Françols Vercammen The OECD, the organisation of the main Imperialist states, has broken a taboo with its latest report. It admits that Germany and France will not meeton time the criteria set by the Maastricht accords.
The 'pact for jobs' of Germany's Chancellor Kohl outlines the prospects for the whole European Union-frontal assaults against social security.
Maastricht is running into ever bigger problems.
Someone suggested that one day the forecasters of the official institutions should be dragged before the courts, just like manufacturers who make dishonest adverts or put false information on the labels of their products. The prisons would have to act quickly. Everyone locked up for petty crimes would have to be freed in order to make space for those responsible for the economic situation which has developed over the last 15 years.
Not so long ago we were being told that econonic growth was just about to restart, and that the recession was temporary. They said 1995 was a disillusioning year, but 1996 would be much better.
Right-winger Jacques Chirac won the French presidential elections on the back of these reports. He had been able to go to the G7 summit in Lille and present himself as the champion of all forces joined up in the fight against There was the same refrain at the G7's Washington summit a few weeks later. 1997 would be a year of strong and Italy. growth, explained Le Monde back in April, because "the fundamental economic indicators remain promising".
However the only countries truth.
grow by one per cent this year. Last year it grew 1.9 per cent. Just a few days later the 'five wise men' who advise the German government cut that prediction in halfgrowth would be just half a per cent. That respectable institution also reaffirmed that the single currency should not be introduced unane enteral had been modified. A few days after that statement, the OECD announced that neither France nor Germany would fulfil the criteria on time. These 'reports' have very little to do with science and everything to do with political tactics. Since 1995 their tactics have revolved around the question they dare not ask in public-when and how can they tell the truth? The truth? The truth is that it is impossible to introduce a single currency within the timetable fixed at last December's Madrid summit. It is quite a problem for the dominant classes. To come out with the truth now would deprive them of the most powerful argument they use to justify their austerity policies. Yet the closer it is to the end of 1997, the more any adwith these results are those mission will destabilise the fithat have given up obeying nancial markets and put the the Maastricht plan and do not single currency even more in intend going back to it in the danger. A special Inter-Govshort-term: Sweden; Britain ernmental Conference at the start of 1998 will assess the The chief economist of the situation, studying statistics International Monetary Fund from the different countries. Michael Mussa has had thun- On top of all this, the finanderbolts rained down on him cial markets threaten to reby the great and good for sume speculating in pointing out this troublesome currencies If the Furo comes too late, or even not at all, one The facts speak for them- knock-on effect will be a specFOR conditions and union rights. class. Trotsky. its own class rule. imperialism in Ireland and worldwide. hands.
-- -- - UP AGAINST mass unemployment, rampant employers with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won public services, the working class in Britain faces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership Socialist Outlook exists to build a new type of working class leadership, based on class struggle and revolutionary socialism. The capitalist class, driven by its own crisis, and politically united by its need to maximise profits at the expense of the workers, has had determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal Tory high command. The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions, and to fragment and weaken the resistance, allowing them to pick off isolated sections one at a time. In response, most TUC and Labour leaders have embraced the defeatist politics of 'new realism', effectively total surrender, while ditching any pretence of being a socialist alternative. Every retreat encouraged the offensive against jobs, wages, New realism is the latest form of reformism, seeking only improved conditions within capitalism. We reject reformism, not because we are against reforms, but because we know that full employment, decent living standards, a clean environment, peace and democracy, can never be achieved under capitalism. Nor, as we argued long before the collapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achieved under the bureaucratically deformed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes survived only by repressing the working We are a marxist current, based not on the brutish totalitarian parodies or state marxism, nor on the tame. toothless version of 'marxism' beloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and OUR SOCIALIST alternative is not based on parliamentary elections or illusions of peaceful legislative change. We fight to mobilise and unleash the power of the working class to topple the corrupt and reactionary rule of capital and establish We struggle against fragmentation by building solidarity, to unite the various struggles of workers, the unemployed, of women, of pensioners, of the black communities, of lesbians and gay men, of students, of youth - and of those fighting Socialist Outlook is above all an internationalist current, in solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises in over 40 countries. Unlike some other groups on the British left, we do not believe a mass revolutionary party can be built simply by proclaiming ourselves to be one. This degenerates into sectarian posturing and abstention from struggles in the labour movement, playing into right wing Nor do we believe that the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland, Ireland and Wales should be left to await revolution. The oppressed must organise themselves and fight now for their demands, which are a part of the struggle for social. ism. But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The fight for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers in struggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight for their rights.
To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key issues such as racism and fascism - in which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to debate differences. If you agree with what you see in Socialist Outlook, and want to join with us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in cities across the country. Contact us now, get organised, and get active!
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