Lenin for Today by John Molyneux

Author:John Molyneux
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910885635
Publisher: Bookmarks

At the same time Syriza committed itself to remaining within the EU and the Eurozone. These radical anti-austerity aims were to be realised through negotiations with their “European partners”. Alexis Tsipras, Yanis Varoufakis and other Syriza ministers consistently referred to the EU and its leaders as their “partners”.

It is a feature of the political culture of the European left (outside of its “Leninist/Trotskyist” components) that it frequently combines hostility to its own national establishment and their political representatives (the likes of Merkel, Cameron, Blair, Sarkosy, Rajoy, Samaras, etc) and the police chiefs and generals of its own state, with a rose-tinted view of the representatives of those same establishments and states when they gather together internationally. As a result, there is a widespread notion that the EU and the United Nations (UN) are in some way progressive institutions embodying “left values” such as international cooperation and internationalism. In what can broadly be called the peace movement, it is common to find resolute opponents of almost all war, such as the late Tony Benn, who are equally resolute proponents of the UN. Moreover, this attitude seems to persist despite an abundance of evidence and experience to show that in all important matters the UN is nothing but an instrument of, and cover for, the interests of the major (imperialist) powers. As Perry Anderson has written:

The UN is a political entity without any independent will. If we set aside its specialized agencies, most of which perform useful practical services of one sort or another, the core of the institution—that is, the General Assembly and Security Council—is a legitimating, not a policy-making, apparatus. Decisions reached by the organization are in essence embellishments of the relationships of power operative at any given time.284

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