Wednesday 29 August 2018

Lexit Re-Loaded with Costas Lapavitsas

This discussion on Novara Media's TyskySour is well worth a listen regardless of your position on Brexit.

4 comments:

Jim Denham said...

Lapavitsas was one of the left-wingers who quit after the Syriza-led government capitulated to the EU-ECB-IMF impositions to form the Popular Unity party. Popular Unity’s line of agitating for “sovereignty and independence… against the new colonialism”, rather than for explicit socialism or a Europe-wide working-class policy, has proved unproductive. Although PU started with 25 of Syriza’s 149 MPs, and other prominent Syriza figures, it lost all its MPs in the September 2015 election, now polls between 1% and 2%, and has not rallied a large part of Syriza’s former left-wing base.

The same sort of line would also be unproductive for the left in Britain.

Lapavitsas makes the valid point that the Single Market today is structured on very neoliberal lines. No wonder. Back in the 1980s, when EU leaders talked much and did a little about “Social Europe”, other leading EU governments saw Thatcher’s neoliberalism in Britain as an “Anglo-Saxon” aberration.

Neoliberal governments produce neoliberal policies. The problem is that the Single Market has become more “British”, not that Britain has become too “European”.

Brexit cannot be a left-wing policy. The struggle for socialism is an affair of workers vs capitalists, not of Britain vs a “Europe” identified solely with neoliberal Brussels officials.

EU rules would not block anything in Labour’s 2017 manifesto. The frontline measures which the left wants to see added to that manifesto would not be blocked either.

Radical measures on those lines would face domestic capitalist resistance much more than any hindrance from EU rules.

The Single Market rules have become neoliberal not because they are “European” and “foreign”, but because they represent a trend of capitalist development pioneered… in London.

“Europe” in Lapavitsas’s picture, is just the neoliberal officials in the European Commission and the ECB. Workers? Labour movements? The argument proceeds as if no such things exist anywhere in Europe except in Britain and Greece.

Labour should certainly be pushed to policies which really would contradict Single Market rules. If the British labour movement rouses itself that far, then it can and must rouse labour movements elsewhere in Europe to do similar.

The outcome would depend on the conflict between capitalists and workers right across Europe, not on legal battles between the British government and the European Commission.

Right now we face the danger of a real “hard Brexit”, not Lapavitsas’s imaginary “socialism in one (British) country”, or rather “‘industrial policy’ in one country”.

That Tory, or modified-Tory, “hard Brexit” will set us back in many ways. We should fight it, not accommodate to it by way of telling ourselves tales about it mutating into “semi-socialism in one country”.

TheOnlySanePersonOnPlanetEarth said...

“EU governments saw Thatcher’s neoliberalism in Britain as an “Anglo-Saxon” aberration.”

I think Jim Denham’s view is incorrect and possibly the product of believing the Keynesian compromise was a permanent state of affairs. Maybe he is applying a teleological method to capitalism, which is a circular system, albeit with a highly dynamic development. But it was the Keynesian compromise that was the aberration.

“Neoliberal governments produce neoliberal policies.”

It isn’t neo liberal government which create neo liberal policies, it is the fundamental logic of capitalism that produces neo liberalism.

So whether we remain or exit the development will be the same, everything else being equal. The EU allows different models of capitalism within it, so Britain is at the neo liberal end of the spectrum while Germany is more to the centre. The problem is that over time the flow has to be in the same direction and when given this choice the ruling class always chooses the neo liberal spectrum as this is the fundamental basis upon which capitalism operates. A capitalist system without exploitation is like a car without wheels, i.e. non functioning and pointless. So from this perspective it doesn’t matter if we are in or out of the EU, the train is still going in the same direction, the same circular direction (over the long term)! Anything short of overthrowing capitalism will not alter this.

“Brexit cannot be a left-wing policy.”

The socialist case for remain can be demonstrated by what is happening in Venezuela. Imperialism can engineer hyper inflation in a single country but it can’t impose it on the entire continent, and hyper inflation is never caused by domestic policy but is always imposed by a superior power. So a socialist Britain will be too vulnerable to ruling class attacks, and only a socialist continent can avert such gangsterism.

This is probably one of the reasons Marx believed that socialism had to take hold in the advanced world first.

However we must also bear in mind Engels quote that, “A sincere international collaboration of the European nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house.”

The EU was never built on these grounds and the case of Catalonia shows it never will be. So here we have the socialist case for Brexit, the whole thing needs tearing down and can only be built on a socialist basis right from the beginning. Built under the current system and its contradictions tear it apart sooner or later.

I think Lapavitsas is coming from this second position.

“but because they represent a trend of capitalist development pioneered… in London”

See above points but also understand that capitalism doesn’t trend it develops from material conditions; it doesn’t develop via the ideas coming from the brains of the City of London.

“Labour should certainly be pushed to policies which really would contradict Single Market rules.”

One of the positives for trade unions is that the single market delivers common rules, so avoids a race to the bottom. But Labour do not need to push for policies that contradict the single market because the single market itself is a contradiction and will contradict itself.

“not accommodate to it by way of telling ourselves tales about it mutating into “semi-socialism in one country”.

A better approach might be to build international workers movements rather than rely on capitalist ones. And no one has yet provided any reasonable logic as to why that can be achieved more easily by being in the EU.

So we can have a left case for and against Brexit, which is why we have left wing cases for both. The problem is not these positions but the lack of any international workers movement to properly debate these issues and arrive at a concrete policy. Al we have now are sects arguing over their sectarian and dogmatic positions.

Anonymous said...

"The struggle for socialism is an affair of workers vs capitalists, not of Britain vs a 'Europe' identified solely with neoliberal Brussels officials."
I think everyone would agree with that, but I'm not sure the implication is correct: I see no evidence to suggest think Costas believes our socialist struggle is Britain vs this Europe, or that europe is identified solely with neoliberal Brussels officials. That's a bigoted ultra nationalist attitude that treats our neighbours as shallow stereotypes compared to our fully human british britishness. We obviously have no quarrel with the people of Europe. But do we think the EU as it is currently constituted is a good representative of the people of the countries of Europe, - its parliament is disempowered and what we have isn't equal representation per person in the bloc but the leaders of each nation, some much more powerful than others, working out policy in backroom dealings. The myriad staff and buildings and representatives of the EU in Brussels is just the civil service in the employ of that agenda decided behind closed doors. The workers of France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, all face this question, and we need to stand in solidarity with whatever socialist initiative arises in relation to the EU, membership, democracy and governance.

I don't know if its going to be any more effective trying to grow socialism globally from wherever we gain authority within the EU as a member state than trying to grow it as the authority in one country that has exited but which has a close co-operative relationship as a fellow European country. Its hardgoing whether we exit or not.

I also think this is a bold statement: "EU rules would not block anything in Labour’s 2017 manifesto. The frontline measures which the left wants to see added to that manifesto would not be blocked either.
Radical measures on those lines would face domestic capitalist resistance much more than any hindrance from EU rules."
Costas sets out why he thinks our obligations in the EU make a mess of this, here:
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/corbyn-labour-eu-single-market-economic-policy

It seems it would block a lot in Labour's mannifesto, including the frontline measures the left wants, around state aid and public procurement - key to the whole strategy - it won't be allowed. Obviously by being in the EU Britain gets a seat at the negotiating table that decides these neoliberal rules, and as you rightly point out successive neoliberal governments of the UK had a big hand in setting them up, but would we really be able to change all this so quickly?

I think it would be wise to start thinking seriously about how these goals would be achieved if we end up somehow remaining, but I see no principle reason to ask Labour to risk its support by coming out and backing Remain all of a sudden.

giles humphry said...

So if there’s no problem with the 2017 manifesto how come the French rail workers have been striking against the plan to split up the French rail monopoly as demanded by the fourth Railway package? And why do the Commission wish to negotiate a non regression clause locking in the Thatcher and Blair privatisations? I am afraid you have swallowed a demonstrably false line. Just read the Fourth Railway package and tell me how that would allow the recreation of British Rail (hint, it wouldn’t)