i have been watching brexit proceedings and reading the news on it every day for two years, and i have never heard complaints about 'socialism'. working people are against immigration and europe because they perceive it to be contributing to their economic immiseration, yes. they resent jobs going to foreign workers. that is not an example of 'socialism'. the EU as a neoliberal trading bloc, a giant common market, has created that. socialism is not based on common markets where companies can compete internationally for the cheapest labour: socialism is about working people having a common share of their wealth. a socialist europe, a socialist policy of any sort, would not let workers get shafted like that. so i am frankly confused at what you are talking about.
your linking the declarations of the first international or whatever that is, from 1907, is frankly bizarre, especially when you're using it as some 'proof' against my reading of brexit, in 2018, and accusing me of having my nose in an 'old book'. uuuuh. socialism and communism were always conceived as internationalist. the main book ends in the famous 'workers of the world, unite!' you're not surprising anyone here with an even rudimentary understanding of socialism. the point of their internationalism (especially against the aggressive nationalism of the period you cite) was that workers should combine in solidarity, to better exercise their rights and their share of the international wealth (history has shown what happens when a socialist country tries to run a controlled economic experiment when surrounded by capitalist neighbours). that is very different from the 'open borders' of trade agreements and globalism, of 'cheap products' and 'cheap labour'. the whole organising principle of socialism is to PREVENT against those depredations. you fucking idiot.
ironically the most vocal anti-EU people are the hardline torys, who are free-marketeers who think that even the level of economic regulation the EU currently has is 'too much'. but again, not even they have accused the EU of being socialist: merely meddlers, dirigistes, a bureaucratic power that puts too much regulation on the 'natural' laws of the market (and the UK's presumed strengths in that market).
the biggest socialist party in europe by membership, labour, and the official party of the opposition, are ANTI-EU at their very highest level. i guess socialists just hate socialists, eh? brexit is galvanising the left wing in britain (and europe) by saying 'hey, we can get out of this globalist, corporatist, neoliberal stranglehold and reassert some socialist policies of our own rather than being beholden to a financial elite and big banks'. the left-wing press is full of this sort of fantasy. but wait, i thought the EU were perceived as big bad socialists? errrrrr
the EU has become a source of suspicion and perceived misery for the majority of average brexiteers because it has represented a distant, bureaucratic organisation that has promoted austerity since the financial crash. it has caused widespread economic misery in greece, huge unemployment in spain: all in pursuit of its austerity goals, to balance the books and ensure the big german banks don't collapse after the crash. tens of millions of working people have been grist to its mill, having to pay off huge bailout loans. that is not socialism in any form. it's pro-market, pro-finance policies in support of the financial elite.
your rhetoric about 'forcible wealth redistribution' has only come up here in things like the 'campaign to give our NHS £300mill more a week'. as i have pointed out, most of the hardest anti-EU areas have been recipients of huge amounts of EU funding for their regeneration and rebuilding. and it says a lot that appeals to leave the EU are justified with appeals to the biggest socialist institution in the country, the NHS. 'pesky 'wealth redistribution', eh. i guess people just hate socialism.
Last edited by uziq (2018-09-27 06:36:06)
