RE: The French 'NO'

What is IMO?

I agree fully with Trond also on this point. The formation of the Common
Market, the EEC to end with the EU, is just a set of strategies to
build a European wide system of monopoly capital which has no chances of
succeeding even in its own terms. It cannot succeed because modern
capitalism is crucially conditioned by its specific historical roots
which differ from country to country and the Common Market worked well
mostly because it was sustained by a set of external circumstances. When
these ended in 1971 the EEC did rather poorly afterwards and, indeed, a
country like Norway - but also Iceland that in the 1970s and 1980s had
no hesitation of accepting high inflation in favor of high employment -
did much better. Yes, Trond is right: all the elements of neoliberalism
were enshrined in the Treaty of Rome. Perfectly true. However, the
Treaty of Rome did not have the norms (laws) needed to implement it and
they started to be formulated with the Delors programme in the 1980s.
But you cannot say these things anywhere South of Norway especially to
the Left, except in few cases to communists. Not always though because
in Italy the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani, perhaps the most orthodox
of the 3 groups that came out of the former communist party, supported
the OUI side in the French referendum. I think that Southern Europe,
viewed from Norway it includes Danemark and Germany, or EU Europe,
should fully run its course. This is what the Southern (of Norway)
Post-Keynesians do not understand: they do not analyze the constituent
forms of European capitalism, neither economically nor politically and
certainly never both instances jointly. They think that by constructing
nice schemes (with which I do not have major theoretical qualms), like
Sawyer has been doing ad nauseam, and then by convincing policy makers,
or becoming themselves policy makers/advisors, etc they can change the
structural economic and political forces that shaped Southern (of
Norway) Europe!! What is unbearable chez les Post-K is that they assume
the realm of policy to be infinitely large whereas it is extremely
narrow. Its width is always determined by contingent short run economic
perceptions and existing power relations established by
(monopoly)capital. Even when Eurocrats and corporate executives speak of
long run in reality they mean only long run permanent domination over
labor, the rest are short run contingencies, something that Garegnani
and his children will never understand in a million years.

(I still do no know what is IMO)

I would also like to call your attention to the enormous attraction that
the whole mystical term EUROPE exercizes upon many people and especially
on certain social groups. In Southern Europe, this time South of the
Alps and of the Pirenees, it acquires a metaphysical meaning. For
Italy's petty bourgeoisie it meant to enter civilization and a formal
recognition of belonging to the center and not to the underdeveloped
periphery. Lenin correctly called the Italian bourgeoisie a rat-bag
bourgeosie which is exactly what that class thought of itself in Italy.
After 1948, with the Popular Front (Communists and Socialits) safely
defeated and the movement of landless peasants in the South physically
massacred with the crucial help from the Mafia, Europe could become,
ideologically as well, the ticket out of the peripheral status. Later
this view has been fully accepted by the Italian left as a sign of
'modernity', that is by the Communist Party, already in the late 1960s,
while the Socialist Party accepted it from the start in 1957. Mutadis
mutandis this story applies to Spain and Portugal although not so much
to the very traditional communist party of Portugal, now shrunken to a
mere 7% of the electorate, and perhaps less to the regionalist Left of
Spain. In Greece you have exactly the Italian attitude multiplied by
1000 times, firstly because the socio-economic transformation of Greece
occurred after the fall of the military junta and especially with the
Christian Democratic like clientele policies of Papandreu (Socialist)
and also because Europe is seen not just as a way out of the periphery
but as a guarantee in relation to Turkey. Moreover since Greece has a
large polyglot professional stratum, where many were educated and lived
in Germany, USA, UK, France, such a stratum stands to gain from staying
strictly with the EU. This is also the stratum from which come
parliamentarians, policy advisors, diplomats, academics, etc etc. Indeed
they acquire from the EU greater leeway and economic advantges than they
could obtain directly from the Greek State and the Greek economy.

Internationally Brussels magnifies the mystical vision about EUROPE to
the point where in Latin America (I spent 2 months in Argentina in 2004
and 5 weeks in 2003)it is virtually impossible to speak of European
imperialism whereas it is de rigueur to speak of US imperialism. And
YET!!!! The greatest obstacles to the 'quita' , debt rescheduling and
cancellations, came from European countries which just acted in the
interests of the respective corporations (Spain for Telefonica, Italy
for the syndicate of bondholders, etc). But to the most leftwing daily
of Argentina, Pagina 12, Europe is untouchable.
  
joseph halevi

joseph halevi

-----Original Message-----
From: trond andresen [mailto:trond.andresen_at_itk.ntnu.no]
Sent: Wednesday, 1 June 2005 8:59 PM
To: Marc Lavoie; she_forum_at_itk.ntnu.no
Cc: shaun310_at_coombs.anu.edu.au; Political Economy
Subject: RE: [HE] The French 'NO'

At 14:47 31.05.2005, Marc Lavoie wrote:
>Hi!
>
>I can confirm what Joseph Halevi just said.
>..........................(snip).............
>what really
>struck me was the depth of the debates among ordinary French citizens.
Last
>Saturday, on the eve of the vote, I had supper with friends that were
>neither intellectuals nor politically involved, and I was amazed at the

>depth of their knowledge of the constitution.
>.....

I agree with Marc and Joseph: The discussion in France has been an
unusually
informed one. As opposed to in Spain. And the more knowledgeable the
more a
population tends towards rejecting the proposed "constitution". This
really
says it all, but will not have much impact on the autistic so-called
European elite.

But I write this to make another point: While the French have updated
themselves very thoroughly on the character of EU during the campaign,
they
seem to have illusions about there being a fundamental difference
between
the "neoliberal constitution", and the EU as such: "I am against the
proposed constitution, but for the EU".

I cannot see the important difference. Neoliberalism was set in stone in
the
original Treaty of Rome, with the four "freedoms": Unfettered movement
of
goods, services, labour and capital. National control of a macroeconomy
is
through this impossible. The Euro and the further removal of national
autonomy in all sorts of areas are in my opinion logical extensions of
the
principles in the Treaty of Rome. This has also, quite correctly, been
pointed out by some of the supporters of the "constitution": they say
that
there is nothing new in the neoliberal principles formulated in that
document, so why all the fuss?

This is the reason that a majority in Norway has voted no to mebership,
both
in 1972 and 1994. This quite well-informed majority has the same
political
composition as that of the today's French NO majority -- it is not and
has
not been a right-wing, xenophobic movement.

The race to the bottom now happening because of poorer Eastern European
countries having joined, has been the intention all along. To some
degree it
has been taking place for many years, by industries being moved to more
exploitation-favourable countries like Spain and Portugal.

The French has IMO now -- through the debate about the "constitution" --

started to discover what the EU really is. Good.

Trond Andresen

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Received on 03-06-05