CAEF AGM 2013 27 April 2013 - Resolution
The National Question
and Democracy
In the current period of capitalism, the transnational corporations and banks have near global dominance. They want to remove all restrictions on their objectives to have free movement of capital, services, goods and labour. It's the TNCs in the form of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), a powerful lobby in Brussels, which has promoted the EU at each stage. The ERT with similar interested parties has pressed for and helped draft various EU treaties, the neo-liberal Single European Market and single currency.
The crisis in the eurozone of 17 EU Member States illustrates the disastrous outcome of centralising controls which have been taken away from national governments. The wholesale privatisation of many industries and handing the public sector over to privateers has been choreographed by EU policies, directives and regulations. These huge changes have been rubber stamped by national governments to the detriment of their own sovereign powers.
To consolidate the ever closer union, specified in the Rome Treaty, the recent European Constitution (aka Lisbon Treaty) set capitalism in reinforced concrete as the economic system. The EU is the antithesis of democracy and the right of nation-states to self determination. The common policies, directives and legislation being put in place across the EU are designed to hand all aspects of the public sector to privateers to bring an end to the welfare state, NHS and state education system. It is a method to divert money into capitalist bank accounts and away from pockets and purses of those who work for their living and to increase exploitation.
The essence of this reactionary process is to reverse the historic gains of the French Revolution. The imperative political task led by the left in the labour and trade union movement must be to re-establish the right to self determination, national independence and democracy. This requires using all means possible to reinforce an understanding of the role and defence of the nation-state, real internationalism and proletarian solidarity as the fundamental focus of democracy.
Adopted unanimously
see also - Resolution on Globalisation is Imperialism