The Political Physicist

For those of you who weren’t aware (and, frankly, I suspect that will be all of you), there are currently elections going on for the European Parliament. This is, in principle, the legislative body of the European Union, although in practice it is debatable how much power it actually holds. For this reason, European elections don’t usually attract too much attention, even in Europe, and tend to have turnouts similar to those in municipal elections.

However, as an international observer, what is quite interesting about the European Parliament (EP) is the shear diversity of parties represented in it. Compared to the recent Nova Scotian election, where there was so much homogeneity that you would be hard-pressed to tell which party anyone belonged to, the EP elections overwhelm you with choice. But, before I go into what the various choices are, I’ll just provide a bit of background on how the EP works.

Every country is given a certain number of seats in the EP, distributed according to population.¹ Exactly how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are elected is left up to the individual countries, the only requirement being that some form of proportional representation is used. In each country, the various national parties will put forward candidates, some of whom will be elected. Most of the national parties will also hold an affiliation to a European party. Elected MEPs sit in groups with their national party, which in turn sits in a group with similar parties from other countries, roughly along the lines of the various European parties. Because these groups consist of a collection of national parties, they won’t necessarily have a single, coherent position—a national party will often vote differently from its group. Additionally, the Europarties play little roll outside of the EP; national parties campaign individually on their own set of policies. Of course, this all seems unnecessarily complicated and confusing, but there you are. As best as I can tell, the reason for this complexity is that the EU never really arose out of a plan but was more stitched together bit by bit.

The groups within the EP are (with the main Europarty composing them given in parentheses, if more than one):

• European People’s Party: Pro-EU (support tighter integration), conservative. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats are notable members.
• Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats: Pro-Europe, social democracy (centre-left). While consisting of the Party of European Socialists, in reality they are not that different from the European People’s Party when it comes to economics.
• Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group: Pro-EU, centrist, socially liberal, free-market economics.
• The Greens—European Free Alliance (European Green Party): Green politics, and representatives of nations without states (ex: Scotland, Wales, Catalonia). Economically progressive in principle, but been known to give in to conservatism.
• European Conservatives and Reformists (Movement for European Reform): Conservative, anti-EU. The British Conservatives are part of this party, but not many other members.
• European United Left—Nordic Green Left (Party of the European Left): Socialists and communists. Supportive of European integration but don’t like the current setup of the EU.
• Europe of Freedom and Democracy (Movement for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy): Anti-EU, highly conservative, right-wing populist. Tend to be very anti-immigrant and, in particular, anti-Muslim. Similarities to the Tea Party.
• Independents

This list is given in descending order of the size of the EP groups. What is interesting about this election, in particular, is that the more radical parties are expected to do well; the European Left and Europe of Freedom and Democracy are both hoping to make gains. The latter has proven especially good at tapping into discontent and anti-politics sentiment, often presenting themselves as a real alternative to the now indistinguishable main-stream parties. I suppose this is, strictly speaking, true as the main-stream parties tend to be pro-EU and in agreement over centre-right economics. However, it is disingenuous in the extreme for them to portray themselves as representing ordinary people; for example, one of the most notable constituent national parties, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), is led by wealthy financier and arch-Thatcherite Nigel Farage. Yet, since he drinks, smokes, and is more plain-speaking than leaders of the larger parties, he somehow comes off as a man of the people. This has, at times, bizarre results. For example, a poll showed that an overwhelming majority of UKIP voters support renationalization of rail and energy companies. The only party whose voters supported these policies in higher numbers was Labour (unsurprising, given its socialist origins). Yet UKIP has a radical “small government” policy, more extreme even than the Conservatives’.² All in all, it seems that it is social policy that UKIP and Europe of Freedom and Democracy attract people with. Sad to say, many working class people with progressive economics are distinctly xenophobic.

Far more encouraging is the growth of the European United Left—Nordic Green Left (EUL/NGL). The national parties in this group are, to a greater or lesser degree, socialists. They are all vehemently opposed to neoliberalism,³ and most are (at least officially) opposed to capitalism itself. Policies vary from stronger regulation and increased public spending, to (re)nationalisation of banks and energy companies (which seems to be the standard position of group members), to outright revolutionary (although not necessarily insurrectionary⁴) socialism. Additionally, they call for making the structures of the EU much more democratic. As you might have gathered, the EU is a rather ungainly institution. There are three governing bodies, only one of which (the EP) is directly elected. EUL/NGL supports giving more power to the EP in order to help remedy this. In addition, the European Central Bank (ECB, in charge of the Euro’s monetary policy) is not under any sort of democratic control. This, in particular, is something that EUL/NGL wishes to change, with the EP appointing the Banks governors and setting its mandate (as is done with most central banks, including the Bank of Canada). They have good reason for this, as the ECB’s current policies have exacerbated the crises in Italy, Greece, et al. (“the periphery”). It is resolving these crises that makes up the centrepiece of EUL/NGL policies. The intention is to implement an industrial and redistributive policy which will eliminate the imbalances between “the centre” (Germany, France, etc.) and the periphery. While these proposals are really social democratic, rather than anti-capitalist, they would nonetheless be of great help and would likely make it easier for national governments to implement more radical policy.

However, there is some debate over how committed to European integration the Left should be. Some feel that, because neoliberalism has more or less been written into the very structure of the EU, the Left should be Eurosceptical. However, as described above, the general position is that the Left should reform the EU. There appear to be two main reasons to pursue this policy. One is an objection to nationalism, which caused so much carnage in the first half of the 20^th century. It was to prevent something like this from ever happening again that European integration was originally begun. The second reason is that it is felt you would need to be coming to power on a continental scale if you seriously want to confront, let alone do away with, capitalism. Otherwise any country attempting the transition to socialism would end up isolated as capitalist nations began committing economic warfare (as happened to Chile in the late ‘60s).

Both of the above arguments are strong. However, the issues arises of what will happen if a Left government comes to power in one country much sooner than the others. This is not just idle speculation, as there is a very good chance that EUL/NGL member SYRIZA will come to power in Greece in their next election.⁵ SYRIZA has campaigned around ending the austerity in Greece, which is causing massive damage to their economy and creating a humanitarian crisis. However, doing so would involve renegotiating bailout terms with the EU. But, SYRIZA is also determined to stay in the EU and to keep Greece on the Euro. It is unclear that the EU would allow them to do both of these things. Undoubtedly, it would be difficult for Greece to leave the Euro and it would also be extremely unpopular for them to pull out of the EU. From my knowledge, it appears that SYRIZA will only go as far as the EU lets them. Hopefully, this will be far enough to resolve the Greek crisis (kicking out Greece would likely be damaging to Europe as well), but that might not be the case. For what it’s worth, my personal view is that Greece shouldn’t pull out on its own but if, in the course of implementing SYRIZA’s policies, they get kicked out then so be it.

Another interesting case study (if only because all of the debates here are in English) is the formation of the new Left Unity party in the UK. This party is actually fairly radical compared to some of its Continental counterparts, calling for a much greater degree of nationalization (although I suppose that Britain has a history of more extensive public ownership than most countries, so perhaps that isn’t surprising). The issue here is that EU regulations would make it vary difficult for Left Unity to implement many of its policies if elected. However, the reasons for staying in the EU that I mentioned above are just as true for Britain as anywhere else and, as a result, Left Unity has much the same set of policies regarding the EU. In this case, I think the answer is much more clean-cut. The radical left in Britain is lagging far behind the rest of Europe,⁶ so it is unlikely that the UK would have a Left government before the EU as a whole. Therefore, they might as well advocate staying in the EU and take the same position as the rest of the European Left.

Yes, I think that, with the possible exception of countries like Greece, the Left should be trying the achieve socialism at the European level. Various think-tanks, such the Rosa-Luxemburg Siftung (associated with the German party Die Linke) and transform! (loosely associated with the Party of the European Left) have called for the ultimate establishment of the United Socialist States of Europe. This, I think, is an admirable goal. However, I am not convinced that this goal can be achieved with the current European leftist institutions. UEL/NGL and the Party of the European Left are both much too loose as associations. To the extent that they coordinate trans-European campaigns at all, they tend to be centred around policies making up the least radical common denominator of their members. For the most part, as with all of the Europarties, active campaigning is left to the individual national members. However, as is generally acknowledged, building socialism requires a Europe-wide movement. That means a truly Europe-wide party.

Ultimately, I feel, to be successful, the members of the Party of the European Left will have to give up their individual identities. They’ll have to become national chapters of a continent-wide party. And, do you know what? I’m actually somewhat hopeful. For all the mess that the world is in and all the ways that mess is likely to get worse, I can’t help but feel that we’ll pull through it. It won’t be easy, but the worthwhile things seldom are. To the extent that I have faith in anything, I have faith that humanity is capable of being better than it is today. I think Europe can do it—it can overcome the more unpleasant parts of human nature and build a society based on cooperation and solidarity. And if Europe can do it, then so can others. Maybe one day, before I die, I’ll wake up in a socialist Cooperative Commonwealth of Canada.