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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
68September/October 2015
T
HE political Left, whether
social democratic, communist
or Trotskyist, has always
found the European Union
problematic.
This is because supranational EU
‘integration’ poses the issue of national
independence and national democracy
so acutely, something many on the Left
find embarrassing. They prefer to con-
centrate on economic issues, for on
political ones like national independ-
ence they fear being found on the same
side as the Right. Their political sectari-
anism makes that hard for them to cope
with.
The EU shifts a myriad of government
functions from the national level, where
they have traditionally been under the
control of democratically elected parlia-
ments and governments, to the
supranational, where the bureaucrats of
the EU Commission have the monopoly
of legislative initiative and where tech-
nocracy rules. Should the Left oppose or
support this process?
The classical socialist position is clear.
It is that leftwingers should eschew
“economism” and should seek to give a
lead on democratic political questions as
well as economic ones. They thereby put
themselves in the best position to win
political hegemony in their respective
countries and to implement leftwing
economic measures in due course when
their peoples desire these.
Marx and Engels took it for granted
that socialism could only be achieved in
independent national states. In ‘The
Communist Manifesto’ of they
wrote: “Though not in substance, yet in
form, the struggle of the proletariat
with the bourgeoisie is at first a national
struggle. The proletariat of each country
must, of course, first of all settle matters
with its own bourgeoisie”. They sup-
ported Irish independence from Britain.
Engels wrote to his friend Kugelman:
“There are two oppressed peoples in
Europe, the Irish and the Poles, who are
never more international than when
they are most national”.
Their Irish follower, James Connolly,
showed by his political practice in ally-
ing himself with the radical democrats
of the IRB in the Easter Rising that he
regarded the establishment of a fully
independent Irish State as the prerequi-
site of being able to achieve the socialist
measures that he advocated. While
awaiting execution he speculated on
how the international socialist press
would interpret the Dublin rebellion:
“They will never understand why I am
here. They will all forget I am an
Irishman”.
Outside Europe the proposition that
the Left should be the foremost advo-
cates of national sovereignty would be
taken as self-evident. The strength of
communism in Asian countries like
China and Vietnam rests on its identifi-
cation with nationalism. The appeal of
the Left in Latin America is largely
based on its opposition to Yankee impe-
rialism. Only in Europe do so many
Leftwingers regard the defence of
national independence in face of EU
INTERNATIONAL
Nationalism
before
socialism
How history made the Irish and other
European Leftists pro-EU.
By Anthony Coughlan
do NOT fall for it, comrade!
September/October 2015 69
integration as “right-wing” and there-
fore by definition reactionary.
This is primarily due to the fact that
the main countries of Western Europe
– France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Italy
etc. – were all imperial powers in their
day and historically their mainstream
labour movements identified with that
imperialism and its colonial accompani-
ments. With honourable if marginal
exceptions, the national labour move-
ments in these countries supported
their respective national bourgeoisies in
going to war with one another in World
Wars I and II.
In the second half of the th century
transnational capital became predomi-
nant over national capital in the
advanced industrial world. In Europe
continental social democrats now
shifted to backing European-based
transnational capital in supporting its
main political project, the construction
of a supranational power, the EU/Euro-
zone, in which the classical principles of
capitalist laissez faire - free movement
of goods, services, capital and labour
- would for the first time in history have
the force of constitutional law.
In Britain and Ireland Labour initially
dissented. The political tradition in Brit-
ain is that all the main issues of national
policy are decided inside the Tory Party,
with the rest of society having bit parts.
Joining the EEC became the central goal
of Conservative policy from . The
Labour Left originally opposed this, as
indeed in this country the Irish Labour
Party opposed Irish membership of the
EEC in our Accession referendum.
Under Michael Foot’s leadership British
Labour advocated the UK’s withdrawal
from the EEC in the general
election.
Then in , with Margaret
Thatcher in Downing Street, Commis-
sion President Jacques Delors, a French
socialist, wooed the British TUC at
Blackpool and Ireland’s ICTU at Mala-
hide and promised them labour-friendly
legislation from Brussels which they
would never get at home. The Trade
Union leaders embraced “social Europe”
and much of the Labour Left followed
them, in some cases becoming mission-
aries for the grand “project”. As the
downside of the EU/Eurozone became
clear in recent years, Euro-scepticism
began to grow on the political Right.
Now some on the Left are starting to
follow the Right in that too, in Southern
Europe and maybe in Britain.
In France and Italy the central role of
communists in the war-time Resistance
and their consequent appeal to national
sentiment gave these countries mass
communist parties for three decades
after World War II. A key factor
in the subsequent decline
of these parties was
their embrace of
the EC/EU in the
s and
s as one
of the tenets
of
“Eurocom-
munism”.
In France
this volte-
face was
necessary to
allow Commu-
nist Ministers join
Francois Mitterand’s
socialist government in
. I recall the labour his-
torian Desmond Greaves remarking at
the time; “This will revive fascism in
France.” That was before anyone had
heard of Le Pen. The French CP, which
had one-quarter of the seats in France’s
National Assembly in , has %
there today. Many former French work-
ing-class communist voters now vote for
the National Front.
Leftwingers in the Trotskyist tradi-
tion tend to be upholders of EU
supranationalism as “objectively pro-
gressive”, while stigmatising concern
for national independence as national-
ism and “rightwing”. This goes back to
Trotsky’s famous dispute with Stalin in
the s over whether it was possible
to build socialism in one country – that
being Stalin’s view – or whether it
required a more general transforma-
tion, world revolution, as Trotsky
thought. The EU is assumed to provide a
more favourable field for socialism
because it is at once bigger and it is
trans-national, although it is hard to see
how socialist-type restrictions on capi-
tal can come from a body one of whose
constitutional principles is free move-
ment of capital.
The EU institutions and their national
extensions are populated with people
who were on the Trotskyist Left in their
youth and who feel no qualms at the EU’s
assaults on national democracy. Former
German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer, former French Prime Minister
Lionel Jospin, Portuguese Commission
President JM Barroso are among those
with such a background who have
advanced supranationalism. Left-
sounding arguments for the EU go down
well in circles where “socialism” is in no
way a realistic danger, but where
“nationalism” very much
is – that is, the nation-
alism which resists
losing national
independence
and democ-
racy.
Radical-
sounding
rhetoric has
greased
many a lucra-
tive EU career
path.
Leftist
Europhilia of this
kind has been influ-
ential in the ideological
collapse of Greece’s Syriza,
which made its leadership adopt policies
the opposite of what they were elected
on. While loud against “austerity”
Messrs Tsipris, Varoufakis and Tsakalo-
tos continually proclaimed themselves
believers in the EU, which they seemed
to think could be transformed into a
force for cross-national solidarity and
Euro-Keynesianism by dint of rhetorical
argument. When it came to the crunch
they lacked the courage to go for a
“Grexit”, a repudiation of Greece’s
mountainous debts and a devaluation of
a restored drachma. Yet only such a
policy can revive Greece’s lost competi-
titiveness, stimulate its home demand
and bring back economic growth, for
Greece’s third bailout will not work.
The dissenters in Syriza are now
advocating such a course, as are the
Greek communists and others. The
Syriza collapse is educational for
Leftwingers everywhere. It illustrates
the old truth that the establishment or
re-establishment of national independ-
ence – which means a State having its
own currency and with it control of
either its interest rate or its exchange
rate – must be central to any meaningful
campaign against neoliberalism and
banker-imposed austerity, not to mind
“socialism”, however one might define
that. •
Anthony Coughlan is Associate Professor
Emeritus of Social Policy at Trinity College,
Dublin
In the second
half of the
20th century
continental
social
democrats
shifted to
backing
European-
based
transnational
capital and the
construction
of a supra-
national
power, the EU
“
