First published by Global Research in April 2016
1. The historical background of Brexit
The June referendum on whether Britain will remain a member of the EU or not is in fact the second referendum on the issue. The British people was asked again to vote on the same issue some 40 years ago, in 1975, when they had to decide on whether to stay in the “Common Market” (the precursor of the present EU) or not. At that time, the Left was not yet integrated into the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization expressing the interests of multinational corporations, which were just emerging en masse.
This was reflected in the fact that not only the antisystemic Left but also the Left of the Labor party under the leadership of Tony Benn was fighting for a British exit. Today, Benn’s son is one of the strongest opponents of Brexit and supporter of all the wars by the Transnational Elite (TE) i.e. the network of economic and political elites based mainly in the G7 countries, which effectively rules the world today. In fact, the entire Labor party and the Trade Unions controlled by it are now against Brexit, apart from a handful of its members in Parliament. So, what has changed since 1975? Has the EU moved to the Left, or is it the other way round, i.e. the Left is today theoretically and politically bankrupt and has been fully integrated into the NWO of neoliberal globalization?
The process of creating a single European market, which began in the 1950s with the Rome treaty, accelerated in the late 1980s and the early 1990s with the 1992 Maastricht treaty (which replaced the Rome treaty) and the Single Market Act that was put into effect in 1993. At the same time, and not accidentally, these Treaties implied a very significant acceleration of the integration process that was made imperative for the elites because of the growing internationalization of the market economy–-as expressed by the rapid expansion of multinationals––and the intensifying competition with the other two parts of the Triad (North America and Far East).
The supporters of the acceleration process maintained that, in the ultra-competitive internationalized market economy of the twenty-first century, only a market of continental dimensions could provide the security and the economies of scale needed for the survival of European capital, i.e. of the Europe-based multinationals. And indeed, during the last two decades of the 20th century, the economic gap between the European countries and the rest of the Triad has widened considerably. A characteristic indication of the widening gap was the fact that the European Union’s world export share decreased by about 7 percent between 1980 and 1994, whereas at the same time the US’s share fell by only 2 percent and the Japanese share increased by a massive 31 percent. The main cause of Europe’s failure was the fact that its competitiveness had, for long, been lagging behind the competitiveness of the other regions. Thus, European competitiveness has fallen by 3.7 percent since 1980, while US competitiveness has risen by 2.2 percent and Japanese competitiveness (which for many years has been on top of the competitiveness league) increased by 0.5 percent.[1]
The form that the integration had taken reflected, in various ways, the neoliberal trend, which had already become dominant by then, as necessitated by the exigencies of globalization for open and ‘liberalized’ markets. On the other hand, a politically and theoretically bankrupt “Left”, which developed in parallel with the rise of globalization, ceased questioning globalization itself and its institutions like the EU, the IMF, WTO and so on. This development was of course in consistence with the systematic effort of the reformist Left to undermine the antisystemic movement against globalization, which emerged since Seattle, and its replacement with a reformist, in effect globalist, movement under the meaningless title “Another World is possible”. [2]
For the globalist “Left” that emerged, neoliberalism was just an ideology or a dogma, if not a ‘doctrine’ imposed by unscrupulous capitalists and ‘bad’ free-market economists and politicians associated with them! ! [3] This is the kind of reformist Left which takes for granted globalization and its institutions such as the EU, the WTO, the IMF and so on (e.g. the “Left” of the Syriza –-presently presiding over the catastrophe of the Greek people––and Podemos kind).
Alternatively, an antisystemic version of the globalist “Left” that emerged in parallel simply waits for the overthrow of capitalism to take care of globalization. This is the kind of globalist “Left” which, using the theoretical tools of the 19th and early 20th centuries that were based on nation-states, attempts to analyze a new systemic phenomenon, the NWO of neoliberal globalization, which implies the phasing out of national sovereignty. So, they fight against “imperialism” in general and wait for the overthrow of capitalism to abolish the NWO institutions, despite the fact that imperialism, in the old Marxist sense of the world that they invoke, has disappeared together with the effective decay of the nation-state, with which capital was intrinsically linked in the past!
Yet, had, for instance, the acceleration of the integration process started about 10 years earlier, i.e. in 1979, when a European Commission’s report was still foreseeing a European Union built on `indicative planning’ at the continental level, a very different picture of European integration might had emerged. In fact, the European Commission’s report was accurately reflecting the essence of the social-democratic consensus, which had just began breaking at the time. Its proposal amounted to a kind of “European Keynesianism” that should have replaced national Keynesianism, which had already become obsolete under conditions of increasingly free movement of capital.
However, the collapse of the social-democratic consensus, following the flourishing of the neoliberal trend in the 1980’s (Thatcherism, Reaganomics, about turn of Mitterrand etc.), as a result of the rise of multinationals, brushed aside the proposals for a European Keynesian strategy. Thus, the tendency that was encouraged by the economic and political elites and eventually prevailed in the European Union was one that identified economic unification with the radical shrinking of national control on economic activity. Consequently, the European Union’s executive power has been confined to creating a homogeneous institutional framework that allowed for unimpeded entrepreneurial activity, while, simultaneously, providing for some minimal guarantees (those compatible with the neoliberal consensus requirements) regarding the protection of the environment and labor.
Thus, the agreement for the single market rested on the main neoliberal assumption that the European Union’s economies were suffering from a lack of `structural adjustment’, that is, from structural deficiencies due to inflexibilities of the market mechanism and barriers to free competition. Such barriers that were mentioned in the Cecchini Report, [4] on which the official ideology of the single market rested, were the various physical, technical and fiscal barriers that were assumed to obstruct the flow of commodities, capital and labor. As regards the capital market in particular, freeing this market from any controls, that is, the creation of conditions for the easy and unrestricted flow of capital between countries, was considered to be a basic requirement in this process. This is why the abolition of all foreign exchange controls has always been considered an essential condition for the `Single European market of 1993’.
J. M. Keynes
However, the most important barriers were not the ones explicitly mentioned in the Report, but those implied by it and, in particular, the emphasis it placed on competition. These implied barriers were the ‘institutional’ barriers to free competition, that had been introduced by the social-democratic consensus and which the agreement for the Single Market undertook to eliminate—a task brought to completion by the Maastricht treaty. Such institutional barriers were the Keynesian type of state interventionism to secure full employment, the large welfare state that created fiscal problems, the labor unions’ `restrictive practices’ and the public corporations, which did not always act on the basis of micro-economic criteria to raise economic efficiency. These barriers, as long as the degree of internationalization of the European economies was still relatively low, did not have a substantial negative effect on economic growth. However, once the growing internationalization of the economy and, in particular, the enlarged mobility of capital ceased to be compatible with the implementation of national macro-economic policies on Keynesian lines, their negative effect on growth became evident, as manifested by the stagflation crisis of the 1970s which hit particularly hard the European economies.
The Maastricht treaty, therefore, simply confirmed the overtly neoliberal character that the Community had begun to acquire with the Single Market Act. The improvement of competitiveness was the primary goal. To this goal belong the mechanisms that were established by the Economic and Monetary Union (1999-2002) and the Eurozone.
Thus, this Union, as indeed the single market, signified not the integration of peoples, or even the integration of States, but just the integration of free markets. Still, free markets mean not just the unimpeded movement of commodities, capital and labor, but also `flexibility’, that is, the elimination of barriers to the free formation of prices and wages, as well as overall curtailing of the state’s control on economic activity. And this is, in fact, the essence of the neoliberal consensus that characterized the EU’s new institutional framework, i.e. the further marketization of the European Union’s economy. Thus the aim of the new institutions was obvious: to maximize the freedom of organized capital, the concentration of which was facilitated in every way (as it was witnessed, for instance, by the mass take-overs and mergers that took place in the late 1980s in view of the single market) and to minimize the freedom of organized labor, through any means available and, particularly, through the threat of unemployment.
So, in the interest of enhancing competitiveness, the “European ideal” had degenerated into a kind of “Americanized Europe”, where luxury and extreme poverty stand side by side and the comfortable life of a minority was a mirror image of the marginalization of the rest. Britain, which was the first European country to embark on neoliberal policies, which were then enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty, was showing at the time the future image of Europe. Therefore, the institutional framework that was established in Europe consisted of a model in which the continuation of growth depended on a process of further internationalizing its economy, through the destruction of local economic self-reliance and the continual expansion of exports to cope with a growing volume of imports.
All this implies that the rise of the NWO of neoliberal globalization was not just the result of a betrayal by social democrats that consented to the neoliberal content of the new Europe then emerging. Similarly, the present criminal policies implemented by a “left” government in Greece are not just the result of a “capitulation”, as today’s globalist “Left,” asserts. [5] Nor simply is the present recession to be blamed on the austerity policies adopted by EU member-states etc. If we accept interpretations (or rather myths) such as these, then the replacement of the neoliberal institutional framework is simply a matter for the `true’ socialists and Leftists to gain power, who, in the context of economic recovery, would reinstate the institutional framework of the social-democratic consensus.
However, if a government today takes for granted the institutional framework of the internationalized market economy and its institutions such as the EU and the WTO, then, it will simply implement the same “neoliberal policies” irrespective of whether it calls itself a government of the Left, including the communist Left. But, this is exactly what the globalist “Left” does today when it does not raise the issue of a new world order of sovereign nations, in the name of an outdated internationalism. This is why the issue is not one of Left betrayal nor is the radical change of the institutional framework ‘from within’ possible, as it proved to be impossible in the past (Mitterrand, Lafontaine and so on), or at present (SYRIZA) and will undoubtedly prove once more in the future if Podemos take over in Spain, or the Labor party under Jeremy Corbyn in Britain.
The reason for this is that, within the framework of capitalist globalization, the minimization of the state’s social role and of national sovereignty in general does not constitute a choice but a pre-condition for European capital (i.e. the Europe-based multinationals) to effectively compete with those based in the USA or the Far East. Particularly so if we take into account the fact that the latter face much weaker institutional barriers due to the lack of a social-democratic tradition in the United States and the Far East. Today, therefore, social democracy and the globalist “Left” in general, have, no meaning either at the national level or at the transnational level. Thus, any attempt by European social democrats or globalist “Leftists” to change the present institutional framework, in order to radically enhance the state’s social role, or generally to expand national sovereignty, allowing states to impose more social controls on markets than those based in the Far East or the USA, would simply make European multinationals less competitive than those based in the rest of the world and would result in a mass exodus of European capital.
By the same token, a new, Europe-wide kind of Keynesianism is not feasible, unless it is going to be combined with a self-reliant growth led by a highly protected market economy. But, such a solution is in direct contradiction to the NWO’s logic and dynamics. It is exactly for this reason that the proposals to re-negotiate the EU treaties, in order to introduce social-democratic aims in the European Union, are equally utopian in the negative sense of the word, if not totally disorienting, as is the case with Varoufakis’ DIEM25. [6] In fact, the argument in favor of creating a European ‘social market’, which today’s globalist “Left proposes within the framework of a supposedly ‘new’’ movement like the aforementioned, is simply a repetition of the same arguments proposed by the previous generation of social democrats about 20 years ago. What differs is the packaging, as today’s proposals are presented in the form of a pseudo-direct democracy proposal ––which is particularly fashionable nowadays, following the various “indignados” and “occupy” movements of the last few years. Thus, Will Hutton, a major social democrat thinker was arguing for a “social market” Europe more than 20 years ago:
The countries of EU together have the power to regulate the financial markets and control capital flows, and to play a part in compelling the US and Japan to regulate their relationship better, as part of a world deal …Europe can insist on common social rights across the continent so that multinational corporations cannot play one state off against another in an effort to bid down wages and working conditions. Europe can set common environmental standards and common rules of corporate governance, establishing the concept of the stakeholder company. Indeed social market Europe can formalize its rules and codes so that … a co-operative, more committed form of capitalism could be defended..[7]
JM Keynes
However, our experience of the last two decades had amply shown that exactly the opposite was the case, following the higher integration achieved within the EU in the 1990s. As I stressed at the time, “much more is involved in the financial crisis than the deregulation of the financial markets. In fact, what is involved is the opening and deregulation of all markets, i.e., the very essence of neoliberal globalization”. [8] No wonder that despite the catastrophic financial crisis in 2008, the liberalization of markets, including the financial ones, continued unabated and many analysts already predict a repetition of a similar crisis (only worse as far as its effects are concerned) in the near future. Yet, even today, members of the globalist “Left repeat the same mantra, as if nothing happened in the last quarter of a century. Thus, as Monbiot put it, in a supposedly ‘objective’ article on Brexit,
“by instinct, like many on the left, I am a European. I recognize that many issues – perhaps most – can no longer be resolved only within our borders. Among them are grave threats to our welfare and our lives: climate change and the collapse of the living world; the spread of epidemics whose vectors are corporations; the global wealth-grab by the very rich; antibiotic resistance; terrorism and conflict”. [9]
2. Why BREXIT now?
In view of the above, the answer to the question I raised at the beginning of this article on what has changed since 1975, when the first British referendum on EU membership took place, should be obvious. EU member-states, following the economic integration achieved in the 1990s, have lost most of their economic sovereignty ––if not all of it, in case they are also members of the Eurozone. It is clear that if a country does not control even its own currency it can hardly be called economically sovereign, as it is at the mercy of the bureaucrats controlling the European Central Bank, who in turn work at the behest of transnational corporations. As the examples of Greece and Cyprus clearly showed, the Eurozone elites can at any moment financially strangle any members that do not obey their instructions by simply turning off the liquidity tap. Even more so when these countries, in fact, do not control even their fiscal policies and have to obey the catastrophic austerity policies imposed ‘from above’. That is the policies Eurozone members have to follow in case they cannot improve their competitiveness through alternative means (e.g. investment on research and development and high technology industries) while at the same time they are also pushed, directly or indirectly, to privatize their social wealth.
However, a country with no economic sovereignty does not enjoy also any national sovereignty––setting aside the disorienting distinction between power and sovereignty that Eurofans make,[10] as if it is possible for any country within the Eurozone to implement different economic policies from those imposed by the Euro-elites! It is in this sense that nation-states have only a formal existence today, given that their national sovereignty has withered away within the EU. A clear indication of this is the fact that, according to several studies on the matter, at least 65% of domestic legislation of EU member states has its origin in Brussels. Thus, as a recent ‘definitive study’ on the British case study showed (a country which in fact is much less dependent on the EU than most other member countries), “64.7 per cent of the laws introduced in the UK since 1993 either originated from the European Union (EU) or are deemed to be EU influenced by the House of Commons Library”. [11]
Thus, as a British analyst aptly described the loss of sovereignty of EU members within the framework of neoliberal globalization:
“This is the crux of the matter, namely the sovereign right of European nations to form their own policies for their own people and expect other states to do the same within sovereign borders…The Euro-project is also a study in the implementation of a Neo-Liberal Regime which benefits the corporations and which has seen small businesses vaporize from the streets. Gone is the butcher, gone is the baker, gone is the greengrocer selling local produce and in come the Big Spaces which offer fabulous GM goods smothered and charged with chemicals, deep-frozen meat products made in Vietnam, and Japan and Peru and Nigeria, washed with ammonia, compressed into blocks and frozen for years before being marketed as 100% Prime British Beef!” [12]
It is therefore the resentment of the British people at the loss of their national sovereignty within the EU (despite the fact that the British elites are a constituent part of the Transnational Elite), which has led to a growing anti-EU movement in Britain that may well lead to a Brexit––an event which could have catalytic implications for the EU itself. This is particularly so because, as the British elites themselves recognize, the anti-EU movement in Britain is actually a movement against globalization (a fact that the Globalist “Left” ignores!), which could also explain the rise of the nationalist UKIP party:
“The surge in support for UKIP is not simply a protest vote. The party has a constituency among those left behind by globalization… the globalization of the economy has produced losers as well as winners. As a rule the winners are among the better off and the losers among the least affluent.”[13]
A further confirmation of the lack of economic and national sovereignty even in a country which is a member of the TE, Britain, was provided recently with the closing of the steel industry by its Indian owner Tata, with the loss of up to 40,000 jobs.
Clearly, in case Britain was a sovereign nation it could have imposed, long ago, tariffs to protect its own industry from imported steel at an impossibly low price because of the miserable wages being paid in countries such as China. In fact, within the EU, steel production is impossible, even if the Tories were prepared to nationalize it––which is of course anathema not only to them but even to “left” wingers like Corbyn and the rest of the Labor party that did not even dare to raise the issue! As a British systemic paper put it: “Even if Whitehall was prepared to take control of Tata’s UK steel business, Europe’s strict rules on state aid could preclude it. Member states are not allowed to prop up or subsidize uncompetitive businesses.” [14]
Therefore, the jobs of tens of thousands of people are condemned to oblivion, as it happened repeatedly in the recent past, as a result of globalization and the consequent freeing and liberalizing of markets, as well as the privatizations and general de-industrialization following the migration of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) to cheap cost ‘paradises’. No wonder Britain today is a service economy with three quarters of its national output produced in the services sector. The result is that present growth is based mainly on consumption, often on borrowed money, with official figures showing Britain having now the highest current account deficit since modern records began in 1948. [15]
This does not mean a capitalist crisis, as globalist Marxists believe. Profits of TNCs thrive from transferring their production cost, including taxes, to cheap labor and/or low-tax paradises. What it means is that neoliberal globalization destroys the productive structure of countries like Britain, as the steel industry case showed. As a very recent investigation by a think tank reported, since 2000, the share of GDP accounted for by foundation industries (i.e. industries supplying the basic goods – such as metal and chemicals – used by other industries) has fallen by 43% in Britain vs. a fall by 21% across the rich nations. This could well explain the fact that whereas at the end of the 1990s, imports accounted for 40% of UK demand for basic metals, today they account for 90% of it![16] This is of course nothing new within the EU marvelous world. A similar process has destroyed the Greek economic structure since the country entered the Common Market in 1981, leading to a consumer society funded by borrowing, which inevitably collapsed thirty years later and led to the present informal bankruptcy and the consequent Greek economic and social catastrophe.[17]
So, the main factor which created a movement ‘from below’ for Brexit was the growing realization by the British public that its national and economic sovereignty has been decisively eroded within the EU, forcing the elites, albeit reluctantly, to accept the demand for a referendum. Particularly so when one takes into account that Britons used to live in one of the strongest nation-states of the world and now are forced to watch powerless the effective destruction of their industrial base, in the very place where industrialization was born. Needless to add that the “Left” academic/politicians supporters of the EU, such as Picketty and Varoufakis (the two “left-wing gurus who try to save Europe”, according to another EU acolyte[18]) have nothing to say about all this and the loss of national sovereignty but talk instead about a mythical and disorienting European “sovereignty”, which just suffers from the present lack of internal democracy!
3. Brexit as a precondition for sovereignty
However, it is not only the Britons but also millions of other Europeans who increasingly realize that true independence and self-reliance, the preconditions of national and economic sovereignty, are impossible within the NWO in general and the EU in particular, which has systematically dismantled sovereignty in the last two decades or so. But is just an exit from the EU a sufficient condition to restore sovereignty? Here is how a reader of Guardian, the flagship of liberal (i.e. the globalist) ”Left”, simply put it:
The “Brexit buccaneers” would suggest that an out vote would enable us to regain our sovereignty. That is a fantasy. As a nation, with the encouragement of successive governments, we have ceded sovereignty to a variety of external powers, including the EU, over many years. Major, foreign-owned multinationals determine levels of investment and jobs in this country as a consequence of decades of British national institutions and businesses being privatized or sold to the highest bidder. It is an illusion to believe that leaving Europe will somehow restore national sovereignty when our energy security is largely dependent on the French and Chinese governments deciding whether or not Hinkley C is built; Canadian multinationals decide how many aerospace jobs there will be in Northern Ireland; and Indian entrepreneurs preside over the survival of our steel industry. These same Indian entrepreneurs, and their German and Japanese counterparts, will decide the long-term health of our automotive manufacturing. Similarly, decades of privatization of the public sector has seen outsourcing contracts (particularly in the NHS) let to US corporations, among others. Brexit will not diminish the power and influence of these institutions over our economic future and our elected representatives. Nor will the government suddenly be in a stronger position to persuade them to pay a fairer contribution towards our civil society through taxation. [19]
No wonder this is an argument supported also by the propagandists of globalization and the EU, like Varoufakis, who stated the obvious when he said that: “it’s impossible to stay in the single market and keep your sovereignty”. However, for systemic writers, pretending to be radicals like him, the implication of this fact was not the need to fight for national sovereignty but, instead, exactly the opposite: to persuade people about the necessity of the NWO on the basis of the famous Thatcherism principle TINA “There Is No Alternative” (TINA). Thus, using the cheap trick of creating a pseudo-dilemma in order to draw the “right” answer, the same author and ex Finance Minister of Greece, (who took an effective part in the Greek catastrophe last year) stressed that:
“Neither withdrawing into the safe cocoon of the nation state, nor giving in to the disintegrating and anti-democratic EU, represent good options for Britain. So, instead of seeing the referendum as a vote between these two options, and these two options alone, the UK needs a third option: to vote to stay in the European Union so that it can fight tooth and nail against the EU’s anti-democratic institutions”. [20]
Yet, both the first option as well as his own third option are, in fact, false options. The first one because fighting for national sovereignty does not of course means withdrawing into the safe cocoon of the nation state, as he and some calamity “Marxists” suggest. It could well mean, instead, laying the foundations for a new democratic world order of sovereign nations.
In fact, sovereignty is a necessary condition (though not a sufficient one) for any radical social change, given that such a change is impossible within the NWO of open and liberalized markets for commodities, capital and labor. Therefore, those like Varoufakis, Zizek and the “anarchist” [21] Chomsky (who just joined Varoufakis’ movement!), as well as the rest in the globalist “Left” who talk today about open borders, are in fact deceiving the victims of globalization. That is, they exploit the old libertarian ideal for ‘no borders’ in order to indirectly promote the NWO. Clearly, open borders in an internationalized capitalist market economy simply mean that multinational corporations will be absolutely free to exploit the productive resources of any country in the world– and particularly labor–in order to maximize their economic power at the expense of societies.
In other words, societies, in a state of open borders, will be unable to impose any effective social controls to protect themselves from markets, as Polanyi has aptly described the need for such social controls long ago. [22] Furthermore, open borders, as regards the free movement of people in general (rather than just labor), which was secured by the Shengen Treaty, created the present huge migration problem, which the EU has temporarily “solved” at the expense of the Greek people, through the conversion of their country (with the connivance of Syriza) into a huge depository of migrants. However, the migration of a huge number of people from Asia and Africa is bound to create cultural problems among peoples with very different cultures, unless the peoples themselves in each country decide the number of migrants they wish to host, rather than leaving the economic elites (as at present) to make this decision, according to their own economic interests.
This is the reason why a huge resentment has been created among European peoples at the moment against the uncontrolled migration, which is of course another indication of the effective undermining of national sovereignty. Thus, according to a very recent poll carried out by France’s Institute for Opinion Research (IFOP), Europeans overwhelmingly would like to see Shengen halted and the re-establishment of border controls between neighboring countries: 72 percent of French want their borders sealed, while 66 percent of Germans and 60 percent of Italians want the same for their own countries.[23]
On the other hand, Varoufakis’ supposed third option, i.e. to “fight tooth and nail against the EU’s anti-democratic institutions” in order to democratize the EU, is another pure deception, as I briefly explained above and in more detail in a forthcoming book. [24] Therefore, a Brexit, by itself, is not enough to restore sovereignty as long as a country is integrated into the NWO and is subject to the regulations stipulated by the TE and implemented through the transnational institutions it set up to impose the free movement of capital, commodities and labor. That is such institutions as the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank and military institutions like NATO.
So, the discussion in Britain today among supporters of Brexit on whether the exit from the EU should be followed by the establishment of the Canadian model, or the Norwegian model and similar models, is completely disorienting. The Norwegian case is particularly illuminating since, unlike Canada, which has always been a fortress of Anglo-American liberalism (despite the introduction of some significant social democratic programs during the post-war statist phase of capitalism), Norway has always been a stronghold of social democracy. Norway is not a member of EU, as two referendums on joining it failed, even if it was by narrow margins, in 1972 and 1994. However, the Norwegian elite decided to harmonize the country’s policies with those of the EU anyway, while at the same time the country has always been a member of WTO, IMF, as well as NATO. This meant that despite Norway’s rich energy resources, Norwegians saw a massive retreat from social democracy in their country during the NWO era!
Thus, despite the fact that social services are still supported in Norway, social democrats participated enthusiastically not only in the brutal NATO bombing of Libya, but also, in a continuous process of intensifying and worsening working conditions. In other words, as Norwegian social democrats, adopting their elite’s options, did not break with the NWO of neoliberal globalization, they had to follow the policies imposed on them directly, through the country’s participation in the transnational institutions of globalization (WTO, IMF etc.) and, indirectly, through the harmonization of Norway’s policies with those of the EU. As a result, Norwegian social democrats, as Andreas Bieler rightly pointed out, are “sliding gradually toward more and more mainstream and soft neoliberal positions”. [25]
Yet, although Brexit by itself is by no means a sufficient condition for sovereignty, it definitely is a necessary condition for it. Not only because sovereignty is a precondition for any radical social change today but also because Brexit could really have catalytic effects on the NWO. The Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan, in an interview with The Guardian, correctly described the possible domino effect of a Brexit, which terrorizes the elites:
“Brexit would be the demonstration that if you have an anti-European program you can implement that programme…It would be a message sent to many anti-European parties and to some anti-European governments. It would have, especially in the medium term, quite dramatic implications. We are already seeing a domino effect with anti-European parties gaining a lot of support, starting in France.””[26]
In fact, the possible domino effect is the main possible negative consequence for the elites as a result of a Brexit, particularly at a moment when the repeated terrorist attacks in Europe lately and the massive influx of migrants are bound to boost the neo-nationalist and Eurosceptic parties in general and the Brexit campaign in particular. Needless to add that the bogey of recession following a Brexit and a decline in exports is just part of the black propaganda of the elites. Clearly, the European elites are as keen not to lose a big market like the British one, as the British elites are keen not to lose an even bigger European market.
4. The entire Transnational and local Elites come out against Brexit
As soon as the June referendum was announced a formidable campaign against Brexit was launched by the entire Transnational Elite as well as by the largest part of the British elite in a huge effort to exorcise any idea of a Brexit: from John Kerry, who stated that the US had a profound interest in a “strong UK staying in a strong European Union” and Lord Bramall, former chief of UK’s general staff, who had no qualms about stating that “a broken and demoralized Europe just across the Channel … would constitute a far greater threat to our future, indeed to the whole balance of power and equilibrium of the western world”, [27] up to the Chinese President Xi Jinping who made the following memorable (for a “communist”) statement:
“China hopes to see a prosperous Europe and a united EU, and hopes Britain, as an important member of the EU, can play an even more positive and constructive role in promoting the deepening development of China-EU ties”..[28]
The last statement shows the degradation of present day so called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (something that Mao had accurately predicted knowing the kind of party cadres that were going to succeed him) which, however, as we shall see next, is reflected in almost the entire “Left” today. In fact, the explanation given by “Chinese diplomats” for this stand is revealing of the opportunism of Chinese communists. According to these diplomats, “Britain’s potential exit from the EU worries Beijing, which believes free-market supporting Britain strengthens the EU which China sees as an important ballast to American market dominance.” [29]
Thus, not only these ‘communists’ show complete ignorance of present neoliberal globalization, as a new phase in the development of the capitalist market economy, but they also imagine important differences between the two blocs, i.e. the North American and the European capitalist blocs, presumably seeing them as a kind of imperialist states in conflict between them for the division of markets! However, Lenin’s theory of imperialism was of course based on nation-states, even if such states consisted of empires, such as the British Empire, which were in constant explicit or implicit conflict between them for the division of markets –a fact that led to two world wars.
But today’s blocs are by no means empires in this sense of the word, as they consist of elites based on transnational corporations with overlapping specific economic interests and a common general interest: the reproduction of the NWO of neoliberal globalization. It is the protection of this general interest that is the main function of the Transnational Elite (TE). This is why any military conflict between the states on which the TE is based (mainly the G7 states and its associates in Scandinavia, Australia etc) is inconceivable today and any differences between them, like those that arose in connection to the Iraq war or Syria, were purely tactical and never reflected any antagonistic conflicts. On the other hand, Russia can hardly be characterized as an imperialist power, as some calamity “Marxists” do, just because the Russian people had created an informal patriotic front from below (which includes from communists up to orthodox Christians) to fight for their national sovereignty. [30]
The domestic front of the elites against Brexit was formidable. The entire political elite, apart from a few exceptions, mainly in the Tory party, and of course UKIP, was against Brexit. Particularly pro-EU was the entire “progressive” part of this elite i.e. the Labor party, the Green Party, Social Liberals and the rest. Thus, whereas the Tory party is more or less split with about 45% of its Members of Parliament (MPs) being in favor of BREXIT and 55% against (although Cameron has selected a Cabinet which is overwhelmingly pro-EU) in the Labor Party only 7 of its 222 MPs are in favor of Brexit. Similarly, the Liberal Democrats and all the autonomist parties (Scots, Welsh and Irish in Northern Ireland––apart from pro-UK nationalists) are 100 percent against Brexit! ![31] Given therefore the strong influence that the Labor party still exerts on trade unionists, we can conclude that if the Brexit proposal is thrown out this will be due mainly to the fact that the British ”Left” (as well of course as the globalist “Left” world-wide) is completely integrated into the NWO—the basic cause of its political bankruptcy.
The economic elite almost unanimously came out against Brexit, if we exclude from it the medium or small businesses or individual cases, with some 250 of them coming out publicly in favor of Brexit. [32] Thus, the economic elites and the financial elites in particular headed by the financiers controlling central banks, hedge funds etc. (a prominent constituent of the Transnational Elite) play a leading role in the “Project Fear”. The Canadian governor of the BoE and former Goldman Sacks employee, i.e. a man with impeccable links to the financial constituent of the TE––which plays a crucial role in the exercise of economic violence against the victims of globalization all over the world–-came out first to declare that the prospect of leaving “is the biggest domestic risk to financial stability because, in part, of the issues around uncertainty”, adding that some City companies would leave the UK in the event of Brexit.[33] This forced even Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, to say to the BBC that it was “quite wrong for a governor of the Bank of England to enter the political fray in this way. I believe he is talking nonsense and if I may say so he was doing it for political reasons,” he said adding “I think it would please the chancellor of the exchequer who appointed him.” [34] In fact, the governor of the Bank of England was more interested in pleasing his former employer, Goldman Sachs, rather than his political appointer (who is also controlled by the same economic elites).
Mark Carney
Mark Carney
Naturally, Carney (image right) could defend himself that he simply expressed the views of the Bank, which is true, although he omitted mentioning that several key senior positions within the Bank of England are also held by former Goldman officials! [35] Needless to add that, following Carney, HSBC also said publicly that it might move thousands of jobs from London in the event of Brexit, while Morgan Stanley has warned that leaving the EU would trigger “a significant backlash against London as a financial centre”, and Goldman Sachs itself (rightly described by Boris Johnson as “the people who engineered the biggest financial disaster of the last century”) warned as far back as 2013 that if Britain left the EU “every European firm [of investment banks] would be gone in very short order.” [36] Similarly, the rating agency Moody’s took immediately part in the Project Fear by declaring that “Britain’s biggest companies could face a credit downgrade – potentially forcing up their borrowing costs – should the UK vote to leave the EU in June. [37] Needless to add that the City (i.e. the British financial centre in London) came out in full support of the EU. Thus, TheCityUK, the financial services lobby group, declared on February 20th: “Membership of a reformed EU and continued access to the single market is vital … It is also the preferred outcome for the majority of our members.” [38]
Of course, the campaign of the economic elites against Brexit has not been only rhetorical. They have also used their economic power in order to blackmail their working force. This method was particularly used by major TNCs like BMW. As it was reported, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, which is owned by BMW, has written to all its workers in Britain to warn that exit from the European Union would drive up costs and prices and could affect the company’s “employment base.” The letter is one of six sent by bosses of each of BMW’s British companies, including Mini, to their staff warning of the dangers of UK withdrawal. Both Rolls-Royce and BMW admitted that emails and letters had been sent out to 8,000 employees, including workers at car plants in Goodwood, West Sussex, and Oxford and, of course, BMW was among the signatories of a business letter – organized by the government – backing EU membership.[39], Paul Stephenson, a Vote Leave spokesman gave an insightful explanation about this industrial blackmail:
“Big foreign multinational companies like the EU because they spend millions lobbying it in order to stitch up the rules in their favor – forcing smaller players out of business.” [40]
Needless to add that the campaign against Brexit has been fully using the state mechanism to promote its stand, creating a scandal when it was announced that £9m would be spend on leaflets to be sent to every UK home to promote the EU case. Cameron had of course no qualms about doing this, as he knows very well that a victory for Brexit will cost him his premiership, although this makes a mockery of the referendum. As if it was not enough that the elite-controlled media (particularly the TV channels, with BBC playing as always its role of the systemic medium par excellence) clearly discriminate against the Brexit, Cameron and the elites behind him decided that every home in the country will get an official leaflet. That is, a leaflet bearing the official HM government stamp, which supposedly is telling “the facts” (i.e. the “truth”) about the EU but in fact, repeating the EU black propaganda. Here is how the BBC described its contents:
The leaflet claims that a vote to leave the EU would cause an economic shock that “would risk higher prices of some household goods and damage living standards”. It further claims that the only way to “protect jobs, provide security, and strengthen the UK’s economy” is by staying in the EU, arguing that leaving would create risk and uncertainty. [41].
As regards the BBC role in particular, recent research by a media-monitoring group showed the shamelessly biased practice of this supposedly objective medium on the referendum. As the report mentioned, “one of the BBC’s flagship news programs has shown a “strong” bias towards Britain staying in the European Union (EU). From the 13th of January to the 11th of March 2016, News-watch analyzed 40 editions of the popular current affairs program Newsnight. News-watch noted that 25 of the guests who appeared on the program were in favor of Britain staying in the EU, compared to only 14 who advocated the UK leaving the union.” [42]
Taking into account that several polls at the moment show a clear majority for Brexit it is obvious that the pro-EU elite uses every trick in the book to avert a victory for it (at the expense of course of the taxpayer). This is Western “democracy” in action!
Moving now to the Brexit campaign, the supporters of it ‘inevitably’ are much more divided than their opponents. Inevitably, because supporters of Brexit range from conservatives and nationalists up to genuine antiglobalists, from the Left or the Right. The main demand of conservatives and nationalists is the strict control of borders but only as far as it concerns the movement of people and not also as regards the much more important movement of capital and commodities through the activities of TNCs. On the other hand, the real anti-globalists fight for genuine national sovereignty, which is incompatible with globalization and the integration of the country into the NWO and its institutions, such as the EU, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank, which preclude any policy of self-reliance that is the sufficient condition for national sovereignty.
5. What will happen after Brexit?
I will not discuss here the possible economic effects of Brexit, as the media and ‘experts’ supporting the elites amply do in their effort to terrorize the British people by enhancing the usual fear that many people feel when faced with a possible radical change affecting their lives (“the Project Fear’). No wonder that even a well known member of the globalist “Left” (heavily promoted by its flagship, The Guardian), who moved from an opposition to the EU to one supporting it once the referendum was announced, had to exclaim: “I reject the use of Project Fear by the government to frighten people into staying within the EU, backed by corporate titans warning of economic apocalypse if the vote swings the wrong way.” [43] Yet, the elites, despite the sensitivities of their supporters in the globalist “Left”, know well their job and they have no reason to abandon a highly successful technique that was tested again lately in Greece, in order to dissuade the victims of globalization (the vast majority of the Greek people) from leaving the Eurozone (EU was not even on the agenda).
I think it makes little sense to discuss the possible economic effects of Brexit on jobs, incomes, prices and growth in general, unless one knows exactly what sort of economic framework will be created in the referendum’s aftermath. As no one knows at the moment the exact answer to this question, it is clear that the ‘predictions’ made on what will follow Brexit amount to pure speculation, which is inspired by the motives (i.e. the stand on Brexit) taken by the “experts”. However, the fact that most so-called ‘experts’ (mainly academic economists) are strongly against Brexit is far from surprising, particularly if one takes into account, apart from their class position which classifies them beyond the victims of globalization, their vested interests in the EU (e.g. the various EU programs financing their research and their trips all over the globe –well appreciated by them– to participate in conferences, seminars etc).
Clearly, what will follow a Brexit vote depends not only on what the British government will or will not do, following such a radical decision by the British people, but also on how the EU, as well as the other economic blocs, will react and, most important, on how the TNCs themselves will react. Obviously, their decisions on whether to stay in Britain or not will be decisive in determining the new economic landscape. I therefore think that drawing conclusions on what will follow Brexit is meaningful only with respect to two extreme cases: the case in which the rejection of Brexit will be followed by a continuation of the present model and, alternatively, the case in which a real anti-globalization strategy would be adopted.
There is not much to be said about the former case, as the rejection of Brexit will simply mean the continuation of present policies within the EU, although a problem might be created in case the EU proceeds to an integrated political union, i.e. the full integration of member states. Although Britain has the option not to accept such a radical decision, it is clear that in case all other member states decide to abandon even the present remnants of their national sovereignty Britain may indeed end up politically isolated from the rest of the Union, although one of the advantages of Britain staying in Europe is supposed to be that this is the best way to avoid isolation.
As regards the economic (as well as the social, cultural and ecological effects) of a Brexit, they would obviously be radically different in case Britain adopts a real anti-globalization policy than in the case a Brexit is followed by the introduction of a variation of the present model, e.g. in the form of the Canadian or the Norwegian model and the likes. The former case implies a break not only with the EU but also with the other transnational institutions of the NWO (WTO, IMF, NATO and so on), whereas the latter implies a continuation of the present reliance on TNCs, which of course aim to determine economic growth according to their own objectives of profit maximization. However, any variation of the present model, even if it involves a Brexit, is highly unlikely that it will involve any significantly different economic effects compared to the present situation. Particularly so if a Brexit is accompanied by a new agreement with the EU as regards trade (which anyway even after Brexit will still be ruled by the WTO regulations) and the re-confirmation of the other treaties on the movement of capital and labor, which most likely will remain unchanged ––apart perhaps from the present British obligations as regards the movement of labor. Therefore, as we shall see in the last section, Brexit makes sense only if it signals a complete break with the NWO of neoliberal globalization.
However, apart from the economic arguments about Brexit one has to consider also the political arguments involved and particularly the propaganda about peace supposedly secured by the EU. Thus, Gideon Rachman, the well known Zionist chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times, (who in a well-known 2008 article entitled “And now for a world government”[44] provided the ideological background for global governance), aptly put this case for Brexit:
But, perhaps paradoxically, the fact Europe is in crisis actually strengthens my own resolve to vote for Britain to stay inside the EU. For all its faults, the EU champions ideas that are crucial to peace and freedom in Europe. These include co-operation between nations, the rule of law, the protection of human rights and the promotion of free trade. Nationalist political forces that challenge all of these ideas are growing in strength across Europe, from France to Poland, and they are united by their hostility to the supranational EU. Outside the EU, a hostile and freshly aggressive Russia is cheering on the possible collapse of the European project — and is probably funding some of its most ardent internal opponents. Given Europe’s bloody past and troubled present, helping to destroy the major vehicle for European co-operation cannot be a good idea. It is true that the crisis within the EU may soon require a fundamental rethink of the organization’s aims and methods, well beyond the minor changes that Mr. Cameron is able to negotiate…. It would be a serious mistake for the UK to undermine an organization that, whether we realize it or not, is crucial to Britain’s own security. [45]
I reproduced at length this view as, to my mind, it is in fact a monument of misinformation and distortion of truth, endemic among the practitioners of the Project Fear. Of course the EU is as much a champion of peace and freedom as the US and the other members of the TE are, which instigated or carried out all the bloody wars of the last quarter of a century or so not just on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria but even in Europe itself (Yugoslavia) .[46] In fact, the only reason that wars among major capitalist countries are inconceivable today is the high degree of economic interdependence between the TNCs based in these countries, which globalization itself created. It is this reason alone that precludes any wars between members of the TE and not the economic unions such as EU and Nafta etc, which have simply been created to complete the opening and liberalization of markets that globalization requires––in the process leading to a globalized world, as envisaged by Rachman himself!
Therefore, the values mentioned by Rachman (co-operation between nations etc.) refer only to the TE and its associate states and not to any states questioning its hegemony in any way, such as Russia, China and the Arab states based on national liberation movements (e.g. Ba’athism). With all these states peace and co-operation is impossible unless they submit to the TE’s authority. These are not of course intra-imperialist conflicts, as globalist “Marxists” describe them confusing and disorienting the victims of globalization, but simply conflicts between those controlling the NWO and those refusing to be controlled by the TE. This applies also to the case when a state (e.g. Russia), aspires to join as an equal member the TE, not realizing that the only position offered to them in the NWO is one of a subordinate member. Finally, it is not surprising at all that Rachman adopts the misleading and disorienting ideology of globalist “Left” (Varoufakis and his mentor Soros, Piketty and the rest) that the way out of the present crisis is not a break with the globalization institutions like EU but, instead, an attempt to “democratize” it ‘from inside’!
6. The stand of the globalist “Left” on Brexit
The result of the referendum in the Netherlands is very indicative of the explicitly anti-EU and implicitly anti-globalization wind blowing all over Europe and beyond at the moment. The way in which a conservative newspaper like the London Times described it is highly significant: “In 2005 the Dutch voted against an EU constitution and were dismayed when the Lisbon treaty, in effect, introduced one by the back door. Many other EU countries share this suspicion that the integration process has become automatic and unquestioning.” [47] In other words, the Dutch simply expressed their indignation for the loss of any national sovereignty that became particularly evident in the last ten years or so. When they found out that their elite (as also the elites of all other EU countries, without asking them, decided to have an EU association Treaty with the protectorate created in Ukraine by the TE coup of 2014,[48] they presumably concluded ‘enough is enough’. A clear movement ‘from below’ was set in motion when an Internet petition demanding a referendum on the issue (using a new Dutch law designed to promote democracy) attracted more than 400,000 signatures (significantly more than the 300,000 required by the law). As even the full pro-EU BBC had to admit, “from the start activists said this was a chance for Dutch voters to express frustration at the EU, in particular what they see as its desire to expand despite democratic shortcomings”. Yet, the Dutch voters completely ignored the stern warning by EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who had described the stakes in the run-up to the vote as being high, warning that a “No’” vote could trigger a wider crisis in the 28-member bloc. .[49] Thus, the No campaign won with 61.1 per cent, against 38.2 per cent for the Yes group, despite the latter being backed by all mainstream Dutch political parties. As The Times reported about the low turnout (which was well over the minimum required 30%), this was a miraculous expression of popular will against all the odds:
“The result is a major blow for the EU at a time when Euroscepticism is growing across the continent…Campaigners for No accused the government of trying to keep the turnout low by providing only half the normal number of polling stations used in a national election. “It is outrageous,” Harry Van Bommel, an MP for the Eurosceptic Socialist party, said. [50]
This, despite the fact that “during a lacklustre but ill-tempered campaign, Dutch ministers and Yes campaigners warned that a No vote would signal support for President Putin, Russia’s aggression and annexation of Ukrainian territory.” As part of the same campaign, the infamous “Panama papers” were published at the same time with the obvious aim to target Putin and Russia, as Wikileaks revealed, given that the “Putin attack” was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and American hedge fund billionaire (sponsor of many NGOs) George Soros. [51] Not accidentally, again at the same time, Western papers reported a new flare-up in Ukraine! [52]
Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn
As regards the British “Left”, particularly damaging to the Brexit campaign––although far from surprising––is the stand of the Labor Party. Whereas in the 1975 referendum the Party was split on the Common Market issue––despite the fact that at that time the issue of sovereignty was far less significant than today––today, it is unanimous in supporting the EU. Thus, apart from a few exceptions, the Labor party is united against Brexit, including its “progressive” leadership under Corbyn, who in the past was against both the EU and, perhaps aspiring to play the dishonest role of Tsipras, in abandoning all his pre-election commitments. The very fact that he appointed the highly connected with the elites Varoufakis as one of the Party’s economic advisers is highly significant. However, the Labor Party’s stand is far from surprising since it has abandoned long ago (since Tony Blair, another political crook, took it over) its close links to workers and the victims of globalization and became a party expressing the middle class (or rather that part of it that did not suffer from globalization). Similarly, trade unionists linked to Labor also stand against Brexit, supposedly to protect jobs! No wonder the blue-collar working class, the unemployed and those paying the consequences of globalization have moved towards neo-nationalist parties and in Britain towards UKIP. This is another indication of the total political bankruptcy of today’s ”Left”.
However, what many people in the Green Left find difficult to understand is the stand of the British Green Party, which is also opposed to Brexit. Thus, its leader Caroline Lucas, using effectively the same argument as Gideon Rachman we examined above, had no qualms about supporting the myth of a peaceful EU. Thus, in a recent lecture at the London School of Economics she used the “peace argument” against Brexit today, warning that EU membership is Britain’s best defense against the risk of Europe descending into war:
“Europe is not, historically, a very peaceful place. It would be sheer folly to think that armed conflict cannot return. We cannot know what dangers lie ahead. But we can be sure that a strong and stable European Union, with Britain as an active and positive participant, provides the surest guarantee of our national security.” [53]
But, although this stand may be surprising to some Greens, it is in fact far from unexpected following the full integration of the European Greens into the NWO since the taking over of the German Green Party by the “realos” of the despicable Kohn-Bendit kind, who enthusiastically supported every single war of the TE in the last quarter of a century or so.
Moving further to the Left, a number of communists, Trotskyites, trade unionists and others signed a common declaration published in the flagship of globalist “Left” under the title “EU is now a profoundly anti-democratic institution” and concluding with the following statement:
We stand for a positive vision of a future Europe based on democracy, social justice and ecological sustainability, not the profit-making interests of a tiny elite. For these reasons we are committed to pressing for a vote to leave the EU in the forthcoming referendum on UK membership. [54]
As it is obvious from the text the issue of globalization and of economic and national sovereignty is not even mentioned in it, despite a passing reference to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which is mentioned as just a bad Treaty that has to be abandoned. Instead, the non-democratic character of the EU is emphasized, (exactly as Varoufakis and the rest of the globalist “Left” do), the only difference being that this declaration asks also for a Brexit, presumably in the hope that a new ‘proper” EU will emerge out of this, i.e. a new ‘good’ capitalism in place of the present bad neoliberal one.
Further to the “Left”, the Socialist Workers party (which supported the Libyan and Syrian “revolutionaries”, and up to a point even the Ukrainian ones!) took a stand, which can be well summarized by the following extract of an article in their theoretical organ:
[socialists] shouldn’t feel compelled to back the austerity-driven, racist EU project simply because the leave camp is led by such hateful figures as Nigel Farage, Michael Gove and Boris. In fact, it is important to note the racism and pro-business arguments dominating both camps. Socialists have a responsibility to put a principled internationalist, anti-racist, anti-austerity case for a left exit. Neither should we be afraid that if Britain left the EU it would automatically benefit only the right. …Crucially, a vote to leave would destroy David Cameron, tear apart the Tory party, weaken the EU project and throw all kinds of questions up for debate. We vote to leave in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Greece suffering under the EU institutions — as well as those risking death in the Med to reach Fortress Europe’s shores. — as well as those risking death in the Med to reach Fortress Europe’s shores.[55]
The purely tactical stand adopted on such a crucial issue (to “destroy Cameron, tear apart the Tory party” etc) is fully explained by the fact that this Trotskyite party, far from understanding the significance of globalization and national sovereignty, in fact adopts also the ideology of globalization of open borders (promoted by Soros and the likes) in blissful ignorance (?) of the significance of open borders in an internationalized capitalist market economy on unemployment, wages, the (remnants of) the welfare state etc.
However, the point implicitly raised by the stand of the British “left” in general on the issue of Brexit cannot just be discussed in terms of the free trade vs. protectionism debate, as the liberal (or globalist) “Left” does (see for instance Jean Bricmont[56] and Larry Elliott [57] of the Guardian). The point is whether it is globalization itself, which has led to the present mass economic violence against the vast majority of the world population and the accompanying it military violence. In other words, what all these trends hide is that globalization is a class issue.
This is the essence of the bankruptcy of the “Left”, which is reflected in the fact that, today, it is the neo-nationalist Right which has replaced the Left in its role of representing the victims of the system in its globalized form, while the Left mainly represents those in the middle class or the petty bourgeoisie who benefit from globalization. Needless to add that today’s bankrupt “Left” promptly characterized the rising neo-nationalist parties as racist, if not fascist and neonazis, siding fully with the EU’s black propaganda against the rising movement for national sovereignty. This is obviously another nail in the coffin of this kind of “Left” as the millions of European voters who turn their back towards this degraded “Left” are far from racists or fascists but simply want to control their way of life rather than letting it to be determined by the free movement of capital, labor and commodities as the various Soroses and Varoufakises of this world demand!
Needless to add that the capitalist system as such is taken for granted by almost everybody, even by today’s working class (particularly in countries like China and India where capitalist industry has moved in the era of globalization), as today’s workers feel more like consumers rather than like workers, with the corresponding class consciousness. No wonder that there has been not a single pan-European strike against the systematic demolition of workers’ rights in the era of globalization. Therefore, following the collapse of the soviet bloc, there is no conceivable threat against capitalism as a system, in any foreseeable future. This is why the only real threat that the elites see today is the one arising by the struggle of the victims of globalization against it, which increasingly takes the form of a mass struggle all over Europe, even in the USA where a rudimentary (and sometimes distorted) form of an anti-globalization front has been developing around Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, against whom the entire US establishment has turned.
Finally, the argument that a Brexit followed by a break with the NWO will lead Britain to political isolation, particularly if it is accompanied with an exit from NATO as well, is baseless and promoted by the elites for well understood reasons. Participation in NATO–-as participation in the NWO required––led Britain to a series of wars in the last quarter of a century or so (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) for the sake of the transnational elite’s interests and those of its members based in Britain. If we take into account that during the same period, as a direct result of the opening and liberalization of markets imposed by the NWO through the EU, the welfare state has been systematically dismantled, while the flexibility of labor introduced meant the effective abolition of full time jobs and their replacement by part-time jobs, zero contract hours and so on, then it becomes obvious that membership of the EU and of the NWO in general has hardly helped the victims of globalization in Britain or anywhere else. No wonder that on the average, according to the latest Eurostat data, well over 20 percent of EU citizens are at risk of poverty or social exclusion (in Portugal this percentage is close to 30%, while in Greece it is close to 40%!)[58] It is therefore clear that the question of Brexit is indeed a class issue, although we have to re-define ‘class’ to give it a broader sense than the traditional Marxist sense, more appropriate to the globalization era, as I tried to do elsewhere. [59]
Therefore, leaving EU and the NWO will indeed lead to ‘isolation’ but only if by this we mean isolation from the elites who rule the world today. It will mean far from isolation as far as the vast majority of the world population who are the victims of globalization. Indeed Brexit will be harmful to the transnational elites and the British elites but it will be very beneficial to the victims of globalization all over the world. In fact, a radical change in Britain could function as the catalyst for the creation of a new democratic order of sovereign nations, an aim also pursued by the Russian people and its leadership, which, exactly for this reason, are subject to an unprecedented attack by the TE that aims for yet another ‘regime change’, this time the definitive regime change, which will determine the future of the present NWO. However, in both the British and the Russian cases, unless the victims of globalization unite and fight the economic elites and the associated political and media elites, then the TE will come out of this Titanic conflict victorious and the present criminal world order will be strengthened–perhaps through the formalization of the power of the TE as a global leadership–for many years to come. And it is a criminal world order since its dominant characteristic is the economic and military violence, which exercises over the vast majority of the world population.
7. A radical proposal for Brexit and beyond
The maximization of the positive effects of Brexit for the vast majority of the population, who are the victims of globalization, are intrinsically linked to a complete break with the NWO of neoliberal globalization, which would lead to a real economic, as well as national sovereignty. Only this way the peoples themselves, instead of the economic and political elites as at present, will be able to take the fundamental economic decisions concerning what, how and for whom to produce.
Under the present conditions, i.e. the formidable campaign of the elites against Brexit and the despicable stand of the globalist “Left”, only the full mobilization of a social movement fully conscious of its aims and the strategies to achieve them would be able to succeed. The social subject in this movement would be the victims of neoliberal globalization and the consequent de-industrialization, i.e. the unemployed, involuntary part-timers, or casual employees and ‘zero-hour contract’ workers on barely survival wages and the likes. In other words, all those who often have abstained from the electoral game all these years, as they found themselves with no political representation in Westminster, following the effective institutionalization of neoliberal policies imposed by the transnational corporations controlling the economic policies of Thatcherites first, and then the Blairites, Brownites and the likes, who still dominate the Labor party. But it is not only the victims of economic violence exercised by the NWO, through the opening and liberalization of markets (particularly the labor markets) and of the opening of the borders, who are the victims of globalization. Similar victims are in other countries those subjected to military violence, through the aggressive policies of the TE (of which the UK was a prominent member) against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and now possibly even Russia. It is this combination of military and economic violence, which has convinced the victims of globalization everywhere to turn against the NWO of neoliberal globalization.
Such a full mobilization of the victims of globalization never took place in the past, even on the occasion of the Scottish independence referendum. Instead, there was a full mobilization of those who benefit from globalization and the TE’s aggressive policies. This is why the independence movement was defeated, as the victims of globalization were never fully mobilized by a movement, which was just a nationalist one. No wonder today not only the Scottish nationalists but also the Welsh and Irish nationalists (Sinn Fein) are against Brexit, playing exactly the game of the establishment (i.e. the English elites as part of the TE) on this crucial referendum. In other words, unless the victims of globalization in Scotland, Ireland and Wales realize that no real political independence (i.e. political sovereignty) can be materialized without economic independence and sovereignty, they will continue to be the victims of globalization, either under the British flag, or under their own national flags.
At the same time in England, not only a very significant part of the working class (at work or not) but also part of the middle class as well, which is also squeezed at present as a result of globalization, have realized that without economic self-reliance, any political independence and self determination is impossible in the era of neoliberal globalization. It is because of this real danger that the elites and those benefiting from globalization face in the UK that the TE has mobilized all its supporters in the country (the Labor Party, most of the Conservative Party, the Liberals, the Greens, the Scots and the Welsh nationalist parties) to avert any possibility of British exit from the EU. But exit from the EU is, as I already stressed, only a necessary condition (although not a sufficient one as well) for any political and economic independence. In fact, the reason why Nigel Farage’s (UKIP) social policies do not significantly differ from those of the Tories is exactly because he, like Salmond (the leader of the Scottish nationalist party during the Scottish referendum), represents much more the nationalist part of the bourgeoisie rather than the victims of globalization as a whole. This, unlike the economic program for instance of the National Front in France, which is much more to the Left than Syriza’s or Podemos’ “Left”! Yet, due to the very fact that significant parts of the working class in Britain have moved to UKIP lately, mainly because they bore the brunt of globalization (unemployment, austerity policies, degradation of the welfare state and so on), one could hope that this party will introduce more radical social policies in the future, particularly if Brexit prevails in the referendum.
As far as the political subject of this movement is concerned, it is obvious that only if the present informal front which fights for a Brexit is formalized after Brexit into a Front for National and Social Liberation (FNSL) it could achieve the required huge mobilization, so that the aim of national sovereignty leads to self-reliance. Such a front can be achieved ‘from below’ or ‘from above’. The preferred option is of course the former, but in case this becomes unfeasible because the level of political consciousness of the victims of globalization and their will to fight is inadequate for this huge task, then the only other possibility is for existing political forces to take over the task of achieving sovereignty and self-reliance.
A FNSL ‘from below’ could be organized from among local assemblies, committees, groups and initiatives consisting of the victims of globalization (namely, the vast majority of the population) who ought to join as ordinary citizens, irrespective of party affiliations and ideologies or religious and other differences, as long as they share the ultimate aim of national and economic sovereignty. The intermediate target should be the break with all the transnational economic and political institutions of the NWO such as WTO, IMF and NATO, so that the victims of globalization could escape the present process of economic catastrophe.
Initially, the political-economic framework within which these decisions will be taken should be determined democratically by the people themselves, within the framework of a strong democratic state. The aim would be at this stage to impose adequate social controls on markets, so that society and particularly labor, as well as the environment, are protected from them. This is only feasible (as has always been the case in the past) at the national level at which real sovereignty of a people is only possible. Needless to add that the nation could consist of a confederation of communities bound together by a common culture.
Then, at a later stage, the people could decide, through a definitive referendum, the form that a future society would take, following a thorough discussion, which, to be meaningful, presupposes a democratic control of the media (e.g. by committees representing the main options under discussion), instead of the present system of media control by the political and economic elites. The main possible options to be discussed at this stage could include the Inclusive Democracy project as I described it elsewhere, which implies that productive resources will be communally owned and controlled, so that an allocation of resources that transcends the limitations of both the market mechanism and central planning could develop. An alternative option might be a kind of a socialist planning based on social ownership of resources, or even a social democratic model ––as it was originally designed, rather than as it developed in the hands of social-liberal crooks pretending to be social democrats.
Finally, once the people of a particular country have broken with the present NWO of neoliberal globalization, which is based on economic and military violence, they should join forces with peoples from other countries, also fighting for the same aims, to form new political and economic unions of sovereign Nations and the corresponding democratically-organized international institutions. This will be a new international community of sovereign and self- reliant nations based on the principle of mutual aid rather than competitiveness––the guiding principle behind the present criminal NWO. As long as the member countries share complementary production structures, the possibility of an involuntary transfer of economic surplus from some countries (usually the weaker ones, as is the case in the EU) to other countries in the Union can be ruled out. Therefore, a collective kind of self-reliance could be achieved within the economic area covered by such a union, which should be based on the sovereignty of each participating country.
In other words, a FNSL would function as a catalyst for fundamental political and economic change, which is the only kind of change that could get us out of the current mire, while creating also the basis of a new true internationalism based on the self-determination of each nation.
Notes:
[1] The present analysis of the historical background is based on Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy (London/NY, Cassel/Continuum, 1997/98), ch 2
[3] See e.g. the best-seller (heavily promoted by the TE’s media), by Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, (Penguin, 2007)
[4] P. Ceccini, The European Challenge (London, Wildwood House, 1988)
[6] Y. Varoufakis, A MANIFESTO FOR DEMOCRATISING EUROPE, February 2016
[7] Will Hutton, The State We’re In (London, Jonathan Cape,1995) pp.315-16
[9] George Monbiot, “I’m starting to hate the EU. But I will vote to stay in”, The Guardian, 10/2/2016
[10] Yanis Varoufakis, “Why we must save the EU”, The Guardian, 5/4/2016
[13] Editorial, “The People’s Revolt”, The Times, 11/10/2014
[14] John Collingridge, “Sunset on steel: is there any hope for Tata’s workers?”, The Sunday Times, 3/4/2016
[15] Larry Elliott, “Britain’s low grade free-market model is bust”, The Guardian, 4/4/2016
[18] Paul Mason, “Can two leftwing gurus save Europe?”, The Guardian,1/4/2016
[19] Mark Dodd, The Guardian, 24/2/2016 (comment under the general heading, “Sovereignty, autonomy and Britain’s relationship with Europe”)
[21] Chomsky, according to Murray Bookchin, the doyen of post-war anarchism, has very little, if any, relation to anarchism; see Murray Bookchin’s interview in Janet Biehl’s The Politics of Social Ecology (Black Rose Books, 1998) pp.148-149
[22] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, (Beacon Press, 1944), chs 5-6
[24] Takis Fotopoulos, THE NEW WORLD ORDER IN ACTION: MIDDLE EAST, GREECE, UKRAINE. Towards a Democratic Community of Sovereign Nations, ch 18
[26] Patrick Wintour Rajeev Syal, “British EU exit ‘could spark domino effect’”, The Guardian, 7/3/2016
[27] George Parker, “Brexit could destabilise Europe amid populist upsurge and damage UK’s biggest export market”, Financial Times,18/2/2016
[32] EU referendum: 250 business leaders sign up as backers of Vote Leave, The Guardian, 26/3/2016
[33] Chris Giles and Emily Cadman, “Carney supports Cameron’s deal with Brussels”, Financial Times, 9/3/2016
[36] Jim Pickard and Laura Noonan, “Boris Johnson hits out at pro-EU stance of City”, Financial Times, 6/3/2016
[37] Phillip Inman, “Brexit ‘could trigger credit threat’ for UK firms”, The Guardian, 22/3/2016
[38] Patrick Jenkins, “Brexit is the last thing City banks need”, Financial Times, 22/2/2016
[39]see the report by Anushka Asthana and Heather Stewart on this interference by a German multinational, “Rolls-Royce warns its staff of Brexit risks”, The Guardian, 3/3/2016
[41] BBC News, “EU referendum: PM ‘makes no apology’ for £9m EU leaflets”, BBC, 7/4/2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35984991
[43] Owen Jones, “To leave the EU over Isis would be a victory for terror”, The Guardian, 25/3/2016
[44] Gideon Rachman, “And now for a world government”, Financial Times, 8/12/2008
[45] Gideon Rachman, “Brexit is no way out of a Europe in crisis”, Financial Times, 1/2/2016
[46] Takis Fotopoulos, “New World Order and NATO’s war against Yugoslavia”, New Political Science, vol. 24, no.1, (March 2002), pp. 73-104
[47] Editorial, “Dutch Torpor”, The Times, 7/4/2016
[48] . Takis Fotopoulos, THE NEW WORLD ORDER IN ACTION: MIDDLE EAST, GREECE, UKRAINE. Towards a Democratic Community of Sovereign Nations
[50] Bruno Waterfield, “Boost for Brexit campaign as Dutch voters reject EU deal”, The Times, 7/4/2016
[52] Jack Losh, “Ukraine clashes shatter ceasefire”, The Times, 6/4/2016
[53] Cf. Bruno Waterfield, “Boost for Brexit campaign as Dutch voters reject EU deal”
[54] Mick Cash et al, “EU is now a profoundly anti-democratic institution”, The Guardian, 17/2/2016
[57] see for instance Larry Elliott, “How free trade became the hot topic vexing voters and politicians in Europe and the US” , The Guardian, 28/3/2016
[58] Valentina Romei, “Over 71 per cent of non-EU citizens in Belgium are at risk of poverty”, Financial Times, 23/3/2016
