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Well, ALL European countries are now faced with AUSTERITY BUDGET CUTS. Such a global, pan-European answer to the crisis is to the credit of the ECB and the EU finance ministers. Greece, Ireland, France, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, ... they are all implementing the self same policies that the corporate European interests have been drafting in Brussels. European socialists' worst fears about the EU have been amply realized. Instead of uniting a continent that used to be fraught with rivalries and imperialism, the EU has produced a "European capitalist class consensus", which has its own agenda. This agenda is primarily directed at dismantling any "silly notions of welfare statism such as Europeans experienced in the 60s to 80s". The cost of labour is far too high in Europe, and must "be brought under control". Furthermore, budget cuts must be made across the board. Finally, Europe must understand that it can no longer rely on welfare states, that mass unemployment is inevitable and that production must be outsourced to Asian countries. Europe must rely more on a "finance-directed" economy. I expect massive strikes in Spain and Portugal over the coming year and industrial action in Germany and Sweden. Irish workers could also come out in a general strike, but they generally tend to seek parliamentarian outlets to their anger. As for France, the good news is that unions are still strong (although of course only 6% of workers are unionized) and the recent three-week long general strike has ended in a sort of "stalemate", Sarkozy having called in a new government and indicated that the dismantling of the health care service was "no longer our top priority". The retirement age extension has come into law but there are indications that, in order to diffuse unrest, the Socialists would be in favour of a referendum on the issue. The Socialists are widely believed to be the winners of the next French general election in 2012, and therefore they have been very cautious on the subject of the retirement age. They apparently don't want to make any promises they can't keep. Which explains why they refuse to promise a return to the 60-year old retirement limit. Last week a poll showed that "68% of French people believe a Socialist government would not overturn Sarkozy's policies on the retirement age". Which all goes to show that people are far from dumb, they just mistrust the ruling elite that keeps telling them what to think. The NPA was very active in the 10/10 French strikes. The only problem is that they were seen to be too openly present in those unions and organizations they controlled. In my home town, striking workers were weary of seeing the same NPA people in top positions in both the FSU union and the SUD union, not to mention the Family Planning-Feminist Front, the countryside-urban organic food alliance, the Libre Pensée (the main French Atheist Free-Masonry lodges organization), ATTAC France, Ecole Emancipée (organization of teachers in favour of alternative teaching methods), etc. I think the NPA has got a lot of extremely good activists, is more active than any other left-wing group, and yet fails to achieve the same electoral scores as the Left-Party/CP alliance. First of all, I think the NPA lacks any influence on the main French union, the CGT (who is paranoid about the NPA and actually has a special "bureau" devoted to countering NPA infiltration). Secondly, the NPA does not benefit from nostalgia for the 60s, a period during which the French CP and the CGT got 25% of the vote. The NPA are still seen as "Trotskyists", as somewhat alien to the old division between CP-oriented and "libertarian"-oriented. A situation that makes them allies of libertarian communist/revolutionary syndicalist groups, who benefit from a very old tradition in France, there having been libertarian communist strongholds in certain regions since the 19th century (Lyon, Nantes, St Nazaire where May 68 started, St Etienne, Toulouse, Perpignan). The NPA is currently seeking to imbibe this tradition, but the problem is, schisms are in the making if it pursues that road too far, as "socialism from bellow" tendencies are already starting to conflict with the Leninist traditions of the NPA leadership. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
