No truce in the struggle against the governments of the bankers and the Troika!
The world is witnessing aggravation of the economic and political crisis en the Europe of Capital, a historic crisis and part of a flaw in the world system and markets. The situation is so dramatic that not only the existence of the euro as a united monetary system but also of the European Union (UE) as a strategic political-economic system of the local imperialism. The so famous European welfare State is coming to pieces in a tremendously evident manner.
The deepening of the crisis on the old continent means, on the one hand, great intensification of attacks on the working class by international capitalists and bankers – expressed in the adjustment plans, colonisation and Bonapartism put into practice by their governments. And on the other hand, that organised resistance of workers, youth and nationalities accrues in this part of the world spawning a veritable social war unleashed by imperialism in their attempt to get out of the crisis imposing historic retreat on the rights and living conditions of the proletariat and the peoples of Europe. How can the responses delivered by our class become more effective? What solution should the working class pose against the Troika’s and imperialist plans of famine and colonisation?
European economy slows down and recession looms
In a recently distributed report, the European Commission (EC), member of what – together with the Central European Bank (CEB) and the IMF has become known as Troika – mentioned the concrete danger of the stagnation of economy in several countries of the EU.
The EC foresees strong deceleration of global European GDP and announced of not more than 1.5% in 2011 and 0.5% the following year. Olli Rehn, European commissar warned through that document, “the growth has stopped in Europe and we can enter a new phase of recession”. On the other hand the expectation of the rough debt (relation debt/GDP) 0f the Eurozone is 88% this year increasing to 90.4% in 2012 and reaching 90.9% in 2013.
Within this framework, the Greece case is horrendous. The expectation for the Hellenic debt is of a direct recession of -5.5% of the GDP. As for, the rough debt in that country, in 2011 it reached 162.8 and in 2012 it will be of 198.3% and will reach 198.5% in 2013.
In Italy, a country that has just joined the so-called “rescue zone” all but stagnation is announced with a GDP growth of 0.5% in 2011 and 0.1%. The Italian foreign debt represents 121% of their GDP.
This process of descent of European economy will also affect the most powerful countries of EU as Germany, where the slight growth of 2.9% in 2011 is expected to descend to 0.8% in 2012. The same thing is expected for France that comes from 1.6% to 0.6% this year and next year respectively. UK is no exception: it slides from a meager 0.7 to 0.6 in the same period of forecast.
Social war more acute
Through their governments and parliaments, capitalists and bankers are waging social war against European working class. It is not a question of whether they risk losing this or that achievement; it is all about a historic retreat in living standards and all kinds or rights by the proletariat of the greatest tradition of struggle in History. We mean that there is a probability for several countries among the weakest European capitalist links of the chain may recede to a standard of living similar to that of semicolonies.
Against the background of this tremendous confrontation between classes, the dominating classes even go as far as trampling their own alibis of false (bourgeois) democracy and adopt measures of a Bonapartist nature, as for example, manipulating governments (as in Greece and Italy) placing representatives and direct pawns of the IMF, the Troika, Merkel and Sarkozy at the steer of those countries.
They have no doubts whatsoever about the fact that in this crisis there will be losers and there will be winners and they want us to be losers. They intend to get out of the crisis and that we pay for it with our poverty and the hunger of our families, the loss of our homes, our achievements in education, health and labour rights. We, the grassroots, must have the same awareness of the gravity of the situation. It is them or us. This awareness is beginning to take shape in the struggles and demonstrations taking place in several countries. Our war cry is and will be: Let the capitalists pay for the crisis!
Political crisis in the EU and the colonisation of the weakest links
A few days ago Greece and Italy changed governments. Yorgos Papandreu and Silvio Berlusconi respectively fell in disgrace and were replaced by Lucas Papandreu in Athens and Mario Monti in Rome. They are both – as we shall describe below – agents and direct auditors of the Troika whose sole and explicit role is to have the prescriptions of the banker put ruthlessly into practice.
The process of “Latin Americanisation” that is on the agenda for some European countries is beginning to become visible also in the loss of political sovereignty. In the Greek case, the replacement for Papandreu, Lucas Papademos is a technocrat who was the vice-president of the European Central Bank and former governor of the Bank of Greece.
In Italy, the new Prime Minister – also minister of economy – Mario Monti, is an economist, well known in European imperialist institutions and American banks. For ten years he was Commissar of Home Market of the European Commission and adviser to Goldman Sachs. His “administration of technicians and experts” consists of thirteen “technocrats” who actually are representatives of the bankers. Among them, we can find Corrado Pasera, new minister of Economic Development, Infrastructures and Transport and Telecommunications, who is a direct agent, direct agent of Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, entity with shares in such companies as Telecom and Alitalia.
What the Troika is tying to show with all these changes is that they will not have weaklings as heads of state, people who would hesitate or delay the application of their recipes against European peoples. . It is clear that they keep their fuses in accordance of their political capacity of passing and advancing in the social war at the smallest possible political cost. Following this logic, if a fuse does not work, it is to be replaced.
We are witnessing facts that only a short time before would have seemed unimaginable. In these European countries we can see processes of colonisation – political as well as economic. It is important that we should be categorical about this assessment: we are face to face with governments placed directly from top against bottom, directly and treacherously manipulated from the offices of the Troika to apply their plans. That is why Papandreu fell at the first attempt of issuing summons for a referendum regarding the application of the Troika plans.
The truth is that because of the blows delivered by the crisis and polarisation, these bourgeois-democratic regimes either resort to elections that decide nothing or even accept presidents who were just “given the job”. For example: in the State of Spain, the elections of 20th November were not to decide anything, let alone the economic policy of the country. They wee an attempt at legitimising the future administrator of the plans previously conceived by and agreed with the Troika. In this way, regardless of the results of the elections, the only foreseeable winner could be the European banks.
In these countries the democratic demands hinging round national sovereignty against the axis of USA-Germany-France-Troika who boosts the colonisation of several of the weaker countries of Europe. What is on the agenda there is – the same as in Latin America or other semi-colonies – the exposition of the IFM and the German and French banks and their expulsion from such countries as Greece, Italy, Ireland and other that are on the verge of being overcome.
Our class has joined the fight.jpg)
Even if at an uneven pace according to the country, is responding stoutly to the social war unleashed by the Troika. The demonstrations of last 15th October (15-O) have been the pinnacle in the headway towards nationally and internationally coordinated battles.
On that day, thousands of workers and young people walked out into the streets demonstrating against the effects of the crisis, chanting, “You do not represent us”. The demands and the targets of the 15-0 struggle had a stronger anticapitalist tone and against the financial capital than on other occasions while the great banks, head offices of international financial capital and the parliaments the main targets of the demonstrators. This expresses an encouraging headway in the awareness of the movement. It is necessary to keep up with the sectors that have been active and increasing the number of actively protesting workers and it is determining to bring together the strikes and struggles of the workers with those of the young people who can see no future for themselves – and are quite right to feel so.
Within this scope we wish to highlight very positive facts. In late October, over 250 000 people participated in a general strike in Greece. In early November – as a “welcome” for the new Troika administration, Greek workers and youth once more walked massively into the streets to fight against the plans that Papademos-Troika are trying to impose.
On 17th November, in the very same day that Monti requested a vote of confidence from the Senate for his puppet government dependant on the international banks, students and some trade unions protested in 60 cities of the country against the cuts and the plans announced. The demonstrations challenged the “government of the banks” and the austerity measures posed by the new administration as a “way out” of the crisis. In Rome, Milan, Turin and Palermo over 10000 demonstrators challenged the police. In Milan the war cry was, “Neither Berlusconi nor Monti”. In Florence, students hoisted banners with slogans against the new “technocratic” government: “Monti, pig, slave of capitalists”, “The crisis is theirs, the money is ours.”
In Spain, a strike of health workers has been summoned but it is now being dismantled. On the other hand, workers of education and students keep on fighting after a day of strike on the 17th November.
In Portugal, a general strike is summoned for November 24th. In England, the TUC (Trade Union Congress) the country’s sole trade union central is summoning for a general strike for the 30th this month against the attacks on the British working class, essentially the cuts on pension funds.
On the other side of the Atlantic, in the USA, and as a reflection of all these struggles chanting “We are 99%”, thousands of people occupied Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. I was in that country, too, that on November 14th, the New York Police violently vacated the Sucoti Park, the equivalent of “Puerta del Sol” or Tahrir Square for New York protesters. Thousand gathered facing the police action wielding banners saying, “You can evict us from the square but you cannot take our idea”. The 17th was dubbed as the “day of action” and it was a day of nationwide struggles and mobilisations. In New York, over 30 000 demonstrators between students and trade union activists, gathered by the Brooklyn Bridge to march through the city and occupy Wall Street. In spite of the police repression, the movement accrues chanting “We are 99%”, “Occupy Wall Street”, “Occupy Los Angeles”… “We are unstoppable”, “This is the beginning of the beginning”, “Another world is possible”…
Which way out and what is the workers’ solution to the crisis and the attacks?
Confronted with the crisis and this social war, the working class and the peoples of Europe must answer to the programme answer (a concrete solution to the crisis) and to the struggles, from the point of view of organisation.
The first thing is that confronted with famine plans and “rescue” (for capitalists and blood-sucking bankers) we must propose a rescue plan for the toiling masses. This should be a continental response for policies, programmes and ideology that will adopt the most adequate specific forms for each country.
The central issue is to become aware that only battling to the death for a rescue plan for our class can we counteract the social war plans of the EU-IMF-ECB-
This rescue plan should stem out of the non-payment of the foreign and home debts to the usurers and bandits of the Troika; reduction of working day without reducing wages; investment in public service to defend education and public health and a plan of public and social works in the service of the peoples. With this in mind, in order to ensure these and other measures, apart from rejecting privatisations, expropriation and nationalisation under workers’ control of the entire financial system, control of capitals and the monopoly of foreign trade as well as the split from the euro and our exit from European Union will be unavoidable. Let us fight for a proletarian and popular government to apply these measures with an outlook towards a Europe of workers and peoples, that is: Socialist United Nations of Europe.
With what policy do we strive to impose our rescue plan? This is a key issue and we categorically assert that the first necessary step is to boost and unify the struggles of all sectors against the attacks of the Troika and their puppet administrations. We must rally all together against the plans of famine brought about by bankers and capitalists.
It is really important to keep up and accelerate the pace of massive 15-O demonstrations. It is urgent to transform the indignation into organised action, in well-aimed political responses that may beat the Troika and its agents in each country by drawing all the unionised sectors together with the students. It is extremely important to follow the example of students and trade unionist from Occupy Wall Street. It is fundamental to coordinate actions and strikes of workers and the unemployed, students and immigrants, for all these sectors are suffering the consequences of poverty plans and they all challenge the same political enemy. Within the scope of each country these struggles ought to aim at general strikes until the defeat of the adjustment plans.
The united policy at a national level should be in the service of getting all the struggles to flow into a European strike day in defence of the rights, wages and pensions. This summons is imperious so that struggles that surface in the different countries can mutually benefit each other and so we can deliver the definite blow to the Troika-Merkel-Sarkozy-Obama.
But in order to advance in the national struggles and carry out the European strike day against the Troika plans, we must fight against the trade union bureaucracies and political bureaucracies who overtly o not, stand behind the Europe of Capital, support their governments and the Troika adjustment plans hindering the struggle of our class. From this point of view we must pose clear demands to the trade union leaders, to the reformist parties and to the leaders of the indignant pressing for united struggles. If the pressure is sufficient to drive them to accept, the struggle will be greatly fortified. If they find excuses, we shall have exposed them in the eyes of our class.
While we expose the policy and the conceptions of sectors such as Real Democracy Now who dive at a prospect within the system, trying to reform it and apposing any type of trade union and political organisation of the youngsters and workers, we must pose demands while never forgetting to boost struggles and presenting, explaining patiently the proletarian solution and summoning workers, youth and nationalities to fight for the workers’ solution and requires that the issue of proletarian power is to be posed. This is how, in the heat of the struggles and programme struggle we shall have wrought the revolutionary leadership of our class.
International Secretariat
Sao Paulo, November 21st, 2011
