Well, I suppose there are some who still consider North Korea or Cuba a workers' paradise, but the role that they play in the European left is marginal at best. Here, even calling them "marginal" would be generous. The point anyway is that the left argument against the EU is not rooted in any illusions about the ideal nature of pre-existing state structures, but that the EU (in both its design and its operation) is not an acceptable alternative and furthermore, is an obstacle to the achievement of an acceptable alternative.
> [WS:] It has been tried before, and the results were even less
> satisfactory. So far, European style social democracy has been head and
> shoulders above any other real alternative as far as interests of the
> working class is concerned. I used to live in a "workers' state" - it was
> not as bad as bourgeois propaganda claims, but I would not trade it for
> European social democracy, or even plain EU.
>...
> [WS:] That sounds pretty fatalistic for someone who advocates building an
> alternative to the existing state structures. If I took my car to a garage
> and the mechanic told me that he could not fix it but he could build me a
> new car, I would look for a different garage.
To me, it sounds fatalistic to accept that you have to make do with a lemon just because so far you haven't been able to build the car you want.
As to the wonders of European social democracy. Here is a real life case that I have been dealing with at work for the past half an hour. A woman who had to leave work due to chronic pain but was denied invalidity benefit because the Department of Social Welfare didn't think she was disabled enough. She filed her appeal in December 2009, yes 2009. She's still waiting for an oral hearing and is not likely to get one for another two months or so because they're currently hearing appeals from October 2009. She's been living off her social insurance stamps but these have now run out and she is living on €2.40 a week. And her case is not actually that extreme, I see a lot of these. Many more so since the austerity measures demanded by Europe have begun to take effect. Now maybe it is €2.40 more than she'd be getting in the US, but come on. We're aiming higher than that.