In Europe and in the world, workers, young people refuse to pay for the crisis of the capitalist system
The crisis of the world-wide capitalist system is going on, throwing millions of people in the streets, in misery.
All sections of the people, workers, workers of the cities and countryside, small and medium peasants, craftsmen, employees, active or unemployed, young or retired ... are shaken down by a handful of rich, always richer by the financial oligarchy, its banks and monopolies. In all capitalist countries, developed or emerging, in the imperialist countries and in countries dominated by imperialism, the oligarchy wants to charge his attack on the working class, the working masses and people : eleven million millionaires in the world, growing richer on the backs of billions. Never the wealth produced has been so great, never so many women and men have been so deprived of the minimum subsistence, this wealth has never been so concentrated in the hands of a parasitic class, the bourgeoisie, class of shareholders.
After demanding states, devoted to its exclusive service, to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, yen ... to save its banks and financial institutions, the financial oligarchy now requires the payment of public debts and interests. His motto: “Let's end the deficits”, it has generated and dug itself.
The policies for the reduction of the public deficit : a pretext for imposing austerity plans
In Europe, the Greek people were the first target of these large scale attacks, jointly conducted by the European Commission and the IMF, which has resulted in mega austerity plan, allegedly to reduce the public debt.
Within weeks, throughout the European Union, the right-wing governments and social liberal governments have competed on an escalation in the amounts of "savings" they want to impose on state budgets, they can be counted in hundreds of billions, sparing no country.
The pretext: to reassure the financial markets and their "rating agencies".
The goal: make a further wide transfer of wealth, from labor to capital, to guarantee the profits of banks and the the most powerful monopolies.
The social budgets are squeezed, all the social mechanisms conquered and imposed by the working class and peoples, especially since the Second World War, are the target of this concerted offensive.
The first victims of the liquidation of the social "nets", are the poorest strata of the society, those who were already living in poverty, insecurity and fear of tomorrow. They are also those who will suffer the worst from the cuts in social budgets. In rich countries, like Germany, France ... there are millions of men and women, young people seeking employment, youth holding odd jobs, poor workers, who are threatened of falling into the blackest misery. At the other extreme of society, the rich continue to celebrate with champagne the growth of their income.
The attacks began long before this crisis, neoliberal and social-liberal policies had already caused extensive damage, privatizing major economic sectors, undertaking the liquidation of public health services, education, social protection ... Today, the oligarchy wants to use the crisis to remove obstacles to the free use of the work force, by liquidating the economic and social rights won by workers. It wants to over-exploit those who have jobs, while massively laying off : to make people work harder, longer, until exhaustion, for ever lower wages, for ever lower pensions. It wants to take advantage of the army of the unemployed to pressure on wages and working conditions.
In these severe austerity plan, the questioning of the retirement system, based on solidarity and the social contribution, is a goal shared by all the EU governments.
Working beyond 65 years has become the norm, while millions of young people do not find work. Banks and insurance companies are rubbing their hands: they hope to sell their pension systems based on capitalisation to the few who can afford it, speculating on the fear of the bankruptcy of pension systems based on solidarity between generations and the social contributions.
To impose these massive cuts in social services, the oligarchy strengthens law enforcement, produces stiffer anti-labor and anti-popular laws and tries to divide the workers and peoples.
At the peak of the crisis in Greece, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators shouted in the streets of Athens and all Greece cities their refusal to pay the crisis of the capital, we heard speeches of hate in the mouths of politicians (widely reproduced and amplified by the media) against the workers and peoples of southern Europe, accused of trying to "take advantage" of other countries; workers and peoples of southern Europe that should be "punished" ...
It is far from the rhetoric of European harmony, peace and understanding that the EU had to promote and that the euro would ease!
People have the right to leave euro and the EU
After several years of the Euro, the people did their maths. This "unique" currency has primarily served the dominant imperialist powers in the EU, to strengthen their economic and political power.
The euro has accelerated the race to minimum wages within the EU. The "convergence criteria" of the Maastricht Treaty are an instrument of permanent social dumping. The EU governments are trying to impose them to countries, including non-Eurozone countries such as Denmark, where the people voted against Euro through a referendum.
The Euro has meant an increase of the prices, whose recipients have been the great monopolies of distribution, agro-business, at the expense of popular consumers, small and medium agricultural producers, small traders ...
The euro is an essential mechanism for building a Europe that aspires to become a major imperialist power, a neoliberal Europe who exploits the working class and participates to plundering the wealth of Africa, Latin America, etc... participates to wars and conflicts over strategic raw materials, energy sources and their means of communication and transport to the major production centers in the imperialist countries.
The reactionary nature of this European project gets more and more visible : Fortress-Europe protects itself against migrants expelled from their country by famine and wars fomented by imperialism. The Europe of police, implements common police forces to monitor and suppress large popular mobilizations, such as during the NATO Summit in Strasbourg or the summit "on climate” in Copenhagen.
Besides the huge deployment of police that has resulted in thousands of arrests, the Copenhagen Summit has also shown that the great powers are only concerned by their interests and that they can only conceive environment preservation issues as a market for their monopolies.
We stand with the people of Greece and other countries where they claim the right to leave the euro and the EU.
We support the development of solidarity with all peoples of the world. We have common struggles to carry with workers and peoples of Europe, against the mechanisms of exploitation, promoting competition between workers, submission of "small" countries to the imperialist powers, of political domination, the mechanisms that organize the pillaging of the dominated countries. The construction of Europe, the EU and its currency are instruments of these policies that we denounce and fight.
Widening resistance to austerity plans across Europe
The resistance of the working class and peoples to the capital’s attacks was immediate and it grew everywhere. Several days of strike, several general strikes took place in different countries. The anger and the desire to fight to deny the payment of the system’s crisis, the debts of the oligarchy and its austerity plans, are great.
That anger alarmed the bourgeoisie and reformist parties who rallied to austerity policies and agreed to implement them. They talk about "shared sacrifice", but only to impose them to workers and peoples.
This resistance must develop and grow, in each country but also internationally. Social rendez-vous, including the labor movement, have already been taken for next fall: we will work to give them the maximum extent and success, to build a strong expression of internationalism and unity of the working class.
Working for the unity of the working class is a vital necessity. The working class produces surplus value and is the one who can exert considerable pressure on the Capital. It is the spine of the struggle against capitalism, for social transformation. In all EU countries, it is the working class that has stood first and massively against the attacks of bosses, governments, the Brussels Commission, IMF, etc..
The first instrument of resistance of the working class and the working masses in cities and countryside are the trade-unions. The labor movement has been divided and weakened by the policies of class collaboration that have been developed within it. But today, currents, trade unionists, labor unions are developing the class struggle at the base of concrete struggles.
We defend the class struggle unionism and we urge workers to organize in unions, to work for unity within the union movement on positions based on class struggle. We denounce and repudiate the attempts of exclusion of combative trade union activists. We are working to develop international solidarity for union initiatives that strengthen the struggle of workers in each country and internationally.
Migrant workers, with or without papers, "legal" or "illegal" are part of the working class in each country. It is a workforce needed by monopolies because of their lack of rights, endlessly exploitable. In the stiff competition between monopolies and in sector where the production cannot be delocalized, this workforce is essential. In this context, the successful strike in France led by undocumented workers for their regularization is of great importance and is an encouragement to all those who fight on this front. The strike, that lasted more than eight months, has been supported by trade unions, women's organizations, democratic organizations and by all parties of the left. It has demonstrated concretely that immigrants, men and women, are primarily workers, part of the working class. It generated a great movement of solidarity in the public opinion, a real antidote to the division attempts the oligarchy and the reaction won’t cease to develop. These workers, men and women will take their place in the overall battle for refusing to pay for the crisis of the system.
Workers in the public services, state offices and local authorities (municipalities, departments, regions ...) are particularly affected by the planned cuts in state budgets and all public and semi-public institutions. Tens of thousands of jobs are cut, wages are reduced in all countries, as in Greece, where the Socialist government wants to remove two months of salary. By fighting against privatization, for their wages, for jobs, public services workers are also fighting for popular users of public services. Together they struggle to oppose to policies of dismantling public services.
Let us refuse the austerity plans, the militarization and imperialist wars
The crisis of the capitalist system and imperialist world is exacerbating all the contradictions, which become increasingly violent. To impose severe austerity plans, the oligarchy strengthens its arsenal of repression and criminalization of workers' struggles and popular struggles.
The hard competition for control of markets and sources of raw materials is already reflected in conflicts and wars. The dirty war lead by the imperialist powers and their military wing NATO against the people of Afghanistan, also has as a background motivation the control of future gaspipes and minerals contained in his soil.
Therefore, we say "we will not pay for your crisis, we will not pay your wars."
We say that money should not go to war and militarization, but to the satisfaction of social needs, education, health, social protection for the greatest number.
We say “NATO troops out of Afghanistan" and " imperialist troops out of Iraq. "
We also express our solidarity with the Palestinian people and the population of Gaza, subject for months to an inhuman blockade organized by the reactionary government of Israel. With the progressive forces in the world, we condemn the criminal Zionist policy and demand the immediate withdraw of the blockade. We denounce the complicity of UE and support the struggle of the Palestinian people for the recognition of their national rights.
For an alternative to break with the imperialist capitalist system
The severe austerity plans affect all the layers of the population. The need to work to the union of all the categories victims of these policies of social regression is more timely than ever. We are working to build this unity, through ambitious front policies, which incarnate the refusal to pay the crisis of the capitalist system, the refusal of austerity policies. We say that banks, shareholders, oligarchs have to pay for their crisis and we want to work with all forces, political and social, that share this objective, to enforce it effectively, through always stronger mobilizations.
The depth of this crisis poses acutely the need to work on the development and implementation of policies to break with the system. These policies must rely on social measures and concrete policies, to be imposed immediately, in and through the struggle and the mobilization of the masses. These social requirements must be the bases of programs breaking with the system and brought by coalitions of political parties, social forces, mass organizations ... We use all political and democratic spaces, including the electoral arena, to make us heard by the greatest number and win the masses to our positions.
As parties and organizations claiming themselves from the working class, we affirm our conviction that the only effective and long-lasting way out of the imperialist capitalist system crisis goes through his overthrow and the establishment of socialism. All our struggles are in this perspective.
Hail the struggle of the working class, youth and people to refuse to pay for the crisis!
It's the oligarchy to pay its crisis
Hail international solidarity
Paris, June 2010
Workers’ Communist Party of Denmark (APK)
Communist Marxist Leninist Party of Spain (PCE(ml)
Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de France (PCOF)
Organisation for the recontruction of the Communist Party of Greece (1918-1955)
Communist Platform of Italy (Plata Forma Communista)
Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey (TDKP)
Marxist-Leninist Organisation “Revolution” (Norway)
Members of the International Conference of Marxist Leninist Parties and Organisations (CIPOML)
Observer: Organization for the Construction of a Workers Communist Party of Germany
No comments:
Post a Comment