Editorial
Going it alone?
If the results of June’s European elections are anything to go by, more
people in Britain like the approach of the “United Kingdom Independence
Party” than they do that of the Liberal-Democrats.
UKIP is basically a know-nothing, anti-foreigner party. It is a sad
sign of the currently low level of working class political
understanding that 16 percent of those who voted in these elections
(even if only about 6 percent of the electorate) should have given
their votes to such a party, with another 5.7 percent (2 percent of the
electorate) going to the even more explicitly anti-foreigner BNP. Not
that that means that those who voted for the other parties showed much
political intelligence either. No party of capitalism can solve the
problems faced by the wage and salary working class and so none of them
are worth voting for.
Independence in the sense UKIP means is just not possible within the
context of globalized capitalism. Certainly, formal political
independence, or sovereignty, is possible, where states have the full
power to make decisions without reference to any supra-national rules
or decision-making procedures. But there’s a difference between the
mere legal power to do something and what can be done in practice. In
practice all states, when exercising their sovereign power to make
decisions, have to take into account the economic reality that there
exists a single world market economy on which they are dependent.
A state can exercise some degree of influence on how the world market
operates in relation to it - it erect tariff walls, subsidise exports,
devalue its currency - but this depends on its economic clout (such as
the productivity and size of its industry and the extent of its
internal market). Nearly fifty years ago the leading states of
continental Europe calculated that they could better face the world
market if they formed a single economic unit. They realised that this
meant giving up some of their sovereignty to a supra-national body into
whose decisions, however, they would have some input, but anticipated
that what they were giving up in terms of national political
sovereignty would be more than compensated by the gains brought about
by being part of a wider economic unit, exercising collective political
sovereignty on trade matters. Thus was born what is now the EU.
Twenty-five years later the dominant section of the British capitalist
class made the same calculation as had Germany, France, Italy and the
Benelux countries, and, from 1973, joined the economic union they had
formed. The advantages of this, for British capitalism, were access to
a wider internal market and a greater, even if shared, economic clout
on the world market than they would have had on their own.
UKIP tacitly admits, in the small print, that Britain couldn’t go it
alone economically when they argue that, after withdrawal from the EU,
Britain should still form part of a free trade area with the rest of
Europe. But this is how the EU started, and it still involves a
sacrifice of sovereignty in the form of a surrender of the right to
erect tariff walls against goods coming from the EU or to subsidise
exports to it. And there would still need to be negotiations over the
rules, their interpretation and on whether or not they had been
infringed, negotiations in which the British capitalist class would be
weakened by having to face on its own a bigger unit with a common
position.
This of course is where the mainstream parties, which better reflect
the current interest of the capitalist class, will be able to fault
UKIP if ever things got serious, by arguing that if British capitalism
is going to form part of some European economic unit then its interests
would be better served by being a full member, with full rights to have
a say in determining the unit’s common policies.
But this is to assume that UKIP’s case is a rational one whereas it
isn‘t. It is based on xenophobia, with its slogans “No to the EU” and
“Keep the Pound for Ever” meaning “No to foreigners” and “Britain ber
Alles”. It is based on the irrational view that “foreigners” of one
sort or another represent a threat to the supposed community with a
common interest made up of the “native” population of the UK. But there
is no such community, no such common interest. Britain, like every
other country in the world, is a class-divided country where the two
classes - those who own and class and those who work and produce - have
diametrically opposed interests.
The view that all who live in the same country have a common interest
against all those who live in other states is part of a political
ideology that seeks to mobilise the producing class to line up behind
the owning class in its contest with the owning classes of other
countries. But the interest of the wage and salary working class in all
countries is to reject all nationalism, to reject in fact the very idea
of “foreigner”, and to recognise that they have a common interest with
people in other countries in the same economic situation of being
obliged to sell their mental and physical energies in order to get a
living. That interest lies in working together to establish a
world-wide society of common ownership, democratic control and
production for use not profit.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain
The next meeting of the Executive Committee will
be on
Saturday 3rd July at the address below.Correspondence should be sent to
theGeneral Secretary.All articles ,letters and notice should be sent to
the editorial committe at
The Socialist Party
52 Clapham High street,London SW4 7UN
tel. 020 7622 3811 Fax 020 7720 3665
email
spgb@worldsocialism.org
website
www.worldsocialism.org/spgb
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