The struggle against the EU ’s financial dikta ts is a class issue

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The struggle against the EU’s financial diktats is a class issue
29 March 2010

Before and during the recent EU summit, the conflict between Europe’s
governments assumed an extremely sharp character. At the start of the
deliberations of the European leaders in Brussels last Thursday,
Stefan Kornelius wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “Germany is going
through its worst foreign policy crisis in decades.”

The row flared up over whether or not the European Union should hold
out the prospect of financial assistance for Greece. EU Commission
President Jose Manuel Barroso expressly called for an EU-assistance
programme, in order, as he said, to prevent a financial disaster with
unpredictable consequences. As a former president of Portugal, he
spoke in the interests of the governments in the southern European
countries, which like Greece are threatened with national bankruptcy.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU)
spoke out strongly against this position, warning against a softening
of the Maastricht criteria, which stipulate that a country’s budget
deficit cannot rise above 3 percent of gross domestic product and that
its total national public debt cannot exceed 60 percent of GDP. In the
face of the international economic crisis, all governments must uphold
strict financial discipline, Merkel stressed. She demanded that the
Greek government unconditionally adhere to the austerity measures it
has adopted.

In taking this hard-line stance, Merkel and the German government are
responding to a fundamental economic dilemma. Any EU aid package for
Greece would call into question the EU Stability Pact, increasing
pressure on the euro. The value of the euro has fallen by about 20
percent against the US dollar from a peak of $1.60 in the spring of 2008.

The refusal to offer European funding, however, involves no lesser
dangers. It could trigger sovereign defaults in Greece, Portugal and
Spain, accelerating the collapse of the euro even further.

This dilemma is directly related to the fact that despite the
existence of the European Union, despite the Single Market, the
abolition of customs duties and border controls, and despite the
introduction of a common currency in 16 of the 27 EU members, the
various European nation-states still exist, and all important
decisions are taken at a national level.

Under conditions of economic growth and prosperity, the majority of
European governments were able to profit from the EU, the euro and
Single Market. But faced with the economic crisis, conflicts between
the states are intensifying. Germany, which long supported the
expansion of the EU with large financial contributions, because it
benefited from it economically, is now using its economic power to
dictate drastic social cuts and austerity measures.

The recent Brussels summit decided that the EU would not provide
direct financial aid for Greece. Only in extremis would it support
measures taken by the International Monetary Fund through so-called
bilateral aid from EU countries. This decision was directly determined
by the interests of European and international finance capital. It was
made abundantly clear to the Greek government that it must enforce the
planned austerity measures against growing popular resistance. It was
made equally clear to Barroso that this also applies to Portugal,
Spain and Italy.

A signal was sent out to the financial markets, that if a state faced
insolvency—the ultima ratio (last resort), as Merkel termed it—then
the profits of the European and international banks would not be
endangered, but would be protected by an international rescue
programme. However, such a rescue package would itself be bound up
with the need for governments to impose drastic conditions.

Rarely before has the European Union so nakedly revealed its true
character as a tool to enforce the dictatorship of the European banks,
with Germany—the strongest representative of European
capitalism—setting the tone and dictating the terms.

In the past, the EU had advocated the peaceful and harmonious
unification of Europe. But the economic crisis has cut the ground from
under this propaganda. As at the beginning of the last century, so
today, the unification of Europe under capitalism is a reactionary
utopia. As in 1914 and 1939, it means the strongest European power
dominating all other states on the continent.

A few months before the Nazis came to power in Berlin in the autumn of
1932, Leon Trotsky summarized the historic crisis of Europe and the
special role of capitalism in Germany with the following words: “If
the economic evils of our epoch, in the last analysis, result from the
fact that the productive forces of humanity are incompatible with
private ownership of the means of production as well as the national
boundaries, German capitalism is going through the severest
convulsions just because it is the most modern, most advanced, and
most dynamic capitalism on the continent of Europe.”

Squeezed into the narrow confines of the European nation-state system,
German big business is once again trying to dominate the economy of
Europe.

This offensive is meeting with opposition. Last week saw sharp attacks
on Germany from politicians of smaller nations, who accused Berlin of
ruthlessly exploiting its economic advantages and of pushing other
European countries into taking on debts from which the German banks
would benefit the most.

At the same time, the trade unions and their related organizations,
such as SYRIZA in Greece, are playing a leading role in spreading
nationalist propaganda. On the last day of action, they called for a
boycott of German goods. Such appeals serve primarily to help them
cuddle up to their own government and to suppress a joint struggle by
European workers.

The working class must reject these initiatives and nationalist
attacks. Anti-German nationalism is no better than German chauvinism;
they are two sides of the same coin. The equally bloody and tragic
consequences of this policy are all too familiar in Europe.

The struggle against the EU’s financial diktats is not a national
question but a class issue.

To fight back against the draconian austerity measures, which the
Papandreou government wants to enforce on behalf of the European
banks, Greek workers must join together with their German colleagues
and all other European workers. During the dictatorship of the
colonels in the 1960s and 1970s, many workers came from Athens,
Thessaloniki and other parts of Greece to find work in Germany and
other European countries. Many still have friends and acquaintances
from this time in a number of countries.

These international ties must now be deepened and developed on the
basis of an international socialist programme. Such a programme must
start from the fundamental principle that the workers in every country
are not responsible for the economic crisis and its impact. The claim
that there is no money is a lie. For years, the ruling elite in each
country has plundered the wealth created by the working class and has
enriched itself further through the destruction of social conditions.

To solve the crisis, it is necessary to break the power of the
financial aristocracy. This requires the expropriation of the banks.
In order to finance production and trade, private ownership of these
vast financial resources must be abolished, and they must be placed
under the democratic control of working people. This calls for a
struggle against the reactionary and cowardly politics of the unions
and their petty-bourgeois lackeys, which is sabotaging any serious
fight against the international banks.

The working class must not allow the Balkanization of Europe. It must
take up an international struggle for the establishment of workers’
governments and the United Socialist States of Europe.

Ulrich Rippert

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m29.shtml

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