A Future That Works

A Future That Works
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Saturday 22 October 2011

Referendum on British membership of the European Union

Will the British Left be stronger or weaker if a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union went in favour of withdrawal, would Britain be less or more neo-liberal economically and have more or less neo-conservative laws which control the labour movement?

The extreme right-wing of the Tory Party, UKIP, BNP and English Defence League, the Daily Mail, Daily Express and SUN newspapers all support a referendum and withdrawal from the European Union. This should give an indication as to whether it’s in the best interests of the British working class or a section of the ruling capitalist class.

Without the EU directives on holidays, sick pay and working hours low paid casual workers and agency staff would have any protection or entitlement to holiday and sick pay. This should send a warning to trade unions and the ultra-left who ally themselves with the ultra-right, be careful what you wish for.

18 comments:

  1. Daily Mail

    At last: We get vote on Europe as MPs are forced to decide on referendum

    Daily Express

    Lord Tebbit warns Tories may desert David Cameron over his refusal to give EU referendum

    Sun

    Tory rebels: We’ll quit over Europe

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  2. Guardian

    European Union: The referendum is an absurd sideshow

    Independent

    Cameron joins talks on Euro crisis

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  3. Daily Mirror

    Reject EU referendum, urges Hague

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  4. Labour leader Ed Miliband described the debate as ‘‘an irresponsible distraction’’ and yet 60 Conservative MPs could defy the Prime Minister.

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  5. The Tory right-wing (Eurosceptics) would turn Britain into a low-tax, deregulated, offshore haven for the very wealthy but with next to no protection for ordinary people.

    The Left should be aware of consequences of leaving the European Union.

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  6. As the Tory Party descends into conflict over the European Union with David Cameron's first big revolt what response should the Marxist and non-Marxist Left be giving to this debate? Will the labour movement and the British people be better served by staying in or coming out? Or will a privileged capitalist elite be the true winners if Britain comes out of the European Union?

    http://leftalternatives.myfineforum.org/sutra11203.php#11203

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  7. From a Marxist and Leninist perspective does the crisis of capitalism and bourgeois democracy across the European Union from Greece to Britain has shown both the limited understanding of the British and Greek communists for refusing to be a part of the European Left lead by Pierre Laurent of the French Communist Party.

    Whilst Ed Miliband represents the failed project of new-labourism’s version of neo-liberalism and a semi neo-Keynesianism in the British bourgeois democracy it could be argued that he represents the sanest option electorally.

    If the Eurosceptics win and force a referendum on David Cameron, where does this leave the pro-Europe Liberal-Democrats and the coalition? Can the coalition survive, would the Liberal-Democrats try and form a government with Labour? And does this leave the Socialist Party and Communist Party allied to right-wing Tories, UKIP, BNP and the English Defence League?

    http://leftalternatives.myfineforum.org/sutra11219.php#11219

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  8. Whilst the EEC as it was then an EU as it is now is obviously a capitalist economic and political bloc it has remained broadly Keynesian and certainly social-democratic in nature to a greater degree than Britain or the USA. Britain and the USA moved from this progressive phase of capitalism, if I can call it that in the late 1970’s as a way of solving what had for capitalism become a crisis of class power.

    The rest of the European Union and Scandinavian nations maintained a large degree of the Keynesian social-democratic model of capitalism up until the late 1990’s, and have only really perused a neo-liberal economic and neo-conservative political agenda since 1995 with the Single European Act and Stability and Growth Pact.

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  9. The EU has moved decidedly to the right as an institution, to the degree that its constitution enshrines neo-liberal privatization of health care and social services since 1995 this process has accelerated with the Service Directive of 2001 and again with the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. This compares markedly with the European Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of 1989 or the Social Chapter and Treaty of Maastricht of 1992 and Jacque Delors President of the European Union from 1985 to 1994 which was based on a social-democratic vision as for the EU.

    This phase of neo-liberal and neo-conservative capitalism has accelerated since the Lisbon Treaty and the financial crisis of 2007/8. As a Marxist and Leninist what I see is capitalism moving from a progressive social-democratic phase of development to an increasingly reactionary neo-liberal and neo-conservative imperialist authoritarian phase. Neil Harding shows Lenin to have been able to analyse these two types of development within capitalism.

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  10. Jacque Delors fellow French socialist Francois Mitterrand who was President of France from 1981to 1995 followed a radical left-wing programme, including nationalization of key parts of French industry but was forced to abandon most of his programme after a few years in the mid 1980’s. Proving that one nation cannot pursue an alternative left-wing programme alone and succeed. This is why I’ve argued in the CPB that its naïve to believe that if we managed to get a Left-Labour government (which I desire as part of a British Road to Socialism) that it could pursue a radical left-wing programme on its own against the global governance of the IMF, World Bank and WTO.

    This is why I have argued not just for good relations with fellow Marxist and non-Marxist parties such as the Communist Party of Greece, Communist Party of Portugal, Die Linke (Left Party) of Germany and the Communist Party of France etc. but that within the framework of the European Left it is more viable to pursue an alternative left-wing programme than as a single national programme. If the European Left and European United Left/Nordic Green Left were able to enter into coalitions with the social-democratic parties such as has happened with Jean-Pierre Bel’s Parti Socialiste which is part of the PES group with the Parti Communiste Français which belongs to both the UELG and EL.

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  11. Most EU member states are better than Britain and that’s why I am arguing for fighting from within the EU rather than withdrawal. A return to a social-democratic model of Britain and Europe may not be possible as the crisis of global capitalism deepens, but if we take the view that by defending the social bundle won in the progressive Keynesian period of welfare capitalism we make it harder for the capitalist elite to solve the crisis in their favour as was the case in Britain and the USA in the 1980’s.

    The first type of capitalism creates an environment in which workers can develop an understanding of their economic power and of participation in politics through the labour movement and bourgeois democracy and to improve their living standards. When capitalism enters the reactionary phase as the capitalist class use a crisis of capitalism to reverse the gains made by the working classes in a period of strong economic growth we enter what Lenin saw as potentially a revolutionary phase where socialism becomes a real possibility.

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  12. In this second phase the Left can either take advantage of the crisis of capitalism or the capitalist class takes the advantage as they have done in Britain and the USA over the last thirty years from the crisis of the 1970’s. If we accept the Marxist and Leninist argument that finance capital is an international force and cannot be resisted or defeated at the national level then nether a Keynesian social-democratic economic and political programme or a Marxist socialist programme could succeed in a single nation state for very long.

    This is why Lenin said that ‘‘National Bolshevism’’ was utopian and why Ive argued within the CPB that as a Marxist-Leninist party it should be a part of the European Left which has Pierre Laurent of the PCF as its president. The CPB along with the KKE of Greece both are against being a part of the European Left which I have argued is acting as National Bolsheviks and therefore utopian and contrary to Marxist and Leninist analysis.

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  13. Lenin was a pragmatist as well as a revolutionary, it’s my premise that he would have argued for the PCF strategy of working within the European Union against the Lisbon Treaty and EU directives as internationalist rather than perusing a nationalist strategy as the CPB and KKE are doing. The European Left are much stronger than the British Left and therefore more able to resist the neo-liberal and neo-conservative offensive, I suspect the KKE will fail to resist the dictates of the IMF and ECB and the people of Greece will experience the full force of austerity inflicted by global finance capital.

    Here in Britain the CPB and SP will be on the margins of the class struggle, the Labour Party as a social-democratic party whether neo-liberal/neo-Keynesian or not are whilst ideologically the weakest they are electorally the only option for the British working class. The British Marxist-Leninist parties seem unable to apply a Marxist or Leninist theoretical methodology to their analysis where does that leave British Marxism in this the deepest crisis of capitalism for eighty years?

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  14. That increases the possibility of resolving the crisis of capitalism in a way that favours the working classes of Britain and Europe, if Britain leaves the EU it’s more likely it will follow further down the American model of capitalism, huge wealth at one end for a small percentage and increasing poverty and insecurity for the majority at the other end.

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  15. Marxists and Non-Marxist communists and socialists must push for internationalist rather than nationalist strategies and for a European Left Alternative to the neo-liberal/neo-conservative policies of the IMF, World Bank, WTO, European Central Bank and Conservative/Liberal governments.

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  16. Now that we know there isn’t going to be a referendum and Britain will for the foreseeable future remain a member state of the EU, I will return to my argument that if we accept Lenin’s theoretical analysis and imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism and the economic structure is global, monopolistic and regressive, and therefore the only viable response is an international one and not just a national response.

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  17. See Theory and Practice in the Democratic and Socialist Revolutions

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  18. Let’s leave the nationalist to fall out amongst themselves from the far-right to the ultra-left.

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