EUROPE

Political crisis, class struggle & the state

On Nov. 27 there were demonstrations of more than 100,000 people in Dublin, Ireland, protesting the government’s austerity program and about the same number of students and youth in Rome, Italy, protesting cutbacks in the education budget. These followed massive student protests in Britain earlier and a general strike in Portugal on Nov. 24 of 3 million workers. These popular actions in four countries were the defensive response to a relentless class war that big capital is waging to impoverish the European working class and steal back all the gains workers have made since 1945.

During the time the Soviet Union existed, the European bosses of each country would flinch before such a strong popular defense and would offer concessions. Now, however, with seemingly no fear of an alternate social system, the bosses and bankers have organized through the European Union to concentrate their centralized forces against the workers of each country.

The following are excerpts from a Nov. 23 “El Otro País” article by Ángeles Maestro, a former member of Parliament in the Spanish state and a leader of the Corriente Roja (Red Current) group. The article was translated from Spanish by WW managing editor John Catalinotto.

Events are occurring at breathtaking speed in the European Union. Last May, the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank decided to “rescue” Greece with 110 billion euros, and within a few days created a permanent rescue fund of 750 billion euros (250 from the IMF and 500 from the EU states) to confront the threat of a contagion of Portugal and Spain, with the goal of ensuring “the health and stability of the euro.” [On Nov. 29, 1 euro was worth about $1.24.]

Recently the same screenplay used in Greece has been reworked. First came rumors about the insolvency of Ireland and Portugal, a soaring interest rate paid to debt purchasers, putting in doubt the countries’ financial viability — both public and private — and discussing the risk of bankruptcy, all completely fabricated, with the corresponding government asking for a loan of billions of euros.

The Portuguese social-democratic government, a more obedient pupil, is preparing the groundwork by threatening a flood: “If the budget is not approved, Portugal could leave the euro.”

The Irish government put up more resistance, aware of the political bombshell of what it would mean for a country just beginning to recover its self-government to lose its sovereignty. To force Ireland to take the loan before it holds anticipated general elections and use the money received to buy what its creditors indicate, there will be an obscene landing of bankers representing the trio of the IMF, EU and ECB. The recipe is brutal for a country of 4.2 million inhabitants: 100 billion euros at 5 percent interest and a corresponding austerity plan.

The drama in Ireland, a country that spent centuries fighting for independence from England and was now just beginning to regain its sovereignty, is of historic proportions. Marx reappears again: No political independence is possible without economic independence.

Loans, austerity and military spending

But the loss of sovereignty consists not only in implementing savage austerity plans. The country involved must invest the money received in the purchase of what its creditors order. This method, used by the IMF for decades in Latin American countries, in Asia, and recently in the ex-USSR, now comes with the same methods and all its harshness to the countries of the periphery of the European Union.

Very few times is there news of the final fate of those loans. Greece is the EU country with the most military spending: 4.3 percent of its GDP. Military spending has remained high even as the country was sinking, with the austerity plan imposed on the Greek working class and popular sectors in 2010 including a decline in GDP of 4 percent.

Capitalism is confronting this crisis, one without precedent, without it being predictable for now what military confrontations will occur between states, confrontations that fulfill the historical role of eliminating surplus and uncompetitive human capital. The EU will intervene in its peripheral states and make us pay the gap between the productivity and competitiveness of our capitalism and that of France, Germany or England, which will include a broad social war still difficult to imagine. If we do not find a response, that is the destiny in store for us.

The task [set by the ruling class] is meant to be carried out without hesitation, and governments are preparing it regardless of their political hue. Is it possible to hope, in this scenario, with unemployment of around 30 percent [in Spain], that over a long period spending will remain available for universal services such as health care or education or the public pension system?

In the Spanish state, after the last general strike on Sept. 29, the capitalists now have officially announced an attack on pensions, the destruction of collective bargaining, health co-payment, etc.

We the people are slowly starting to wake up, but the working class, except in Greece, is still far from the realization that what is involved is not simply making a general strike in order to negotiate a solution one way or another. We are facing an attack on all fronts, with no foreseeable end.

The strategic objective of the bourgeoisie and their governments is to destroy the labor movement, which is the only guarantee that their agenda will be imposed without much resistance. Therefore, no European government will move an inch, unless — as was at the point of happening in France — the havoc caused serious problems. Each partial struggle, every strike, must be seen as being a step on the road to an accumulation of forces, strengthening the Europe-wide coordination of struggles, with an eye on the construction, against the power of the bourgeoisie and their governments, of an alternative workers’ and peoples’ power.

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