Against a European super-state: a reply to Roy Wall
Comments on socialistresistance.org2010sA comment by Alan in the thread under “Unite behind Syriza’s anti-austerity programme” on socialistresistance.org.
The publication's own web text.
Editor's note. In the comments under the Socialist Resistance editorial on Syriza of 13 May 2012, Roy Wall wrote that revolutionaries must support “a bourgeois united states of Europe, i.e., for a federal, single-state Europe”, which was historically progressive. To oppose it, he said, was to defend “a national, reactionary, independent and wretched British state. Alan Thornett has been pursuing this latter line for years, and it is wrong and always has been.”
Alan's opening sentence below agrees with Roy's account of his record, that he has long opposed a European state, and not with Roy's argument. Roy took it the other way for a moment (“I thought for a moment that Alan agreed with me!”). The booklet Alan mentions is his pamphlet Behind the EU Crisis (2012), which Roy went on to review; Alan's answer to that review is For a capitalist United States of Europe? A reply to Roy Wall.
Roy is quite right about this. I have been opposed to a European super-state for many years, since its aim, in my view, is to more effectively exploit the European working class. Moving towards it is currently the policy of the European elites as a supposed ‘solution’ to the current crisis. As it happens SR is publishing a new booklet with a full ayalysis of precisely this issue next week. I invite Roy to review it once it is available.