Vol. 80/No. 26 July 18, 2016
NY forum: UK protest vote against EU
changed nothing
The ruling class in the U.K. waged “a great fear campaign” leading up to the June 23 referendum, urging a vote to stay in the European Union. Despite that, a majority, including among working people, voted to leave. The result took the rulers in the U.K. and beyond by surprise, “but that doesn’t mean that the working class won a victory,” Sandler said. “It wasn’t a step toward workers strengthening our organizations and acting in our class interests.”
In fact the outcome of the vote can “reinforce illusions in British finance capital — the idea that there is a ‘we,’ workers and bosses together with common national interests.”
The prospect that the U.K. may leave the EU does further “puncture the illusion that there is a united Europe on the road to becoming a stable, capitalist superpower.” The EU is “28 capitalist nation states that compete with each other,” Sandler said. And the strongest ruling class, in Germany, “uses this arrangement to dominate the weaker capitalist countries, such as Greece, and extract wealth from the hides of workers in them.”
The idea of a “common European state power and currency that could compete with the U.S. was always a fantasy,” he said. From the beginning the EU was stamped by conflict. And the impact of world events on Europe has accelerated its coming apart.
When “the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, Washington and its closest imperialist allies, including London, thought they had won the Cold War.” They “thought they could use military might to impose their will in the Middle East.” They thought they could plunder Russia and Eastern Europe with a free hand through “shock therapy.” The consequence has been ongoing wars, financial crises and instability, including a massive influx of refugees and migrants across Europe.
“A lot of ink has been spent in news columns analyzing the U.K. vote,” Sandler said, but it is “the world — from South Asia, through the Middle East, to the Balkans and Ukraine — that is shaping politics in the U.K. and Europe.”
There were many questions and comments from among the nearly 50 participants. “Why didn’t Greece leave the EU?” asked one, referring to the extreme measures imposed on Athens by Berlin last year in exchange for loans to prevent a financial collapse. “The Greek ruling class was too terrified to leave,” replied Sandler, “but whether in or out, workers still go to the wall.” There have been mass working-class protests in Greece, “but there was no communist leadership. That’s the challenge everywhere.” The United Kingdom is becoming less united, Sandler noted in response to another question. “Scotland’s capitalist leaders say they want to leave the U.K. But that’s not so simple either. They share nuclear military bases, offshore oilfields and financial institutions.”
“Was it correct to take sides on the referendum?” was another question. “Communists oppose the political, military and trade pacts of the rulers, because we oppose their class rule,” Sandler said. “But that doesn’t mean we campaign around them. We campaign to advance the struggles of working people against their state power and system of exploitation.”
In face of capitalism’s depression conditions and wars, Sandler said the challenge for the working class is how we organize to replace the dictatorship of capital. “That’s what the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Leagues are campaigning to discuss with working people.”
Sandler began and ended the forum inviting participants to join in getting Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? broadly into the working class.
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