File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 39


Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 14:56:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Dennis R Redmond <dredmond-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: M-I: Re: Amsterdam Treaty


On Wed, 4 Feb 1998 17428-AT-HHSS.SE wrote:

> 	The national question is very interesting indeed. There are no
> legitimate democratic institutions on a European level today and a
> prerequisite for building such institutions is that the working class
> uses its existing institutions as a power base. Those institutions are
> generally nation-based, and attacked by contemporary capital

What about the European Parliament? It's popularly elected by the people
of Europe, if I'm not mistaken. True, the EP doesn't have a lot of power
yet, but it exists, it's set a precedent, and it's been gaining strength.
The European Commission isn't elected, but its members are selected by
popularly-chosen, democratically-elected Governments. The EU budget has
also redistributed some of the wealth of the richer EU countries to the
poorer, peripheral ones -- no, it's not enough, but it's a good beginning.
Politically, the Greens have been transnational from Day One; other
European-wide groups include the European trade union federation and the
European association of Social Democratic parties. 

More importantly still: Europe today is irrevocably multicultural.
Fifteen percent of Sweden's population are immigrants,
and the other European countries are becoming very multinational very
quickly, too. Appeals to the unity of the traditional, national, mostly
male working-class can be very easily twisted into Le Pen-style
ressentiment against women, foreign cultures and immigrants. Difficult as
it may be to imagine right now, in a viciously reactionary period of
world history, the global Left has to start fighting for transnational
and supranational forms of citizenship, democracy and economic justice,
and there's no better place to start than the terrain of the European
Union.

-- Dennis



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