Theory - Socialist Action

Eastern and Western Europe today

1st May 1998 Socialist Action 0

First published: May 1989

Europe is today undergoing its greatest changes since World War II. This is obvious in Eastern Europe which has seen the greatest political shifts since 1945. In Western Europe structural shifts on a less dramatic scale, but still the greatest since World War II, have marked the two last decades. How are these developments linked, and what are their driving forces?

The first issue to be clarified in examining European trends, and the development of European politics, is the relation between the uniqueness of each state and the overall situation. There are no two countries in Europe in which the organisation of capital, the structure of the state, or the relations in the labour movement are duplicated or in which political tactics can be the same. Nevertheless this does not prevent there being a clear general European development. If we are to understand the individual process in each country in Europe we must first examine the international reality in which it develops. The aim of this article is to consider these broad trends of European development in their full scope. Within that framework the specific situation in each country can then be situated.

PR heralds purge of MPs and end of selection rights

1st March 1998 Socialist Action 0

First published: March 1998

Indications that proportional representation and centralised ranking of candidates for the European Parliament elections are going to be used to purge Euro-MPs and abolish the right of party members to choose candidates give a flavour of what is posed by the Electoral Reform Commission’s remit to look at the introduction of PR for Westminster.

Labour has acknowledged that under PR it anticipates losing up to 30 of its 62 MEPs. In London, for example, where Labour currently has nine seats, it is braced to lose up to six. In Scotland, with currently six Labour-held seats, the party could lose three MEPs.

How the BNP needs to be fought

1st July 1997 Socialist Action 0

First published: July 1997

The doubling of the vote for fascist candidates in the general election should set the alarm bells ringing about the risk of a rise of racism and fascist activity under a right wing Labour government. While the extreme right, concentrated mainly in the BNP, remains a tiny political force, such an advance – in a general election characterised by a massive swing to Labour – should not be taken lightly. A right wing Labour government which presides over the further dismantling of the welfare state, drives down wages and attacks the most vulnerable in society will create exactly the conditions which led to the breakthrough into mass politics of fascist and far right currents in France, Italy, Austria and elsewhere in Europe.

The left and European Monetary Union

1st July 1996 Socialist Action 0

First published: July 1996

‘The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable. One of the basic reasons for the crisis in bourgeois society is the fact that the productive forces created by it can no longer be reconciled with the framework of the national state. From this follow, on the one hand, imperialist wars, on the other, the utopia of a bourgeois United States of Europe. The socialist revolution begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena, and is completed on the world arena. Thus, the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a news and broader sense of the word; it attains completion only in the final victory of the new society on our entire planet.’ – Trotsky

The social explosion in France at the end of last year, and the new wave of cuts in public spending planned in Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and other states, show the contradictions in which those on the left who supported the Treaty of Maastricht now find themselves. They endorse the very agreement which is co-ordinating the attacks on the welfare state on a European Union wide level and, in doing so, place themselves on a collision course with every section of the European labour movement acting to defend the welfare state.

The material basis of Euro-socialism

1st July 1996 Socialist Action 0

First published: July 1996

For more than a decade the most coherent support for the process of concentration and integration of capital in western Europe has been provided by social democracy. The rise, and recent decline, of this current – ‘Euro–socialism’ – provides an object lesson in the way in which the politics of the working class movement are shaped not merely by its own immediate situation, but by its relations with all classes in society.

Militant bourgeois

1st July 1996 Socialist Action 0

First published: July 1996

Some years ago the Financial Times ran an exceptionally instructive back page interview with Jean Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right wing French National Front. It was instructive, not because of what it told the reader about Le Pen, but for what it reflected about the thinking of the Financial Times.

The article was entitled ‘Militant bourgeois’. The tone of the interview was precisely expressed by its title. It sought to foster toleration among the FT’s readers of Le Pen as a ‘militant’ representative of a ‘bourgeois’ political force – without, of course, endorsing his more obscurantist, racist and anti-semitic views. The approach was to create the kind of attitude to Le Pen among FT readers, that might have been found among militant car workers in the 1970s to a ‘communist’ shop steward – ‘we don’t agree with a lot of their ideas, but they are useful to have on our side in a fight with the class enemy.’