A Socialist Campaign For Labour and Europe - Part 3

In 2016, I described why socialists had no interest in supporting David Cameron's deal with the EU, which was based upon British exceptionalism, and attempts to reconcile the interests of Britain's small capitalists, and the City of London, with the needs of the large-scale socialised capital upon which the future of the British state depends, and of the shareholders of those companies. A distinction should be made between the large scale owners of fictitious-capital, who need to see long-term stability for capital accumulation, so as to maximise the profits in the companies in which they own shares, and thereby to maximise the potential for the dividends/interest they receive, and for capital gains arising from rising asset prices on the back of it, as against the City of London, whose banks and finance houses make their profits from arbitraging the buying and selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, and currencies. For the latter, any harmonisation and homogenisation is a bad thing, because it undermines the potential for such arbitrage. 

A bank or finance house that specialises in foreign exchange dealing, for example, loses a large part of its business if instead of there being 28 different European currencies, each of which has to be converted into the others, there is just one single Euro currency in which all internal trade is conducted. But, for actual businesses that have to conduct trade, and have to insure themselves against currency fluctuations, separate currencies represent a significant cost. Not only do these businesses have to pay commissions to forex dealers, to convert one currency to another, but a fluctuation in exchange rates can make the difference between profits and losses. If you are only making a 10% profit margin on the commodities you sell to another country, if the exchange rate changes by more than 10%, your profit could be completely wiped out. This uncertainty and volatility, welcomed by speculators and arbitragers, is a significant friction and cost when it comes to investment decisions for real capital. That is why those economies inside a single market and currency union have significant competitive advantages over those outside it. Its no surprise, therefore, that, in general, the large-scale owners of shares and bonds and their representatives on company boards, and in organisations like the CBI, are opposed to Brexit, whilst it is amongst the City traders, and managers of hedge funds, such as the Nigel Farages, the Crispin Odeys, the Max Keisers, and the Jacob Rees-Moggs that can be found the proponents of Brexit. 

Cameron, and the other conservative social-democrats, like the Blair-rights and the Liberals are trying to reconcile things that cannot now be reconciled. That is why the political centre has collapsed, and why society has divided into two great class camps. The real division being played out across the globe is one between these two great class camps, one based upon the plethora of small private capitals, and their desire for unrestrained free market competition, a desire shared by the speculators of the type mentioned above, and from which they make profits from uncertainty and arbitrage, as against the other which comprises the ranks of the organised working-class, and its most advanced and educated sections, along with the owners of large-scale fictitious capital, who also want a continuation of the existing systems of oligopoly, of planning and regulation to continue, which provides them with long-term stability in which investment decisions amounting to billions of Pounds can be made confidently, in which the state intervenes to stabilise things when they go wrong, to continue to remove frictions on the movement of capital and labour, and thereby to reduce costs, so as to maximise profits. 

This same division is seen in the US with Trump and the Republicans, representing the former camp, and the Democrats representing the latter. Brexit is merely a manifestation of this division, and those that think that it will end if Brexit goes ahead are deluding themselves. The reality is that the world that the former want to recreate is gone and cannot be resurrected.

But, they can try, and in trying they will have to resort to all sorts of undemocratic and authoritarian measures, some of which have already been seen in Britain, have been seen even more in the US, but whose more fully developed form is seen in the actions of Erdogan in Turkey, and Putin in Russia. Again, it is no coincidence that Trump is an ally of Putin and Erdogan, as well as of Johnson and Farage, with Farage also being best buddies with Putin, and Putin's cronies paying to play tennis with Boris Johnson, and funding various right-wing Tory pressure groups. In Britain, we just have various fascistic, pro-Brexit groups threatening journalists, whilst the pro-Brexit gutter press accuses judges of being traitors. But, in Turkey, we have journalists and anyone else who is critical of Erdogan being locked up in their tens of thousands. In Russia, we have opposition politicians gaoled, as well as critical journalists murdered. And, of course, we could mention Saudi Arabia, the friend of Trump and Johnson, which lures even moderately critical journalists into traps, even in foreign lands, before torturing them, and chopping body parts off them, before, eventually, murdering them. 

If the proponents of Brexit were to get their way, the attempt to create this kind of world that never really existed, of fully free market competition, but even in its approximate form ceased to exist towards the end of the 19th century, it would meet with increasing resistance from the mass of the population that would suffer from it. The only way that these Brexiters could continue down that road would be by increasing the kind of authoritarianism that currently we see in Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia etc. Already its being touted that if Trump loses the 2020 Presidential election, he will refuse to accept the result, and it should be born in mind that the vast arsenal of automatic weapons owned in the US, are owned by a relatively small number of people, nearly all of whom form a part of the phalanx of reactionaries that stand behind Trump. 

As socialists we have every reason, therefore, not only to seek to obtain a Labour victory, but that, as part of that Labour victory, we ensure that it is achieved on a socialist basis, and a socialist basis only has meaning as also a defeat for reactionary nationalism, and a victory for internationalism. We have to say clearly that Brexit is reactionary, and, in part, it is reactionary, because its goal is utopian. It seeks to turn the clock back to a world that never actually existed, but which, more importantly, today is unachievable. It is unachievable whether it is in its North Korean variant, of overarching state control, and autarky, as well as in the form that the Moggies and Farages seek, of some kind of 18th century, free market nirvana. The idea that its possible for Labour to negotiate some kind of “Jobs First Brexit” is even more utopian, and divorced from reality, but even if it were possible, is reactionary compared to simply remaining in the existing EU. 

But, socialists are not content simply to remain in the existing EU. Remaining in the existing EU is a necessary start, but our aim from there is to unite workers across the EU, to reform the existing institutions, and to struggle for the creation of a Workers' Europe, on the road to creating a Socialist United States of Europe. The programme of demands set out in Part 2, can be lifted wholesale to form a programme around which socialists and progressive social democrats could organise in the EU as well. But, additional demands are required, because, unlike Britain, the EU is not yet a fully fledged state. A basic progressive demand is that it should become so, and although a unitary state would be preferable, it is inevitable that initially, such an EU state, will have to be established, like the USA, as a federal United States of Europe. Our goal is then to transform that into a Socialist United States of Europe, which will be able to act as a powerful bulwark from which the struggle for world socialist revolution can be undertaken. But, even the longest journey starts with a single step. 

The demands that Labour should raise in the current General Election in relation to the EU are these: 

• Revoke Article 50. Labour should drop the confused and illogical position of saying it would negotiate a fantasy “Jobs First Brexit” followed by another referendum. Brexit is reactionary. Labour should oppose it full stop. Offering voters “a choice” is irrational. As a Remainer I do not want a choice, I want Labour to commit to stopping Brexit at least as militantly as currently as the Liberals are doing. Anything else smacks of lack of principle and leadership. It is duplicitous and dithering, where what we need is clear, militant, principled leadership. Unfortunately, therefore, Remain voters, who comprise around 75% of Labour's 2017 voter base, are likely to vote Liberal, unless Labour changes course. But, if I were a Leaver, I also would not want a choice. I would want a party that was committed to Leaving, in which case I would vote Tory. Labour's vacillating and triangulating position falls between two stools, and will likely lose it the election. We need, therefore, local candidates, and local parties to commit to a clear position of opposing Brexit outright and supporting Revoke.
• Remain and reform. Labour's position already involves reforming the existing EU. But, that message is obscured by the continuation of the insistence on negotiating a fantasy “Jobs First Brexit”. Moreover, a large part of Labour's reform agenda, for the EU, continues to be based upon British exceptionalism and nationalism. It is more about seeking further concessions for Britain, for example, around questions of free movement, than it is about transforming the whole of the EU in workers' interests. Labour conference overwhelmingly committed to the principle of free movement and abolition of immigration controls, but the leadership are already watering down, and undermining that position. Our starting point is rank and file solidarity with workers across the EU, and the reform of all institutions on that basis, not in narrow national interests, but in the interests of the European working-class as a whole.
• Rebuild. In order to struggle for a more consistent social-democracy across Europe, and to reform its institutions, we also need to rebuild the labour movement on an EU wide basis. We have a European TUC, and we have the Socialist Group of MEP's. However, these replicate the deficiencies that existed with the original Second International. It existed as merely a confederation of national social-democratic parties, each of which was essentially free to develop its own programme. Each national section simply had diplomatic relations with the others. That is no basis for a functioning, fighting socialist international, and that was illustrated when, in World War I, the Second International collapsed, as the workers of each country lined up behind their own ruling class to slaughter each other. Our starting point should be to build rank and file organisations of workers across Europe. The international nature of capital facilitates such links. For example, if we take a car company such as BMW, it has car plants in many countries across Europe, and indeed the world. The workers in each BMW plant have common interests. International organisations of BMW workers already exist, as they do for many other multinational companies. We should build upon those links, and scale them up to cover all workers. What can be done at the level of trades union organisation, can be done at the level of workers cooperatives, and of a European Workers Party, which can represent workers interests in the political sphere.
• Build an EU Wide Workers Party, Cooperative Federation and Trades Union Movement. Trades Unions have been consolidating into a smaller number of larger unions. The logical step is for these unions to be European unions, organising workers in the different industries across the EU. A move to industrial unions, and preferably, in the end to one big union, is a progressive development, and its rational expression is for that to occur on an EU wide scale. Capital is global, firms are multinational, and labour must organise in the same way. It makes no sense, and is indeed, reactionary, for example, to rip British BMW workers away from their German, Spanish, and Belgian comrades, by Brexit. But, it also makes no sense to see the answer to the problems of British BMW workers to be in nationalisation, because that, by definition, also rips them away from their EU comrades. The clue is in the word “nation-alisation”. But, this problem does not exist with a cooperative, a cooperative is in no way bound within the constraints of the nation state. An EU wide Cooperative Federation could unite workers across European multinational cooperative firms. But, as Marx says, its not just co-ops that are the transitional form of property. That applies to joint stock companies. We need an EU Wide Workers Party to take the EU's Draft Fifth Company Law Directive as a starting point, and to establish in law that 100% of company boards should be elected by the company's workers and managers.
• For Consistent Bourgeois Democracy. Opponents of the EU point to its democratic deficit. They are right, but they fail to point to the same democratic deficit in the British state, which continues to have an unelected Monarchy, House of Lords and so on. Alongside addressing those issues in the British state, we should address them in the EU. The Commission should be abolished, along with the Council of Minister. All power should be vested in the European Parliament, from which an executive and President should be elected. The President should occupy a non-executive function, as Head of State.
• The EU should continue the process of integration. The problems faced by Greece should never happen again. An EU state should function on the basis of cooperation and solidarity. That requires not just a single market and single currency, but a single fiscal regime, and single debt management office, issuing EU bonds, to borrow on behalf of the whole EU. The EU then should direct funds and investment to its component states and regions to ensure that economic development proceeds evenly across the bloc. Ultimately, this means that the EU must consolidate into a federal United States of Europe.
• Along with a harmonisation of borrowing, taxation and funding, workers across the EU, should demand that pensions, benefits, rates of pay, and working conditions be harmonised, by setting an EU wide Minimum Weekly Wage of £400 (€465) and maximum 35 hour week. We should harmonise retirement age at 60, with the aim of reducing it to 55. We should harmonise annual paid holidays to the 32 days currently enjoyed in France. Harmonising wage benefits and pensions is essential for free movement of labour. Until such time as workers themselves have ownership and control of social insurance, we should demand that an EU wide Social Insurance Fund be established from which all benefits and pensions should be paid.
• To ensure further integration and harmonisation, and to prevent a competitive race to the bottom, it is also necessary to harmonise taxation, which is in any case required by a single fiscal regime. The majority of tax revenue should be collected by the federal state, with the component nation states having a right to levy local taxes, in the same way that currently Local Authorities in Britain, and the states in the US do, to cover their specific spheres of responsibility. As I have written elsewhere, Corporation Tax should be abolished, so as to encourage real capital accumulation, and to the same end, and to replace the revenue from Corporation Tax, we should demand a high rate of Income Tax on unearned income from dividends, rents, and interest, of around 75%. We should also abolish Inheritance Tax, which is a voluntary tax for the rich, and instead make all inheritances subject to Capital Gains Tax. We should levy a rate of Capital Gains Tax of 60%, with a £20,000 a year tax free starting point, which would also be a disincentive to speculation and indolence. An EU wide Wealth Tax of 10% p.a., on all wealth over £10 million, would also begin to address the inequality of wealth, and provide funds for real investment. 

Socialists across the EU can fight for these demands whether Britain remains in or leaves the EU, but as socialists living in Britain, we should seek to ensure that Britain is a part of this momentous struggle. In order to achieve that, we must first seek to defeat Brexit. For socialists in Britain, Brexit is the main order of the day. We must do all we can to achieve that end, including acting strategically and tactically in the upcoming General Election. 

I have described what those tactics should be elsewhere. We need as many PPC's, and CLP's, branches, trades unions and other organisations to support something like the programme I have set out here in Part 3, as well as that in Part 2. Already, a number of organisations such as “Another Europe Is Possible” exist. It was encouraging to see that Nadia Whittome, an executive member of Another Europe was selected as Labour candidate in East Nottingham. There are other similar groups such as Labour For A Socialist Europe. Unfortunately, many of these groups are seen as just front organisations for assorted Left sects. Here and now, even that would be a starting point, but it is necessary for all of these organisations to come together to form a single Socialist Campaign For Labour and Europe, so that the maximum resources can be mobilised across the country. 

Our strategy should then be as I have set out elsewhere. We need to emphasise militant opposition to Brexit. That means demanding that Article 50 be revoked, and that Labour commit to taking Britain back into Europe if the Tories take us out. Having signed up PPC's, CLP's etc. to a socialist programme, we should ensure that all available resources nationally are focused on those seats committed to it. That is the best way of ensuring not only that we get the maximum number of anti-Brexit candidates elected, but that we get the maximum number of anti-Brexit candidates elected on a socialist programme. If we have any further available resources, we should focus on those seats with Labour candidates that support Remain, but who have not committed to a socialist programme. We should agree to campaign in these seats only on condition that the local Labour Party agrees to us also promoting our socialist programme for Labour and Europe, and our free and open discussion of it with rank and file Labour members and voters. 

We should treat any Labour candidates not backing Remain, as being in the wrong class camp. Labour MP's like Gareth Snell in Stoke Central and Ruth Smeeth in Stoke North, by voting for Brexit, alongside Boris Johnson, are traitors to their class and to the Labour Party. They should have had the whip withdrawn, and been deselected. Their actions are stupid and shortsighted even for their own short term interests, because, in both those seats, they have very small majorities over the Tories. Their action is likely to lead to Labour Remain voters in those seats voting Liberal, or staying at home, which will be enough for them to lose the seat to the Tories. In truth there is little difference between a Tory Brexiter winning the seat under a Tory banner, or a Tory Brexiter winning the seat under a Labour banner. We cannot advocate a vote for the Liberals in such seats, because the Liberals are also our class enemy, but if a Liberal Remain candidate wins in any of these seats that is a lesser evil than a Brexiteer winning, whether they wear a red or a blue rosette. 

The election is, in reality, only the starting point. The experience of the election and of Brexit shows just why it was vital that the process of democratic reform of the party was undertaken, and why we needed to clear out the majority of sitting MP's and replace them with new socialist internationalists. In the aftermath of the election, however it turns out, there will be a jockeying for position, as Corbyn cannot remain as Leader for long. There is a dearth of appropriate alternative candidates, because we have failed to renew the PLP from the party's current cadre. A defeat will inevitably result in a demand for Corbyn and McDonnell to step down. The Blair-rights will be reinvigorated. Watson will be the spearhead of the challenge to regain control of the party. We must not allow demoralisation to set in. We should use the defeat to learn lessons, once again about the disastrous effects of Stalinism and nationalism within the labour movement. We should redouble our efforts to democratise the party, and to rebuild. Our focus would inevitably have to turn outwards, to utilise the large numbers of members to get involved in local struggles, and to rebuild local organisations. 

If Johnson wins the election he will begin to implement plans for a Managed No Deal Brexit, using the transitional period for that purpose. My guess is that somewhere along that line he will ditch the ERG, and pivot towards a closer relation to the EU. Trump's statement that even Johnson's deal makes a trade deal with the US impossible illustrates a Brexit Britain's dilemma. An isolated Britain has to tie itself to either the EU or the US. Trump would like to buy the UK, just as he wanted to buy Greenland, and has bought real estate across the US, before asset stripping it, and leaving the local economy devastated. As he has done throughout his Presidency he seeks to utilise his occupation of the Whitehouse as the lever with which to expand his own personal business empire, and family fortune. Trump needs a totally deregulated UK economy, and compliant stooges like Farage to implement that strategy. But, Johnson needs a longer term perspective. He knows that selling Britain off to Trump would not be easy. Simply imagining Trump using Buckingham Palace as a Trump Hotel, and the Queen as a Trump tourist attraction, shows how hard that would be even amongst Brexiters. Johnson knows that Britain's future depends on a close relation with the EU, which is by far its largest, and closest trading partner. 

Hitler was also an economic nationalist who
introduced greater economic planning and
Keynesian spending on infrastructure like
the autobahns.

Johnson is likely in the future to pivot back towards the EU, alongside pursuing an interventionist economic policy, as already witnessed by the large, unfunded spending commitments he has already set out. This is a similar strategy of economic populism as was promoted by Mussolini, Hitler and Mosely in Britain. Such a strategy is totally at odds with the Austrian School/Libertarian agenda of Rees-Mogg and the majority of the ERG. To implement it against their resistance, he will again need to turn to the mass in a further populist endeavour. It is an almost identical series of events as unfolded in France as described by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, leading up to the coup in 1848, but similar things occurred in Austria in the 1930's. 

But, one thing we know about Johnson is that he is an opportunist, hence those two Telegraph articles. It is equally possible that, as things unfold, Johnson may find himself trapped, and bound into a course of Managed No Deal, and increasing divergence from the EU. Either way, the only possibility of pursuing that course, given the economic damage it will do – whilst not having the chaotic impact of a crash out – is again by increasing authoritarianism. 

What further makes the Brexit agenda impossible is that not only will the economic consequences turn more people against it, but there is already a majority opposed to it. Every year, the number of old Tory Leavers declines, as they die off. At the same time, around a million young, Remain supporting voters enter the electorate. This was the last opportunity that the nationalists had to inflict Brexit upon us. But, the demands to reverse Brexit, if it happens, will not go away. In coming years, whilst the Tories might be able to consolidate their core vote around an English nationalist agenda, the fact is that any opposition party will only ever be able to get a winning coalition if it stands on a programme of taking Britain back into the EU. 

It is the young dynamic supporters of the EU that have momentum and history on their side. Socialists should seek to harness that dynamism to ensure that we renovate the labour movement in Britain and across the EU.

Back To Part 2