No To A Bosses' Europe. posted by Richard Seymour

I complained a while ago that the Euro-sceptic arguments had been so hegemonised by the right that any public revolt against European bureacracy would almost certainly assist the reactionaries - hence, UKIPs strong showing in the European elections. Well, duh! Anyway, Larry Elliot provided the obvious answer to this in The Guardian this week. Namely, why doesn't the Eurosceptic Left articulate its arguments more forcefully, and why doesn't the Left in general apply that scepticism to Europe that it applies to almost every other entity?

Elliot has always been suspicious of appeals to some overseas utopia to help regenerate Britain. In The Age of Insecurity, he and Dan Atkinson expertly demolished many myths about Europe and the United States, from a radical Keynesian perspective. The same purview inflects Elliot's latest:

Who among us is not sceptical about the common agricultural policy, which costs every family of four an extra £16 in dearer food bills and stunts the development of poor countries by denying them access to European markets? Aid agencies such as Oxfam have been outspoken in the need for radical reform.

And how about the common fisheries policy? Were not the environmentalists right when they said it would result in the waters of the North Sea being hoovered dry by factory trawlers?

And then there's growth and unemployment. More than a decade ago, the Keynesian left in Britain warned that a European central bank with a deflationary mandate would result in weak growth and lengthening dole queues, and they were absolutely correct.

There is also what is deceptively referred to as "the democratic deficit", as if it were something that could simply be topped up. But since the whole thrust of the European project has been a neoliberal one, to withdraw economic powers from the hands of states and place them at the disposal of unelected central bankers with deflationary goals, it is hard to see how this "deficit" could be addressed within the current system.

Elliot got a response to his argument in today's Guardian:

Larry Elliot's "leftwing" arguments against Britain's integration in the EU (June 16) are all short-term: they concern current EU economic and monetary policies, which can be changed by the EU left acting together from within. The leftwing arguments for integration are structural and long-term. Most importantly, Britain's potential for independence from the US, over whose policies it has no guaranteed influence.
Prof Moshe Machover
London School of Economics

The suggestion that "current EU economic and monetary policies" are short-term and can be remedied from within is precisely what is false in the pro-European argument. The whole point of the project is one of capitalist consolidation in an era where social-democracy and a strong welfare state is not conducive to profitability. Moreover, those policies cannot be changed by the left acting from within, because it is a legal impossibility. The government's convergence report on the Euro states that "These Member States need to exercise firm control over domestic price pressures with regard to, inter alia, wage and unit labour costs. Support is also required from fiscal policies, which need to react flexibly to the domestic price environment." And if they want to influence the ECB in a different direction, then they may be breaking the law. It is incompatible with the Maastricht Treaty to "approve, suspend, annul or defer decisions of national central banks" or to "censor a national central bank's decisions on legal grounds". - that is, to exercise or attempt to exercise any influence whatsoever on banks which are supposed to be "independent" (read unaccountable).

In my view, Elliot has answered adequately the argument that European consolidation would provide an alternative alliance to that with America, or even (heavens forfend) a counter-power.