Report on the Ireland Institute Lecture on the EU and Imperialism April 23, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in European Union.trackback
Thanks to LeftAtTheCross for this report on the lecture on the EU and its global ambitions held by the Ireland Institute as part of a series of lectures on imperialism in the 21st century. I think his points raise some interesting questions about the left’s attitude to what imperialism actually is, and what its relationship to Ireland might be.
There was a decent crowd at this event last night, maybe 40 people. The subject was EU neo-imperialism. In particular Kevin McCrorry’s talk was very detailed and over-ran somewhat, to be cut short by Deirdre Uí Bhrógáin of the CPI who was chairing the meeting (to the annoyance of many of the audience).
EDIT: I have received an email from someone else present who pointed out that Kevin McCorry was not asked to stop but responded to a remark about the need to leave time for questions by unexpectedly stopping straight away rather than him being cut off by the chair.
The big question for me however, which wasn’t addressed, is what is the alternative to the EU? Leave aside the neo-imperialistic ambitions of the founding members (the ex-colonial powers) for a minute, and how their agenda has driven the development of the EU. I wouldn’t argue against that for a second, but it is a distraction from another underlying argument.
One of the arguments made last night was that Europe cannot exist as a state because there is no common European people, no European nation. I simply don’t buy that argument, that a state must be founded on a nation. The USSR survived as a state for quite a while, and dealt with its nationalities issue reasonably successfully (whatever about the differing opinions of Lenin and Stalin about how it should have been handled). The Ottoman empire, the Habsburg empire are other examples. Again, leave aside the inherent nagatives we associate with the word “empire” for a second.
It seems that the only alternative being offered is some cosy notion of “nation states” or the evils of multi-ethnic “super states”, with the underlying assumption that the latter is just a guise whereby one dominant nation state fools its smaller neighbours into accepting its hegemony. A continuation of the historic empire building dynamic by different methods if you like, the domination of some nations over other nations.
But so what? It is the emphasis on the “nation” which jars.
Whether people, citizens of whatever form of state, are oppressed by transnational capitalism (last night’s subject) or by the local national bourgeoisie (as Conor McCabe has highligted in many of his posts here and on ILR) somehow seems to be ignored in the analysis. Is it a stagist thing maybe?
An interesting meeting all the same. The organisers asked that people who attended the meeting might publicise the series of lectures and encourage other to come along to the next event.
Partial re-submission:
European ‘identity’ is one of my own pre-occupations.
I feel culturally ‘European’, with all the baggage that entails, and find lumpen-nationalist arguments against the EU distasteful. I don’t believe I find it more difficult to empathise with the woman in Weimar (dodgy alliteration, I know) than the man in Moyross. I’d like to think we could constitute a federation of European peoples despite the federation of European capitalism.
My sense of European-ness is pretty wide and extends way into Russia, up into Finland and out into the Middle East, for what it’s worth.
The USSR survived as a state for quite a while, and dealt with its nationalities issue reasonably successfully (whatever about the differing opinions of Lenin and Stalin about how it should have been handled). The Ottoman empire, the Habsburg empire are other examples.
I entirely and vehemently disagree with this claim (to put it as politely as possible).
The brutalities involved in subduing (and keeping subjected) various nationalities, particularly as resistance arises to Russification (or whatever the internal top dogs are) is well-documented by this stage. The political tactics of playing nationalities off against each other (including forced migrations and border re-drawing), resulting in the wheels flying off the whole edifice into a collection of nasty civil wars and ethnic-cleansing once the empire disintegrates is also well-known.
Ironic that this would arise in the context of a meeting held at the Ireland Institute (of all places), given how playing the Orange and the Green off against each other is an old British trick.
I think we can take it as read that ‘dealing with the nationalities issue’ implied extreme brutality. It was successful in purely political sense ( in that the USSR didn’t split due to ethnic tension) rather than ethically. That may be what LATC meant.
Yes, partly.
I’m not suggesting that diffusing established inter-ethnic animosity is without difficulties (look at the local history for one small example), nor that Stalin’s approach was without issues of its own.
I understand it, Lenin envisaged a new society that made an irrelevance of nationality as the legitimate unit of statehood (open to correction from the experts there obviously). Whether that made the USSR an “empire” is sort of beside the point, as such an argument falls back into relying on nationalism as the unit of currency distinguishing between one form and the other.
EWI’s point about the post-USSR conflicts, the resurgence of nationalisms, and what happened in Jugoslavia also, reinforces my point that we need to look for a future political model that moves beyond nationalism. And also beyond neo-imperialism obviously. But are they the only choices?
And that’s what I found missing in the lecture.
I understand it, Lenin envisaged a new society that made an irrelevance of nationality as the legitimate unit of statehood (open to correction from the experts there obviously). Whether that made the USSR an “empire” is sort of beside the point, as such an argument falls back into relying on nationalism as the unit of currency distinguishing between one form and the other.
Yes, but it’s the way of such things that uniformity (culture, language, etc.) will always be imposed by the dominant elite in the empire, often by force. There’s no getting around this.
Perhaps I’ve got the history all wrong, but I don’t think the ambitions of the founding members could accurately be described as neo-imperialist. Rather, they were a genuine attempt by their elites of the central countries to repair a Europe devastated by the Second World War and avoid a repetition of our disastrous capacity for fratricide.
Granted the ambitions of this capitalist block later began to burgeon. When? The 70s or the 80s? But even then the movement was more complex than the blanket term neo-imperialist can encompass. Given their recent history, the Germans were much less ambitious to exert political power than the French, and the British considered themselves politically semi-detached and confusedly semi-American. (As did, arguably, the Irish.)
This is a far from univocal neo-imperialist block, surely, and it’s doesn’t get us very far to treat it as such.
Pope,
the argument put forward last night by Kevin McCrorry was that the founding members of the EEC were ex-colonial powers (France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy) who had lost their overseas empires and the market access and opportunities for capital accumulation that went with that. Add the fact that German imperial ambition has been historically to the east and southeast, which was closed off at the time by the expansion of the Russian sphere of influence. The argument was that the imperial classes of these states saw an opportunity for collaboration, strength in numbers, to establish a 3rd power bloc between the expanding imperialism of the USA and USSR. That neo-imperialist ambition manifested itself in economic domination of the peripheral European states who have subsequently joined the EU, and in a morphing of the domination of the overseas ex-colonies from a political/military model to a nakedly economic model, implemented via the WTO and bilateral trade agreements which perpetuate imperialist exploitation of the developing economies.
I might well have missed some other important arguments from his talk, as I said it was very detailed and really would benefit from a re-reading of his paper. I don’t know if it’s available anywhere but I have emailed the Peoples movement in the meantime to see if I can get a copy of it.
I can see the turf-war-for-markets point of view from a block of capitalists caught between the ‘victors’ of the Second World War – the US and the USSR.
But I understand neo-imperial to denote military as well as economic domination. At the same time the EU was being born the determined action of anti-imperialists in Africa and Asia destroyed most of what remained of the European military/political empires. The EU per se has still to take part in imperial wars. Individual members have done so (the British ruling class is especially addicted) but not the EU as an entity.
Perhaps I have my history and terminology wrong, but I do find neo-imperial to be a reductive one-size-fits-all label, that doesn’t do us any favours. Part of the motivation of the birth of the EU was a genuinely humanitarian and pacifist by people who had lived through Nazism, and I would argue that traces of this is still there in it’s DNA, much mutated by neo-liberal co-option.
You’re straying into territory there that was covered by Roger Cole’s talk last night, the military aspects of how the EU is evolving via the various treaties, and how the EU has now replaced the WEU within the NATO structures. NATO has fought wars in Jugoslavia and Afghanistan. It’s an aspect of the Lisbon Treaty debate that didn’t register with me at the time to be honest.
Yeah, I think you’re overlooking a good deal of the shift towards militarism incorporated in recent treaties, Pope Epopt. Don’t forget, the goal of the EU becoming a military and economic force capable of challenging US hegemony is a notion cherished by the left elements of the neoliberal consensus. You can well judge whether that will take the form of a paternalistic fostering of third world peoples or an exploitative relationship based on compulsion by examining the EU’s trade relations with those countries.
Don’t forget, the goal of the EU becoming a military and economic force capable of challenging US hegemony is a notion cherished by the left elements of the neoliberal consensus.
It’s my understanding of such things that the US neo-cons started off this way (I guess analogies here would include the Living Marxists, and elements of the WP).
EWI, can you expand on that, I don’t follow what you’re saying?
EWI, can you expand on that, I don’t follow what you’re saying?
That adapting all the means of what you’re supposedly opposing (e.g. militarism) in order to fight it, most often seems to end up in the end in there not being any differentiation at all.
The neo-cons, if I recall correctly, started their journey to the right-wing fringe with a “might for right” (what some refer to as ‘muscular liberalism’) philosophy – and I more than suspect that the same thing could happen for some parties of the mainstream EU left as well. Our own LP, for one, seem to be peculiarly susceptible to dodgy rightwing ideas at the present moment.
EWI, thanks for that. Yes, that is a contradiction at the heart of european social democracy. Your reference to the LP ties in with the comment by WbS after the LP conference that there is an un-idealogical element to that party, one which probably would see noting wrong with those dodgy ideas. On the other hand, Roger Cole last night is a long standing LP member and founder of PANA. It’s a good illustration of the ideological schizophrenia of a broad left party.
“One of the arguments made last night was that Europe cannot exist as a state because there is no common European people, no European nation. I simply don’t buy that argument, that a state must be founded on a nation. ”
what nation isn’t made up of various peoples? Nations are invented, as are peoples. Some of these inventions work better than others i.e, in terms of more or less slaughtering of perceived non-membership of the imagined community in question