[18 March 1999, English version of the pamphlet]
EU and the Euro/EMU: Created by and for the Bosses
How many times have we heard that ‘the good times’ are just around the corner? Nearly seven years ago, at a special European Union EU job summit in Edinburgh, Europe’s leaders declared ‘war on unemployment’. The ink was hardly dry on their declaration before the very same leaders once again surrendered unconditionally to the ‘market forces’. The so-called ‘war on unemployment’ became a war on the unemployed and the poor, who were accused of pricing themselves out of the job market.
Nearly 10 per cent of the workforce, an alarming 17 million people, are out of work in the European Union – more than the entire population of the Netherlands (this is the official figure given, real unemployment is much higher).
Europe lost more jobs during the first years of the 1990s than during any other crisis since 1945. Six million jobs were lost. Words not work, that is what the EU is offering. If rhetoric and talk at EU ‘summits’ created jobs, Europe would have full employment!
The EU was never intended to create jobs or social welfare. From the beginning it was a project set up by and for the ruling classes in Europe. The EU, and its forerunner the EEC, were formed to create more favourable conditions for the big companies in Europe. The idea was that stronger economic and political links between nations, particularly between France and Germany, could stimulate integration and hopefully turn western Europe into a capitalist bloc that would be able to challenge the position of US imperialism. An additional objective at the time was to form a western European alliance against the totalitarian Stalinist regimes in eastern Europe and the former USSR.
In recent years the EU and the Maastricht criteria set for the Euro/EMU have acted as a means of co-ordinating the bosses’ attacks against social welfare and job security. Deregulations, privatisations and the so-called tax harmonisation are measures implemented inside the EU in order to undermine the position of the workers and generate more profits for the European monopolies. The Euro will be used as a weapon to bring down wages and deregulate the labour market as companies go from region to region, and country to country to see who can go lowest on wages.
The EU and the EMU represents the bosses’ Europe. We are fighting for another Europe. A workers’ Europe – a democratic Socialist Europe.
‘A further 15 million white-collar and blue-collar workers in the European Union will have to fear for their full-time jobs in the coming years.’
from ‘The Global Trap’ by Hans Peter Martin & Harald Schumann
‘EMU will impose a major and uneven shock across regions of member states. The regions most likely to suffer most will be those that already have the highest relative unemployment.’
European Urban and Regional Studies published in September 1998.
Why Europe Isn’t Working
Today Europe is not working, but who should be held responsible? The crisis of capitalism, the complete failure of the market, and disastrous government policies.
Persistent mass unemployment – structural unemployment – has become a scar across the EU. Unemployment will rise again as the economy slows down and the launch of the Euro starts to bite.
The plague of higher unemployment will tend to tear society apart. Youth unemployment (under 25s) is 20 per cent in the EU; the figure is even higher for young women (22 per cent).
Only a fundamental change of policy could reverse the present trends and offer a new future for working people in Europe.
Why the CWI Will Take Part in the European Election
The CWI, the Committee for a Workers’ International, will be taking part in the European elections in June to raise the need for an all-European struggle against the attacks on jobs and welfare in the wake of the crisis and the Euro/EMU.
We will stand in order to defend the rights and interests of working people. We aim to give a political voice to the people hardest hit – by the policy carried out by governments acting on behalf of the ruling class – low paid workers, unemployed, single parents and immigrants.
The European Parliament, whose members MEPs were last elected in 1994, on a 56 per cent turn-out, is a rich man’s club. Each MEP received in a year, on top of their massive salary of 68,400 euros (£44,760), travel allowances worth in total 143,300 euros (£100,000) a year. Many MEPs use their seats as a ticket onto the gravy train.
In contrast to most of the present MEPs and candidates in the European election, the CWI will run candidates who are prepared to live in the same conditions as ordinary working people and on a worker’s wage.
‘The red that money can’t buy. Joe Higgins is the only truly radical socialist elected to the 26th Dail (the Irish Parliament). He will not be corrupted by money. He accepts less than half his Dail salary and donates the rest to his party’s coffers and other socialist causes. He will not be corrupted by his fellows.’
The ‘Evening Herald’ (Ireland) 3 November 1998.
In Ireland, Joe Higgins, a member of the Socialist Party (CWI) will stand in Dublin West. Joe Higgins is a member of the Irish parliament (Dail) and he has been described as ‘the opposition’ in the press. In Sweden, our section, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna, the Socialist Justice Party, will run candidates on a national list. In Belgium, in the French-speaking Walloon area, members of the Militant Links, Militant Left (CWI) will be part of the workers list initiated by trade unionists. In England and CWI European manifesto Wales members of the Socialist Party (CWI) will fight on a common list with other forces on the left and in Scotland CWI members will stand on a Scottish Socialist Party ticket.
In countries where we are not standing we will advocate a vote for working-class socialist candidates who oppose the capitalist market and is prepared to support workers in struggle. We will therefore urge workers and youth to vote, for example, for the Partito Rifondazione Comunista in Italy, the joint list put forward by Lutte Ouvrière and Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LO/LCR list) in France, for candidates of the Izquierda Unida in Spain and the PDS in Germany. At the same time our members in those countries will campaign and try to win support for the ideas and demands of the CWI.
The European Parliament acts as a fig-leaf to cover the undemocratic and secretive workings of the European Union body. The EU is run by its Commission and ministers from different countries. They do not want to share power with the European Parliament. At the same time, the national parliaments are very reluctant to give away power to the EU hierarchy. The European Parliament is left hanging in mid-air.
The CWI will stand and participate in the European election campaign in order to fight for:
=> A workers’ MEP on a worker’s wage.
=> Real jobs and adequate welfare.
=> A shorter working week without loss of pay, and without the introduction of annualised working hours and worse working conditions.
=> For a living minimum wage.
=> Equal pay for work of equal value.
=> A massive public spending increase in education, health, housing and transport. No to privatisation and deregulation.
=> A united struggle against racism and discrimination.
=> The right to asylum and scrapping of all racist laws.
Our alternative to the bosses’ EU and Euro/EMU (European Monetary Union) is the struggle for a voluntary democratic Socialist Confederation of Europe.
The big monopolies that dictate our future and our lives should be taken into public ownership under workers’ control and management. Democratically elected representatives of the working class, from workplaces as well as the community, should be in control.
A socialist plan of production, on a national as well as international basis, would make it possible to build a society in harmony with nature and the environment. For the first time, the wealth produced by so many but controlled by a few will be distributed in a democratic way and according to what the vast majority of the people need.
This, in essence, is our socialist alternative to all the capitalist parties that will be standing in the European election. We urge you to support our platform, but above all to join the CWI and its struggle for working class policies and international socialism.
A workers’ Europe exists in an embryonic form in the present struggles throughout Europe: against the draconian cuts, privatisations and tax increases put forward by the Greek government in order to join the Euro in 2001; the fight against unemployment in Italy; against corruption and sleaze in Belgium; and the struggle of the sans-papiers in France etc. The political outcome of that struggle is far more important than the outcome of the European election.
‘The strongest concept of workers’ unity is internationalism. Developing internationalism means breaking with the racist and chauvinist concept of ‘Fortress Europe’. Europe (EU) is a capitalist creation in order to defend their interests against American and Japanese bosses. This is not a social Europe because it is developed in order to exploit the workers and the third world. The right name for Europe at the moment is ‘Europe of capital“
Statement from The Movement for Trade Union renewal. The text was drawn up by the workers of Forges de Clabecq and trade union activists throughout Belgium in October 1997
During the 1990s the old socialist parties in southern Europe, the Social Democratic parties and the British and the Irish Labour parties became less and less rooted in the working class. They crossed the Rubicon – were transformed into capitalist parties, or ‘centre-left’ parties. They embraced the market, the move towards a ‘flexible’ labour market and slavishly implemented all the cuts necessary to qualify for participating in the Euro-EMU. New mass socialist parties of the working class need to be built to give a political voice to working
people.
The Crisis of the Capitalist Market
The present capitalist crisis has run from continent to continent and ruined the lives of millions of people. The crisis began in East Asia in 1997, then spread to Russia, to Latin America, and has now started to take its toll on western Europe and the US.
For many years the bosses, the politicians and their fellow travellers in the international workers’ movement said that the capitalist ‘free’ market could deliver the goods. But the market is now in crisis because of the short-sighted drive for profit, and the profit motive is the driving force of capitalism.
Capitalism is based on exploiting working-class people; profits are made by unpaid labour. The workers do not have money enough to buy all the goods produced especially when real wages are squeezed and millions are unemployed. That is why today’s market is struggling with a mounting shortage of buyers. It is a scandal and an absurdity that the problem of capitalism can be described that ‘there is too much of everything’ – a lot of productive capacity, but very few buyers and the capitalists complain that goods cannot be sold at profitable prices. The result of this perversion is more lay-offs, cut-backs in public spending, job insecurity and a further deterioration in social conditions.
The inherent instability of the chaotic market has been exacerbated by the growth of a parasitic finance market. Currencies are traded for short-time profit. The daily trading of national currencies now exceeds US $ 1.3 trillion a day. That means a volume of foreign-exchange trading that in four or five days equals the annual output of the US economy. Financial ‘engineering’ rather than production has become the most profitable activity in the present casino economy.
The So-Called ‘Social Europe’
At least 57 billion euros or US $ 66 billion are spent on the expensive and grotesque combat aircraft called the Eurofighter project, initiated by the aerospace industry. Each new aircraft will cost 86.4 million Euros or US$100 million. Talk about a waste of money, skills and knowledge! Imagine if that amount of money was spent on jobs and social security instead.
The cost of the Eurofighter project alone – the US has a similar project at a similar cost – is more than the yearly cost of achieving and maintaining access to basic education, basic health care and adequate and safe water and sanitation for all the people in the world. (According to estimations made by the United Nations in 1998.)
‘A report by the Commission for Economic Planning has estimated that seven million people are affected (in the EU) by unemployment or are victims of unfair wage agreements arising from economic policy currently pursued by most European governments … In 1993, the last year for which figures are available, 57 million Europeans were categorised as ‘poor’, of whom 35% were of working age and in employment’
The French paper, ‘Le Monde Diplomatique’, October 1998
The EU countries do not have less wealth today than 25 years ago. But people’s skill, talent and willingness to work or study are wasted because it is not regarded as ‘profitable’. The level of technology is higher than ever before. The amount of resources and wealth is without any comparison. Never in the history of mankind has so much been produced, yet more people than ever are regarded as poor or ‘socially excluded’ in the EU.
The gap between ‘those who have and those who have not’ is growing bigger every day. Britain is, for example, the most unequal country in Europe, with the poorest two-fifths of its people sharing less than in any industrialised country apart from Russia. In France, since Jospin came to power in June 1997, the fortunes of the rich have risen by as much as four times, while the number of workers earning the minimum wage or less has increased.
This is happening at the same time as profits and stock markets are soaring in the EU. Profits of European companies were up 35 per cent over the last two years. Profits in German metal industry rose 200 per cent between 1993 and 1998, whereas real wages fell 7 per cent, according to the British ‘Financial Times’, 3 February 1999. This is one reason why Germany came close to an all-out metal workers strike at the beginning of this year.
Only a small amount of the profit made at the expense of the workers is ploughed into investment. Profits are spent on speculation, take-overs or mergers, which in turn have boosted the stock markets throughout Europe. im 1998, the total value of all mergers in Europe reached CWI European manifesto the astonishing sum of 604.8 billion euros (US $ 700 billion) – a sum bigger than Spain’s gross domestic product this year!
Just as in the 1930s, the level of over capacity and falling prices are causing a massive concentration of corporate power. Cash-rich companies are buying up competitors or merge with other companies in order to sustain profits and protect markets. Mergers may be good news for shareholders but they are bad news for jobs. Job losses and factory closures always accompany mergers or take-overs Millions of jobs are under threat as the monopolies are growing bigger and the market is shrinking.
Power and wealth are concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. This development has paved the way for a rapid and massive increase in the gap between rich and poor. Moreover, growing inequality and social divisions have also resulted in mass anger, discontent and even disgust towards the Establishment. There is a growing revolt by workers and youth.
‘The disintegration of the capitalist system will (give rise to)… political movements that will seek to expropriate multinational companies and recapture ‘national’ wealth’
George Soros in his book, ‘The Crisis of Global Capitatism’
The Capitalist State
The impending crisis and the fact that capitalism is still rooted in the nation state will turn the Euro or the EMU into an unworkable project. The nation state developed out of capitalism. The different ruling classes, despite globalisation, still depend on the protection and subsidies given by the state apparatus.
The state, with its police, army and legal system, has given the capitalists protection against workers’ demands as well as against rivals abroad. When companies go bankrupt, the state will intervene – by spending tax-payers’ money – to make sure that the capitalists do not need to pick up the bill. At the beginning of the 1990s the state in the Scandinavian countries was forced to take over nearly the entire banking system, which was on the verge of collapse. The governments nationalised the losses, injected tax-payers’ money and then sold off the banks to the capitalists. This has nothing to do with a struggle to bring the commanding heights of the economy into public ownership under the control of the workers.
That is why state-owned industries and public service became the servants of capitalism. The state provided cheap energy, transport and raw materials to the main industries owned by the capitalists. The state-owned industries were run like capitalist firms and submitted to the market.
EMU is Even More Unemployment
Europe and the EU will enter a sharp economic downturn in 1999. The launch of the Euro will accelerate the onset of a crisis. While EU governments are talking about the need for creating more jobs and for stimulating demand, the tight straitjacket of the Euro and the misnamed ‘Stability Pact’ are demanding the opposite – imposing deflationary policies.
In one way or another, the bosses and all the governments working within the limits set by capitalism are forced to attack workers’ rights and living standards in order to try to maintain a high rate of profit. These attacks flow from the crisis of capitalism. Neither the austerity measures stipulated by the Euro/EMU nor a dose of inflation to prop up demand, as in Japan, offer a way forward for the working class.
However, the struggle against the Euro/EMU needs to be put at the top of the agenda of the workers’ movement. This is because governments and the bosses will be compelled to step up their attacks against workers’ rights and social welfare in the wake of the introduction of the Euro.
The economic slowdown in the EU, in the context of a worldwide crisis for capitalism, could turn unemployment into a time bomb in the Euro-zone, the eleven EU-countries in the Euro/EMU. The Euro demands ‘a one size fits all’ policy, but there is neither real economic convergence inside the Euro-zone nor does the European Monetary Union constitute a single political entity.
A fixed exchange rate and fixed interest rates set by the European Central Bank, ECB, in the Euro-zone means that national governments will not be allowed to respond to the looming crisis by manipulating the value of their currency (devaluation) or inflate their economies in order to stimulate demand or reduce the burden of debt. Instead they will be forced to introduce draconian cuts in wages and public spending.
This will provoke mass anger against Europe’s governments and spark off even bigger working-class movements than in France 1995. This will particularly be the case when unemployment rises sharply, and political and social crisis paralyses society. That is why the Euro/EMU project will come up against the wall of capitalist crisis and the national interests of each capitalist class and government.
The ECB conjures up the imaginary terror of inflation, when the EU is facing the threat of a deflationary spiral – falling prices, wages and a profit squeeze. The ECB will inevitably come into conflict with national governments and could become a perfect scapegoat for the crisis by the very same politicians who decided that the ECB should be the most ‘independent central bank in the world’ accountable to nobody. The critical remarks made by for example, the former German Finance Minister, Oskar Lafontaine, which partly explain why he lost his job, were a harbinger of the future. Lafontaine wanted the ECB to make further cuts in interest rates to prop up sluggish German capitalism. But the ECB was more worried that the deal between the employers and the German metal workers could, according to its president Wim Duisburg, ‘give a signal for wage rises in Europe’!
No wonder that shops near the EU headquarter in Brussels were instructed to black out the Euro symbols in February this year. The reason was that the authorities feared that the Euro symbols would have infuriated angry farmers demonstrating against the EU.
‘Flexibility’ and the Low Pay Scandal
The European labour market has changed dramatically over recent years. Permanent jobs have been replaced by part-time jobs and low-paid and temporary and insecure jobs. Half of all women in work in the EU are working part-time. Casualisation and annualisation have become more common. Millions in work earn less than 10.03 euros (£7) an hour – the EU ‘decency threshold’ – based on two-thirds of average wages. Most of the 14 million people living below the poverty line in Britain are ‘working poor’, held down by scandalously low wages. In Wales sixty per cent of all women in work earned less than £6 an hour in 1996.
The move towards a so-called flexible labour market has worsened working conditions and tends to lower wages. However, overall unemployment has remained the same. This is true, despite the fiddling with unemployment figures carried out by governments. The Dutch government, for example, claimed that they have managed to bring down unemployment to 5.3 per cent. But according to the OECD (an organisation that includes all the major capitalist countries) unemployment in the Netherlands is close to 20 per cent. On top of that, the unemployed are offered the ‘Hobson’s choice’ (the no-choice alternative) of accepting any job or losing state benefits.
‘The proportion of Irish employees on low pay rose substantially between 1987 and 1994, from 20 to 24 per cent. Among the European OECD countries only Britain come close to Irish levels, with nearly 20 per cent of its workers experiencing low pay’
‘Inside the Celtic Tiger’, by Denis O’Hearn
‘It is nearly the 21st century and France is still in the Middle Ages. it might as well be run by seigneurs (feudal lords) because we, the workers, are the serfs. How can I bring up four children on Ffr 7,632 (1,164 euros) a month? The government and the bosses will have to back down, because we can and we will, if necessary, bring Europe to a halt.’
A French lorry driver to ‘The European’, 6-12 November 1997.
For a Shorter Working Week
The demand for a shorter working week has been put forward, in way or another, by workers throughout the European Union. In July last year, more than 60,000 workers took to the streets in Madrid in support of the demand for a 35-hour week.
It was the pressure and the struggle put up by the workers in Italy and France that forced the bosses and governments to introduce a shorter working week. But a shorter working week in those countries will means more flexibility, i.e. annualised working hours, no plans for taken on more workers and each workplace negotiating conditions: quite the opposite to what the workers were fighting for.
Many of the 2,000 agreements negotiated so far in France have compelled the workers to accept a pay freeze for up to three years, more flexibility, monthly and or annual working patterns and shorter coffee breaks. No guarantee was given that more workers will be employed. In practice, workers are forced to work more for less. This underlines the need to struggle for an immediate reduction in working hours without loss of pay, annualised working hours, and on the conditions set by the workers. According to a report issued by the German Employment Office, one million new jobs were created in what was then West Germany between 1983 and 1992 thanks to the shortening of working hours. The 35-hour week in Germany has secured and created more than 300,000 jobs in the metal industry alone, according to IG Metall, the metalworkers‘ union. This gives a small glimpse of what could be done throughout the EU if there was a general reduction in working hours.
The CWI Fights For:
=> A shorter week without loss of pay and on the conditions set by the workers. No to annualised working hours.
=> A living minimum wage.
=> Abolition of ‘business secrets’. Open the books. Let the workers know where all the massive profits have gone, what are the plans for the future, investment, job re-location, etc.
=> Governments to take over all factories under threat of closure or partial closure. Confiscate the assets of companies which blackmail workers and jeopardise the future of the community, or which have a record of environmental pollution.
=> Reject workfare systems. For the right to decent benefits, training or a job without compulsion.
=> Employment protection rights for all from day one of employment.
=> Full-time rights for part-time workers.
For a Democratic and Fighting Trade Union Movement
Only a conscious and determined struggle on the part of the working class can save jobs and stop the dismantling of the welfare state. In 1936, the French workers managed to force the government to cut their working hours to 40-hours a week without loss of pay after taking to the streets and occupying the factories.
Sixty years later, in 1996, the employers and the government in France conceded the lorry drivers’ demand for lowering the age of retirement from 60 to 55 and for shorter working hours. But, after the end of the strike and with an agreement reached, the bosses and the government tried to withdraw from the terms agreed, provoking a new strike from the lorry drivers in November 1997. The lorry drivers placed between 150 and 200 blockades on major roads and brought Europe to a standstill. The German capitalists then wanted the EU to take actions against ‘future disruption of free trade caused by strikes’.
However, this indicates the kind of militant struggle needed to force the bosses and governments to concede workers’ demands.
Global capitalism means that the bosses are using worsening conditions in one country and the threat of job re-location as a weapon in the class struggle to force down living standards. Workers in one country will have to seek support from their brothers and sisters abroad. As a starting point, joint demands should be formulated for all workers in multinational companies. Low wages should be raised to cut differentials with the aim of achieving equal pay for work of equal value and ensuring that workers doing similar work enjoy similar living standards.
The ‘euro-strike’ of March 1997 against the proposal to close down the Renault factory in Vilvoorde, Belgium involved car workers from Belgium, France, Spain and Slovenia. If that strike had acted as a starting point for a real all-European campaign to save jobs in the car industry, then the closure could have been defeated. The absence of an alternative strategy to take the struggle forward made it possible for the new ‘Socialist’ government in France to approve the decision to close down the factory.
Euro-strikes, blockades on an all-European level, days of action, etc. need to be organised. Workers on the shop floor level need to meet and discuss, and steps should be taken in order to build a network of trade union militants in Europe.
Most of the trade union leaders today just pay lip service to internationalism. This was, for example, shown in the lack of official support given to the Liverpool dockers and in the bus drivers’ strike in Esbjerg in 1995. It was up to the rank and file to organise solidarity actions.
The European Trade Union Confederation ETUC brings together 65 National Trade Union Confederations from 28 countries and 14 European Industry Federations with a total membership of 59 million. The potential power of the ETUC is there, but in the hand of the present leadership the ETUC has become yet another pressure or lobby group, not an international trade union movement that unite the working class in a common struggle against the bosses.
Deeds always speaks louder than words. The impotence of most of the trade union leaders across western Europe reflects the fact that you cannot have it both ways. You cannot embrace the market and the Euro/EMU, and at the same time organise a struggle against the market and capitalist projects like the European Union. The present trade union leaderships’ pro-market stance and their blessing of the social partnership are a cul-de-sac for workers and young people.
The CWI Fights For
=> A fighting trade union movement democratically controlled by the members. Full-time union officials to be regularly elected, subject to recall and to receive no more than the average wage of skilled workers.
In November 1998, rail workers in eight EU countries responded to a call for an all-European strike against deregulation and privatisation in the railways. In Austria, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands there was no industrial action. The decision taken by the Federation of Transport Workers in the EU (FST) was just a token gesture. Instead the trade union leaders in those four countries organised news conferences and sent a letter of protest to transport ministers! This illustrates that it is not enough to talk about the need to act on an all-European scale. Members have to be informed and involved, mass actions have to be organised and democratic discussions held amongst the membership in order to work out a clear strategy to win the struggle.
‘Wherever industries have been privatised the results have been the same – a flood of job losses and a new focus on lowering the cost. The substantial reduction in the workforces of privatised industries can play a significant part in the softness of the labour market and in the transformation of workers’ expectations’
Roger Bootle ‘The Death of inflation’
The Great Robbery
Between 1990 and 1997 governments in the EU sold off public assets worth 185.8 billion euros (US$215 billion). This gigantic looting or privatisation is, in the words of the former British prime minister Harold Macmillan, like ‘selling the family silver’. Privatisations and deregulations have led to a worsening of workers’ conditions and no improvement in services. The opposite has happened and the anarchy of the market has spread te new sectors of society.
Public sector workers are squeezed while profits soar and speculators become the ‘King Midas’ of the 20th century.
The dismantling of the modern welfare state and public services, due to many years of social cuts and lack of investment, is now undermining every social gain achieved by the working class during the capitalist upswing of 1950-75.
During the 1990s, the Swedish welfare state, once a model throughout the capitalist world, was torn apart by severe cuts implemented by the right-wing parties and above all by the Social Democratic government which came to power in 1994, just before Sweden joined the EU. The Swedish Social Democratic government of 1994-98 carried out social cuts equivalent to nearly 10 per cent of GDP – ‘the biggest cleaning up programme in Europe’, boasted the Finance Minister. One outcome of this programme of spending cuts was that it pushed one in ten families below the poverty line.
‘Sweden felt the market’s lash in the summer of 1994, when institutional purchasers (financial institutions and monopolies) of its bonds (issued by governments in order to finance their debts) suddenly went on strike… To end the bondholders’ boycott, Sweden’s central bank was compelled to tighten credit still further and the prime minister quickly announced new plans for further spending cuts. Yet Sweden’s economy – once the model of a stable, prosperous social democracy – was already deeply depressed. The new measures made things worse.’
William Greider describing the dictatorship of the market in his book, ‘One World, Ready Or Not – The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism’.
Sweden, like many other countries in the EU, introduced a Reagan-inspired tax reform in the 1990s. The outcome was that rich people and companies paid less tax, while the poor working people had to pay more – a regressive tax system instead of the old more progressive one. This, together with the fact that the state has to pay for unemployment caused by the crisis of capitalism, ruined the welfare state. This has created a situation where interest rates on the national debt are the single biggest expenditure in the Swedish state budget. The state is paying nearly three times more paying off national debt than on family and child allowances.
Stop the Cuts
When the crisis sets in again later this year, the budget deficits will start to increase again across the EU and so will the burden of interest rates on the national debts, which in turn will be used as an argument for more cuts. Capitalism has got a stranglehold on society. The national debt should be abolished. Why pay out billions each year in income to the very same financial institutions and super-rich that are responsible for this vicious circle of cuts, impoverishment and unemployment – to the very same speculators that are using the national debts as a means of blackmail?
A massive public investment programme is needed in order to create more jobs, reverse the cuts, build new houses, schools and hospitals, and develop an integrated transport system. The German trade union movement has given figures to show that a public investment programme worth 30 billion deutschmarks (15 billion euros) could create 400,000 jobs, according to IG Metall. But the problem is that the trade union leaders in Germany and elsewhere do not organise the necessary struggle to achieve such a programme. Moreover, a struggle for jobs and welfare has to be part of a struggle against the dictatorship of the market and the capitalists that are in control of the resources and the money.
The CWI Fights For:
=> An end to privatisation and deregulation. Renationalise the public utilities that have been privatised.
=> A massive public spending increase for health, housing, education, childcare, leisure and community facilities.
=>. Public investment in a cheap, accessible and environmentally friendly publicly owned transport system.
=> A progressive tax system, based on direct taxes. Increased corporate taxes and taxes on wealth and the rich.
Corruption, Fraud and Sleaze
‘The court of Auditors (an EU body) found MEPs’ travel bill in 1996 was a massive, 25.8 million euros, £18 million – 30 per cent more than if the members had flown every single journey business class. Yet many MEPs travel by train, car or economy flights to Parliament: some even get reduced fares on their national transport systems.’
The ‘Financial Times’ 21 September 1998.
We have no illusions in the European Parliament neither do we think it can become anything other than a body that debates and decides on secondary issues. But a workers’ MEP living on a worker’s wage could use the platform to promote socialist ideas and expose how the ruling classes are using and running the European Union and the Euro/EMU.
The lack of popular support in the EU and the low turnout in the European elections is part of a general distrust in the ‘Establishment’ and in all capitalist institutions, such as the Parliaments, the traditional parties, the Church and the so-called justice system, etc. This distrust or even contempt has been reinforced by the constant abuse of power, corruption and the question of one law for the rich and another the poor.
The EU as an institution bears the stamp of mismanagement, fraud and nepotism. It is ‘institutionally corrupt’. The European Union was plunged, in March, into the biggest internal crisis in its history when a new official inquiry savaged the European Commission for a litany of fraud, failure and favouritism. All the 20 Commissioners resigned in response, but it will be ‘business as usual’ after a new Commission has been elected and this crisis will give way to new crises.
However, what was revealed in March was just the tip of the iceberg. At least five per cent of the EU’s budget, 4.3 billion euros (£3 billion) could not be properly accounted for in 1997, according to the EU Court of Auditors.
The CWI Fights For:
=> Workers’ MEPs to live on worker’s wages.
The EU has sometimes been portrayed as an environmentally friendly project. Nothing is further from the truth. Its actions on environmental issues have been an empty gesture and its decisions are full of loopholes. How could it be different when the EU is always trying to avoid a conflict with the European multinationals? At the same time as the EU is committed to cutting greenhouse gases (for example, carbon dioxide) every EU country still subsidises and promotes road transport, a ‘car culture’, and is spending huge amounts of money on building new motorways. This is despite the fact that road traffic is the single largest producer of atmospheric pollution.
What is needed is an integrated, planned transport policy, which meets the needs of society and is environmentally sound. Privatised transport must be returned to public ownership and democratically controlled with the aim of creating an integrated public transport system that offers an alternative to cars and road transport.
The EU promised, already in 1983, to take firm action against overfishing in Europe. Sixteen years later, there are no more herring or mackerel in the North Sea, and many species, like the cod, are facing the threat of extinction.
The EU reaction to the early warning about cattle in Britain being infected with BSE (known as ‘mad cow disease’) which spreads to humans in the form of the fatal neurological disease, CJD, was revealing. This was a scandal caused by the grotesque dash for quick profits in agriculture. Many warnings were given to the EU at the end of 1980s, but, ‘The politicians and the bureaucrats in the EU were more concerned about the meat industry than people’s health and safety’. (Swedish “Dagens Nyheter’, 2 February 1997)
No to Fortress Europe
‘The present policy on immigration is promoting the extreme right. At least half a million people were expelled from the EU during 1995 to 1997. Many private businessmen are making huge profits out of this human tragedy.’
The Belgian journalist Chris de Stoop, in November 1997.
Unemployment hits the European Union’s ethnic minorities two to three times harder than it hits people of European origin. At the same time, immigrants and refugees face worsening discrimination from employers, the police and other authorities. They are used as scapegoats for the crisis of the system by the ‘Establishment’, only welcomed when the economy is booming, as in the 1960s.
Racism and sexual discrimination have always been used as weapons by the bosses to split the working class, particularly in an era of capitalist decay. But workers have to stand together to fight back against cuts and unemployment. ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’. A united working movement is needed to fight class oppression, racial or sexual discrimination.
It is not immigrants or refugees who are closing down factories, hospitals or implementing cuts. The formation of a Fortress Europe has meant that is almost impossible for anyone to be granted asylum in the EU. More than 70 measures have been adopted by the EU over the last five years in order to restrict the number of refugees wanting to enter Europe. The latest proposal, initiated by the Austrian government, outlines an even tighter policy on immigration and would in practice destroy the right of asylum. Instead of granting refugees asylum, they should be ‘temporarily protected’ in camps and then sent back. This proposal should be seen in the context of the fact that many refugees never get closer to the EU than the border. They are sent back to another country or just deported by the authorities who do not even bother to read their application.
Even an official report, ordered by the EU in 1998, concluded: ‘Europe’s strong rhetoric about human rights is not matched by reality.‘ The report warned about ‘the tendency towards a ‘Fortress Europe’, which is hostile to ‘outsiders’ and discourages refugees and asylum-seekers‘.
The Schengen agreement, signed by 12 EU countries as well as Norway and Iceland, has reinforced the development towards a ‘Fortress Europe’. On paper, people are free to move wherever they want in the Schengen area and the EU but different cultures, languages and lack of jobs are making it impossible for most people to move.
However, included in the Schengen agreement is the creation of an all-European police surveillance operation system. Refugees are already treated as criminals and are registered.
There is a tendency towards restrictions of basic democratic rights in every EU country. This tendency is also reflected in the EU and in the Schengen agreement. Civil liberties groups in Britain have warned that the permission given to the police by the EU, to gather and share intelligence ‘on all sizeable groups which pose a threat to law and order‘, could be used against demonstrators, road protesters or even people just a CWI European manifesto travelling to a rock concert.
The CWI Fights For:
=> The scrapping of the Schengen agreement and ending the treatment of refugees as criminals. => The defence of the right of asylum and an end to all racist immigration laws.
The Fight Against Racism and Fascism
It is, in the main, the worsening social conditions and the lack of any mass socialist and revolutionary alternative that has led to a strengthening of racism in Europe, and on its back, the parties of the extreme right. In five countries in the EU, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium and Denmark, the extreme right have scored more then than five per cent in the election. Moreover, the state and the more traditional parties can use, and are using, the racist card to split the working class.
Racism must be stamped upon wherever it raises its head. The extreme right has to be driven out from estates, workplaces and schools.. This can only be done by mass action organised by the trade unions, community organisations, immigrant organisations and anti-racist groups. The fight against racism and the extreme right is first of all a political issue. What is needed is a programme that can unite the working class in a common struggle for jobs and welfare and answer the lies spread by the extreme right or fascist groups.
Fascist groups should be stopped from holding meetings or demonstrations by well-organised mass actions. We defend all democratic rights, but groups that are a physical threat to immigrants, to homosexuals, socialists or anti-racists should not be allowed to take advantage of the democratic rights won by workers in struggle.
There is a grave danger that the crisis of European capitalism, the EU and the Euro/EMU will give rise to a strengthening of nationalism and the extreme right. The way to defeat them lies in fighting for an internationalist and a socialist alternative.
For a Democratic Socialist Europe
We are internationalists and stand for the unity of the European working class. That is why we are against a Fortress Europe and the Euro/EMU. The CWI is against the European Union and the European Monetary Union. But the alternative to the EU is neither a nationalist nor a capitalist road; such a road would be a dead end.
The struggle against the bosses’ EU has to be used as a lever for bringing workers and youth together across Europe in a voluntary democratic Socialist Confederation of Europe of independent, separate states within which there will be full respect of every democratic right and for the culture and language rights of all national minorities. This will be the first step towards a socialist unification of Europe in a socialist world.
Real socialism and workers democracy, is nothing like the totalitarian system which existed in Eastern Europe and Russia up to 1991. But who can say that capitalism has meant a better life for people in those countries? Eastern Europe and the former USSR have seen some of the greatest social deprivation in the world over recent years. More than one-third of the population is now living below the poverty line. Capitalism has meant misery without end for people in Eastern Europe and the former USSR.
A Socialist Europe, based on common ownership of the means of production and a rational plan, will make it possible to cure the society of its ill. All those able to work would find a job. The working day would rapidly decrease. The wants of all members of society would secure increasing satisfaction. Mankind would at last cross the threshold into humanity.
=> Away with the insecurity and chaos of the capitalist market! Democratically plan the economy for working people and not the profits of the rich by taking major companies into public ownership.
=> For a socialist Europe that meets the needs of all.
CWI, 18 March 1999
For socialism and working-class unity – Join the CWI
The CWI – Committee for a Workers’ International is an international socialist organisation with sections, groups and co-workers in 35 countries on all five continents
The CWI was founded in 1974. Since then we have struggled to build a new socialist workers’ international that can bring workers and youth together worldwide.
From the 1840s onwards, there have been many attempts to create an international workers’ movement. At different timed strong Internationals were created but, for various reasons, collapsed.
The CWI is a Marxist, revolutionary organisation. It stands on the political foundation laid down by Marx and Engels, by the 1917 October Revolution and by Lenin’s struggle for a new International after the collapse of the Second International in 1914. A new Communist International was created in 1919, but that international degenerated and then disappeared as Stalin’s clique took power and crushed the ideals of October 1917.
The task of building a new international was then undertaken by Leon Trotsky and his supporters around the world who were able to defend and develop the ideas of Marxism in the dark years of the 1930s. The CWI defends the tradition of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalinism and for the creation of a world party of socialist revolution – a new mass workers’ international.
Global capitalism needs to be challenged by a determined struggle on an international plane. Problems such as poverty, mass unemployment, attacks on living standards, sexual and racial discrimination, know no borders.
The CWI has affiliated members throughout Europe. From Sweden in the north, to Russia in the east, Ireland in the west and Cyprus in the south.
Members of the CWI were instrumental in setting up Youth against Racism in Europe (YRE). This was the first, and is still the only, all-European campaign against racism and fascism. The YRE organised a 40,000 strong all-European march against racism in Brussels in 1992. Since then, the YRE has played a key role in many countries in combating the menace of racism and the extreme right and against the scrapping of the right of asylum.
Members of the CWI were, for example, amongst the first to mobilise international support for the heroic struggle put up by the Liverpool dockers against casual labour and sackings in 1995-98.
We will be campaigning, as we did for the euro-march in Amsterdam in 1997, for a massive turnout at the new euro-march in Cologne on 29 May this year. Be there!
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