For once you started of civilly before descending into hyperbole.
what was hyperbolic? Let's try and both keep things civil, eh, old chap.
Let’s unpick things for you:
1. Yes, well done, the major problem is indeed capital and the troika - IMF, ECB and EU technocrats - who administer the system. How they administer it is the question in point here. They administer it through the single market project. Hence the reason I oppose the single market project. The principles are the practical measures that give effect to the ideology.
Wrong. Just plain wrong. They administer it through the Eurobank and other financial institutions, the 'four freedoms' themselves can be interpreted many ways, as they were before '92 when they were in place, but under different rules. It's those rules that are the problem. The rules prohibiting deficits and state aid etc, the ones that enforce a specifically finance directed system.
2. You’ll need to explain to me how it’s ‘as dubious as hell’ to suggest that the principle of free movement is not a key driver in driving workers to service jobs whilst elsewhere work that can be moved is moved.
I did explain it. If you have evidence of
your claim you need to show it. I pointed out that you are wrong about even basic neoliberal EU rules not providing any national worker protection. Pre '92 - when the four freedoms still applied - there was no PWD, and almost all protections were still nationally based and enforced. Workers have always moved around the world according to the needs of capital, an open system actually protects wages, to some extent, by discouraging people working totally offbook, and undercutting agreed rates much more. If you want to look at a specific...
3. Finally, in respect of the fruit pickers. Well dur, that’s precisely the point I was making. The industrial scale use of poor people to do those jobs here and elsewhere is a perfect example of the freedom of movement policy in practise rather than theory.
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this is just contradicting yourself. Was it students on jollys or working-class people in need? Fruit picking has always been like this, in an organsied fashion since the seventies (and much probably earlier, I'm just not old enough to be sure), and throughout the entire history of agriculture, there is an itinerant workforce at harvest time. It's not a new thing in any way shape or form, not an invention of the EU, or the EEC.
Put it another way, imagine a socialist europe, democratically run from the bottom up. Wouldn't we have nearly all of those four freedoms there? The sheffield workers coop would freely trade Henderson's with the sicilian gelato confederation, wealthier countries could support poorer ones in supplying services, and even capital, and people could just go where they wanted. All would be under some rule to ensure local development and autonomy, as well as a financial system that isn't based on crushing the poorest and supporting the financial centres.
I agree with you, wholeheartedly, about the EU being unreformable, and the last para being unimplementable within the current body, but in simply blaming 'the four freedoms' i think you are missing the point of what is
actually the problem.
