“No” Respect

Yesterday part of the French left wing voted against the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe. They believed they were voting against the “Constitution” that was to entrench neo-liberal ideology into the very heart of the European constitutional document. By this they wanted to “electroshock” their political elite into understanding that they do not want Europe. They are not going to achieve their aim. The French left lost, Le Pen and co. won. What is to be the outcome of this vote is certainly not the restructuring of the Constitution as to include the values the French left hold dear. Neo-liberal directives and other regulation are going to continue being implemented by the EU institutions. As a fitting parallel there will be a total stalemate in the construction of a political Europe, meaning that there will be no strong forum (at the EU level) to control the making of such neo-liberal directives. Such decision is also likely to prevent, or at least significantly slow down the entrance of the South East European Countries and Turkey into the EU.

In the same way Stalin destroyed the dream of the communist international (from the Spanish Civil War onwards), French left wingers stabbed the European left wing in the back. They voted against supranationalism, against the brotherhood of men for petty nationalistic egoism. Unlike, Le Pen they did not even have the courage to say that they voted “no” for these reasons. They voted not to protect their welfare state. Such an attitude, such jealous protection of own’s own resources, breeds war and conflict.

J. J. Rousseau, in his anthropological tale of the rise of human civilization, describes how men first lived peacefully under one tree. They did not need to fight over resources, they did not need even exercise their intellect because they had everything they wanted, food, shade and sex. As the number of human beings rose, a single tree was suddenly not sufficient for all. Men and women started fighting over resources, which led the first man to fence off his tree and say "this is mine". As history went on, human beings simultaneously developed higher fences, deadlier arms, everything that would secure their resources and possibly provide them with the opportunity to take those of the others, like the French did in Algeria, Vietnam…all over the world in the colonial period. Men also developed structures that tried to tame this egoistic impulse..the EU is the emblematic example of such efforts.

With this vote the French left fenced off their territory, proclaiming the welfare state is theirs alone, "don’t touch it"! Indeed, they voted for the company of Le Pen…etc. They demonstrated a complete ignorance towards political realism and a complete lack of consideration of the laws of history.

I have no respect for them.