Try as I might, I cannot recognise much of Europe in Dennis's description. At best it corresponds to a European social democracy of thirty years ago (which, may it be said, was not a pro-working class political establishment, but a statist-capitalist one).
Dennis seems to avoid the precipitate fall in union membership in the eighties and early nineties in Europe, its long-term decline in union density, and the political collapse of the working class left. From the US it might appear as if Europe had swung to the left considering the elections of Schroeder, Blair and Jospin. But for the most part these middle class elites came to power on the basis of the dismantling of the left in Europe. Most obviously, the conditions of European unification are decidedly not welfarist, but market-driven. It was the elite consensus around reduction in state-spending and deficits, as well as the liberalisation of markets that made the current round of unification possible.
In message <Pine.GSU.4.21.0108150224430.1894-100000 at garcia.efn.org>,
Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond at efn.org> writes
>I don't trust the Eurocrats any further than I could throw them. I *do*
>trust the collective power of Europe's working-class to not only resist
>neoliberalism, but to go on the offensive and start building the very
>first institutions of multinational socialism in human history. Here's a
>laundry list of Cool Things The EU Already Has, Which Bananamerica Is
>Centuries Away From Acquiring:
>
>1. electoral systems which -- gasp! -- actually count ballots
>2. proportional representation in parliaments
>3. tons of social protection
>4. the shortest workweek and longest vacations of any other
>metropolitan zone
>5. feisty, militant unions
>6. intelligent policies on R&D, renewable energy, the environment
>7. the world's biggest public bank, which invests piles of cash in poorer
>countries without stuffing IMF austerity packages down their throats
>
>Of course, in the old days, the Bananamericans would argue that their
>culture/technology was just ever so much more innovative than Europe
>and, besides, the Dow Jones was going to 30,000 in no time at all. But
>with Max Payne coming out of Helsinki and STMicro coming out of France and
>Italy, even that feeble excuse has bit the world-historical dust.
>
>-- Dennis
>
>
-- James Heartfield