THE crisis of the European Union’s attempts to overcome the contradictions of European capitalism has landed the Tory Party into the gravest crisis of its history.
In an attempt to prevent more defections to UKIP and avoid a humiliating defeat in the forthcoming Rochester and Strood by-election which could cost him his job, Cameron has unleashed venomous attacks on the EU, and in so doing has pushed his leadership and his party right to the edge of the precipice.
The immediate cause of Cameron’s woes is the demand from the EU that Britain cough up an extra £1.7 billion in contributions to the EU budget.
This extra cash is being demanded following new calculations by the EU on how much member states have to pay – the amount being determined by a nation’s national income.
This surcharge is based on revised figures which for the first time included income from the so-called ‘black economy’. This section of the economy is basically the income derived from prostitution and drug dealing.
In an effort to prove that all the austerity cuts are working and that British capitalism is recovering, the government have included these figures – and now they are howling because the EU actually believes them.
Despite the outpourings of anger from Cameron, this is not a bolt out of the blue – Cameron knew full well how the calculations are made, the British government signed up to the agreement under which this surcharge is being made.
What angers him is that he hoped it would not come out until after the by-election. Italy, Greece and even Cyprus – the most bankrupt nations in the Eurozone – are also being forced to find hundreds of millions more.
These states are the victims of attempts by governments to cover up the extent of their bankruptcy by selling off government bonds to speculators, enabling them to claim economic recovery.
Meanwhile, the nations that will actually get a reduction in the amount they have to pay because their income has drastically declined include Germany and France.
This extra cash demand is just one more example of how the entire EU ‘project’ is breaking up, as the various nation states are forced to drop the facade of European co-operation and integration and are revealed to be hopelessly split, divided and at war with one another.
The impact of the world crisis has smashed up the dream that the EU capitalists could peacefully reconcile their contradictions and found a contradiction-free capitalist united Europe.
The history of Europe in the 20th century was dominated by military attempts to create a unified capitalist Europe. Two world wars were fought to attempt economic unification by blood and iron – the EU was an attempt to achieve unification peacefully.
However, while capitalism at its highest, and final stage of development has highly integrated the world’s productive forces, the contradictions inherent in capitalism itself are exploding, leading to a world crisis that is blowing the tendency to integrate to hell and back, with new wars of mass destruction and civil wars.
We are seeing the pipe-dream of a united, peaceful, capitalist Europe being shattered as the capitalist class retreats back to its nation states to wage war against its own workers and war against its capitalist rivals – each one determined that in the economic Armageddon they alone will survive.
Writing in 1929 Leon Trotsky spelt out that the productive forces had outgrown the framework of the nation state and now can only be conceived on a world scale. Therefore he insisted ‘the Socialist United States of Europe represents the historical slogan which is a stage on the road to the world socialist federation’. (Trotsky: Disarmament and the United States of Europe).
This must be the demand of the working class today: Down with the capitalist EU – Forward to the Socialist United States of Europe!
In Britain this means building the WRP and the YS to lead the struggle to bring down the Tory-led coalition and bring in a workers government and socialism as a step to the Socialist United States of Europe, and the World Socialist Federation.
