Alan Thornett on the European Union
Socialist Resistance online2010sAlan Thornett for Socialist Resistance, speaking in the first session of the day school, after Gilbert Achcar. He discusses the evolution of the European Union, its role in the Greek crisis, and how the left should approach the coming referendum. The recording is cut off before the end.
A corrected transcript of the recording. The recording is the authority.
00:00 Alan Thornett: … following a fascinating intervention by [inaudible], and reporting [inaudible]. You won't have the visual aids in this. It's quite a big subject. Gilbert has dealt with it globally; I'm going to attempt to fit the EU into that global picture, and say something
00:32 about the role of the EU within that global picture. So I'm going to try to say something about the origins and political nature of the EU, where it fits into world imperialism today, the brutal role carried out and still being carried out in Greece, and then finish with something about the
01:04 continuing crisis of the EU — which I would argue actually remains an existential crisis of the EU and the eurozone — and end up with saying how I think we should vote in the referendum on the EU when it comes. The EU was conceived in the immediate post-war period, in the 1950s, originally as a customs union, a reasonably small customs
01:36 union, and also a gesture towards some unity in the post-war period — no more wars in Europe, that kind of thing. By the 1990s various developments in world politics had transformed it into something completely different. It transformed it into the key strategic objective of the European capitalist
02:07 class: to go to a European super-state, in order to attempt to compete more effectively in a globalised world with emerging power blocs — at that time in particular Japan and the USA. So there were three developments really that shaped the EU. There was globalisation, as I just
02:39 said; there was the need to fully embrace the neoliberal project, which was being promoted by Reagan and Thatcher in the eighties, and ensure that that became central to the politics of the EU; and also the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bloc states in Eastern Europe, and the need of European capitalism to expand to the east. So
03:10 these things brought together what determined where the EU was going. The key treaties that shaped the developments were the Single European Act of 1986, which essentially transformed the EU from an economic project into a political project, and then the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, with the single currency which was
03:42 introduced at the end of the century, which shaped the EU in a way to carry out that role. So from the Single European Act onwards the key objective of the European bourgeoisie was European integration, the moves towards a single state. And the thinking behind that was that if they're going to
04:13 compete with other power blocs in the world, then they need, like those other power blocs, a single leadership which could quickly take decisions in the way that the governments of the USA and Japan could do — some kind of federal set-up in Europe — and would otherwise not be able to compete with them in that way. The result was what
04:47 we've seen in recent years, which is the EU of today: a supranational construct designed to help the member states more effectively impose austerity on their domestic working classes, and to help them to do it, and direct them to do it, and force them to do it if that is necessary. The single currency was never really just a
05:19 currency. I mean, you could say that no currency is just a currency, but the single currency was even more so not a currency. It was designed right from the start as a mechanism to enforce austerity and to destroy welfare. As you may remember, the guiding principle of the single currency is the restriction of borrowing to three per cent of GDP. This means that when the single currency
05:49 was introduced they froze the economies at that time, in a way that the only way that debt or insolvency can be tackled is austerity. There is no other way. It has to be cuts, it has to be cuts to welfare. That's built into the system. The EU is unable to make capital transfers, for example, as is possible in somewhere like the United
06:19 States, because it has a completely different structure. The EU was undemocratic from the outset, but actually each of the many treaties that we've had since the 1980s reshaping the EU has made it less democratic, not more democratic. And so there is a huge
06:50 democratic deficit in the EU. The power in the EU resides in the Council of Ministers and in the Commission; the parliament has no real powers at the end of the day. And it is therefore unreformable, because there is no mechanism within the EU to change its fundamental nature through the European Parliament — no
07:21 democratic way. In fact it's less democratic even than the member states, less democratic even than the British state, with our [?] electoral system and everything else — because in Britain, you can depend on all kinds of undemocratic procedures and so on, but you can at least change a government. You can't do that within the European Union. If we want to look at the real
07:51 nature of the EU, then we look at what happened in Greece. The real face of the EU is the troika, and the role that the troika has played in Greece. Greece has been for the last five or six years the epicentre of the struggle against austerity Europe-wide, and we've all followed it. We've had in Greece
08:22 about 30 general strikes, we've had thousands of strikes, thousands of demonstrations, big social movements, et cetera, against the EU elite forcing austerity through in Greece. And the brutality of it was there for all to see. The weapons of choice of the elites in applying
08:55 pressure to the Syriza government elected in January were, on the one hand, the use of the European Central Bank to threaten to close banks — actually closing banks, threatening to close off cash machines, this kind of thing — and on the other hand the threat of expulsion from the EU itself, which was a problem as a weapon in Greece, because the majority of the population were worried about being expelled
09:27 from the EU. What we've seen in Greece recently, with the recent election and before the election, is probably the most spectacular collapse of a left wing leadership in front of austerity that has been seen for a very, very long time. We had the referendum on the memorandum, which produced a 61
10:01 per cent majority to reject the memorandum, and continued resistance — and then in five days we had total collapse, with the leadership of Syriza calling in the other parties and throwing in the towel and saying we accept the full terms. In fact we accept even worse terms than the ones that were on offer. A spectacular collapse, and actually a significant defeat of the
10:31 workers' movement on a European scale. This is a huge matter for the left in Europe and for the European workers' movement. There is a big debate, and unsurprisingly, I think, a debate has opened up as to how to assess that defeat, and a number of questions are at the centre of it. We can
11:02 say, for example — the main lines of the debate are: did Syriza have an alternative or did it not have an alternative? Because the Syriza leadership is saying we had no alternative, what they were throwing at us was too much, we were unable to sustain it, and we've had to make a tactical retreat and accept austerity and everything else. We've heard
11:32 that before a lot of times in the past and we'll hear it again. I think we have to insist that yes, there was an alternative. That alternative did mean making a stand against the European elites. It was never going to be easy, it was always going to be a big confrontation, and there was never any guarantee of success. However, there was a very good
12:06 chance of success — and in any case, partial success would be a lot better than the total collapse that we've seen. It would have meant standing up to the elites. It would also have meant starting to take measures to take control of sections of the Greek state. It would have meant, absolutely crucially, the control of the banks and financial institutions, so that they couldn't be used against the workers' movement but could be used in favour of it. And
12:38 it would have meant capital controls and various things, and it would also have meant the mobilisation of a mass movement behind the resistance in Greece. There was an alternative. Also the question arises: what does it say about
13:09 building parties like Syriza? Is this an argument — well, maybe that's not the right thing to do, because this one collapsed? I wouldn't say actually this one collapsed, because there was, as we know, a big opposition inside Syriza that at the point of capitulation formed a new party, Popular Unity, and stood in the election, and continued struggling against austerity. It might be that they represent the best forces in Greece
13:40 continuing the struggle against austerity. They did do very badly in the election, and clearly they were not able in the very short period of time to present a real alternative and to get an electorate behind them. However, in my view it doesn't in any way devalue the building of such parties, because Syriza had got itself in a position to
14:12 lead the struggle had it chosen to do so. The fact that it chose not to do so is another matter. What it raises is the politics of the leadership of such parties, and how such parties tackle a struggle when that kind of brutal confrontation takes place. Quite a lot of things, I think, can be said about that, but probably the most significant one is the role of Euro-
14:43 communism, and the role of left Europeanism. I think — I've probably got about five minutes, I have to finish — this being the big lesson that comes out of the capitulation of Syriza: you cannot, inside the EU and the eurozone in particular, you cannot oppose austerity unless you're
15:14 prepared either to leave the European Union or be expelled from it. It's absolutely totally impossible. And if you start with a Eurocommunist position, or even a left European position — but particularly a Eurocommunist position — then you're at a very big disadvantage right from the start. So it's these political issues I think we have to address when we look at the defeat.
15:45 Now then, on the referendum. It might seem that if we start from a position that the European Union is a reactionary, anti-working-class organisation designed to increase the exploitation of the working class in Europe, and subject to the neoliberal agenda, then a no vote in the referendum is a no-brainer. I would argue that it absolutely is not. My view is
16:18 that — I'm in principle for leaving the EU, I'm in principle for seeing the EU leave the stage of history, go into the dustbin of history or whatever. But I don't think that translates into: we will vote to leave the EU whatever the circumstances and whatever the consequences. And that's where I think the argument lies in this referendum that's coming up. It's not a referendum [called] from a progressive position —
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