The Boss Needs You, You Don't Need Him!

Eurofreaks!

Much has been made of the democratic deficit in the European Union (and no doubt there is a battle to be won) yet the right-wing critics usually have little to offer by way of serious reform of the system. This is especially so as many rightists would just like to see the whole project crash and burn. The improvement of the system could only risk prolonging its existence. At best the Right offers to reaffirm liberal ideas of democracy and freedom in the nation-states currently held captive by the European bureaucracy. Naturally it appeals to the small government fetishists of libertarian ilk, as well as the hyper-nationalist herd and populist shepherds like Nigel Farage. It's an easy game to play as the European Union lacks the legitimacy of a liberal democratic nation-state.
 

It's no coincidence that the same people - namely UKIP - who want a referendum on the EU are for the elections for Police Commissioners. The same crowd have been hollering for elected judges, all of which could be of great advantage to smaller parties looking to break in where voter-turnout is light. In such instances, we find that direct democracy is rather convenient for certain figures, those who need a horse to ride to their destination. And yet the majority would prefer a job of such importance to be done well. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the turnout for the election of Police Commissioners was so low. The defects of democracy in such an area of public service are clear to most people. It's only when there is an obvious blockage in the democratic system, as in Europe, that the ideal of democracy can move us to a burning rage. This is why the Eurosceptics need Europe, just as American conservatives need liberals to rail against in the culture wars. Victory would be a defeat.

It is the undemocratic state of affairs in Brussels that the Right can't resolve, as that would mean the end of the basis for their 'scepticism'. The calls for 'democracy' are doubly shallow as the Right has no serious solutions, or even an alternative, to a project which is in fundamental accordance with the neoliberal agenda. The austerity junkies in Brussels are hardly leftists. Yet even as the EU seeks to permanently limit the expenditure of its member-states Cameron vetoed it and still poses as a heroic bulldog to Eurosceptics. It would seem this is really a clash between different concentrations of capital, not the people of European nations. Furthermore, we know that in historical terms the idea that it's wrong to establish a political entity, like a nation-state, without democratic means is groundless. The European Union has developed into a powerful and effective structure precisely because it has no electorate as such. There is no 'European people' in the same way that there is an American people. The EU couldn't have gotten this far without its democratic deficit.
 

Consider the wedge-issue of immigration with regard to the European project. Immigration is meant to be the disruption of our cohesive and well ordered society, through its corrosive impact on civil society by way of its 'otherness', its dependency culture, abuse of our public services and advantage-taking of Western privilege. Common claims like "They're taking the jobs!" and "They're all on benefits!" stand together arm-in-arm in ignorance without bliss. At least these complaints of many working-class people about immigration have an economic basis (a more about that later) which we can't say about the culturalist whining of conservatives. The Eurosceptic rightist tend to foam at the mouth over the apparent loss of British sovereignty, for we can only limit non-European immigration. It's at this point that the Right loses sight of the Muslim 'problem' to gawp at the hordes of Slavs unleashed by the death of Communism. This is the doomed battle of anti-immigrant populists, just like the battle for democracy it cannot be won.

If immigration were actually blocked ff forever then the rightists would have lost in their own victory. Limitations on immigration can't possibly satisfy the demands placed on them: firstly, because the migrant serves a structural need within capitalism for fresh labour to squeeze dry; secondly, migrants can become a point of division insofar as they form a labour reserve army to be deployed to hold down the wages of the working-class. For these reasons immigration can only be impeded temporarily out of a cheap electoral opportunism.  The increased scarcity of labour in Britain would hasten the need for such unpopular measures as higher taxes to support the growing number of retirees. Of course, a cheap way out of this would be to pull the rug out from under the pensioners and privatise the whole pension system. All the while the lack of a readily available reserve army of labour would deprive the system of a means to hold down wages for an ever dwindling workforce.

The real answer of an extensive unionisation across borders to accomodate free-moving labour is out of the question for the Right. Even though that would mean higher wages for 'native' and 'foreign' workers alike. The same can be said of the possibility of repairing the damage of the brutal transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe. The contradiction between the economic need for immigration and the widespread opposition to the unconstrained flow of labour across borders can't be resolved by the mainstream parties. So it is the stomping ground of demagogues looking to ride a wave of racism into public office.

Working-Class Heroism.

The trade union model has long tended towards reformism in its place within the capitalist system as a dependent. The union depends for its existence on the business class in it's role as the private owner of the means of production. Typically trade unions are content with the protection and promotion of working conditions, pensions, pay and so on. The labour movement on it's own is not an agent of revolutionary change for the simple reason it has a vested interest in the system. The labour movement is unlikely to overthrow the system or even try to take over the managerial duties to rearrange the workplace in a democratic form for workers’ control. The unions may even tend to dampen down radical currents by winning concessions from the capitalists. The great victories of the 20th Century came about partly as a way of "buying-off" socialism. The system has to survive for trade unions to remain necessary for empowerment of the working-class within its chains.

The preference is for a social democratic capitalism complete with strong welfare state institutions over the laissez-faire alternative of unfettered markets. In the 1980s right-wing administrations in the US and Britain staged a series of ram-raid attacks on the labour movement and the industries they sought to defend. The reactionaries succeeded in defeating the major unions and wiped out domestic industries such as cars and coal. The neoliberal turn has virtually destroyed the culture of solidarity in the working-class. In the aftermath the only union strongholds serve as defenders of the privileges of an almost ‘aristocratic’ layer in the working-class - what Žižek calls the ‘salaried bourgeoisie’. In Britain this recently took the form of defending the pensions of doctors and other public sector workers. This in turn creates the division between people who have no security because of the devastation of the last 30 years and the people who have managed to hold onto a raft. It’s the old division between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ poor.

The tube unions are the last bastion of working-class power left in this country and this is precisely the reason that the forces of reaction are out to destroy them. The widespread perception is that the tube unions are simply out to protect their privileges, which the rest of the working-class goes without. This is part of the death of the culture of solidarity and the devastation that the working-class has endured. But it isn't totally untrue of the tube workers. The strikes aren't, at the immediate level, about the preservation of the welfare state let alone any socialist dreams of overthrowing capitalism. The rest of the working-class can see this and are willing to support right-wing politicians to blow Bob Crow out of the water for the inconvenience he has caused them. Of course, this is a part of the very process of neoliberalisation which pits the working-class against itself in its bid to eviscerate the cultural solidarity. We are reduced to resentful individuals in this way, distant from one another and looking out for who's getting a better deal than us.

No longer is the trade union simply an instrument of workers’ power even as it was in the days when Arthur Scargill fought valiantly against Thatcher’s policy of mass-unemployment and deindustrialisation. It might seem that the working-class movement is totally finished because it has been de-industrialised and, at this point, unions have been reduced to xenophobic suspicions of anymore ‘foreign rivals’ coming over here. This isn’t to say that the deindustrialisation of the North was fine and that we should oppose the efforts of the fragments leftover of organised labour. Rather it should demonstrate the urgent need to reconstruct the working-class movement in a much more radical form. It's fine to propose unionisation of workers on a European scale. It would be wrong to confine the prospects of unionisation not just to the nation-state but to the traditional industries that have been wiped out. The unionisation of the indebted could serve as the means to undermine the power of the financial institutions.

Take a look at some of the stats. The household debt in Britain is set to rise from £1,560 billion to £2,126 billion in this time of austerity. I would assume there is something similar going on with household debts around the world given the attempts of government to patch up the system as it is. Household debt in the US was at 115% in 2011 down from 135% in 2008, the dip is probably the result of the crisis. In the years of the bubble, 2000 to 2007, households doubled their debt to almost $14 trillion while personal consumption shot up by 44% from $7 trillion to nearly $10 trillion. Over a period of 5 years American households ringed $2.3 trillion of home equity loans and cash-out refinancing from their homes. That's an injection of nearly $500 billion into the economy every year. So you can see why Obama's so-called "stimulus package" was a cop-out, $787 billion for 2 years doesn't cut it! Especially when it's left to the sort of self-glorified bureaucrats who would rather cut than spend.

There is actually an opportunity in this. It might seem that the working-class movement is finished because it has been de-industrialised and, at this point, unions have been reduced to xenophobic suspicions of anymore foreign rivals coming over here. That extends to the opposition of trade unions to European integration, these are supposed to be organisations that are internationalist. It's fine to propose unionisation of workers on a European scale. We're wrong to confine the prospects of unionisation to traditional industries that have been wiped out. The formation of debtors into unions on a cross-continent scale could potentially give the working-class a way to yank at the banks. A straight refusal by the majority of people with debts to make the payments unless the rates of interest are cut could work. It could also be a way to wipe away household debt altogether. This isn't to say that the capitalist system could not incorporate this into it, it could do easily, but it is a starting point in accordance with conditions which are radically different to the 20th Century.