[PEN-L:28412] Re: The new EU

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 23/07/02 08:45 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:
> Chris Burford:
> This remarkable success within a short space of human history, has been of
> benefit to the working people of Europe, and of the world, not withstanding
> the imperialist nature of the new EU. Perhaps it was also a by-product of
> the strength of the communist movement in western Europe and the need for
> capitalism to show a more peaceful and progressive face. It is a triumph of
> the vision of people like Jean Monnet that markets should be regulated and
> answerable to the democratic will of the people, and that negotiation and
> cooperation between capitalist enterprises under this degree of social
> foresight is progressive.
>
> ----
>
> The Euro-Zone is a victory for the ruling class, not the working class.


Largely yes, of course. And I agree with Paul Phillips that the EU has a
major problem of conventional bourgeois democratic accountability.

But the "monetarist" perspectives of the Maastricht convergence criteria
reflected what was financial orthodoxy in the world as a whole at the time
and there are still a lot of social democratic or christian democratic
protected labour practices waiting to be eaten into. (That is perhaps the
main reason why Schroeder is likely to be defeated in September. Then there
will hardly be any Third Way people to criticise at all.)

But it is not the case that there is nothing in the EZ that conforms to the
progressive interests of working people, just because it is a victory for
the ruling class. For one thing they generally appreciate the benefits of a
large market, as Lenin noted, in an aside on the national question.

But most importantly, geopolitically, it is necessary now to call into
existence the Old World  to redress the balance of the New.

There is a sometimes a counterposed symmetry in the positions of Louis
Proyect and mine. I regard it as the first international duty of any
citizen of the USA to oppose US hegemonism, and to pay due attention to all
the rival forces in the world, including the other imperialisms in order to
have a realistic chance of doing so. I tend to assume that Louis Proyect
would regard the first duty of a citizen of a western European country to
oppose their own imperialism and the new European imperialism, and I have
to concede there are quite a number of Lenin quotations to this effect.

I  see the development of a more diversified world in which power is
struggled over between imperialist blocs, so long as they do not go in for
war, as favourable to the interests of the working people of the world, and
to the development of world unity and world government on the basis of some
relative justice.

That will make it easier, not more difficult, to move on to the struggle
for socialism. IMO.

Chris Burford

London