Re: alan woods on socialist europe

re:
www.newyouth.com/archives/westerneurope/a_socialist_alternative_to_the_e.html

I just browsed this site: interesting, and I will read it closely. 

I find it noteworthy though, at first sight, that the word 'enlargement' 
does
not appear in this text written in 1997 and placed on the web in 1999. This
is truly amazing if you consider that just about the most important 
strategic
issue for the EU, after the completion of monetary unification, is the 
nature
of its economic and geopolitical relationship to its carefully layered 
eastern hinterland, by now a site of steep rates of accummulation for
EU-capital.

It appears that the west European left's long-standing confusion over 
'eastern Europe' is exacerbated by a continued confusion over 
'post-state-socialism'. (This also rhymes with the confusion of west 
European
unions and other labor and grassroots organizations with the issue of
'eastern enlargement' where the principle of solidarity clashes with some
narrow interests in not sharing the rent derived by the working classes of
the richest countries from their citizenship.)

Jozsef (Borocz)
jborocz@rci.rutgers.edu