Re: European Union

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2 Jun 1998, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:

> Before the depression, the socialist and communist movements and parties
> were strong, the worker movement vibrant. There was a strong intellectual
> culture, with socialist thought widely read and appreciated.

Are you seriously suggesting that the Left was this powerhouse force in
politics from 1900-1929? No social democratic party was elected, anywhere;
the European Communist parties were still relatively small, and would
reach their electoral peak only in the late 1940s; fiscal orthodoxy, the
gold standard, and Victorian-era liberalism ruled the roost. Compare that
to the 1960s, when 30% of the US workforce was unionized, and the ruling
class was forced to buy off workers with all sorts of non-market
structures and subsidies (among them, of course, the military-industrial
complex, which was the 20th century's biggest jobs program).

> Some bourgeois fractions fought this [the welfare state] (particularly
> labor intensive competitive industries). But the capitalist state,
> particularly during its more autonomous phases, does not work for
> particular bourgeois fractions.

Then who precisely does it work for? Could it be that the modern state is
*not* just the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, but is a terrain
and locus for all kinds of class struggles? The US government 1998 is not
the same thing as the Bonapartist state bureacracy Marx analyzed in the
18th Brumaire.

> This is a necessary adaptation to the imperatives of the global economy.
> The capitalist state is never for the workers. Therefore, when the times
> comes that the state must respond to economic needs differently, it will.

Well, there we disagree. The state is, in First World countries, hardly
something to be smashed, like used china or something. The state employs
18% of the US population, and provides all kinds of vital public services,
and regulates capital and corporations to some extent (though not as much
as it should). It represents, in many cases, the interests of the
proletariat, and not big biz, which is why biz was so hot to smash,
privatize, or otherwise roll back the power of the state. Second, there's
nothing "necessary" about this process: it's what capital wants, but not
what's good for workers or indeed for the long-term health of the economy.
Countries with lower-than-average profit rates have grown faster, like
West Germany and Japan, and with greater income equality and fairness.
The choice for Europe is this: to become a US of Europe, in which case all
the usual social ills will result, or to come up with some sort of
Eurosocialism.

But enough of this chatter. What's *your* agenda for the EU? What should
EU workers be doing, and how should they be fighting Maastricht
monetarism?

-- Dennis