The EU and 21st century Feudalism

PETER SIRE

The Author has an MBA from Cass Business School, London and a background in international finance. He is a long-time observer of international and European affairs.

Harvard lecturer Yascha Mounk writes in his open letter resigning from Germany's Social Democrat party of the betrayal of the social democratic dream. Germany is not alone in this. Every European social democrat party, from Labour in the UK, to PSOE in Spain or Pasok in Greece has sold out to neoliberalism and none more so than those in control of the new steamroller against democracy that the European Commission, its instrument the European Central Bank and - to a large extent - the European Parliament have become.

Owen Jones rightly points out in the New Statesman that the German-led terrorist coup by the Eurozone cabal against Greece was designed no more no less than "to stop an anti-austerity movement spreading across the continent" or, put another way, to stand with the powerful against the most disadvantaged across Europe, ravaged by the bank-created 2008 recession.

There is no doubt that the social democratic promoters of the European project of one or two generations past will be turning in their graves at the events unfolding, but if they were still alive, they would be warning of a repetition of history.  While national socialism lurks on the sidelines of institutional politics, an even greater and more powerful threat is attempting to march its jackboots over the sovereignty of European citizens under the cover of the consensus submissiveness of those cosy and still dominant bedfellows, the Christian Democrat and Sclerotic Socialist establishment. The threat comes in the form of an international corporatism that seeks to turn Europe and the whole world into a a tax-free, risk-free paradise where the citizens are expected to pick up the price tag for the unscrupulous recklessness with which greedy corporations (not all, but far too many) exercise their muscle, yielding rich dividends for those faceless "markets" and ethic-corrupting bonuses for their directors.

Europe's Christian Democrats have cleverly appropriated the tag of "popular" to describe their essentially anti-popular, pro-elite paternalism. So while new parties such as Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain are labelled "populist"and "radical",  it is ironic that they are in fact propounding no less than the political philosophy known as social democracy in the 20th century or that proposed by Bakunin as his alternative to feudalism in the 19th, demonised at the time as anarchy. Indeed, it is always the threat of social disorder and economic collapse that is wielded by the political elites against those who challenge their self-rewarding power with its thinly-veiled authoritarianism and oppression of the common man and woman.

The instrument the corporatist tax-evaders are employing to exercise their feudalist plunder on the people of Europe, with a multi-million investment in manipulative lobbyists and lawyers, is TTIP. This transatlantic treaty seeks to eliminate what was commonly accepted as a political risk, meaning that corporations will now be featherbedded from parliaments or local authorities passing laws to protect public health, food safety, the environment or public services because they will be able to claim compensation for loss of earnings through tribunals that by-pass national jurisdictions. It will also in effect override national agencies in matters of public health, forcing them to accept the lowest common denominator of standards such as those of the corrupt FDA in the USA, stuffed with corporate appointees.  

Europe is already declining to the levels of physical and mental illness prevalent across large swathes of the US.  By letting TTIP in under the table, the powers that be in the European Commission are, in the name of flexibilisation and competition, seeking to facilitate the process, with its consequent health costs, both human and economic, requiring ever-increasing austerity and accelerating the spiral of private profit and public loss that is so ravaging Europe's most disadvantaged since the 2008 crisis. Such is the project that is being forged by Europe's elites with the shameful acquiescence of a majority of the social democrats (in name only) sitting in the European Parliament who supposedly act in the interest of their electors but take their orders from the party apparatchiks back home that dance to the corporatist piper's tune.

Like Yascha Mounk in Germany, there are growing numbers of supporters of the traditional parties - internationalists at heart - who are becoming disillusioned and indignant at the European project's slide into this new feudalism. In the UK, there are those who are considering using the opportunity presented by next year's referendum to express their rejection. A"radical", Jeremy Corbyn, seems favourite to lead a Labour party whose militants have grown weary of waiting for their leaders to break away from the tainted Blairite legacy  to put an end to the rapacious corporatism that demands zero-hour contracts and yet more benefit cuts for the most vulnerable, including 300,000 children.

As Ronald G. Asch writes in The decline and fall of the European Union: is it time to rip it up and start again? Europe is already in crisis following the upheavals of Greece and the failures of austerity against a background of accelerating inequality.  The threat of a "no" vote in the UK referendum would cause panic in the EU and likewise for David Cameron who is hoping to return triumphant with Treaty changes to please his corporate backers and secure a "yes". It is time for progressive UK voters to use the opportunity he has unwittingly handed us on a platter to put a bomb under the foul-smelling State of Europe and re-vindicate social democracy as once was - on the side of the people.