14.04.2004

Party Notes: Respect and Europe

Europe's capitalists may have been divided over the war in Iraq, but they are continuing their push for ever closer integration in the interests of capital accumulation.

Small national capitals continue to be swept aside by the rising tide of globalisation. Far from a new phenomenon, this tendency was emphasised within the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Marx and Engels wrote: “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.”

This process did not put a stop to national antagonisms. While the post-World War II settlement ended conflict between Europe’s great powers for a whole period, today European militarism has returned in a new form. The cold war and rivalry with the United States has forced the capitalists of Europe to come together economically, politically and militarily. This union will create the terrain upon which the European revolution is won or lost. Yet the Socialist Workers Party tells us that Europe is “boring”.

We are eight weeks from an election for the European Union parliament. Yes, the occupation of Iraq is dominating the headlines, but the left is effectively silent on Europe. Respect - an attempt to weld the anti-war movement into a leftwing political force - has a threadbare and ultimately reactionary position on the politics of the EU. Apart from the bullet point, “Opposition to the European Union’s ‘fortress Europe’ policies”, its entire platform consists of three sentences: “We will strongly oppose the anti-European xenophobic right wing in any euro referendum. But we oppose the ‘stability pact’ that the European Union seeks to impose on all those who join the euro. This pact would outlaw government deficit spending and reinforce the drive to privatise and deregulate the economy and we will therefore vote ‘no’ in any referendum on this issue” (‘Founding declaration’).

Not only is this wildly illusory - implying that we should concern ourselves with a particular means (borrowing) by which national governments finance spending. (Ironically, last month’s budget breaches the terms of the stability pact in any case, since Gordon Brown has made clear his intention to take “deficit spending” beyond the three percent of GDP the pact allows. The UK now joins France and Germany in exceeding this ‘inviolable’ limit.) Worse, it focuses on merely one aspect of the drive to European unity - that of the currency.

In two weeks time, the European Union is expanding to encompass 25 countries. The European powers have been locked in exhaustive but so far unsuccessful discussions to hammer out an EU constitution. A rapid reaction force is being assembled as a proto-European army. More and more binding law is being made at a European level. What does Respect have to say on all this? Nothing.

Chris Nineham, leading figure in Globalise Resistance (an SWP front), has said at European Social Forum meetings that the European constitution is simply “not an issue” in Britain. What an indictment of the SWP’s economism. This man obviously does not read the newspapers very much. The Tories are trying to turn the EU election into a referendum on the proposed constitution.

Far from being boring or a side issue, the question of the political and economic unity of Europe is one which Marxists - armed with our programme of extreme democracy from below - must contest. The European left, while befuddled by Keynesian reformist rubbish, at least is aware of the importance of the EU as a terrain for struggle. Many groups have been working towards a common day of action across the continent against the proposed constitution. A good start, but we need to go further. Communists must use such a political intersection to raise the need for a continent-wide Constituent Assembly and a republican federal Europe, shaped by the working class.

At present European unity is not being brought about under the direct or indirect impact of working class self-activity. It is proceeding fitfully through a whole series of tortuous, behind-the-scenes compromises and makeshift deals, hatched between member-governments - all presided over by an unelected EU bureaucratic elite.

There can be no doubt that the whole project is moving according to the rhythm, requirements and restrictions imposed by capital. The working class has no reason whatsoever to endorse, applaud or join forces with those who want to drive such a unity - any more than we would make common cause with the Atlanticists or those who stubbornly defend Britain’s sovereignty.

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s draft constitution contains a veritable paean of praise for the market and the virtues of competition (title VII, chapters I and II). However, capitalist Europe must, and will, give rise to an alternative. The working class has never been simply a passive victim. The power of capital has always been confronted by the power of labour.

Moreover, our class is ascendant. History is on our side. After World War II capital could only maintain itself through a far-reaching historic compromise - the social democratic state. And, with each year that passes, capitalism becomes ever more impossible and riven with contradictions. Hence, whereas Giscard d’Estaing and the EU governments are proposing half-democratic measures and palliatives, we require our alternative that can help create the objective and subjective conditions for the epochal transition from capitalism to communism.

Communists wish in general to bring about the closest voluntary unity of peoples - and in the biggest state units at that. All the better to conduct the struggle of class against class and prepare the wide ground needed for socialism. Hence our formulation, “To the extent that the European Union becomes a state, then that necessitates EU-wide trade unions and a Communist Party of the EU” (‘What we fight for’).

Confronted with this enormous yet necessary task, Respect is completely disarmed. Its hopeless, King Canute strategy of simply saying ‘no’ to the euro is a capitulation to the little-Britain chauvinists. Of course Respect is not alone in this. The entire British labour movement, with one or two honourable exceptions, falls in behind either the chauvinists or the bourgeois federalists.

We communists reject the terms of the capitalists. We argue for a positive programme. A social Europe, within which the political power and economic interests of the broad masses - albeit initially under capitalism - are qualitatively advanced. To bring forward these immediate ends we make the following seven demands, specifically concerning the EU:

1. For a republican United States of Europe. No to Giscard d’Estaing’s EU monarchical president. Abolish the council of ministers and sack the unelected commissioners. For a single-chamber executive and legislative continental congress of the peoples of Europe, elected by universal suffrage and proportional representation.

2. Nationalise all banks in the EU and put the ECB under the direct, democratic control of the European congress. No to the stability pact and spending limits. Stop privatisation and so-called private finance initiatives. End subsidies to, and tax breaks for, big business. Tax income and capital. Abolish VAT. Yes to workers’ control over big business and the overall direction of the economy. Yes to a massive programme of house-building and public works.

3. For the levelling up of wages and social provisions. For a maximum 35-hour week and a common minimum income. End all anti-trade union laws. For the right to organise and the right to strike. For top-quality healthcare, housing and education, allocated according to need. Abolish all restrictions on abortion. Fight for substantive equality between men and women.

4. End the Common Agricultural Policy. Stop all subsidies for big farms and the ecological destruction of the countryside. Nationalise all land. Temporary relief for small farmers. Green the cities. Free urban public transport. Create extensive wildernesses areas - forests, marshes, heath land - both for the preservation and rehabilitation of animal and plant life and the enjoyment and fulfilment of the population.

5. No to the rapid reaction force, Nato and all standing armies. Yes to a popular democratic militia, equipped with the most advanced and destructive weaponry.

6. No to ‘Fortress Europe’. Yes to the free movement of people into and out of the EU. For citizenship and voting rights for all who have been resident in the EU for longer than six months.

7. For the closest coordination of all working class forces in the EU. Promote EU-wide industrial unions - eg, railways, energy, communications, engineering, civil service, print and media. For a democratic and effective EU Trade Union Congress. For the closest possible socialist unity as part of the process of establishing a single, centralised, revolutionary party: ie, the Communist Party of the European Union.

Unless Respect adopts such a positive programme on Europe, its voice will be drowned out by other forces, not least that of the Tories. It is the duty of communists to fight for that programme as part of the struggle for Respect to adopt principled partyist forms.