[Marxism] EU Elections: further decay of Social-democrats, surprise sucess of Cohn-Bendit, failure of victim attitude

["Lüko Willms" <lueko.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

  From the fourth to the seventh, the seventh elections to the European 
Parliament, i.e. the parliament of the European Union took place in all 24 
countries. Most countries took the poll on Sunday, some others followed their 
traditions and voted on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. The results were 
supposed not to be published before Sunday evening midnight UTC (22 
o'clock of Central European Time, which is valid in most of the EU countries). 

  See results on the EU pages here:
> <http://www.elections2009-results.eu/en/index_en.html>

  Just some comments here, since I will have no time for the rest of this 
week for a full article with concrete numbers.  

   The participation in the election was at an historic low of 43%, with 
participation rates in Eastern European country even below 30% in some 
cases. In Germany, the participation with 43% hardly differed from the one in 
the previous election five years ago. 

   The most visible result is the further weakening of the Social Democracy. 
In Germany, the SPD's losses were minor, less than one percent point, but 
with 20.8% it nevertheless got the worst result in any nationwide election 
since the second world war. In Britain, the Labour Party came in third behind 
the Tories and the "United Kingdom Indepencence Party" (UKIP) which favors 
leaving the European Union. In France, the Socialist Party received a little 
bit 
more than 16% of the vote, just 0.2 percent points more than the new 
left-bourgeois formation "Europe Ecologie". In Italy, I can't make out any 
party with roots in the working class movement. 

   In Germany, the conservative Christian Democrats lost heavily, about 6.5 
percentage points down to 37.9% (addition of CDU + CSU), but this was made 
up by an important increase of votes for the right-liberal FDP. 

   An interesting point is the instant success of "Europe - Ecologie", a 
coalition patched together by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, of May 1968 fame, and 
who had successfully stood for the European Parliament interchangeably in 
Germany and France. Cohn-Bendit had won Larzac farmer rebel José Bové 
and the state attorney Eva Jolie to build the formation together.  Cohn-Bendit 
countered with this coalition both the NPA (New Anticapitalist Party) of 
Olivier 
Besancenot and the "Left Front" formed by dissident Social Democrats and 
the stalinist PC. The big difference being that Cohn-Bendit is a staunch 
supporter of the European Union and of "humanitarian imperialism". In a TV 
debate a few days before the vote, Cohn-Bendit provoked François Bayrou, 
leader of the recently formed centrist "Mouvement Democratique" (MoDem) by 
a humiliating langauge and insults to counterattack Cohn-Bendit by 
mentioning the explanations about child sexuality in a book which 
Cohn-Bendit had written several decades ago. 

   As said above, this formation won slightly less votes than the PS on 
national level, but outdistanced the PS in the Ile de France, i.e. the Paris 
agglomeration, arriving second behind the president's party. 

   The "Front de Gauche" got 6.3%, the NPA "only" slightly under 5%, not very 
much more than what Olivier Besancenot hat gotten at the presidential 
elections.  I saw Besancenot in one TV debate the evening of the elections, 
but he did not say very much. The scene was occupied by UMP satisfaction, 
discord among PS leaders about they bad results, and Cohn-Bendit's 
triumphalism. 

   The party "Die Linke" in Germany did also not score so well, despite the 
economic crisis. 

   I see in both those cases the failure of "victimism", i.e. only lamenting 
about being a victim of the capitalist crisis ("We will not pay for their 
crisis") 
but without real proposals which could lead beyond the capitalist system. "We 
need socialism" and other ultimatist and utopist slogans don't do it either. 
The 
Party "Die Linke" in the Hessian regional parliament had last fall introduced 
together with all other four parliamentary groups a motion to give the German 
GM subsidiary (Opel) financial guarantees of several hundred million Euros, 
and voted for it. The party leaders in Berlin complained that not enough 
bailouts of capitalist companies had been done. 

  The workers solution is to force all car makers and their suppliers into a 
syndicate under public and workers control, to widen the collaboration 
between the -- then former -- competitors, and to retool the auto industry 
to produce more according to human necessities than capitalist profit. 

  Only such a compulsory industry syndicate could shorten the work week for 
all automobile workers without endangering those who have not a strong 
enough capitalist government backing their "national industry", as do the USA, 
Germany and France, to name just a few. 

  This would, of course, also require a nationalisation of all banks and other 
financial institutions (by changing property titles of the stock owners into 
savings accounts with variable and low interest, not terminable by the 
holder). 

  An interesting new political current got one seat in Sweden, the "Pirates 
Party" (<http://www.piratpartiet.se/>). In Sweden not long time ago the 
organisers of the Internet "Pirate Bay" had been condemned to prison for 
infringing the copyright of the music and motion picture industry. There is an 
international movement of the "Pirate Parties", kind of a Fifth International...

  The Pirate Parties center their activity very much around the Internet, 
opposing "Digital Rights Management", surveillance, patents, etc. In this, the 
"Pirates" represent the productive forces in their conflict with private 
property 
which clashes with the technical advances in spreading information and 
artistic productions. 

  The "Pirate Party USA" is here <http://pirate-party.us/>, from there one can 
find allied movements in many other countries. 



Comradely yours, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany
--------------------------------

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