May
Day in Europe
The First of May is the day when the workers’ movement celebrates its
internationalism, and affirms the unity of their class across all
boundaries. It is striking, then, that this year it also happens to be
the day on which the ten ‘Accession States’ become members of the
European Union. Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will all become part of
the same continuous political and economic zone, with a population of
some 450 million people.
The workers’ movement that initiated Mayday as Labour Day used to look
forward to a United States of Europe as its prize. Yet, the venalities
of the property system defy the attempts at unity between humans. The
enlargement of Europe, and all the rights of movement of Labour it
brings managed to bring down a government Minister – Beverley Hughes –
because the Tories saw fit to prey on the insecurities of workers in
the UK, making out we would be ‘swamped’ by migrants coming to make
them unemployed.
That workers are afraid is an effect of the systemic threat of poverty
through unemployment capitalism needs in order to function. That the
Tories did it is because they saw an opportunity to build electoral
support based on that fear reflects the existing culture and
institutions built up already in the UK. They did it because British
capitalists do not want to invest tax money on welfare for workers who
may not produce any profit for them.
It is not, though, just the Tories capitalising on the fact that humans
organise around units of property called nation states. Labourites too
join in the sport. Arch-apologist for Blairism, Polly Toynbee, in her
Guardian column, talks of how a modern ‘social democratic welfare
state’ needs to control immigration in order to function. That is, her
social democracy requires a nationalised workforce competing on a world
market against other national capitals. She is as much against wasting
state money as the acolytes of free-market capitalism.
The Home Office, under Blunkett, has begun to inform asylum seekers
from the accession states that on May 1st their entitlement to benefits
ends, and they must find work or leave the country; this is because
they are not at the moment subject to European rules on welfare
entitlement for European Union citizens. ID cards are being rushed
through to brand the workers as Made in Britain.
The truth is, that the uneven distribution of capital and property
within the EU, and the attempts by the defenders of that property to
build political alliances and movements based upon national prejudice
and fear, remain a stain on whatever will be celebrated this Mayday.
Many workers may well be misled by trade union barons squawking about
needing to take action to defend British jobs, of Labour politicians
bleating about defending Britain from being swamped by scroungers; but
those workers will be no better off for siding with British capital
against their fellow workers. As soon as the going gets tough, the
capitalists will without hesitation pull up their money and send it
elsewhere to make better profits without the slightest regards for the
workers who would be swamped by the resulting unemployment.
The truth is that it is not fellow workers who cause poverty and
unemployment, but capitalism and its unyielding drive for profits.
Their investments are the stage upon which we must try and play our
parts. We cannot be free or united so long as they are free to move
about the scenery around us.
The task confronting us is to build up a union of the working class,
organised to put an end to the property system that divides and
oppresses us. In today’s capitalism, organised on a global scale, a
united Europe would not be enough; to free ourselves from the
depredations of capital we need the World Commonwealth of Humanity.
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