The Lisbon Treaty has hit the buffers after rejection by the Irish electorate. CS member James Turley outlines an internationalist approach to the European Union

The European bourgeoisie is reeling after the decisive rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon, a putative replacement for the scuppered EU constitution, by the Irish electorate. And, of course, the left is celebrating. As if a defeat for the Eurocracy is a victory for the working class.

Any constitutional proposal, not least the Lisbon Treaty, requires all 27 European Union states to ratify it. Having learnt their lesson last time after French and Dutch voters decisively rejected the constitution in referenda in 2005, the vast majority of EU states have avoided taking the question in any form to their electorates. The Irish government was simply unlucky enough to be bound by its own constitution to do so.

Despite spin to the contrary, this is a severe setback for the pro-EU sections of the capitalist class. The present set of institutions is creaking under the weight of 27 separate vetoes for each member-state, effective on vital areas of policy. Positive aspirations for an enlarged role vis-à-vis other imperialist powers and blocs of states have been dealt a blow by the rejection of (very limited) steps towards a common EU military force.

Unsurprisingly, then, the establishment is fuming. It has become a commonplace among pro-EU bourgeois commentators to lament the ability of a single small nation to upend the grand plans of top leaders and bureaucrats. Others, such as the author of a letter to The Guardian, blame it on the pernicious influence of referenda, as opposed to “parliamentary democracy, on which our liberties depend” (June 16).

Anti-democracy

The main story here is, for communists, one of absolute contempt for democracy from one end to the other.

We may as well begin with the document itself. It is worth noting, first of all, that despite fulminations to the contrary, Lisbon really is a superficial remix of the maligned EU constitution. It has all the same emphases and all the same functions. That document, remember, faced two referendum defeats – in France under the pronounced influence of the left – and was heading for a particularly severe third in Britain before Brussels accepted it was dead. It is likely that several other countries would have turned in similar results, if not so pronounced. The simple fact that it is back, Dracula-like, from the grave betrays contempt for those decisions.

Of course, simply serving the thing up again with no changes at all would not have been very bright, so on a textual level the Treaty of Lisbon is a very different read. Indeed, it is a much briefer document, but even more tortuous and elliptical. It is written effectively as specific amendments to specific previous treaties, making it effectively incomprehensible to all those without the time to laboriously go through hundreds of pages of EU law. In this respect it is not reminiscent so much of the classic bourgeois constitutions – the US constitution, at a lean 20-odd pages, will fit in a pocket and be meaningful to pretty much anyone – as the infamous USA Patriot Act, which cleaved away half of the former document’s ostensible limits on state power in a similar epic slab of legalese.

This approach to constitutions and law is fundamentally anti-democratic, needless to say. As principled republicans, communists demand clarity from such documents. Such requirements are largely superfluous to the EU bourgeoisie, for whom this incomprehensibility has many uses. It provides an excuse to cut these deals behind the backs of the workers and petty bourgeoisie, since they are just too ‘complicated’ and ‘technical’ for the ‘layperson’. Should a document like the Lisbon treaty go to a vote, the EU bureaucracy has an effective monopoly over knowledge of what it actually says and, should it be rejected anyway, it can be blamed on its ‘unfortunate’ form rather than the substantive proposals, which can then be rejigged into yet another (unreadable) format.

Should it, of course, become law, it will entrench a ‘lawyerocracy’, who will exercise a judicial check on any democratic or pseudo-democratic structures in a far more pronounced way than any constitutional nation-state. Particular provisions of Lisbon, such as the EU president being selected from the largest political bloc in the EU rather than by the particular national government whose turn it is, are effectively meaningless in the face of the very form of the treaty.

The content itself is far from democratic. It commits member-states to “harmonisation” on infrastructural matters, which in effect means pressure towards privatisation. It is another step towards the creation of a standing EU military force, which would inevitably be employed to various ignominious imperialist ends, as well as acting as a more effective means of repressing opposition to EU policy.

A word must also be said about referenda. The aforementioned correspondent to The Guardian is correct to note their undemocratic nature. His reasoning, however, is amusing in this case at least. The problem with referenda is that they grant far too much power to the ‘side’ (all major parliamentary factions in Ireland were united behind the treaty) that drafts the question – yes, fascist and Bonapartist leaders often use such methods to circumvent the power of elected assemblies – ie, the executive overrides the legislature; in this case, however, a detached political class was given an unfair advantage over the ‘no’ side. That it did not convert this into a victory is a measure of the depth of dissatisfaction felt by the Irish.

Those opposed to a bosses’ Europe, then, must go beyond merely calling for and fighting referenda. Just because on the last three occasions the establishment received a bloody nose this way does not make it any less true that the cards are stacked in its favour; and each time it is defeated the bourgeoisie learns and gets better at pressing that advantage.

Whither internationalism?

There is another, related matter here.

Referenda have the effect of collapsing all opinions on each side into two great camps. They produce such memorable moments as Tony Benn sharing anti-Common Market platforms with Enoch Powell. As a result, even sharp political differentiations tend to become blunted. The opportunist politics of groups such as the Irish Socialist Workers Party all but got lost completely in the nationalist-chauvinist morass – that opportunism is detailed by Anne Mc Shane in last week’s paper (Weekly Worker June 12).

Despite paper commitment to internationalism in most cases, the left’s economism on this question – its refusal to take seriously the overarching problems of democracy in the EU and at the level of the nation-state – has effectively led it to tail the bourgeoisie on this question. And since it is generally the lower layers of that class, reliant on protectionism and subsidy, that oppose greater EU integration, opposition tends to take on a chauvinist political hue. In Ireland, this was manifested in the dominance exercised by Sinn Féin and even outright xenophobes over the ‘no’ campaign. Tailism precluded a truly internationalist campaign – the ‘I’ word was in practice reserved as a rallying cry for the already converted.

The picture is further complicated by the intervention of a section of the big bourgeoisie, organised into the lobby group, Libertas. Libertas had at its disposal, unsurprisingly, a huge amount of money and resources and so its relative isolation from the Sinn Féin/SWP-led ‘no’ campaign was not enough to truly cause it difficulties. Where is this money coming from? A large part of it hails from the personal funds and contacts of one Declan Ganley, the chief executive and chairman of Rivada Networks – an American corporation that provides telecommunication systems to the US military. Later on, Libertas recruited Ulick McEvaddy, yet another CEO of yet another US military contractor.

This is unlikely to be a coincidence. One section of the big bourgeoisie that certainly does not have any interest in a more effective and united EU is the American ruling class. The cultivation of ‘Atlanticist’ links with Britain and thus effective control – one way or another – of the UK veto has had the effect that the EU has outgrown its institutions, and now finds it vastly difficult to seriously reform them. This is all very amenable to US capital in decline, leaving it still without a serious rival as global hegemon (a status which, after all, relies in the last instance on the ability of hegemon states to deploy overwhelming military force).

I happen to disagree with comrade Mc Shane that a spoilt ballot was the correct tactic for Irish workers, since the Lisbon treaty is indeed highly anti-democratic and anti-working class, and deserves to be opposed. But in a sense, this is the least interesting question. What is really at issue is the strategy of communists for promoting and producing a genuine internationalism.

There is a screaming negative lesson here – the abject failure of the Irish SWP. Its insistence on tailing the Sinn Féin campaign not only disarmed it against the petty bourgeois nationalism of that party, and not only gave a petty bourgeois coloration to its own demands and propaganda. It also made it impossible for the SWP to effectively distinguish its politics from that of the American military-industrial complex. Its minimal ‘anti-militarist’ defence of Irish ‘neutrality’ actually played into the hands of the most militaristic, brutal imperialist force in the world.

Communists advocate the immediate commencement of practical cooperation across national borders against the bosses’ Europe, and for a genuine, democratic and socialist alternative. We cannot pin our hopes on particular conjunctures in particular nation-states, but must build internationally as soon as is practical and possible, uniting the myriad Marxist forces for a properly internationalist policy against Brussels.

For a Communist Party of the European Union!