The socialist answer to the euro: debate with Martin Thomas
Workers' Liberty no. 531990sAlan's two contributions to a debate with Martin Thomas of Workers' Liberty at a Workers' Liberty meeting in London on 21 January 1999, three weeks after the euro was launched. Printed as “The socialist answer to the euro” in Workers' Liberty no. 53, February 1999, and reposted on workersliberty.org on 17 July 2008. Martin Thomas's speeches are not reproduced here; links to them are given in their place.
The publication's own web text.
Editor's note. The debate was held at a Workers' Liberty meeting in London on 21 January 1999, and Alan spoke for Socialist Outlook. Martin Thomas opened. He argued that it is “not the job of socialists to support or oppose the single currency”. Workers' Liberty's answer was workers' unity across Europe, not a “no”. Read Martin Thomas's opening speech in the full debate on workersliberty.org. Alan replied as follows.
Alan Thornett
Thanks for the invitation to speak and the opportunity to present Socialist Outlook's view. There is clearly some common ground when Martin says, on the single currency, "in principle we are in favour of it, but not by these people in this way" and "we're in favour of the breakdown of national barriers, but not the way it is being done by these people".
The problem is, the whole point is the way it is being done by these people at this time. A different single currency at a different time may well be a different matter. But we are considering this single currency at this time. It is not a matter of putting a minus where the bourgeoisie put a plus. We need a serious analysis of what the EU project is all about. And in our view it is aimed absolutely at the European working class.
I will just make a few points about the history. There are two quite distinct periods of the development of European integration. There is the period from the early days of the Coal and Steel Community, up until the mid-1980s and the Single European Act, and then there's the period after that. They are quite distinct periods.
Before the mid-1980s the project was driven mainly by France and Germany, very concerned to create the political conditions to avoid another European war. By the mid-80s there was a change, with the emergence of major trading blocs around the world. The EU has become the way the European bourgeoisie organises itself against other trading blocs, round Japan and in North America. The European bourgeoisie recognise that in competing with those blocs they have some major disadvantages. Living standards and welfare rights of workers are higher in Europe and stand as impediments for the European capitalists' ability to compete in export markets with other trading blocs.
Therefore, from the mid-'80s they began to recognise that they needed more than a common market or customs union. They needed to move towards a European super-state which could have political control over the economy of Europe in the way Japan dominates its area and America has control over its region.
From the mid-'80s the whole European project became politicised at a new level. First the Single European Act, and then the Maastricht Treaty, began to put in place what is necessary to attack the European working class, reduce living standards and cut welfare provision.
That is why the single currency criteria are shaped in a particular way - limiting government spending. The single currency, as it has been introduced, with the convergence criteria and the stability pact, is a way of forcing the member states to attack the welfare state and put the European bloc in a better trade position. It is an anti-working class strategy of the European bourgeoisie aimed at increasing the exploitation of workers.
From this point of view we cannot be neutral. European integration in the abstract is a good thing, but this particular integration has very particular objectives in mind. The objective is clearly a European super-state. We have now a single currency, a European Central Bank, a Supreme Court, a common fishing and agricultural policy. All these are being developed in order that political control can be taken by the European bourgeoisie.
Martin's presentation seriously underestimates the attack this represents against the working class. It is not just an attack on the welfare state, not just an attack on wages, not just about mass unemployment and poverty in Europe, but also about rationalising capital across Europe. With the advent of the single currency, all barriers come down for rationalising capital across Europe. What is the point of duplicating services across countries if the single currency comes in and there are no barriers? We will see now is a rapid pace of mergers and take-overs as the direct result of the single currency. I cannot understand how you can be neutral on this. No one is neutral when an individual capitalist announces job losses, restructures the company and attacks the trade unions. So why are we neutral on a European scale?
There are things that we can agree on. We can oppose Fortress Europe. We can agree to put democratic demands on the EU. We are in favour of getting the highest level of bourgeois democracy possible, whether in a single state or across Europe.
But the Europe of Maastricht is not reformable. Our policy is, therefore, that Maastricht should be dissolved. It is a reactionary institution and there is no justification for becoming a part of it. We are in favour of withdrawal from the EU and the dissolution of the EU.
There is more common ground when we discuss what the alternative is. What we are looking for is a socialist Britain within a socialist Europe; we favour a socialist United States of Europe, but not as an agitational demand at this time. We want workers' unity, in action across Europe. And that has not been an abstract matter, either. Comrades will know that the attacks on the working class generated by the Maastricht Treaty and the convergence criteria received a mass response from the European working class - with the mass French strikes of 1995, and, in the following two years, general strikes in a series of European countries, repeatedly in some cases.
Most of these strikes related in one way or another to the attempts of the member states to meet the conditions of the Maastricht Treaty in preparation for the single currency. The process was shaken but not stopped. And now the single currency has gone ahead. The rule limiting budget deficits to 3% - and the limit is likely to be reduced below that level - means that austerity policies continue.
Alan Thornett: summing up
After contributions from the floor, Alan summed up first.
I think that the Alliance for Workers' Liberty has re-written the history of the Juppé plan and the demonstrations against it. It is obvious that when workers demonstrate against such a plan they will do so against its practical effects. That is why the Euro-marches [1997 Europe-wide demonstrations for jobs] were against the social effects of the single currency. We would not expect workers to be marching explicitly against the single currency as such. But we have to make a political analysis. And Juppé was very clear about the issue. He said the plan was necessary because of Maastricht.
Everyone here sees that capitalism attacks workers, and will do so in whatever way it can. But it seems to me very difficult to argue that the Maastricht Treaty and the single currency is not a more effective way to attack workers, and a more systematic, structured way.
There would be attacks anyway, but this structured framework co-ordinates the attacks across Europe and directs them in the most effective way. Capitalists reorganise themselves at every level. Look at Rover cars. Do we say, "They're capitalists, it will not make any difference how they organise themselves"? Why comrades cannot see that the Maastricht Treaty is doing this on a Europe-wide scale beggars belief.
The Maastricht Treaty imposes on Europe a neo-liberal monetarist policy. Now Jospin and Schroder, who would like to get out of that framework, are locked into it because the Maastricht Treaty determines the nature of Europe. And we cannot possibly be neutral.
I find the comments made during the meeting about nationalism deeply offensive. I wish I hadn't come, and I won't come again. [Voice from floor: "Grow up!"] I won't be heckled! To say that because we are opposed to being in an anti-working class European structure, we are little Englanders or nationalists and want to stand in isolation is deeply insulting. There are people who want to do that: the Tories. We were clearly linked to the Tories in this discussion. But the Tories have a totally different agenda. You may not like our position, but we are putting forward a working-class objection to the Maastricht Treaty. We have nothing whatsoever to do with the right-wing Tory racists who are xenophobes and who want nothing to do with anyone outside the borders of Britain. We are a million miles from them! Speakers from the floor linked us to the Tories.
Absolutely insulting!
The campaigns we have been central to building were internationalist campaigns. You have linked us in this meeting to people campaigning to defend the pound. You should know that on the march we organised in Cardiff people carrying pound signs were expelled from the march. They demonstrated a hundred yards behind us, separated from us by a cordon of police.
There are strands within the labour movement that we have not been able to unite with - precisely because we are internationalists and they are little Englanders. We have fought and had success on an internationalist platform. What is your bottom line? Do you say the Maastricht Treaty is a reactionary treaty aimed at the workers? I say it is. Well if you say so too, then recognise that the core of the EU is the Maastricht Treaty. It is the most important treaty that has shaped the EU. The single currency is based on the Maastricht Treaty.
This meeting has degenerated into farce. There is clearly a big difference. You think that there is something incredibly progressive about the current project - not the principle of a single state, but this particular project of the European bourgeoisie, as it has been shaped by the Single European Act. You think there's something progressive in that. And we do not.
That is what we should debate. And you should not poison that debate with lining us up with Tories and accusing us of being nationalists. Comrades may sigh, but that was said very clearly.
Editor's note. Martin Thomas summed up for Workers' Liberty. He explained why the AWL would abstain in a referendum on Maastricht, described the French strikes of 1995 as aimed at the government in Paris rather than at Maastricht, and answered Alan on the Euro-marches, on whether the Europe of Maastricht is reformable, and on the tone of the meeting. Read Martin Thomas's summing-up in the full debate on workersliberty.org.