FORWARD TO A SOCIALIST EUROPE! VOTE NEITHER ‘IN’ NOR ‘OUT’ ON 23 JUNE 2016!

The world and British workers’ movement must proclaim that the EU is a vast multinational, and that the EU ruling layer is a political tool for the world’s multinationals, mostly of oil, armaments and finance industries.

The EU ruling layer is not super-natural however. It is made of the top nation-state capitalists now representing capitalism at multinational level. They will be defeated in the struggle for a Socialist Europe. This is why they are preparing repressive measures in each European country, and cling to each other militarily around the US and Nato.

Neither ‘in’ nor ‘out’ is not the same as abstaining!

The Gove-Cameron dispute expresses at political level the economic and cultural disarray of capitalism. It is to survive that the EU rulers and European Central Bank crush the smaller EU economies, but they are themselves expendable as far as the World Bank, the IMF, the US and Nato are concerned.

In this referendum, an ‘in’ vote leaves this situation untouched, whilst an ‘out’ vote favours reactionary, prejudiced and anti-working class groups like those around UKIP and Ian Duncan Smith. There is no reason for the British public to play the part of referee in this internal Tory Party dispute.

European solidarity!

The UK and EU rulers are not above, but part of multinational capital. The TTIP project is not being imposed on the British negotiators. The latter defend some multinational interests against others, but they are all united against the British, European and world masses. Should the ‘out’ result win, the TTIP negotiations will continue in more unilateral ways, still in secret and without the consent of the people.

It is incorrect to argue as if the power of the multinationals could be lessened by a UK government leaving the EU. The policy of austerity for instance does not come from the EU. It comes from the functioning of capitalism, now multinational, and using the EU therefore as a tool. It is not an ‘out’ vote that is required, but the revolutionary mobilisation of the European working class and its socialist transformation of Europe.

The idea that ‘out’ of the EU liberates ‘Britain’ from the world’s neo-liberal cartel assumes that ‘Britain’ is not a part of it! Where the British left and workers’ leaders do not use Marxism, they can fall for this idealist and classless Great-British viewpoint, instead of adopting a firm Republican and Socialist one.

Comrades, intervene!

Tory leaders like Grayling or Duncan-Smith favour the ‘out’ vote because their Great-British-centrism and insularity grow in proportion to their fear of outside encroachment upon the City of London and other UK interests. Their tendency is to want to control world finances before these get a chance to control them.

If Britain leaves the EU, its ruling class will continue operating within world multinational governance. Multinational power does not introduce any new form of property. Its owners are elusive, but their need to profit, hence to sell, keeps them tied to nation-states. Their political representation, therefore, cannot be other than that of the existing bourgeoisies, whom they lobby. The ‘out’ vote does not alter this!

The antidote is a Europe mobilised for a planned economy to satisfy human need and end insane privilege. This cannot be done by the bourgeois class. Only the working class and its allies are interested in this – and they can only achieve it by uniting for the Socialist transformation of Europe. The British Labour leadership goes some way towards this when it calls “for a Europe investing not in weapons but in the environment, the climate and the refugees“. We need to go further and demand the conversion of the arms industries on a European level, and with workers’ control.

In the referendum, the ‘in’ option keeps the British economy in tow to multinational capital and Nato, whilst the ‘out’ option changes only the way this is done. It is necessary to declare, therefore, that this referendum is not a choice. More than ‘out of the EU’, the working class needs to be ‘out of capitalism’. The first demand, therefore, must be for a Socialist Europe.

It is necessary to call for an International Conference of Trade Unions and workers parties against austerity and in support of the refugees. There is also the need for a genuine Single European Trade Union Centre that actually functions. It must defend the European workers’ and masses’ right to life, their right to expression, and their right to the political space to do this. Those rights are presently being denied to them by an incapable, inhumane and exhausted capitalist system.

Neither ‘in’ nor ‘out’ – this is no abstention: Comrades, intervene!