Re: [Marxism] Workers of Europe unite, you've only euro chains to lose
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 2011-12-22, at 5:35 PM, Paul Flewers wrote: > To put it briefly, the British right wants to recruit the working > class to its anti-EU orientation. It's nothing new, this goes back to > the moves of the anti-Europe wing of the British bourgeoisie to oppose > Britain's joining the Common Market 50 years back. > > The problem is that parts of the left have been as anti-Common Market > and anti-EU as this wing of the ruling class... > > I feel that the left in Britain should combine a call for > working-class unity across Europe (and beyond) with opposition to EU > moves -- such as the latest treaty for compulsory austerity -- and > moves by each European government that attack the working class, and a > call to democratise the pan-European institutions. For the left in > Britain to call for withdrawal from the EU would be to line up with > the most right-wing Tories, who are also the most ardent protagonists > of austerity and public-sector cuts, in a chauvinist opposition to > Europe. It gives the idea that workers in Britain have more in common > with their own rulers than with workers across Europe. European workers, particularly in the most targeted countries, are especially caught between a rock and a hard place: to leave the eurozone, default, adopt their own devalued currency, and try to export their way out of the crisis, or continue to fight austerity from within. Pick your poison. On balance, it seems the European left still considers withdrawal from the euro would cause the greater economic pain, even if a government of the left could take measures to cushion the shock. See, for example: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2011/11/27/abandoning-a-sinking-ship-a-plan-for-leaving-the-euro/ http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/moslerpilkington-response-to-yanis-varoufakis-regarding-our-eurozone-exit-plan.html Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Workers of Europe unite, you've only euro chains to lose
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paul wrote: For the left in Britain to call for withdrawal from the EU would be to line up with > the most right-wing Tories, who are also the most ardent protagonists > of austerity and public-sector cuts, in a chauvinist opposition to > Europe. *It gives the idea that workers in Britain have more in common > with their own rulers than with workers across Europe* (My emphasis). > My response: this is of course the absolutely key danger. When the workers get sucked into supporting their own bourgeoisie, it all leads to the uncountable slaughter of the working class. I know that is straight from Marxism 101. Yet with Germany emerging as the head honcho in the current crisis we cannot be sure that the echoes of two world wars will be resounding in the consciousness of the working class. comradely Gary Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Workers of Europe unite, you've only euro chains to lose
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 21.12.2011 20:22, Marv Gandall wrote: But there's no quarrelling with his thesis that "Europe's Left has suffered a calamitous six months. Socialist governments have met historic defeats in Portugal and Spain. Greece’s Pasok party was toppled by an EU technocrat Putsch. Ireland’s soft-Left Fianna Foil lost every seat in Dublin ..." Whatever about the Social Democratic parties in Greece, Spain and Portugal, describing Fianna Fáil as "soft-left" is ludicrous beyond all compare. The Fianna Fáil has been THE party of the Irish ruling class since the 1930s when it also managed to pick up a considerable degree of support in working class areas partly because of the uttter patheticness of Irish social democracy almost since its inception (now on display yet again), partly by clever use of populist and anti-imperialist demands in its early days and partly because of a degree of clientelism that would have made Tammany Hall blush. The fact that the back of this party was broken in the last election is a major positive step forward for independent working class politics in Ireland. It's also worth bearing in mind that there are forces on the left in Europe other than discredited social democracy and that international solidarity and internationalism offer a much more fruitful perspective for the European working class in the fight against the current EU-imposed measures (read "imposed by the German Merkel government") than Euro-sceptic nationalism as represented by the Torygraph or any of its columnists. #einde O'Callaghan Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Workers of Europe unite, you've only euro chains to lose
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 12/21/2011 2:22 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: Yet there is another parallel of equal resonance: the election of the Front Populaire in France with Communist support in May 1936, the cathartic rejection of deflation policy. Whether or not Leon Blum privately wanted to leave the Gold Standard – that inter-war replica of Europe’s unemployment union – the logic of his policies forced the outcome. Orthodoxy was overthrown. But not capitalism. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
