Greece fights for its life

The European Central Bank - as expected, and following political consultation with its masters - decided that it would not back Greek banks against a run this week. Yet that was the major reason why it was set up! The ECB was designed to create a tsunami of Euros for the Euro countries, backing Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and other weak banks, in order to get growth going across the Euro zone - at virtually any cost. (The 1.1 trillion euro scheme, announced this January, involves the ECB printing over a thousand billion euros and buying 60 billion euros a month of EU governments' bonds.) The costs of backing Greece's banks are minimal financially. But Greece is grand politics.

The aim of Europe's political masters in the last stage of the negotiations was to split Syriza and regroup the Greek parliament. Now it has become to split the Greek people. Not the arrangement they sought. These latest 'masters of the universe' are highly adverse to decisive political and economic choices made democratically by the people. They are used to a slimy political class of self seeking bootlickers that would normally do anything to get in with the money in the room and whose main skill is obfuscating key questions in front of their own populations. However, the EU is now on the spot. The supposed firewalls erected to cordon off the impact of a Greek exit from the Eurozone have not so far stopped the interest rates for Spanish and Italian government loans having to rise rapidly. It looks like the Greek population is about to mess with the Eurozone's future after all.

But that does not mean that pressure cannot be applied. Thus the ECB's 'decision' not to back Greek banks. Think how clear headed, principled and brave you now have to be, with the Brussel's manufactured fear of no income, following five years of dwindling resources and services, to vote 'no' next Sunday. (In fact Cyprus managed bank capital controls for three years, but stayed in the Eurozone.) The vote remains a major risk for the EU, which therefore suggests that some backdoor concessions could still be offered as a further pressure on the result. There might be more than the current hint of future overall debt relief for example. We shall see.

Syriza leaders are correctly stressing the political limits of the referendum. They say it is designed to bring the direct and democratic opinion of the Greek people to the negotiating table in the argument over the Greek debt and the EU support that is required. But that has not stopped them underlining the significance of the vote for the leadership of Greece. A Syriza minister ('Today,' BBC Radio 4, 29 June) said that should the referendum accept the Troika's proposals despite Syriza's strong opposition, there would need to be a new government. In other words Syriza's project would be defeated; a new government set up, and the next stage of the Troika's austerity programme for Greece would begin.

And the alternative? If Greece votes 'no' but the EU leaders still do not make major concessions, then the Syriza has brought itself to the point where it has the mandate to end austerity, to start growth and to end poverty and the humanitarian crisis - but it will have to do that initially within the country's own resources. Out of such bold steps, it would begin a different journey to new sort of European union.

Greece; back to the wall; back to basics

The Syriza leadership have characterised the action of the financial institutions used by the EU (the European Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and the direction they took from the European Council, as an attack on the dignity, the democratic will and the future prospects of the Greek people. They have come to this conclusion out of their prolonged struggle with these bodies; in other words directly from their own experience. The Greek proposition, that the permanent debt / austerity model of Western European capitalism is a failure, had been decisively rejected by Europe's main leaders. Syriza has now deployed the only counterforce which it is able to engineer - that is to say the democratic view of the Greek people themselves. Greece will decide who rules Greece, Europe's current leadership, or the Greek people. And this is a turning point for Europe, perhaps for the whole world. 

Opponents of the Greek government in Greece, like the remnants of Pasok, denounce Syriza for not taking the decision themselves whether to accept the Troika's 'offer'. But every democrat in the world is thrilled by Syriza's 'choice'; to denounce the deal but to ask the people for their agreement. This is a huge decision in people's lives. It is magnificent and historic to see democracy used to determine key issues of power and wealth that have for so long in the West been unavailable for public scrutiny let alone public choice. Opponents of the Greek government outside Greece are now scared. They were working for regime change in Greece but they were not prepared for a decisive rebuttal now from the whole of Syriza. Will Angela Merkel be the first European leader to reduce the 'ever closer union'? Will the first major act of the new European Central Bank be to allow the Greek Euro-based economy to slide into chaos? Will the non payment of the IMF loan lead to a repudiation of all Greek debt? 

The next period in Greece will obviously be determined by the course of and by the outcome of the referendum. (Although it is not altogether impossible that the Troika might be induced by Merkel and the US to make concessions - if only to muddy the vote.) It will also set the frame for the entire anti-austerity fight - certainly in the rest of Europe - and should the reputation of the IMF be restored - across large parts of the globe as well. In Europe the prospects for Podemos in Spain, Sinn Fein in Ireland, anti-austerity forces in Portugal will hinge in large part on the Greek outcome. Should Greece slide into social collapse and political chaos, which some in Merkel's party openly and cheerfully predict, then the Front National in France, the Danish and British far right will be significantly strengthened. Their cry will be that the left cannot deliver true independence from German hegemony, from mass immigration and from failed internationalism - because the left exists, pthe right claims, to invariably promote the subordination of national identity!  

But the defence of the Greek nation now and its political and economic integrity, is a most decisive national and international task. The Greek government has to rise to the leadership of the whole nation, one of the least economically developed in Europe, to insist on the right of Greeks to a modern, mutually supportive, socially advanced country. Greek wealth and power is held in large part by an oligarchy; more similar to Latin American models of ruling elites than traditional European dominant classes. The Greek oligarchs have adapted to globalisation and taken their companies' names to Hungary or to international waters etc., to avoid tax. Underneath them are more than 720,000 small businesses. There are 73 small businesses for every 1000 Greeks. In Greece 60 % of employees, including those in the public sector, work in businesses employing under 10 workers. (In the US it is 11%. In the UK it is 21%. In Germany it is 19%.) This structure of capitalist enterprise is highly vulnerable to low capitalisation, family employment, loan poverty and requires a high use of services by a economically secure population. Erratic and uneven income is the norm and this is also associated with difficulty in planning of government tax revenues. 

If a new Greek nation is to be created, whether remaining inside or outside the EU, albeit definitively outside the Euro, which is aimed at securing the most advanced conditions already available to the populations in the northern European countries, it follows that a most radical reorganisation of the Greek economy will be required. Following on from an inevitable deep currency devaluation for the new currency, accompanied by swingeing measures to hold the line against any further impoverishment for the mass of Greek's working class population, a decisive new economic policy will need to be created and should rest on three pillars. 

First, the oligarchy needs to be immediately expropriated. All its assets, its fixed capital in Greece and whatever can be rescued from foreign banks etc requires seizure. Like the 1974 abolition of the Greek monarchy, the oligarchy (but not the managers who will unfortunately have to be bribed) must be abolished and sent packing. This is essential because the government must control the main economic levers available, stabilise them before they are ransacked or stolen by their owners, and keep trade and production turning.  Second, presented as an emergency measure only, the government must take a monopoly over all movement of big capital and therefore incorporate the main banks, pension funds, large private fortunes and insurance and finance companies in a rigid legal framework, with inspection, to prevent the nation's wealth disappearing. Resourses from this source are needed to shore up state services and decisively win the small business owners. Third, key national assets, ports, pipelines, airlines etc must be immediately nationalised or renationalised with assurances to previous partners offered, and new partnership arrangements sought for their use, involving strict requirements for long term investment and the use of Greek labour with their established conditions guaranteed. 

These measures need direct attention, before counter measures on the streets and in the barracks can get beyond idle chat and into the planning stage. The economic programme of the government as a fait accomplis is the best argument to stall those who want to act illegally. They will still be there and they will have secret money and international friends. The best defence is speed and clear definition of the actions required and the mobilisation of the people who have a new country to build. 

These suggestions may seem dramatic but they are, simply and coldly, a measure of the depth of the crisis that Greece now faces. Previous defaults were mainly carried through by rightist governments (e.g. Argentina which, although successful after 5 or 6 years, went forward by making the poor bear the terrible costs.) The Greek government must make other richer classes take the weight of the changes it needs to make to rebuild its nation - where hope really has turned into practice. 

Greece on the rack

The Troika (the IMF, the ECB and the European Council) knocked back the Syriza leadership's proposal and are ramping up the price for the release of the 7 billion euros which is the last bit of the bailout funds that the EU had already agreed before Syriza won the Greek election last January.

92% of the 252 billion euro bail out launched in 2010 has so far gone in debt payments to European banks and other original lenders (59%), to Greek banks (19%) and in incentives to private Greek bond holders (14%.) Only 8% of the bailout has so far gone into the Greek Government's budget. The remaining 7 billion euros of the original bailout will go almost entirely into debt repayments to the IMF at the end of June and to the ECB later in the summer.

The Troika allows European political leaders and their paymasters to play good cop / bad cop. This is useful for example for Merkel as she faces powerful pressure from the US to settle with Greece for geo-political reasons. Nevertheless, what is playing out now is a thoroughly co-ordinated political strategy. Already Syriza leader Tsipras faces objections from the left in Greece for his original compromise - particularly on pension age. It is clear that while fomenting the colonels and getting Golden Dawn once again on the streets would require serious unrest against the Syriza government to work - and that is not available (Syriza's popularity remains high) regrouping the Greek parliament over the head of Syriza, through provoking a split in the governing party, that seems more than possible.

Of course it would be better for Greece and Syriza if the European leadership gave way to a policy of growth in Greece. But even if they have no such intention they still underrate the political maturity and culture of the Greek people and of Syriza's leaders and its organisers. Certainly any harsh compromise with the Troika would lead to a battle inside the Greek Parliament and outside it for sure. But then the argument about Greece's relationship with the Euro would really open out in society - as it has to anyway - even if there is no compromise agreed by the Syriza leaders in Brussels and they default on the IMF loan. And it is not at all beyond the realms of possibility that democratic ways would be found of discussing the question and of resolving it. The results of the clash with the Troika can be managed. Of course, either way, if a poor deal is closed by Syriza's leaders, or if there is no deal, retreats, even defeats are sometimes unavoidable and must be faced. And it starts with the Euro. Stepping away from the Euro and repudiating the 317 billion euro debt would, however necessary, create Greece's greatest emergency since the military coup in 1967 and would need to be thoroughly and democratically prepared. Initially there would be big sacrifices. But Greeks have already put up with great sacrifices for the best part of a decade - and that was for nothing. Worse, it was for ending up in a poorer position today with no possibility of of altering the direction of travel in the foreseeable future.

Whatever the political questions that emerge in Greece about the latest talks in Brussels, possibly including an answer to a new question of who will now constitute the anti-austerity political leadership in the Greek parliament in the eyes of the Greek people, the essence of the Greek crisis remains the debt. That is the political and economic question of questions facing Greece. The debt is the instrument that European capital has decided to use to create the politics it would favour across the whole of Europe, whether countries are loaners or debtors. Greece is currently leading a European wide movement against those politics and economics. The rest of us need to put our shoulders to the wheel.

A good starting place is the Jubilee Debt Campaign's international on-line petition for a European debt conference, starting with Geece. Yesterday, a meeting of MPs in Parliament agreed to launch an Early Day Motion based on the Jubilee Debt Campaign's petition. Get hold of 'Drop It' from the same source. It explains everything people need to know about the debt.

A magnificent march - meaning what?

Those who were fortunate enough to attend the Peoples' Assembly march on Saturday 20 June in London were part of the biggest mobilisation against austerity that has yet happened in the UK. Organisers claimed that a quarter of a million walked through London and tens of thousands more came together under the same banner in cities across Britain.

But why did people march - and what can it achieve?

A march organiser from the Peoples Assembly, John Rees, was quoted in the Observer (June 21) that the march had undoubtedly been a great success but, of course, austerity still stands, indeed it is about to get much worse
'We can't win with only one demonstration' he added. So; if austerity is still with us what has been 'won' by this remarkable event?

Something, it can be argued, of immense importance for our political future.

The London demonstration had a number of new features that bear some consideration. For example this demonstration was called and led by a national campaign body. The Peoples' Assembly has put together many events in is short history, but the march on the 20 June is one of the great demonstrations in Britain's political history. It ranks with the poll tax mobilisations, the mass trade union marches of the1970s, and the Miners marches in the late 80s and 90s. Most of all it reminds us all of the million strong great anti-Iraq war march that did not bring the British troops home but which tarnished the war and ended Blair's political career in Britain for good. These events led large parts of society - often against 'elected' governments - and created an alternative voice to the status quo of the day. Part of the failure of the May election campaign and the twisted vote that followed, is that the anti-austerity cause was marginalised by the political system. Now; within a few weeks of the gloating Tory 'victory', an alternative course has been championed by a vast, active movement of ordinary people.  Those thousands obviously did not think that May 7 put the lid on the argument.

Some trade unions, and three in particular, gave significant support to the PA's call. Unite, the FBU  and the NUT were out in force. However, neither the TUC and nor the Labour Party gave any national support (that was visible) to this event. Dianne Abbot complained at the lack of Labour presence on the march. One of the candidates for Labour leadership was there. Perhaps the others were worried by the marcher's lack of aspiration? Or perhaps they not not share it. In any case, it is yet another warning to the Labour Party that a mass event, centred on progressive objectives, completely bypasses them. In years gone by, the defeat of Labour in a recent general election would have infected the potential of such an event, perhaps even derailing it. Today, tens of thousands march against austerity - representing millions behind them - denying in practise the argument that the election has resolved everything and not themselves affected or deflected by Labour's election defeat.

The demonstration was the sign of a new political current inside British society - and outside Westminster's mainstream parties. (The Greens were a very significant presence on the march - as were several women's campaigns.) Younger people predominated. Many specific grievances against austerity politics and economics and initiatives to fight their consequences were brought into its camp. The march showed that the anti-austerity movement has become itself a pole for the political regroupment of Britain's collapsing, traditional, mainstream left.

It is true that austerity will not be defeated by one demonstration, however successful. But the signs of a political recomposition and regrowth of the British left, with a clear national and international cause, makes the prospects much brighter.

Greece on the brink

We are told by the international media that the Greek government have till Thursday 18 June to concede to German terms (the real force behind the showboat antics of the IMF.) It has come down to ultimata. Greece will cut its pensions and dismantle its labour rights or face withdrawal of EU and IMF funding. Without the funding Greek banks will collapse as Euros are withdrawn and there will be no Euros to pay for any government expenditure. Greece will 'fall out' of the Euro and its government will have to pay its debts in a newly created currency without international backing and without reserves available to prevent rapid, even hyper inflation. 

From any moral or even humanitarian point of view such action by Greece's European masters would be a deliberate act of destruction of millions of people's lives; an act taken in full understanding that it weighed human futures against what they claim to be the logic of the ledger book. And it is only a claim because the people threatening this action know fine well that Greece cannot pay its debts, that only growth and debt reduction that will ever give Greece the chance to get out of mass unemployment, the breakdown of services and the years of recession. So their action is taken for the purpose of a message, a warning, for the benefit of the rest of us. We will bow to the will of international finance (behind which stands the mighty German economic hinterland) or we will starve. They shake their heads, these new masters of the universe. They shake their heads at the folly of the Greeks who choose not to bend their knee. But what is the threat that international finance and the German rulers face that they are apparently prepared to destroy a European country?

German rulers and their narrow band of allies are nervous. Geopolitically Russian power is on the rise in the Balkans. Both China and Russia are more than prepared to invest in Greek infrastructure and loans can come from other sources than the IMF. At the same time the clamour for debt reduction is growing. The case, now made by thousands of the world's economists, that the permanent debt economy simply crushes growth, has overwhelmingly won the argument. And not just in Greece. Its contagion is spreading. In the Eurozone four countries face early elections and the overturn of their pro austerity governments. And finally the lodestone of the EU's economic (if not quite yet it's political) future, Germany, is in a growing mess. 

Two thirds of Germany's exports go to its European neighbours. A third go to (the now rapidly declining import markets of what we used to call the BRIC economies - before they started to decline.) The European two thirds, it turns out, have been bought only through the systematic waiving of the Maastricht regulation on debt to GDP ratio in most European countries that are the main importers of German goods. Systemic low growth in the Eurozone is now coiling back and beginning to choke the arteries of the German powerhouse. Low and still shrinking investment bedevils German manufacture and productivity. In the 1990s investment represented 23% of German economic output. By 2000 it was 20%. And by 2013 it was 17%. This is not just the impact of 2008. The consequences are profound. Germany is now a country with an outdated infrastructure, whose productivity has halved since the end of the 1990's. Germany desperately needs its Euro. Germany needs a shared, overpriced currency to maintain its inflow of capital from the sale of its exports. Germany needs to make an example of what happens to a small European country that begs to differ from the permanent economic cycle that keeps Germany, and the structure of international and European finance, intact.  So; the Greeks have touched a nerve. They could bring the house down! And that is why they are threatened with utter destruction.

This blog has argued before (see 22 Feb; 25 Feb; 10 March etc) that it would be unlikely that the Syriza government would meet its pledges to the Greek people without breaking the current form of the Euro. (Which was never an argument to stop supporting Syriza, or for a particular timing.) At the moment the key question is not how Europeans and socialists world wide should begin a discussion with Syriza about their view on a possible exit from the Euro. That discussion happens daily among the Greek people and the members of Syriza - in a much more sophisticated and practical way than any outside observer might suggest. Our duty is crystal clear. We must help Syriza and the Greek people drive back, in any way possible, it's diehard enemies in the battle that it is now waging. 

A first priority for us all is to attack and denounce and repudiate the financiers' debt, the poisoned well and mainspring of the economic gangrene spreading across our Continent. 

Resurrecting Labour?

In a thoughtful and perceptive contribution, Neil Lawson, chair of a Labour Party based think-tank, 'Compass', (publicly associated with Jon Cruddas MP) has made the most useful analysis of Labour's real, post May 7 condition so far. Here is a link to his pamphlet, 'Downfall,' Labour Pamphlet. 

The standard of discussion in the Labour Party more generally about their crisis has been pitiful. Andy Burnham, the front runner for party leader up to now, has gone so far as to declare that the debate about Labour's crisis is already over! His answer to the future? Labour needs to draw from both Ed Miliband AND Tony Blair. Genius. (See the Observer 14 June.)

Bearing in mind Neil Lawson's contribution, let's start at the beginning.

On May 7 just under 15 million Britons voted for the Tories or Ukip. Just under 12 million voted for Labour, the SNP, the Greens and Plaid Cymry. The latter group voted for austerity lite or no austerity at all. 2.4 million voted for the Lib Dems. Even if some would be inclined to add the Lib Dem votes to Labour's pile in this division, common sense surely dictates that the Lib Dem base in Britain has been politically atomised, and was not at all regrouped by its coalition 'compromise' with austerity. Even on May 7 exit polls showed numbers of erstwhile Lib Dems turning to Ukip for example. The Lib Dems have been broken by the May 7 polarisation. They too will struggle to find a new political purpose and will have to use the coming EU referendum as a temporary means of hiding their absent heart.

The above voting breakdown shows that the political balance of forces in society have shifted significantly to the right in society since 2010. The essence of this shift (albeit expressed in terms of the least representative voting system available) is that at the same time as Labour first 'won' a significant sector of the middle classes under Blair (and even marginally increased that position in 2015 under Miliband) Labour has 'lost' 3 million or more working class votes, mainly in England and mainly to Ukip, since the leadership of Blair, Brown and now Miliband. This disaster for Labour is becoming a disaster for the whole of society.

In Lawson's argument he hits some of Labour's real weak spots. He steadfastly and honestly faces the disaster that hit Labour on May 7. He rightly denounces the sectarian character of labourism. Lawson points out the absence of Labour's initiatives towards the campaigns on climate, on housing etc. He notes the general crisis of social democracy across Europe. He insists that neither a 'return' to Blair nor to Attlee is relevant, even if it were available. The weakest part of his comments are the proposals that he makes for thorough going reform of Labour. And some of those weaknesses stem from faulty assumptions in his diagnosis. As those mistakes are seminal to the overall argument about the future of the British Labour Party it is necessary to address them frontally.

In the first place Neil Lawson does not place Labour's problems in the context of the British political crisis as a whole. Despite the Tories only needing to score 34 000 votes per MP they only 'won' a majority of 12. (When the Tories redraw electoral boundaries it is worth knowing that Labour had to score 40 000 per MP on May 7, leave aside the democratic 'deficit' for Ukip and the Greens. Most Labour leaders will not raise this fact in the argument about constituency boundaries of course, as they still have the forlorn hope that they will benefit from it.) The main political event scheduled in Britain for the end of 2015 and 2016 is a referendum on a crisis ridden EU. The leading party of the British establishment, the Tories, are completely vulnerable when it comes to the future of the UK and its relations with the EU. Propped up by the US since it retreated from Suez, the British Tories now find their own ruling class dissolving into the international diaspora of billionaires, leaving them without access to the material sources of wealth which for so long underpinned Britain's political stability and, at the same time, their global protectors are losing wars, status, influence, markets not to mention their major proportion of the wealth of the world.

The British political system and its parties are spent.

Not recognising this context Neil Lawson tells us that in Britain today cultural identity has become as important as class. He develops some thoughts about the cultural role of a successful future Labour Party in this context. In part this is an attempt to recognise the importance of the SNP, but he is making a wider point about cultural and even confessional identity now submerging self identification as working class for millions of people. The old class parties he tells us, are over.

The most 'anti-class' based political party in Britain for the last 85 years has been the Liberals. They, if anything, emerged more shredded than Labour. Neil Lawson correctly describes the decline of the traditional working class movement, but he misunderstands that class politics do not go away because, as it happens, all of the main classes in society have changed dramatically. And while it is true that many working class people are struggling to understand where they belong in modern Britain, that unions only represent a small minority, the new definitions of the class ridden world that people who have to sell their labour have to inhabit, are surfacing once again. So. In the case of the working class people who voted SNP it was as much to do with inequality, with the hope for an economy that served society first and the wealthy second, with the sense that they could define a space where they might be able to create a hopeful new society, as with any sense of national 'identity', that meant they dumped Labour and went for the SNP. Labour were seen as the establishment in Scotland.  

The Scottish example shows something of the evolving contradictions and complexities of 'class consciousness' in our modern world. But to confuse that evolution and development in peoples' minds with the end of the reality in life of the terrible burden of class politics and class economics - which continues to crush the life out of our societies - is a big mistake. A new Labour Party would need to be based on new class politics.

The first attempts at political organisation of the working class, as a class, for itself in Britain, were the Chartists. They called together hand loom weavers in villages, factory workers in towns, mining families off the moors, agricultural workers from the fields, women and men and children, and brought together a force, created an identity capped by a political hope for a new society.

At this very moment in developed countries in Europe like Spain and Greece and Ireland political parties are emerging that seek to allow the working class people and the dispossessed of society to rise up and lead the whole nation.

Neil Lawson makes a point that outside of the Labour Party progressive and radical politics are flourishing. In Scotland the political centre of that process today is obviously the SNP and in England it is the Greens. In both countries in the last election these parties explicitly led the challenge to austerity politics and economics. (One of Neil Lawson's six themes for Labour's renewal is the need for Labour to support a democratic voting system.) During the election the SNP proposed an anti-austerity alliance going into May 7. Labour should have been at the front and centre of that alliance. It should be there today. Including electoral reform there are some interesting suggestions in Neil Lawson's six suggestions for Labour's reform (and others that are exactly a return to 1997.) But the crucial point is missing. Today, now, the Labour Party needs to break definitively with austerity, with big capital's investment strike now impoverishing British industry and infrastructure, with production and energy that poisons our future, with a totally undemocratic voting system, with the costs and dangers of maintaining Britain's (fake) great power status, to face the crisis in the Middle East and Africa in part created by wars we promoted, to break away from the British establishment, and to lead. First lead the mass movement gathering on June 20 against austerity, then help the new working class recompose itself and rise up again to lead all the nations of a Britain that it will help re-make in the name of the future.

The future of Europe

In an essay for the Soviet Press written in 1923 Trotsky described Europe in this way; 

'Europe is not a geographical term it is an economic term.'

He was writing in the immediate aftermath of the first attempt, since the Hapsburg's, to unify Europe (under German tutelage) in 1914. He argued that Europe had lost the world war war and that the US had won it. He was in favour, he went on, of the economic unity of Europe as the US would come to dominate Europe otherwise and because the national boundaries in Europe were too restrictive for Europes' productive forces, which would intensify friction and potentially destroy the leading role of the Continent unless dealt with. Trotsky wrote in the wake of another military and capitalist attempt to unite a significant bit of Europe's productive forces as the French Army had just marched into the Ruhr, linking the iron of Alsace Lorraine to the coal and factories of Germany's industrial heart. This also failed. 

For Trotsky, his call for a United Federal Europe in 1923 of course included the nascent Soviet Union and was indelibly linked with the call for 'workers and peasant governments' across the Continent. It was a direct response to the failure to unite Europe under force of capitalist arms. 

And a second failure in 1940, a direct extension of the first, caused the greatest death roll in human history.

Military means eschewed and US dominance confirmed a peaceful third capitalist attempt to unite 'economic' Europe has now reached its own apogee. The remote corruption of an alien political class dominates the politics of the 'new' Europe'. There will come to be volumes written about this period of kleptocracy in European history. So far today's critics of the EU have been fixated by the 'democratic deficit' represented by the modern EU but the reality could not be worse. Besides the absence of any democratic accountability, but of course linked to it, is the emergence of a grotesque criminal class who rule Europe. Helmut Kohl, ruler of Germany for 16 years and 'great' European, gathered 2 million euros in a personal slush fund. Across the Rhine Jack Chirac, French President for 12 years was convicted of embezzlement and abuse of office. Neither suffered any penalty. But they laid down the new European legacy for their political children.

Gerhard Shroder, Angela Merkel's predecessor, stepped into a top job in Gazprom, weeks after his government had guaranteed a 2 billion euro loan for the Baltic pipeline. Angela Merkel has seen the resignation of 2 German presidents under commercial clouds. Her Defence and her Education Ministers were recently both stripped of the Doctorates - for intellectual theft! Back over the Rhine the Socialist Minister Jerome Cahuzac has been discovered to be holding up to 15 million euros in hidden Swiss and Singapore banks. Sarkozy still stands accused of receiving 20 million dollars from Qaddafi for his 'election campaign'. Christine Lagarde, Sarkozy's ex Finance Minister who now heads the IMF is under investigation for the 'award' of 420 million euros in 'compensation' to a well known crook Bernard Tapie, a friend of Sarkozy. Sarkozy is very likely to be France's next President. And the hapless Francoise Hollande? It turns out he was using the flat of a Corsican gangster for his lover's trysts. 

Blair of course stands out, even in this gallery of frauds and thieves. Never mind his latest consultancy 'fees' gathered from a South Korean gangster with an oil company embedded in the most reactionary parts of the Middle East, also 'consulting' for the Nazarbaev dictatorship in oil rich Kazakhstan this is what 'the most successful Labour Prime Minister ever' wrote about his new boss;

'Kazakhstan's achievements are wonderful. However, Mr President, you outlined new heights in your message to the nation.' If Blair is still capable of making you sick, look up the President's speech. Many New Labour Ministers followed Blair into lucrative futures. 

In Spain the current Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been caught accepting kickbacks of a quarter of a million euros from construction companies, passed to him by his party treasurer Barzanas. Barzanas is now under arrest following the discovery of a 48 million euro hoard in secret Swiss accounts. 

And so it goes on and on; in Ireland; in Portugal; in Eastern European countries, and in Greece, up to January this year. As of now only one old Greek man has been goaled - for corruption in office. And European leaders, officials and general hangers on continue to lecture Africans and Asians about the need to eradicate corruption. 

It seems that this latest, peaceful, iteration of a united Europe has also reached its end stage. In the last blog the EU's failure to advance the economics of Europe in the world was described. The decay and dissolution of the political leadership of Europe gives us another marker of its rot. What then remains? 

It remains the case that Europe is an economic term. While our current system of economics has seen the collapse of European leadership in front of aggressive globalisation, there is nothing inevitable about such a state of affairs. Indeed a united Europe potentially stands as a much more realistic counter to the 'buying and selling of the whole world' than any individual - even developed - country. But it does seem that the experiment (tried twice) of military/capitalist domination of Europe and the experiment (tried once) of peaceful/capitalist unification of Europe, do not work. An inevitable response to the EU mess is the development of nationalist and racist currents in particular countries that try to define any sort of European unity as undermining the nation. This is an empty perspective, full of failure, defeat and anger, eyes fixed firmly on scapegoats, and inevitably productive of strong and dictatorial states, more remote than ever from their people, that have to crush their own populations to survive in the capitalist world. 

But an alternative Europe is struggling into the light. In Greece and Spain new mass parties confront the rulers of Europe and their austerity. In Italy 25 years of stagnation has forced a new popular, egalitarian and anti-corruption movement into Parliament. In Ireland anti-austerity Sinn Fein could win the next Irish election. There are many other movements and parties moving in the same direction. Uniting this political force is a critical priority. It is an indelible link to the still unresolved possibility and necessity of a united Europe but this time a European unity that is based on a new political and economic principle. 

A partisan view of the EU

For a quarter of a century most of the mainstream western European left have embraced the EU as a potential engine of progress. This idea has modified through time and experience as with, for example, the British Labour Party and even a section of the Greek Syriza government, to become the EU as a possible shelter, first from domination by the US, then as a platform for a more socially responsible response to the impact of global multi-nationals and latterly as continental wide insurance policy against the rise of the BRIC economies, led by China.

In the last ten and especially in the last five years the prevailing social democratic outlook on the EU has come under pressure. In many EU countries, including Britain, Denmark and Holland, popular political movements have arisen around internal EU immigration and the intendent perceived undermining of indigenous wage rates and access to services. The defence of the 'free market' and labour 'reforms' as the magic bullets to be fired at European societies in order to overcome the impact of the 2008 banking crisis; plus an EU leadership dominated by the unelected Council of Ministers, the unelected European Central Bank and emergent German hegemony, means that positive enthusiasm has soured in most of the EU's larger countries. Support for the EU in the mainstream left is now an almost entirely defensive affair; to hold on to Nurse for fear of something worse.

This blog has noted the the ideas of some of the leaders in Syriza; a radical anti-austerity party battling at this moment against EU political scheming and intransigence. (See 3 March 2015, 'Yanis Varoufakis - erratic Marxist?') Greece, a country that represents barely 3% of the EU economy, has particular concerns about the vulnerability of any future outside of the Euro. This blog argued alongside with the left of Syriza, that exit from the euro will be inevitable for Syriza to meet its electoral commitments. But Varoufakis and others make a strong case that, as things stand, the implosion of the Euro and the EU could engender a nationalist, rightist, even protofascist response across a series of European countries. The level of debate at the other end of the European mainstream left's political spectrum - in the British Labour Party - is embarrassingly superficial, self serving and timid. The new candidates for Labour leadership are desperate for any hand to hold. And none of them have yet said a single word about the EU that is worth an instant's consideration.

Meanwhile the EU is in deep crisis. It helps organise the economics and politics of the least successful continent since the the 2008 shock wave. More worryingly for its admirers and over a much longer term it has signally failed to use what was the largest market in the world to develop any sort of global lead.

'In the spring of 2008, the most careful estimate, by Andrea Boltho and Barry Eichengreen, two distinguished economists of impeccably pro-European outlook, concluded that the Common Market may have increased growth by 3 to 4 per cent of the GDP of the EEC across the whole period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, and the Single European Act by another 1 per cent, while the positive impact of monetary union had to date been negligible – making for a grand total of perhaps a 5 per cent increment in GDP over half a century.​ That was before the onset of the crisis.'  (Perry Anderson 'The Italian Disaster', London Review of Books, May 2014.)

Since the crisis of 2008 EU austerity policies have plunged large and small European nations into penury and large parts of their populations into the abyss. The EU has now accelerated Europe's relative decline.

Turning to politics, in the last quarter of a century the European political classes especially in the larger countries have become more corrupt, more 'bought and sold', less representative or accountable to their voting populations. But does the 'higher' level of European politics perhaps offer some immunity to this infection? In 2014 the European Commission released its first official report on corruption in the Union, whose extent the commissioner who authored it described as ‘breath-taking’: at a low estimate, costing the EU as much as the entire Union budget, some €120 billion a year – the real figure being ‘probably much higher’. The report did not examine corruption in EU institutions as such. Your guess ... ?

Speaking objectively, the EU therefore has not advanced life for most Europeans. Worse. The EU has, in its fossilised, inaccessible institutions, its remoteness and lack of popular or day to day relevance, its corruption and its obeisance to global wealth, crystallised all that is most rotten in the individual political and economic systems of its members. It has gradually become the Europe wide expression of the worst characteristics of politics and economics to be found in its member states. The social democratic illusion, that the EU might be some sort of repository of rights and social conscience, is dead. Indeed, it was stillborn.

Which is not at all the signal to make common cause with Ukip in the UK - or any its various relatives in other European countries. The realities of peoples' actual struggles in Europe will govern any analysis of the EU's concrete contradictions - and therefore any line of action decided by the left.

Today, right now, radical socialists in Greece are battling for concessions from the EU in the context of retaining Greek membership of the Euro and the EU. This battle is of immense, continental significance. The gathering forces within Podemus in Spain are not neutral in their interest over Syriza's battle. Indeed rebuilding a popular left in society across most of Europe will hinge, in large part, on its progress and on its outcome. In Britain the coming referendum on remaining in the EU or leaving will also have its own content created by its context. The referendum (together with the prospects of the next referendum in Scotland) are already provoking a debate about the general future of Britain. The vote will take place in an atmosphere of deepening economic and political crisis in Europe and with the corrosive impact of the non-representative, outworn political system in Britain itself.

One possibility could be if the wider European left were to make gains between now and the British referendum, the UK vote might become a vote of confidence in the rise of a new, anti-austerity prospect for European people as a whole. In Britain the role of the City of London remains the key obstacle to economic (and political) progress. And the EU's current and past role in that structure is and was entirely supportive and obsequious (notwithstanding the odd French cavil about the need for a Paris based finance sector.) But if the referendum became a means to express a political link with new, dynamic, anti-austerity forces, that would reinforce any challenge to the City.

For now there needs to be a united anti-austerity movement in the UK, marshaling those who will come from Labour, from the SNP, the Greens, the Unions, wherever possible, in action, against the coming Government assault. It starts with the Peoples Assembly demonstration on June 21. And in that context the EU is an implacable enemy.