Re: [A-List] Re: EWP

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

Domhnall writes:

> My point is that your alternatives seem to offer little new to that which
> the left cults have offered for decades. A programme which will attract
the
> masses because of the widening crisis of capitalism. Perhaps, but then
again
> I don't hold my breathe. Success is built on hard work on the ground,
dogged
> determination and discipline. To me, this programme was like a parody of
> what is really needed. Nothing in it that is wrong of course, just the
fact
> that it is as a document and that we need to start with where the people
> are.

The primacy of the pan-EU space as an arena of operations is new, and is
necessary given the hopelessly outdated attachment of older left cults to
nationalist modes of thought. And where exactly are the people? The people
are the ones being ignored by most of those already active within the
mainstream parties, while those who attempt to address their concerns
sincerely are the ones usually sidelined, if not expelled, by the
leaderships of those same parties. Hence the futility, in my view, of
clandestine working which is precisely the sort of conspiratorialism that is
all too easily caricatured by the mainstream media and is more than likely,
in its own right, to repel those we wish to attract. I wonder if your
definition of "the people" is in fact "political activists". Sure we need to
reach out to the aware and active, but there is as strong a need to enthuse
the presently disenfranchised who find no hope whatsoever in the current set
up. Attracting those already active in existing, compromised structures
threatens to stunt whatever growth we might hope to achieve because of their
attachment to outmoded policies, ideas, structures. If people have to make a
clean break to be with the EWP, so much the better for making it absolutely
clear to them that our raison d'être is up for an accommodationist
compromise. This is not to say that we cannot evolve as the circumstances
evolve, but to bend our requirements to suit the sensibilities of those
already active in other parties would be silly. After all, it is precisely
because of our perception that there is a political vacuum at present that
we are engaging in this effort. Compromising that effort by accommodating to
the prerogatives of those responsible for this vacuum would be
self-defeating.

>  The project is ambitious, sure ambition and will are necessary but they
are
>  certainly not sufficient. That requires appropriate orientation.

Agreed. Implicitly at least you suggest that the orientation of this
proposal is not appropriate. Hence the value of exchanges like this and,
incidentally, the value of openness as opposed to clandestine caballing,
posturing, etc.

> IMO, the problem with the old international was that it did not recognise
> the contours of national specific struggles. I certainly recognise the
> potential for EU-wide collaboration on the broad anti-imperialist left,
but
> it will be national progressive organisations which form the basis of that
> collaboration. Groups will row and have different strategies, but that
will
> be the basis on which we will build a credible opposition not some pan-EU
> worker's party. With time, things will change - particularly if the EU
> integrates further. It is the contours of the popular EU consciousness
which
> should determine campaign lines (although not ultimate objectives). If
> people want to build a EWP (probably more realistically European People's
> Network) over 20/30 years then that's a good thing ....

No, cannot agree. In this respect at least the EWP must be a vanguard party,
although I would argue that it won't be so difficult establishing the sort
of position we are advocating in the wider political space because the
vacuum exists already. Waiting for others to reach our considered views is
not an option when the stakes are so high. We've already been through
elements of this argument elsewhere but my views remain the same: it is not
alarmist or doom-mongering to point to the increased probability of global
catastrophe as the inevitable result of the current developmental
trajectory, and the deep unease this is generating is palpable. People of
all shades of opinion I come across here in Finland (and that includes many
non-Finns of very varied background, and not at all Marxist or even social
democrat) are absolutely horrified, aghast at what is being proposed by Bush
and co. -- they simply cannot believe what is going on. In other words, Bush
is providing them with the wake-up call that might otherwise not have
materialised (at least until irreversible ecological catastrophe kicks in)
and which is leading many to question previously held assumptions and seek
the appropriate answers. We need some kind of party or organisation that
acts not only as a focal point for such unease, but also that is
commensurate with the tasks that lie ahead. In other words, we need to
strengthen the European state at the same time as we work to democratise it.
Waiting 20/30 years for "the masses" to catch up, or, as is more likely,
present-day political hacks to catch up, is not an option.

> Just realise that to get marxist realities accepted will
> require serious long-term work. People will need to respect marxists as
> consistent and serious fighters for their interests on local as well as
> national and international stages. That means near continuous work on the
> ground and often involvement in messy 'reformist' actions.

Agreed. Hence the points made about working on the ground within trade
unions and other community organisations, but not as clandestine agents
within political parties of the status quo. The requirements you outline
would be true regardless of whatever agenda we would wish to promote. I am
rather more optimistic than you appear to be about the potential
receptiveness of people to explicitly Marxist arguments about the
conjuncture given the widespread disillusionment with that same status quo.
It doesn't take a professor of East European studies to recognise the
manifest failure of "transition" that has occurred in the former Soviet
bloc, and that living standards there were far higher than they are now.
Coupled with the treadmill existence of many in the west serving mammon
whether via labour or highly manipulated consumption, there is ample
opportunity for the comfortable to be afflicted with some presently
under-publicised argument.

> I don't know what level of expertise actually resides on the A-list.
> However, it's not clear to me that a group of 100 or so people throughout
> Europe, could do this irrespective of their personal abilities. If people
> here are to have an impact, orientation within existing structures is the
> best shot; if anyone has any detailed analyses of the way forward for them
> locally - that I would find interesting and important.

Hence this discussion. It may be that this little enterprise will fizzle
out. I hope not -- in fact if we really are serious in our analysis of where
we are and where we are likely to go then we better not. There are
undoubtedly many people subscribing to the A-list (and others who get
forwarded mailings) who could provide valuable input to this kind of
project. If they don't, then there is little that we can do about it. But at
the very least we (Mark and I) ought to be able to substantiate our case
more clearly and robustly if and when good people like yourself take the
time to challenge what we are trying to do.

> The tasks traditionally associated with Social Democracy have largely been
> proscribed due to the development of globalised imperialism. Therefore, we
> capture those tasks (which remain popular) and counterpose them to the
> imperialist structures (doesn't that task seem easy to sell to the
ordinary
> five-eighths?). What Phil suggests is as the social basis for social
> democracy has evaporated, the social basis for social democratic tasks has
> also evaporated. I just totally disagree. Now more than ever, we need to
> focus on these and other tasks (such as opposing imperialist war and
> ecological damage). In doing these very basic and popular things we will
> develop a more widespread consciousness that the true difficulties lie in
> the IMF, neo-liberalism and market capitalism.

Or, as we are saying, US imperialism. Meanwhile the EU's current efforts at
playing "catch up" with US imperialism in terms of privatisation,
deregulation and withdrawal of social welfare cover are deeply unpopular
within the EU and so offer little problem in terms of generating popular
support for a progressive alternative model of EU integration. Mobilisation
of opposition to US imperialism within the EU would strengthen the hand of
those like Gerhard Schröder and Gordon Brown who would wish to assert their
interests more freely with respect to US hegemony, but it would also
constrain them because of the implications it would have for their own
sub-imperialist agendas. The French complaints regarding "anglo-saxon"
capitalism are well made and can be found in varying degrees throughout
Europe, but require to be shorn of their nationalist basis and instead
bolstered by an internationalist progressive agenda for an alternative
development model of the kind we suggest in our original programmatic
statement. And this is why we need a pan-EU organisation, because if we
don't have one we are condemned to operating within national boundaries and
dealing with the same old structures that are manifestly failing at a time
when the forces arrayed against us are fully aware of the advantages of
operating at the level of the EU and beyond. Sure we need to save the NHS,
German pensions, Finnish rural communities, etc., etc., but in fact we need
to save the health care, pension systems, rural communities of *all* EU
members states and future entrants. In other words we need to link local
struggles within a common framework.

> The Green's are not associated with Communism. The fact that they have not
> done better is perhaps what we should be looking at more than why they
have
> done so well. Europeans would rather vote for a shade of centre-left or
> centre-right than the objectively sensible and acceptible radicalism
offered
> by the Greens. They are not considered 'dangerous' like authentic
> revolutionary movements but they still can't grow pass 20% anywhere. Why
is
> this? And can we learn any lessons from this?

Institutional lethargy might explain part of it. People often identify
themselves politically with labels that have long ceased to mean what they
meant originally. Many in Glasgow, for example, would vote Labour because
their family always has done, and because of an identification of class
interest even if that identification is no longer at all appropriate. The
same goes for the old Tories who remain identified with the Conservative
Party despite the latter's transformation into a nasty little Englander rump
that complains about the collapse of old symbols caused by the very free
market policies they would insist upon as correct and necessary. Breaking
through that sort of thing takes time and effort. Meanwhile the success of
the Green agenda (as opposed to Party) can be measured by just how much of
that agenda has been incorporated, at least rhetorically, by the mainstream
political parties. No one with serious political ambition is going to
rubbish the notion of sustainable development, but its incorporation into
mainstream political rhetoric is also its partial negation. No surprise
there, but nevertheless the fact that soothing noises can be made about it
and the "need to protect the environment" means that the Greens must work
harder to analyse the specific processes by which the environment is being
degraded and destroyed. And since few have an adequate conception of how our
economic system actually works they end up in a similar position to punk
Thatcherites, bewailing the loss of valuable symbols whilst advocating the
very policies ensuring that loss, as with Joschka Fischer in Germany, trying
to force Schröder to implement neoliberal policies. The lesson I draw from
this is that we need to infuse Green with Red if we are to have any success
at all in stemming ecological degradation, because this is the only way of
providing people with an appropriate contextualisation of the phenomena they
are concerned to end but which, without such a contextualisation, they are
condemned to perpetuate or, at best, ameliorate.

> There are rakes of
> other things, independent left actions, anti-war actions, trade union
> activism. The point I was making was that working in an operation like the
> Socialist party (I think that's the right name) in the Netherlands is the
> sort of thing we need to be at. In England, there is little alternative
> between New Labour and the miniscule Socialist Alliance. I don't know if
> working outside new Labour is a runner.

It must be. Ken Livingstone being rejected from the Labour Party might, as
Tariq Ali has suggested, be very much a blessing not just for him but for
those who might otherwise have the illusion that the Labour Party can offer
some kind of socialist agenda. It is an accident of history that New Labour
still tolerates people like Alan Simpson and George Galloway -- but through
a process of natural wastage (i.e. they die, are deselected, or lost owing
to constituency boundary changes, as potentially with Galloway right now)
they will be replaced, as Bernie Grant was by the very solidly Blairite
David Lammy, against the wishes of the constituency party. Again, the other
groups you mention are, to varying degrees, worthwhile, but there remains
the need for some kind of organisational focal point for the sort of agenda
we propose. Livingstone is actually quite close to it (at least on the
surface), although I would not rely on him or seek to use him as some kind
of standard which we should measure ourselves against -- rather the
opposite. Livingstone's main weakness is his lack of a movement, and not
only because without one he is electorally vulnerable. The main source of
his weakness is the lack of constraint that such a movement would exercise
upon him, not least as a means lowering his personal exposure in favour of
the agenda for which he is supposed to stand.

> True, but are you saying activism within these left alliances is
> compromised. Are we to give it all up and start over again? Better to have
a
> loose network of activists in various parties pushing the same way. Build
up
> and together within the stream.

The trouble is, by our reckoning, many of these activists are not pushing
the same way, and in some respects even when they are they are pushing in
precisely the wrong way. Most obviously, the British left in its attitude
towards the European Union is hopelessly out of date, and playing precisely
the sort of role that benefits, however unintentionally, US imperialism (as
well as the rump UK national bourgeoisie, whatever precisely remains of that
but which is nevertheless represented by Norman Tebbit, a strange bedfellow
if ever there were).

> The PDS is a positive party, no doubt, like RC in Italy. But they have
been
> hammered in the polls recently. All the same, I would look to them as
> potential components of any pan-EU alliance.

I wouldn't over estimate the electoral performance of leftist/Marxist
parties. As you say the key is in on-the-ground organising and while it
might not be what the PDS envisaged, the election result forces them to
examine precisely what they should be doing. When electoral success takes
over from the political agenda that originally inspired the movement, then
you end up with unnecessary compromises, as opposed to the necessary ones
that are, in the short term, unavoidable. Actually it's encouraging that
despite the apparent failure of the German elections the PDS opted for Gabi
Zimmer instead of some smoothie "moderniser" which, unfortunately, is what
Gregor Gysi seems to be becoming.

As for the rest of your post, no complaints. And I hope that our discussions
on this topic might indeed clarify just what is meant by a Marxist agenda.

Best,

Michael