The Left Case Against the EU (1/2)

1. God she's awful… I want to listen, but I just can't take it.

2. I respect Lapavitsas, but I think his advocacy of Greece leaving the EMU is presented disingenuously here. As I'm sure he knows, a new lira would have depreciated enormously against the euro, not only introducing strongly inflationary import pressures into greece but also thereby multiplying the greek government's liabilities, a large proportion of which were denominated in foreign currencies. This would not only have exacerbated the considerable economic dislocation greece was already struggling against in itself, but it would also have worsened Greece's access to the bond markets both immediately and in the longer-intermediate term by requiring further and more substantial defaults at precisely the same time as it would require even more severely contractionary monetary and fiscal policy to ward off risks of hyperinflation. These are only the most salient of the dire economic consequences attendant upon some form of Grexit.

   I'm a revolutionary socialist. I'm never happy to call for capitulation to the realities of capitalism – as a socialist, I reject their moral necessity or justice – but I would sooner admit ugly defeat by injustice than ever pretend that sentimentally ignoring reality is somehow in the service of justice or morality. Capitalism of some form is here to stay for at least the intermediate future – the two tasks of the serious radical left are: 1) immediate Reform; 2) growing a creditable anti-capitalist movement. To ignore capitalism whilst it is still here is mostly to condemn the masses to suffering the monstrosities of an even more dysfunctional version of capitalism. Calling for Greece to leave the euro I regard as an extreme illustration of this principle.

   To a lesser degree, this is also my analysis of Lapavitsas proposal that Lexit (Left-Brexit) is a good idea. In the concrete, historical circumstances, Brexit was only ever going to be a coup for the nativist, authoritarian, anti-immigration hard-right. It was only ever going to strengthen a virulent brand of domestic ultra-neoliberalism and cause economic damage that would harm the average person. Rather than enhancing democracy, it was only ever going to enhance the oligarchic status quo and the profoundly undemocratic institutions that already exist in the UK. Rather than making the UK 'independent', it was only ever going to render it an even more servile adjutant of the US imperium. All of this we are witnessing already. The small handful of instances of neoliberal regulation cited by those on the radical left who support Brexit are real, but they are outweighed (from a left perspective) by the aforementioned considerations in addition to the fact that they do not even preclude other Social Democratic policies that can achieve the same or similar results in different ways.

   Whenever the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a feasible model of socialism is even close to immanent in the UK, I will become the most ardent Brexiteer. Until then I can only acquiesce in the verdict of the referendum, as a democrat, although I cannot pretend that I think it is likely to be anything other than a small disaster and a major distraction from much more important issues. For this reason I would have been unlikely to have supported it even if I had wanted to destroy the EU; the French were flirting with euroscepticism a couple of years ago, whereas now Brexit is a source of bitter schadenfreude in France, as elsewhere across the continent; Brexit will be costly for the EU as well as the UK, but the elite EU bureacrats everyone despises will not be the ones who pay those costs and those costs will ultimately pay for strengthening their project.

3. The problem is that the EU is a big conglomeration of the individual governments, which are themselves, neoliberal. Progressives have to be weary of nationalism.Nationalism has always been a menace to progressive causes, with powerful states bullying less powerful nations to gain popular advantage. Arguably, this is happening with the EU, as Germany has become the great benefactor of monetary policy. Less powerful countries should voice themselves through stronger representation in Brussels, in coalition with the members of other countries having the same interests.

4. Excellent relort..Please do more about the ins and outs of the Unelected and unaccountable Eu banks and unelected leaders from Brussels.

5. Instead of leaving the EU, Mr Lapavitsas could do better to join with and urge others to support DIEM25 and Yanis Varoufakis, who has been correct since January 2015 and earlier. Prof Varoufakis has written all the books on the problems of the EU. Lapavitsas should sit down and read them.

6. There are those who, on any other question would be of “the Left”, are dedicated to a futile rearguard action. One that seeks to maintain Britain’s place in the moribund European Union. A great deal of political energy has been squandered in this effort; their enemies have wasted none.

   It is curious that so many of this tendency would hitch themselves so determinedly to the status quo. Older Remainers have come to imagine the EU as the Enlightenment project made real. Finally, at last, the ideals of that heady age — fumbled in America, and quashed in France — have been realised. (I have a reply to such dreamers, that has become something of a stock response.) While the younger status-quoers have come to see the EU as a multiculturalist bastion, as all around it moves further into reaction. A heart in a heartless world.

   In reality, the EU is run for the benefit of central bankers (as was shown most painfully in Greece), and careerist politicians who refuse to accept the fundamental breakdown of their ideology.¹ These liberals proved too conciliatory to Big Business — blind to the its ill-gotten gains and corruptive influence — and, caught up in bourgeois tedium, became deaf to those trammeled beneath. While they believed themselves to be cultivating worldviews more broad and humanistic than any yet achieved (an judgement bolstered with every new installment of Pangloss’s Bible), they in fact developed a siege mentality.

   Christopher Hitchens once wrote of Conor Cruise O’Brien (again anticipating much about his own “evolution”), that, “he could descry, in the features of a ruling elite, the lineaments of an oppressed minority”. So it is with Blair, Osborne, Clegg and Labour’s right-wing. Recieving electoral blowback from the neoliberal reforms they either championed or let pass, they now see themselves as society’s most sat-upon.

   "[Due to populism] we are losing sight of the values which brought the West together, saw it through the menace of fascism and communism."
   Tony Blair, a man still sought for words of wisdom despite being Tony Blair

   Which goes some way towards explaining the now overt antipathy towards democracy among the chattering classes. Such a development would’ve been unsurprising to Christopher Lasch, maybe the leading thinker of Left conservativism.

   As with all good leftists, we find his salvos most consistently in the liberal camp. Among those who, in the style of Lippmann and H.L. Mencken, believed themselves above “the bewildered herd”. These two belonged to small, self-selected minority of highly-educated men, who considered it a duty to reject everything common; sense included. And it was under their wise tutelage that Americans were taken to the gleaming heights of the Great War, the Great Depression and… Vietnam.²

   Chomsky’s withering examination of the mainstream media was named after Lippmann’s own “manufacturing consent”. Something the latter believed was just and necessary, seeing as how the mass were incapable of making the correct choices.

   This “revolt of the elites”, as Lasch called the authoritarian turn in liberalism, or the liberal turn in authoritarianism, would presage a counter-attack. Perhaps led by another star from the big screen?

   https://medium.com/@lukeob/brexit-remainers-on-going-battle-with-reality-4f3ac78f12fd

7. so basically after ww2, europe looked at Hitlers world domination aspirations and thought 'ooh, nice idea! how do we get away with taking over countries?! treaties!'

8. yes!! the EU is a neoliberal project. we need to leave to enact many socialist policies.

9. Can anyone point me to users or sites that have more European leftist intellectual talks/interviews in English?

10. I'm flabbergasted that anyone could think the EU is 'left'. Guess they missed the whole thing where a private company (the ECB) appointed two heads of state (Greece, Italy). That's straight up fascism. The Lisbon Treaty required all signatories to change their constitutions to allow vaguely designated corporations to dissolve parliament, appoint heads of state or suspend government entirely.

11. #Grexit !!! There's no way of 'reforming' the obscure, neo-liberal bureaucratic moloch : EU, which was never a good idea in the first place.

12. Everyone should read Varoufakis' Adults in the Room for some first-hand background on how the EU operates. Interestingly, Varoufakis is not for destroying the EU, but reforming it from within. I'd like to see a nice debate between him and Lapavitsas–he's wrong that Syriza didn't have a plan or a weapon. Not true. They had a plan for bridging to a new drachma that they refused to trigger when they should have, according to Varoufakis, who created the bridging mechanism. Tsipras' fault–a combination of EU intransigence and internal Syriza backstabbing.

13. Even if EU is so useless as Costas says, isn't worthy thy reform before killing it?

14. People assert that the EU is irreformable, to which I ask, is the nation state reformable? Or to put it more starkly, is socialism possible in one country? Or is it not the case that a social democracy is always barely possible in both and neoliberalism will reign in both.

15. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhockett/2019/01/16/the-green-new-deal-how-we-will-pay-for-it-isnt-a-thing-and-inflation-isnt-either/?fbclid=IwAR2roiwAiHU2OR5EbmBlCqp-d9luY8_2oGaOBxORlbpKU2iFgXoFsz80xpk#676006c64d7f

16. I WOULD RECOMMEND A BOOK BY DR WILLIAM MITCHELL RECLAIMING THE STATE A PROGRESSIVE VISION OF SOVEREIGNTY FOR A POST-NEOLIBERAL WORLD

17. Had Greece been a Nation with an independent central bank, it would have printed money easing liquidity but harming savers who save money by way of inflation. Do Poor people like inflation? This guy is a communist.

18. The Weight of Chains 2 comes to mind… This should be a MUCH bigger discussion among the left especially after the recent dramatic collapse of Yugoslavia and then its former republics at the hands of the EU.

19. Greece held a referendum to cancel its foreign dept without consequences. How silly was that? If you make a pact with the devil you have always to pay a price.

20. EU will be and has been a disaster. Ask Portugal what its like to be told that Germany needs plumbers.

21. good, now get bill mitchell on the show to finish the job

22. correct timely and realistic.

23. finally. took you goddamn long enough!

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