Vol. 79/No. 27      August 3, 2015

BY JACK BARNES
Conflicts between rival national capitalist classes and governments are blowing apart the myth of a “united Europe” at an accelerating pace. Since the end of the so-called Cold War, bourgeois politicians and commentators have had trouble coming up with phrases to describe the world balance of power. They talked about a New World Order for awhile, but that did not seem to fit so well in light of the outcome of the Gulf War, the permanent crises in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, and the onset of depression conditions. So some of them began talking about “the tripolar world” — the United States, Europe, and Japan were the three poles. But that description of power relationships in today’s world has already bumped up against a big problem — there is no Europe pole.

How long ago was it that many ruling-class figures in Europe (especially in Bonn, and to a lesser degree Paris) were insisting that the European imperialist powers —whatever their problems and frictions — were on the road toward political unity? Members of the European Community would pool their funds — so the story went — and give some money to Ireland, to Portugal, to Greece, and even a little bit to Spain, so these countries could catch up and narrow the economic and social gap with the rest of capitalist Europe. They would adopt common social welfare rules, labor standards, and pollution controls. Eventually they would converge toward a common foreign and military policy. They would smooth out differences in productivity and eventually all agree to use the same tokens as a common currency. And then, this new and united Europe — with class differences slowly but surely disappearing for all practical purposes —would emerge big, powerful, and competitive with the United States and Japan.

The opposite has actually happened over the last decade, however. Despite all the talk about unity, the evolution of world capitalism has increased uneven development across Europe and made its character more explosive. And not just between the weakest capitalist powers in southern Europe and the rest. The gap has also widened, for example, between rates of capital accumulation and economic development in Britain and other, more powerful capitalist countries in Europe.

Enormous changes are taking place that are improving the odds that the international working class can become a social force able to transform and salvage the future. The working class makes up a larger and weightier component of the population in countries the world over than ever before in history, and it continues to expand. In a growing number of countries, moreover, the working class is more international in its makeup than ever before too. And these trends will continue and deepen as the crises of world capitalism unfold in coming years.

Communists often explain that there is no “Europe”; there are only a number of capitalist states and their rival national ruling classes. That is true, but I have learned that leaving it at that is not the best way to help people understand the political point we are making. It is more accurate to say that their Europe is disappearing — the capitalists’ Europe. Their idea of a Europe of a single currency, of a single fiscal and monetary policy, of converging or at least compatible foreign military policies — all of this still widely talked about in ruling circles in Europe — is a bourgeois utopia.*

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.

* 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 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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