Doug wrote:
> I wouldn't if he didn't hammer away constantly about how American leftists just
>don't get how terrible things
>
> are in Germany. I'm just asking him to return the favor.
But you forget I was responding to an article that really *did* paint the EU, and Germany in particular (!), as a workers paradise, with "strong" trade unions. And this at a time when the media is full of notices about the erosion of trade union membership in Germany!
People like Geoghegan mistake unions engaged in social partnership with "strong" unions. Just because union members sit on the board of corporations, that doesn't mean industrial policy is decided for the benefit of the working class. In fact, serious leftists over here usually argue the opposite.
And the only person on this list who has come under consistent criticism from me is Dennis, because he is so completely arbitrary in his pollyannaism. Just a year and a half ago he was singing the praises of the "progressive" EU. Then, German became the voice of fiscal austerity, not just in Europe, but worldwide, against the Obama administration (!), at which point it would have been too absurd to maintain that charade. So Dennis just quietly stopped referring to the EU, and switched songs to the BRIC countries. Sorry, that's not serious.
Wojtek, on the other hand, is a special case. His idealization of the EU also seems bound up with a patrician conservative culturalist contempt for American in general. It's not just a case of social policy with him, but a more general case of showing off social distinction by carping about what idiots Americans are.
Sorry, but I agree with Jim Heartfield on American culture. And the daily newspaper Junge Welt, very communist and anti-imperialist, hardly can be accused of pro-Americanism, said very astutely with regard to American literature: "Germany does not have any Thomas Pynchons or Don DeLillos. At best, we have a few Nick Hornbys."