Global Turmoil
Capitalist crisis, a socialist alternative
Section One: World Relations
Chapter Three: Europe and the World Revolution
Europe remains a key area in world relations and for the future of the world revolution. The European proletariat is the oldest, with the longest traditions and, up to the outbreak of the Asian crisis showed most, clearly the re-emergence of the working class. Strikes and movements of the working class have broken out most noticeably in France, in the near general strike in Denmark, in the ferocious bank workers’ strike in Greece, in the chemical workers’ strike in Italy, and in most countries in Europe. Economic developments in Europe in the next year or so are a guarantee of an increase in the tempo of resistance of the working class to the European bourgeoisie’s neo-liberal policies.
At the moment, Europe appears to be out of economic synchronisation with Asia with estimates of an increase in the growth rate of the Euro-zone, which rose by 3.2% in the first quarter of 1998. Bourgeois economists are hoping that Europe will catch up with the US, with annual growth in the first quarter approaching 4%. Exports and imports have increased substantially and even countries with a low rate of growth, such as Germany, seem to have experienced a certain upswing in 1998. However, the Asian crisis and the ending of the growth cycle in the US will have a dramatic effect on Europe’s economic perspectives.
If during the ‘boom’ there is a preparedness of the proletariat to move to defend their position, it is easy to envisage how ferocious defensive battles will probably take place in the event of big rises in unemployment. A heightened political consciousness by the mass of workers and a preparedness to draw far-reaching socialist and revolutionary conclusions by the more advanced layers, will result from a deep recession or slump. It must be remembered that during the 1990s boom, the gap between rich and poor, the differences between wealth patterns between one part of Europe and another, have increased enormously. Parts of Greece, Spain and Italy receive less than a fifth of the annual income per head of richer regions. In the north German port city of Hamburg, the richest single region in Europe, average income is over $60,000 per head, whereas in areas of the Greek island of Crete, in Calabria in Italy, and Extremadura in Spain, incomes are about one-sixth of that.
A tale of two Europes
The poverty belt of Europe is defined as regions where the GDP per head is less than 75% of the EU average. This would include all of Greece and all of Portugal except Lisbon, rural Spain, southern Italy and the former East Germany. Surprisingly, areas of Austria and the British regions of Merseyside and south Yorkshire are included. Apart from the former East Germany, south Yorkshire and Merseyside are the only two ‘poor’ regions in northern Europe. As an indication of the grinding poverty, which has followed on the heels of massive deindustrialisation in both areas, each area has a per capita income of about £8,400 against an average of £11,400 for the rest of Britain which, in turn, is one of the lowest in Europe. The EU average income is £12,000 ($19, 680).
The divisions within countries are just as stark. Greater London is the only region that makes the top 12 of Europe’s regions, with a GDP per head of 139% of the EU average. This disguises the massive belt of poverty that exists in London. In Germany, Hamburg enjoys almost four times the income per head of former East German provinces. Brussels is more than twice as wealthy as the depressed former mining region of Hainaut, barely 80km down the road, while average income in Paris is more than twice as much as Corsica and Languedoc. Lombardy, Italy’s richest region, is nearly three times better off than Calabria.
Overall, the statistical picture of two Europes - a rich north and a poor south - according to the British newspaper, The British Guardian, "endures despite decades of subsidies and financial aid from Brussels". And this aid, which has cushioned some of the poorer areas and countries of Europe, is about to be cut back substantially. The German bourgeoisie was prepared to underwrite the EU with massive subsidies up to now. This was the economic price they were prepared to pay for their domination of the EU in tandem with the French bourgeoisie. But the increasing economic difficulties of German capitalism and the approach of the German general election, against the background of rising opposition in Germany to the EU, forced Kohl to demand a cut of Germany’s contribution to the EU budget. This is in advance of a serious recession or slump in Europe in the wake of economic events in Asia and the US
These developments, together with the huge economic divisions in Europe, mean that a common economic and monetary policy, including the euro, cannot be fully implemented. The question of the single currency has become more and more of a prominent issue. The Netherlands finance minister warned that his country will vote against Italy joining EMU without a "tough Italian budget". Italy itself is not sharing in the growth that is taking place in other parts of Europe. Its target of 2.5% growth in 1998 has been called into question by bourgeois economic analysts, particularly as GDP fell by 0.1% in the first quarter of 1998. The state debts of Italy remain intractable and in the German Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, the regions of Bavaria and Saxony abstained in votes on the EMU because of ‘concern’ about Italian debt levels.
The EMU project will break down in fact. The timing of this breakdown is dependent on economic developments not just in Europe but in Asia and, above all, in the US. It is not a question of ‘if’ the euro will break down, but of ‘when’ and ‘how’. With the change in the economic situation, and given the colossal accumulation of social problems even during the boom, the European proletariat will inevitably face a revival of its fighting capacity and the renewal of its organisations, particularly the trade unions.
Ethnic tensions in the Balkans
This will be against the background of increased nationalist and ethnic tension in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe. In Kosova it is clear that the Serbian regime of Milosevic, basing himself on the narrow layer of the Serbian 10% of the population in Kosova, is carrying through a policy of subjugating the Kosova Albanians. He is expelling them from the frontier areas (to stop the supply of weapons for the KLA/UCK) and has carried out the settlement of Serbs in Kosova to change the ethnic composition. All the major imperialist powers are terrified that Kosova will become the spark of a new Balkan conflagration, which would dwarf the conflict in Bosnia.
While the majority of the population of Kosova are in favour not just of self-determination but of complete independence, this is presently opposed by all the main imperialist spokespersons. One of their concerns is the example this could set in the unravelling of other multinational states. They are urging Milosevic to return to the autonomy status Kosova enjoyed, before this was abrogated in 1989. Failure to do this will only stoke up support for the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) which at one stage controlled one-third of the territory of Kosova. Independence for Kosova could lead to a full-scale military conflict with Serbia, leading to an even greater expulsion of Albanian Kosovars into Albania itself.
This, in turn, would draw in Macedonia with its huge Albanian population, which then could involve both Greece and Turkey. This is one of the reasons why the Greek regime, despite its hostility to Macedonia (which it insists on calling Skopje), recently made a common declaration with the Macedonian government opposing independence for Kosova and arguing for ‘autonomy’. Despite all the efforts of imperialism, including Yeltsin’s Russia, which has urged Milosevic to make concessions, it cannot be ruled out that a new conflagration could detonate throughout the Balkans.
The deployment of Serbian military forces against the ethnic Albanians led to "a display of force" and the threat to "go further" by NATO forces in the area. Basing themselves, allegedly, on what happened in Bosnia, bourgeois commentators in Britain have urged an immediate military intervention in Kosova unless Milosevic draws back. However, large-scale military intervention with troops on the ground is ruled out, especially at the beginning of a conflict. Air strikes would be as counter-productive as they would have been in Iraq and, moreover, would earn this time the outright opposition of the Russian Yeltsin regime that acts as a shield for Milosevic. The nationalist and ethnic tensions, which have broken out in the Balkans and remain as intractable as ever, are an indication of the impossibility of solving these issues on the basis of capitalism.
The role of the workers’ movement, of taking an independent class position, of urging unity between the working class, and opposition to the nationalist poison of the different bourgeoisies, would assume great importance. The initiatives taken by our comrades in Greece and, above all, in Cyprus could be an important example for what we could do in the event of a new Balkan war.
However, it is not just over Kosova but also in Cyprus that the war clouds have gathered recently. The threat of Clerides, the Greek Cypriot President, to deploy Russian missiles on the Greek side and the visit of four mainland Greek F-16 aircraft and transport aircraft to the new Paphos air base in the southern, Greek-controlled, part of Cyprus, led to a reciprocal deployment of airplanes by Turkey in northern Cyprus. Turkey has now threatened to use the air bases in northern Cyprus, where it has stationed 30,000 troops since its invasion in 1974, particularly if Russian missiles are installed by the Greek Cypriot government. While neither the Greek nor Turkish bourgeoisies wish to go to war at this stage, these clashes are an indication of the underlying tension which continues. Cyprus enjoys one of the highest living standards in Europe if not the world. But the fate of former Yugoslavia, considered as part of "civilised Europe" , is a warning of what can happen if underlying national tensions explode. These developments are also against a background of the failures of plans to reunite Cyprus on some kind of federal basis.
The cost to the environment
Moreover, just as environmental disaster in Asia, particularly in Indonesia, went hand in hand with economic collapse, so the recent mud-slides in Italy indicate the price that the peoples of Europe will play environmentally for a continuation of capitalism. Moreover, they are not unique. The destruction and deaths in the Sarno Valley in southern Italy have come after recent lethal flash floods in eastern Spain. Most environmental experts expect that areas of Portugal, Greece and Turkey will suffer the same fate as they become ‘richer’ and ‘more developed’.
Across southern Europe in particular, but not exclusively, vested capitalist interests have based themselves on a system of eliminating natural methods of cultivation by which excess rainfall can be absorbed harmlessly. There has been a continual clearance of ‘green belts’ for development, by the methods of forest fire. There have been a huge number of forest fires around the Mediterranean that have been started deliberately by developers to ensure that areas they have targeted lose their natural beauty. One of the side effects is to loosen the underlying soil that can lead to the kind of death and destruction witnessed in southern Italy. Moreover, the absence of planning permission can lead to individuals unsafely adding extensions to their houses, or the erection of houses by unscrupulous builders that can easily collapse under the pressure of sudden rain. According to one estimate, 207,000 houses have been built without permission in Italy. This would cover an area more than ten times the City of London. Many have been constructed without proper drainage or even on river beds that seem empty, until the next once-in-a-century storm. One whole town in Campania, in the Naples area, with 15,000 inhabitants has been created without the slightest official authorisation. Even right-wing papers in Italy have spoken of the "collective suicide" and "the environmental pillage" that is taking place.
These environmental disasters are the logical outcome of the ‘free market’ which has held sway throughout the 1990s. But the reaction against the catastrophe in southern Italy has led to protests, which will swell into mass movements and merge with those which arise from economic and social factors. The period of the 1990s was a watershed for Europe, which will be followed not by environmental but by social storms in the period that we are going into.
Socialist ideas and new workers' parties
The movement of ex-social democratic leaders to a more and more open bourgeois position will leave a space for the development of socialist and revolutionary ideas. At a later stage, these will lead to mass workers’ formations. The process of bourgeoisification has affected not just the right wing of social democracy but those who claim to be on the ‘left’ as well. Oskar Lafontaine, leader of Germany’s SPD, declared it firmly in 1995-96 as a "left-wing party". In the run-up to the German general election, he now declares that the decidedly right-wing economic policies of Clinton is a "model" for an SPD-led government if it comes to power after the September general election. At the same time, Lafontaine wants to maintain the fiction of still standing on the ‘left’. Therefore, in an attempt to square the circle, while supporting Clinton he also calls for a "move back towards more social justice, more equality of opportunity, more jobs, more opportunities for people to hold the productive capital of society".
Clinton’s US is in marked contrast to this latest stated ideal of Lafontaine. Unbelievably he declares that wages in the US have "been geared to growth and productivity". But Lafontaine knows that the productivity growth in the US has been on the basis of the increased exploitation of the working class and that real wages have, in effect, been standing still for the last two decades. At the same time, he has admitted that "net wages fell last year for the first time in Germany’s post-war history. Lafontaine to a limited extent merely fills the role of a decorative ‘left’ to Schröder. Schröder, like Blair in Britain, is an openly bourgeois figure without the disguise, which has been assumed, for instance, by Jospin in France.
Left's ideological capitulation
Indeed, throughout Europe, the left while retaining a lingering terminological difference with the right wing of social democracy, have in effect capitulated to the ideological campaign of the bourgeoisie for the adoption of neo-liberal policies. Even the Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) which was the most left mass party in Europe in the 1990s, adopted policies which can be broadly described as reformist. While it has zigzagged in its support, at one stage supporting the Prodi bourgeois government and then into opposition, in the last period it has supported the government on crucial votes in the Italian parliament. It has voted for public expenditure cuts, which are the biggest since the second world war.
In Britain the Labour left has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, with Benn clinging to the wreckage of the Labour Party and advocating that workers should stay in to ‘fight’. Yet every avenue to swing the Labour Party back towards the left has been systematically blocked by the Blairites. The National Executive Committee has been reduced to a rubber stamp for the government. The national conference has been in effect abolished. The Blairites are now proposing to introduce a system of vetting the parliamentary candidates, which will remove all undesirable ‘lefts’ from any selection process for them to become MPs. In fact, the process has already started in Scotland with the exclusion of lefts like Dennis Canavan and others (who are already Westminster MPs) from Labour candidates’ lists for the Scottish Parliament.
The attacks from the right, however, are unlikely to provoke a major defection of the left from the Labour Party, either in Scotland or in the whole of Britain in the next period. This arises from two factors. On the one side, they have no fundamental differences on policies with the right. This is typified in Britain by the stance of Labour MPs such as Chris Mullin - formerly on the ‘extreme left’ of the Labour Party and close assistant and confidant of Tony Benn. Mullin now states that it is only possible for ‘right of centre’ governments of the ‘left’ to be elected in the changed circumstances which have developed in the 1990s. The other factor that determines the indolence and ineffectiveness of the left is their utter pessimism on the capacity and willingness of the working class to fight back at a certain stage against the neo-liberal offensive.
One of the political repercussions of a new serious recession or slump will be a reactivating of the working class in countries in Europe where they have been relatively dormant, as in Britain. In other countries, where there is a serious level of resistance already, the movement will go to new heights. All of this will have an effect on the development of the left.
The movement of the bourgeoisie towards more ‘national’ policies (in Europe they could also take the form of regional measures), means the more this will provide a basis for the emergence of new reformist moods amongst the working class and, as a consequence of this, the development of new reformist and left reformist movements. The idea that we can by-pass the stage of reformism, left reformism and centrism, because of the weakness of these formations at this stage, is wrong.
We in no way mitigate the importance of seizing the opportunities which exist now for the development of the revolutionary organisations of the CWI at the present time. But, as we have stated on many occasions, we cannot fully occupy the vacuum that exists at the present time. However, we can partially fill this vacuum and in fact build powerful revolutionary poles of attraction, which can be decisive in the development of new mass workers’ formations in the future. But reformism, left reformism and centrism are not just the inventions of a few leaders at the top but also represent a confused stage in the developing consciousness of the mass of the working class. However, a balanced assessment of the possibility of left reformist and centrist currents emerging in the future is one thing, but to engage in a kind of Sherlock Holmes-type hunt, with magnifying glass in hand, to discover these currents now, is entirely futile. It is vital that the small forces of Marxism, gathered in the ranks of the CWI, dig roots amongst the youth in particular. We must assemble the best layers of the working class under our banner, thereby developing the base to be able to intervene in the future revolutionary storms.