THE mass of the working class and the majority of the middle class must vote to ‘Leave’ the EU today to strike a body blow at the plan to create a European imperialist superstate capable of making war on the working class at home and making war on Russia and China.
Bourgeois democracy and the EU are opposites. This is what was confirmed to demonstrators last Saturday when they sought to bring a convoy of aid through Dover port to the refugees in Calais. Their path was blocked by the British police acting for the French ‘socialist’ government who refused to allow them to pass.
So much for the ‘freedom of movement’! Like everything else about the EU it is a fraud. The French ‘socialist’ government is too busy using its CRS bully-boys to batter trade unionists all over France to allow any ‘freedom of movement’ in support of refugees!
However, the position of the Trotskyist movement on some super-imperialist united Europe that would be able to stand up to the US and attack Russia is very long-standing. In his book ‘The Third International After Lenin’, Trotsky writes, ‘A more or less complete economic unification of Europe accomplished from above through an agreement between capitalist governments is a utopia. Along this road matters cannot proceed beyond partial compromises and half measures.’
As the British bourgeoisie pines for the loss of empire and seeks to release itself from under the heel of German capitalism just how far-sighted and correct Trotsky was and is is there for all to see. He added: ‘But this alone, an economic unification of Europe, such as would entail colossal advantages both to the producer and the consumer and to the development of culture in general, is becoming a revolutionary task of the European proletariat against imperialist protectionism and its instrument – militarism.’
He added further: ‘The United States of Europe represents first of all a form – the only conceivable form – of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Europe.’ The reality is that, after the re-unification of Germany, the Common Market rapidly turned into the project for a European capitalist state as the bosses and bankers of Europe developed an appetite for driving eastwards, destroying Yugoslavia in the process.
The essence of this would-be super-imperialism was further emphasised when Cameron and Sarkozy, to the applause of the thousands of assembled Islamists, in 2012 hailed the ‘liberation of Libya’ from the just-murdered Gadaffi as their deed – boasting that they had liberated the country that is now a living hell.
From there, the EU sent its leaders to Maidan Square in the Ukraine to address thousands of neo-fascists as the EU organised a coup to overthrow the Yanukovych regime and incorporate the Ukraine into a greater EU, ever expanding eastwards.
The fact that this imperialist plot did not succeed testifies to the revolutionary determination of the Ukrainian peoples.
The French and UK imperialists also hit a brick wall in Syria but are still plotting to overthrow Assad. This is the murderous foreign policy of the EU which is still being developed in its war on refugees. Its home policy has been, since the 2008 crash, to beat, beat and beat again the working class of the eurozone, the Greek, Irish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German workers, all for the benefit of the EU bankers. This devastation is ongoing.
It has however been matched by the austerity measures of the Tories who have worked to create a nation of paupers. Smashing the power of the would-be super-imperialist EU, at war with the workers at home as well as with the working class of the world, will be an act of liberation, and indeed a continuation of the great work of the October 1917 revolution, whose centenary takes place next year.
We must begin these centenary celebrations a little early, in fact today, by voting en masse to ‘Leave’ the EU, and after that by marching forward to bring down the Cameron government and bring in a workers government and socialism. This will organise alongside the workers of Europe to bring down the EU and replace it with the Socialist United States of Europe.
