Re: The EU question

[Greg Schofield <gschofield@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:14  1/05/01 -0500, you wrote:
> > The EU is above everything else a result of geo-political pressures that
> > have been with Europe for a long time.
>
> Which part of the world does not face geo-political pressure? To take an
> example, Latin America certainly does, and has done so for "a long time,"
> yet no we see no EU type structures emerging south of the Rio Grande. It
> is easy to come up with a vague tautology in terms of a catchall phrase
> like geo-politics which covers everything and explains nothing an the
> advantages for some of this approach over a class analysis are rather
> obvious.

As I said in the previous post,
"I said it was a result of long term geo-political pressures - I should now
add mostly from within Europe, but I could simply refer you to Engels'
writings (letters to F.Sorge are pretty revealing). In a nutshell the
division of Germany neutralised it as a military power long enough for a
true pan-european economy to emerge - the EU is simply the recognition of
that existing economy."

I don't understand what is so tautological about this. Maybe I could add
that the geo-political influences in South America may well push in a
different direction - I am in no place to judge but I seem to remember that
pan-South American moves have come up from time to time since the 19th century.

> > In fact, if proletarian socialism had spread through Europe before-hand
> > an EU type resolution would be expected.
> >
>
> Again, where is the class in this? EU is definitely a bourgeois state,
> and as such is geared soley towards the needs of capital and West European
> imperialism. I doubt very much that this is the kind of "resolution" which
> European revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg laboured to see spread
> through Europe.

Monetary unionism, EU passports, freedom of movement within the EU.
Whatever the EU has become some of these things would be instituted by
Proletarian Socialism but obviously not the bourgeois parts. I thought
class was the premise of the statement.

On another thing, the bourgeoisie share a real world and are not completely
free to do what they wish at any point history, everything they can do is
conditioned by history, it is not unexpected that some of things they may
do in their own interests laps over into more general interests or is in
response to other material conditions which might remain true in other
circumstances. I find nothing odd in such an acknowledgement, as it seems
such a truism.

> >
> > There is the EU then as a general historical trend and its particular
> > manifestation. Concretely there is much to change, challenge and oppose,
> > there are reforms which need to be put up and a vision for Europe which
> > needs to be proletarianized.
> >
>
> Proletarianized (ugly word, but yours not mine) through reform? What is
> this the Fourth Way?


What Fourth Way? Where does this come from, I don't believe I have said
anything that cannot be found in classic marxism (even the precursors to
European union will be found there - re Engels especially). Believe it or
not reform and revolution has never been opposed as some seem to believe -
reform is not the same as reformism - the April thesis suggests nothing
more than a series of reforms, yet there are few that would doubt its
revolutionary credentials.

"Proletarianization" may be ugly but it is not my invention, while its
meaning is fairly straightforward (to make proletarian, to make in their
image, to have proletarian nature, to be in proletarian interest) just as
the equally ugly word bourgeosification means the same thing albeit for the
bourgeoisie. The point of using such an ugly word is I am not trying to
forecast the way this might happen, but that the point of judgement any
particular strategy would be by that end result.

> > There are also consequences which the ruling class want to ignore, the
> > emergence of regionalisation and mini-nations within countries that form
> > the EU, the need to dissolve NATO
> >
>
> which is to be replaced by what? The European rapid reaction force? Is the
> Western Left is so lame, the best it can do is call for the European
> bourgeoisie to break with NATO and the Americans? Pathetic.

I dare say a European army of some description - whether this takes place
under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat the result
would be similar (of course the nature of the armed force would be
different). I do not understand the premise on which you say this, the
breaking of NATO alliance would have a world-wide effect, in a sense it is
already historically broken, although it could I suppose be reasserted in a
new way (American extra-territorial force perhaps).

It would seem to me that such things are facts that need to be taken into
consideration, the need to dissolve NATO is because of the danger it
presents to the people of Europe (of which I am not one, I might add there
is a great need for my own country to abandon the ANZUS treaty and engage
in less imperialist arrangements - I don't know what you could find so
objectionable about either suggestion).

> > the need to further democratise the EU
>
> Talk to Third Wayer Jack Straw about Democracy. He's busy bullying,
> threatening and jailing the Roma refugees whom the oh so civilised
> Europeans (not to mention their fascist allies) bombed out of the Balkans.

Where is all this stuff coming from, I would have thought the need to
democratise social institutions of all types was part and parcel of the
proletariat's interest.

> > and from this flows other things a (a  pan-european bill of rights,
> >
> the right of savages everywhere to be invaded and bombed by the ERRF
> and Blair-Schroeder rather than NATO and Blair-Bush.

Again I cannot see how a suggestion of wider political reform should
somehow translate to what you are suggesting. A bill of rights effectively
does very little, but the struggle for one could do a lot (this was only
mentioned in passing I have no idea of the practical realities of such a
thing, but somehow bombing people does not seem to be a logical conclusion
even if it is a pathetic reformist thing to suggest.)

> > judicial reform, constitutional reform, language revitalisation,
> > cultural resurgence, joint social programs, etc.,).
> >
> >
> Where's the class in all this? Besides which, Jack Straw and Tony Blair
> already have judicial and constitutional reform cornered, and it's
> unlikely they need your advice. Why, Straw even got rid of a handful of
> hereditary peers in the upper chamber and replaced them with Labour Party
> appointees (does this count as proletarianizing?).

Surely that is the problem - where is the working class in all this - this
was the problem I was trying to address. I would not be so dismissive of
such things, Marx did not dismiss the Chartist movement however much
criticism he leveled at some of their ideas. However, we have no chartist
movement, we have no popular working class movement of any kind

> Sony, Disney and Bertelsmann are too busy commodifying culture to be
> bothered with this guff about language revitalisation (see Lou's post
> about the Smithsonian institute). And what is cultural resurgence anyway,
> if not a shabby slogan with chauvinist undertones?

Chauvinist undertones - who's chauvinsism? Cultural resurgance of the
celtic fringe, Flems, Basques etc (the list is actually large), something
that is already underway, struggles that reach to the surface and submerge,
but they will not go away.

In short, the cultural/national richness found within Europe which is
continually submerged by gross-kulture of the better known nations. Perhaps
I have not made my self all that clear. In any case I am at a loss at the
connection to Sony, Disney and Bertsman within this context

> >
> > joint social programs, etc.,
> >
>
> Social Democratic and Labourite pipedreams etc,. The great postwar
> expansion ended thirty years ago and no amount of wishful thinking will
> recreate the conditions which allowed capital to indulge the working class
> of the imperialist countries the way it did in 1945-1970. Slumps, crises
> and wars will increasingly be the order of the day, and the EU is the
> European bourgeoisie's vehicle of choice in the management and containment
> of these crises. Labourite and Social Democratic reformism were another.

From the context I thought it plain that joint meant
cross-language-national state programs within Europe. However this was not
clear and I apologise.

> > All of this goes by the boards if blind oppositionalism is embraced. In
> > this I join your criticism wholeheartedly.


> Actually the shoe is on the other foot. Blind oppositionalism, as you term
> it, is characteristic of the ruling classes in their dealings with the
> recalcitrant masses. Which is why Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made
> irrational violence a pillar of state policy (Kissinger's irrational
> madman theory).

I don't understand any of this I am afraid.

> So while you and the social democratic left might have
> renounced class warfare for constitutional, judicial modernisation and
> social reformism, beware, the personifications of capital are in no doubts
> as to the efficacy of the tried and traditional methods.

I don't know how you could have had this impression as the whole discussion
has been within the context of class struggle. It would seem I have said a
number of words which have bad associations for you, but I assure you I
meant to discuss reform within the same context as Marx etc, as a means and
expression of class struggle and not reformism where reforms are used for
the exact opposite.

Like many things the EU is a pre-given, my view is that with such things we
must get past simple opposition or affirmation and take a much more active
and critical stance on what may happen and should happen, what can and
can't be changed in the direction of things take beyond abstract debates as
to whether or not something that is, should be.

Comrade, I am happy to discuss any point but I think we must first come to
some agreement as to the terms being used and their meaning as these seem
to be getting in our way. Perhaps words like reform and reformism would be
a good starting point.


Yours somewhat confused,
Greg Schofield
Perth Australia