Socialists should still oppose Brexit: a reply to Costas Lapavitsas
Craig Lewis
and Len Arthur
Jeremy Corbyn’s
insistence that the UK must leave both the single Market and the Customs union is
not just a consequence of electoral “triangulation” to accommodate leave voting
Labour constituencies. It is also
indicative of the extent to which the Labour leadership and sections of the
trade union movement believe that a “people’s Brexit” is a viable strategy for
the radical left. This view has been
developed recently in a Jacobin article by Costas Lapavitsas, a Corbyn adviser
and academic economist. It has been widely publicised on the Lexit left: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/corbyn-labour-eu-single-market-economic-policy
Like most of the pro leave Left, he accepts that Brexit was led by racists and xenophobes
but nevertheless it was a working class revolt in areas “ravaged by the
neoliberal policies of the last four decades”. The thrust of his argument is
that staying within the single market will prevent a Corbyn government
implementing key aspects of its “radical” programme. EU Single Market rules will undermine its
industrial strategy by blocking increased public ownership, state aid to
rebuild key industries and the use of public procurement to promote decent jobs
and employment standards.These are all arguments commonly touted by the CP and
other Lexit groups. However, in a mirror image, of arguments used by Tory hard Brexiters,
Lapavitsas asserts that WTO rules actually provide significant opportunities to
implement a radical industrial strategy.
Finally, like many on the Lexit left, he seems to accept that free
movement is nothing more than a business ploy to lower wages. EU rules would
therefore restrict Labour’s ability to introduce a “progressive and fair
migration policy”.
Much of what he says is tendentious to
say the least and has been challenged by many on the left who supported a
“remain” position in the referendum. For
instance the idea that free movement should be replaced by a progressive
migration policy is a massive concession to the idea that low wages and
pressure on public services is the fault of migration not the result of
austerity. An idea which has been
extensively challenged even by mainstream economic commentators as Phil Hearse
has recently pointed out. https://prruk.org/product/transform-a-journal-of-the-radical-left/
In a widely quoted report for the
Renewal Journal, Andy Tarrant and Andrea Biondi have undertaken a detailed
analysis of claims that EU rules would present significant barriers to Corbyn’s
industrial strategy. They looked at each of Labour’s economic proposals in the
2017 manifesto (26 in total). 17 would
not fall within State Aid rules at all. 7 potentially do, but these would be
exempted under current EU law. Only 2 measures would need to be reported under
existing regulations and these could be structured to comply. With regard to
nationalisation they suggest that little of Corbyn’s agenda would be affected,
and point to the far higher proportion of public ownership in other EU
countries.
State aid and nationalisation rules
have not stopped Germany from municipalising energy provision and it has not
prevented the operation of publicly owned railways throughout much of the EU.
In Germany 90% of passenger services are run by the state railway company; in
France both the main train operator and the infrastructure operator are state
owned; the same applies in Italy; the Spanish railways are virtually entirely
in public ownership; as is the case in Belgium and Holland; even in Sweden
which has started to privatise its railways 80% of services are still publicly
owned and run.
Lapavitsas’s
assertion that WTO rules would be more favourable than the Single Market is
frankly bizarre. It focuses only on WTO regulation
of state aid, procurement and public ownership.
He ignores the whole economic and political purpose of the WTO, which is
aimed at promoting free market competition and free trade. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/602053/IPOL_BRI(2017)602053_EN.pdf
The hard
right of the Tory party support trading under WTO rules precisely because they
understand that it will hard wire austerity and neoliberal economics into the
UK economy. Secretive bilateral trade
deals under WTO auspices are not a technical matter, they reflect the exercise of
raw political power in an increasingly anarchic trading environment. Will Hutton
argues perceptively that leaving the Single Market in order to engage in trade
deals with China, Russia, Trump’s America and the emerging economies of the
global South is akin to “swimming with crocodiles”
Combined
with the disruption to trade and supply chains attendant on leaving the Single
Market, such deals would massively increase the rate of exploitation within
British capitalism as explained below.
But
Lapavitsas’s justification of a “people’s Brexit” is not just technically
flawed. His argument is completely devoid of any serious analysis of the global
economic and political circumstances in which Corbyn’s Labour Party and the
radical left more broadly finds itself.
This is surprising for someone who had first-hand experience of the
Syriza tragedy and at the time developed a much more nuanced and
internationalist perspective than those on the Greek left, like the KKE, who
advocated an economic nationalist style Grexit. In fact the extent of
Lapavitsas’s political analysis seems to comprise a sharp rebuke to those of us
on the Left who support remaining in the EU and the Single Market to: “come to
terms with the underlying realities of the referendum decision”. This is the language of Rees Mogg! It pays no heed to the political realities of
Brexit.
There is of
course no socialist principle that requires us to remain in the Single Market.
The EU is and always has been a “businessman’s club”. It has become a vehicle through which
austerity politics have been imposed by the European elite. An exercise of class power that has had
particularly devastating consequences for the people of Southern Europe
especially the Greek working class, where civil society has come close to
collapse through enforced privatisation and massive attacks on working class
jobs, living standards and welfare provisions since the 2008 financial crisis. But
as socialists we must confront reality as it is, not as we would wish it.
Brexit will not provide political and economic opportunities for a radical
transformation of British society. There
are a number of reasons why this is the case which left remainers have argued
consistently since before the referendum: https://prruk.org/product/transform-a-journal-of-the-radical-left/
In short,
the referendum was not aimed at giving the “people” a democratic say on EU
membership. It was supposed to resolve
the long running Tory civil war over Europe.
When it went wrong the hard right, both within and outside the Tory party,
seized the opportunity to initiate a “coup” aimed ultimately at completing the
transformation of Britain into a low wage, low welfare, free market economy
with increasingly authoritarian forms of government. A process starkly evident
in recent attempts to restrict Parliamentary Control over the final withdrawal
deal, and to undermine the power of the devolved governments to take autonomous
decisions.
The central
purpose of Brexit, especially in its hardest and increasingly most likely form,
is to attack working class living standards and increase the rate of
exploitation of labour in British capitalism in order to overcome a historically
low rate of profit. In concrete terms
this is already reflected in the higher inflation generated by a falling £. In
consequence real wages have stagnated or fallen for most workers; a process
that will intensify after EU exit. Tories talk openly of deregulation as a key
benefit of Brexit. Despite weasel words from May and the soft Brexiteers this
can only mean stripping away the last vestiges of “social Europe” protections;
reduced workplace rights, more restrictions on collective bargaining and trade
union rights, lower environmental and safety standards. Leaving the EU will, even by the Government’s
own assessments, be either moderately or massively disruptive of manufacturing
industry (http://uk.businessinsider.com/5-charts-secret-brexit-impact-study-damage-threatened-by-leaving-the-eu-2018-3) In practice this means large scale
job losses of between 35,000 – 80,000, and a further shift towards precarious
work and low pay.
Finally it
is undeniably true that the leave vote was high amongst working class
communities devastated by austerity. Yet any serious analysis of the referendum
result shows that this is neither the whole, nor even the main story. https://prruk.org/product/transform-a-journal-of-the-radical-left/. Much more important were the politics
driving the vote in those communities. Like
most advocates of a “people’s Brexit”, Lapavitsas downplays the fact that the
leave vote was dominated by racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant ideas
pedalled by the authoritarian right inside and outside the Tory party, and
legitimated by mainstream politicians and key sections of the media. Reactionary rhetoric has continued to
dominate Brexit discourse since the referendum forming a background to what
Neil Faulkner refers to as “Creeping Fascism”. https://prruk.org/creeping-fascism-and-the-rise-of-the-far-right-one-year-on/. The ability of the Democratic
Football Lads Alliance and other far right groups to put large numbers of their
supporters on the streets in recent weeks, culminating in the estimated 20,000
who marched in London demanding the release of jailed Nazi Tommy Robinson is a
massive wake up call for the left. It is clear that British fascists have been
able to strengthen their ideological hold over sections of the working class by
using the same “tropes” as those legitimised by the hard Brexiteer right of the
Tory Party – denouncing anyone who opposes a hard Brexit as saboteurs, enemies
of the people, traitors etc. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/13/brexit-traitor-trope-hard-right-fantasies-risk The rise of the UK far right becomes more
alarming when set in a European context. Parties of the far right are in government in
Austria, Poland, Hungary and Italy. In Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark,
France, Germany and Finland far right parties are in national parliaments. As a
consequence anti-immigrant and Islamophobic discourse and policies are becoming
normalised in much of Europe.
The fact
that Lapavitsas ignores this wider economic and political context is
symptomatic of the dead end in which the Lexit left finds itself as the Brexit
process unfolds. His argument is little
more than toothless anti-EU propaganda and isolationist economic nationalism, underpinning
the Stalinist notion of a “British road to Socialism”. As a result he advocates a political and
economic strategy for Labour that plays right into the hands of the hard Tory
right and those more sinister forces now emerging on our streets.
There is of
course another way. The EU is as much a
terrain of struggle for socialists as the individual capitalist states which
comprise it. The radical left in Britain
needs to Europeanise and internationalise the fightback.
The Party of the European Left (EL) is a starting point in this process.
It covers 23 countries – not all in the EU – and 40 radical socialist and
communist parties. It acts more as a network than a democratic centralist party
and with regular meetings and congresses it provides an ongoing forum for
socialists to develop policy, politics and coordinate action. It is intent on
reaching out through the annual Summer University and European Social Forum,
the next one to be held in September 2018 in Bilbao. It is coordinating action
against the rise of the right and neo-fascism as well as emphasising the fight
against austerity, NATO and militarisation. The EL includes 27 MEPs and is the
largest part of the 52 GUE/NGL red green group in the European Parliament. A recently agreed EL statement has been put out in the name of
Gregor Gysi the EL President, appealing to the left across Europe to work
toward a joint platform against the right, neoliberalism and climate change
running up to the European Parliament elections next year.
Internationalism
also needs to be an integral part of the socialist case and action in the UK.
Defending these politics is what this response is all about and in practice, on
the issue of the EU working with others through organisations such as Another Europe is Possible, to ensure that the socialist case for remain and fighting
for a social and democratic EU is made as opposed to the ‘business as usual’
case being promoted by others. Just as important is the active defence of
working class action across Europe, against the attacks of neoliberal
governments such as that of Macron in France; opposing the rise of the right,
for example the AfG in Germany; and supporting social and human rights, such as
the vote against the anti-abortion laws in Ireland.
The key to a
radical socialist transformation of Europe remains the process of actively
linking local fightbacks, with building an international socialist organisation,
such as the EL. It, at least, provides a European starting point of being able
to seriously and meaningfully tackle the power of international capital and the
threat of climate change. Such a process becomes more urgent than ever, as parties
and movements of the hard right target next year’s European elections for their
anti-migrant and islamophobic politics.
Pulling up
the national drawbridge, as advocated by Lapavitsas, would mean turning our
backs on this international project, creating divisions and rendering the required
transformation less likely.
