E.U. Rulers’ Austerity Plan for Workers: Slash and Burn

PARIS, July 13 — Europe’s bosses are driving to slash government budgets, shifting cash from the working class into their own pockets. How deep? A lecturer at Warszawski University in Warsaw recommended on state radio that, “Another way [to cut the budget] is to limit the amount of people who are getting compensation as a result of health problems or having been categorized as terminally ill or incapable to work. This is one area where a lot of government funds disappear.” Learning from the Nazis….

Karl Marx wrote in “Capital” about labor being the source of all value, that under capitalism, the value produced by living labor is divided into two parts: “an equivalent of the value of labor power” (which goes to the worker), and “surplus value” (which goes to the capitalist). The capitalist’s goal is to reap as much surplus value as possible, and “the rate of surplus-value is therefore [determined by]…the degree of exploitation of labor-power by capital, or of the laborer by the capitalist.” Europe’s bosses are out to squeeze as much of that surplus value as possible out of sweat of the continent’s working class.

The Bank Bailout

European governments went deep into debt when they spent $5.3 trillion bailing out the banks during the credit crunch, reported a European Union (EU) Economic and Financial Committee document (5/26). To pay off that debt, EU governments are now slashing social security programs and pensions and raising the retirement age. Thus, they’re transferring vast amounts of money from the working class to the finance capitalists and therefore, as Marx said, are increasing “the degree of exploitation of labor-power.”

Imperialist Rivalry

Consequently, European capitalists are increasing their profitability. “Unfair competition” squealed their U.S. rivals at the June 25-26 G8 summit in Toronto. “Nobel prize-winning economist and arch-liberal Paul Krugman said that the situation was getting out of hand and the U.S. government needed to take action. He said: ‘[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel says that budget cuts will make Germany more competitive but competitive against whom, exactly? You know the answer, don’t you?’” (The Guardian, 6/11)

Workers in the U.S. and worldwide can expect copy-cat budget-slashing from “their” capitalists, as the bosses in each country ratchet down their government budgets in a race to the bottom.

European Bosses’ Budget-Cut Assault

On June 17, the European Council — including the heads of government or state of 27 EU countries — mapped a coordinated attack to slash budgets affecting the working class, in its “Europe 2020” strategy. Among Germany, the UK, France, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, and Portugal, between now and 2015, current and planned budget cuts will total $409.4 BILLION, as the vaunted European “social welfare” state gets slashed to ribbons.

This is resulting in two- and three-year government-worker wage freezes; frozen pension and welfare payments; pension cuts and two- to five-year increases in retirement ages; huge privatization programs across many government-run services; elimination of checks for child births and child benefits; cuts in government reimbursement for medicines and in unemployment benefits; closing of hospitals and schools (900 in Portugal alone!); and layoffs of teachers, nurses and other government workers into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

 “These cuts will result in significant harm to people’s health,” said David Stuckler, Oxford University Sociology Department. “It’s not just about doctors and medicines to care for the sick — social care and support are vital to prevent people from becoming ill.”

Racist Cuts

As a result of institutional racism, cuts in social security programs and pensions and higher retirement ages will hit black people and immigrants harder than native-born whites. In the UK, among youth between 16 and 24, the jobless rate for blacks is 50%, for whites it’s 20%. (Institute for Public Policy Research, January 2010) Proportionally, they will be hit harder by cuts in unemployment benefits, schools, and health care.

In Sweden, on June 9-10 two days of rioting erupted in the Rinkeby neighborhood of western Stockholm when immigrant youth were denied entrance to a local school dance. Mariam Osman Sherifay, chair of the Center Against Racism, said racism against Somalian and Turkish immigrants in Rinkeby is worse than ever. But the Swedish government — presumably “for budget reasons” — provides no funds to help them integrate into Swedish society.

In a number of European countries, “cost-cutting” is specifically linked to these attacks:

• Italy has made “irregular migration” a crime. Schoolteachers and local government workers are legally required to report “illegal” immigrants to the police. This prevents immigrants from gaining education and medical care. Local governments are allowed to create unarmed posses to patrol towns. This “may result in discrimination and vigilantism” against Roma families, according to Amnesty International’s 2010 report.

• In Germany, “illegal” immigrants and their children have limited access to health care, education and the courts in cases of labor rights violations.

* In 2008, Ireland cut funding 43% for its Equality Authority. The Equality and Rights Alliance says Ireland no longer has an effective body to oversee anti-discrimination policy. In 2009, non-Irish nationals were three times more likely than native-born to experience discrimination while job-seeking; black people were seven times more likely. (Economic and Social Research Group)

• Eight Roma women have filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights for having been sterilized after giving birth in a hospital in eastern Slovakia. The racist sterilizations were presumably intended to reduce the Roma population and its potential use of government services, thus “cutting costs.”

Sexism

Institutional sexism means that women will suffer disproportionately from cuts in government services, lower pensions and higher retirement ages. In the UK, women are trapped in low-paid, part-time work. Two-thirds of low-paid workers are women. Average pay for full-time working women is 17% less than for men. Nearly a million more women than men live in poverty in the UK. Every year, 30,000 women lose their jobs in the UK simply for being pregnant. (All statistics for 2007, before the world economic crisis!)

In France, 50% of women don’t qualify for full retirement pensions, partly because they’re forced to quit work due to a lack of childcare, and partly because they’re forced — more so than men — to work part-time and temporary jobs. Of four million part-time workers, 82% are women. And now their small retirement checks will be cut even further.

Union Hacks Defend Capitalism

Union “leaders” have barely reacted to this massive attack on the working class. In Ireland, when the government decided on its austerity measures, “The Irish unions say outright that they deliberately shied away from widespread strikes for fear of sparking a bond market meltdown.” (Reuters, 7/7)

In the UK on May 24, Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, fretted: “Taking any money out of the economy at the moment is dangerous, as there is a real risk of a double-dip recession.”

Bernard Thibault, head of France’s 711,000-member CGT union, worried that, “Austerity ... can be suicide for economic productivity.”

In Germany, Michael Sommer, chairman of the German Trade Union Federation, was tormented by the idea that, “The so-called savings concept of the federal government is a document [absent] of prospects and social imbalance. In view of the continuing crisis and demographic developments, it threatens the core of Germany’s sustainability.”

“Double-dip recession,” “productivity,” “sustainability” — these labor fakers are more concerned with saving capitalism than with protecting the working class!

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is planning protests and “possible” (!) work stoppages across the EU on Sept. 29 when EU finance ministers will meet. But on June 4, ETUC head John Monks still didn’t know how many unions or workers would join the protest. On June 9, Monks wrote to the EU heads of state and government begging them “to spread the reduction of national deficits over a longer and more realistic period.” He has no problem with stealing from the working class, as long as it’s done more slowly!

Communist Revolution

Clearly the working class cannot depend on these union hacks to defend it. The hacks’ very existence depends on the survival of capitalism. If you’re afraid of “hurting” the capitalist system, you cannot wage a meaningful fight against cutbacks. But as long as the bosses hold state power and control society, even gains against this assault will eventually be reversed. That’s why communist leadership is needed to turn this fight to roll back the cutbacks into schools for communism, to overthrow the whole capitalist system.

We make the whole cake. Why content ourselves with crumbs? Through communist revolution, we can create a society in which all the wealth created by our labor is shared by the whole working class