Nation state isn't the mythical monster - that's the EU

A chimera is, in terms of mythology, a "monstrous creature with parts from a multiplicity of animals."

What better way to describe the European Union?

Monopoly capital wants us to believe that the nation state is an anachronism, which is what I think your correspondent meant.

The monopolists want to break down national sovereignty, substituting increasingly powerful international capitalist institutions, guaranteeing them free economic reign and allowing them to circumvent any democratic representation and accountability that has been won through struggles within individual nations.

Workers' everyday experience proves that we need to fight within the specific and particular contexts of our nations in order to win and not just protest, thereby contributing most effectively to the international struggles of our class.

The European Union is clearly a "monstrous creature with parts from multiple animals."

Its multiple parts are the capitalist classes of its member nations, creating a monstrosity that divides, super exploits and oppresses the workers of those nations.

It cannot be reformed or remodelled into anything else.

We need to kill the creature by removing its parts - linking our struggles in Britain for pay, pensions, industry, jobs, skills, public services and benefits, demonstrating that they are completely contrary to EU membership and demanding British withdrawal.

Of course these struggles will be linked in solidarity with those of workers similarly fighting in other European nations - but to disregard the specific national characteristics of each would be to restrict all our chances of winning and reducing ourselves to permanent protest, and therefore to permanent subjugation.

Bill Greenshields

Derby