Brexit: a diversion from the revolution

French workers strike against EU labor law

Marxist economist Michael Roberts has commented on what is at stake in the British referendum on membership of the EU; nothing, compared to the damage to the EU that the coming global crash will cause. That’s a dose of Marxist realism.

Greek fake Marxist Yanis Veroufakis wants Britain to stay and save EU imperialism from itself! He is only the latest of a left social democratic tradition supporting ‘social Europe’- the figleaf covering German imperialism.

One of Veroufakis’ mates who blogs at The Automatic Earth disagrees and says voting for Brexit is the way out for all states as the EU breaks up. This he says is a symptom of the global economic crisis. But he does not explain falling profits as the ultimate cause of this crisis and why workers should take sides and vote for the profits of one or other imperialist power.

The EU is certainly breaking up as a result of the structural crisis of imperialism. The EU was the project of the US to unite Europe under its hegemony. But this was always a futile plan. German imperialism is screwing the Southern periphery of the PIIGS and the other larger imperialist members like Britain and France pushing them towards the exit.

Germany as the dominant imperialist power has emerged at the expense of both the peripheral semi-colonies such as Greece and Ireland, and the declining imperialist powers, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Increasingly their ruling classes are poised to exit to escape the death grip of German imperialism.

Whether the British bosses (or the bosses of France, Italy, Spain or Portugal etc) exit the EU, it makes no difference to the working class. Workers have no class interest in voting for one or other fractions of their imperialist bourgeoisies.

Backing one fraction of the national bourgeoisie as ‘progressive’ diverts the working class from taking independent action against their own imperialism. It also diverts it from supporting the struggles of workers in the semi-colonies to break away from the EU.

European workers must unite across borders to struggle against the attacks of workers by all the imperialist powers. Workers must oppose the ruling class enemy at home, and mobilise to defend the struggles of the semi-colonies to break with imperialism.

For a United Socialist States of Europe!

Yanis Varoufakis, fake Marxist saving European capitalism

 

In several articles and an interview Varoufakis claims to be an erratic Marxist. Michael Roberts comments that Varoufakis is more about burying Marx and keeping Keynes alive. Unlike Piketty, Varoufakis at least has read Marx even if he got stuck on the maths in Capital Volume 2.  He cannot forgive Marx’s basic errors that led to dogmatism and authoritarianism. He was “dogmatic” and produced a “closed system” based on his exposition of capitalism on his Volume 2 ‘reproduction schemas’. Keynes, however, was genius because...

“It was this determination to “have the ‘complete’, ‘closed’ story, or model, the ‘final word’, is something I cannot forgive Marx for. It proved, after all, responsible for a great deal of error and, more significantly, of authoritarianism. Errors and authoritarianism that are largely responsible for the Left’s current impotence as a force of good and as a check on the abuses of reason and liberty that the neoliberal crew are overseeing today.”

Robert’s continues: “This erratic Marxist, now negotiating with the neo-liberal Euro leaders aims “to save European capitalism from itself” so as to “minimise the unnecessary human toll from this crisis; the countless lives whose prospects will be further crushed without any benefit whatsoever for the future generations of Europeans.” Apparently socialism cannot do this. YV says “we are just not ready to plug the chasm that a collapsing European capitalism will open up with a functioning socialist system”.

“Instead, according to YV, “a Marxist analysis of both European capitalism and of the Left’s current condition compels us to work towards a broad coalition, even with right-wingers, the purpose of which ought to be the resolution of the Eurozone crisis and the stabilisation of the European Union… Ironically, those of us who loathe the Eurozone have a moral obligation to save it!” Thus YV has campaigned for his Modest Proposal for Europe with “the likes of Bloomberg and New York Times journalists, of Tory members of Parliament, of financiers who are concerned with Europe’s parlous state.”

Let’s see what the Greek people think of this attempt to “save European capitalism from itself.”