While European mainstream media has been euphoric concerning Greece´s exit from the beialout programme it was subjected to. The results are catastrophic:
-500k people, mostly young, emigrated
– Unemployment hit 27.8% (still >20%)
– Youth unemployment reached 60% – Economy shrank by 25%
– Debt/GDP ballooned to 180%
– Suicide & depression rates rose sharply
by Steffen Stierle
Steffen Stierle is one of the coordinators of the European Lexit network as well as active in Attac Germany and the Eurexit initiative. He works as a freelance journalist in Berlin. His thematic focus is the political economy of European integration.
Cross-posted from Makroskop
Cross-posted from Makroskop and Brave New Europe. Translated and edited by BRAVE NEW EUROPE.
Leftists like to add that the fundamental social rights of the British are also in jeopardy, as they are protected by the EU. Thomas Fazi and Bill Mitchell have already pointed out the weaknesses of the economic forecasts and argued why it is nonsense to view the EU as a shield for social rights.
Looking to the North – above all at Norway, a European nation that twice voted against EU membership by referendum and is now at the top of the global prosperity scale – supports Fazi’s and Mitchell’s argumentation.
Let us first look at Sweden – the former Scandinavian model nation that joined the EU in 1995 – as an example to illustrate the challenges posed by EU membership for the Scandinavian welfare model. Later, we shall examine Sweden’s economic and social developments since joining the EU compared with those of Norway. Finally, in an interview with the Oslo historian and trade union researcher Idar Helle, we approach the question of to what extent the Norwegian experience are applicable in the case of Great Britain.
The neoliberalisation of Scandinavia
A look at Sweden shows how challenging the EU rules are for generous welfare states and economies with a broad public sector. Until its accession to the EU, the country was regarded as the ideal example of the Scandinavian welfare model: high and even distribution of income, a broad public sector, strong redistribution through tax and social policy, etc. In the meantime, however, the EU has had more influence on Sweden than vice versa.
The EU’s economic and fiscal rules are hard law, i.e. tough, binding, and sanctionable rules. Those areas in which Sweden has been able to exert influence incorporating its background of Scandinavian traditions at best occur at EU level as soft laws and therefore remain non-binding. Who remembers the European Employment Strategy or the EU´s Open Method of Coordination? And for whom does ESM still stand for the “European social model” today? Sweden has contributed a great deal here, but these contributions have remained structurally subordinated to the hard core of EU rules for integration.
Cross-posted from Corporate Europe Observatory.
As its authority in Brussels is being threatened, Germany is consolidating its control over the EU. Three of the EU´s four leading civil servants are now German. Angela Merkel has declared that a German, the lacklustre Manfred Weber, is to be made the new President of the EU Commission. In the midst of this European Ombudsman issued a scathing reportof how the appointment of Martin Selmayr as the most powerful EU civil servant, Secretary-General, on 21 February 2018 was a stitch up (Read here). There will of course be no consequences – but the EU political elite is known for this.
On 4 September 2018, the European Ombudsman ruled that the appointment process of Martin Selmayr had suffered from several instances of maladministration and recommended the “Commission should develop new procedure for appointing its Secretary-General”.
The appointment of Martin Selmayr as new Secretary-General of the European Commission took almost everybody by surprise. Only a handful of Commissioners were apparently aware before the fact, including of course Jean-Claude Juncker, who announced the promotion of his then chef de cabinet on 21 February 2018, making Selmayr the head of some 33,000 commission staff.
Jean Quatremer, EU correspondent for French newspaper Libération, soon revealed details about the dubious appointment procedure. Selmayr had first been named deputy Secretary-General, a position in which he remained literally just a few minutes – long enough to give him the required civil-service grade for further promotion. He was then swiftly, without interview or public announcement, handed the top post following Alexander Italianer’s resignation. Quatremer describes it as “a brilliantly executed coup that has handed this 47-year-old German bureaucrat near-total control of the EU machine”.
The appointment sparked uproar among Brussels journalists as the Commission’s spokespeople refused to answer questions and stubbornly insisted that there was no problem with the way Selmayr had been appointed.
Further digging into this lightning-speed procedure has in the meantime revealed more baffling details. Quatremer’s research, based on undisclosed sources, revealed what could be the most shocking detail yet: the cabinet of Commissioners may have withheld criticism of or even opposition to Selmayr’s promotion as the man himself had flagged the possibility of providing them with increased post-employment benefits, from in-house offices at the Commission headquarters to a personal driver. In addition, the prospect of extended as well as heightened transitional allowances was raised by him.
If true, this last aspect is particularly outrageous. Transitional allowances are official payments to former EU commissioners following their exit from the institutions. They are meant, among other purposes, to reduce the financial incentive of potentially conflict of interest-laden private sector roles for ex-officials and to thereby keep them from accepting ethically dubious employment offers.
Considering the recent revolving door scandals and the fast approaching 2019 EU elections which will see many of the current Commissioners leaving office, it is urgent to reinforce transitional allowances as an effective tool for preventing conflicts of interest. But its getting caught up in the scandal surrounding Selmayr’s appointment has rendered the issue toxic and any changes to the allowances now seem unlikely. This is precisely what happens when a tool meant to fight conflicts of interest is used for political leverage to gain favours.
And the fallout of the appointment didn’t end there. Soon, Members of the European Parliament expressed their horror, not least because Selmayr is a political figure aligned with the German Christian Democrats, and not a civil servant. With his appointment virtually all top positions in the EU institutions are now held by conservative politicians linked to the right-leaning EPP group.
Selmayr has also been a controversial choice due to the aggressive and often authoritarian style in which he used to execute his responsibilities as Juncker’s chief of staff, a behaviour that earned him the nickname the ‘Beast of the Berlaymont’. As a consequence of his leadership style, media report that his “peers in power say they cannot trust him. Subordinates say they fear him. Already, one Commission vice president and several high-level aides have quit, decrying his authoritarian control of the Commission, which he has remade unapologetically, in Juncker’s name, as a top-down institution.”
Earlier last week, the uproar around the Selmayrgate scandal deepened when Commissioner Oettinger was grilled in Parliament by angry MEPs. Oettinger appalled the parliamentarians by simply denying all criticism and claiming that the Commission had done “everything by the book”.
MEPs were not willing to accept this evasion of the issue, with ALDE’s Sophie in ‘t Veld saying how she was left “completely speechless at the scene of 28 powerful politicians, selected for the political leadership of this continent, but led by the nose by a civil servant”, adding that “Selmayrgate destroys all credibility of the EU as a champion of integrity and transparency in public administration”. Relating the scandal to the already low public trust in the European Union, Ms in ‘t Veld summarised the scandal as “devastating” and said that “the Commisison will have to chose what is more important: the career of Mr Selmayr or the credibility of the European Union.”
Speaking for the Greens/EFA, Philippe Lambert highlighted that “Mr Selmayr is a party man above all” and that he “is moving forward with authoritarian centralisation”. Dennis de Jong for the GUE/NGL group, like others during and after the debate, reminded everyone of the fate of the Santer Commission, which in 1999 resigned en-masse following an internal corruption scandal.
Oettinger, as the Commissioner responsible for Budget and Human Resources, should have played a key role in the hiring of a new senior civil servant like the Secretary-General but, according to media reports, was completely side-stepped during Selmayr’s recruitment. During the European Parliament debate he was then mostly unable to answer MEPs’ hard-hitting questions and in his closing remarks largely failed to address the many concerns that had been raised. Instead, he chose to repeat that there was nothing wrong with Selmayr’s appointment. At Corporate Europe Observatory, this caused us to recall our concerns regarding Oettinger’s own fitness for the job. (More information about the Parliament debate here.)
In a step further highlighting the severity of the case, the Parliament’s committee for budgetary control last week also unanimously approved a probe into Selmayr’s appointment and the Commission’s integrity more generally. Then yesterday, MEPs agreed to further quiz Commissioner Oettinger and submit questions about the appointment directly to President Juncker. The Parliament’s Conference of Presidents is also to draft a resolution on the issue to be voted on alongside the budget discharge, again highlighting MEPs’ power to postpone the Commission’s annual budget discharge until there is clarity over the appointment.
The importance of the Secretary-General role
What is clear is how much is at stake with this appointment. The Secretary-General role to which Selmayr has been appointed is an extremely powerful one within the Commission apparatus. This became very clear during the long term of previous Secretary-General Catherine Day, who filled the position from 2005 until 2015. Her mandates were marked (and in our view marred) by several deep and shocking interventions in the EU decision-making process on behalf of corporate lobby interests.
A profile of Day’s lists some of her interventions, which blocked public interest regulations:
In addition to these cases, our own research, as well as a study by the Pesticide Action Network, has shown how then Secretary-General Day was a key actor in delaying the adoption of criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals following a massive corporate lobbying campaign.
It is no surprise then that the flawed appointment of ‘Beast of the Berlaymont’ Selmayr is a cause for concern. Especially with a view to climate and energy policy, Selmayr already has a questionable track record, as German Süddeutsche Zeitung reported: Selmayr might have been a crucial actor in the Commission’s watering down of EU emission targets following a telephone call with the head of German car lobby group VDA.
And, of course, as highest ranking civil servant in the Commission, the Secretary-General is responsible for administrative issues, including for complaints relating to revolving doors moves and conflicts of interest issues. So if Selmayr stays in the role, it will be him assessing ALTER-EU’s complaint on the recent lobby meeting between current Commission Vice-President Katainen and former President and now Goldman Sachs employee Barroso. What a turn of events, considering that Selmayer himself went through the revolving door. Once a lobbyist for powerful German media organisation Bertelsmann, he went on to become spokesperson for former Information Society and Media Commissioner Vivian Reding. Can someone with this professional history really be considered best suited for monitoring revolving door issues at the Commission?
Right now, Selmayrgate is raising big questions about the integrity of this Commission. And it’s feeding public mistrust. After all that has so far been revealed about the appointment process, it should be clear that Selmayr must resign. If he chooses to stay, this scandal will escalate further. In a pre-election year like the current one, neglecting to clear up such a massive scandal may prove fatal not only for the sitting Commission but also for electoral turnout and choices in 2019.
by Costas Lapavitsas
If the next Labour government is to be truly transformative, it has to free itself from the constraints of the single market.
n recent weeks there has been intense debate in Britain about the Labour Party and the ongoing Brexit process. Advocates of the European Union have sought a range of concessions from the party leadership ranging from another vote on Brexit, to continued membership of the single market and Customs Union, and focusing on Brexit at party conference.
Underpinning this campaign to change Labour’s position on Brexit has been a barrage of articles arguing that European Union or single market rules would not impinge on Jeremy Corbyn’s program for government. These have come from a wide range of sources including the journal Renewal, the New Statesman, the Fabian’s website, the New European, LabourList, Open Labour, OpenDemocracy and Open Britain. But are they correct in their assertions?
In three interrelated areas EU rules would place severe restrictions on a future Corbyn government: State Aid, public procurement and nationalization. These are not minor issues. They lie at the heart of any attempt to transform Britain’s economy in a socialist direction, especially when it comes to industrial policy. As the debate over Brexit rumbles on it is clear that the EU would place unique barriers to a Corbyn-led Labour government—making even a reversal to WTO rules more advantageous than either EU or Single Market membership in these respects.
Read the full article on Jacobinmag.com
In February 2018 Oskar Lafontaine wrote: “Do we need a movement of the political left accumulating broader forces (Sammlungsbewegung)? Yes, if we want social cuts to be halted, wages and pensions to rise again, foreign policy to reinstate Willy Brandt’s policy of detente, and the progressive destruction of our environment and species extinction to be stopped.” His analysis of the results of the German national election of autumn 2017 was that DIE LINKE Party with 9.2 per cent is too weak to challenge the rise of the political right and to fill the vacuum that the decline of the SPD has created. Pointing out Bernie Sanders in the U.S., Jeremy Corbyn in the UK or Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) as new promising attempts to create broader movements against neo-liberalism by mobilizing via social media, he called: “Left, unite!” The aim is to appeal especially to those who have been disappointed and disillusioned for many years and who don’t see themselves represented any longer by the current political spectrum.
Sahra Wagenknecht (co-chair of DIE LINKE group in the German national parliament, the Bundestag), argued along the same line as her husband Lafontaine in numerous interviews and articles. Together with Bernd Stegmann, a theatre director, Wagenknecht announced on 6 August 2018 their common intention to launch a new ‘movement’ called ‘Aufstehen!’ (Stand up!): “In order to be able to make a different policy in Germany, other majorities are needed. To regain these, there must be a left-wing rallying movement that has the courage to engage with the powerful actors. The basis of such a movement is the classic social democratic tradition that politics cares about the material living conditions and ensures that they are good for all people and the opportunities are equally distributed.”
From interviews to the ‘appeal’
They created a website of ‘Stand Up!’, calling on people to register to the new ‘movement’ via Internet – in the first weeks even without any political platform being presented. Just carefully manufactured video statements from ‘normal people’, why a profound change of policy in Germany is necessary, was all that was to be found there. For weeks, there was absolute silence who (except Wagenknecht and Stegmann) are the driving forces behind this initiative. Finally, as presented at a well attended press conference on 4 September 2018, the co-initiators of that appeal went public: e.g. Marco Bülow (MP, SPD), Ludger Volmer (the former chair of the Greens in the 1990ies), Antje Vollmer (Greens, former vice-president of the German national parliament 1994 – 1998), Fabio De Masi (MP, DIE LINKE), trade unionists, academics such as Wolfgang Streeck, writers and artists etc..
‘Stand Up! was able to present all in all a broad spectrum of lefties from different origins. As of October 2018, ‘Aufstehen!’ claims to have gained about 150.000 registered supporters, most of them without any party affiliation. This indicates that there might be some hope in different sections of German society to create something ‘new’, in order to build a counter-power directed against both official neo-liberalism and the rise of the hard right. Currently ‘Stand Up’s’ focus seems to be to create local groups and start discussions about what to do next.
Vague political platform
The appeal states clearly that ‘Stand Up!’ does not want to create a new party, but considers itself as a (cross-party) movement open to anybody (party-affiliated or not) who supports its aims. The political platform of ‘Stand Up!’ is quite vague and mildly social democratic. It focuses on rebuilding and strengthening the welfare state, protecting the environment, stopping privatization and neo-liberal de-regulation and so on. It’s perhaps clearest message is calling for peace and detente with Russia (which is currently not so much supported by Social Democrats and Greens in Germany). Wagenknecht’s wing within DIE LINKE has strong controversies with the party’s majority on issues such as the European Union and the Euro regime (Lafontaine and Wagenknecht supporting Lexit and PlanB orientations) and on migration policy (Wagenknecht arguing against the concept of open borders).
On EU issues, the appeal argues for: “A European Germany in a united Europe of sovereign democracies. The European Union should be a space for protection and organization, but not a catalyst for market-radical globalization and the erosion of democracy. European politics needs democratic legitimacy.” On migration, it demands: “Ensuring the right to asylum for the persecuted, stopping arms exports to areas of tension and ending unfair trade practices, helping war and climate refugees, tackling hunger and poverty on the ground and creating prospects in their home countries. Through a new world economic order, guaranteeing the life chances of all peoples at a high level and in line with the available resources.”
Economist Heiner Flassbeck (editor of Makroskop) is quite disappointed about that current appeal (‘beautiful words, but few content’). On Europe, he comments: “The European Union should not be a catalyst for market-radical globalization, states the paper. So what? Not a word about the great tensions between Germany and the countries of Southern Europe, not a word about the devastating German role in the monetary union, not a word about the necessary new economic policy and the reduction of Germany’s current account surplus, not a word about the future and the all-important question, such as how Germany should position itself to prevent the collapse of Europe.”
However, the initiators of ‘Stand Up!’ claim that its launching appeal is not the final word on all this, and that there will be debates with the grass roots supporters to develop a more precise programmatic platform of the ‘movement’. So what will be next for ‘Aufstehen!’? A phase of organizing and programmatic debate, in order to constitute and consolidate its ‘virtual’ support base on the ground? And what will be its future trajectory?
Options under discussion (or feared)
Is ‘Aufstehen!’ about creating a broad left-wing movement (with conferences, debates, mass mobilisations, demonstrations) to counter right wing street movements such as PEGIDA (the anti-Muslim and xenophobic alliance in Germany working closely with the hard right AfD as their parliamentary wing)? Will it be focusing on extra-parliamentary activities to create a momentum for shifting policies in Germany to the left? This would be worth a try (considering the very low level of political consciousness that is there in Germany), anyhow we shall see …
Some of its initiators discuss the idea to put pressure on DIE LINKE, the Greens and the SPD to put candidates from ‘Stand up!’ on those parties electoral lists, in the hope that those might be able to jointly re-conquer lost space amongst voters. However, ‘Stand up’s’ Green representatives such as Ludger Volmer and Antje Vollmer have only a very marginal influence within the current German Greens. The moderate German Greens are flying high in opinion polls (15 to 17 per cent) with an orientation to become a major player of the ‘centre’ (CDU down in the polls to 28 per cent, SPD at around 17 per cent). Future coalitions with conservatives and liberals (Jamaica-like) is what the current party leadership (including the remaining ‘left wing’ of the Greens) is aspiring to. Also, ‘Stand Up’s’ representatives coming from the SPD are quite isolated within their own party. In my view, this approach of pressuring Greens and SPD to open their lists is not very realistic.
‘Stand Up!’ as an emerging ‘electoral alternative’?
The crucial question for many political observers is this: the real (some think: still hidden) long-term project of Stand Up! could be to create a social democratic ‘left populist’ party, using Internet and social media mobilisation, in case that the ‘movement’ can consolidate and establish itself. As mentioned by Lafontaine earlier on, the templates for this are ‘Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise , Momentum linked to Jermy Corbyn as Labour leader in the UK, or Podemos in Spain etc.. Such a prospect seems to be the dream of Wolfgang Streeck (one of ‘Stand Up’s’ prominent initiators): “There is very little to distinguish many leftwing members of the SPD from the non-sectarian wing of Die Linke, and the same holds for many non-voters. All could find an electoral home in a new combination of leftist Social Democrats and the realistic wing of Die Linke.” Streeck proposes a quite concrete policy agenda for such a formation – an interesting read (whether one agrees or not).
In his view, Lafontaine and Wagenknecht are the ‘realistic wing’ of DIE LINKE. But not the self-proclaimed ‘realists’ from eastern Germany such as Gregor Gysi and his followers, which for decades preached about the need for compromise, moderation and ‘Red-Red-Green’ (R2G) coalitions. This happened in Germany’s eastern ‘Länder’, and proved to be disappointing. DIE LINKE was losing many votes to the hard right AfD in the East, because it is regarded (quite justified in my view) as being part of ‘the establishment’. The perspective of a new party formation emerging from ‘Stand Up!’ is thus the main fear of the current majority of DIE LINKE (ironically: a view equally shared by ‘eastern German realists’, the party centre, and the anti-capitalist currents alike). DIE LINKE’s executive committee (Bundesvorstand) distanced itself from that project: “The initiative Stand up! is not a project of the party DIE LINKE, but a project of Sahra Wagenknecht, Oskar Lafontaine and other individuals. This initiative, its goals and implications were never put up for discussion in the party’s committees. This does not correspond to our understanding of a democratic member party ( …).”
All that told, splitting DIE LINKE along those lines is a risky endeavour, if ‘Aufstehen!’ should not be able to compensate that by organizing a much broader and radical left wing political base (as with the Corbyn project). Programmatically it represents a ‘weak social democracy’, if at all. The Greens are becoming more and more one of the main pillars of the German ‘extreme centre’ (Tariq Ali); the SPD is unable to renew itself and in free fall. And as just another more or less ‘left social democratic’ formation in Germany (such as DIE LINKE), ‘Aufstehen!’ and the latter might each receive something about or above 5 per cent of the vote in the next German national election, if there is no broader spirit of ‘social uprising’ emerging. This neatly exposes the ‘poverty of theory and poverty of strategy’ of the German Left, which could demolish itself along more or less personal and psychological strife between its leading figures.
The German Left: confused …
There is also a further irony to all this: in former times, Wagenknecht and Lafontaine were very sceptical about R2G – rightly in my view – pointing out its failures to roll back neo-liberalism and strongly criticizing the R2G oriented wing of DIE LINKE for its collaborationist actions on austerity, privatization and the like in regional governments (such as Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Thuringia etc.) Now, it seems, that ‘Stand Up!’ tries to promote a ‘new’ strategy for forging R2G electoral and governmental alliances, which in my view is based on a lot of ‘wishful thinking’.
It is equally ironic that ‘Marxists’ and ‘Keynesians’ within DIE LINKE’s ‘centre’ supporting the failed ‘realist’ R2G strategy (such as Joachim Bischoff, editor of the magazine Sozialismus, or Axel Troost, head of the German Memo-group on ‘alternative economic policy’, could easily (and rightly in my view) de-construct Wagenknecht’s ‘re-discovery’ of the writings of the conservative ordo-liberal Ludwig Erhard (and his concepts as Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs in 1950ies on the ‘social market economy’ providing ‘prosperity for all’) on theoretical and historical grounds. Wagenknecht pushed Erhard’s ideas strongly in several of her books; Bischoff, Troost et.al. now see a ‘window of opportunity’ opening for the EU with the politics of the Juncker-EU-Commission and Macron, to which the left should align itself. Gregor Gysi twittered hopefully, that the ‘centre’ will deadly need the ‘left’ as a partner to combat the ‘populist right’ in the future. Again, ‘poverty of theory and strategy’, on all sides.
To learn from the experience of Podemos, Momentum, LFI etc. on how to use the Internet and social media to mobilize the ‘disaffected’ maybe one thing, concerning both ‘Aufstehen!’ and DIE LINKE. How (and which) orientations are needed to provide ‘realistic left wing leadership’ is another one …
Which of the options discussed above ‘Stand Up!’ will follow, is far from clear at the current stage. Whether the new ‘movement’ will be able to create some extra-parliamentary momentum to push German politics leftwards remains to be seen. To cite the famous literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920 – 2013): “The curtain is closed and all questions open”.
The Full Brexit – For Popular Sovereignty, Democracy and Economic Renewal, is the title of a new appeall, which we document here.
Brexit offers a historic opportunity for democratic and economic renewal. This opportunity is being squandered by Britain’s political class. The Full Brexit will set out radical arguments for a clean break with the European Union. Instead of the conservative nostalgia of the Eurosceptics, our arguments will put the interests of working people – the majority of citizens – at the centre of the case for a democratic Brexit.
In the EU referendum, British voters seized the opportunity to protest against a politics that offers no real alternatives and an economic model that leaves many behind. The Leave campaign’s slogan, “take back control”, resonated with millions of people whose interests are no longer represented in British politics. For this revolt, Leave voters have been slandered as dupes and racists. The Full Brexit stands up for and with the majority of British people: not just Leavers, but also Remain voters who believe the decision must be respected, and for everyone hungry for meaningful political and economic change.
Eurosceptics rightly complain that powerful elite Remainers are conspiring to sabotage Brexit. But this is not the main reason Brexit is adrift. The real cause is that the entire political class lacks any compelling vision of Britain’s future, leaving most British citizens without effective political representation.
Having lost touch with ordinary people, political parties have retreated into European Union policymaking networks. After decades of integration, few politicians, civil servants or academic experts can now imagine any kind of future outside of the EU. Yet Leave campaigners on the right also lack any positive vision. Nostalgic bluster about “Global Britain” has led only to the sterile argument about free trade agreements versus the Single Market and the Customs Union. This wrangling about trade fails to address the problems that led people to reject the EU.
The problems of low investment, stagnant wages and ageing infrastructure that blight our towns and cities require a much more fundamental reconsideration of Britain’s economic and political model. Lacking ideas about how to tackle the deeper problems, politicians on all sides are defaulting to conservative positions, seeking to minimise change, whether through full single market membership or “regulatory alignment”, mostly to defend vested interests like the City of London.
This lack of vision threatens to neutralise Brexit’s potential to renew our political and economic life. EU rules are not neutral: they lock in a set of neoliberal policies that tightly constrain governments’ capacity to innovate, experiment, and tackle voters’ concerns. By preventing practical redress of voters’ grievances, this corrodes representative democracy. Brexit offers a precious opportunity to change this. If this opportunity is squandered, the public will rightly conclude that voting changes nothing. Disengagement and cynicism will intensify and populism – rampant elsewhere in the EU – will surge, threatening what is left of our parliamentary democracy.
A challenge to the logic that “There is No Alternative” is urgently needed, and this must come from the left. The Full Brexit is not a political party. We do not all agree about each and every policy or document on this website. But we do agree, first, that the left’s proper role is to be the architect of a better, more democratic future and, second, that a clean break with the EU is needed to realise that potential.
To this end, we will provide analysis of the present political situation and proposals for the future. We will engage with the public, politicians and anyone who shares our democratic ethos. And we will conduct our work in solidarity with those on the left in other European countries to develop a genuinely internationalist and democratic politics of national sovereignty.
Brexit offers an unprecedented opportunity to reshape Britain for the better. Please join us in that mission.
Founding Signatories
Dr Christopher Bickerton, University of Cambridge
Dr Philip Cunliffe, University of Kent
Paul Embery, Trade Unionists Against the EU
Thomas Fazi, Author and Journalist
Lord Maurice Glasman, House of Lords
David Goodhart, Author and Journalist
Prof Matthew Goodwin, University of Kent
Pauline Hadaway, University of Manchester
Dr James Heartfield, Author and Journalist
Dr Kevin Hickson, University of Liverpool
Dr Lee Jones, Queen Mary University of London
Prof Costas Lapavitsas, School of Oriental and African Studies
Prof Martin Loughlin, London School of Economics
Dr Tara McCormack, University of Leicester
Dr Jasper Miles, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Prof Peter Ramsay, London School of Economics
Prof Richard Tuck, Harvard University
Bruno Waterfield, Journalist
Prof Philip B Whyman, University of Central Lancashire
Dr Suke Wolton, Regents Park College, University of Oxford
By Sergio Cesaratto & Gennaro Zezza
In this paper we briefly review the evolution of the Italian economy in the post-war period, discussing the shift from a first period when fiscal policy was targeted – among other things – at full employment, to a later period when controlling inflation through a “foreign discipline” became the main policy target. We review critically the literature on the Italian productivity slowdown, suggesting that it neglects the role of aggregate demand, and of labor market reforms, on productivity. Finally, we discuss Eurozone imbalances, suggesting that Eurozone institutions adopt new rules to keep the interest rate low enough to make public debt sustainable, while using fiscal policy to stimulate growth.
Get the full paper, published at Hans Böckler Stiftung.
“The EU is not a nation state over whose mechanics the Left could give battle… It is a transnational juggernaut geared to neoliberal and hierarchical motion.”This claim, made near the end of Costas Lapavitsas’ stimulating new book The Left Case Against the EU, summarises his core argument, and it is an argument he makes with great élan and to considerable effect.
Andy Storey provides an interesting review of Costas Lapavitsas´ new book. The text was published on the website of the Dublin International Institute. To read it, click here.
The longest and gravest cycle of crises in the history of capitalism after that of 1929 has brought the popular classes and large swathes of the middle classes of mature economies to their knees. A cycle generated by the class warfare from above unleashed by the political and financial elites of the United States and Europe, waged in the European Union through the single market and the euro. The process of globalization and financialization of the economy, together with the policies of public and private indebtedness regulated by the supranational organizations (IMF, World Bank, EU), have fed and multiplied inequalities and injustices out of all proportion, factors in a further exacerbation of discord and an additional round of stagnation.
In this context, Italy has undergone a radical process of deindustrialization and impoverishment due also to the propensity of the historical families of Italian capitalism to live off unearned income. To tackle this situation, it must be acknowledged that, contrary to what reformists or radical leftists believed, in particular after 1989, the path of democratic sovereignty at the European level is impracticable for profound cultural, linguistic and historical reasons. The “United States of Europe” or the so-called “democratization of the European Union” are a conservative mirage of a neoliberal order founded on the devaluation of work and on the hollowing out of constitutional democracy.
The only way to restore social and political value to work is the revitalization of popular and national sovereignty: this means focusing on implementation of the principles of the Constitution of 1948, whose spirit of solidarity and socialist orientation is essential for rebuilding both the economic and social functions of the democratic state and a renovated form of mixed economy. This is the road to relaunching industry, generating full employment, governing the market and restoring to the citizens, through the parties, the power to impact the general direction of the country. What we need, therefore, is an authentic constitutional patriotism.
Read the full manifesto here.
by Lee Jones
Remainers offering a sop to Leavers have admitted the EU’s imperfections but argued Britain can reform the EU from within. This claim is nonsense. The EU’s constitutional structures deliberately make change virtually impossible, reflecting the pro-business agendas hardwired into the Union from its inception.
This article dwells on this second set of arguments at greater length, because it is more important to correct errors of thinking on the left than to quibble with ardent Remainers. Moreover, leftist critics point out that the object of much “Lexit” criticism – the neoliberal capitalism that the EU entrenches – is transnational in scope and so seems to demand a transnational response, not a retreat into national politics. This point deserves a proper response.
Nonetheless, it is first worth highlighting what both R&R camps share in common.
First, they both fear democracy and the demos. Typical in this regard is a recent New Statesman article by Professor Jeremy Gilbert. He maintains that Leave won due to the mobilisation of “xenophobic” working-class voters, whose “reactionary position [is] rooted entirely in misinformation and prejudice” promoted by “the Daily Mail and The Sun”:
hardly anyone voted for Brexit because they are radical socialists who believe that the EU is an institutional obstacle to the implementation of socialism. Almost everyone who voted Leave did so because they believed a narrative coming from the extreme nationalist fraction of the British ruling class (who control the press), according to which the EU and immigration are the causes of austerity, rapid social change and the crisis of liberal democracy.[1]
The similarity to many non-leftist Remain arguments here is obvious: the working classes are simply idiotic dupes, fooled by nasty, right-wing elites. This attitude is mirrored by those like Mason and Varoufakis, who clearly believe they are re-running the 1930s, repeatedly warning that the only alternative to R&R is the triumph of reactionary nationalism and the return of fascism. Such “leftists” clearly hold in contempt the very working-class citizens that the left once regarded as the primary focus and agent in political life.
The second commonality is that many R&R enthusiasts have mocked Brexiteers in the UK government for apparently failing to come up with a viable Brexit in the two-and-a-half years since the referendum, yet none of them have presented any plan – viable or otherwise – for reforming the EU. Many have written lengthy, apparently learned articles about the follies of Brexit, but curiously they never quite get around to telling readers exactly how the EU can be changed. This is not due to a failure of imagination. It is because the EU cannot be reformed along socialist lines. Indeed, it is actually very hard to change the EU at all.
Changing the EU: Mission Impossible
The EU describes itself as being “based on the rule of law. This means that every action taken by the EU is based on treaties”.[2] The most important of these are the Maastricht Treaty, which transformed the European Economic Community into the EU and entrenched neoliberal regulations across the continent, and the Lisbon Treaty, the EU’s de facto constitution. These treaties would have to be changed in order to effect any fundamental transformation of the EU.
How can EU treaties be changed? The Lisbon Treaty sets out the incredibly tortuous procedure:
A proposal must emerge from either a national government, the European Parliament, or the European Commission.
The Council then discusses the proposal and passes it to the Council of Ministers, comprised of national heads of government.
The Council of Ministers must then consult the European Parliament, the Commission, and (if the proposal touches on monetary matters) the European Central Bank.
The Council of Ministers must vote on the proposal, with a simple majority required for it to progress further.
For any proposals suggesting fundamental change, the President of the European Council must then convene a “Convention”. This must be comprised of representatives from national parliaments, national governments, the European parliament, and the Commission, but the President has total discretion as to how many of each are included.
The Convention discusses the proposal and develops, by consensus, a draft treaty text.
An intergovernmental conference convenes to discuss the text.
If the text is approved, it must be ratified by member-states in accordance with domestic law, e.g. through national parliaments or referenda.[3]
The barriers to any serious change of the EU treaties are obviously formidable; indeed, they are practically insurmountable.
To begin with, a majority of EU member-state governments (i.e. at least 15) must first agree to the potential change. Therefore, for R&R to work in the way leftists suggest – for the EU to be reformed in a socialist direction – socialist governments would need to have been elected in 15 EU countries, and they would have had to develop a consensus on EU reform. The likelihood of this occurring is obviously close to zero. Thanks in part to the EU treaties, even moderate social democratic parties – let alone real socialist parties – have been eviscerated across the continent, and there has been a widespread lurch to the right and towards nationalist populism. Britain only bucks this trend thanks to two unique factors: the extraordinary quirk of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader, and Brexit, which has pulled the rug from beneath the main right-wing challenger party, UKIP.
Even if we ride the unicorn into a fantastical future where 15 socialist governments are simultaneously elected across the EU, at step five the Council president has the power to rig proceedings against meaningful change. There is nothing to stop him or her stuffing the Convention with unelected bureaucrats from the Commission, or with the scarcely-elected Europhiles who dominate the European Parliament.
Furthermore, at step six, our imaginary socialist governments’ representatives will be further diluted by representatives of other EU governments that do not share their priorities, with whom they are supposed to reach “consensus”. Any serious reform programme – let alone radical objectives like turning the EU into an instrument of socialism – would be considerably diluted, if any consensus could be reached at all.
At step seven, the non-socialist EU member-states would enjoy a second opportunity to veto any change, while at step eight, so would the parliaments or populations of most EU countries, depending on their domestic rules on treaty ratification. The Irish constitution, for example, requires treaties on constitutional matters to be put to a referendum; accordingly, a country of 4.8 million people could veto changes desired by up to 468.7 million people (the combined population of the 15 largest EU member-states). R&R is therefore practically impossible.
A Feature, Not a Bug
This is not accidental; the EU is designed to work in this way. It is an expression of what Professor Stephen Gill has dubbed “economic constitutionalism”: the locking-in of certain ways of organising and governing the economy as “constitutional” principles that, like all constitutions, are deliberately hard to change.[4]
All polities have some kind of constitution, even if unwritten, which safeguards particular principles and processes considered extremely important – even sacred – to the public. The American constitution, for example, safeguards freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. The German “Basic Law” outlaws parties opposed to liberal democracy, essentially outlawing communism and fascism. The US constitution cannot be changed without the approval of two-thirds of the national senate or through a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures. Amending Germany’s basic law, imposed by the Allies and never subjected to a popular vote, also requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers of the national parliament, with the rights underlying the first 20 articles unchangeable even through that mechanism.
The EU has constitutionalised free-market principles. As we have heard repeatedly throughout the Brexit process, where “the integrity of the single market” has constantly been invoked to rebuff British proposals, its constitutional principles, enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty, are the so-called “four freedoms”: a free market in goods, services, capital and labour. Unlike many constitutions, which enshrine the human rights of individuals, typically against the state, these are freedoms for capitalist enterprises to transact without restraint across the entire territory of the EU. Governments’ hands are tied; they cannot erect any barriers to capitalists’ freedoms without violating the EU’s de facto constitution (the treaties) and, if they do, they can expect legal action in their own domestic courts and, if necessary, the European Court of Justice, followed by enforcement actions, if necessary, by their own state apparatuses.
Like all constitutions, this pro-market constitution is designed to be difficult – near-impossible – to alter. By signing Maastricht and other treaties, EU member-states have deliberately tied their own hands. Governments that have embraced the neoliberal agenda can now point to EU law as the reason why they cannot change how the economy is governed. They have created what the German political economist Professor Wolfgang Streeck refers to as
a supra-state regime that regulates its participating nation-states… so that democracy is tamed by markets instead of markets by democracy… The purpose of the whole edifice… is to depoliticise the economy while at the same time de-democratising politics.[5]
Back to the Nation-State
This brings us back to the challenge set out by self-proclaimed leftist critics of Brexit. The EU’s neoliberal project – and the wider thrust of “globalisation” of which it forms part – is undeniably transnational in nature. Does it not therefore require more than a “national” response in the shape of Brexit? [6]
Ultimately, there is no denying that capitalism is transnational in nature and, therefore, cannot be defeated on a purely national basis. The record of Stalin’s “socialism in one country” is hardly something to be proud of; Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution failed the moment that it was unable to spread to the more developed countries of Western Europe.[7]
And yet, we ought to recall Marx and Engels’ insistence that the class struggle “is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie”.[8] Notably they insisted on this even while simultaneously observing the globalisation of capital: some of the most evocative lines of the Communist Manifesto, after all, refer to the bourgeoisie chasing profits “over the entire surface of the globe” and battering down “all Chinese walls”.[9] Marx thus apparently realised that, although the capitalist economy was global, or becoming so, the scope for meaningful political action, capable of transforming capitalism, remained national.
Has this changed in the era of the EU? Unfortunately, no. The near-impossibility of changing the EU’s treaties indicates that EU politics is still fundamentally inter-national in nature. The European parliament’s role is minimal, as in EU governance more generally.[10] The EU’s structure is based around insulating transnational capital from the vagaries of democratic politics. The EU offers no political structures amenable to challenging transnational capital. The fact that it very occasionally acts to regulate things we find disagreeable, like chlorinated chicken or Facebook’s privacy settings, does not fundamentally alter this reality.
If the transnational political structures for challenging neoliberalism do not exist, that leaves us with only one option: a return to national structures, however imperfect these undoubtedly are. There is nothing inherently “reactionary” about this at all. In fact, the national scale is the only one where ordinary working people have managed to exercise any political influence whatsoever, through their own political parties. Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that the left traditionally prized the principles of popular sovereignty and national democracy. That most self-professed leftists now revile these things, seeing them only as tool of nationalists or even fascists, speaks to their profound confusion and their abandonment of fundamental left-wing principles.
None of this is to suggest that Brexit will automatically lead to the building of socialism.[11] This is precisely because of the ruination of the left’s social and political organisations, which allowed the Thatcher government and its successors to lock-in neoliberalism at the European level in the first place. But it is a recognition that, if we are ever to achieve socialism, we require an institutional context that is at the very least amenable to popular control. The EU does not provide this, and never will. The institutions of national democracy, whatever their many shortcomings, are infinitely more accessible and responsive to popular impulses.
This does not in the slightest imply an inward-looking retreat into “socialism in one country”. Building socialism in Britain would necessarily involve rediscovering genuine internationalism, as opposed to the phoney cosmopolitanism of the EU (see Analysis #8 – Phoney Cosmopolitanism versus Genuine Internationalism). In the EU, the only solidarity that exists is between national ruling elites, who develop policies in secret that they then impose on their own citizens, backed by the “moral support” or effective coercion of their peers and EU institutions and in the shadow of the EU’s ‘economic constitution’. This is the solidarity of the Holy Alliance, not the Communist International. The EU expresses no solidarity between peoples; indeed, as Streeck observes, the exact opposite is produced: EU structures set European peoples against one another.[12] Witness German workers bemoaning the “laziness” and “corruption” of their fellows in southern Europe whom they are forced to “bail out”, while the Greeks – facing mass unemployment, a collapse of their welfare state, and an epidemic of suicides under EU-mandated austerity – compare Angela Merkel to Hitler. Witness the rise of national populism in response to neoliberal economic constitutionalism, pitching European peoples against one another and prompting diplomatic clashes unprecedented in the post-war period. Witness the horrendous treatment of migrants desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean: the collapse of basic human decency.
We should not, therefore, confuse socialist internationalism with the EU. The EU is an internationalism of capitalist enterprises and their allies in state apparatuses. Genuine internationalism barely exists in Europe today; it has to be rebuilt, bottom-up, by working-class organisations and parties committed to a genuinely transformative agenda.
In short, R&R is not a serious socialist or democratic agenda, but a dangerous liberal fantasy, distracting from the real work of rebuilding social and political movements capable of challenging capitalist domination. Fighting neoliberal hegemony in Europe cannot be done using the very instruments of that hegemony. The fight must be taken to a more promising terrain. The only institutions still potentially open to popular control remain those of the nation-state. The task for socialists is not to waste their energies trying to harness a machine designed for completely neoliberal ends, but to re-energise the only institution through which they have ever exercised meaningful power: national parties, national parliaments, and national states – and international, class-based solidarity with one another. If the left does not seize the challenge of returning from the neoliberal-transnational to the democratic-national, there are plenty on the populist right who will do this instead, and they will certainly steer politics in a right-wing, nationalist direction. But there is nothing inevitable about this. It depends entirely on the choices that political leaders and activists make at this critical historical juncture. But make no mistake: if the left makes the wrong choice, and cleaves to the institutions of transnational capitalism, they will be lost for decades to come.
This article was first published at The Full Brexit.
References
[1] Jeremy Gilbert, “Labour cannot ride the Brexit wave to socialism, it must fight the nationalist right”, New Statesman, 11 February 2019.
[2] European Union, “EU Treaties”, 4 June 2016.
[3] See Peadar ó Broin, “How To Change the EU Treaties: An Overview of the Revision Procedures under Treaty of Lisbon”, Centre for European Policy Studies brief 215/ October 2010. As ó Broin notes, a simplified process exists for basic changes, but this would be the process for more meaningful reforms.
[4] Stephen Gill, “European Governance and New Constitutionalism: Economic and Monetary Union and Alternatives to Disciplinary Neoliberalism in Europe”, New Political Economy 3(1), 1998.
[5] Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Politics, 2nd edition (London: Verso, 2017), p. 116.
[6] See Gilbert, op cit.
[7] See Philip Cunliffe, Lenin Lives! Reimagining the Russian Revolution, 1917-2017 (Winchester: Zero Books, 2017).
[8] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ch.1.
[9] Ibid.
[10] See Christopher Bickerton, The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide (London: Pelican, 2016).
[11] This position is advanced by a few so-called “Lexiteers” and then caricatured by their opponents. See Gilbert, op cit., for an example of the latter.
[12] Streeck, Buying Time, ch. 4.
