ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that the lack of orientation, hence hopelessness of the “left” facing transnationalisation and European integration. Andreas Bieler and Hans-Jurgen Bieling start by making two crucial theoretical decisions. First they postulate a worldwide “neoliberal hegemony”, and second they claim that at the core of all relevant conflicts in the course of European integration and the Euro-crisis “are the relations between capital and labour”. Approaches aiming critically at society as a hostile totality suffer from two problems. First such approaches face a performative contradiction. Either the observation of the present state of society is correct, or then there is no place in it for an independent observer. The Euro-crisis revealed that surplus Euro-members gradually dispose of cooperative industrial relations, whilst conflictuous relations characterise debt countries. Thus one should at least notice that industrial relations are not invariably a zero-sum game; hence conflict is not at all times and under all conditions the best choice for trade unions’ membership.
