Dave Stockton
As mass strikes sweep France, Spain, Greece
Indefinite general strikes can beat European cuts
A massive wave of strikes is shaking Europe, as millions of workers walk out of factories and offices and take to the streets against the most vicious set of cuts since the war.
A series of one-day general strikes paralysed France, Spain and Greece – a similar strike is planned for Portugal next month.
Weak capitalist governments – from right wing Sarkozy in Paris to ‘socialist’ Zapatero in Madrid – are desperate to press ahead with their huge cuts packages, to make workers pay the price for the trillion euro bailout of the banks in 2008. So they are trying to stand firm.
And so far these one-day strikes have not been enough to force the governments to back down. They need to go further.
An indefinite general strike in France, Spain or Greece could break the cuts programmes, bring down the bosses’ governments and open a fight for working class rule. And that is precisely why the leaders of Europe’s social-democrat, socialist and Communist parties and unions are dead set against it.
Workers show their strength
There can be no doubt that, given a lead, the organised European working class is ready and willing to strike hard and smash the bosses’ offensive.
On 29 September unions in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Romania and Spain held one day general strikes while the European Trades Union Congress summoned 100,000 from across Europe onto the streets of Brussels in a massive show of strength .
In Spain, where a terrifying 20 percent are already unemployed, more than 10 million workers took part in the first one-day general strike in eight years. The protest targeted new laws which make it easier to fire workers, increase the retirement age from 65 to 67 and slash public sector workers’ wages by 5 percent. This offensive is being masterminded by premier Luis Zapatero so-called Socialist Party (PSOE).
The strike was called by the General Union of Workers (UGT) members and the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO). The UGT, with 800,000 members, backs the PSOE and the CCOO, which has more than a million members, backs the Spanish Communist Party (PCE).
Strikers closed main roads, shops and markets. Transport systems ground to a halt. The main car factories were at a standstill. And in Barcelona and Madrid, street fights broke out between police and strikers.
In Portugal unions called a general strike for 24 November.
In France, three million workers marched on 2 October in all the main cities to protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s attack on pensions, which will force people to work an extra two years before they can retire. This is the third mass demonstration in a month. Another one day general strike is planned for 12 October .
Marc Lassalle, a member of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste in France, told us: “It is far from certain that Sarkozy will win. The workers’ mobilisation is exceptionally long and deep. Polls say a record 72 percent are dissatisfied with him.”
But the greatest danger today is the compromising attitude of the trade union leaders.
The largest unions – the social-democratic CFDT, and the CGT which backs the Communist Party – are hoping for minor concessions.
François Chérèque, leader of CFDT, calls for “appeasement gestures from the government to open dialogue and build true reform”. Bernard Thibault of the CGT threatens a harder line but is ready to accept a deal.
Only the union SUD-Solidaires calls for a “grève reconductible” – an unlimited strike.
In Eastern Europe very severe wage and spending cuts are rousing workers to struggle. In Poland on 29 September thousands of workers from both major union federations – Solidarnosc and OPZZ – demonstrated. In Romania and Slovenia there are public sector strikes against massive job cuts.
British and German unions
But in central and northern Europe, 29 September was a different story. The main union federations – Germany’s DGB, Britain’s TUC – took virtually no action at all. In Germany it was rank and file anti-cuts coalitions who organised protests.
The TUC and DGB leaders accept that cuts are necessary to reduce the budget deficit and, in effect, just transmit the views of the ruling class and its experts that there is no alternative to cuts. This is also the message of the Socialist, Social Democratic, Left and Communist parties and their union federations: their ‘alternative’ to austerity is just to slow cuts programmes down.
Why? Their number one priority is to avoid a major political clash. They would prefer to watch and wait as the governments demolish the welfare systems won by the last three generations of the Labour movement.
In Mediterranean countries like Spain, France and Greece, the social democratic and Communist party trade unionists are more outspoken in their opposition. They demand more public spending and investment to stimulate the economy, but fall short of calling for the confiscation of the property of the big banks and corporations. Similarly they are prepared to call repeated one day strikes to let off steam and keep control of the movement, but will not countenance an indefinite strike because they know it would open a fight for working class power. In short, they fear revolution. So they propose piecemeal solutions to the economic crisis, and actions that fall short of a general strike, to save the system .
General crisis – general strike
But what we face today, in Europe and beyond, is not just a crisis of the financial system, not only a crisis of free market neo-liberal policies, but a fundamental crisis of capitalism.
The credit crunch and the recession were not caused by ‘too much lending’ or ‘too little lending’ – they were caused by a decline in profitability which is intrinsic to the way capitalism works. Faced with this, there is only one way the capitalists can make it profitable to invest once more, and that is to slash their underlying costs and destroy capital that can’t be invested profitably. That means much lower wages, pensions and welfare, mass unemployment and a huge transfer of wealth to the rich.
So the answer isn’t begging governments for more state spending to save the system – it’s to mobilise resistance to the cuts and direct it into a general strike against the cuts. And this would pose the question point blank: who rules? In an unlimited general strike, whether it begins in France, Spain, or Greece, local and regional committees of strikers would need to spring up to coordinate action and supplies to the strikers and working class communities. With society paralysed and the workers organising from below, the stage would be set for an uprising to take power into the hands of these committees and establish a working class state that could solve the capitalist crisis once and for all – by taking over the bosses’ property and creating a democratically planned socialist economy in which production is for need, not profit.
Then there would be no credit crises, no unemployment, and no austerity.
The present leadership of the workers in Europe – the social-democratic, labour and Communist parties – utterly reject this anticapitalist solution. And they are willing to allow the cuts to destroy our communities rather than risk revolution.
So the rank and file need to get organised in delegate based committees, like the coordinations that French workers built in their fight against the last round of government attacks, which can bring together all those who want to fight austerity and the governments who implement them. The German anti-cuts coalition that mobilised tens of thousands in July, despite the sabotage of most DGB leaders, also shows it can be done.
In every town and city, in every country, we need to set up anti-cuts committees. As the struggle develops we must turn them into fully fledged councils of action – made up of delegates from the workplaces, the unions, the schools and colleges, the organisations of migrants, women and youth.
Without for a moment letting the ETUC leaders off the hook or relaxing the pressure on them to act, we should build up a pan-European coordination from below involving the more militant unions like COBAS and FIOM in Italy, SUD–Solidaire in France, the RMT in Britain, with rank and file delegates linking up.
The aim is clear: fight for a general strik,e, action with the union leaders if possible, without them if necessary.
Conclusion
In summary, the basis is there to beat the austerity – but there is a crisis of working class leadership. The historic decision of the social democrats 90 years ago and the Communist parties in the 1930s to renounce revolution has a practical effect today: they will not fight for the level of action we need to beat the cuts in Europe because they fear it would bring down capitalism itself.
To get a general strike in any one of the key European countries, to maintain it until victory, to spread it to other countries, we need councils of action to both organise the struggle and fight for power – and we need new political parties committed to that revolutionary road. This historic crisis of the system is exactly the sort of period in which a fifth International – a new world party of the workers – can be built, opening the fight for a United Socialist States of Europe.