[A-List] European Workers Party

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Fellow listers

Mark Jones and I have been throwing around some ideas concerning the
opportunities for political development within the EU. Below represents
about as far as we have got, and, in line with our desire to develop a
European dimension in A-list discussions, we present it in the hope that,
regardless of your country of origin/residence, you will feel free to build
on it, rip it to shreds or whatever, in a suitably comradely spirit, of
course.

Michael Keaney


Project for a European Workers' Party (EWP)

Rationale: there is a need for an EU-wide political organisation of the
left.

At the beginning of the 21st century the crisis afflicting the global
capitalist economy has deepened to such an extent that the very
survival of planet earth is at stake. Instead of the exterminism of Cold War
mutually
assured destruction, today we face the exterminism of a globally
untrammelled capitalism that rides roughshod over spaces previously
considered part of the commons, backed by the full military power of the
United States and its sub-imperialist collaborators. The manifest
contradictions of such a trajectory include growing evidence of ecological
degradation -- climate change, freak weather, species extinction,
increased prevalence of rare diseases and human disorders -- in addition to
the
widening inequalities between rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped,
North and South. Rather than pursue even the most inoffensive ameliorative
policies, those at the helm of the US state apparatus are intent
on perpetuating the status quo and, to that end, securing supplies of fossil
fuel energy at any price. Both inside the US
and outside, the desperation underlying such a policy has provoked splits
within ruling
classes and focused global opposition movements more intently on the
realities of US imperialism. Within the EU this has become apparent as
mainstream political leaders express alarm over US unilateralist
warmongering.

The European Union, as a political space, offers an arena of struggle to
those recognising the above realities and willing to engage in the task of
uniting progressive forces across national boundaries to the end of
constructing a radical anti-imperialist movement capable not only of
challenging the hegemony of US imperialism, but offering an alternative
model of political economy in which exists both economic and ecological
security for all inhabitants. To that end we propose the establishment of
the European Workers Party.

The EWP owes its allegiance to the social  classes of solidarity of the
whole of the European Union and not to those of any one member-state. The
social  classes of solidarity include the workers by hand and brain, small
farmers and small businesses, and the mass and public professions. It is to
these groups and their social and political interests, that the European
Workers' Party would pledge itself.

The EWP would be premised on the  recognition that the determining last
instance of political life in the EU is the EU itself and not the state
authorities of the member countries. While all important national political
parties  including greens, social-democrats, Christian democrats, and
socialist and ex-communist parties, do have pan-European organisations and
form common blocs in the European parliament, the primary political focus
and level of organisation is always the national state. The EWP's programme
would be about broadening the EU, welcoming new entrants from central,
eastern and southern Europe and campaigning against the chauvinist rejection
of expansion and redistribution, and against racist anti-immigration
policies championed by the right and apologists of the "centre".

The EWP would be strongly anti-imperialist as well as anti-racist and would
campaign specifically against US interference in EU domestic affairs and for
the closing of US military bases in Britain, Germany and elsewhere.

The EWP ought to participate fully in political and social life and to take
part in local and national as well as EU elections, to form cells and
branches in trade unions and other social organisations.

The programme of the EWP ought to be based on an analysis of the capitalist
crisis, of the general unsustainability of the capitalist system, and of the
structure, functioning and crisis-modalities of imperialism. The fundamental
and radical nature of the general crisis of late capitalism means that the
historic tasks of the international proletariat, analysed and laid out by
Marx and Lenin and others, remain to be accomplished, and are more urgent
than ever. Since there is no alternative to socialism but barbarism and
ecocide, historical and social logic dictates that socialism must be the
prime goal of any authentic working-class party. Socialism entails firstly,
the expropriation of the expropriators, the public ownership of large-scale
industry and science, workers' control of industry, land to the tiller, and
the social and historical liquidation of the exploiter classes: the big
bourgeoisies, the landed interest, finance, monopoly and corporate capital,
and the various sub-groups and layers of sepoy-classes which defend them and
serve them; these subaltern classes and layers also face historical
dissolution.