http://lastingfuture.blogspot.fr/2016/06/sovereignty-matters-and-yes-brexit-will.html

There’s no doubt that a great part of the Brexit campaign represents a rather nasty combination of nationalism, xenophobia and nostalgia for an empire that will never return.

Yet the truth is that there is nothing progressive in the current monetary, institutional and political configuration of the European Union

- The EU is the greatest experiment in the consitutionalization of neoliberalism by means of international treaties. It is the WTO on steroids. It is globalization in action.

- The EU has been one of the driving forces for the erosion of labour rights and for the implementation of flexible labour relation.

-The EU has imposed across the board privatization of public services and has penalized all forms of national subsidies.

-The EU has undermined democratic procedures and the treaties represent a preventive war against the possibility of progressive legislation.

- The EU is not in favour of refugees. In contrast, the EU represents state racism and state xenophobia exemplified in the practical refusal of the right of asylum and safe passage to most refugees. Moreover, anti-immigrant policies are the norm in the EU.

Above all the EU is a form of reduced sovereignty. It is based on the ceding of sovereignty. Integration means a constant reduction of the ability of member-states to decide. In the absence of any European polity and in the structural democratic deficit, the EU means that popular classes see a constant erosion of their ability to affect the direction of a country be means of democratic procedure or social mobilization. The EU is inherently undemocratic.

And yes sovereignty matters. For the working classes and their allies. Sovereignty offers the possibility that a broad alliance of the subaltern classes can decide to struggle for power and influence the course of a society. In contrast, in a condition of limited sovereignty this is impossible. Democracy, the ability of the subaltern classes to impose their own collective will, requires sovereignty; otherwise any collective project of emancipation will be undermined by the real power of the EU and its institutions.

The forces of capital, the big banks, the multinational corporations, all find this condition of limited sovereignty favourable to them. Because the international organizations such as the EU represent the actual sovereignty of capital. Europeanism is the nationalism of capitalists.

Greece is not an exception. It is the new European normal... Greece is a country where every piece of legislation is dictated by the representatives of the Troika and in particular the bureaucrats of the EU, representing the business lobbies that have infested Brussels. This is 'truth' of the European project.

A potential Brexit will be a profound shock for the EU. It will lay bare its open crisis. It will be a message that countries can break out of the straightjacket of neoliberalism and reduced sovereignty. It will offer hope to the subaltern classes all over Europe. We urgently need this shock, we urgently need this message of hope.