If there were demonstrations across Europe for such a referendum and possibly a call for a second referendum on a Tobin Tax on the financial institutions that caused the crisis, then the parties of the Left in Britain and Europe would be leading the fightback both theoretically and in practice. This would be proactive rather than reactive, progressive rather than reactionary and regressive.
This is what the Marxist Left parties should be seeing form a Marxist perspective an international response to the crisis of capitalism not a nationalist response, leave that to the English Defence League BNP, UKIP and Right-wing Tory Eurosceptics.
So let’s see those red flags out on the streets of Athens, Berlin, London, Paris, Rome etc. calling for a new Europe, a Europe for the people not for the Banks and international capitalism with the European Left parties and the European United Left/Nordic Green Left parliamentary group at Strasburg.
People before profit "Without social justice there is no freedom. My political goal is democratic socialism, a peaceful and democratic society for all people, free from exploitation."(Gesine Lotzsch leader of Die Linke)
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Is this the issue on which the British and European Left can unite?
ReplyDeletewhat’s does David Harvey say about the EU? As I had thought he says it’s a regional organisation in world terms as Dugsie points out, but as Lee says up to the time of the Maastricht Treaty it was a social-democratic Keynesian economic bloc, after this the EU set out on ‘‘a broadly neo-liberal framework for the internal organization of the European Union’’ which ‘‘would not have been possible had there not been pressure from those states, such as Britain, that had committed themselves to neo-liberal reforms’’ (Harvey p89) from D Harvey, 2005, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press.
ReplyDeleteHarvey argues that ‘‘the World Trade Organization was the high point of this institutional thrust’’, as the WTO set the neo-liberal rules and standards by which the global economy was to function and opening it up to unhindered capital flows. (Harvey p93). Harvey says that the IMF and World Bank had by 1982 been purged of any remnants of Keynesian economics and fully adopted neo-liberal theories of how the world economy should work and by the time the WTO was set up this had become the hegemonic framework for global governance.
ReplyDeleteReagan and Thatcher governments that first adopted neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism in the advanced bourgeois democracies after the CIA had backed the first experiment with neo-liberal/neo-conservative theory in practice in Chile with the Pinochet government in the 1970’s and as has also been pointed out the Callaghan government came under IMF pressure to follow Monetarist policies in Britain in the late 1970’s so this country was way ahead of the Europeans and Scandinavians and they have been dragged quite late into the neo-liberal and neo-conservative project.
ReplyDeletewhat should happen now? I think we can see that the IMF and ECB are still following the neo-liberal ideology even though it’s austerity programs will require a more neo-conservative authoritarian state to enforce these programs on the people of Britain and Europe, hence the Secretary of State Theresa May’s decision to have water cannons and rubber bullets available at the latest student demonstration. In the 1984 strike the Miners which was considered correctly the strongest labour union with a tradition of militancy and solidarity was broken by the Thatcher government.
ReplyDeleteThis is why industrial struggle alone cannot succeed, there has to be a political side to the struggle this was Lenin’s argument with Willie Gallacher in 1920 and why the Communist Party has since that time accepted the Labour Party as integral to the class struggle in Britain. If we accept that social-democracy is the first stage in working class struggle and that once it reaches a certain point the capitalist class were always going to fight back, the question is how best do we resist/prevent them from succeeding and therefore move towards socialism rather than continually be in retreat as we have been in in Britain since 1979.
ReplyDeleteWhilst the broad Left should support the attempt by the Left inside the Labour Party to reclaim it from the neo-liberal/neo-conservative new/blue-labour faction as necessary if we are to achieve a Left-Labour government, we have to look beyond this and at the same time what the British Left can do now in light of the attack on the post-war compromise between capital and labour.
ReplyDeleteThe European Left and European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group, are to the left of the social-democratic group which the Labour Party and other ‘‘social-democratic’’ parties belong and as they are led by Pierre Laurent as President of the European Left Group and he is also the National Secretary of the Parti Communiste Français it makes little or no sense for the Marxist Left parties in Britain to refuse to become a part of these European and Scandinavian Left groupings of which the French communist party is a member.
ReplyDeleteThe former president of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group of MEP’s was Francis Wurtz who was also a member of the Parti Communiste Français and as I see it, it defies any logical argument as I see it that the Communist Party of Britain refused to join these groups. It has to be because they hold on to the misconception that by some miracle the CPB in a coalition with the Labour Party can build socialism in isolation, this wasn’t possible in 1945 when we had the most radical Labour government of the 20th century and two communist MP’s Willie Gallacher West Fife Glasgow and Phil Piratin Stepney London, There was at that time a hegemony for Keynesian welfare capitalism and that was what they built along with the rest of the bourgeois democracies of Europe and Scandinavia.
ReplyDeleteThis crisis is a time to demand the impossible
ReplyDelete‘‘The old neoliberal certainties are melting into air - but what will we replace them with?’’
http://www.morningstaronline.co.u...php/news/content/view/full/111855
Britain is in the first 'double-dip' recession since the mid 1970’s as it’s the economy shrank by 0.3% in the final quarter of 2011 and then another 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2012. The European Commission says Spain will remain in recession this year and next unless it changes policies as forecast for growth in Spain are revised from -1% in February to minus 1.8% now. When will the cycle of recession end or when will it tip over the precipice and into the vortex of a full blow depression.
ReplyDeleteAre the parties of the left across the EU ready to lead the fightback against the diktats of International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. François Hollande as the newly elected social-democratic president of France has called for a renegotiation of the austerity plan drawn up by Merkel and Sarkozy but will it happen, is it enough to avert recession turning to depression? A group of GUE/NGL Left MEP’s are going to Ireland ahead of Fiscal Treaty referendum there next week for a meeting 16th May and 18th May 2012.
http://www.guengl.eu/upload//Irish%20referendum%20May%202012%20%282%29.pdf
Now is the time for a broad Left Front of the Marxist-Leninist, Marxist a Marxian Green-Left parties against the hegemony of neo-liberal economic policies and neo-conservative government/governance of nation states, European super-state and the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund led by Pierre Laurent and Gabi Zimmer of the EL and GUE/NGL.