The rebirth of Marxist-Leninist socialism?

 
The New Europe, the rebirth of Marxist-Leninist socialism?
It has been a hard slog for the European Architects but well worth it. The embryo of the European Empire was ushered in quietly without any fanfare as a customs agreement between three European countries but christened as BENELUX, a union of states comprising three neighbouring countries in north-western Europe: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. In 1951 these countries joined West Germany, France, and Italy to form the European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor of the European Economic Community (EEC) and today's European Union (EU)
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You will note each one was referred to as a community or Union. Sandwiched between the EEC was the EC or European community, in those days they were still called communities but Marxist Europe still had a long way to go and it was a while before all pretence of Unions and Communities was thrown out of the window and the so called European Union shape-shifted into a full blown European Government with all the trapping of Nation Status, ambassadorial recognition with a Space agency and an embryonic foreign Ministry or European Union External Action Service and even a National Anthem and flag. Its Foreign Ministry WAS a for-seen consequence of the signing of the Lisbon Treaty.

This embryonic foreign office fulfils a long-cherished ambition of Euro-Federalists to give the EU a single identity on the world stage. Just like those other political contrivances, the single currency and the Schengen Agreement (both, incidentally, creaking under the strain), it is designed to give the union a legal personality that few of its citizens asked for or wanted

12 treaties later with no referendum it assumed its long planned title as The European Government. It may have no vote at the United Nations table but is party to more than 50 United Nations multilateral agreements and conventions as the only non-State participant and is the single largest financial contributor to the UN system, its funds derived from income from the taxpayers of its wealthier satellite countries. The European Commission alone contributes more than $1.35 billion in support of UN external assistance programmes and projects. Participants sacrificed their borders for instance signing the Schengen Treaty

The Schengen Area operates like a single state for international travel with external border controls for travellers travelling in and out of its area or political bloc, but with no or minimal internal border controls. Other treaties saw our fishing rights and Agricultural policies being decided in consensus with 26 other European countries. With each treaty the occupied territories lost some self-determination, or self-government
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This is the present state of play, but whose brainchild was it you might ask and what was its real purpose? Was it inspired originally by Marxist Doctrine? Was it a Marxist belief that drove the thinking of a little communist man named Gramsci, languishing in one of Mussolini’s Fascists jails in 1926? Perhaps he had scribbled his vision for a New Order in Europe on discarded pages of La Stampa while in Jail. He had been sentenced to 20 years in prison near Bari.

We must tnot  give all the credit to Gramsci when another Italian  Altiero Spenelli a European Federalist did much to theorise on the shape of the New Europe in fact he was regarded as one of the "Founding Fathers of the European Union.

Marx and Engels are seen by many as the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, Gramsci in particular was a key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. Marxism is complicated by the fact that Marx is by no means the only influence on this critical school; given the various sorts of political movements that have been inspired by this thinker (socialism, Trotskyism, communism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, radical democracy, etc.), one despairs at trying to provide a fair and lucid introduction
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Some might warm to Gramsci when he talks of cultural Hegemony. To understand social class cultural hegemony proposes that the prevailing cultural norms of a society, which are imposed by the ruling class, must not be perceived as natural and inevitable, but must be recognized as artificial social constructs (institutions, practices, beliefs, et cetera) that must be investigated to discover their philosophic roots as instruments of social-class domination. One could say ones socio-economic position are made possible by and in some cases exploited by cultural hegemony. As a matter of interest Gramsci died in Rome in 1937 at the age of 46.

Some branches of socialism arose largely as a philosophical construct (e.g. utopian socialism); others in the heat of a revolution (e.g. early Marxism, Leninism). A few arose merely as the product of a ruling party. Marxism and Socialism are very close bed-fellows, one could say the labels are similar but they come in different tins.

The term socialism refers to two fundamentally different ideologies - democratic socialism and Marxist-Leninist socialism. The Marxist-Leninists sought to work towards a classless, stateless, moneyless or at best a single currency society with a Marxist ideology by first creating a socialist state, which represents the proletariat.

It is said that the Marxist-Leninist form of government has been in decline since the dissolution of the Soviet Union which might be true, but I believe a new birth is taking place and is the foundation of the NEW EUROPE is the rebirth of Marxist-Leninist socialism. It is worth speculation I think.

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. Benito Mussolini
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I could have quoted a Mr Bliar he actually believes in democracy, a million dead Iraqis would disagree with him.