[PEN-L:31471] Green light for EU expansion

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The decisive Irish vote for the Nice Treaty gives the green light to the
addition of 10 more states to the European Union. This is a momentous
decision, unprecedented in human history. 

It marks a set back to petty bourgeois and small national bourgeois
forces resisting integration of European capital, even though their
complaints are sometimes justified. It enables Europe to develop further
as an alternative economic magnet to the power of the USA. It is a blow
for consensual politics and against US hegemonic politics. 

It is for that reason not only a victory for European finance capital. It
is also a victory for the interests of the working people of the
world.

She or he who does not understand this contradiction, does not understand
materialist dialectics, and is a subjective idealist.

As Lenin wrote 89 years ago

"Developing capitalism knows two historical tendencies in the
national question. The first is the awakening of national life and
national movement, the struggle against all national oppression, and the
creation of national states. The second is the development and growing
tendency of international intercourse in every form, the break-down of
national barriers, the creation of the international unity of capital, of
economic life in general, of politics, science, etc."

The Irish people have courageously and selflessly played their part in
both historical periods. 

Chris Burford

London