We face austerity, privatisation, and toxic influence. But we are growing, and cannot be beaten

HISTORY is a corrective of ideas, serving as a reality check on intellectual inflation. Sometimes it takes years, decades, even centuries for big and even not so big ideas to be properly deflated.
I remember fondly many heated arguments with the late Fred Gaboury, a former union logger from the north-west United States, who became an organiser for Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy, editor of Labour Today and World Federation Trade Union representative to the United Nations. Fred was a serious thinker in ways that many of his contemporaries missed.
When the eurozone — the European monetary union — was about to be established, I argued that between nationalism and uneven European development, a common currency was not sustainable. Posthumously, I conceded to Fred. But, today, there is plenty more reason to doubt the eurozone’s future sustainability. History has yet to speak definitively.



