The
unflinching support for the EU and its institutions is not about
preventing European countries from becoming “Afghanistan.” Not
about preventing collapse. Not about the inconvenience of long lines
at passport control. It is about promoting an ideology, a specific
worldview, a vision for the way the world should work.
by
Michael Nevradakis
Part
5 - Why the fear of losing the EU?
For some of
those who favor the EU, their support often approaches levels of
blind dogmatism. The main issue to contend with here though is why do
such large segments of the political, business, and media elite so
strongly support the EU, the Eurozone, and all of its associated
institutions and policies?
In a word,
the reason is neoliberalism. Based in part on “third way”
politics, which burst to the political forefront in the 1990s with
the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, it is the idea that
capital, including “human capital,” should be able to flow freely
across borders—or better yet, that borders should be abolished
altogether. It is an idea that pays lip service to democracy and
social justice but that preserves the primacy of international
financial capital and so-called “free trade” über alles.
Greek Prime
Minister Tsipras, defending his government’s policy of maintaining
Greek membership in the Eurozone, argued in a recent interview that
Greece would turn “into Afghanistan” if it left the common
currency bloc. However, as evidenced by Tsipras’ aforementioned
victory speech, the end goal is preserving the idea of “Europe”—as
conceptualized by today’s European Union—at all costs, even if it
means breaking campaign promises (or outright lying, if you prefer)
and implementing policies that are toxic for the country and its
people.
Some of the
more laughable defenses that have been heard in favor of EU
membership—as exemplified by the heated pre- and post-Brexit
referendum rhetoric, concern such awful inconveniences as having to
wait on line at customs control or at currency exchange. Somewhat
more serious arguments concern the loss of the right to seek
employment in other European countries. Doom-and-gloom scenarios,
such as the one put forth by Tsipras and also much of the press and
mass media, predict economic failure and catastrophe for those who
dare depart from the Eurozone or the EU.
This
unflinching support for the EU and its institutions, though, is not
in reality about preventing European countries from being transformed
into “Afghanistan.” It is not about preventing collapse. It is
not about the laughable inconvenience of waiting on long lines at
passport control. It is about promoting an ideology, a specific
worldview, a vision for the way the world should work.
How exactly
does this new, visionary world work in reality? What is the end goal?
Let’s take the “free movement of labor” as an example. The
positive spin that is often placed on this issue points out the
advantages of being able to seek work in 28 EU member-states,
increasing options for those seeking jobs and the pool of potential
workers for employers.
In actuality
though, such policies promote a “brain drain” from poorer EU
member-states towards those that are wealthier. This perpetuates a
spiral of impoverishment in countries such as Greece, from which an
estimated 600,000 people have emigrated just during the years of the
economic crisis, draining the country of a significant percentage of
its educated professionals, the know-how and innovation they could
provide, and the contributions their employment would make to the
national tax base and pension system–further perpetuating the
vicious economic cycle.
Indeed, it
can be surmised that a portion of the still significant levels of
support for EU membership in Greece stems from individuals who do not
view EU membership in terms of the country’s best interest but in
terms of self-interest — such as the opportunity to escape the
“hellhole” that is Greece and to move to other, wealthier
countries that are deemed more “civilized.” Motivated
self-interest can also be seen in certain professional categories,
such as academics for instance, who fear losing such benefits as
EU-provided or EU-supported financial grants.
On their
end, employers do not wish to lose what amounts to a pool of surplus
labor. This has nothing to do with meritocracy, competition, or
finding the best candidate to fill available positions. It has much
more to do with increasing labor supply and lowering wages
accordingly, essentially pitting labor against itself. As an
ancillary benefit, the impoverishment of EU member-states such as
Greece creates an internal bloc of countries with educated working
populations, proximity to the rest of Europe, free trade and the same
currency, and labor conditions and wages rapidly approaching
third-world levels. This leads to “investments” (including the
aforementioned privatizations) in these nouveau-poor nations, while
“free” trade allows cheaply-made imports from economic
powerhouses such as Germany to be dumped on local markets.
The same
holds true for economic migrants and refugees, for whom we are often
told there must be “no borders.” But what this influx of peoples
actually represents from an economic point of view is further surplus
labor, including labor willing to perform undesirable jobs at
pitifully low wages. It represents a new labor pool which is, in
essence, pitted against the domestic labor of European countries,
suppressing wages across the board. As an additional bonus for
employers, those migrants and refugees who are undocumented are far
more likely to be amenable to long workdays, extremely low wages, and
employment without insurance, benefits, or union membership —
essentially held hostage by fear of deportation or starvation.
In other
words, these migrants and refugees are exploited, and this
exploitation occurs under the guise of “open borders” and
“solidarity.” As this exploitation takes place, the true causes
of the mass waves of migration and outflows of refugees from these
countries are ignored. These, in turn, are closely related to the
geopolitical ambitions and activities of Western actors, including
the EU and Brussels-based NATO.
While many
of those who are opposed to unchecked migration are indeed racist and
xenophobic, there also exist those who oppose such migration on the
aforementioned grounds, while further recognizing that states already
battered by domestic unemployment are in no position to absorb a new
labor pool. There are obviously non-racist and non-xenophobic grounds
for opposition to the destruction, impoverishment and exploitation
of these countries in the first place There are then equally sound
and benignant grounds for further opposition to the exploitation of
the migrant workers and the suppression of wages and elimination of
jobs for the domestic workforce, especially at a time when
double-digit unemployment already officially exists in much of Europe
and the Eurozone.
The way this
induced “free” movement operates, a significant percentage of the
labor force within “united” Europe is exploited or driven out of
work and forced into internal migration within the “common market,”
while migrants from outside Europe add to the pool of surplus labor
and drive down wages even further. Both categories of workers are
exploited by the “big fish,” namely economic and industrial
giants such as Germany, and by international financial capital, which
together benefit quite handsomely from this situation. This is as far
from a xenophobic argument as one can get.
If this all
sounds far-fetched, consider the following remarks made by British
Labour Party MP John Reid on the BBC’s “Sunday Politics”
television program on April 14, 2013: “The Treasury insisted in
having a free flow of labor because they thought it would have
brought down the cost of labor.” Reid further noted that he was
attacked by members of his own party for suggesting that it was not
racist to discuss the issue of immigration.
This is the
prevalent ideology: “open borders” under a veil of “humanism”
but with the goal of the economic exploitation of workers and entire
countries alike. War and conflict is fomented in some countries,
economic oppression in others. The migrants fleeing these countries
in search of survival and employment are then exploited by the
wealthier countries, which benefit and profit off of their work and
very presence in these countries, such as through the broadening of
the tax base. Conversely, the countries that raised these individuals
and invested in their education are left largely empty-handed, at
best awaiting remittances from abroad. And all of this is couched in
pseudo-humanitarian terms: open borders, free movement, and “free”
trade.
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