To get a job, to have full democracy, and worthy public education and health care, workers and the peoples of Europe must break up with the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB), the euro [common European currency] and IMF!
For many years European capitalism has been building the EU as a central tool to enforce its political and economic plans. Since 2000 it has being doing so with the help of the euro. For this “European construction” the European capitalism was supported and continues counting on the support of most political parties and organizations of the system, which, under the sound of the 9th Symphony of Beethoven and the false promises to improve our life quality, got us into the EU. They counted on the complicity of the leaders of CCOO and UGT [Spanish Union Federations] who came out endorsing the EU and its constitution without any consultation with its members.
Only our small organizations were against the EU since the beginning and we have denounced it as a Europe for the capital that back governments to attack us, wrapped in the blue flag with yellow stars (the EU flag).
The meaning of the entry in the Euro zone
Edmund Stoiber, an influential German politician, defined in the late 90’s the meaning of the establishment of a “single currency”: “the euro means a clearly tougher competition (…) and also will exert a pressure on the labor market so that it turns to be flexible. Under the new conditions of increased competition, there will be winners and losers. The winners will be the highly competitive companies that produce in states and regions in good condition. Those states that do not withstand stiff competition will be hindered to devaluate their currency and should be prepared to reduce the wages and social standards.”
Stoiber’s predictions are fully confirmed. From the very beginning, the EU has been, first and foremost a tool of the German and French capitalisms which, in the shadow of the euro (and taking advantage of a few years of unrestrained speculation), imposed their industrial and commercial domination over the EU. And with the large commercial surplus achieved, their banks have lent with no limit to the European periphery, sharing benefits with bankers and real estate brokers in these countries. Meanwhile, across the EU, they would attack social and labor rights and making them subordinated to the whole financial capital.
Now, with the global crisis and the debt crisis, the EU crudely shows its true role as an instrument of the German and French big banks and companies to plunder the European periphery and attack their own working classes. For weeks they are squandering achievements that have cost us too much blood and decades of work, and unbelievably, the worst is yet to come… and not only to the periphery.
Leaving the euro, breaking with the EU and the IMF
As we said in this issue, fighting against the capitalist plans requires, first, to stop paying a public debt which is illegitimate and that impoverish the people as a whole. And of course, refusing to pay the debt and rejecting their plans mean automatically the rupture with the euro and the EU.
However, the same scoundrels who got us into the EU now tell us that below the EU there is only the chasm and that the best is to go cap in hand, pay the debt and accept the cuts. However they have continually lied because Greece, Portugal, Ireland and even Spain demonstrate the opposite: it is completely certain that to continue within the EU is to slide down the hill of a social catastrophe with no end in sight.
For the Socialist United States of Europe!
It is true, however, that to leave the EU while keeping intact the foundations of capitalism, would let completely helpless the country and the workers in face of the foreign capitalist offensive and the own country capitalist offensive. Therefore, to prevent the country from sinking and in order to begin to reorganize the economy for the benefit of the vast majority, it is essential to take measures such as to expropriate the banks, fiercely controlling all movements of capital…
And besides, we must go further, because there is no possibility of triumphing if in the end we stay limited to a country and do not extend the revolution to the rest of Europe.
There is no way out if we stay isolated, without organizing the economy across Europe, without opening the way to the Socialist United States of Europe based on the workers’ democracy and be joined closely to the rest of the workers of the world.
Unite the struggle in order to prepare the General Strike! Organize the unified answer in Europe!
Boosting and organizing the massive support to the struggles, in particular to the teachers and health workers struggles, is one of the most important tasks at the moment. The fight of these comrades is the fight of all of us, in defense of public education and public health. This support should be part of the battle to unite all the fights in progress, which is the best way to prepare the conditions for a needed general strike to face this social war declared against us, by openly targeting the government resulted from the fraud on November 20 (Spanish national elections] and impose a favorable change for workers and for the people.
Similarly, it must be said that the 15-O [October 15] is an example that we can and we should unify at a European level (and at an international level) the response to the capitalist plans. It is a scandal and a direct responsibility of the European Trade Union Confederation (CES – of which CCOO and UGT are membership) that there has been no serious European response to the social war triggered by the EU and the IMF. Not in vain, CES, formed by the major European trade union bureaucracies, is an institutional part of the European Union. It is therefore more than necessary that the left Trade Unions in Europe gather together and get forces within Europe, and provide a unified response, and, at the same time demand that the major unions stop acting as instruments of the EU and take the call for a European general strike.
Source: Bandera Roja n° 8, November 2011
