The European Union is becoming the enemy of the European people

The European Union is becoming the enemy of the European people - it gives me no pleasure to post this, but it is essential that I do so because it is the truth. Like many people of my generation I had high hopes for the EU. I voted for the UK to join in a referendum in 1974. I didn't buy the 'common market' guff I was being sold at the time by the corporate propaganda machine of the Tory press. I was voting for the 'ideal' and by that I mean a peaceful, war-avoiding Europe, united in a common and progressive purpose. 

In those days a progressive purpose was a realistic project, that a social Europe would be a prosperous, sharing society in which everyone would benefit from the kind of economic and social progress that still seemed inevitable at the time. How things have turned sour since then! Although most Europeans have held fast to that concept of progress, the politicians and capitalists had other ideas. By the 1970's profits were falling and as the EU expanded, so did the influence of the 'free' market neoliberals who were determined to ensure that the EU became a neoliberal corporate club, dedicated to the interests of the rich, at the expense of the rest of us.

And so now we find ourselves at the end of the European dream, living in a union dedicated to destroying the living standards of workers down to third world levels. The exemplar for this is the treatment of the Greeks, by the so-called Troika, who have been beggared  because of a crisis not of their own making. That the hypocrites who lead the EU such as Merkel (and of late Sarkozy) have claimed that this is "solidarity" only serves to emphasise the hypocrisy and mendacity of the Eurocracy . The Greeks have been betrayed and crushed by their own ruling class, with the co-operation of the Eurocratic/capitalist alliance which is a the heart of darkness of the EU.The bailout was only ever intended to protect European banks at the expense of the Greek people.

Munch's The Scream sums up the fate of the Greeks at the hands of the EU

The primary instrument of our betrayal is the the Lisbon Treaty, a neoliberal charter, which enshrines the supremacy of the 'free' market above the needs and democratic rights of the European people. Until this charter is consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs, there can be no solidarity, freedom or progress within the EU. We need to fight to overcome not only the democratic deficit in the EU but to free Europeans from the economic slavery of neoliberalism. 

Having said all that, its essential that we reject the anti-EU rhetoric churned out by the likes of UKIP, and the right of the Tory party. The only reason for their euroscepticism is because they want to destroy what remains of EU environmental and employment legislation so that they can can screw UK workers even harder than they are being screwed at the moment. Of course, its ironic that this kind of euroscepticism is popular, and that people's discontent in the UK with the EU has been manipulated by the capitalist media to benefit  the likes of UKIP who think that the neoliberalism of the EU doesn't go far enough. Don't be fooled! We don't need to leave the EU but we do need to change it for the benefit of the European people.