On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:
> I've been reading the Treaties of Rome & Maastricht over the last
> couple of days - damn, those documents show how far the bourgeoisie has
> fallen since its great documents of the 18th century - and there's not much
> there for the Parliament to do. It can originate nothing; it has to ask the
> Commisson (or is it the Council? what a weird structure of governance) to
> propose something. It is consulted, but seems like a very weak body. The EU
> is a creature of central bankers and senior politicians.
Such is the EU's primeval exoskeleton. The internal protoplasm,
however, is considerably more promising: the European Parliament has been
gradually wresting more and more power to itself. Don't forget, the
Commission members are themselves appointed by the national governments,
and Europe's election system is incomparably more democratic than
America's rentierocracy, so there's more flexibility there than you might
think. Europe in general gets this bad rap for being forever behind the
Americans, but this is very superficial -- if you want to see some
visionary politics, check out the EU's Social Charter, which insists upon
everything from "fair compensation for workers" to an end to sexism and
workplace discrimination, etc. While the US has similar things, like Title
IX mandates and whatnot, the US approach is legalistic, disorganized, the
result of countless entrepreneurial micromovements and legislative deals;
the Social Charter, however, lays all the issues out in one place, and
reads like something out of a Green Party platform.
I think the European elites are pretty scared of a people's European and
the democratic potential of a true European Parliament, so they're trying
to keep the financial and fiscal levers of power to themselves. But it's
not enough to condemn the EU as a creature of capitalism; the
Euro-comrades have got to turn this creature against its masters (what we
might call the Frankenstein strategy of resistance).
> And they're [the European Central Bank] so busy being deflationists, I
> don't think they have the lender of last resort thing worked out at all,
> even though the IMF predicts massive financial turmoil as capacity is
> shaken out.
This is true. In fact, the various national banks would have to
collectively intervene to prevent this sort of thing; the currency crises
of 1993 are not a happy portent here. Still, the ECB may be progress over
the current system, where the Bundesbank has de facto control over the
entire show, and can single-handedly choke the airhose of the European
economy (as they almost did in 1993 with superhigh interest rates, until
protests from their neighbors plus the anguished cries of domestic German
industrialists forced them to lower rates to their current rockbottom
levels). The EU Ueberkapitalisten would like to sacrifice the West
European industrial base in order to build a new, low-wage one in the
East; so the Euroleft has got to head the bastards off at the pass, by
legislating a pro-inflationary euro and soaking the Eurorich to co-finance
domestic demand as well as an Eastern boom.
-- Dennis
