Category: Politics

On 8 July 2022 The Economist set out its explanation of why Georgia had been denied candidate status on the same day Ukraine and Moldova were granted their candidacy, on 23 June 2022.

The Economist explains the failure by uncritically repeating the EU’s explanation. But the EU’s real reasons are not necessarily the reasons they give for their actions.

In 2014 all three countries signed association agreements with the EU. The Economist omits to explain the difference between an ‘association agreement’ and ‘candidate status’ but they are essentially steps along the same path. The EU expects countries seeking membership to demonstrate a stable bourgeois democracy and also have a reasonably strong economy. If the applicant is deemed to meet their criteria they are granted candidate status. If not they draw up an association agreement setting out what changes the EU requires before they can become candidates.

Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine are former Soviet states and all three were subject to the same economic anarchy that enabled powerful individuals to seize the assets of the people at a tiny percentage of their true value. This was achieved primarily through the corruption of the government bureaucracies who were bribed or co-opted into the new capitalist entities that took over the state assets. In many cases the corruption was at arm’s length. The co-owners of the massive new enterprises were often the family members of the people who actually wielded the power.

The problem Georgia faced with it’s candidacy was its failure to ‘de-oligarchize’. This is a term used by the EU to stigmatise the obscenely rich individuals who own and control Georgia. They cite Bidzina Ivanishvili as an example of type of oligarch whose influence needs to be restricted. And like many oligarchs in the states of the former Soviet Union, he uses proxies to do his dirty work. The trouble with the EU’s concerns about oligarch power in Georgia is their failure to show the same concern about oligarch power in Ukraine and Moldova.

The Economist let’s slip the reason behind the EU’s selective blindness. ‘Russia’s relationship with Georgia will also be on the minds of EU leaders’ we are told. Of course it will.

The defeat of Trump at the election gave rise to a huge sigh of relief from the mass media. There were displays of triumphalism across the USA, most famously in central New York City with his opponents celebrating in the streets. Trump’s decision to challenge validity of some of the voting procedures is portrayed as vainglorious peevishness by sections of the press.

The spectre hanging over this election, however, is the huge number of people who voted for a second term of Trump presidency. For the Democrats and their supporters in the media the question is: why did so many voters choose not to support Joe Biden?

Trump could not have made a Democrat victory easier for them if he had tried. By siding with the anti-maskers and the Covid-deniers and failing to take drastic steps to control the spread of Covid-19, he virtually handed the election to them. And yet the walkover that was predicted for the Democrats did not materialise.

The outgoing President has announced he will challenge many of the votes in court. The media are spitting feathers at the prospect of a judicial challenge to the electoral process. This is despite the fact that Trump’s opponents spent years trying to overturn Trump’s election, through the Mueller enquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election and into alleged collusion, and through an attempted impeachment of the President.

The legal process is invoked by losing Presidential candidates as a matter of routine in American elections. In this case, however, the media announce that it is unreasonable for Trump to invoke his rights under the law.

Trump has been written off as a crank, a madman and a fool. But that analysis also assumes over 70 million US voters chose a crank, a madman and a fool to run their country for the next four years.

I have more confidence in the American working class than that.

It is closer to the truth to say that millions of American workers have absolutely no faith in the Democrats to carry out policies that are in the interests of working people. And they are right to be suspicious.

Within the Democrat Party the right wing have already declared their intention to ditch some of the policies which helped them attract some working class support. They effectively put an end to the bid of Bernie Sanders to offer a moderately social-democratic programme to the voters. Instead they chose to put forward a long-standing supporter of Wall Street, big finance and crony capitalism. They assumed that any candidate, no matter how tainted by their connection with financial capital, would be enough to defeat Trump.

The question for the American working class, and for socialists everywhere, is to create an alternative party committed to promoting the interests of the working class. The economic crisis faced by world capitalism has not gone away during the pandemic. In fact it has been exacerbated by the creation of billions of dollars, pounds and Euros of fictional capital. This growing credit mountain can only intensify the struggle between the working class and finance capital for the real wealth created by the labour of the working class. The ruling class will be driven by economic necessity to make deeper and more savage attacks on the living standards and welfare of working people.

The working class need their own party, their own leadership, and their own policies, because a programme that defends the rights and living conditions of working people will come into uncompromising conflict with the needs of the ruling class.