reviews“) Best Books of 2011, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2010). Other books include A Companion to Marx’s Capital, Limits to Capital, and Social Justice and the City. Professor Harvey has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital for nearly 40 years. His lectures on Marx’s Volumes I and II are available for download (free) on his website.  He was director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics from 2008-2014.

Michael Pelias is a member of the Philosophy department as well as a member of the executive committee of the faculty union at LIU Brooklyn. He is the co-managing editor of and contributor to the journal, Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination and a co-founder of the Institute for the Radical Imagination, an alternative education and thinking institute. He works on the history of Materialism in the light of post-structuralist thought and the active synthesis of libidinal and political economy in the era of financialization.

This event is free and open to the public. It is Cosponsored by the  Center for Place Culture and Politics, and the Advanced Research Collaborative, Graduate Center, CUNY.

1 thought on “GREECE: AUSTERITY OR BUST? Kostas Vergopoulos and David Harvey in Discussion

  1. The problem with Greece is that it was bankrupt already before it joined the Euro zone. And nearly everyone involved secretly knew the books were “cooked”. But one wanted Greece in the Euro rather than be “single” because it is a geographically strategic NATO partner. Greece should have defaulted prior to joining the Euro, then joined with a “clean sheet”. Creditors might have found that, given a sensible economic policy “from then on”, credible. Now no one believes, that someone like Varoufakis, whose immodest proposal says “give us more money” and hide the sources by spreading it across a few development banks and funds (financed all the while still by the European taxpayer – there IS no free lunch). So, if anything, the monies should come out of the NATO budget. But then Turkey would want some subsidies too. Syriza campaigned on a popular ticket saying “all these billions” never made it to Greece. Of course not – if you owe other banks money and then try to consolidate your debts, that consolidation money goes to these creditor banks, not to you, the bankrupt debtor. When i read this blatant lie from Varoufakis which he repeats without batting an eye lid at every occasion I knew that Syriza was a worse bunch of con people than all the oligarchic parties before them!

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