International

For many years now the thinking of the left in Western Europe has been dominated by an enormously optimistic view of the social policy of the European Union. Trade unions and left parties told everyone that we were on our way to a "Social Europe", one in other words which distributed available work fairly; a Europe which would offer security even to workers with little education, to the unemployed, to those who cannot for whatever reason work, to young people just starting out on working life, to mothers with little experience of work outside the home, to pensioners. As long as the capitalist west of Europe had to compete with an east ruled by communist parties to win the approval of working people, the right wing had nothing to say against this.