Europe including the Sovict Union in a United Socialist States of Europe based on a new intemational economic cooperation and nationalist. A Europe that supports the struggles of the peoples of the of the workers cast and west and builds a society with political and so- cial institutions based on instruments of direct socialist democracy and division of labour A Europe that is socialist, democratic and inter- For a Europe of the workers and oppressed, Fast and West! Socialists should approach 1992 with the slogans: a political and strategic altemalive to the SEA. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15 May 1989 No to the Single European Act. The trade union and labour self-management.
A pure example of capitalist, pan-European planning: climbing (part of) the British grain mountain. No to the bosses' 'single market': European Elections I PHOTO: siohn Harri
American and Japanese companies. This would be bad enough even if it were true: but there is nothing to suggest that a 'European capitalism" is really on the agenda. They are simply trying to create a sort of Europcan chauvinism which they will use to justify more redundancies, produc- market by arguing that what is at stake is fighting competition from For a United Socialist States of tivity speed-up, wage freezes and other measures. Europe THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS of June 1989 are going to be mainly centred on the theme of the 'single market' of 1992 and the Single European Act. After years of austerity and in- creasing unemployment, the unification of western Europe is now presented as a hope of new growth and a big reduction
should be denounced in the same way as any other chauvinist defence of The perspective of the 'big market" is certainly one of the answers through which the major European firms could sock to defend themse]- ves and squeeze out their rivals — but it is not the only one. In certain in- dustries, for certain products or research programmes, their alternative solution has been alliances or mergers with American or Japanese com- nationalisation of the capitalist economy: the Europe of 1992 is only one Tink in the chain of reorganisation, The ideological attempt to develop a "European patriotism' to help sugar the pill of industrial restructuring The Single European Act (SEA) is completely orientated to increas- ing profits from capital. In no way is it an attempt to satisfy the nigin so- panies. The fundamental trend in the situation is the increased Inter- "national' capitalism. Yet no amount of reorganisation of capital can conceal or eliminate expand profitably through increasing its exploitation of the working class. The consequences of this will be just as grave for workers on a market will mean all-out competition between the nations, each keeping in unemployment, implying that the economic crisis which capitalism cannot resolve at a national level can somehow be the fundamental conflict of interest between the classes: capital can only European level as they have been in cach individual country. The single its own national regulations and norms, tax sysems, leveis of produc- Through this competition is supposed to emerge a thorough reor ganisation of European industry and an economic upturn. Certain overcome on a continent-wide basis. tivity and working conditions.
solution is required, based on the expropriation of private capital across ary solution, seeking to mobilise the labour movement throughout the continent. The penalty for failure will be to allow the employers further scope to regroup their forces for more concerted attacks on the working SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15 May 1989 cial needs or to attack unemployment and poverty. To do that, a socialist the continent and the liberation in castern Europe of the nationalised means of production from the paralysing grip of Stalinist bureaucracy. The way forward for the workers and oppressed has to be a revolution- class. defenders of' the "single market" even argue that the shock of abolishing the frontiers, eliminating the non-tariff barriers and free circulation of capital should give rise to a new economic order — once the laws of the free market have finally purged the system of all protectionism and what posite of a planned expansion of production to meet social needs in den in which the gulf between classes and hetween haves" and have The employers want to get European workers to agree to the single they see as an overdose of state intervention. All of this is quite the op Europe and world-wide; the single market will be a derculated bear-gar- nots" will widen. Page 24
PHOTO: Philip Gordon/Reflex reduced the inequality of trude. Under cover of protecting these counties it has increased their economic and political dependence. The Stahbex system which is supposed to regulate the receipts and exports of these countries has heen overtaken by fluctuating demand for raw materials, materials and imported commodities. The European workers' movement must lead the fight for the cancellation of Third World debts, for new, sion involving countries of the North and South in a concerted war on fiance our demand is that they leave and close down all US hases. The Franco-German brigade is the precumor of a project of gradual European military integration. We are opposed to all the proposals to strengthen or re-equip the military forces of Europcan imperialism, states in the cast. France and Britain must seas, and, along with other west European confrontations between workers and their increasing number of subsidiaries and links Page 25 and takes no account of the relationship between prices of exported raw favourable terms of trade, and a programme of planned economic expan- In all the European countries belonging to NATO and the Atlantic Al- whose sole function is to buttress capitalist nue over the working class in the west and to threaten the bureaucratised workers" unilaterally destroy their nuclear weapons, withdraw their troop garisons from over The interests of the big financial and in- dustrial gmupsare increasingly intertwined: there are more and more alliances, making bosses even more complex and difficult. An between Europcan multi-nationals has al- fectively outside the framework of any one The introduction of the single market is a challenge thrown down to the European workers' movement. The bosses hope it will establish a hetter relationship of forces for them to impose their wages policies and During these European elections there will be a lot of noise about the problems of the European institutions, the relationship hetween the states and the political workings of the Community, Though convinced of its needs on the cconomic front, the bourgeoisie is still hesitant to set up The perspective of a single market does not remove regulatory functions divide the working class. We have to expose and challenge these European institutions and over their relationship to the national states. ready put many decision-making centres ef- nation, confronting the trade union move- from national governments. This is why there are contradictions ae- states, disband their vast standing annies. ment with new problems and dangers. workers' movement A challenge for the bring many more redundancies. Such regulation of rush to set up shop inside Fortress Europe the essential disagreement Tokyo stock exchange, as Japanese firms competitive Europe. That's the social programmes we between us [and Jacques job-creating Europe, and Europe we wanted was a interviewed in Newsweek, I wanted were those that */ said that the social Delors]. " (Lord Young, would encourage an capitalist projects. entrepreneurial, April 17, 1989) poverty: the market that remains intact will lead to increased monopoly control, The while policies of privatisation encourage free market strategies irrespec- tive of social needs, especially in transport, energy, communications and economic crisis has widened these incqualities, and the single murket will increase them. Certain regions will experience cumulative growth while otbers will sink deeper into crisis, deindustrialisation and unemployment. The competition between different nets of regulations and standards is The Europe of 1992 will still be a Europe of unemployment. While The single market will not unify a bomogeneous Europe. There are al- plies gradual military integration (already there are moves towands a joint Franco-German military brigade) and a greater coherence of the different sive Line from European multi-nationals. From now on, the Community countries will act as a group in negotiations with Third World countries posed on dependent countries. They will act together in negotintions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and UNCTAD (the The Lome Convention, a mechanism regulating trade hetween the EEC and 63 countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, has not going to increase the pressure to reduce wages, impose 'flexible working" does not end with rationalisation of the community's market: it also im- national policies towards the Third World, coupled with a more aggres- on the debt. They will act as a group in talking to the USA and Jupan about the world market and monetary policies, which will then be im ready significant differences between countries and regions. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). the same methods and recipes that they have been Of course the workers will again bear the brunt The bosses want a 'unified' Europe based on tile industry or shipbuilding was supposed to be has been nose of this: so now a new refrain appears implementing in each individual country for the last fifteen years. They keep telling us that the profits of 'today" will he the jobs of "tomorrow" - followed by an upturn in employment and economic activity in the regions concered, There - blaming the failures up to now on tariff barriers oF the changes. The acceleration of industrial restructuring, the mergers, the takeovers - all of them cnormously profitable for bankers, finance houses, speculators and swindlers of all sorts - will just as the restructuring of the steel industry, tex. The workers will carry the itscif incrcase employment. Whole sectors benefit from the new markels offered by the with an income of less than half the average are young people. None of this will be duction of goverment policies designed to certain sectors and companics will in time removal of non-tariff harriers, this will not in are going to be affected by large-scale restructuring and rationalisation, which will have a fall-out effect on the job market. Al- ready in the EEC there are 44 million people income of their country. There are more than 16 million unemployed, 40 percent of whom changed by the SEA and its incantations The competition between tax systems, the need to bring VAT rates into line, the al- European workers are not the only ones to profitable countries, will all lead to the intro suffer from a united hosses! Europe. The tempts of each country to direct capital in- vestment towards the most financially attack working class incomes while benefit- scarch for greater profits in capitalist Europe SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15. May 1989 cost of the SEA ahout the single market. and national divisions. and worsen conditions. ting the capitalists. the media.
the EBC. Their bosses and governments argue that this gives them a "comparative advantage" that could bring great benefits in the single market. Workers must fight this logic and demand an improvement in social conditions to at least the levels prevailing in other BEC countries The trade anions should counterpose their main demands to the SEA. other countries around demands that such benefits are extended to them. Within nuch struggles for partial demands, socialists must raise the wider ing different wages and conditions must be fought. Some countries like tions and social benefits that are quite different from those elsewhere in management of the introduction of the ringle market. It should first of and the bosses. Te is through class struggle - and not through accepting the logic of the SEA and adding reformist social polcy demands - that fight to defend the gains already won in various countries, and fight in perspective: the problems of the working class and the oppressed will Attempts to create competition between workers in Europe by impos- Greece and Portugal, the Spanish state and Ireland suffer wages, condi- all be concerned about the relationship of forces between the workers never be solved while capitalism remains intact. the capitalist offensive can be blocked. EP TH Faced with the bosses' attacks, the workers" movement must oppose the SEA. Against a Europe of united bosses we must counterpose a Europe of workers united in a new, active internationalism and coopera- ments between different partics and sections of the employers. The workets" movement should start from its own demands and the goal of improving wages and living standards, Our apposition to the bosses' resents a device of European capital aimed at controlling the working able role of social control by the state machinery in each member country. The discussion on Europcan institutions, on the role of the European par- liament and Europcan Commission are purt of this question. In some There is also now a big discussion among the members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) on joining the European Com- munity. Here again the workers' movement has no interest in the argu- Europe is based on the fact that each of the institutions of the EEC rep- cumulating between the scheme of a united Europe and the still irreplace- For a Europe of the workers! countries this is increasing the crisis of right wing partice. class and preserving capitalist rule.
malched elsewhere in Europe. This and wider struggles, not by any socin! consensus or appeals to the ideals of The general strike in the Spanish state showed that it is possible for Workers must respond with demands wards, insisting that the advantages won in one country or one sector bc will be won only through trade union worker to oppose govermmental austerity policies and challenge the authority of capitalist goverments. - demanding the 40 hour week in Portugal, for instance. The fact is that the employers seck to bring wages, working conditions and social and action to force them into line up- benefits into line downwards. a 'united' Europe. things like co-determination. Now there's no way we would ever go we've lived through that, and 'social gains. He was talking would have, which included "[Delors] was talking about about the social Europe we back to that." Faced with the dangers of the SEA, the working class response must inter-union and national divisions The Irade union movement must crcate the instruments necessary to Link up and unite its forces in the in the struggle for socialist solutions in each country and across the con- IL is urgent for the trade union mation and struggles on a comany wide basis. This means that be broken down and chauvinist prejudices swept away. multi-nationals and Eumpean com- tich, raising their own class demands movement to establish means of coor- dination and centralisation of infor- have to tinent.
these examples found echoes across ganise jointly and spread struggles The Europe we want is not that of capitalism, exploitation, imperialist ambitions, militarism and repres- sion. In opposition to this capitalist Europe we put forward anotlier, dif- ferent, socialist Burope. The altema- The nurses' strikes in Britain and then in France last year and the present struggles of Italian health workers show not only that health and other social benefits are under attack across Europe, but that workers can fight back. There have also heen struggles of youth against cuts and attacks on education, and mass action by railworkers (France) and teachers: (France and Spanish stale). The german metalworkers took the lead in the fight for a 35-hour week. All Europe and point to the need to or- A socialist alternative and solidarity interationally. "(...) take the average Frenchman. same country with Italy, Germany, Ireland. I suspect at the end of the Greece, Portugal and Britain and Frenchman". (Lord Young on 1992 You see if he wants to be in the day he still considers himself a the past ten years is now going to back-track on all of them simply at the be notautopian, reformist idea of some sort of "European" social dialogue between bosses and unions (along the lines promoted so successfully by gle. There is no way that the Thatcher government, having faced down the struggles of the British labour movement to impose its policies for top Eurocrat Jacques Delors at last ycar's TUC Congress), but to strug: Fidence trick: it began only after the policy of a single Bumpe was al- ready decided, and represented the attempts by the reformist labour bureaucracy and politicians to amend or add to the SEA through top-level negotiations in carpeted offices in request of some European tri-partite talks: The same goes for any right how imposing superior European so- cial legislation across the continent, a 'social Eumpe?, was always a con- wing govemment. The talk of some-
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15 May 1989 nationality laws and restrictions on entry and refused equal political creased social services, especially childcare and health services; and full • The oppression of immigrant workers from colonial and semi- colonial countries, who are subjected to racist immigration and tive to the market economy and its be a socialist, democralic, fraternal internationalist Europe, built on the • The oppression of women, whose aspirations will never be fulfilled by the EEC or the single market. A socialist policy would guarantee the right to paid work; equal pay for work of cqual value: the right to educa- tion and training, full trade union and employment rights for part-time workers, free contraception; the right to free abortion on demand; in destructive consequences can only expropriation of private capital, on direct democracy and workers" Only such a Europe will be able to combat all oppression: participation in political and civic life. management. This al least makes clear the class content of the SEA, since no matter how civilised and social democratic may be their rhetoric, so long as the convinced that the 'single market" is a miracle solution to problems of economic growth. The European employers" associations, organised in sion have already announced that there is no question of enforcing any homogencous social policies onto member states, While the bosses want to intemationalise their capital as far as possible, they refuse workers the The workers' movement has nothing to gain from any so-called co- the CES, are already committed to the idcal of the single market: yet in The whole dialogue bas taken place between people who are already the name of deregulation and liherlism the employers and the Commis bencfit of the same level of social benefits across the 'united" Europe. employers are firmly in control any social policy concessions will simp ly be a facade to conceal the reality of capitalist exploitation. Brussels (suitably remote from the eyes and influence of the workers). Page 26
m brought up in Europe. rights, and of black communities bom and at work, in housing who suffer from racism, discrimination and access to social
• The appression in the North of Ireland heartlands of Europe- and nationalities in the and Buskadi - and in nations services. of
The Europe we completely different economic system, profit, and taking into want is based on a starting from produc- tion for need, not account the urgent task of protecting and. colonies like New restoning the aircady Caledonia. The
propriation of private capital and expansion of production to meet social ditions at work, in health and safety, paid holidays and retirement, the right to free, tax-funded health care, social socurity and education • Against women's oppression: for the right to abortion and con- traception on demand; for a massive expansion of state funded childcare, • Against raciam: repeal all immigration restrictions and racist nationality laws; for equal political rights including the right to vote for all immigrant workers, Defend the black conmunities against racist immediate unilateral nuclear disarmament. Dishand NATO and other im- perialist alliances, expel US bases, withdraw British French and other • Against destruction of the environment: halt building and close: down all nuclear power stations. For national and Europe wide plans to Our vision of a socialist Europe involves not creeping reforms oreven European movement: the revolution must begin in particular countries Page 27 ping and swindles, and lay the basis for alternative plans based on ex- • Against competition hetween European workers: for identical con- • Agamst imperialism and miliarism cancel the Third World dehit; "radical' restructuring of capitalism, but the revolutionary overthrow of the existing order. No single country can complete a socialist revolution in isolation, but there is no magic panacea to trigger a synchronised pan- The priority for the workers' movement is to develop links at runk and file and official level which can open up solidarity around key class bat- fles, especially in fighting the multinationals and opposition to austerity meat is an urgent task. Such a leadership is essential in the fight against reformist and Stalinist bureaucracy and for the perspective of the troops from overscan: disband the standing arnics of western Europe. measures. Within this the development of a revolutionary marxist leader- ship in the unions and other mass organisations of the workers' move- Batish tmops out of Ireland! Independence for New Caledonia! health and social services; equal pay for work of equal value. throughout the Community at the most favourable level. Forward to the united socialist states of Europe! A united Europe for the working class and oppressed - or for the bosses? protect and restore the environment Europcan socialist revolution. and spread Europe-wide. violence. bom our of the combined forces of the anti-capitalist struggles for socialist revolution in the west und the anti-bureaucralic struggle for political revolution in the east. Perestroika and galsnost are not miracle solutions to free the workers of eastern Eumpe from the repressive and Withour waiting any longer we have to organise the convergence of tionary socialist currents and parties in every country, linked through an international movement Such a tradition arcady exists — in the forces of Whatever the outcome of the European elections, the working class movement needs its own programme of demands wilich begin from the defence of gains already won and immediate needs, but which reach nut towards the necessary socialist transformation of sociely. Only in this way can we rcally Fight the implications of the Single European Act and • Against all austerity policies, whether implemented hy parties of tion, "co-management" and European ot national patriotism. Defend wasteful straitjacket of bureaucracy. Comecon is no more a voice for in- Bureaucratic unification, like murket unification, ina source of inequality struggles berween the workers' movement in westem Europe and the in- dependent organisations in eastern Europe, This means building revolu the right or left", For workers" unity against all forms of class collabora monitored hy trade union commitices —to compensate for each increase • Apainst unemployment: for trade union and political action to fight piant closures and redundancies, including European-wide action to fight rationalisation by multi-nationnis. Against the bosses" calls for neckings; demand a shorter working week - an immediate universal policy of a 35- hour week, leading to the wider policy of work sharing without loss of pay. Demand programmes of useful public works to create new jobs at • Against the capitalist restructuring of indastry: trade unions and other workers' organisations must demand the opening of the books of ternationalismi and solidarity between peoplen than is the EEC. the multinationals to expose the extent of hack-room dealing, asset strip- living standards against inflation through a sluding scale of wages the bosses' sraiegic roorganisation. The furst demands should be: A policy for the workers' movement SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15 May 1989 in prices, interest rales and taxation. the Trotskyist Fourth Intenational. 10 trade union rates of pay. Our perspective is damaged environment and resolving the probiem of energy uf u European socialist rederation, a workers" and oppression.
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of religion. Should we still see organised religion of any description as a bulwark of reaction, conservatism and obscurantism as Marx and Engels did in the nineteenth century? If so so how do With the Salman Rushdie affair still in the news, this month's Back to Basics looks the Marxist view The