#74 New Freedoms: the European Union before Neo-liberalism
For 2 to 3 years after 1945, there were levels of suffering and lack of the rule of law not seen before or since. There were little to no public services, and for a time the main form of exchange was based on cigarettes. Money for a while had no value in some parts of the world. Boundaries between states were uncertain as people displaced by the war attempted to find a society where they might be accepted. Jews Germans, Poles, and others streamed across Europe on foot due to their displacement en masse after the war. It was under these circumstances that the new and old states, offered freedoms never allowed before. The appeal of Soviet Socialism was high. In Italy where the Communist Party had played a major role in the struggle against the Nazi regime, the American army stayed behind with the purpose to destroy the Communists.
Some examples of these new freedoms can be seen in Trades Unions and in publishing which I explore in this blog. I also discuss the creation of the European Union, a long-lasting political innovation that remains with us today.
The Trades Unions and Radical Publishers
The trades unions were freed after 1945 as never before, or since. From 1971, Trades Union freedoms were curtailed by Governments across Europe. After 1945, for the first time, trades unions became involved in the discussion of wage increases, they sat on board on national industrial policies. The Union movement that had first appeared on national scenes in the latter part of the 19th century was suddenly freed from the shackles of government legislation. And for a while, Union leaders thought this was to be the new normal. Over 25 years, there was a great expansion of militant trade union activity.
Parallel to the growth of trades unions was an equal growth of radical publishers demanding wide-ranging political humanitarian changes. Every city across Europe had a set of new bookshops giving access to new journals, pamphlets, and books of every kind – from feminism to anarchism and many varieties of socialism. This surge in creativity saw the growth of new bookshops, wholesalers, and the multitude of services that publishers required. As with the trade union, most considered this the new norm. Most considered that socialism was on the rise and the days of capitalism were numbered.
Few if anyone involved at that time realized that after the end of hostilities in 1945, the old ruling classes in the USA and the UK would reorder and come back on the attack. In retrospect, we can look back at these 25 years, after 1945, as years when capitalism was at its most creative. Many peoples from the poorer classes found their way to University. New opportunities occurred as never before. In the early 1970s, this all came to and throughout the old Western world.
After the early 1970s, the trades unions and the new surge of creativity in publishing declined sharply. The Unions were legislated against, and new market conditions for small amateur publishers were destroyed. Only Monthly Review in the USA and Pluto Press, Verso and Zed remained in the UK; the rest closed shop and went into liquidation.
The Creation of the European Union
The territories of the member states of the European Union (European Communities pre-1993), animated in order of accession. Territories outside Europe and its immediate surroundings are not shown.
Perhaps the most important and lasting political innovation among the old colonising countries was the creation of the EU, the European Union. As these blogs have shown, all the major countries of Europe had been at war with each other over the long period from 1492 to 1945. The neat boundaries which demarcate countries today were not present in 1492. This had been an era of Empires: the Holy Roman Empire, which collapsed in 1815, The Spanish Empire, the Austro Hungarian empire, the Ottoman and Russian Empires. None had nice clear boundary lines.
All these Empires were destroyed as the new Capitalist Empires spread across the world. The Spanish and Portuguese were the first to falter The basic frame was that the Spanish, French, Dutch, and British people were regularly at war with each other. Monarchies attempted to intermarry to create the conditions of mutual support. By the time when Europe went to war with each other in 1914 and 1939, that had been a long period of years when all these monarchical states, fought each other.
The attempt to create the Union across Europe was first and foremost a political affair. It was an attempt to create a union where all would be so intertwined that future conflict would be impossible.
The Napoleonic wars after 1793 to 1815, could have been the first opportunity Europe had had to join its political and economic forces together. Although Britain came out dominant, there had been an interregnum between 1815 and 1914. Britain attempted to maintain a balance of power within Europe. There was considerable turmoil in Europe as both France and Germany prepared their countries for an industrial revolution, there was no serious war over this period inside Europe. Wars were fought outside Europe.
If we are to take the long view, the countries of the European continent had been at war either within Europe or in India, North America and across the seas for over 450 years. The wars themselves varied, of course, but generally, they were about the control of wealth and territory. The final outrage between 1914 and 1945 was so devastating – it had spread so far East to all of Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, north to all of Scandinavia – every territory was lost on a grand scale. At long last, it was agreed to form what has since become the European Union.
The EU has of course moved through various stages. It was supported by the USA so long as it was anti-socialism and against the USSR. From the start it was only a handful of countries; that has grown considerably since the demise of the USSR after 1991. Many of the European nations that had been under the suzerainty of the USSR joined. The EU expanded its functions and activities to include the common Euro currency and its own central bank, which has become a globally used system of exchange. Perhaps one of the early EU’s most important functions has been financially supporting poorer EU nations intending to bring them up to more or less equal standards of living. An early, principal aim was to attempt to equalise the growth and wealth of the EU as a whole. This goal has been undermined by the EU’s movement into neo-liberal economics after the demise of the USSR, which has had the opposite effect.
Most countries that have joined the EU have remained enthusiastic members. There have been many advantages. The German economy has thrived and some of the wealthiest parts of the EU are today in Germany. The British on the other hand has always been the most reluctant member. Britain was not seriously invaded in the 1939/45 war, unlike the rest of Europe. As a consequence, she had a different experience. Pockets of the super-rich in alignment with many of the lesser educated nationals have always looked across the Atlantic for their primary partner. This group has never come to terms with the loss of their great power status and the loss of their colonial past. This section of the population still understands the island as a 'great nation'. Parts of Britain have always resented the influence of the EU on their affairs. The British have lost free access to the largest marketplace on their doorstep since leaving the EU, a clear mark of a decline of a once-powerful nation.
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The peoples of Western Europe had risen from one world of relative poverty and had learnt how to take the wealth from the Americas and transfer it to their own countries. This was slavery and latterly until 1920, indentureship. A whole set up of banks, shipping companies, and insurance companies had arisen to make these transfers possible. From the 1750s the European invaders turned their attention to Asia and systematically began the colonisation process anew. At the same time, as they attempted to colonise and extract the wealth of Asia, the colonising countries began the process we now recognise as industrialisation alongside the rapid growth of cities. The surplus resources extracted through colonisation were used to finance the growth of new industries.