BY JACK BARNES
The imperialist powers that make up the European Union announced June 3 plans to form a common military policy that could be a counterweight to the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance. At the same time the euro, the attempt at a common European currency, is in decline and trade conflicts between the EU and Washington are intensifying. The speeches that make up Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium by Jack Barnes help explain why Europe is farther from "unity" than ever. Several excerpts, from talks given between 1992 and 1994, are reprinted below. The book is copyright (c) 1999 by Pathfinder Press, and reprinted with permission.

National boundaries are more important to the bourgeoisie today than at any time in history, just as they are becoming more porous than ever before. Forget the hoopla about European unity, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations. To the most powerful ruling families of world finance capital, borders are becoming more important, not less.

Why? Because national boundaries mark off two things the capitalist rulers need in order to maximize their wealth and protect it in face of rising competition.

One, boundaries define currencies. The borders of France define the area in which the franc is legal tender, backed by the full faith and credit of the state. The French bourgeoisie's effort to keep the franc strong is important if they are to keep capital flowing into their coffers, not out.

Second, boundaries define the home base of the bourgeoisies' armed forces. The French army stands behind the franc; that is the power that makes the franc more than a piece of paper when push comes to shove. French bankers do not want a devalued franc when it comes time to collect on their loans; the bourgeois state and its armed forces are the ultimate collection agency. It defends French finance capital against its rivals around the world and against the effrontery of working people from Paris to Rwanda, from Lyons to Martinique and Guadeloupe, and from New Caledonia to Marseilles.

The greatest single contradiction in world politics is the internationalization of both capital and labor, on the one hand, and, on the other, the growing conflicts among the most powerfully armed nation-states as a result of intensifying competition for profits. Marx and Engels explained this fundamental contradiction of capitalism many years ago, and Lenin and the Bolsheviks taught us why these conflicts are much more explosive and much more devastating for working people in the imperialist epoch.

Our Europe is slowly coming into being, however. Think about the expansion of intra-European travel. What comes along with expanded flows of capital and commodities worldwide is greater migration by workers to get jobs. In every single capitalist country in Europe today there is a higher percentage than ever before of workers from other countries and other nationalities who are part of the working class. The working class in every imperialist country - and this will even begin to include Japan - is more multinational than at any time in its modern history.

The war in Yugoslavia sharpens interimperialist conflicts. It sharpens the divisions between the United States and Europe, as well as divisions within Europe itself.

Margaret Thatcher - "retired" against her will as prime minister of the United Kingdom, but also freed from some of the diplomatic niceties required while serving at that post - is wagging a finger at her successor John Major, warning that the dream of a stable, prosperous, reunified, and peaceful Germany at the heart of Europe is a lie. Major's signing of the Maastricht treaty last year, outlining plans for greater European economic and political integration, including a common currency, endangers Britain's capitalist rulers, Thatcher scolds. "A reunited Germany cannot and won't subordinate its national interests in economic or in foreign policy to those of the [European] community indefinitely," she warned in a widely publicized speech in the Netherlands last month [May 1992]. "Germany's power is a problem - as much for the Germans as for the rest of Europe."...

Trying to maintain a "special relationship" with Washington is becoming more necessary than ever for the British bourgeoisie, and not just for them alone. The capitalist rulers in Scandinavia and elsewhere are also sidling up to the Yankees, hoping somehow to protect their relative positions and profits in face of Bonn's economic strength in Europe. At the very same time, however, U.S. capitalism itself shows declining capacity for self-sustaining economic expansion and is becoming more and more dependent on its massive military might to offset its own mounting weaknesses.

The ruling families of Germany and Japan are confronting the need to be able to use their armed forces once again to intervene abroad to defend their class interests against those of their rivals. As they take steps forward in doing so, however, they are meeting opposition both at home and abroad....

Whether in North America, Europe, or Asia and the Pacific, working people over time will move into action against the devastating consequences of capitalist militarism and the rulers' drive toward World War III. In order to succeed, these struggles cannot be "we in Britain" against "them in Germany" or "we in the United States" against "them in Japan." There is a we and a they - but it is a we of the working class and a they of the capitalist class. This we and they, moreover, have irreconcilable class interests. Either the workers of the world will unite to fight against the oppressive social and political conditions that will increasingly bear down on all of us, or the working class in each country will be torn apart and defeated by our respective capitalist rulers one by one.

It is the outcome of this struggle that will decide whether or not the march toward a third world war and its unthinkable consequences will become inevitable once again - as it had earlier in this century, by 1939 - or will be stopped this time by the advance of the world socialist revolution.

Footnote
1. On January 1, 1999, eleven governments in Europe did begin using a common currency - the "euro" - to denominate stock, bond, and banking transactions. Actual "euro" notes are to replace German marks, French francs, and other national currencies in circulation in 2002. Compared to its eleven separate predecessors, the euro will put up stiffer competition to a relatively weakened U.S. dollar as a store of value in national treasuries around the world, and later perhaps even as a unit of account. From birth, however, the euro's stability was undermined by the conflicting interests of the rival imperialist bourgeoisies it pretends to yoke together. As the onerous effects of capitalist overproduction bear down in differential ways on countries and regions across Europe - and working people press demands for jobs, against farm foreclosures, and for livable wages and government-funded social benefits - the fissures in the new currency union will widen.  
 
 
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