EDITORIAL
Class struggle, you say?
A few weeks back, the president of the Philips corporation, Jan Timmer, declared, "The relative calm and abundance of yesteryear will never return [..] Europe must choose between a high quality of life with costly Welfare States sheltered from the rest of the world by protectionism, or an open economy in which, as elsewhere, industry can produce at the lowest cost with longer work hours." As for the president of the Belgian employers' federation, Georges Jacobs, he has called for "horse medecine"
However, keeping a mere tally of "points" scored by each side is not sufficient for understanding the current situation. Companies such as Air France are in sectors that have yet to be seriously affected by restructuring. Its workers have yet to endure a defeat and can still serve as examples of intransigence and courage.
The crisis might create other forms of radicalisation. It could unite employed sec-
CLAUDE GABRIEL - 29 October 1993
HEY couldn't be more explicit! Previously, capitalism managed to export part of its crisis to the countries of the Third World. This process has now reached the saturation point. Social deregulation and misery seem to be stretching their tentacles from the "South" to the "North" as an inevitable consequence of capital's new needs.
At the European Council meeting of October 29, there was an entirely different song about unemployment in the European Economic Community (EEC). There was talk of a "European growth initiative", , an urgent policy of supporting investments, and so forth. What a strange institution this is, in which everyone — Jacques Delors above all — seems condemned to schizophrenia! This is the same EEC that calls for deregulation, competitive public services and privatisation. It is difficult to do the bidding for Jan Timmer and George Jacobs and at the same time be proponents of a return to social protection and prosperity.
The wealth produced by the real economy goes less and less towards improving the general standard of living. States which get bogged down in indebtedness and budgetary deficits undertake wide-scale privatisation in order to pump some resources into their treasuries. But this return to the private sector provokes massive job losses, which in turn aggravates the social situation taken as a whole.
The political Establishment, social democratic and liberal, is worried. They know that if they go to far they will revive our old friend, the class struggle. And this worry has been justified over the last few weeks. We need only examine a few examples.
In Belgium, the government and employers are having a difficult time organising a social pact with union leaderships that face tremendous pressure from impatient and combative sectors of the workforce. There was even a call for a strike to coincide with the European Summit in Brussels.
In France, the major strike by Air France personnel against the restructuring plan and job losses has created tremendous hope. It was a popular struggle: in a poll, 70% of those polled said they sympathised with the strike. It was a victorious struggle, too; the head of Air France resigned and the plan was withdrawn. And it was a significant struggle as it took place in the context of a generalised upturn in the combativity of the public sector.
In the Spanish State, there was a demonstration of 100,000 students against fee hikes on 27 October; and there is a call by the two major union federations, the UGT and the Workers Committees, for a day of action on 25 November against the aggressive attacks envisaged by Felipe Gonzales.
In Italy, there were more than 100,000 in Rome on September 25, from a variety of sectors, to denounce the government's social policy; this was followed a few weeks later by a demonstration of 300,000 retirees and major strikes, especially in the south, and a four hour countrywide strike on October 28.
In Switzerland, in the canton of Geneva, recent elections led to the collapse of the "respectable" left and a breakthrough for the Left Alliance — a united, radical bloc — which garnered 19.2% of the vote.
To be sure, all this is not enough to lessen the burden of defeats and fear. The brutal closure of the Seat (Volkswagen group) factory in Barcelona - 9,000 job losses -has not yet provoked a significant enough response to meet the challenge head on. In Spain, as in Italy and other countries, government cutbacks are playing their role of demoralisation and atomisation.
tors that have social protection and want to defend their gains, sectors of the population that are excluded from the system of social protection and the right to decent housing, and sectors of students who face unemployment once they have graduated
Employers have put forward the idea of a kind of "sharing of work" - which can be summarised as the sharing of unemployment, the disappearance of a weekly regulation of working time, the lowering of salaries and an increase in productivity. This is the challenge that has been thrown up by German employers, who have gone on the atack against the famous "social market economy" which was so often celebrated as the virtuous model of consent between the classes.
Meanwhile, the European Council is engaged in a highly academic discussion about unemployment and misery. French President François Mitterrand has proposed that Europe borrow 100 billion European Currency Units (ECUs) towards the revival of the EEC's economy. Why not 200 or 300 billion? After all, the main objective of such a proposal is to give a major face lift to capitalism and to avoid at all cost any kind of radical challenge.
There are a lot better things to do. Now that unemployment and the sharing of work are the topics of the hour, it is up to the workers themselves to take the initiative. The Europe we want to build will be one of a radical reduction of the number of hours worked with no loss in salary, a Europe with a moratorium on layoffs, a Europe in which the unions have the right to inspect companies' account books and in which banking secrets are abolished
Job losses in the name of competition? Then it's time to abolish competition and quickly find the path of mass mobilisations of solidarity between all working people and youth. "Prioritise social needs. Get the money where there's plenty." This is the direction in which today's mass resistance leads. *
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International Viewpoint #250 November 1993
- RUSSIA