Lessons for the Left from the European elections 2009
By Mikael on Tuesday 9 June 2009, 14:01 - Permalink
This is a preliminary analysis of the results of the European elections,
viewed from a Finnish perspective, and in the light of some of the main
European trends: the defeat of the Left, the success of the Greens, a lot of
Rightist Nationalist Conservatism, intellectual stagnation and anxiety for the
future. The strategic conclusion is that the Left must decide to build a
democratic European state...
... Mitro Repo, the Orthodox priest and vote magnet (with 71 517 out of a total of 1 670 486 votes; the voting turnout in Finland being 40,2 %) of the Finnish Social Democrats , is not even a Social Democrat. That the Social Democratic leadership offered him an electoral platform is the clearest sign of its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. Again, Liisa Jaakonsaari (45 335) , the other new MEP of the Social Democrats, is not on the Left. Of the candidates who can be characterized as belonging to the Left, the two most successful, namely Annika Lapintie (Left Union, 29 010) and Kimmo Kiljunen (26 837) were not elected. This summarizes the electoral defeat of the Finnish Left.
The Social Democrats, in particular, and the Left in general, suffered severe losses in Germany, France, Italy, UK, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Austria, Portugal (where, however, the Left Bloc won 2 seats), Denmark (although the Socialist People's party, which belongs to the Green group in the EP, won 2 seats), the Netherlands and Belgium. In Poland, the Social Democrats kept their positions and even increased their seats in the EP with 2 new MEPs, while in Hungary the Socialist Party lost 5 of its 14 seats. The Czech Social Democratic Party, founded 2002 and thus a late-comer in the history of Social Democracy, increased its number of MEPs from 2 to 7. In Slovakia, the “Direction – Social Democracy”, also was victorious (32,5 % of the votes; up from 3 to 5 MEPs; however, the turnout was only 19,6 %). In spite of the rise of Social Democracy in Eastern Central Europe, the overall picture is that Rightist and conservative forces have won the elections.
Yet the the Left can rejoice with the Greens in the success of the latter in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France and Greece (and also to cry with the Greens of Europe, because no Green MEPs were elected from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania or Poland). The personal results of Heidi Hautala (58 952) and Satu Hassi (56 855), the two elected Finnish Green MEPs, are impressive. By the way, over the years a considerable part of the Left has migrated to the Greens. Satu Hassi is a good example, as is the Danish Socialist People's Party.
The old Finland-Swedish Leftist Nils Torvalds (the father of Linus) scored an excellent result (14035). He will be the substitute of Carl Haglund (16 853), the elected candidate of the Capitalist establishment of the Swedish People's Party. Add the good result of the open-minded journalist Björn Månsson (13 309) , and the picture emerges of a party with a constituency on the left rather than on the right of the centre.
Another subject for rejoicing is the astounding success of the Pirate Party in Sweden, which got 7,1 % of the votes in its first elections. The voters for the Pirate Party have understood what has not yet penetrated into the brains of the fossils among the commentators who do their best to explain it away: the crucial importance of the Internet for the future of mankind. Only one representative of the Pirate Party made it into the EP, though. His name is Christian Engström.
The political shipwreck of the European Social Democrats and Socialists is a fact. When the Finnish Social Democrats chose Heinäluoma and then Urpilainen to chair their party instead of Tuomioja, they missed their very last chances. No rescue is in sight.
The Left of the future is green. It has got rid of the ideology of economic growth, it is bent on dismantling every nuclear power station, and its security policy is not Atlantist. Thus it has liberated itself from the doctrines of such political dinosaurs as Tony Blair, Göran Persson and Paavo Lipponen (and the already mentioned Liisa Jaakonsaari).
The Left will remain a loser in the EU as long as it does not realize that the EU should have been its own cause ever since the Manifesto of Ventotene (1941). It will be lost in the wilderness until it stops looking for an alternative to EU instead of seeing the alternative within the EU.
The European Left is presently traversing a long phase of mineral exploration, in order to extract its most resistant metals. The process might require too much time, and it may already be too late to prevent a new world war or other catastrophes of the same magnitude. As long as the EU-leaders are named Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Barroso and Fogh Rasmussen, anything can happen. Can one trust that the Greens, who seem to be as struck by the prevailing climate hysteria and hypocrisy as the rest, will continue to refuse the present proposal to build new nuclear reactors and export them to all parts of the world in order to, as they say, “reduce the emissions” (although, in reality, nuclear power is exclusively about making money and, in some countries, nuclear weapons)? Let's hope so. However, be sure that the politicians who won the European elections, or at least did not lose their positions in the power structure (e.g. the above-mentioned Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Barroso and Fogh Rasmussen &Co) prefer to just forget about the “emissions” from the nuclear power plants, in other words, the radioactive waste and plutonium.
In these very days, more precisely from June 6 to 16, the “Loyal Arrow 09”, as the NATO calls its military manoeuvre, is taking place in Northern Sweden. It started in the midst of almost total public silence (at least in Finland), undisturbed by any painful electoral debates. What is the relation of NATO, its immense military-industrial-academic basis and ideological doctrine of superiority in weapons of mass destruction, to our famous western democracy? When did the Swedes and the Finns elect NATO to defend themselves? Should there not have been referenda about the NATO-membership in the countries which joined the Atlantic Pact in 1949 or later,after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? If a European Left had existed, would it not have questioned the existence of NATO? A European Left would not have let itself be fooled by the fancy talk about the “crisis management” of the EU and the NATO, and the pretended peaceful and humanitarian motives of the “rapid deployment forces”, including the NATO Response Force, which is at this moment being tested in neutral Sweden and Finland under NATO military commanders. The Left would have notified the electorate about the real and potential “emissions" from this entire parasitic production of business corporations like EADS, BAE, Dassault, Lockheed, Boeing and others, which carry on and flourish in spite of (or maybe precisely because of?) the global financial and economic depression. One would expect a European Left, which really wants to tackle the enormous waste of the resources of the earth and the harmful influence of the human species on the environment and the climate (?), to start taking on the military-industrial complex. How many times did you hear that word during its most recent electoral campaigns?
The voting turnout in the whole EU was 42,85, which is 3% less than in the EP elections 2004. How to interpret these numbers? At least, the election result does not prove that people in general and people on the Left in particular, are becoming less interested in the EU. However that may be, the Left now needs to engage itself more, not less, in the basic issues concerning the EU. It must find again its own federalist roots, the original Leftist European project. Let the Treaties of Rome (1957) and The Single European Act continue to symbolize the EU of Capital. The EU of the Left, on the other hand, started with the Ventotene Manifesto(1941) and continued with the [Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union|http://www.spinellisfootsteps.info] (1984), which needs to be re-constituted and updated from an ecological point of view and in the light of the digital evolution. I shall finish my preliminary analysis with a table, which aims at engaging the citizens in the debate about the EU, and add some further comments.
CLICK ON THE TABLE TO OPEN IT IN A NEW WINDOW
Comments to the table's questions and answers: Dare to deal with the diseases which I believe Thomas Wallgren refers to as underlying “cultural problems”. However, the EU is the patient, not the symptom.
Neither Finland nor any other member country should withdraw from the EU, which marks the beginning of a new political world system in which the states do no longer have (or, rather: do no longer believe that they have) absolute sovereignty.
It would be reactionary to try to dissolve the EU. The dissolution of the EU would signify a return to the Europe of Nationalism and war.
Not the EU as such, but the irresoluteness of the Europeans regarding their union, threatens the democracy. Let us decide to build a democratic European state, and we will have one.
The treaty of Lisbon is a symptom of underlying political problems; the lack of democracy, in the first place. The Lisbon Treaty is to cover up the fact that the EU does not have a democratic constitution like, for instance, he USA and India. In addition, the Lisbon Treaty explicitely binds the EU to NATO, which is unconstitutional. Military alliances should not be made by way of basic legislation.
The Irish NO to the Lisbon Treaty must be respected which means that the treaty deserves to be scrapped. By the way, the treaty will not become any better than it is even if the Irish would accept it in a second referendum.
The essence of the Lisbon strategy is that states (and the EU) should be regarded as business corporations. Thus economic competition and rivalry is elevated into the norm of behavior, not only in the economic, but also in the international sphere. The EU must be biggest and collect the biggest profits! How could a European Left ever accept this arch-bourgeois, Capitalist ideology?
For Capital, accumulation is Moses and the Prophets (as Karl Marx stated). The Left in Europe has to break with the economic growth dogma, and with the reminiscences of the myth of “man's domination over nature” in the classics of Socialism and Federalism.
Hope Heidi Hautala of the Greens can explain how the Lisbon strategy can avoid being a major cause of environmental problems.
Hope Claes Andersson will tell his reasons for the continuation of NATO.
With one, or maybe two exceptions, all seem to think that the EU would not need any military organization for its territorial defense, which is somewhat surprising.
European rapid deployment forces? During the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, some leading statesmen of the USA and Europe have rehabilitated the notion of Imperialism. Consider, for instance, the statements of Mr Robert Cooper, General Director of the external relations of the EU, and the right hand of Mr Javier Solana. What are the RDF, if not a regrettable relapse into the idea of the moral superiority and the duty of the West to develop, civilize and, if necessary, punish the rest of the world?
European Nuclear disarmament, yes: the first and maybe most pressing task of a European Left is to wake up END, the broad, popular movement for the denuclearisation of Europe 'from the Atlantic to the Urals'. The identity of the EU as a peace project, the very possibility of a Europe beyond Imperialism, depends on whether the Europeans decide, unilaterally, to abolish the French and British WMD and to tell the Americas to withdraw theirs from European soil. (Note that both the French and the British governments are still, and unilaterally, going on with their production of new nuclear missiles and warheads.)
The so called nuclear renaissance, the actual plans to construct new nuclear power plants, is as fatal as the nuclear weapons development, to which it is closely connected. Every new investment in nuclear power is a terrible mistake. The dismantling of the existing reactors will be a very long and complicated story. I am glad that all (in the table) say no to more nukes.
Finally, one would believe that Leftists support the opinion that the EU should have its own Postal Service. Are we not in favor of public services? Which national peculiarities speak against a common European Post? Indeed, should we not strive to establish a global Postal Service?' “It seems to me that the long struggle which led to this great institution [.i.e the Post] throws some light on social progress in general”, wrote my compatriot Laurin Zilliacus only half a century ago, “and that the itinerary of the Post still might prove to be our road towards a peaceful, united world” (quoted from ''Det gula hornet. Glimtar ur postens oroliga historia.'' Helsingfors 1957) If the institutionalized so called Left continues to allow the Capitalists to rob us of such essential public services as the Post, we will probably soon also have to witness how Mitro Repo &Co give their blessing to the privatization of the public libraries. As everybody should be aware of by now, Google Inc. has already proceeded quite far along that road.
Mikael Böök
9 June 2009
... Mitro Repo, the Orthodox priest and vote magnet (with 71 517 out of a total of 1 670 486 votes; the voting turnout in Finland being 40,2 %) of the Finnish Social Democrats , is not even a Social Democrat. That the Social Democratic leadership offered him an electoral platform is the clearest sign of its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. Again, Liisa Jaakonsaari (45 335) , the other new MEP of the Social Democrats, is not on the Left. Of the candidates who can be characterized as belonging to the Left, the two most successful, namely Annika Lapintie (Left Union, 29 010) and Kimmo Kiljunen (26 837) were not elected. This summarizes the electoral defeat of the Finnish Left.
The Social Democrats, in particular, and the Left in general, suffered severe losses in Germany, France, Italy, UK, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Austria, Portugal (where, however, the Left Bloc won 2 seats), Denmark (although the Socialist People's party, which belongs to the Green group in the EP, won 2 seats), the Netherlands and Belgium. In Poland, the Social Democrats kept their positions and even increased their seats in the EP with 2 new MEPs, while in Hungary the Socialist Party lost 5 of its 14 seats. The Czech Social Democratic Party, founded 2002 and thus a late-comer in the history of Social Democracy, increased its number of MEPs from 2 to 7. In Slovakia, the “Direction – Social Democracy”, also was victorious (32,5 % of the votes; up from 3 to 5 MEPs; however, the turnout was only 19,6 %). In spite of the rise of Social Democracy in Eastern Central Europe, the overall picture is that Rightist and conservative forces have won the elections.
Yet the the Left can rejoice with the Greens in the success of the latter in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France and Greece (and also to cry with the Greens of Europe, because no Green MEPs were elected from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania or Poland). The personal results of Heidi Hautala (58 952) and Satu Hassi (56 855), the two elected Finnish Green MEPs, are impressive. By the way, over the years a considerable part of the Left has migrated to the Greens. Satu Hassi is a good example, as is the Danish Socialist People's Party.
The old Finland-Swedish Leftist Nils Torvalds (the father of Linus) scored an excellent result (14035). He will be the substitute of Carl Haglund (16 853), the elected candidate of the Capitalist establishment of the Swedish People's Party. Add the good result of the open-minded journalist Björn Månsson (13 309) , and the picture emerges of a party with a constituency on the left rather than on the right of the centre.
Another subject for rejoicing is the astounding success of the Pirate Party in Sweden, which got 7,1 % of the votes in its first elections. The voters for the Pirate Party have understood what has not yet penetrated into the brains of the fossils among the commentators who do their best to explain it away: the crucial importance of the Internet for the future of mankind. Only one representative of the Pirate Party made it into the EP, though. His name is Christian Engström.
The political shipwreck of the European Social Democrats and Socialists is a fact. When the Finnish Social Democrats chose Heinäluoma and then Urpilainen to chair their party instead of Tuomioja, they missed their very last chances. No rescue is in sight.
The Left of the future is green. It has got rid of the ideology of economic growth, it is bent on dismantling every nuclear power station, and its security policy is not Atlantist. Thus it has liberated itself from the doctrines of such political dinosaurs as Tony Blair, Göran Persson and Paavo Lipponen (and the already mentioned Liisa Jaakonsaari).
The Left will remain a loser in the EU as long as it does not realize that the EU should have been its own cause ever since the Manifesto of Ventotene (1941). It will be lost in the wilderness until it stops looking for an alternative to EU instead of seeing the alternative within the EU.
The European Left is presently traversing a long phase of mineral exploration, in order to extract its most resistant metals. The process might require too much time, and it may already be too late to prevent a new world war or other catastrophes of the same magnitude. As long as the EU-leaders are named Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Barroso and Fogh Rasmussen, anything can happen. Can one trust that the Greens, who seem to be as struck by the prevailing climate hysteria and hypocrisy as the rest, will continue to refuse the present proposal to build new nuclear reactors and export them to all parts of the world in order to, as they say, “reduce the emissions” (although, in reality, nuclear power is exclusively about making money and, in some countries, nuclear weapons)? Let's hope so. However, be sure that the politicians who won the European elections, or at least did not lose their positions in the power structure (e.g. the above-mentioned Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Barroso and Fogh Rasmussen &Co) prefer to just forget about the “emissions” from the nuclear power plants, in other words, the radioactive waste and plutonium.
In these very days, more precisely from June 6 to 16, the “Loyal Arrow 09”, as the NATO calls its military manoeuvre, is taking place in Northern Sweden. It started in the midst of almost total public silence (at least in Finland), undisturbed by any painful electoral debates. What is the relation of NATO, its immense military-industrial-academic basis and ideological doctrine of superiority in weapons of mass destruction, to our famous western democracy? When did the Swedes and the Finns elect NATO to defend themselves? Should there not have been referenda about the NATO-membership in the countries which joined the Atlantic Pact in 1949 or later,after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? If a European Left had existed, would it not have questioned the existence of NATO? A European Left would not have let itself be fooled by the fancy talk about the “crisis management” of the EU and the NATO, and the pretended peaceful and humanitarian motives of the “rapid deployment forces”, including the NATO Response Force, which is at this moment being tested in neutral Sweden and Finland under NATO military commanders. The Left would have notified the electorate about the real and potential “emissions" from this entire parasitic production of business corporations like EADS, BAE, Dassault, Lockheed, Boeing and others, which carry on and flourish in spite of (or maybe precisely because of?) the global financial and economic depression. One would expect a European Left, which really wants to tackle the enormous waste of the resources of the earth and the harmful influence of the human species on the environment and the climate (?), to start taking on the military-industrial complex. How many times did you hear that word during its most recent electoral campaigns?
The voting turnout in the whole EU was 42,85, which is 3% less than in the EP elections 2004. How to interpret these numbers? At least, the election result does not prove that people in general and people on the Left in particular, are becoming less interested in the EU. However that may be, the Left now needs to engage itself more, not less, in the basic issues concerning the EU. It must find again its own federalist roots, the original Leftist European project. Let the Treaties of Rome (1957) and The Single European Act continue to symbolize the EU of Capital. The EU of the Left, on the other hand, started with the Ventotene Manifesto(1941) and continued with the [Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union|http://www.spinellisfootsteps.info] (1984), which needs to be re-constituted and updated from an ecological point of view and in the light of the digital evolution. I shall finish my preliminary analysis with a table, which aims at engaging the citizens in the debate about the EU, and add some further comments.
CLICK ON THE TABLE TO OPEN IT IN A NEW WINDOWComments to the table's questions and answers: Dare to deal with the diseases which I believe Thomas Wallgren refers to as underlying “cultural problems”. However, the EU is the patient, not the symptom.
Neither Finland nor any other member country should withdraw from the EU, which marks the beginning of a new political world system in which the states do no longer have (or, rather: do no longer believe that they have) absolute sovereignty.
It would be reactionary to try to dissolve the EU. The dissolution of the EU would signify a return to the Europe of Nationalism and war.
Not the EU as such, but the irresoluteness of the Europeans regarding their union, threatens the democracy. Let us decide to build a democratic European state, and we will have one.
The treaty of Lisbon is a symptom of underlying political problems; the lack of democracy, in the first place. The Lisbon Treaty is to cover up the fact that the EU does not have a democratic constitution like, for instance, he USA and India. In addition, the Lisbon Treaty explicitely binds the EU to NATO, which is unconstitutional. Military alliances should not be made by way of basic legislation.
The Irish NO to the Lisbon Treaty must be respected which means that the treaty deserves to be scrapped. By the way, the treaty will not become any better than it is even if the Irish would accept it in a second referendum.
The essence of the Lisbon strategy is that states (and the EU) should be regarded as business corporations. Thus economic competition and rivalry is elevated into the norm of behavior, not only in the economic, but also in the international sphere. The EU must be biggest and collect the biggest profits! How could a European Left ever accept this arch-bourgeois, Capitalist ideology?
For Capital, accumulation is Moses and the Prophets (as Karl Marx stated). The Left in Europe has to break with the economic growth dogma, and with the reminiscences of the myth of “man's domination over nature” in the classics of Socialism and Federalism.
Hope Heidi Hautala of the Greens can explain how the Lisbon strategy can avoid being a major cause of environmental problems.
Hope Claes Andersson will tell his reasons for the continuation of NATO.
With one, or maybe two exceptions, all seem to think that the EU would not need any military organization for its territorial defense, which is somewhat surprising.
European rapid deployment forces? During the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, some leading statesmen of the USA and Europe have rehabilitated the notion of Imperialism. Consider, for instance, the statements of Mr Robert Cooper, General Director of the external relations of the EU, and the right hand of Mr Javier Solana. What are the RDF, if not a regrettable relapse into the idea of the moral superiority and the duty of the West to develop, civilize and, if necessary, punish the rest of the world?
European Nuclear disarmament, yes: the first and maybe most pressing task of a European Left is to wake up END, the broad, popular movement for the denuclearisation of Europe 'from the Atlantic to the Urals'. The identity of the EU as a peace project, the very possibility of a Europe beyond Imperialism, depends on whether the Europeans decide, unilaterally, to abolish the French and British WMD and to tell the Americas to withdraw theirs from European soil. (Note that both the French and the British governments are still, and unilaterally, going on with their production of new nuclear missiles and warheads.)
The so called nuclear renaissance, the actual plans to construct new nuclear power plants, is as fatal as the nuclear weapons development, to which it is closely connected. Every new investment in nuclear power is a terrible mistake. The dismantling of the existing reactors will be a very long and complicated story. I am glad that all (in the table) say no to more nukes.
Finally, one would believe that Leftists support the opinion that the EU should have its own Postal Service. Are we not in favor of public services? Which national peculiarities speak against a common European Post? Indeed, should we not strive to establish a global Postal Service?' “It seems to me that the long struggle which led to this great institution [.i.e the Post] throws some light on social progress in general”, wrote my compatriot Laurin Zilliacus only half a century ago, “and that the itinerary of the Post still might prove to be our road towards a peaceful, united world” (quoted from ''Det gula hornet. Glimtar ur postens oroliga historia.'' Helsingfors 1957) If the institutionalized so called Left continues to allow the Capitalists to rob us of such essential public services as the Post, we will probably soon also have to witness how Mitro Repo &Co give their blessing to the privatization of the public libraries. As everybody should be aware of by now, Google Inc. has already proceeded quite far along that road.
Mikael Böök
9 June 2009
Comments
Mikael, what you write: "The Social Democrats, in particular, and the Left in general, suffered severe losses in Germany, France, Italy, UK, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Austria, Portugal" is wrong with regards to Greece. The absolutely defeated governing party is in the right, while the relative winner is PASOK, a party belonging in the European Socialist coalition. As far as the Greek non-socialdemocratic left is concerned, SYRIZA (belonging to the European Left) was indeed defeated, although the dogmatic old-fashioned Communist Party of Greece won and the Greek Ecologists-Greens have done very well. Just for the sake of truth.. --Moses
Thanks, Moses, for correcting me about PASOK. Glad to hear about PASOK's victory in Greece. By the way, how does PASOK nowadays place itself on the Green-Red scale?
Le Monde of June 6 has a substantial anti-nuclear article by Corinne Lepage, newly elected MEP for the party "Mouvement Democrate" (MoDem), of which she is the vice president. See
http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/arti...
orique-par-corinne-lepage_1202870_3232.html
Is Corinne Lepage on the Left or on the Right? Is she Green? The MoDem Party of Francois Bayrou and Corinne Lepage wants to surpass the cleavage between Left and Right, thinking that it is outdated. However, politics continues to be very much about cleavages, and the one between the Left and the Right tends to return in new shapes. Thus I am inclined to think that the writers of 'anti-nuclear' articles, like Corinne Lepage, nowadays tend to be 'on the Left'. Admittedly, this has not always been so. Consider, for instance, the example of the great nuclear scientist Frédéric Joliot-Curie. He was clearly 'on the Left', and certainly also in favor of building the (then still not yet really existing) nuclear power plants of France. But who is, today, in favor of building new nuclear power plants? Well, many (most?) of those people tend to be Right-wing politicians, like the Président de la république himself. Tragically, some scientists also continue to believe that nuclear power is a viable source of energy for humans. Their thoughtlessness is even greater than their knowledge.
My only disagreeement with Moses' assessment is in relation to the decisiveness of the defeat of SYRIZA and triumph of the Ecologists-Greens in Greece. It is true that SYRIZA's vote came down and the Ecologists' went up, so that for the first time they have representation in the European Parliament. But the polls, the media and the public were predicting a bigger vote for the Greens in the context of the serious corruption crisis affecting the governing centre-right party. Many of the Green voters came over from voting for the governing party, and more were expected. It was doubtless because the Greek Greens were expecting at least a second seat that the Greek/Austrian Green politician Maria Vassilakou, who has stood for mayor of Vienna on the Austrian Green ticket , decided to stand for election with the Greens in Greece. Well, she has not got in this time.
We would have voted for the Greens if they had proved themselves more willing at least on our local level, to take up the nuclear issue, and at a minimum make use of this shattering France 3 documentary on nuclear waste disposal in France, which Greeks can now see with Greek subtitles:
http://www.spitia.gr/images/video/f...
At some other local levels: Corfu, Northern Attica, there has been some more response in the Greens. But it is not visible at the national level, or at the local level where we live.
As a result, we stayed with SYRIZA, which is still well in front of the Greens in terms of voter support in Greece notwithstanding its own very real credibility problems. .