LEXIT NETWORK

For a Left Exit from neoliberal integration and and the Euro-system

Looking to the North

By

by Steffen Stierle

Steffen Stierle is one of the coordinators of the European Lexit network as well as active in Attac Germany and the Eurexit initiative. He works as a freelance journalist in Berlin. His thematic focus is the political economy of European integration.

Cross-posted from Makroskop and Brave New Europe. Translated and edited by BRAVE NEW EUROPE.

According to the economic and political mainstream of the rest of the EU, the Brexit vote is simply irrational. The repeated impact assessments presented to the public assume a loss of economic strength. The withdrawal of the British would deprive its society of a good part of their prosperity – the scenarios range from a strong but bearable decline to the complete collapse of the British economy.

Leftists like to add that the fundamental social rights of the British are also in jeopardy, as they are protected by the EU. Thomas Fazi and Bill Mitchell have already pointed out the weaknesses of the economic forecasts and argued why it is nonsense to view the EU as a shield for social rights.

Looking to the North – above all at Norway, a European nation that twice voted against EU membership by referendum and is now at the top of the global prosperity scale – supports Fazi’s and Mitchell’s argumentation.

Let us first look at Sweden – the former Scandinavian model nation that joined the EU in 1995 – as an example to illustrate the challenges posed by EU membership for the Scandinavian welfare model. Later, we shall examine Sweden’s economic and social developments since joining the EU compared with those of Norway. Finally, in an interview with the Oslo historian and trade union researcher Idar Helle, we approach the question of to what extent the Norwegian experience are applicable in the case of Great Britain.

Continue reading in Brave New Europe.

Jeremy Corbin’s Labour vs. the Single Market

By

by Costas Lapavisas. This article has been published in Jacobinmag.

“In recent weeks there has been intense debate in Britain about the Labour Party and the ongoing Brexit process. Advocates of the European Union have sought a range of concessions from the party leadership ranging from another vote on Brexit, to continued membership of the single market and Customs Union, and focusing on Brexit at party conference.

Underpinning this campaign to change Labour’s position on Brexit has been a barrage of articles arguing that European Union or single market rules would not impinge on Jeremy Corbyn’s program for government. These have come from a wide range of sources including the journal Renewal, the New Statesman, the Fabian’s website, the New European, LabourList, Open Labour, OpenDemocracy and Open Britain. But are they correct in their assertions?

In three interrelated areas EU rules would place severe restrictions on a future Corbyn government: State Aid, public procurement and nationalization. These are not minor issues. They lie at the heart of any attempt to transform Britain’s economy in a socialist direction, especially when it comes to industrial policy.”

Read the whole article in Jacobinmag.

Norwegian Elections: Another Right-Wing Victory – And a Serious Labour Defeat

By

By Asbjørn Wahl, Norwegian trade union and political activist

The centre-left failed in getting rid of the so-called blue-blue government at the parliamentary elections in Norway on 11 September. The Labour Party was the main loser, while small parties on the centre-left advanced slightly. However, the parliamentary basis of the right-wing government has started to unravel. A deeper political crisis may be looming in the background, while social contradictions are on the raise. Social Democracy followed the general European downward tendency (except Britain).

[Read more…]

Brexit, Corbyn and Beyond

By

by Paul O´Connell

Great historical events generally … concern whole social systems. The result is that to the typical modern mind they assume a catastrophic character, with all that this implies in the way of emotional shock and intellectual confusion. To the Marxist, on the other hand, the specific historical (i.e. transitory) character of capitalism is a major premise. It is by virtue of this fact that the Marxist is able, so to speak, to stand outside the system and criticize it as a whole.[1]

I. Introduction

Even though it is often derided and dismissed, the exuberant rhetoric of capitalist triumph and neoliberal ascendancy characteristic of the 1980s has seeped into the core of political theorising, and activism, particularly on the left. While mainstream thought and politics has always taken capitalism, as such, as its perennial premise; the seemingly relentless march of globalisation (with its privatisation, deregulation, and commodification of the entire life course) led many, whether consciously or not, to internalise Thatcher’s mantra that There Is No Alternative (TINA), or Fukuyama’s declaration that while there had been history, with the collapse of the Soviet Union it, now, had ended. Even the most significant crisis of world capitalism, albeit centred on North Atlantic capital, since the early Twentieth century led, for the most part, to a consolidation of neoliberalism and the class interests it supported, rather than any serious challenge to it.

Events of the last two years, however, have thrown the certainty of the status quo into the air, and ruffled, but by no means displaced, the complacency of the mainstream commentariat. The Brexit vote in the UK, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, and the rise of the genuine far right across the West, as well as other authoritarian formations around the world, have ushered in a period of panic, and tin pot prognoses: populism, Fascism, the “white working class” and sundry other terms have been wheeled out to try make sense of the seemingly incomprehensible. Briefly, here, I want to argue that the Marxist tradition (broad and wide as it is) provides us with the analytical tools to allow us both to understand the current conjuncture, and point the way to how we should orientate ourselves, strategically, to the challenges that confront us today. Using the Brexit vote in the UK as an entry point, it will be argued that our era of crises and dislocation calls upon us to fundamentally challenge the extant social order, and to develop ideas, organisations, and movements for transcending the archaic and barbaric social system which confounds us today.

[Read more…]