Anders asks a series of questions, basically asking why French Social Democracy couldn't pursue a progressive program designed to transform or derail the current (reactionary) trajectory of European unification. Cutting to the chase, it seems to me that your real question is this: whether politicians with a clear sense of tactics and strategy could make an important difference if they reached out to the victims of European neoliberalism and attempted simultaneously to raise political consciousness and to promote a series of coherent political-economic alternatives. I believe that they could make an important difference if they chose this path. But I would concur with the sentiment of Michael's initial comment that generated this discussion. A move in the direction of progressive intervention by the French government is highly unlikely, given the fact that Jospin is coming into office with no sense whatsoever of what to do by way of alternative to the regressive policies in which he and Mitterand were so complicit in the 1980s and early 1990s. Even if we could overcome this problem by waving a magic wand and giving French S-D a sense of progressive initiative and audacity, I believe that their active opposition to neoliberalism would be much more likely to lead the forces of neoliberal unification, led by people like Kohl, to abandon the already shaky unification project and to unite their efforts to isolate and undermine the progressive French opposition than to promote European unification on a progressive basis. In short, I believe that the prospects for transforming the European Union from a reactionary to a progressive project are nil. Cheers, Sid
