Not like the rest at all ?

[aeolium]

I think I would agree with what I think aeolium was saying recently (can't remember where). The response to what you say is likely to be, So what? What are you going to do about it (or rather, what can be done about it?). Pointing out where the fault lines are (and many of us who don't 'see' what you see would not disagree with you on that) doesn't go very far in improving anything. In the meantime, is the basis of the EU so flawed that you want to see it discontinued or just, like UKIP, that we should get out of it?

I think pointing out where the fault lines are, as a number of people have been doing in recent years, is a necessary first step to getting some kind of reform or change of course. Getting those in power to agree about the nature of the fault lines is another and much harder second step, but again it's hard to see how reform can be achieved without this.

For myself I feel (in hindsight for I did not see it at the time) that the wrong turning in the EU - or formerly EEC/EC - was with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 which set the member states on a course towards monetary union as a preliminary step towards political union. Up until that time, the EC had been successful in helping to preserve peace in Europe, setting standards in equality and human rights as well as employment protection, and helping redistribution of wealth from the richer member states to the poorer so that countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece all saw significant improvements in living standards - and, for three of those countries, the embedding of democratic rule after recent periods of military dictatorship. So perhaps 1991, with the recent liberation of Eastern European countries from effective Soviet or proxy-Soviet domination, was a high point of the European Community.

But Maastricht changed that. Not only did it set the course for highly risky creation of a currency union between economically unequal member states with no fiscal union to allow bailouts of countries in economic crisis, but it was clear that this was part of an overall move towards political integration, which it's highly doubtful was desired by the peoples of the member states. Maastricht set down stringent fiscal requirements of all member countries (and prospective members) to effect convergence towards monetary union - whether or not countries were to proceed to the final stage of joining the euro. Policies promoting open competition were a virtual endorsement of the then fashion for widespread privatisation, and it was hard to see how a government of a country could renationalise a privatised institution without being in breach of those policies (it still is). That to my mind is tantamount to denying the electorate of a country the power to determine the kind of economic and social policies it wishes to be pursued if they are in contravention of the economic philosophy of the EU - an economic philosophy which remains monetarist and some would say neo-liberal.

Where we are now is that after the economic catastrophe of 2008 and several years of savage austerity policies for those eurozone countries left impoverished by that catastrophe we have widespread unemployment and appalling hardship and little prospect of it being alleviated due to the conviction of those with the power and the purse-strings in Europe that their model is right and their medicine is working. And we have a situation in which the overwhelming feeling of peoples around Europe seems to be disillusionment with the EU institutions, which I suspect will be reflected in the elections this month. Europe which had for some decades worked, most of the time, for the good of most of its citizens, now seems to be working mainly for multinationals and the wealthy.

[Serial_Apologist]

"So what you're really saying is" (as James Naughtie would habitually have it!) that it's not so much the possibility of EU and/or NATO expansion that exercises you as the capitalism tht you perceive would underpin it; my only question about that is that the very same capitalist practice would hold sway at least as much and as widely as it does now whether or not EU or NATO might grow in numbers of member states. I remain to be convinced, therefore that the two are somehow synonymous or necessarily even inherently related to one another.

Anything that helps the rich and powerful dominators of humanity more so is to be deplored is what I'm saying, and the expansion of their spheres of influence and control falls into that bag. Conversely therefore, anything that prevents or hinders this is in everyone else's interests, though that realisation would have to acted upon to prevent power vacuums.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think I would agree with what I think aeolium was saying recently (can't remember where). The response to what you say is likely to be, So what? What are you going to do about it (or rather, what can be done about it?).

Well, either there is the opportunity for something to be done about a problem, whether by oneself or not, or there isn't, in which case one retreats into despair as everything that could be sorted by alternative thinking crumbles around one's ears.

Pointing out where the fault lines are (and many of us who don't 'see' what you see would not disagree with you on that) doesn't go very far in improving anything. In the meantime, is the basis of the EU so flawed that you want to see it discontinued or just, like UKIP, that we should get out of it?

Either would do, but even without opposition, it's quite easy to envisage the EU collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Unfortunately capitalism never does - what happens when total collapse seems immanent in that the ruling class dream up some new scapegoat to keep us ordinary mortals blaming each other for such things as not being one of us, or being fallible human beings. When these cliches fail to work their magic, brutal repression waits standing in the wings.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think pointing out where the fault lines are, as a number of people have been doing in recent years, is a necessary first step to getting some kind of reform or change of course. Getting those in power to agree about the nature of the fault lines is another and much harder second step, but again it's hard to see how reform can be achieved without this.

For myself I feel (in hindsight for I did not see it at the time) that the wrong turning in the EU - or formerly EEC/EC - was with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 which set the member states on a course towards monetary union as a preliminary step towards political union. Up until that time, the EC had been successful in helping to preserve peace in Europe, setting standards in equality and human rights as well as employment protection, and helping redistribution of wealth from the richer member states to the poorer so that countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece all saw significant improvements in living standards - and, for three of those countries, the embedding of democratic rule after recent periods of military dictatorship. So perhaps 1991, with the recent liberation of Eastern European countries from effective Soviet or proxy-Soviet domination, was a high point of the European Community.

But Maastricht changed that. Not only did it set the course for highly risky creation of a currency union between economically unequal member states with no fiscal union to allow bailouts of countries in economic crisis, but it was clear that this was part of an overall move towards political integration, which it's highly doubtful was desired by the peoples of the member states. Maastricht set down stringent fiscal requirements of all member countries (and prospective members) to effect convergence towards monetary union - whether or not countries were to proceed to the final stage of joining the euro. Policies promoting open competition were a virtual endorsement of the then fashion for widespread privatisation, and it was hard to see how a government of a country could renationalise a privatised institution without being in breach of those policies (it still is). That to my mind is tantamount to denying the electorate of a country the power to determine the kind of economic and social policies it wishes to be pursued if they are in contravention of the economic philosophy of the EU - an economic philosophy which remains monetarist and some would say neo-liberal.

Where we are now is that after the economic catastrophe of 2008 and several years of savage austerity policies for those eurozone countries left impoverished by that catastrophe we have widespread unemployment and appalling hardship and little prospect of it being alleviated due to the conviction of those with the power and the purse-strings in Europe that their model is right and their medicine is working. And we have a situation in which the overwhelming feeling of peoples around Europe seems to be disillusionment with the EU institutions, which I suspect will be reflected in the elections this month. Europe which had for some decades worked, most of the time, for the good of most of its citizens, now seems to be working mainly for multinationals and the wealthy.

Capitalism transforms good intentions into excuses for maintaining the status quo, yet secures nothing. Instead it renders universal the principle of survival of the fittest. You only need to have had a few family members with connections with money, and attend their summer garden parties, to be reminded how insecure the collective state of mind of the bourgeoisie is, even at the best of times as they see it. Fuelled up on bubbly they argue interminably whether Marx was possibly right about their dispensability, whether all that charity money can ever make up for the inadequacy of the system they disproportionately enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else from in property or from making or investing in unsustainable, often lethal product. That insecurity stems partly from guilt - what a long way we have to fall! do we really deserve our privileges and historical advantages which don't really make us happy - it's not realised that alchohol and other substance abuse and wife swapping were ubiquitous among the rich in the Thatcherite 1980s and '90s - and partly from knowing that under their common objectives to make money and keep the proletariat down is the deep underlying emnity of competition that means survival, and the fact that mistrust is always the underlying reality of their inter-buddy-relationships down the country club or golf course. The rich and powerful are just as subject to motivational self-doubts and forms of religion-clinging tantamount to a child who rushes into the arms of its abusive parents. How ridiculous for such presumably intelligent people, who wouldn't otherwise be where they are, unless it's all down to Daddy's connections. And yet, these are existential dilemmas, not ontological or basic to life in a Darwinian survivalist universe, but are structural to the capitalist way of doing things. We really do need a new model of human potential - one which stops setting us up for belittlement and can stand up proudly to superstition and that is first of all our potentials, not our limitations-based. Next a context which encourages the maximum creative potential of every human being to flourish, a model of inclusiveness that casts aside just-in-time and other such mechanisms of "efficiency" in favour of enough slack to allow people enough time to think, create, participate in what is worth participating in rather than a sham, love, rest and just potter around taking in the greater Intelligence that gave rise to us in all its beauty, complexity and diversity.

[aeolium]

We really do need a new model of human potential - one which stops setting us up for belittlement and can stand up proudly to superstition and that is first of all our potentials, not our limitations-based. Next a context which encourages the maximum creative potential of every human being to flourish, a model of inclusiveness that casts aside just-in-time and other such mechanisms of "efficiency" in favour of enough slack to allow people enough time to think, create, participate in what is worth participating in rather than a sham, love, rest and just potter around taking in the greater Intelligence that gave rise to us in all its beauty, complexity and diversity.

Yes, those are fine aspirations, and the criticism of capitalism's ills is good as far as it goes, but what is lacking is a viable programme which could point a way towards bringing about that model without creating the potential for a different form of oppression. Expecting people in large and complex societies with multiple global interrelations (as opposed to small and isolated communities) to co-operate in ways that reject the capitalist model is I think utopian. Historically the only serious attempts that have been made to create a communist alternative have involved a high degree of centralised power invested in the state, with all the consequences for oppression, abuse, corruption and unaccountability that we have seen. It is not surprising that people have become wary about trusting the state with great power to intervene in economic and social life yet without that power capitalism will remain dominant.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, those are fine aspirations, and the criticism of capitalism's ills is good as far as it goes, but what is lacking is a viable programme which could point a way towards bringing about that model without creating the potential for a different form of oppression. Expecting people in large and complex societies with multiple global interrelations (as opposed to small and isolated communities) to co-operate in ways that reject the capitalist model is I think utopian.

Models, historically speaking, have come about as a consequence of resistance to existing orders and policies, and express given balances of power. In the light of experience, it seems to me unlikely that the existing ruling orders will come up with anything different unless their interests are challenged. How this will happen will determine their response, what they come up with. This is what makes adducing models in vacuo, which you ask, so difficult. For one thing, how can any alternative plan be enacted without a support base out there in society? However convincing, persuasive and "sensible" its proposals might be judged in terms of electoral support, the left would be considered even more naive than the Tories and tabloid press would have us believe if it thought that those with the power and privilege would meekly concede to the dismantlement of its positions, connections and entitlements, whether piecemeal or in a mass uprising.

Historically the only serious attempts that have been made to create a communist alternative have involved a high degree of centralised power invested in the state, with all the consequences for oppression, abuse, corruption and unaccountability that we have seen. It is not surprising that people have become wary about trusting the state with great power to intervene in economic and social life yet without that power capitalism will remain dominant.

While this is of course where a centralised response is needed to matched the centralised character of what one is up against, (from trade/currency agreements by way of national courts, armies and police, through, if you will, to NATO) one is minded that the original advocates of socialism (and communism in the long run) envisaged the eventual withering away of the state entirely. Marx cited the Paris Commune as one possible model for pre-empting the kinds of problems you cite above: elect bosses, don't pay them extortionate salaries - they are then peers and in consequence subject to peer-group pressures. I think I'm right in thinking that this only became the theme tune of the right when the neo-cons of the 1970s concocted an ideological equivalence between size of state and tax wastage - before which, coming out of colonial thinking, the large state was seen as its beneficial prerequisite: you needed the looming presence of all that police-military apparatus on which to model your social services. Only lately has the post-Cold War issue of shrinking the armed forces to affordable levels (the peace dividend) been made to comply with economic constraints, post 2008. This may appear a mere detail in our considerations, but armed forces morale could form a sizeable factor regarding the enactability of alternative, anticapitalist political programmes by a progressive government; we have only to think of the growing proliferation of failures in terms of non-enacted Royal Commission and other recommendations on institutional racism and failure to deal properly with rape cases in the police force to ask how the armed wing of the state would respond to policies to make it more democratically accountable than at present, both clandestinely and through anecdotal record. Furthermore we cannot afford to ignore the opportunities facilitated by technology for businesspersons to circumvent policy by engineering runs on the currency; in terms of advances we are a long way from 1976, when Portuguese bank and airport workers physically blocked their bosses from taking huge quantities of Escudos out of the country on pain of their enterprises being seized and put under workers' control. Will the on-side hacker of the future take the equivalent place of the occupying workforce trying to prevent the stripping of its assets?

These are just a few of the myriad considerations beyond my puny imagination contingent upon any progressive government seeking to bring about a transition away from capitalism. The actuality is something one has to be economical with... in one's dreams...

[MrGongGong]

Interesting stuff
thanks for posting

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting stuff
thanks for posting

I'm off now to watch this programme on Magritte on ITV. <wink>.

[MrGongGong]

I'm off now to watch this programme on Magritte on ITV. <wink>.

Never heard of him ?
Tin Tin .....? Yes :wink:

[MrGongGong]

Magritte was good indeed (love the Belgians)

One of todays examples

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/04/ukip-eu-brussels-restrictions-car-garages-mot-repairs-stephen-hammond

[Beef Oven!]

Magritte was good indeed (love the Belgians)

One of todays examples

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...tephen-hammond

Seems that telling porkies about MOTs has done nothing the harm the UKIP's expected European election performance.

Apparently, they're going to win!

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/04/uk-eu-election-britain-idUKKBN0DK0E920140504

[MrGongGong]

Seems that telling porkies about MOTs has done nothing the harm the UKIP's expected European election performance.

Apparently, they're going to win!
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/0...0DK0E920140504

So not so different from all the other liars in politics then !
Which was my point at the start

I'm not sure that the word "WIN" is appropriate either.
Vote for someone who won't bother to attend most of the time
when they do they will oppose everything regardless of what it is
and try and extract as much money in expenses as possible
while being as insulting as possible

seems a bit of a loose loose situation

[Beef Oven!]

Well maybe they are not so different in that regard, but they are different in that they are a party that is experiencing enormous growth in their membership at a time when membership of political parties is declining sharply.

People don't seem interested in political parties, unless it's the UKIP - you and quite a few others in this forum, are an example of that very point! People (you for example) have even started threads about the UKIP. This sort of attention is the oxygen that the UKIP needs!

Have a look at this, I know your 'fascinated' by the UKIP and it's meteoric rise...https://www.facebook.com/TheUKIP/posts/144617065721285

[vinteuil]

Models, historically speaking, have come about as a consequence of resistance to existing orders and policies, and express given balances of power. In the light of experience, it seems to me unlikely that the existing ruling orders will come up with anything different unless their interests are challenged. How this will happen will determine their response, what they come up with....

... I like Upton Sinclair’s observation that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.

[aeolium]

While this is of course where a centralised response is needed to matched the centralised character of what one is up against, (from trade/currency agreements by way of national courts, armies and police, through, if you will, to NATO) one is minded that the original advocates of socialism (and communism in the long run) envisaged the eventual withering away of the state entirely. Marx cited the Paris Commune as one possible model for pre-empting the kinds of problems you cite above: elect bosses, don't pay them extortionate salaries - they are then peers and in consequence subject to peer-group pressures.

Don't you think that Marxian idea about the withering away of the state is the least convincing (and least historically informed) of all his theories? When has the state ever withered away, or looked like withering away, in modern times? Even revolutions have tended to make it stronger. Only in countries without any history of a strong state, like Afghanistan, has it remained weak, and there the power vacuum is not filled by popular communitarian activity but by powerful warlords. Where the state is weak in smaller third-world countries then powerful economic interests move in to manipulate it. The examples which are given of communitarian models, like the 1871 Paris Commune or the anarchist "structures" George Orwell admired in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, are models which operated in relatively small self-contained communities in time of war or civil war, and they did not last long.

I agree about industrial democracy, and the Germans have moved much further in that direction than we have. But I think there will only really be effective popular resistance - one which translates into government action - against the huge power of the wealthy and the big companies, when the middle classes begin to feel that the system is no longer working for them. The underclass, the precariat, will not rebel unless they begin to be joined by the impoverished in the middle classes - as perhaps is beginning to happen in some of the Mediterranean eurozone countries with stratospheric unemployment.