The moth-eaten security blanket of nationalism

Sounds almost identical to EP Thompson’s Sunday Times piece arguing against British entry to the (then) EEC.

“That’s the reason for admitting Turkey”

Who said we’re admitting Turkey?

Nothing against Turks, but those talks will be stalled for years, and everyone knows it.

The Eurosceptic left’s embrace of nationalism is particularly insidious, because it hides behind the language of social justice.
The alternative given here is between free, free, free markets or nationalism, not a fait way to put the problem, imo.

There is some nationalist who vote no to europe, but then, they always have. The difference this time is that some see a way to wipe the smile off chirac’s face, get rid of raffarin, and generally share the unpleasantness. Some other feel the constitution is tilted right. Some again conflate the consitution and some recent outsourcing. Etc, etc, etc.

I’m personally voting yes, trying hard not to think about Supermenteur and his intensely, amazingly, ferociously mediocre prime minister.

Ugh. Sorry for the typos.

Mornin’. Coffee.

Your friend Glyn Morgan’s smug, condescending tone is one of the reasons many people – IMO, justifiably – feel suspicious of the project, sensing that they are being sold a dud.

On balance I would probably vote “yes” if my country had not already ratified the Constitution, but I understand where many of the “no” side are coming from. Intellectually dishonest articles like this (in the Independent, yet) do the Constitution no service.

And anyway, who are the British to lecture the rest of us Europeans on the evils of “nationalism”? The country which invented jingoism, the country of football hooliganism, of the British rebate, the country which has rejected the Euro, the Schengen treaty, etc.?

I would feel better about the Constitution if the Brits, and a few others, were made to leave the Union until they learn to be Europeans.

“… But, contrary to the claims of its supporters, the new European Constitution is not a step toward a stronger Europe, but will actually lessen European influence on the world stage. And that’s but one of the reasons why American progressives should be hoping French voters reject it next month. Let me explain why:

Although the new Constitution gives Europe a reinforced, lengthened presidency and its first European foreign minister, far from strengthening the voice of Europe in the World this Constitution would weaken it. Why? Because the requirements for adopting a common foreign policy are so restrictive. As the former Socialist Defense Minister of France, Jean-Pierre Chevenement (who resigned in protest over France’s support for the first Gulf War) has repeatedly pointed out during the current campaign, under the Constitution the crucial role France played at the United Nations in opposing the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq would no longer be possible. Not only would a country like France no longer have the possibility of expressing its own view of the situation, but the Constitution restricts the ability of any member of the U.N. Security Council (like France) which is also a member of the E.U., to take a position contrary to that adopted by the European Commission. And the complicated weighting system for adopting policy within the Commission makes it possible for a handful of countries to veto any expression on foreign policy. You will recall that, in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, George Bush was able to buy the support of a majority of European countries (by bribing the Eastern Europeans) for the war. Under the Constitution, the U.S. would, in effect, be able to buy a veto bloc of countries to avoid an independent role for Europe that is critical of Washington. Moreover, the Constitution specifically makes the E.U. subordinate to the authority and policies of NATO for foreign, defense, military, and security policy. This double hobbling makes a strong European voice in the world impossible–unless it supports the views and adventures of Washington, capital of the world’s only “hyper-power” (to borrow the coinage of former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine.)”
Doug Ireland

He can’t be arguing that the world offers no examples of economic and political progress in a country in the absence of that country joining a political union, can he?

The Ireland quote that Mr. Edenbaum posted is interesting, in that it appears to criticize majoritarian rule and minority veto power simultaneously.

1. Most political positions are in fact in favour of particular settlements rather than the principles used to explain preference for it over another. So right wingers are only in favour of free markets to a limited extent and left wingers are only in favour of helping the poor in so far as it doesn’t disadvantage the only quite poor. Time was when Japan was the low production cost country and Ireland and Spain were the poor we had to deal with.

2.National governments really don’t make the interesting decisions any more. Voter interest is low and there is precious little to choos between the parties. However they use Brussels as as scapegoat despite being behind many of its worst excesses, the council of ministers for example.

3. Being a hyperpower has never done anyone much good. People don’t like you, the chippy pick fights with you and you get caught wearing the emperor’s new clothes.

4. There has been remarkably little debate about individual issues within the constitution. The problem with it being such a large sweeping document is that most of the things that people say about it are true. It does, as far as I can tell, tidy up a lot of existing treaties. It also does new stuff. Surely there ought to be three documents — a shorter constitution, a clean up of the existing treaties and new measures.

5. Whose idea was it to get valery Giscard D’Estaing to write the thing?

6. More power to the parliament!

It’s no. Et merde.

Interesting discussion. From my German expat perspective, it’s either Poverty or Resistance for Europeans.

I have not yet been to Lodz, but to Marseille, to some of the many devastated and dying parts of East Germany, and to truly poor areas, eg Lesotho in Southern Africa, rural Iran, rural China. And let me tell you, there’s no “winning” this competition. But there is a reminder of the politico-economic question underlying the EU Constitution: Poverty or Resistance. Do you want a neoliberalised, deregulated Europe where corporatist crusaders run rampant and call it freedom? The answer to which the French just gave – and I would have too, if Berlin had not just ratified it.

Central Europe’s still blessed with a middle/lower-middle class, but things on the continent are changing fast. Here’s but one illustration: A growing number of young German academics, scientists and physicians are leaving the country: No jobs or low-pay jobs, growing academic chaos, rising costs and no long-term stability or prospects. So we go overseas. Take medicine: Young Czech and Polish doctors are coming in to take on the poorly paid “House positions” that German hospitals create (as they are loathe to pay the sums for Federal regulated jobs). For my East European friends these are still good jobs with a variety of rewards. For Germans they don’t even pay the rent. This is what’s happening right now: A kind of “poverty-adjustment” as Alphonse van Worden and others on Long Sunday (www.long-sunday.net) have already pointed out.

So comparing poverty is not the point. The point is to resist the redistribution of wealth and power that only makes things worse – and to come up with an intelligent alternative.

If anyone would read the proposed constitution it will be clear that it’s an economic blueprint for neoliberalism. It’s exactly the project that, e.g., many SouthAamerican populations have now rejected, based on bitter experience.

The best article to read about France in the British newspapers, I think, is Will Hutton’s analysis pre the vote. http://www.guardian.co.uk/
eu/story/0,7369,1494650,00.html As he points out, the problem in France and Germany right now isn’t that the economies are being held down by lack of the Thatcher spirit — but by laws that keep both countries from participating in the global housing bubble. It is that bubble which has kept the American economy going.

Here’s the heart of Hutton’s case:
“A more obvious explanation stares European governments in the face, but nobody dares to act. The heart of British consumer spending growth is the withdrawal of equity from our houses; now that the housing market is slowing down, predictably there is a slowdown in spending. But the apparatus that supports equity withdrawal in Britain – a high-transaction housing market, low stamp duty, financial institutions ready to offer 100 per cent mortgages, the ‘Tesco approach’ to loan finance and even the concept of the overdraft – is completely absent in France, Germany and Italy. They retain the rules that we used to have in the Fifties and Sixties, and because liquidity in the housing market is so poor (transaction costs in all three countries exceed 10 per cent of the value of the property), lenders are more risk-averse.”

Outside of that particular factor, Hutton’s larger point is that this is a typical Keynesian crisis of overproduction and underconsumption. Unfortunately, the EU economic mandarins don’t see it like that, and are obsessed with keeping national deficits down and the specter of inflation.

I’m quite psyched by the non, actually. Jospin, d’Estaing, Chirac, a sort of evil three muskateers — were bucked. As Fabius put it in November, what kind of constitution runs to 500 pages? Now, if the PS has any sense left, they will put a final stake in the heart of Jospin and his associates and make a real play for power, based on the obvious feeling, in France, that the place should be a nation, plus a determination to accomodate the needs of a social democracy with the needs of a growth oriented economy. The latter formula does entail freeing up the credit market to some extent, and probably reflating, but not the assimilation of American style inequality.

Raimo, you are right. I blurred Hutton’s points about Italy and France — which are specific to the limits on the market in housing — with his point about France and Germany — that is, the traditional problem of overproduction/underconsumption. Separate but overlapping issues.

I don’t think of the Eastern Europeans as victims of anything. Two years after WWI, right after its creation, Poland declared war on practically all of its neighbours: Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine.

They wanted more territory and were very willing to take advantage of the fact that some of their neighbours had been through the bloodiest war in history to get it.