[WS:] My area of academic interest is social policy so I will pretty much stick to this. The scholarly studies that I read argue quite persuasively that the European social policy - which benefited the general population including the working class to a greater degree than elsewhere (including Eastern Europe) - was achieved pretty much because the state had power to implement policies in relative independence from special interest groups.
In fact, the argument goes, these policies were implemented to protect capitalism from the excessed of capitalists. Albeit the organized labor influence on these policies was also quite strong, it was not decisive.
So if these arguments are correct - and I have no reason to believe they are not - they lead to a logical conclusion that the state, which by no means is the enemy of capital, can nonetheless implement policies that benefit general population. Furthermore, the more the state is removed from direct influence of individual capitalists (as for example it is the case in the US) the more likely it is to pursue policies that "save capitalism from the excesses of capitalists" and benefit the general population. This is the basis of my belief that EU stricture can both save capitalism and benefit the working class at the same time.
This is, of course, does not imply that interests of capitalists and the working class converge - au contraire, they are opposite. However, contrary to the opinions popular on the left, the interests of the state do not necessarily converge with those of the capital. The state is primarily interested in maintaining its own power, and in doing so it must balance different, often conflicting interests. As the British writer Thomas Hardy aptly noted, you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. Any government that wants to stay in power cannot rely on brute force alone - it must provide something to citizens. How much it provides depends of course on the balance of power, but even in authoritarian societies it must give enough to appease a significant portion of the citizenry.
So for these reasons I believe that EU is a better bet for the working class than any other alternatives (including the US and the x-USSR) - just as its predecessors - national governments - were. And if it seems to be doing less for the working class than we would like to see, it is because of the dramatic global power shift toward the capital that took place during the past three decades. If you want to see what that power shift produced in countries that lack the state protections as continental Europe does - welcome to the United States.
To sum it up, the problems that you are complaining about result from the vastly enhanced power of global capital, not because of the European governance structure. In fact, jettisoning the latter is jettisoning the only life boat currently available to the working class against the capital.
You may, of course, disagree with my assumptions and reject these conclusions, but by doing so you would fail to learn from your own (i.e. European) history.
Wojtek
On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Wendy Lyon <wendy.lyon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 February 2011 17:53, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [WS:] But that is an entirely different argument. I do not think that
> > anyone here was claiming that everything id peachy in the EU, and
> certainly
> > not me. But arguing that things in EU are not as good as they should or
> > could have been does not lead to the conclusion that EU is a problem and
> > should be eliminated.
>
> I have no problem, and neither would most of the anti-EU left, with
> reframing the argument to say that the EU should be completely
> overhauled so that it actually serves the interests of working people.
> Of course, that's as likely to happen as it being eliminated -
> probably less likely in fact. The reason we keep getting in this
> argument is because people here, mostly people who are not based in
> Europe, keep insisting that it actually *does* serve those interests
> or at least it mostly does, and to the extent that it doesn't those
> are either only minor concerns or ones that could be addressed by
> minor reforms. When in fact they're fundamental to the EU's very
> existence, and it's the benefits to the worker that are incidental.
>
> Of course this isn't the same thing as arguing that the EU is the
> whole problem and if it just collapsed everything would be fine. But
> the fact that Europe is essentially controlled by an economic (and
> increasingly political and military) union which is dedicated to
> advancing the interests of capital *is* an obstacle to achieving the
> interests of the working class. How could it not be?
>
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