[D66] Left of Europe | Harper's Magazine

[A.OUT]

[Discussion] Left of Europe, by Ashley Smith : Harper's Magazine
By
Ashley Smith
harpers.org
9 min
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>From an interview with Neil Davidson published in the Summer 2019 issue
of New Politics. Davidson teaches at the University of Glasgow. His most
recent book, We Cannot Escape History, was published by Haymarket Books
in 2015. The European Union has given the United Kingdom until October
31 to reach a Brexit agreement in Parliament.

“the european union is an imperial power”

ashley smith: A lot of people, even on the left, think the European
Union is progressive. What was it created to do?

neil davidson: The E.U. has developed over many decades since the end of
World War II. It was set up for four reasons: First, France wanted to
avoid another war with Germany—to establish rules that would separate
economic competition from geopolitical and military competition. Second,
the United States wanted the E.U. established as a political and
economic complement to the NATO military alliance. It was part of
Washington’s Cold War imperial project. Third, the E.U. was designed to
avoid protectionism within Europe. So, from the very beginning, free
trade and globalization were immanent dynamics within the E.U. And
fourth, the E.U. took shape during the postwar boom—the greatest boom in
capitalist history—when capital needed outlets for investment beyond the
boundaries of individual states, at a time when decolonization meant
that this was no longer possible across the Global South in the way it
had been before 1945. The E.U. provided a mechanism for that to take
place within Western Europe itself.

Given the illusions many on the left have about the E.U., it’s ironic
that its structure corresponds quite closely to the model of “interstate
federalism” devised by the economist Friedrich A. Hayek in 1939. Hayek,
in many ways the intellectual forerunner of neoliberalism, proposed that
economic activity in a federal Europe should be governed by a set of
nonnegotiable rules presided over by a group of unelected bureaucrats,
without any elected members of government and irrational voters getting
in the way. That’s how the E.U. is structured. Its least democratic
institutions—such as the European Commission, the European Council, the
European Global Central Bank, and the European Court of Justice—have the
most power, while those that are at least nomi­nally democratic—like the
European Parliament—have the least. It’s a totally undemocratic
institution. It’s more undemocratic than any of the nation-states that
compose it, including Britain. It was designed to prevent social
democrats from infringing on the logic of capital in Europe.

After the end of the Cold War, the E.U. established a highly unequal set
of relations between member states. Germany stands at the top, with
France, Britain, and Italy below it and in that order. These states
dominate the weaker ones like Greece, Portugal, and all those in Eastern
Europe. The global economic crisis exposed these structural
inequalities. Germany imposed austerity measures on weaker states,
throwing countries such as Greece into depressions.

The E.U. is also a deeply racist formation. Just look at how it bars
refugees from entry, leaving them to drown by the thousands in the
Mediterranean. And in many ways, especially in its economic relationship
with the Global South, it is an imperialist power in its own right—a
capitalist institution that’s neither democratic nor progressive.

capitalists vs. state capital

a.s.: What has been the majority viewpoint among the British capitalist
class on membership in the E.U.?

n.d.: British capitalists on the whole have always been in favor of the
E.U. They saw it as a replacement for their colonies, which they had
used as key sites for investment. After they lost them, they turned to
the E.U. as a new site for investment and trade. British capital remains
in favor of remaining in the E.U.

a.s.: Why then did the Tory Party, the traditional party of capital in
Britain, opt for Brexit?

n.d.: The Tory Party is not acting in the interests of British capital
in pushing through Brexit. This dereliction of its duty is the result of
how ruling-class parties have evolved in the neoliberal era.

Usually capitalist parties at least try to run states in the interests
of capital as a whole. They are supposed to come up with a program not
in the interests of this or that section of capital. As Adam Smith
argues in The Wealth of Nations, at the very dawn of the system,
capitalist parties and not capitalists should run the state, because
individual capitalists tend to pursue their own selfish interests. They
don’t think about capital’s collective interests.

That’s why, as Marx and many others argued, capitalist classes, their
parties, and their states tend to be semiautonomous. This changed under
neoliberalism in Britain. During former prime minister Margaret
Thatcher’s reign, in the 1980s, the Tory Party and a particular section
of capital—financial capital—became ever closer, and that began to
distort the capacity of the party to represent British capital as a whole.

a.s.: So what are the dynamics behind the push for a new vote on Brexit?
What are the class and social forces behind it?

n.d.: The main backers of Remain and a new vote on Brexit are the big
capitalists, the professional middle class, and sections of the
well-paid working class. Each has different visions of the E.U. The
bourgeoisie wants to stay in the E.U. or secure a soft Brexit for their
class interests and neoliberal project. They have drawn behind them
sections of middle- and working-class people who have illusions of the
E.U. as a progressive and anti­racist institution.

Opinion on the left is divided about a new referendum on whether to stay
in the E.U. Most people on the radical left think this would be
disastrous. It would simply consolidate divisions and open the whole
situation to charges from the right of betrayal of the original vote.
The left liberal press, like the Guardian, support a new vote and claim
that there’s a majority for Remain. That may be true, but if there is,
it is only a small majority. If another referendum manages only a narrow
reversal, it would be catastrophic. It would not resolve anything and
would only deepen the polarization and harden it on each side.

“neoliberalism is played out”

a.s.: How will the fight over Brexit affect the E.U.?

n.d.: The E.U. is of two minds on Brexit. On the one hand, it wants to
punish the British to sufficiently scare anyone else away from making an
exit of their own. And it is succeeding in this; even right-wing
governments and parties, who are mainly opposed to migrants, have
dropped plans for leaving because they do not want to suffer Britain’s
fate. On the other hand, the E.U. doesn’t want to be so punitive as to
force a hard, no-deal Brexit that would affect its economies. So it is
trying to get Britain to accept a “Norway Plus” deal. It would prefer
this result because a no-deal Brexit would cause all sorts of problems,
particularly in France, where customs would hold up trucks trying to
make deliveries in and out of Britain.

Ironically, the E.U. might miss Britain, which it used to enact
right-wing neoliberal policies, particularly during the 1980s. Thatcher
would make hard neoliberal demands, the E.U. would concede to her,
implement the policies, and then turn around and blame Britain for them.
But this was all a smoke screen. In reality, of course, the E.U. wanted
these policies all along and used Britain as a Trojan horse to get them
implemented.

a.s.: What does all this mean for the neoliberal program of free-trade
globalization?

n.d.: Brexit is a sign that neoliberalism is weakening or possibly
coming to an end, not just in Europe but around the world. Protectionism
is beginning to revive. Some of this is just rhetorical, but the
conflict between the United States and China is a harbinger of things to
come.

I think we are probably in a transition to a new phase of capitalism.
This transition is going to last a long time. Think about the crisis of
1929. It took until after World War II for state capitalism and embedded
social democracy to emerge out of the Great Depression. Or think about
the transition to neoliberalism itself. The ruling class first
articulated this strategy in the late 1970s, but it took a decade or two
for it to be consolidated throughout the world system. So it will take
some time for a new strategy to replace neoliberalism.

I’m not sure what that new regime of accumulation will be, nor am I
clear what range of options capitalism has now. We won’t know the real
form of its replacement for a decade or two. At the moment, you’re
seeing the ruling classes reviving old strategies from the 1930s, like
tariffs.

The process of globalization, which began in 1945 and eventually led to
neoliberalism, is now in retreat into regional blocs. The E.U. is one.
China is trying to form another. The patterns are just beginning to emerge.

We also may see a movement toward protectionism by the economically less
developed states in Europe. They may try to do this without leaving the
E.U. through things like nationalization, which can be done at least
temporarily. If they try to go further, they will face strong resistance
from the top-­tier powers such as Germany and France.

But this is all speculative. The main point is that Brexit is a signal
that neoliberalism is played out as a strategy of accumulation.
Capitalists and their states will have to come up with an alternative in
the coming years.

“it’s not going to happen like 1917 in russia”

a.s.: The radical left seems to have been divided, confused, and unable
to affect the crisis over Brexit. Are there any signs of this changing?

n.d.: British politics is highly contradictory right now. On the one
hand, there is the unending crisis around Brexit, which, frankly, the
radical left has yet to figure out how to intervene in with any degree
of coherence and influence. On the other hand, there are signs of hope,
especially the Extinction Rebellion, a climate-change protest that
closed down the centers of London and Edinburgh for days, with hundreds
of young people arrested.

This action has come on the heels of massive protests and school strikes
against climate change. These have been some of the biggest since the
antiwar protests in the 2000s. But they are different. Young people,
largely from outside the traditional parties and organizations of the
left, are initiating these demonstrations. That indicates that we’re
coming to an end of a particular way of building revolutionary
organization and its relationship with social and labor movements. We’ve
­tested that method for half a century but have not managed to succeed.
It’s clear that we have to do something different, because it’s not
going to happen like 1917 in Russia.

The most interesting thing today is how these new movements are adopting
working-class methods of struggle. Just look at how climate activists,
the International Women’s Strike, and immigrants’-rights groups have all
turned to striking as the way to advance their demands. Working-class
methods of organizing are developing within the movement but not as a
result of initiatives from the unions or left organizations. It’s coming
up organically. People are realizing that if you want to have an impact
you have to shut down institutions.