WHY DO the European capitalists need the Common Market? In this article, Belgian Marxist economist ERNEST MANDEL argues that in order to face the challenge of American and Japanese capitalism, the European posses need to club logether to co-ordinate both finance and industrial production.
But, argues Mandel, the attempt at European integration — which has the objective trend towards a European 'super-state' has come up against the limitations of the existing nation state which acts as a barrier to political integration.
Moreover, while all the European capitalists have some interests in common, there are crucial areas such as agriculture where their interests clash. Therefore, for the time being at least, the countries of the Common Market will continue to fight one another, but try to keep their market afloat. "There is no honour amongst thieves, but they stick SINCE the onset of the twentieth century, the productive forces developed by capitalism periodically rebelled against nation-state, as well as against the private ownership of the means of production. Twice, tional ruling class has sought to resolve this conflict in a violent way, through the world wars of 1914 and 1939. The objective purpose of these wars was to try to create room for one dominant imperialist power (Britain, or the US) to unite under its sway a much broader sphere than that of the market represented nation-state, a unified domain in which capital could be invested and draw profits unhindered.
These two attempts failed. The Economic (EEC) set up in 1958 after the signing of the Treaty of Rome is the first bourgeoisie in Europe to achieve the same end without wars, essentially by collaboration on the basis of negotiations.
This historic cause of this change in method is the growth in the sector of the world wrested away from capitalist domination in the aftermath of the second world war. The antagonism between the capitalist countries and the 'communist' states became too deep, the risk of additional vital parts of the giobe falling ot tne sonere :apitalist domination too great, to permit new interimperialist imperialist competition operate but within what has proved to że a lasting alliance against all the noncapitalist forces throughout the world.
However, the ween the extent of development of the productive forces and the realm of each imperialist power is more acute than ever.
Socialist Action have the the internaGermany by any KohlCommunity the imperialist Common Market. It was, La general tendency. capitalisin survives, tinents.
JaDalicoc market including Within of create a common market wals Inter- Canada and Mexico continues of Karl "superimperialism' contradiction bet'national' petition with all the others.
What can no longer be Lorraine steelworkers march against unemployment •West German Chancellor settled by war must be resolved if not by consensus, at least by constant bargaining. This led to the attempt to build the only a first experiment in the context of NO COVCH As long as this experimentanon may be extended to olier conimperialism, unable to hold onto its East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere' (that is, its new colonial empire) after the second world war, is now seeking to create a kind of common South Korea Taiwan, or even the ASEAN countries.
American imperialism. some
groups aim — at least historically - to embracing This in no way means the realisation Kautskv's nightmare of organising the world market peacefully. To the conmarkets would be designed essentially one of these 'common the for trade warfare, for sharpened comlonger run, they would prepare the way for a war against the workers' states to CONTRE IES reconquer the space that capitalism has lost in these countries.
All inal sucn common mean is an attempt to make a group of bourgeois states into a basis for intercompetition, rather than each one of them continuing to try to compete on its own.
Interests The main obstacle to carrying out such schemes is social and political in character (and ideological, What a common market really means is a new federation of old states, that is, a 'supranational' federal However, the bourgeois state is not just a means for upholding the economic interests of a ruling class. It is also an instrument of social and political power, a means for upholding and reproducing domination of capital over worked.
In order for the bourgeois state to play this role effectively, simple repression is not sufficient. It is necessary to get the exploited to accept the generai framework of their exploitation as legitimate.
For this purpose, in normal times. the 'national bourgeois state and the legitimacy of the institutions of bourgeois democrac play an essential role. To replace these institutions with European ones takes time, a lot of time. There is a marked desynchronisation between the tempo of the internationalisation of the productive forces, the emergence of supranational institutions of the European Common Market type, and the rate at markets as well).
state.
the political level NON AU rather, CHOMAGE elements:
sway.
onic coulill y are only tradition of the avert protection which broad popular layers are coming to identify with these institutions.
The bourgeoisie is not ready to give up a relatively effective instrument of power in exchange for a new one that has yet to be tested. This is the main reason for the slowness in setting up the machinery of European unity on the there are other factors.
There is not only the desynchronisation between economics and politics. There is also a desynchronisation between the trend toward internanonalisalon the productive forces and the organisational forms of capital, of the capitalist firms themselves. member country of the Common Market, as in the US and Japan, the bourgeoisie is not homogeneous. . It takes the form, of a conglomerate of four • Multinational corporations producing surplus value in several countries. These are more and more predominant. But this is a relatively recent developThey nowhere hold absolute • National trusts (monopolies) producing surplus value still essentially in • Small and medium-sized monopoly corporations. While these junior partners of the monopolies, they still control a not unimportant part of the production of They dominate at the two ends of the industrial chain, in the technologically backward sectors, and in the advanced technology sector. In the latter sector, where the risks remain the monopolies commit themselves only after the little people have blazed the trail, and often lost their scalps in the process. • The nationalised sector, the top levels of which are being integrated into the bourgeoisie, if they were not recruited from it at the start.
Of these four components, only the multinationals have everything to gain economically and nothing to lose from the emergence of supranational states sector of the bourgeoisie OLLICI runs the risk of losing the benefits of and subsidies They hesitating to enter into the stepped-up competition that flows inevitably from the widening of the market Since this risk is compounded by the political and social risk that the ruling class as a whole has to run, including the multinationals, and since the rela[GIL UIL CISL"
UNTF