New Internationalist – September 2019

THE DEBATE

policies. You say that the European Par-

liament’s power is limited by the com-

bined power of the Council and the

Commission ‘which represent the inter-

ests of heads of states and the European

bureaucracy’. It follows then that a radical

UK Labour government that adopted an

‘in and against’ strategy could provide an

anti-austerity opposition in the European

Council, making alliances with other

progressive governments and encourag-

ing presently beleaguered Left parties

across Europe. 

Moreover, without implying that the

European Parliament is genuinely dem-

ocratic, it does have sufficient powers

of scrutiny over EU treaties – indeed

more powers than national parliaments.

For example, anti-TTIP MEPs success-

fully insisted on seeing the documents

prepared for the TTIP negotiations and

leaking their contents to civil society.

You’re right that France was indeed

important, but it was more acting in

defence of small farmers and consumers

against US agribusiness than in defence

of the Common Agricultural Policy. If the

campaign hadn’t exploited every contra-

diction in the EU then TTIP would now

be in place and chlorinated chicken and

hormone-treated beef would become the

affordable food options for the majority.

GR ACE: Today’s Europe – sandwiched

between a hegemonic US and rising

China – is, if anything, more focused

on the interests of capital than before

the 2008 financial crisis. The most sig-

nificant economic debate in Europe at

the moment is whether the traditional

focus on competitive markets should be

sacrificed in order to facilitate the emer-

gence of European monopolies that can

compete with Chinese state-backed

enterprises. The stand-off between the

German, French and Danish leaders in

the wake of the merger of Siemens and

Alstom, blocked by the European Com-

mission, is an expression of two compet-

ing visions of Europe’s future: laissez-faire

or monopoly capitalism.

In the absence of democratic Euro-

pean institutions even the most power-

ful pan-European socialist movement

imaginable (itself vanishingly unlikely to

emerge at the current conjuncture, as the

experience of Diem25 in the 2019 Euro-

pean elections so depressingly demon-

strated) would find itself either ruthlessly

suppressed or strategically ignored (prob-

ably both) if it mounted a real challenge

to the established order at this moment

of existential crisis for European capital. 

The only way forward for internation-

alist socialists is to build new institutions

that extend solidarity between socialist

movements throughout the continent

and the world – outside of the oppressive

and exploitative remit of the World Bank,

IMF and European Union. O

YOUR VIEWS ON: IS PACIFISM APPROPRIATE FOR

TODAY’S WORLD?

Our readers respond to the debate in the last issue (NI 520).

Submissions have been edited for concision.

The ability to choose nonviolence is a luxury for those who have not experienced the

fact of being occupied or attacked by a violent power. It was Angola and Cuba’s valiant

military defeat of South Africa in the 1980s, particularly at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale,

that marked the beginning of the end of apartheid. Violence, deployed in self-defence,

showed Africa that the whites were not invincible. Therefore, Rahila Gupta is right to

give her ‘full-blooded support’ to the Kurds. But Tim Gee is also right to point out that

new governments can ‘continue with the violence through which they came to power’.

To understand this problem we need to think not of violence and pacifism, but the state

itself – that central institution, with its ‘monopoly on legitimate violence’ that organizes

all societies. Can we imagine such a thing as a nonviolent state?

JOHN, NEWCASTLE, UK

WHAT

DO YOU

THINK?

TELL US HERE:

[email protected]

We will print a selection of

your views in the next issue.

4646 NEW INTERNATIONALIST