> Alarm at superstate plan
> Eurosceptics attack Schröder vision of a federal Europe
> John Hooper in Berlin and Patrick Wintour in London
> The Guardian
It's interesting how the discourse of the Euroskeptics has changed so rapidly; it used to be coded in terms of nation-states, i.e. conniving French or power-mad Teutons. Somehow, the content of the nation-state has been cancelled out; the words just don't ring like they used to, and now there's just this aggrieved anguish, the lament for something which is past. I wonder if part of the impetus for neoliberalism -- the part that isn't simple, cruel self-interest, that is -- is an intense fear of this multinational culture bubbling up all around us; a flight back to the archaic verities of the robber barons and corporate overlords, precisely as compensation for the fact that global capital is powerless to stop the rise of the global proletariat it exploits. In the appearance, Adorno would say, lies the social necessity of the total system. Fantasms of control belie the fact that the ground is shaking underneath the world-system's feet. Good news for us moles, at any rate.
-- Dennis