Some introductory food for thought...
"Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire."
- Ludwig Von Mises
"Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients."
- Alan Keyes
The European Union as the New Eastern Bloc?
The Eastern Trading Bloc of the Soviet system had it's origins in the tail end of the Second World war, where, through the suppression of the whereabouts of Kremlin manipulation, had purported itself as democratic agreement, initially giving itself the appearance of a 'bourgeois democracy' as the Soviets called it. Though, inherently was, and clearly became an imperial establishment of control from the Soviet Bureaucracy. Likewise, the European Union, when originally advertised to the nations of Europe was propped up in a similarly unassuming manner, despite having been previously discussed and having the concepts of such a union already organised further back into 1948 at the Hague Conference. The parallels of such such unions (Eastern/Euro) are that they garnered the consent of the public through their foundation being merely upon an economic transnational policy, and not a political one, and therefor their basic parallels are that of deceit.
The Eastern Bloc formed what was essentially a symbiosis of the state and the economy, something that naturally would be inherent under a Communist regime. However, the European Union, too, follows a similar reciprocal foundation, for it binds the state and economy, removing the separation of powers by Capitalistic enterprise, and instead, Centralises governance in a more oligarchical, corporate and bureaucratic apparatus. Operating through a complex arrangement of multitudinous committees and boards, whose members form a body of non-elected representatives. Essentially the European Union, on the guise of an economic market, has formed a centralised, quasi-private parliament akin to the Soviet style hegemony of the Eastern Bloc, and through soft-intimidation and misinformation, keeps it's members bonded. Lest it be forgotten that the Union is allegedly one of 'free trade', yet, when discourse begins to brew of leaving, as it did in Britain, why are we met with threats of economic disability and ostracization? That shows more the signs of a protection racket; of bureaucratic gangsterism, than it does of a voluntary cooperation of national markets.
The unification of Germany and the amalgamation of the European continent?
In a more predictive sense, the European Union shares similarities in it's unifying policies, as it it does to the unification of the German states circa 1871. Spearheaded during the Bismarckian era of the late nineteenth century, Germany, well within a period of two decades transformed from a collection of trading states, to a fully amalgamated nation under Prussian dominated rule, but by what means did this occur, and in what ways does the unification of Germany share similarities to modern Europe?
Of course, the chief processes of German unification lied in the economy, the political structure and culture, the political structure I have already covered. The establishment of a newly amalgamated economy among the German States was created through the breaking down of trade barriers between the previously independent states, one of which ways in doing so was the introduction of the single German currency (the Mark) along with a centralised banking system that allowed for both monetary control by the state and the removal of currency exchange between regions. Likewise the European Union brought with it the introduction of a common European currency (the Euro) and too, a European Central Bank. The new Germany also extended its unification to the creation of a common German culture that evoked a sense of nationalism, for instance, the establishment of a new national anthem and German military, to be paraded with pride. Too, the standardisation of the school system to create a state of coherent socialisation among the German generations. What we see with the European Union is also the creation of a common European national anthem and a cooperative European military (though a centralised European military is still developing) and through policies such as the Bolonga Process, the education system of Europe as a whole has been standardised to the specific image of the European Union, even a single European emergency number (112) is under proposition.
It is said that history repeats itself, and perhaps what we are living through today is the amalgamation of the European states as transpired nearly 150 years ago within central Europe. And that the non-representative, self appointing parliament of the European Union, resembles almost a kind of bureaucratic Kaiserreich; a kind of Prussian hegemony of the modern day.
- a short essay by JDH