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Over the course of the past 40 years, neoliberalism has all but destroyed the institutions that once civilized labour markets. In the wake of that destruction, labour law reform is being driven in some jurisdictions by a new kind of right-wing populist politics. What does this hold in store for work relations? Our investigation of contemporary labour law begins with a brief look backwards to the pre- and post-war decades and to the ostensible depoliticization of the law under neoliberalism. We then consider the possible emergence of a distinctly right-wing populist approach to labour law in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Poland, drawing comparisons with the German experience after neocorporatism. Finally, we take a normative turn and consider what steps ought to be taken by a government intent on addressing class inequalities and restoring the kind of rights that post-war democracies once conferred on workers understood to be industrial citizens. 1 Introduction 2 The politics of labour law 3 Right-wing populist labour law? 4 Germany after neocorporatism 5 Rebuilding civilized labour relations 6 Conclusion Acknowledgements

How do the general and the specific, or unity and diversity, relate to social life and political practice? The essay investigates four areas of social theory that may be fruitfully explored in terms of a constitutive tension between universal and local forces: endogenous institutional change, the role of intermediary organizations in the governance of industrial relations, nation-building, and the origin of capitalist diversity.

Auf Druck der USA könnte die indirekte deutsche Beteiligung am Ukraine-Krieg immer direkter werden – und sich ähnlich wie die Rolle als Waffenlieferant entwickeln.

Die sich abzeichnende Krise des ukrainischen Ultranationalismus steht im Zusammenhang mit einem beginnenden Kampf um eine neue globale Ordnung. Deren Konturen können nur dann verstanden werden, wenn man China mit ins Spiel bringt.

Wenn es jemals eine Frage war, wer in Europa das Sagen hat, die NATO oder die Europäische Union, dann hat der Krieg sie geklärt – zumindest für die absehbare Zukunft.

Vor Gericht und auf hoher See, weiß der Jurist, ist man in Gottes Hand. Und so hoffen die EU-Integrationisten auf den Europäischen Gerichtshof, der die Legitimität des Rechts an die Stelle der erschöpften Legitimität supranationaler Politik setzen soll.

Important legal victories for workers against platform corporations remain partial and limited in the absence of legislative and institutional change.

The Merkel era in Germany—and Europe—brought to an end by the crushing defeat of her party. Prospects for country and continent under the enlarged ‘extreme centre’ of Scholz, Lindner and the Greens. Does the resurrection of the SPD conceal a shuffle to the right?

Der Soziologe Wolfgang Streeck zeigt in seinem neuen Buch, dass das Bestehen auf dem Nationalstaat kein gestriger „Nationalismus“ und nicht „rechts“ sein muss – sondern der einzige Weg ist, Demokratie und soziale Bindung des Marktes zu erhalten. Wir drucken einen Auszug.

Gibt es für »Europa« Alternativen zu dem, was absehbar passieren wird, wenn nichts passiert? Ein Gelegenheitsfenster für eine Lösung der »europäischen Frage« gäbe es.

Die Politik hat sich lange verschanzt hinter einem Lockdown, der sie der Aufgabe enthob, zielgenau zu handeln. Das hatte viel mit einem falschen Bild von der Gesellschaft zu tun. Was wir wissen könnten, wenn wir es wissen wollten, und warum das wichtig wäre.

In the Covid-19 pandemic, the immediate concern of European citizens is with the spread of the virus and the public health crisis, with the lock downs and their economic consequences and with the response of governments. The crisis demonstrates the importance of the foundational economy. This is the part of the economy which cannot be shut down because it produces essential goods and services; and the list of key workers in each national economy provides a practical definition of what counts as foundational. But what comes after the immediate crisis is over? After the crisis, do we default back to the “same old, same old”; or can we make the case for a renewal of the foundational provision which has been neglected in the past generation. Before the crisis we developed and publicly supported the foundational economy concept; now foundational thinking is more relevant than ever to a liveable, sustainable and democratic future.

Durante la pandemia mundial por la Covid-19 y ante una inminente crisis derivada de ésta, surgen diversas preocupaciones respecto de las consecuencias económicas que la situación acarreará, así como de la suficiencia de la respuesta de los distintos gobiernos a largo plazo. De esta manera, el Colectivo de Economía Fundamental propone, para el contexto europeo en particular, una serie de puntos esenciales y lecciones para las decisiones de política económica que surjan de esta crisis con el fin de sacar adelante las economías regionales y nacionales una vez que la pandemia sea superada. During the Covid-19 global pandemic, and in the face of an imminent crisis derived from it, various concerns arise regarding the economic consequences that the situation will bring, as well as whether the response of the different governments will be enough in the long term. The Foundational Economy Collective proposes, for the European context in particular, a series of points and lessons for the economic policy decisions that emerge from this crisis in order to stimulate national and regional economies once the pandemic is over.

In 1945 Karl Polanyi outlined a vision of a peacetime global state system with a political economy in which small countries could be both sovereign and democratic. The present essay reviews developments between then and now in the light of Polanyi’s analytical framework. Particular attention is paid to the history of the European Union, which after the end of Communism turned into a mainstay of the neoliberal project, culminating in its restoration of an international gold standard under Monetary Union. In the crisis of 2008 the advance of neoliberalism got stuck due to “populist” resistance to austerity and the shift of governance from the national to a supranational level. The paper explores the prospects of current attempts to replace the “Social Europe” and “trickle-down” narratives of European superstate formation, which have lost all credit, with a story about a European army as a necessary condition of a successful defense of “the European way of life”.

Friedrich Engels ha sempre vissuto nell’ombra di Karl Marx. Oggi, nel bicentenario della sua nascita, vale la pena riscoprire l’originalità di un pensiero che alla concezione materialistica della storia ha dato un contributo determinante sottolineando come i mezzi di distruzione esistano accanto ai mezzi di produzione e mettendo l’accento sulla formazione dello Stato, che si inquadra e si sovrappone a quella della classe. Ripercorriamo qui gli approfonditi e rigorosi studi sulla guerra e la tecnologia di colui che può essere definito come uno dei primi sociologi empirici.

Die Eigentumsfrage ist die offene Wunde der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft; in ihr liegen die Nerven blank. Wer in sie hineinfasst, wie der Jungsozialist Kühnert, darf sich nicht wundern, wenn der Kranke beginnt, um sich zu schlagen. „Kollektivierung!“ Auch wenn es dem Nachwuchsmann nur um BMW ging, den skrupellosen Dealer sinnfreier Glitzerprämien für selbstlose Aufopferung im Dienste nicht enden wollender Kapitalakkumulation, so weckte doch sein „Zeit“-Interview, Nebenprodukt hektischer politischer Umtriebe, nicht totzukriegende Erinnerungen an den alltäglichen Kommunismus, der unserem alltäglichen Kapitalismus unterliegt und ihn faktisch überhaupt erst ermöglicht.

The international state system is in turmoil, due to pressures on its architecture that emanate from capitalist-economic globalization. Large states in particular seem to be losing the capacity to hold their societies together through economic redistribution from prospering to lagging sectors and regions. The results are centrifugal tendencies toward decentralization and secession, as well as toward exit from international organizations. To defend centralized rule, governments of large political units tend to turn authoritarian. Experimentation with small-scale units of governance seems attractive in many places, given the example of successful small countries that have preserved their national sovereignty, like Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland. Small states tend to be more homogeneous, more suitable for democratic self-government, and more capable of specializing on niches in the global economy where they are comparatively safe from head-on competition. Uluslararası devlet yapısı, kapitalist ekonomik küreselleşmenin, yapısı üzerine yaptığı baskı yüzünden karmaşa içindedir. Özelikle büyük devletler, refah sahibi bölgeler ve sektörlerden, geri kalan bölgelere ve sektörlere ekonomik paylaşım sağlayarak toplumlarını bir arada tutabilme yeteneklerini kaybetmektedirler. Sonuç ise, özerkleştirmeciliğe ve ayrılıkçılığa olduğu kadar uluslararası organizasyonlardan ayrılmaya doğru savrulan eğilimlerdir. Merkezci hakimiyeti savunma amacı ile geniş politik birimlere sahip olan devletler, otoriterleşmeye yönelirler. Düşük çaplı kamu birimleri ile yapılabilecek yönetim deneyleri, Danimarka, Norveç ve İsviçre gibi, ulusal egemenliklerini koruyan, başarılı ve küçük ülkeler göz önünde bulundurulduğu zaman, ilk başta çekici gelmektedir. Ağırlıkta, küçük devletler daha homojendirler, demokratik halk idaresi için daha uygundurlar ve başa baş rekabetten göreceli olarak güvende oldukları küresel ekonomideki nişlerde daha kolay uzmanlaşırlar.

Das Anti-Euro-Krisen-Rezept von Johannes Becker und Clemens Fuest: Angela Merkels Selbstbindung, Schritte seitwärts und ein Sprechzettel für Finanzminister Wolfgang Schäuble.

Review of: German Economic and Business History in the 19th and 20th Centuries by Werner Plumpe Palgrave, 367 pp, £86.00, August 2016, ISBN 978 1 137 51859 0 / The Seven Secrets of Germany: Economic Resilience in an Era of Global Turbulence by David Audretsch and Erik Lehmann Oxford, 229 pp, £22.99, February 2016, ISBN 978 0 19 025869 6 / Germany’s Role in the Euro Crisis: Berlin’s Quest for a More Perfect Monetary Union by Franz-Josef Meiers Springer, 146 pp, £90.00, November 2016, ISBN 978 3 319 37052 1

Die Lage der Sozialdemokratie in Europa ist dramatisch, die politischen Handlungsspielräume für linke Politik sind in der Eurozone klein. Das wird auch die SPD bei der Bundestagswahl zu spüren bekommen.

Lange Zeit galt Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel als deutscher Stabilitäts-Anker in einer chaotischen EU. Ein Mythos - der sich jetzt selbst demontiert. Es ist notwendig, ihr Image der Stabilitäts-Kanzlerin in ein etwas anderes Licht zu setzen.

This discussion forum is based on the roundtable discussion at the 27th Annual Conference of the Society for Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) hosted at the London School of Economics. The discussion presents recent work on capitalism as an evolving historical formation by Wolfgang Streeck and Craig Calhoun, together with contributions by British journalist Polly Toynbee and SASE founder Amitai Etzioni. Streeck opens with a reflection on major trends of capitalism that now pose ungovernable contradictions and thus point to an end of capitalism as a viable historical formation. Despite these contradictions, Calhoun sees capitalism as unlikely to undergo a rapid breakdown, but likely to generat continued challenges related to financial risks, limited international cooperation, negative externalities and growth of illicit forms of capitalism. Toynbee focuses on how these themes relate to the contemporary situation in the UK, outlining the growth in social inequalities and the weakness of social solidarity needed to generate political constraints on these trends. Finally, Etzioni reflects on the prospects for a post-capitalism, where work and consumption are no longer the central social identity around which social institutions are constructed. Together, the panelists present a bleak picture of the future for capitalism, which is likely to be a period of lasting disorder, where new moral foundations of a post-capitalism remain as elusive as they are necessary. Wolfgang Streeck: On the Dismal Future of Capitalism Craig Calhoun: The Future of Capitalism Polly Toynbee: Unfettered Capitalism Eats Itself Amitai Etzioni: The Next Industrial Revolution Calls for a Different Economic System

In this Paper Wolfgang Streeck argues that Angela Merkel’s decision to open up Germany’s borders during Europe’s ‘refugee crisis’ of late summer 2015 was ‘without doubt a major force’ behind Brexit. Merkel’s response to the 2015 refugee crisis, Streeck states, was driven in part by a need to attract new workers to the German labour market to address their ageing population, but also to deflect attention away from Germany’s treatment of Greece and to claim the moral high ground by presenting a favourable contrast to the treatment of refugees at the ‘Jungle’ camp in France.

Der Aufsatz betrachtet das Lebenswerk von Walther Mueller-Jentsch als wichtigsten deutschen Forscher der letzten Jahrzehnte ueber kollektive Arbeitsbeziehungen und das „deutsche Modell“ der Sozialpartnerschaft. Im Mittelpunkt steht das von Mueller-Jentsch entwickelte Konzept der „Konfliktpartnerschaft“ als Beschreibung des derzeitigen Stands der industriellen Beziehungen in Deutschland vor dem Hintergrund ihrer Geschichte seit Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. The essay considers the lifetime achievement of Walther Mueller-Jentsch as a scholar and leading figure of the discipline of industrial relations in Germany during the last decades. The essay focuses on Mueller-Jentsch’s concept of Konfliktpartnerschaft (conflictual partnership), conceived to characterise the current state of industrial relations under the “German model”, against the background of their history since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Virage à 180° Leçon de choses Le problème monétaire européen Le Brexit, les réfugiés et l’Allemagne

Der Starautor Tomáš Sedláček und Oliver Tanzer legen die Ökonomie auf Freuds Couch. Die Diagnose: niederschmetternd. Das Buch: leider auch.

The paper is a contribution to a book edited by, "Semisovereignty Revisited: Governance, Institutions and Policies in United Germany". The book will appear in 2003 or 2004. It explores to what extent Peter Katzenstein's seminal study of the "semi-sovereign" German state in the 1980s is still valid. The paper looks at one of the showpieces of Katzenstein's theory of beneficial semisovereignty, German industrial relations, and follows their development from the "Modell Deutschland" of the 1976 election campaign to "Schröder's Bündnis für Arbeit". It comes to the conclusion that as far as Germany is concerned, the days are gone when it was an advantage for the governance of industrial relations to have a weak state.