Så er det nye nummer kommet – bedst som man er ved at komme i hug med sidste måneds feminismetema :-). Denne gang er temaet EU, Brexit og venstrefløjen.
Ikke desto mindre, så er udgangspunktet for månedens redaktionelle noter, at vi nu står på kanten af en ny økonomisk krise, formentlig af mindst samme styrke som 2008-krisen.
Selve temaet drejer sig primært om anmeldelser og overvejelser i forlængelse af Costas Lapavitsas’ bog “The Left Case Against the EU”. Neil Davidson og Andy Storey anmelder/tænker tanker om bogen, Lapavitsas svarer. Det skal nok blive interessant.
“These chapters are perhaps the most concentrated and clearly written expression of the left-wing anti-EU position currently available, but in the final chapter, where Lapavitsas sets out his perspective on what the left needs to do, even those in broad agreement with his position (like the present reviewer) might begin to feel a certain uneasiness. Lapavitsas has made a powerful case against left illusions either in the existing EU or some putative reformed version, but he undermines it with some of his concluding arguments.”
Neil Davidson
Davidson giver Lapavitsas ret i, at KKE fejlede ved at indtage en ultrarevolutionær linje (jeg husker, at jeg selv læste deres opråb til valget og skrev til min mor: “ser KKE en revolutionær situation i Grækenland? mener de, at en revolutionær udvikling vil kunne opretholdes og forsvares?”). Lapavitsas anbefaler, siger Davidson, en afvisning af EU’s fire friheder, men han mener, at det er forkert at gøre det med udgangspunkt i en kamp for national selvbestemmelse: dermed bliver bolden spillet over på den nationalistiske højrefløjs bane, hvor det er immigranter, der er problemet. Davidson fortsætter ” Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has done this in the United Kingdom and it was a disastrous mistake for, quite apart from any moral considerations, the right will always be able to outbid the left on this issue.”
Davidsons egen position er helt igennem pragmatisk<\ironi>: “The left should certainly reject the EU’s four freedoms (of capital, services, goods, and labor), not by rejecting freedom of movement altogether, but by widening it to encompass everyone who wishes to move and then arguing for this internationalist position among the working class.”
Argumentationen fortsætter “One of the problems of the British radical left is that it was not large enough to do so in a way that could have made the Leave vote expressive of a socialist perspective”. Personligt ville jeg mene, at hvis man prøver at gøre noget, man er for lille til, så har man prøvet at gøre noget forkert…
Davidsons overvejelser går herefter ud i en sociologisk drøftelse af vælgersammensætningen bag Brexit. Endelig kommer hans løsningsmodel for venstrefløjen på banen:
Seeking to leave the EU and implement left social democratic reforms, let alone beginning the transition to socialism, would almost immediately find itself blocked by the state apparatus—another reason why national sovereignty is largely illusionary, so long as the sovereignty of the bourgeois state is unimpeded. In any event, a break with capital could not be successfully attempted in a single state, or even several acting serially. Pierre Dardot and Christian Lavall argue that what is required is “an international democratic bloc”:
Neil Davidson