Workers Confront the Crisis of Capitalist Europe
(The following article is from the April 2 issue of Rouge, the weekly paper of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by IV.)
No one can deny any longer that today, 25 years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the Common Market is undergoing a grave crisis. The Twenty-Second European Summit meeting on March 29-30 only con-
The disputes over the British contribution to the EEC budget and over agricultural policies were only the most spectacular reflections of this crisis. The underlying factors are a decline in investment, which is speeding up the decline of industry; galloping inflation; and the trade deficit with American and Japanese imperialism.
Everywhere the ruling classes have tried to deal with the recession by coordinating their austerity policies. In most countries, buying power has dropped sharply. Industries have been restructured at the cost of millions of jobs. Today, there are already 10,700,000 jobless in the EEC, and this figure is expected to increase by 15% over the coming year.
The Belgian steelworkers have just reminded us of the way the capitalist experts and Brussels Commissions operate to limit productive capacity, and sacrifice jobs and social needs.
Despite the capitulations of the trade-union apparatuses and the reformist parties, this policy is proving more and more difficult to apply. Belgium has become the flashpoint of the resistance. There is the struggle of the steelworkers, several one-day general strikes since February, the spontaneous launching of an unlimited strike in the Mons Borinage region near the French border, the call for a similar action in Charleroi, and the teachers' work stop-
Such mobilizations have not been seen in Belgium for twenty years, not since the general strike of 196l.
If it were not for the divisions between Flanders and the Walloon country and between the Catholic and Social Democrat union confederations, and the lack of political perspectives to unite around, the workers movement could quickly dump the Martens government.
Although it was far less explosive than the workers actions in Belgium, the demonstration of 300, 000 engineering workers in Rome on March 26 testifies to the breadth of discontent in the working class. Everyone agrees that it was the largest demonstration in years.
And in Luxembourg, you have to go back to the 1930s to find anything like the mobilization of 40,000 persons in the streets on March 27.
In all countries, the same demands have been raised--no cuts in wages and past social gains, end layoffs, and reduce the workweek drastically. The victory of the Socialists in France and Francois Mitterrand's call for establishing a "European showcase of social reform" aroused great hopes in the workers in other countries and among trade-unionists....
Thus, the French government has major responsibilities. Any measure adopted here will immediately have a chainreaction effect on the European workers movement and bring the other governments under strong pressure. In his election campaign, the president of the republic
I said that a 35-hour week would mean 800,000 more jobs. He has no excuse now for not setting out to achieve this objective. And by responding to the aspirations of millions of workers throughout Europe, such action would give impetus to a similar movement throughout Western Europe.
In drawing the balance sheet of the European summit, Mitterrand said that he was pleased to see a convergence of economic and social steps in the various coun
But in the official conclusions of this meeting, it says the following about
"Concerted action (between the unions, government, and employers) must be accompanied by increased efforts to control the rise of production costs, which includes
The stress has to be put on productive investment, both private and public, rather than consumption."
Doesn't this mean austerity and reducing wages? In paraphrasing such a document and not saying a word about cutting the workweek, and in advocating "restructuring of the industrial sector" of the EEC, isn't Mitterrand accepting fundamentally a coordinated attack on the working class and on the level of employment? Doesn't this mean maintaining the plans that were worked out under the Giscard government and pushing them harder?
Once again, it has been shown that declarations of good intentions cannot be implemented through the EEC institutions. Setting in motion a process of change favorable to the workers will depend, in the final analysis, on mobilization, on cross-border coordination on all levels of the trade-union organizations.