Re: [A-List] Re: EWP

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

Domhnall writes:

> My definition of the people is largely conditioned by objective conditions
> in which I am used to struggling. Fortunately the great divisions between
> activists and the average individual are much smaller here - in main due
to
> the particular circumstances. I can make mistakes by extrapolating to
places
> where political activism is more alien to the popular consciousness. On
that
> basis, I may doff the cap.

No need for that -- in fact I am the one who should be doing that in
recognition of your own efforts and circumstances, in which the stark nature
of the choices facing all of us is much more evident. The point I am
possibly failing to communicate is that, in being involved with
organisations and structures whose original and/or primary focus is
something independent of the goals we are interested in furthering,
activists, in identifying primarily with those organisations/structures, can
become too focused on the specifics of their activities, to such an extent
that they end up opposing, with the best of intentions, precisely that which
they should support.

For example, in the UK, most of what remains of the organised left is very
suspicious of the EU. This they learned during the 1970s when the EU was the
main vehicle of US Cold War geopolitics and was seen as a barrier to further
Soviet expansion and a means of subverting the appeal of communism in Europe
as a whole. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the position of the EU
vis a vis the US has changed markedly. If not quite turning 180 degrees, the
US is certainly much more suspicious of the EU than before, viewing it as a
strategic rival at least as much as a strategic partner (which is not very
much, actually, when you look at current derisory Bush admin attitudes
towards even the most subservient parts of the EU). However the UK left,
failing to grasp exactly what has happened during the last decade, and even
worse, failing to grasp what happened in 1976 when the US imposed its
hegemony firmly over the UK in order to push it into Europe, believes that
somehow we can turn the clocks back to 1975 and engage in some sort of
modified alternative economic strategy of a kind completely impossible in
2002. Jonathan Michie's recent paper for the "New Europe" outfit exemplifies
this.

See http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w37/msg00058.htm

The fact that avowed leftists like Michie, Bob Rowthorn, Brian Burkitt and
Larry Elliott, among others, have chosen to climb aboard David Owen's "New
Europe" outfit is evidence of how badly advised much of the left remains,
especially considering the undoubted service Owen has and continues to
render his sponsors in the US. But remaining stuck inside organisations and
structures (including modes of thought) that were applicable to quite
different circumstances is only likely to change when a new identity or
organisation that is able to make a clean break with outmoded ways of
thinking makes its mark publicly. That is what the EWP is intended to be.
There is a strong need for a voice that is able to articulate the sort of
agenda we are promoting because, Ken Livingstone aside, very few of
substance appear to get it. And it's a measure of how great the political
vacuum is that it's only Ken Livingstone who appears to be capable of
filling even a part of it.

It's the same for the Labour Party. How many die-hard Labourites remain
committed to the sort of policies and ideals identified with, say, Tony
Benn? Probably quite a lot, but they will never, ever, make any headway
because the Labour Party they joined no longer exists. It is extinct and has
been driven to extinction by the combined forces of the labour aristocracy,
bourgeois placemen and careerists on the make, the CIA, the news media and
the full might of the British state. But labels still mean something which
is why a dinosaur like Dennis Skinner whom everyone loves supposedly because
he's honest and true is also idiotically sectarian and stupid in his
opposition to admitting Livingstone back into the Labour Party. The same
holds true for Tony Banks and others who place loyalty to party above
loyalty to class.

While it is a good thing that Livingstone was denied (if only for shattering
yet more otherwise diehard illusions about New Labour), it also demonstrates
how incapable what remains of the Labour left is to grapple with the current
situation. Thus a reasonable, articulate fellow like Kelvin Hopkins MP, who
knows a thing or two about economics and who can make very articulate
criticisms of New Labour policies nevertheless chooses to train his guns on
the EU when in fact the main source of inspiration for those same policies
is in fact the US. Social democrats like Hopkins should be opening their
arms to Europe because in Europe there are welfare states people like
Hopkins can only dream about, thanks to the US-imposed straitjacket of 1976
which left the British economy (and hence government) more exposed to the
ransom demands of international capital aided and abetted by the US state
apparatus which had already shown itself perfectly capable of engineering a
sterling crisis whenever the UK government followed policies uncongenial to
the White House and Wall Street. This helps to explain Blair's present manic
activity, apparently subservient to Bush but in fact trying desperately to
stave off any kind of reaction of the kind Rumsfeld gave to Gerhard
Schröder. Germany, of course, is much less exposed to US temper tantrums
than the UK and is therefore able to assert itself more autonomously, thus
Schröder's election-winning strategy of opposition to war in Iraq. Blair
does not have that luxury thanks to the historical legacy of the IMF and
Thatcherism, and thus he and Brown are engaged in a holding operation in
which the brinkmanship of buying US support for UK policies (be they
military adventures or public private partnerships that benefit US financial
interests) is matched by that of engineering a stronger UK presence in
Europe where UK interests are finally backed to the hilt by the state, which
will cloak its efforts in the usual crap rhetoric of "leadership" and the
"British example" as per Brown's recent well-timed criticisms of the
stability and growth pact (offering UK leadership in its reform -- how
thoughtful of him). And we ought to be supporting Blair and Brown in taking
the UK towards Europe -- not because we love the British state or the EU
stability and growth pact or the European Central Bank or the European
Commission but because we recognise the imperative of weakening US
imperialism, and therefore, the imperialist chain as it exists at present.
This is not to say that we can thereafter live happily ever after, since
imperialism will evolve and, assuming Europe emerges as a more equal world
power, we could quite easily end up in a situation not unlike the 1920s and
30s in which no clear hegemon has control and so we have a lot of
sub-hegemons vying for control, leading ultimately to war. But the present
situation is such that we are on the precipice of an international
catastrophe whether of an ecological nature or global warfare -- and the
source of these distinct problems is the same. Hence our stated agenda.
While working to strengthen the EU state we will be fighting for its
democratisation. We have no illusions about EU imperialism being any better
than US imperialism -- it is simply weaker at the moment.

> the mindset which sets up an objectively 'correct' programme and waits
> for the correct set of people to come along and adopt it is completely
> ass-about-face. What is needed is to prove the value of the EWP on the
> ground. Having the correct ideological orientation is not the most
important
> thing. Having good party structures, profile and the people's confidence
are
> much more important in working towards power. That is the central
challenge.
> Can we get a structure up and running which is capable of seizing power?
How
> does a better pan-EU ideological basis (assuming that's what you have)
help
> in that task. Not as much as it might seem.

It is possible that the EWP performs the role of a catalyst, in which the
agenda it promotes so enthuses those in existing party structures that they
adopt the programme to at least some extent, thereby filling the political
vacuum. In which case it may be counted as a partial success. Right now I
can think of no organisation that I could join and begin to argue the sort
of agenda I am advocating here, because in joining an organisation I would
be signing up to its present aims and objectives, its present strategies and
structures, and then I would be faced with the doubly difficult job of not
only struggling against official policy from within, but fighting expulsion
by showing how "loyal" I am to the party. Forget that. The fact that Dennis
Skinner remains a "much loved" Labour MP tells you how much of a threat his
subversion poses to the status quo. There is no point going down that road
in New Labour or in any other party regardless of how compromised it may or
may not be. The goal is to highlight the existence of the vacuum, and if the
EWP is the vehicle by which that vacuum is filled then great. If not, but
something else is/are, then all to the good. Our priority just now is simply
getting our message out. Correctness of ideological orientation can come
later -- as you can see there has been precious little deliberation over
Stalin vs. Trotsky, Lenin vs. Kautsky, which International, Dimitrov, 1956,
etc. Right now the real issues are rather more fundamental than those.

> I think we must live in very different European countries, unfortunately.
> Yours would be nice to see.

There's no question we live in very different European countries. Two weeks
ago my local shopping centre was bombed. I heard the explosion from my
living room, and was lucky not to have seen it more closely thanks to the
luck of having unusually different arrangements that day. The Finnish state
was primed for al-Qaeda but instead discovered it was really only a spotty
youth with an unhealthy interest in weapons of mall destruction. However
such was the shock of the experience locally that there was a noticeable
change of atmosphere and much talk all over the news media of "shattered
innocence" etc. Seven people died and 80 were seriously injured. There are
other places in Europe and elsewhere where people are inured to such events
because they are part and parcel of everyday existence and the "innocence"
was long ago shattered. Finland meanwhile has had the luxury of not
experiencing such things. Perhaps that is changing. Whatever, it has been
very easy for people here to imagine themselves somehow immune from the
sorts of events and difficulties that others must negotiate on a regular
basis. Hopefully that is changing.

> If people don't take an interest. Perhaps your assessment of the level of
> political awareness needs revisiting.

Or maybe we need to rethink our agenda. Or maybe we'll just continue to be
voices in the wilderness, wailing jeremiads to those who might listen.

Re French nationalism you say:

> Part of its popular attractiveness to the French is its nationalist
edges -
> France is a country which feels as if its magnificent culture is being
> swallowed up by that of the anglo-americans - that's the secret of Bové's
> appeal.

It would be much more constructive for the French and everyone else if,
instead of railing against "the anglo-americans" (and conveniently ignoring
the fact that French bureaucrats have played an enormously important role in
institutionalising neoliberalism within Europe and elsewhere -- Jacques
Delors, Pascal Lamy, Jacques Attali, Jacques de Larosiere) they would
recognise the imperialist nature of their own state and work against that,
instead of doing what pretend-leftists like Jean-Pierre Chévènement and the
Greens did by acting to protect the integrity of that state. A
non-nationalist pan-EU agenda of the kind we propose would be good for
France.

> That's precisely what I am talking about too. Except, to save these things
> you need to have fairly large and generally progressive organisations
> working together. It seems a lot easier to achieve that than a monoglot
> pan-European structure. How are you going to achieve that when you can't
> even achieve the same in England on its own?

By placing those struggles in a wider context, instead of allowing
nationalism, outdated autarkism or ignorance of US imperialism to permit the
manipulation of these struggles in ways beneficial to US imperialism and its
satraps.

> As a classic example consider
> Arthur Scargill running for the SLP against Peter Mandelson of Labour in
> Hartlepool. Arthur is as solid a representative of the left as you can get
> (almost) in England against him the epitomy of New Labour and its
> corruption. Yet, who won by a mile in such a working-class constituency?
> Mandelson. What does that teach us? (Let's not get into blaming the SLP's
> failures for this).

Had I been a registered voter in Hartlepool I would have voted for Scargill,
despite my misgivings over him and the SLP. But I am not at all surprised by
his failure, because of reasons you have been at pains to state concerning
our own little venture. Having some celebrity ride into town at election
time is no substitute for the sort of grassroots work you mentioned. The SDP
tried this on several occasions during the early 1980s -- Roy Jenkins lost
the Warrington by-election before getting hold of Glasgow Hillhead (my old
constituency), Shirley Williams won Crosby in 1981 only to lose it in 1983,
and so on. Scargill had none of the advantages of the SDP -- uncritical
media support, flattering television coverage, etc. And he has been such a
divisive figure that his natural allies on the left were reluctant to rally
round, despite the undoubted prize that would have been Mandelson's defeat.
There is also the anachronism that is his political programme, which pays
little heed to the sort of questions we are trying to address, since
Scargill ranks with those who would turn the clock back to 1975 and
cheerfully ignore the reality of Britain's enforced subservience at the
altar of US imperialism.

Part of Livingstone's appeal to Londoners was and is that he is a Londoner
who has long been identified, for better or worse, as a voice of London.
When I was living in London many years ago the BBC's Newsroom South East
programme convened a debate hosted by Brian Hayes in which Hayes explained
that the crisis of London was such that some kind of solution was required,
and that what was needed was not partisanry of the sort emanating from
Downing St (home to Thatcher then) and Lambeth council ("Red" Ted Knight et
al) or Brent, but "sensible" opinion of a non-partisan sort. Thus, when he
introduced his "non-political" panel featuring Andrew "Brillo Pad" Neill
(still editing the Sunday Times) and some nondescript Baroness so-and-so who
just happened to be sitting on the Labour benches in the House of Lords you
could guess just how the "debate" would go. Neill intoned loyally in favour
of Maggie while the Labour baroness could not admit that the destruction of
the GLC was completely unjustified because of her own, and her party
leadership's own, distaste for Livingstone, who was blamed for provoking
Thatcher in the first place (never mind the supine obeisance of Neil
Kinnock, as per bloody usual). The third member of this panel, however, was
a local journalist, Robert Elms, who was no political heavyweight and
represented no particular party, but, as a cultural commentator of sorts,
could articulate a popular view of what was required. In his view this meant
that London lacked a proper voice, and that one of the great things of the
GLC under Livingstone was that it had a recognisable voice, which most
Londoners believed was sincere in its defence of local interests. This was
in 1990. Ten years later Londoners still recognised Livingstone precisely
because he remained in his locality working at the grassroots. He's still at
it, although we could do with less stories of mayoral parties and high
living. It's because of that sort of commitment that Livingstone has the
credibility that Scargill lacked in Hartlepool. A similar tale can be told
of Tommy Sheridan in the Pollok area of Glasgow, which remains his power
base because of his identification with the local community.

> Socialists need to incorporate ecological policies
> within their mindset - but who doesn't already realise that?

Unfortunately all too many. It's easy to incorporate the rhetoric, and it's
easy to agree on specific instances of ecological degradation or
environmental disaster. But the sort of root and branch reconfiguration of
lifestyle and consumption patterns required of us in the North is far
outside the purview of socialists who can imagine that by somehow becoming
more "competitive" in the global economy their nation state can resist the
pull of "anglo-americanism" and preserve or construct a welfare state social
democracy, completely oblivious to the global system in which such a social
democracy would have to exist. Here I'm thinking of Will Hutton. If you
don't regard him as a socialist, then we can move to the ultra-left and
consider the sort of policies advocated by the likes of Karl Carlile and his
Global Communist Think Tank

See http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/FIST%20Programme.htm

Even the likes of John Bellamy Foster, whose work has done much to
demonstrate the awareness of Marx of environmental questions, disappoints
when he uses Monthly Review (rather than the platform offered by CNS,
although there are understandable reasons for that) to refute the sort of
Red-Green politics being promoted by James O'Connor et al at Santa Cruz and
elsewhere because, apparently, O'Connor and co. ignore the working class.
Good grief.

See http://www.monthlyreview.org/0902foster.htm

That's a bit of a caricature I guess but in criticising the apparent dualism
promoted by O'Connor's advocacy of a "second contradiction of capitalism"
Foster creates his own in treating O'Connor's work as a substitute, rather
than a complement, to the traditional emphasis on the contradictions of the
business cycle in his attempt to downplay the importance of new social
movements. I understand the political ecology movement as an attempt
(however misguided you might think) to infuse those new social movements
with the necessary Marxism they require to achieve even the limited goals
they have set themselves. And we, in the advanced countries from which the
traditional working class has been exported to the less developed countries
of the South, need to think carefully about the social bases of political
mobilisation, as well as the objective facts of ecological degradation that
affect all, regardless of class.

> So you are looking forward to the development of a European Rapid Reaction
> force? No doubt support for its actions in defending EU imperialist
> interests (on the basis that they will damage the prestige/influence of US
> imperialism) will follow. Social Patriotism or is it Social Imperialism?
> Let's support the lesser of the two evils: EU Imperialism with a
conscience.
> Why? Because the US will nuke the world otherwise. That's a long way off
> from Lenin and from the way people in Third World countries see things. A
> pestilence to both your camps!

As Ronald Reagan might say, "there you go again". This is a false dichotomy,
and one which you are using to posit a nice clean solution which in fact has
the practical effect of benefiting the head of the imperialist chain you
correctly oppose. Of course we are not looking forward to the development of
a rapid reaction force -- which, incidentally, will take shape anyway,
regardless of Nice Treaties or formal EU Common Security and Defence Policy
documents, policies, etc. Look at the agreement tied up between Blair and
Chirac. Look at the disarray within NATO during the Kosovo campaign, and the
disdain with which Rumsfeld treats both NATO and his fellow NATO members. EU
imperialists are being driven to develop their own military forces
regardless of whether they act as strategic rivals or strategic partners to
the US. Throughout this discussion I have not offered one word of support to
EU imperialism, and if you hang around this list long enough you'll soon
accumulate enough material critical of UK imperialism and EU imperialism and
German imperialism and French imperialism and Spanish imperialism that it
will make your head spin. But you are right -- we have come a long way from
Lenin, and we must be careful in looking for perfect analogues of his
decision-making circumstances when we craft our own strategies and tactics.
Lou Proyect's discussions of John Reed's book are most useful in this
respect.

> I'm not trying to be so negative. Just starting a new party around Europe
is
> a huge task. Have you got members in every state yet? How are you going to
> advertise? These are the first questions you need to address.

No hard feelings at all. Asking the questions that you ask is maybe a dirty
job, but someone's gotta do it. We are not at all sufficiently advanced to a
level where answering your final set of questions is appropriate. Suffice to
say we are at the process of exchanging ideas while trying to move forward
on the ground by establishing contacts, networking, etc. No doubt many of
our comrades will come from and remain in existing organisations,
structures, rather than formally break with their own. That is fine,
however, because the point is not that membership of/involvement with EWP
and other parties per se should be mutually exclusive -- rather, the EWP as
a formally separate entity exists to promote a formally separate political
agenda that is capable of incorporating existing lower level agendas within
a common framework.

Best,

Michael