Despite attempts by far-right MEPs to derail it, the European Communist Meeting in the EU Parliament Building in Brussels went ahead as planned. Gerry Grainger, International Secretary for the Workers Party of Ireland spoke on the EU, imperialist wars, anti-communism and Lenin's work, "On the slogan for a United States of Europe". His speech is below
The European Union is an inter-state capitalist union. Today, as over a century ago, Europe is confronted by many of the same questions, conflicts and problems: how to understand and respond to capitalist exploitation and imperialist war and the battle against reformism, opportunism and national chauvinism by the forces committed to revolutionary transformation and proletarian internationalism.
Lenin
At the time of the first World War, the focus for Lenin was the possibility for revolutionary change. From the outset he urged workers to take up arms, not against their fellow workers of other nations, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments of their own countries and the world.
While the biggest parties in the Second International betrayed the workers of their own countries and Europe as a whole, those groups committed to proletarian internationalism formulated a different response. Lenin’s article on “The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International ,” clearly set out the attitude of revolutionary Marxism to the war and he engaged in a relentless struggle for this revolutionary line.
Lenin pointed out that the military blocs confronting each other at that time were not engaged as they contended in a “defensive war” and that the pretence of “defending the homeland” was nothing more than justification for an imperialist war.
The imperialist epoch is an epoch of war. For the European bourgeoisie contemporary history is falsely posited as the struggle between “democracy” and “dictatorship”. The social democrats endorse this narrative providing the ground work for continuing anti-communist slander and the demonisation of the socialist project.
It is the task of our parties to analyse the developments in the European Union and to assess its character taking into account our Marxist-Leninist theoretical and methodological approaches.
The EU
The founding principles of the EU were based on a capitalist economy. Since its inception, the policies and practices pursued by the European Union have influenced every aspect of social and economic life. This has involved the privatisation of the welfare state, attacks on the public sector, the emergence of new forms of social exclusion, increasing unemployment, the casualisation of labour and the promotion of “free-market” delivery systems for health, education, welfare etc. together with the imposition of harsh austerity measures.
The European Union, through “market liberalisation”, deregulation and privatisation serves the interests of big capital and penalises workers. This liberalisation agenda is driven by the European Commission and reinforced through the Court. Industrial sectors, such as telecommunications and energy, have already undergone fundamental transformations, and the liberalisation and privatisation agenda is actively pursued in the areas of transport, the provision of social services and healthcare.
The needs of the people cannot be met under the conditions offered by the current social order. The European Union cannot deliver what people need, nor can it provide what the planet needs in the face of the climate emergency. Only a planned socialist economy under the control of the working class can do this.
Imperialism and War
Imperialism has once again brought a major war to our continent, while other conflicts continue around the world fuelled by rivalry among current and aspirant powers, and competition for resources and the opportunity to exact profit. Ethnic cleansing, massacres, murderous violence against women and children, the deliberate targeting of the most vulnerable by military forces are common and take place with the complicity of the self-proclaimed defenders of “democracy” within the EU.
Today, we are still confronted with the continuing threat and reality of imperialist war. The production of the means of mass destruction has assumed shocking proportions. The accumulation and technological refinement of nuclear weapons continues. Tens of billions of dollars are spent by the imperialist powers on weapons of war while public services such as health, education, housing and environmental protection are disregarded. The expansion of foreign military bases continues to pose a threat to peace. Imperialism poses an ongoing threat to the peoples of the world through subversion, coercion, intervention, occupation and war.
Ukraine
The war that is being waged in Ukraine today is another imperialist war. Russia and Ukraine are today capitalist countries and each of these regimes serve the interests of the capitalist class. This war is the outcome of escalating inter-imperialist rivalries in the region. We should not forget the role of the EU, US and NATO which systematically promoted the economic, political, and military encirclement of Russia. Neither should we forget the lessons taught by Lenin about the Second International which sought to justify imperialist war under false slogans which betrayed the workers of Europe.
Palestine
While the enormity of the murderous and criminal actions of the Israeli state in Gaza shocked the peoples of the world, the European Union, together with the US and NATO remain complicit. While prepared to take action to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and to escalate the war by providing Ukraine with sophisticated weaponry, these states and imperialist alliances take no steps to halt the genocide in Palestine and, on the contrary, offer support, sustenance and weapons and equipment to the aggressor. Since February 2022, the European Union has consistently expressed its support for the Ukraine and provided aid amounting to more than 143 billion euros.
Occupation and the annexation of territories by force draw different and contrasting reactions from the European Union and its allies. In one of the conflicts, the European Union asserts the right of Ukraine to “defend itself” while in the case of Palestine it is the Israeli occupier that is granted the right to defend itself, with no reference to its status as an occupier, its persistent violation of UN resolutions nor to the Palestinian’s right to resist and to an independent state.
Contrary to the narrative adopted by the European Union and the bourgeois media, this conflict did not begin on 7th October 2023. For generations the Israeli state has engaged in the systematic colonisation and usurpation of Palestinian land, the eviction of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes and properties and the attempt to erase the name, history and culture of Palestine has continued and continues to this day. The EU support for Israeli policies, its strategic co-operation, the collusion in Israel’s expansionism, aggression and crimes against humanity, the persistent attempts to block and prevent any criticism of Israeli genocide, has been and remains a major impediment to peace and progress in the Middle East. The EU has adopted the hypocritical policy of so-called “equal distance” from the aggressors and the victims. The approach by Israel and the imperialist powers is to remove the question of Palestinian national rights from the agenda and to attempt to legitimise illegal acts of colonisation and expansionism. In this, the EU has and remains complicit.
The EU has also intensified its anti-communism and anti-Soviet attacks through a denial of the many and great achievements of the Soviet Union and the socialist states; by a crude falsification and distortion of the experience of socialist construction; by crass attempts to devalue the significance of Marxism-Leninism and to maliciously peddle the view that socialism is obsolescent.
Lenin’s assessment remains pertinent.
“But while the slogan of a republican United States of Europe—if accompanied by the revolutionary overthrow of the three most reactionary monarchies in Europe, headed by the Russian—is quite invulnerable as a political slogan, there still remains the highly important question of its economic content and significance. From the standpoint of the economic conditions of imperialism—i.e., the export of capital and the division of the world by the “advanced” and “civilised” colonial powers—a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary.”
“Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.”
(On the Slogan for a United States of Europe)
Lenin’s geopolitical analysis of the concept raised by the slogan remains valid. Today’s inter-state capitalist union remains the embodiment of a dangerous and reactionary alliance for capitalist exploitation and imperialist war.