Latest news and analysis from The People's Movement below:
Sunday, July 31, 2011
ESM explained...
What is the European Stability Mechanism?
The Peoples' Movement
From 2013 the ESM will have the responsibility for providing loans to euro-zone member-states in difficulties—strictly conditional on the implementation of a range of “adjustment measures” and if the granting of the assistance is considered indispensable to safeguard the “stability of the euro area as a whole”—or, to put it more accurately, “assistance” conditional on turning a recipient country into a social and economic wasteland for the greater good of the euro.
Why amend the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to establish the ESM? The EU authorities propose amending one of the EU treaties, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, to give themselves a legal basis for establishing the ESM, using one of the self-amending provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. The Government proposes ratifying this amendment without reference to the people by way of a referendum. Part of the existing temporary EU “bail-out” arrangements will end in 2013.
The ESM was established under article 122 (2) of the TFEU but is under challenge in the German Constitutional Court. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, determined towards the end of 2010 to try to head off any further constitutional challenge and at the same time to take a further significant step along the road to total EU control of the economic policies of weaker member-states. The ESM, together with the Euro Plus Pact, is a quantum leap in EU economic government. How can you argue that there must be a referendum on the ESM when the Government and Fianna Fáil “opposition” refuse to countenance one?
Article 6 of the Constitution of Ireland proclaims the right of the people “in final appeal to decide all questions of national policy, according to the requirements of the common good.”
The Supreme Court laid down in the Crotty case that, as legal sovereignty in this state rests with the Irish people, only they can surrender sovereignty to the EU by referendum (or refuse to surrender it, as the case may be). The ESM is for much more than making permanent the temporary mechanism by which Ireland,
Greece and Portugal are at present being “bailed out.” It is a surrender in matters of control of national economic policy necessitating an amendment to an EU treaty. The purpose of a referendum would be to determine whether or not the Constitution should be changed so as to make EU law superior to Irish law in the area set out in the proposed amendment.
The refusal of the Government to publish the opinion of the former Attorney-General, Paul Gallagher, and any legal opinion it has obtained since coming into ofce attests to the fi fear among the Fine Gael-Labour Party-Fianna Fáil troika of an assertive public opinion demanding what is the democratic and constitutional right of the citizens of this country.
Government decisions of fundamental importance for the future of this country for generations to come, such as the disastrous bank guarantee and, more recently, the EU-ECB-IMF “bail-out,” were made without reference to the citizens of the country. The almost seamless continuity between the policy of the new Government with that of the previous one has denied citizens an opportunity to say Yes or No to those decisions.
What will Ireland’s ESM financial liability be? The state will be legally obliged to the ESM to the tune of approximately €11.13 billion—€1.28 billion in cash and the rest in the form of callable capital and guarantees. Ireland has not been given an opt-out. But that’s not the figure the Government gives!
No. The Tánaiste, Éamon Gilmore, gave a figure of €9.87 billion in response to a question in the Dáil on 13 April 2011, but in fact the country’s contribution is a set 1.59 per cent of the total subscribed capital of €700 billion, i.e. €11.13 billion. Gilmore confused the subscribed capital figure of €700 billion and the callable capital/guarantee figure of €620 billion when making the calculation. But was Gilmore not at least correct to claim that “the manner in which the ESM is structured means that each country’s contribution will not impact on its general government deficit”?
There is no cheap, hassle-free way out of the present crisis, and certainly not through buying in to the ESM. Ireland will have to issue debt to raise the money to be able to pay the €1.29 billion of paid-in capital for the ESM. This is money that could make a substantial contribution to the survival of the country’s health service or our welfare and education systems. Also, after 2013 will be the worst time to be lumbered with such a commitment. We should have exited the present EU-ECB-IMF “bailout” regime from late 2012 and returned to the market.
The country would (in theory) have to refinance a lot of its own debt from the bail-out, and at the same time go into additional substantial debt to pay its share of the ESM. In short, the ESM simultaneously would make our bonds riskier and more susceptible to restructuring and require more of those very bonds to be issued, in order to pay for itself.
But isn’t it an example of EU solidarity? The ESM would need €700 billion in order to borrow the €500 billion that would constitute its lending capacity: €80 billion in paid-in capital and €620 billion of “committed callable capital.” And Ireland, Greece and Portugal, the three countries that are now being subjected to euro-zone austerity schemes, will together be required to cough up or guarantee €49 billion of that sum. It’s not “solidarity,” it’s robbery! Could a situation arise whereby Ireland, Greece and Portugal would have to fork out more cash?
The German court of auditors recently showed how this could happen. In a report to the Bundestag’s budgetary committee, the court discovered that the paid-in capital that Germany and indeed any other euro-zone country might have to provide between 2013 and 2017 could be higher than foreseen. According to the decisions of the EU summit meeting in March, Germany would pay €21.7 billion out of the €80 billion of paid-in capital for the ESM. Merkel had insisted that the German government should be able to pay that money in five equal yearly tranches of €4.35 billion, which would be counted as expenditure in the budget.
But the auditors pointed out that this agreement becomes invalid if one country is unable to bear its share of paid-in capital and if at the same time another state requires the aid of the ESM. In that case the rate of paid-in capital in relation to its total of €700 billion could decline under the 15 per cent that is required by the rating agency to guarantee the ESM AAA rating. In that case the ESM shareholders could decide by simple majority—and, as a consequence, against Germany’s wishes—that the capital stock, and therefore the German contribution, needed to be increased. This anomaly applies equally to Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
But for weaker euro-zone countries there is an additional problem. With regard to callable capital and guarantees, euro-zone countries like Ireland will be required to pay cash down. Germany and France, whose sovereign bonds have a triple-A rating, would not need to put up actual money to cover any shortfall of paid-in capital: a guarantee would do. But as a guarantee has to serve as the equivalent of a prepaid cash payment, a guarantee by a non-triple-A country would not cover the shortfall, so countries with lower ratings (yes, you guessed them correctly!) would have to pay cash. So we are in a perverse situation. Countries with easy access to capital can provide cheap guarantees, while the weaker countries must put up cash.
The Peoples' Movement
From 2013 the ESM will have the responsibility for providing loans to euro-zone member-states in difficulties—strictly conditional on the implementation of a range of “adjustment measures” and if the granting of the assistance is considered indispensable to safeguard the “stability of the euro area as a whole”—or, to put it more accurately, “assistance” conditional on turning a recipient country into a social and economic wasteland for the greater good of the euro.
Why amend the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to establish the ESM? The EU authorities propose amending one of the EU treaties, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, to give themselves a legal basis for establishing the ESM, using one of the self-amending provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. The Government proposes ratifying this amendment without reference to the people by way of a referendum. Part of the existing temporary EU “bail-out” arrangements will end in 2013.
The ESM was established under article 122 (2) of the TFEU but is under challenge in the German Constitutional Court. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, determined towards the end of 2010 to try to head off any further constitutional challenge and at the same time to take a further significant step along the road to total EU control of the economic policies of weaker member-states. The ESM, together with the Euro Plus Pact, is a quantum leap in EU economic government. How can you argue that there must be a referendum on the ESM when the Government and Fianna Fáil “opposition” refuse to countenance one?
Article 6 of the Constitution of Ireland proclaims the right of the people “in final appeal to decide all questions of national policy, according to the requirements of the common good.”
The Supreme Court laid down in the Crotty case that, as legal sovereignty in this state rests with the Irish people, only they can surrender sovereignty to the EU by referendum (or refuse to surrender it, as the case may be). The ESM is for much more than making permanent the temporary mechanism by which Ireland,
Greece and Portugal are at present being “bailed out.” It is a surrender in matters of control of national economic policy necessitating an amendment to an EU treaty. The purpose of a referendum would be to determine whether or not the Constitution should be changed so as to make EU law superior to Irish law in the area set out in the proposed amendment.
The refusal of the Government to publish the opinion of the former Attorney-General, Paul Gallagher, and any legal opinion it has obtained since coming into ofce attests to the fi fear among the Fine Gael-Labour Party-Fianna Fáil troika of an assertive public opinion demanding what is the democratic and constitutional right of the citizens of this country.
Government decisions of fundamental importance for the future of this country for generations to come, such as the disastrous bank guarantee and, more recently, the EU-ECB-IMF “bail-out,” were made without reference to the citizens of the country. The almost seamless continuity between the policy of the new Government with that of the previous one has denied citizens an opportunity to say Yes or No to those decisions.
What will Ireland’s ESM financial liability be? The state will be legally obliged to the ESM to the tune of approximately €11.13 billion—€1.28 billion in cash and the rest in the form of callable capital and guarantees. Ireland has not been given an opt-out. But that’s not the figure the Government gives!
No. The Tánaiste, Éamon Gilmore, gave a figure of €9.87 billion in response to a question in the Dáil on 13 April 2011, but in fact the country’s contribution is a set 1.59 per cent of the total subscribed capital of €700 billion, i.e. €11.13 billion. Gilmore confused the subscribed capital figure of €700 billion and the callable capital/guarantee figure of €620 billion when making the calculation. But was Gilmore not at least correct to claim that “the manner in which the ESM is structured means that each country’s contribution will not impact on its general government deficit”?
There is no cheap, hassle-free way out of the present crisis, and certainly not through buying in to the ESM. Ireland will have to issue debt to raise the money to be able to pay the €1.29 billion of paid-in capital for the ESM. This is money that could make a substantial contribution to the survival of the country’s health service or our welfare and education systems. Also, after 2013 will be the worst time to be lumbered with such a commitment. We should have exited the present EU-ECB-IMF “bailout” regime from late 2012 and returned to the market.
The country would (in theory) have to refinance a lot of its own debt from the bail-out, and at the same time go into additional substantial debt to pay its share of the ESM. In short, the ESM simultaneously would make our bonds riskier and more susceptible to restructuring and require more of those very bonds to be issued, in order to pay for itself.
But isn’t it an example of EU solidarity? The ESM would need €700 billion in order to borrow the €500 billion that would constitute its lending capacity: €80 billion in paid-in capital and €620 billion of “committed callable capital.” And Ireland, Greece and Portugal, the three countries that are now being subjected to euro-zone austerity schemes, will together be required to cough up or guarantee €49 billion of that sum. It’s not “solidarity,” it’s robbery! Could a situation arise whereby Ireland, Greece and Portugal would have to fork out more cash?
The German court of auditors recently showed how this could happen. In a report to the Bundestag’s budgetary committee, the court discovered that the paid-in capital that Germany and indeed any other euro-zone country might have to provide between 2013 and 2017 could be higher than foreseen. According to the decisions of the EU summit meeting in March, Germany would pay €21.7 billion out of the €80 billion of paid-in capital for the ESM. Merkel had insisted that the German government should be able to pay that money in five equal yearly tranches of €4.35 billion, which would be counted as expenditure in the budget.
But the auditors pointed out that this agreement becomes invalid if one country is unable to bear its share of paid-in capital and if at the same time another state requires the aid of the ESM. In that case the rate of paid-in capital in relation to its total of €700 billion could decline under the 15 per cent that is required by the rating agency to guarantee the ESM AAA rating. In that case the ESM shareholders could decide by simple majority—and, as a consequence, against Germany’s wishes—that the capital stock, and therefore the German contribution, needed to be increased. This anomaly applies equally to Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
But for weaker euro-zone countries there is an additional problem. With regard to callable capital and guarantees, euro-zone countries like Ireland will be required to pay cash down. Germany and France, whose sovereign bonds have a triple-A rating, would not need to put up actual money to cover any shortfall of paid-in capital: a guarantee would do. But as a guarantee has to serve as the equivalent of a prepaid cash payment, a guarantee by a non-triple-A country would not cover the shortfall, so countries with lower ratings (yes, you guessed them correctly!) would have to pay cash. So we are in a perverse situation. Countries with easy access to capital can provide cheap guarantees, while the weaker countries must put up cash.
More anti-communism in europe
On the criminalization of communists in Slovakia
The World Federation of Democratic Youth denounces that is ongoing a new escalade of the attack against communist forces, this time in Slovakia. The government of that country has approved an amendment to the existing laws to include the following sentence: “Who publicly deny, question, agree or try to excuse (...) crimes of regime based on communist ideology (...) will be punished by confinement from six months to three years”.
This decision and the new law that now is created is yet another step in the general attack against communist parties and youth organizations that has been taking place all over the world, but particularly in Eastern Europe.
Aware that the current system is unable to provide to the people of Slovakia the “well being, justice and democracy” that was promised during in the early nineties, the dominant classes need to chase and eliminate all forces that, in an organized way, can fight against the destruction of social, political and democratic rights that the capitalist restoration has meant.
Furthermore, the idea of the “communist crimes” is part of a broader ideological line to try to equalize fascism and communism (the two “dictatorial regimes” that are “just as bad”) and, by this way, not only clean the face of the fascist crimes (“they weren’t that bad”) as also, and particularly, trap the peoples and youth to think that there is no alternative whatsoever to the current international order and its injustices and inequalities.
This attempt to rewrite history is even clearer in a country that, as Slovakia (at the time a part of Czechoslovakia), was under the siege and domination of the Nazis’ forces and that counted with the precious support of Soviet Army to free itself from the dark night of the fascist domination.
On this occasion, we express our solidarity with all democratic formations in Slovakia, particularly with our comrades of SZM, and encourage them to continue their struggle for a truly democratic and fair country,where the people and youth are able to take upon their hands the destinies of their own future.
Budapest, July 31, 2011
The CC/HQ of WFDY
The World Federation of Democratic Youth denounces that is ongoing a new escalade of the attack against communist forces, this time in Slovakia. The government of that country has approved an amendment to the existing laws to include the following sentence: “Who publicly deny, question, agree or try to excuse (...) crimes of regime based on communist ideology (...) will be punished by confinement from six months to three years”.
This decision and the new law that now is created is yet another step in the general attack against communist parties and youth organizations that has been taking place all over the world, but particularly in Eastern Europe.
Aware that the current system is unable to provide to the people of Slovakia the “well being, justice and democracy” that was promised during in the early nineties, the dominant classes need to chase and eliminate all forces that, in an organized way, can fight against the destruction of social, political and democratic rights that the capitalist restoration has meant.
Furthermore, the idea of the “communist crimes” is part of a broader ideological line to try to equalize fascism and communism (the two “dictatorial regimes” that are “just as bad”) and, by this way, not only clean the face of the fascist crimes (“they weren’t that bad”) as also, and particularly, trap the peoples and youth to think that there is no alternative whatsoever to the current international order and its injustices and inequalities.
This attempt to rewrite history is even clearer in a country that, as Slovakia (at the time a part of Czechoslovakia), was under the siege and domination of the Nazis’ forces and that counted with the precious support of Soviet Army to free itself from the dark night of the fascist domination.
On this occasion, we express our solidarity with all democratic formations in Slovakia, particularly with our comrades of SZM, and encourage them to continue their struggle for a truly democratic and fair country,where the people and youth are able to take upon their hands the destinies of their own future.
Budapest, July 31, 2011
The CC/HQ of WFDY
Monday, July 25, 2011
NKU Norway Statement
The fascist attacks in Norway July 22nd 2011
Friday, July 22nd 2011, Norway experienced the most tragic event we have experienced since World War 2. Right before 15:30 a bomb exploded in the Government quarters in the center of Oslo. This event alone, which killed 7 people and damaged buildings throughout the center of our capital, was a tragedy in itself. It was, however, completely overshadowed by the following massacre at the Labour Youth camp at Utøya. The death toll is still not totally clear, but at least 86 people, mainly teenagers and young people, were brutally gunned down and killed, while almost 70 are lying injured in hospitals, some close to death. These coldblooded murders are made far more tragic by the fact that they were aimed at innocent youths and children gathered at their annual summer camp, to discuss political issues and enjoy their summer holiday and each others’ company.
The Young Communist League of Norway (NKU) expresses our deepest sympathies to the Labour Youth (AUF), to the injured and to all who have lost their friends and loved ones. Due to the history we share with AUF, being members in the same organization from 1903 to 1923 and by many decades of common struggle, the attacks feel extra personal.
When the first reports came in about the explosion in Oslo, many people were quick in making their conclusions about who was responsible and expressed their hatred against immigrants and Muslims. That many people assumed that Muslim extremists were behind the attack isn’t surprising, considering Norway’s eager participation in NATO’s imperialist wars. But that so many, so early, used this horrible event to fuel the hatred against immigrants in Norway was both frightening and reprehensible.
Had the attack been carried out by a Muslim, the political consequences would be enormous. The already widespread prejudice against Muslims would be ignited and the attack would be used by right-wing extremists and populists to ”confirm” their views on the dangers of immigrations and Islam, legitimize more discrimination against minorities and a more aggressive foreign policy. The authorities would most likely also use the occasion as an excuse to expand the police’s powers at the expense of individual freedoms, as has happened in the USA and Great Britain.
It is now known, however, that the mass murderer responsible for the attack is neither immigrant or Muslim, but quite opposite an ethnic Norwegian and conservative Christian. Ironically, the individual responsible for both the attacks on July 22nd, Anders Behring Breivik, shares many of the same views as the many people who immediately after the attacks blamed immigrants. Breivik is a right-wing extremist, but his views are common: conservative, anti-muslim, anti-immigration, and anti-socialist. These views are found throughout Europe and are growing at an alarming rate. For far too long these views, promoting irrational hatred against immigrants and political opponents, have been left alone to grow unopposed by governments and the media. NKU has in the last few years stressed the danger of this growing ideology of hatred and has had the struggle against it as a high priority. Now we have, unfortunately, experienced exactly how dangerous it really can be.
The tragic event in our country shows the importance of a common struggle throughout Europe against this growing disease, which is nothing else than fascism in a new disguise. Even though the attacks were carried out by a psychotic individual, the political motives behind them cannot be ignored. And even though catastrophic attacks like these are very rare, the hatred that drove them will be a constant threat to our societies if it is left unopposed. The only solution is opposing prejudice, xenophobia and the demonizing of political opponents that this growing neo-fascist ideology represents, and creating a society based on peace, tolerance and equality, both domestically and internationally.
Central Committee of the Young Communist League of Norway (NKU)
24.07.11
Friday, July 22nd 2011, Norway experienced the most tragic event we have experienced since World War 2. Right before 15:30 a bomb exploded in the Government quarters in the center of Oslo. This event alone, which killed 7 people and damaged buildings throughout the center of our capital, was a tragedy in itself. It was, however, completely overshadowed by the following massacre at the Labour Youth camp at Utøya. The death toll is still not totally clear, but at least 86 people, mainly teenagers and young people, were brutally gunned down and killed, while almost 70 are lying injured in hospitals, some close to death. These coldblooded murders are made far more tragic by the fact that they were aimed at innocent youths and children gathered at their annual summer camp, to discuss political issues and enjoy their summer holiday and each others’ company.
The Young Communist League of Norway (NKU) expresses our deepest sympathies to the Labour Youth (AUF), to the injured and to all who have lost their friends and loved ones. Due to the history we share with AUF, being members in the same organization from 1903 to 1923 and by many decades of common struggle, the attacks feel extra personal.
When the first reports came in about the explosion in Oslo, many people were quick in making their conclusions about who was responsible and expressed their hatred against immigrants and Muslims. That many people assumed that Muslim extremists were behind the attack isn’t surprising, considering Norway’s eager participation in NATO’s imperialist wars. But that so many, so early, used this horrible event to fuel the hatred against immigrants in Norway was both frightening and reprehensible.
Had the attack been carried out by a Muslim, the political consequences would be enormous. The already widespread prejudice against Muslims would be ignited and the attack would be used by right-wing extremists and populists to ”confirm” their views on the dangers of immigrations and Islam, legitimize more discrimination against minorities and a more aggressive foreign policy. The authorities would most likely also use the occasion as an excuse to expand the police’s powers at the expense of individual freedoms, as has happened in the USA and Great Britain.
It is now known, however, that the mass murderer responsible for the attack is neither immigrant or Muslim, but quite opposite an ethnic Norwegian and conservative Christian. Ironically, the individual responsible for both the attacks on July 22nd, Anders Behring Breivik, shares many of the same views as the many people who immediately after the attacks blamed immigrants. Breivik is a right-wing extremist, but his views are common: conservative, anti-muslim, anti-immigration, and anti-socialist. These views are found throughout Europe and are growing at an alarming rate. For far too long these views, promoting irrational hatred against immigrants and political opponents, have been left alone to grow unopposed by governments and the media. NKU has in the last few years stressed the danger of this growing ideology of hatred and has had the struggle against it as a high priority. Now we have, unfortunately, experienced exactly how dangerous it really can be.
The tragic event in our country shows the importance of a common struggle throughout Europe against this growing disease, which is nothing else than fascism in a new disguise. Even though the attacks were carried out by a psychotic individual, the political motives behind them cannot be ignored. And even though catastrophic attacks like these are very rare, the hatred that drove them will be a constant threat to our societies if it is left unopposed. The only solution is opposing prejudice, xenophobia and the demonizing of political opponents that this growing neo-fascist ideology represents, and creating a society based on peace, tolerance and equality, both domestically and internationally.
Central Committee of the Young Communist League of Norway (NKU)
24.07.11
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Joint CPI and CYM statement
A political attack on the labour movement and an attack on democracy
The Communist Party of Ireland and the Connolly Youth Movement wish to express their solidarity with the family, friends and comrades of the victims of the massacre that took the lives of ninety-one people in Norway on 22 July 2011.
The people of Norway, and democracy in Norway, suffered a vicious attack directed at the social-democratic party that is at present in government and its youth movement, the AUF.
This was not the action of a madman, as the press would have us believe. Nor was this an isolated event. This was a manifestation of the right-wing political assault on labour and working people that is occurring all over the world.
This tragic event should serve as a lesson to everyone in the labour movement globally. Fascism—the last stand of the monopoly capitalist system in its vile attempt to save itself—has not gone away and in fact is growing as the crisis of the system deepens and its contradictions expose its vulnerability. The ideas and the actions of this individual and of neo-Nazi groups is a product of the moribund and decaying political, social and ideological system of monopoly capitalism.
Western governments have constructed false enemies, promoted division, racism and anti-Muslim sentiment and presented complex global problems in terms of good and “evil”—all designed to construct a world view that reflects their global strategic interests.
The labour movement needs to fight back. It needs to fight fascist ideology and actions with the ideology of working-class solidarity and struggle. It needs to express its vision of a world of equality, freedom, respect, diversity, and community. It needs to fight for this particularly in Europe in the context of the growing assault on working-class families to force them to pay the debts of banks and private corporations.
The eighty-four young activists who were brutally murdered on the island of Utøya were murdered because they stood up for Norwegian sovereignty and democracy and for a more equal and tolerant society. They were attending their summer school as part of their struggle for a better world and for working-class principles.
As one youth activist in Norway has said, “Not a minute’s silence but a life of struggle.” This is also the commitment of the Communist Party of Ireland and the Connolly Youth Movement in memory of these brave young comrades.
Eugene McCartan
Communist Party of Ireland
Conor Meikleham
Connolly Youth Movement
The Communist Party of Ireland and the Connolly Youth Movement wish to express their solidarity with the family, friends and comrades of the victims of the massacre that took the lives of ninety-one people in Norway on 22 July 2011.
The people of Norway, and democracy in Norway, suffered a vicious attack directed at the social-democratic party that is at present in government and its youth movement, the AUF.
This was not the action of a madman, as the press would have us believe. Nor was this an isolated event. This was a manifestation of the right-wing political assault on labour and working people that is occurring all over the world.
This tragic event should serve as a lesson to everyone in the labour movement globally. Fascism—the last stand of the monopoly capitalist system in its vile attempt to save itself—has not gone away and in fact is growing as the crisis of the system deepens and its contradictions expose its vulnerability. The ideas and the actions of this individual and of neo-Nazi groups is a product of the moribund and decaying political, social and ideological system of monopoly capitalism.
Western governments have constructed false enemies, promoted division, racism and anti-Muslim sentiment and presented complex global problems in terms of good and “evil”—all designed to construct a world view that reflects their global strategic interests.
The labour movement needs to fight back. It needs to fight fascist ideology and actions with the ideology of working-class solidarity and struggle. It needs to express its vision of a world of equality, freedom, respect, diversity, and community. It needs to fight for this particularly in Europe in the context of the growing assault on working-class families to force them to pay the debts of banks and private corporations.
The eighty-four young activists who were brutally murdered on the island of Utøya were murdered because they stood up for Norwegian sovereignty and democracy and for a more equal and tolerant society. They were attending their summer school as part of their struggle for a better world and for working-class principles.
As one youth activist in Norway has said, “Not a minute’s silence but a life of struggle.” This is also the commitment of the Communist Party of Ireland and the Connolly Youth Movement in memory of these brave young comrades.
Eugene McCartan
Communist Party of Ireland
Conor Meikleham
Connolly Youth Movement
Friday, July 22, 2011
Socialist Voice New Edition
Comrades,
New edition of Socialist Voice out now, check it out below
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/index.html
New edition of Socialist Voice out now, check it out below
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/index.html
CPI Statement
COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND
Press Release
22nd July 2011
No relief for working people in new EU deal
The heads of State of the 17 member states of the euro have once again concluded that the failed policies being imposed upon the Irish and Greek peoples must be maintained and even pursued with greater vigour. The EU will now send in "advisors" to directly monitor and supervise of the Greek government's implementation of savage cuts in public spending.
It is clear that the Irish government has been hiding behind the Greek government's deepening problems and has been attempting to piggy back in on its crisis. It has been the resistance from Greek workers that has impeded and blocked every effort by the Greek government to impose the policies of the EU.
Any short term relief that Irish government might claim has been gained by the actions of Greek workers and not their own efforts. This is also true of the Irish trade union movement which has failed to take a stand. How much more could be achieved if we had clear organised resistance here in Ireland and across the EU.
The Irish government claims as a victory a small reduction in interests rates and a possible restructuring and extension of debt repayments schedule but this is in reality being led by the creditors so as to ensure payment. They know there is only so much capital that can be sucked from workers in Ireland and know that they cannot push it too far otherwise they might provoke a resistance akin to Greece.
What is clear is this agreement is not a solution to the unpayable and odious debt imposed upon the Irish people. It can only bring a moment's respite to the crisis, not a solution. There will be no relief from the ongoing savage cuts in health, education and social welfare. Repudiation is the only way forward for the Irish people but it will not be delivered by the establishment party's.
What is clear is that resistance can deliver results in favour of working people.
Statement ends
Press Release
22nd July 2011
No relief for working people in new EU deal
The heads of State of the 17 member states of the euro have once again concluded that the failed policies being imposed upon the Irish and Greek peoples must be maintained and even pursued with greater vigour. The EU will now send in "advisors" to directly monitor and supervise of the Greek government's implementation of savage cuts in public spending.
It is clear that the Irish government has been hiding behind the Greek government's deepening problems and has been attempting to piggy back in on its crisis. It has been the resistance from Greek workers that has impeded and blocked every effort by the Greek government to impose the policies of the EU.
Any short term relief that Irish government might claim has been gained by the actions of Greek workers and not their own efforts. This is also true of the Irish trade union movement which has failed to take a stand. How much more could be achieved if we had clear organised resistance here in Ireland and across the EU.
The Irish government claims as a victory a small reduction in interests rates and a possible restructuring and extension of debt repayments schedule but this is in reality being led by the creditors so as to ensure payment. They know there is only so much capital that can be sucked from workers in Ireland and know that they cannot push it too far otherwise they might provoke a resistance akin to Greece.
What is clear is this agreement is not a solution to the unpayable and odious debt imposed upon the Irish people. It can only bring a moment's respite to the crisis, not a solution. There will be no relief from the ongoing savage cuts in health, education and social welfare. Repudiation is the only way forward for the Irish people but it will not be delivered by the establishment party's.
What is clear is that resistance can deliver results in favour of working people.
Statement ends
Thursday, July 21, 2011
New Marx poster
Marx poster €4 available from CPI, James Connolly House, 43 East Essex
Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
A Communist view of political defeat and fighting spirit
Coping with political defeat
by Hans-Peter Brenner writing the Berlin socialist daily Junge Welt
Certain Features of the Historical Development of Marxism is a work of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In it he dealt with the consequences of the defeat of the first Russian revolution of 1905. At that time, many party members (including many recently enrolled intellectuals) left the revolutionary party in droves. Soon after that, the farewell to Marxism, which we too experienced in 1989-1991, became the fashion.
As a reflection of this change there occurred profound disintegration, confusion, shaking and swaying of all sorts – in a word, there appeared a very serious internal crisis of Marxism. The resolute defense against this decay, the determined and persistent struggle for the basics of Marxism, again came on the agenda.
That was Lenin’s diagnosis.
It was — and still is — important for us German Communists to examine what conclusions other Communist parties later drew from the defeat of socialism in Europe and the USSR.
First of all, I think about the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba, which had already adjusted to this disaster before the shameful end of Mikhail Gorbachev who drove to ruin Soviet socialism, his country, and his party. Cuba — the country and the Communist Party – understood this: the harsh “drought” of the Special Period would govern the 1990s and early 2000s. Without its revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist character, the Communist Party of Cuba would have given up its socialist goal.
Self-awareness or Self-doubt?
I recall one Communist leader, prominent but, unfortunately, less noted in Germany , Alvaro Cunhal (1913-2005), the longtime general secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). At the time of the fascist Salazar dictatorship, Cunhal’s underground struggle, his inspiring and mobilizing role during and after the 1974 victory of the “Carnation Revolution,” as well as his shrewd leadership, are legendary.
The advance of the socialist stage of the revolutionary upheaval in Portugal was stopped by the united and coordinated actions of U.S. imperialism, NATO, the EU, the main European imperialist states, international social democracy, and domestic reaction.
Thanks to his personal resourcefulness, Cunhal embarked upon a strategic retreat. With a party united by a Marxist-Leninist program, he achieved the preservation of the PCP and its mass influence. He developed its clear profile, which it keeps today, as a revolutionary party of the working class, peasants and other working people.
To this day, his conclusions about the character of a Communist Party at the beginning of the 21st century are well worth reading. In his 2001 work, As Seis de Caracteristicas Fundamentais do Partido Comunista (The Six Basic Features of a Communist Party) Cunhal goes into the internal situation of the Communist movement at the beginning of the 21st century. He writes:
The international Communist movement, and the parties from which it is made up, were subject to profound changes as a the result of the collapse of the USSR and other socialist countries and capitalism’s success in its rivalry with socialism. There were parties who denied their militant past, their class nature, the goal of a socialist society, and revolutionary theory. In some cases, they were transformed into system-integrated parties, and they eventually disappeared from the scene.
In 2011 as well, this finding is relevant and correct.
Features of a Communist Party
The Communist movement as a whole – Cunhal went on – has achieved flexibility in its composition and reached new limits. Admittedly, though there is no model of a Communist Party, nonetheless “six basic features can reveal a Communist party, regardless of whether the party bears that name or another.
Briefly, their traits could include:
1. To be a party completely independent of the interests, ideology, pressure and threats of capitalist forces;
2. To be a party of the working class, the working people, in general, the exploited and oppressed;
3. To be a party with a democratic internal life and a unified central leadership;
4. To be a party which is both internationalist and which defends the interests of its country;
5. To be a party that defines its goal as the building of a society which knows neither exploited nor exploiters, a socialist society;
6. To be the bearer of a revolutionary theory, the theory of Marxism-Leninism, which not only makes the explanation of the world possible, but also shows the way to change it.
In its simplicity and plainness, the last point sounds like it is of little interest, just as the other five points appear to include too little that is new. And yet these “self-evident truths” are not self-evident truths – not even for Communists. But more of that later.
Classics Taken at their Word
Cunhal made available to us the following explanation for his six points. It is cited here, in more detail, because of its uniqueness and distinctiveness:
All the slanderous, punishing, anti-Communist campaigns are lies. Marxism-Leninism is a living, anti-dogmatic, dialectical, creative theory, which is further enriched by practice and by its responses to new situations and phenomena, which is its job. It drives the practice of enrichment and development, dynamically and creatively using the lessons of practice.
Marx in Capital and Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto analyzed and defined the basic elements and characteristics of capitalism.
In the second half of the 19th century, however, the development of capitalism underwent an important amendment. Competition led to concentration and monopoly. We owe to Lenin and his work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism the definition of capitalism at the end of the 19th century. These theoretical developments are of exceptional value. And the value of research and systematization of theoretical knowledge is rated as high.
In a synthesis of extraordinary clarity and rigor, a famous article by Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism explains it. In the philosophy of dialectical materialism, historical materialism is its application to society. Political economy is the analysis and explanation of capitalism and exploitation, and the theory of surplus value is the cornerstone for understanding exploitation. The theory of socialism is the definition of the new society, the abolition of exploitation of man by man.
During the 20th century and the social transformations accompanying it, much new theoretical thinking was added. However, there also was scattered and contradictory thinking which made it difficult to distinguish what is theoretical development and where it is a question of revisionist deviation from principles. Hence the urgent need for debate without preconceptions and without making truths absolute. It’s not about the search for conclusions deemed to be final, but rather the intensification of joint reflection.” Quoted from: www.kommunisten.ch
Cunhal is now dead six years. His party, the PCP, however, considers him not an idol on a pedestal, a “historical figure” whose thoughts and ideas slowly but gradually have been forgotten. Today, his theoretical and programmatic conclusions determine the path and self-understanding of the PCP. But, unfortunately, it is quite different elsewhere.
On Slippery Ground
The current example of this is the thinking of the chairman of the CPUSA, Sam Webb. Political Affairs, the theoretical organ of his party, published in February this year under the title: “A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century: What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does.” It has now appeared in German on the news portal of the German Communist Party’s website, www.kommunisten.de
Why are Webb’s theses of interest beyond the CPUSA?
For example, why did the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), despite the demands of the controversies and class struggles raging in that country, to which it devotes so much energy and combativeneness, send a really dramatic appeal To the members and cadres of the Communist Party USA! To U.S. militant workers! It was also addressed to all the Communist and Workers’ Parties, “in order to protest against these theses.”
And now, why do German Communists deal with the Webb theses too?
Sam Webb stressed at the beginning of his 29 theses, each different in detail and very different in theoretical significance, that he was on slippery ground. The publisher of the theoretical journal of the CPUSA, Political Affairs, also knew well what he was getting involved with by posting it. The preface that introduces the article makes this clear.
The following article represents only the views of its author. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the official views of any organization or collective…
Apparently, to avoid such criticisms [Editor: criticism of opportunism], Webb emphasized in the introduction that it was a “draft,” an unfinished manuscript, and that “readers will surely note inconsistencies, contradictions, silences and unfinished ideas.”
This is all too ostentatious modesty, and the ensuing fishing for compliments belies the altogether clear and complete implications of the theses.
Communists without Lenin
In the end Sam Webb delivers a very consistent idea, although it is not original. A letter in the German Communist Party weekly Unsere Zeit has already pointed out:
What is so exciting, new and important for us in these theses of Comrade Webb…? I cannot see it. Readers of Marxistische Blaetter already read and evaluated the core of his “Reflections on Socialism” in mid-2008 (In Focus: International Marxism, March 2008). And in our party, since the mid to late 1980s, we have discussed other theories (for example, the reduction of Marxism to a mere method, or the orientation to a “Marxism without Lenin.” Not only did we do this thoroughly, but we developed collective responses crowned with a new party program’. Lothar Geisler, “Theses Not New,” Unsere Zeit, July 1, 2011, p. 12)
In fact, most of the 29 theses do not contain much that is new. Though he writes of merely one in the article mentioned in Marxistische Blaetter from 2008, in its approaches, the quixotic intellectual journey already discernible in 2008 continues, but it now ends as a break with central points of Communist theory — socialism, and the doctrine of the Party. He runs aground on the shoals of a left–pluralist Marxism; or the earlier “Eurocommunism,” or the current democratic socialism of the German Left Party,European Left, respectively.
I mention particularly the rejection of the theory of Marx, Engels and Lenin as a unified, revolutionary theory of the working class.
What is original here is a hitherto less well-known chauvinistic undertone. As noted in his Thesis #2:
As for “Marxism-Leninism,” the term should be retired in favor of simply “Marxism.” For one thing, it has a negative connotation among ordinary Americans, even in left and progressive circles. Depending on whom you ask, it either sounds foreign or dogmatic or undemocratic or all of these together.
Granted, Lenin was no Russian exile finding safety in the U.S., taking out U.S. citizenship, and Americanizing his first or last name – perhaps to Sam Cook or Sam Smith.
But do ordinary Americans deem Karl Marx to be a fellow American?
And does Marxism really sound so terrifically American, that perhaps Sarah Palin herself, the icon of ordinary Americans, understands by Marxism a sweetness and innocence, causing her patriotic sentiment to peal like a church bell?
Webbism?
So the real test awaits Jim and Jane, ordinary Americans.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth comes to my mind, with its sigh, almost a curse:
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But the meaning of Webb’s theses is more than noisy fury.
We long-suffering European Communists are quite accustomed to this counterposing of Marx and Lenin, and the elimination of the latter from what is coyly called “Marxism” or – even more subtly – “scientific socialism.”
A Diminished Picture of History
In the early 1980s, the German Communist Party grappled intensively with a forerunner of today’s “Webbism,” the idea of a Western “plural” Marxism, and a Marxism without Leninism. It arose in the study and seminar rooms of the West Berlin professor Wolfgang Fritz Haug.
At the same time, the highly relevant Marxist journal Argument was being published (compare Marxism. Ideology. Politics. Crisis of Marxism, or Crisis of the Argument? Frankfurt am Main, 1984. Editors: Hans Heinz Holz, Thomas Metscher, Joseph Schleifstein, and Robert Steigerwald.)
The second argument pushed by Webb for the amputation of Marxism-Leninism is even less original. And it is no less wrong. Back then it was also formulated by the Haug school. Allegedly, Marxism-Leninism is not “classical Marxism.”
Sam Webb’s allegation of “simplification” of the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and other early Marxists in the form of “Marxism-Leninism” in the Stalin era is simply wrong.
In the Soviet Communist Party and the Communist International, after the death of Lenin and long before the nonsensical enthronement of Stalin as the “one true disciple of Lenin,” acknowledgement began of Lenin as the third classical author of Marxism.
The careful processing, safeguarding and development of Lenin’s theoretical legacy by many CPSU and Comintern theorists is hidden by the Webb theses in a way that ignores history.
The general assertion that “Soviet scientists under Stalin’s leadership systematized and simplified earlier Marxist writing,” not to mention adapting it to the needs of Soviet state ideology, is nothing more than repetition of the old anti-Soviet slogans.
There were, in the course of seventy years of Soviet party history and scientific history, numerous introductions to the academic and theoretical papers of Marx, Engels and Lenin. They were simplifications, just as in any scientific discipline there is simplification in all introductions, compendia, and so forth. They are merely introductions.
In no way was there systematic falsification of the inheritance. Even in the post-socialist era, the collected works of classical authors have still not finally emerged. This does not change the fact that, in a few texts of Lenin, there also was one or another politically motivated “editorial reworking” or omission, although this was justified and made transparent.
It is not true that Marxism-Leninism was — or is — an impoverished,simplified version of the true Marxism.
Certainly there was and is, in every theory and in all science, phases of greater or lesser creativity and development. And undoubtedly there was and will be future phases, just as in any scientific doctrine, in which revolutionary Marxists/Communists do not evaluate promptly new social and/or natural scientific phenomena. Or they do so too late. Or in a way that is only partly correct. In general, it is the nature of science that it moves in a contradictory manner between faster and slower stages of development.
Webb’s more far-reaching conclusion is that even what he designates as his new “Marxism” is only a “scientific method.”
He thinks his altogether limited and schematic scientific-theoretical view surpasses the comprehensive legacy of the three classic founders of Marxism-Leninism.
A “method” which brings to light no apparent content, is worthless. And in the thesis of Sam Webb, the method goes straight to this “new-old” distinction and the rejection of content.
A German Version of Webb?
After the defeat of real socialism, the Left could not fail to weigh its previous relationship with Lenin and Leninism. The PDS [Party of Democratic Socialism] originating in a Marxist-Leninist party did this too. It broke with its Leninist heritage. In May 1990 at a closed meeting of the former PDS Executive Board, Gregor Gysi spoke about the new theoretical basis of his reform-socialism-turned-political-party. In this context, he explained both the departure from Marxism-Leninism and the move to an “ideologically pluralistic” party in which the Communist component would enjoy only a marginal existence, tolerated and allowed.
Thus far the statements by Sam Webb are nothing new. The same applies to his “new” concepts of organizational theory. They are in theory 27 ideas presented to remodel the party structure into an informal communication network, mainly Internet-based, whose members interact with each other primarily via e-mail.
Abolition of the unity principle and the commitment to the party program and decisions amounts to a vote for the open liquidation of the Communist Party.
Reassuring evidence that the huge distances between widely scattered individual U.S. Communists absolutely requires use of modern means of communication, in this context, is not completely convincing.
It’s clear Webb doesn’t mean to modernize the lines of communication. Such modernization, of course, is useful and necessary.
This is about something entirely different: the liquidation of a strong organizational structure, clear criteria for party membership, a common collectively developed program, binding revolutionary strategy and tactics, and in general decisions grounding the party in the working class, in working people, in the revolutionary youth and among oppressed women, in production enterprises and scientific institutions, and in the intelligentsia worn out by capital.
He also thinks joining this structure existing only in cyberspace should be slapdash – “no more difficult than joining other social organizations.” This is a logical consequence of the destruction of a party once in political struggle against the capitalist system – a party consisting of real, like-minded people coordinated with each other. The party is downgraded to a loose, small electoral force primarily concentrating on the support of the election campaigns of the Democratic Party.
Sam Webb has still provided the remnants of a party. “Teams” will be traveling around as “meet and greet” and support groups.
This is nothing more than window dressing.
Does the U.S. workers’ movement need such a party? I doubt it very much. But it has to decide for itself.
In any case, German Communists do not need it. Nor do we need an “open-ended and interesting” discussion of this plea for the end of Marxism-Leninism and the Communist Party.
We have better and more important things to do.
Dr. Hans-Peter Brenner, a psychologist and psychotherapist, is a member of the national leadership of the German Communist Party and co-editor of Marxistische Blaetter. This article appeared July 9, 2011 in Junge Welt, a Marxist daily newspaper published in Berlin.
www.jungewelt.de/2011/07-09/001.php HansPeterBrenner
by Hans-Peter Brenner writing the Berlin socialist daily Junge Welt
Certain Features of the Historical Development of Marxism is a work of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In it he dealt with the consequences of the defeat of the first Russian revolution of 1905. At that time, many party members (including many recently enrolled intellectuals) left the revolutionary party in droves. Soon after that, the farewell to Marxism, which we too experienced in 1989-1991, became the fashion.
As a reflection of this change there occurred profound disintegration, confusion, shaking and swaying of all sorts – in a word, there appeared a very serious internal crisis of Marxism. The resolute defense against this decay, the determined and persistent struggle for the basics of Marxism, again came on the agenda.
That was Lenin’s diagnosis.
It was — and still is — important for us German Communists to examine what conclusions other Communist parties later drew from the defeat of socialism in Europe and the USSR.
First of all, I think about the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba, which had already adjusted to this disaster before the shameful end of Mikhail Gorbachev who drove to ruin Soviet socialism, his country, and his party. Cuba — the country and the Communist Party – understood this: the harsh “drought” of the Special Period would govern the 1990s and early 2000s. Without its revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist character, the Communist Party of Cuba would have given up its socialist goal.
Self-awareness or Self-doubt?
I recall one Communist leader, prominent but, unfortunately, less noted in Germany , Alvaro Cunhal (1913-2005), the longtime general secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). At the time of the fascist Salazar dictatorship, Cunhal’s underground struggle, his inspiring and mobilizing role during and after the 1974 victory of the “Carnation Revolution,” as well as his shrewd leadership, are legendary.
The advance of the socialist stage of the revolutionary upheaval in Portugal was stopped by the united and coordinated actions of U.S. imperialism, NATO, the EU, the main European imperialist states, international social democracy, and domestic reaction.
Thanks to his personal resourcefulness, Cunhal embarked upon a strategic retreat. With a party united by a Marxist-Leninist program, he achieved the preservation of the PCP and its mass influence. He developed its clear profile, which it keeps today, as a revolutionary party of the working class, peasants and other working people.
To this day, his conclusions about the character of a Communist Party at the beginning of the 21st century are well worth reading. In his 2001 work, As Seis de Caracteristicas Fundamentais do Partido Comunista (The Six Basic Features of a Communist Party) Cunhal goes into the internal situation of the Communist movement at the beginning of the 21st century. He writes:
The international Communist movement, and the parties from which it is made up, were subject to profound changes as a the result of the collapse of the USSR and other socialist countries and capitalism’s success in its rivalry with socialism. There were parties who denied their militant past, their class nature, the goal of a socialist society, and revolutionary theory. In some cases, they were transformed into system-integrated parties, and they eventually disappeared from the scene.
In 2011 as well, this finding is relevant and correct.
Features of a Communist Party
The Communist movement as a whole – Cunhal went on – has achieved flexibility in its composition and reached new limits. Admittedly, though there is no model of a Communist Party, nonetheless “six basic features can reveal a Communist party, regardless of whether the party bears that name or another.
Briefly, their traits could include:
1. To be a party completely independent of the interests, ideology, pressure and threats of capitalist forces;
2. To be a party of the working class, the working people, in general, the exploited and oppressed;
3. To be a party with a democratic internal life and a unified central leadership;
4. To be a party which is both internationalist and which defends the interests of its country;
5. To be a party that defines its goal as the building of a society which knows neither exploited nor exploiters, a socialist society;
6. To be the bearer of a revolutionary theory, the theory of Marxism-Leninism, which not only makes the explanation of the world possible, but also shows the way to change it.
In its simplicity and plainness, the last point sounds like it is of little interest, just as the other five points appear to include too little that is new. And yet these “self-evident truths” are not self-evident truths – not even for Communists. But more of that later.
Classics Taken at their Word
Cunhal made available to us the following explanation for his six points. It is cited here, in more detail, because of its uniqueness and distinctiveness:
All the slanderous, punishing, anti-Communist campaigns are lies. Marxism-Leninism is a living, anti-dogmatic, dialectical, creative theory, which is further enriched by practice and by its responses to new situations and phenomena, which is its job. It drives the practice of enrichment and development, dynamically and creatively using the lessons of practice.
Marx in Capital and Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto analyzed and defined the basic elements and characteristics of capitalism.
In the second half of the 19th century, however, the development of capitalism underwent an important amendment. Competition led to concentration and monopoly. We owe to Lenin and his work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism the definition of capitalism at the end of the 19th century. These theoretical developments are of exceptional value. And the value of research and systematization of theoretical knowledge is rated as high.
In a synthesis of extraordinary clarity and rigor, a famous article by Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism explains it. In the philosophy of dialectical materialism, historical materialism is its application to society. Political economy is the analysis and explanation of capitalism and exploitation, and the theory of surplus value is the cornerstone for understanding exploitation. The theory of socialism is the definition of the new society, the abolition of exploitation of man by man.
During the 20th century and the social transformations accompanying it, much new theoretical thinking was added. However, there also was scattered and contradictory thinking which made it difficult to distinguish what is theoretical development and where it is a question of revisionist deviation from principles. Hence the urgent need for debate without preconceptions and without making truths absolute. It’s not about the search for conclusions deemed to be final, but rather the intensification of joint reflection.” Quoted from: www.kommunisten.ch
Cunhal is now dead six years. His party, the PCP, however, considers him not an idol on a pedestal, a “historical figure” whose thoughts and ideas slowly but gradually have been forgotten. Today, his theoretical and programmatic conclusions determine the path and self-understanding of the PCP. But, unfortunately, it is quite different elsewhere.
On Slippery Ground
The current example of this is the thinking of the chairman of the CPUSA, Sam Webb. Political Affairs, the theoretical organ of his party, published in February this year under the title: “A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century: What It Looks Like, What It Says, and What It Does.” It has now appeared in German on the news portal of the German Communist Party’s website, www.kommunisten.de
Why are Webb’s theses of interest beyond the CPUSA?
For example, why did the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), despite the demands of the controversies and class struggles raging in that country, to which it devotes so much energy and combativeneness, send a really dramatic appeal To the members and cadres of the Communist Party USA! To U.S. militant workers! It was also addressed to all the Communist and Workers’ Parties, “in order to protest against these theses.”
And now, why do German Communists deal with the Webb theses too?
Sam Webb stressed at the beginning of his 29 theses, each different in detail and very different in theoretical significance, that he was on slippery ground. The publisher of the theoretical journal of the CPUSA, Political Affairs, also knew well what he was getting involved with by posting it. The preface that introduces the article makes this clear.
The following article represents only the views of its author. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the official views of any organization or collective…
Apparently, to avoid such criticisms [Editor: criticism of opportunism], Webb emphasized in the introduction that it was a “draft,” an unfinished manuscript, and that “readers will surely note inconsistencies, contradictions, silences and unfinished ideas.”
This is all too ostentatious modesty, and the ensuing fishing for compliments belies the altogether clear and complete implications of the theses.
Communists without Lenin
In the end Sam Webb delivers a very consistent idea, although it is not original. A letter in the German Communist Party weekly Unsere Zeit has already pointed out:
What is so exciting, new and important for us in these theses of Comrade Webb…? I cannot see it. Readers of Marxistische Blaetter already read and evaluated the core of his “Reflections on Socialism” in mid-2008 (In Focus: International Marxism, March 2008). And in our party, since the mid to late 1980s, we have discussed other theories (for example, the reduction of Marxism to a mere method, or the orientation to a “Marxism without Lenin.” Not only did we do this thoroughly, but we developed collective responses crowned with a new party program’. Lothar Geisler, “Theses Not New,” Unsere Zeit, July 1, 2011, p. 12)
In fact, most of the 29 theses do not contain much that is new. Though he writes of merely one in the article mentioned in Marxistische Blaetter from 2008, in its approaches, the quixotic intellectual journey already discernible in 2008 continues, but it now ends as a break with central points of Communist theory — socialism, and the doctrine of the Party. He runs aground on the shoals of a left–pluralist Marxism; or the earlier “Eurocommunism,” or the current democratic socialism of the German Left Party,European Left, respectively.
I mention particularly the rejection of the theory of Marx, Engels and Lenin as a unified, revolutionary theory of the working class.
What is original here is a hitherto less well-known chauvinistic undertone. As noted in his Thesis #2:
As for “Marxism-Leninism,” the term should be retired in favor of simply “Marxism.” For one thing, it has a negative connotation among ordinary Americans, even in left and progressive circles. Depending on whom you ask, it either sounds foreign or dogmatic or undemocratic or all of these together.
Granted, Lenin was no Russian exile finding safety in the U.S., taking out U.S. citizenship, and Americanizing his first or last name – perhaps to Sam Cook or Sam Smith.
But do ordinary Americans deem Karl Marx to be a fellow American?
And does Marxism really sound so terrifically American, that perhaps Sarah Palin herself, the icon of ordinary Americans, understands by Marxism a sweetness and innocence, causing her patriotic sentiment to peal like a church bell?
Webbism?
So the real test awaits Jim and Jane, ordinary Americans.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth comes to my mind, with its sigh, almost a curse:
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But the meaning of Webb’s theses is more than noisy fury.
We long-suffering European Communists are quite accustomed to this counterposing of Marx and Lenin, and the elimination of the latter from what is coyly called “Marxism” or – even more subtly – “scientific socialism.”
A Diminished Picture of History
In the early 1980s, the German Communist Party grappled intensively with a forerunner of today’s “Webbism,” the idea of a Western “plural” Marxism, and a Marxism without Leninism. It arose in the study and seminar rooms of the West Berlin professor Wolfgang Fritz Haug.
At the same time, the highly relevant Marxist journal Argument was being published (compare Marxism. Ideology. Politics. Crisis of Marxism, or Crisis of the Argument? Frankfurt am Main, 1984. Editors: Hans Heinz Holz, Thomas Metscher, Joseph Schleifstein, and Robert Steigerwald.)
The second argument pushed by Webb for the amputation of Marxism-Leninism is even less original. And it is no less wrong. Back then it was also formulated by the Haug school. Allegedly, Marxism-Leninism is not “classical Marxism.”
Sam Webb’s allegation of “simplification” of the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and other early Marxists in the form of “Marxism-Leninism” in the Stalin era is simply wrong.
In the Soviet Communist Party and the Communist International, after the death of Lenin and long before the nonsensical enthronement of Stalin as the “one true disciple of Lenin,” acknowledgement began of Lenin as the third classical author of Marxism.
The careful processing, safeguarding and development of Lenin’s theoretical legacy by many CPSU and Comintern theorists is hidden by the Webb theses in a way that ignores history.
The general assertion that “Soviet scientists under Stalin’s leadership systematized and simplified earlier Marxist writing,” not to mention adapting it to the needs of Soviet state ideology, is nothing more than repetition of the old anti-Soviet slogans.
There were, in the course of seventy years of Soviet party history and scientific history, numerous introductions to the academic and theoretical papers of Marx, Engels and Lenin. They were simplifications, just as in any scientific discipline there is simplification in all introductions, compendia, and so forth. They are merely introductions.
In no way was there systematic falsification of the inheritance. Even in the post-socialist era, the collected works of classical authors have still not finally emerged. This does not change the fact that, in a few texts of Lenin, there also was one or another politically motivated “editorial reworking” or omission, although this was justified and made transparent.
It is not true that Marxism-Leninism was — or is — an impoverished,simplified version of the true Marxism.
Certainly there was and is, in every theory and in all science, phases of greater or lesser creativity and development. And undoubtedly there was and will be future phases, just as in any scientific doctrine, in which revolutionary Marxists/Communists do not evaluate promptly new social and/or natural scientific phenomena. Or they do so too late. Or in a way that is only partly correct. In general, it is the nature of science that it moves in a contradictory manner between faster and slower stages of development.
Webb’s more far-reaching conclusion is that even what he designates as his new “Marxism” is only a “scientific method.”
He thinks his altogether limited and schematic scientific-theoretical view surpasses the comprehensive legacy of the three classic founders of Marxism-Leninism.
A “method” which brings to light no apparent content, is worthless. And in the thesis of Sam Webb, the method goes straight to this “new-old” distinction and the rejection of content.
A German Version of Webb?
After the defeat of real socialism, the Left could not fail to weigh its previous relationship with Lenin and Leninism. The PDS [Party of Democratic Socialism] originating in a Marxist-Leninist party did this too. It broke with its Leninist heritage. In May 1990 at a closed meeting of the former PDS Executive Board, Gregor Gysi spoke about the new theoretical basis of his reform-socialism-turned-political-party. In this context, he explained both the departure from Marxism-Leninism and the move to an “ideologically pluralistic” party in which the Communist component would enjoy only a marginal existence, tolerated and allowed.
Thus far the statements by Sam Webb are nothing new. The same applies to his “new” concepts of organizational theory. They are in theory 27 ideas presented to remodel the party structure into an informal communication network, mainly Internet-based, whose members interact with each other primarily via e-mail.
Abolition of the unity principle and the commitment to the party program and decisions amounts to a vote for the open liquidation of the Communist Party.
Reassuring evidence that the huge distances between widely scattered individual U.S. Communists absolutely requires use of modern means of communication, in this context, is not completely convincing.
It’s clear Webb doesn’t mean to modernize the lines of communication. Such modernization, of course, is useful and necessary.
This is about something entirely different: the liquidation of a strong organizational structure, clear criteria for party membership, a common collectively developed program, binding revolutionary strategy and tactics, and in general decisions grounding the party in the working class, in working people, in the revolutionary youth and among oppressed women, in production enterprises and scientific institutions, and in the intelligentsia worn out by capital.
He also thinks joining this structure existing only in cyberspace should be slapdash – “no more difficult than joining other social organizations.” This is a logical consequence of the destruction of a party once in political struggle against the capitalist system – a party consisting of real, like-minded people coordinated with each other. The party is downgraded to a loose, small electoral force primarily concentrating on the support of the election campaigns of the Democratic Party.
Sam Webb has still provided the remnants of a party. “Teams” will be traveling around as “meet and greet” and support groups.
This is nothing more than window dressing.
Does the U.S. workers’ movement need such a party? I doubt it very much. But it has to decide for itself.
In any case, German Communists do not need it. Nor do we need an “open-ended and interesting” discussion of this plea for the end of Marxism-Leninism and the Communist Party.
We have better and more important things to do.
Dr. Hans-Peter Brenner, a psychologist and psychotherapist, is a member of the national leadership of the German Communist Party and co-editor of Marxistische Blaetter. This article appeared July 9, 2011 in Junge Welt, a Marxist daily newspaper published in Berlin.
www.jungewelt.de/2011/07-09/001.php HansPeterBrenner
Cuba Film Festival
PROGRESSIVE FILM CLUB
A festival of films on or about life in Cuba. This coming Saturday 23rd in The New Theatre, East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
Full programme @
http://www.progressivefilmclub.ie/
A festival of films on or about life in Cuba. This coming Saturday 23rd in The New Theatre, East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
Full programme @
http://www.progressivefilmclub.ie/
Monday, July 18, 2011
New Video from Trade Union TV
Check out new video from Trade Union TV
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCPITV
Protest to save Roscommon Hospital
Also new video from Greece on our favourites list!
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCPITV
Protest to save Roscommon Hospital
Also new video from Greece on our favourites list!
CPI Statement
COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND
12 July 2011
Build the people’s resistance!
As the people of Co. Roscommon protest at the closure of the Accident and Emergency Unit at their local hospital it is clear that this will be only the first of many such closures, as the Government and all the establishment parties have given priority to the payment of an unpayable and odious debt before the people’s needs and the interests of our country as a whole.
The downgrading by Moody’s of Irish bonds to junk status only confirms what the CPI has been saying from the very beginning of this crisis: that this is a no-hope strategy by a politically and economically bankrupt Irish establishment—an establishment devoid of any independent thinking and action, prepared to sacrifice our people’s needs and interests to those of the European Union and the IMF.
The euro as the currency of seventeen member-states is simply unsustainable. Every effort to find a solution to one problem gives rise to new and even more difficult ones. There is simply no solution to be found in the existing system as it attempts to solve its contradictions at the expense of the people.
The anarchy of capitalism cannot be overcome by the wholesale destruction of the living standards and hard-won gains of working people in the peripheral countries. Now the so-called “contagion” is spreading to one of the states at the very heart of the European Union: Italy.
This crisis can be overcome only by a fundamental change in the economic, political and social structure of Irish society, by radical changes that are centred on the needs of the people and the environment.
Eugene McCartan
General Secretary
087 9733414
12 July 2011
Build the people’s resistance!
As the people of Co. Roscommon protest at the closure of the Accident and Emergency Unit at their local hospital it is clear that this will be only the first of many such closures, as the Government and all the establishment parties have given priority to the payment of an unpayable and odious debt before the people’s needs and the interests of our country as a whole.
The downgrading by Moody’s of Irish bonds to junk status only confirms what the CPI has been saying from the very beginning of this crisis: that this is a no-hope strategy by a politically and economically bankrupt Irish establishment—an establishment devoid of any independent thinking and action, prepared to sacrifice our people’s needs and interests to those of the European Union and the IMF.
The euro as the currency of seventeen member-states is simply unsustainable. Every effort to find a solution to one problem gives rise to new and even more difficult ones. There is simply no solution to be found in the existing system as it attempts to solve its contradictions at the expense of the people.
The anarchy of capitalism cannot be overcome by the wholesale destruction of the living standards and hard-won gains of working people in the peripheral countries. Now the so-called “contagion” is spreading to one of the states at the very heart of the European Union: Italy.
This crisis can be overcome only by a fundamental change in the economic, political and social structure of Irish society, by radical changes that are centred on the needs of the people and the environment.
Eugene McCartan
General Secretary
087 9733414
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Making of an Irish Communist Leader
Communist Party of Ireland
Tuesday 19 July, 5:30 p.m.
Book launch
The Making of an Irish Communist Leader
Launch of The Making of an Irish Communist Leader: Michael O’Riordan, 1938–1947
by Michael Quinn
Connolly Books (43 East Essex Street)
Baile Átha Cliath
Máirt 19 Iúil, 5:30 i.n.
Seoladh leabhair
The Making of an Irish Communist Leader
Seoladh The Making of an Irish Communist Leader: Michael O’Riordan, 1938–1947
le Michael Quinn
Connolly Books (43 Sráid Essex Thoir)
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Repudiate the debt!
Comrades/Friends,
2 very good reports on the debt crisis in Europe from 'Research on Money and Finance' can be accessed at the below address:
http://www.nodebt.ie/campaigndocuments/
EUROZONE CRISIS: Beggar Thyeself and Thy Neighbour
The Eurozone between Austerity and Default
Worth checking out and distributing
2 very good reports on the debt crisis in Europe from 'Research on Money and Finance' can be accessed at the below address:
http://www.nodebt.ie/campaigndocuments/
EUROZONE CRISIS: Beggar Thyeself and Thy Neighbour
The Eurozone between Austerity and Default
Worth checking out and distributing
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Politics financialised, Economics privatised
EU: Politics Financialized, Economies Privatized
By Michael Hudson
Breakup of the euro?
Is Iceland’s rejection of financial bullying a model for Greece and Ireland?
This article is an excerpt from Prof. Hudson’s upcoming book, “Debts that Can’t be Paid, Won’t Be,” to be published later this year.
Last month Iceland voted against submitting to British and Dutch demands that it compensate their national bank insurance agencies for bailing out their own domestic Icesave depositors. This was the second vote against settlement (by a ratio of 3:2), and Icelandic support for membership in the Eurozone has fallen to just 30 percent. The feeling is that European politics are being run for the benefit of bankers, not the social democracy that Iceland imagined was the guiding philosophy – as indeed it was when the European Economic Community (Common Market) was formed in 1957.
By permitting Britain and the Netherlands to blackball Iceland to pay for the mistakes of Gordon Brown and his Dutch counterparts, Europe has made Icelandic membership conditional upon imposing financial austerity and poverty on the population – all to pay money that legally it does not owe. The problem is to find an honest court willing to enforce Europe’s own banking laws placing responsibility where it legally lies.
The reason why the EU has fought so hard to make Iceland’s government take responsibility for Icesave debts is what creditors call “contagion.” Ireland and Greece are faced with much larger debts. Europe’s creditor “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission and the IMF – view debt write-downs and progressive taxation to protect their domestic economies as a communicable disease.
Like Greece, Ireland asked for debt relief so that its government would not be forced to slash spending in the face of deepening recession. “The Irish press reported that EU officials ‘hit the roof’ when Irish negotiators talked of broader burden-sharing. The European Central Bank is afraid that any such move would cause instant contagion through the debt markets of southern Europe,” wrote one journalist, warning that the cost of taking reckless public debt onto the national balance sheet threatened to bankrupt the economy.[1] Europe – in effect, German and Dutch banks – refused to let the government scale back the debts it had taken on (except to smaller and less politically influential depositors). “The comments came just as the EU authorities were ruling out investor ‘haircuts’ in Ireland, making this a condition for the country’s €85bn (£72bn) loan package. Dublin has imposed 80 percent haircuts on the junior debt of Anglo Irish Bank but has not extended this to senior debt, viewed as sacrosanct.”
At issue from Europe’s vantage point – at least that of its bankers – is a broad principle: Governments should run their economies on behalf of banks and bondholders. They should bail out at least the senior creditors of banks that fail (that is, the big institutional investors and gamblers) and pay these debts and public debts by selling off enterprises, shifting the tax burden onto labor. To balance their budgets they are to cut back spending programs, lower public employment and wages, and charge more for public services, from medical care to education.
This austerity program (“financial rescue”) has come to a head just one year after Greece was advanced $155 billion bailout package in May 2010. Displeased at how slowly the nation has moved to carve up its economy, the ECB has told Greece to start privatizing up to $70 billion by 2015. The sell-offs are to be headed by prime tourist real estate and the remaining government stakes in the national gambling monopoly OPAP, the Postbank, the Athens and Thessaloniki ports, the Thessaloniki Water and Sewer Company and the telephone monopoly. Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister and chairman of the Eurozone’s group of finance ministers, warned that only if Greece agreed to start selling off assets (“consolidating its budget”) would the EU agree to stretch out loan maturities for Greek debt and “save” it from default.[2]
The problem is that privatization and regressive tax shifts raise the cost of living and doing business. This makes economies less competitive, and hence even less able to pay debts that are accruing interest, leading toward a larger ultimate default.
The textbook financial response of turning the economy into a set of tollbooths to sell off is predatory. Third World countries demonstrated its destructive consequences from the 1970s onward under IMF austerity planning. Europe is now repeating the same shrinkage.
Financial power is to achieve what military conquest had done in times past. Pretending to make subject economies more “competitive,” the aim is more short-run: to squeeze out enough payments so that bondholders (and indeed, voters) will not be obliged to confront the reality that many debts are unpayable except at the price of making the economy too debt-ridden, too regressively tax-ridden and too burdened with rising privatized infrastructure charges to be competitive. Spending cutbacks and a regressive tax shift dry up capital investment and productivity in the long run. Such economies are run like companies taken over by debt-leveraged raiders on credit, who downsize and outsource their labor force so as to squeeze out enough revenue to pay their own creditors – who take what they can and run. The tactic attack of this financial attack is no longer overt military force as in days of yore, but something less costly because its victims submit more voluntarily.
But the intended victims of predatory finance are fighting back. And instead of the attacker losing their armies and manpower, it is their balance sheets that are threatened – and hence their own webs of solvency. When Greek labor unions (especially in the public enterprises being privatized), the ruling Socialist Party and leading minority parties rejected such sacrifices, Eurozone officials demanded that financial planning be placed above party politics, and demanded “cross-party agreement on any overhaul of the bail-out.” Greece should respond to its wave of labor strikes and popular protest by suspending party politics and economic democracy. “The government and the opposition should declare jointly that they commit to the reform agreements with the EU,” Mr. Juncker explained to Der Spiegel.
Criticizing Prime Minister George Papandreou’s delay at even to start selling state assets, European financial leaders proposed a national privatization agency to act as an intermediary to transfer revenue from these assets to foreign creditors and retire public debt – and to pledge its public assets as collateral to be forfeited in case of default in payments to government bondholders. Suggesting that the government “set up an agency to privatize state assets” along the lines of the German Treuhandanstalt that sold off East German enterprises in the 1990s,” Mr. Juncker thought that “Greece could gain more from privatizations than the €50 billion ($71 billion) it has estimated.”[3]
European bankers had their eye on the sale as much as $400 billion of Greek assets – enough to pay off all the government debt. Failing payment, the ECB threatened not to accept Greek government bonds as collateral. This would prevent Greek banks from doing business, wrecking its financial system and paralyzing the economy. This threat was supposed to make privatization “democratically” approved – followed by breaking union power and lowering wages (“internal devaluation”). “Jan Kees de Jager, Dutch finance minister, has proposed that any more loans to Greece should come with collateral arrangements, in which European state lenders would take over Greek assets in the event of a sovereign default.”[4]
The problem is that ultimate default is inevitable, given the debt corner into which governments have recklessly deregulated the banks and cut property taxes and progressive income taxes. Default will become pressing whenever the ECB may choose to pull the plug.
The ECB makes governments unable to finance their spending by central banks of their own
Introduction of the euro in 1999 explicitly prevented the ECB or any national central bank from financing government deficits. This means that no nation has a central bank able to do what those of Britain and the United States were created to do: monetize credit to domestic banks. The public sector has been made dependent on commercial banks and bondholders. This is a bonanza for them, rolling back three centuries of attempts to create a mixed economy financially and industrially, by privatizing the credit creation monopoly as well as capital investment in public infrastructure monopolies now being pushed onto the sales block for bidders – on credit, with the winner being the one who promises to pay out the most interest to bankers to absorb the access fees (“economic rent”) that can be extracted.
Politics is being financialized while economies are being privatized. The financial strategy was to remove economic planning from democratically elected representatives, centralizing it in the hands of financial managers. What Benito Mussolini called “corporatism” in the 1920s (to give it its polite name) is now being achieved by Europe’s large banks and financial institutions – ironically (but I suppose inevitably) under the euphemism of “free market economics.”
Language is adopting itself to reflect the economic and political transformation (surrender?) now underway. Central bank “independence” was euphemized as the “hallmark of democracy,” not the victory of financial oligarchy. The task of rhetoric is to divert attention from the fact that the financial sector aims not to “free” markets, but to place control in the hands of financial managers – whose logic is to subject economies to austerity and even depression, sell off public land and enterprises, suffer emigration and reduce living standards in the face of a sharply increasing concentration of wealth at the top of the economic pyramid. The idea is to slash government employment, lowering public-sector salaries to lead private sector wages downward, while cutting back social services.
The internal contradiction (as Marxists would say) is that the existing mass of interest-bearing debt must grow, as it receives interest – which is re-invested to earn yet more interest. This is the “magic” or “miracle” of compound interest. The problem is that paying interest diverts revenue away from the circular flow between production and consumption. Say’s Law says that payments by producers (to employees and to producers of capital goods) must be spent, in the aggregate, on buying the products that labor and tangible capital produces. Otherwise there is a market glut and business shrinks – with the financial sector’s network of debt claims bearing the brunt.
The financial system intrudes into this circular flow. Income spent to pay creditors is not spent on goods and services; it is re-invested in new loans, or on stocks and bonds (assets in the form of financial and property claims on the economy), or increasingly on “gambling” (the “casino capitalism” of derivatives, the international carry trade (that is, exchange-rate and interest-rate arbitrage) and other financial claims that are independent of the production-and-consumption economy. So as financial assets accrue interest – bolstered by new credit creation on computer keyboards by commercial banks and central banks – the financial rake-off from the “real” economy increases.
The idea of paying debts regardless of social cost is backed by mathematical models as complex as those used by physicists designing atomic reactors. But they have a basic flaw simple enough for a grade-school math student to understand: They assume that economies can pay debts growing exponentially at a higher rate than production or exports are growing. Only by ignoring the ability to pay – by creating an economic surplus over break-even levels – can one believe that debt leveraging can produce enough financial “balance sheet” gains to pay banks, pension funds and other financial institutions that recycle their interest into new loans. Financial engineering is expected to usher in a postindustrial society that make money from money (or rather, from credit) via rising asset prices for real estate, stocks and bonds.
It all seems much easier than earning profit from tangible investment to produce and market goods and services, because banks can fuel asset-price inflation simply by creating credit electronically on their computer keyboards. Until 2008 many families throughout the world saw the price of their home rise by more than they earned in an entire year. This cuts out the troublesome M-C-M’ cycle (using capital to produce commodities to sell at a profit), by M-M’ (buying real estate or assets already in place, or stocks and bonds already issued, and waiting for the central bank to inflate their prices by lowering interest rates and untaxing wealth so that high income investors can increase their demand for property and financial securities).
The problem is that credit is debt, and debt must be paid – with interest. And when an economy pays interest, less revenue is left over to spend on goods and services. So markets shrink, sales decline, profits fall, and there is less cash flow to pay interest and dividends. Unemployment spreads, rents fall, mortgage-holders default, and real estate is thrown onto the market at falling prices.
When asset prices crash, these debts remain in place. As the Bubble Economy turns into a nightmare, politicians are taking private (and often fraudulent) bank losses onto the public balance sheet. This is dividing European politics and even threatening to break up the Eurozone.
Breakup of the Eurozone?
Third World countries from the 1960s through 1990s were told to devalue in order to reduce labor’s purchasing power and hence imports of food, fuel and other consumer goods. But Eurozone members are locked into the euro. This leaves only the option of “internal devaluation” – lowering wage rates as an alternative to scaling back payments to creditors atop Europe’s economic pyramid.
Latvia is cited as the model success story. Its government slashed employment and public sector wages fell by 30 percent in 2009-10. Private-sector wages followed the decline. This was applauded as a “success story” and “accepting reality.” So now, the government has put forth a “balanced budget amendment,” to go with its flat tax on labor (some 59 percent, with only a 1 percent tax on real estate). Former U.S. neoliberal presidential candidate Steve Forbes would find it an economic paradise.
“Saving the euro” is a euphemism for governments saving the financial class – and with it a debt dynamic that is nearing its end
regardless of what they do. The aim is for euro-debts to Germany, the Netherlands, France and financial institutions (now joined by vulture funds) are to preserve their value. (No haircuts for them). The price is to be paid by labor and industry.
Government authority is to lose most of all. Just as the public domain is to be carved up and sold to pay creditors, economic policy is being taken out of the hands of democratically elected representatives and placed in the hands of the ECB, European Commission and IMF.
Spain’s unemployment rate of 20%, much as in the Baltics, with nearly twice as high an unemployment rate among recent school graduates. But as William Nassau Senior is reported to have said when told that a million Irishmen had died in the potato famine: “It is not enough!”
Can anything be enough – anything that works for more than the short run? What “helping Greece remain solvent” means in practice is to help it avoid taxing wealth (the rich aren’t paying) and help it roll back wages while obliging labor to pay more in taxes while the government (i.e. “taxpayers,” a.k.a. workers) sells off public land and enterprises to bail out foreign banks and bondholders while slashing its social spending, industrial subsidies and public infrastructure investment.
One Greek friend in my age bracket has said that his private pension (from a computing company) was slashed by the government. When his son went to collect his unemployment check, it was cut in half, on the ground that his parents allegedly had the money to support them. The price of the house they bought a few years ago has plunged. They tell me that they are no more eager to remain part of the Eurozone than the Icelandic voters showed themselves last month.
The strikes continue. Anger is rising. When incoming IMF head Christine Lagarde was French trade minister, she suggested that: “France had to revamp its labor code. Labor unions and fellow ministers balked, and Ms. Lagarde backtracked, saying she had expressed a personal opinion.”[5] This opinion is about to become official policy – from the IMF that was acting as “good cop” to the ECB’s “bad cop.”
I suppose that all that really is needed is for people to understand just what dynamics are at work that make these attempts to pay in vain. The creditors know that the game is up. All they can do is take as much as they can, as long as they can, pay themselves bonuses that are “free” from recapture by public prosecutors, and run to their offshore banking centers.
*This article is an excerpt from Prof. Hudson’s work in progress, “Debts that Can’t be Paid, Won’t Be,” to be published later this year.
Footnotes
[1] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Iceland offers risky temptation for Ireland as recession ends,” The Telegraph, December 8, 2010.
[2] Bernd Radowitz and Geoffrey T. Smith, “Juncker Calls for Greek Privatization Agency,” Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2011, based on Juncker’s earlier interview in Der Spiegel magazine.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Peter Spiegel, “Greek assets could go to ‘fund of experts’,” Financial Times, May 24, 2011, Dimitris Kontogiannis, Kerin Hope and Joshua Chaffin, “Greece to sell stakes in state-owned groups,” Financial Times, May 24, 2011, and Alkman Granitsas, “Greece Speeds Up Plans to Sell Off State-Held Assets,” Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2011.
[5] Alessandra Galloni and David Gauthier-Villars, “France’s Lagarde Seeks IMF’s Top Job,” Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2011.
This article is an excerpt from Prof. Hudson’s upcoming book, “Debts that Can’t be Paid, Won’t Be,” to be published later this year and is taken from the authors website www.michael-hudson.com
By Michael Hudson
Breakup of the euro?
Is Iceland’s rejection of financial bullying a model for Greece and Ireland?
This article is an excerpt from Prof. Hudson’s upcoming book, “Debts that Can’t be Paid, Won’t Be,” to be published later this year.
Last month Iceland voted against submitting to British and Dutch demands that it compensate their national bank insurance agencies for bailing out their own domestic Icesave depositors. This was the second vote against settlement (by a ratio of 3:2), and Icelandic support for membership in the Eurozone has fallen to just 30 percent. The feeling is that European politics are being run for the benefit of bankers, not the social democracy that Iceland imagined was the guiding philosophy – as indeed it was when the European Economic Community (Common Market) was formed in 1957.
By permitting Britain and the Netherlands to blackball Iceland to pay for the mistakes of Gordon Brown and his Dutch counterparts, Europe has made Icelandic membership conditional upon imposing financial austerity and poverty on the population – all to pay money that legally it does not owe. The problem is to find an honest court willing to enforce Europe’s own banking laws placing responsibility where it legally lies.
The reason why the EU has fought so hard to make Iceland’s government take responsibility for Icesave debts is what creditors call “contagion.” Ireland and Greece are faced with much larger debts. Europe’s creditor “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission and the IMF – view debt write-downs and progressive taxation to protect their domestic economies as a communicable disease.
Like Greece, Ireland asked for debt relief so that its government would not be forced to slash spending in the face of deepening recession. “The Irish press reported that EU officials ‘hit the roof’ when Irish negotiators talked of broader burden-sharing. The European Central Bank is afraid that any such move would cause instant contagion through the debt markets of southern Europe,” wrote one journalist, warning that the cost of taking reckless public debt onto the national balance sheet threatened to bankrupt the economy.[1] Europe – in effect, German and Dutch banks – refused to let the government scale back the debts it had taken on (except to smaller and less politically influential depositors). “The comments came just as the EU authorities were ruling out investor ‘haircuts’ in Ireland, making this a condition for the country’s €85bn (£72bn) loan package. Dublin has imposed 80 percent haircuts on the junior debt of Anglo Irish Bank but has not extended this to senior debt, viewed as sacrosanct.”
At issue from Europe’s vantage point – at least that of its bankers – is a broad principle: Governments should run their economies on behalf of banks and bondholders. They should bail out at least the senior creditors of banks that fail (that is, the big institutional investors and gamblers) and pay these debts and public debts by selling off enterprises, shifting the tax burden onto labor. To balance their budgets they are to cut back spending programs, lower public employment and wages, and charge more for public services, from medical care to education.
This austerity program (“financial rescue”) has come to a head just one year after Greece was advanced $155 billion bailout package in May 2010. Displeased at how slowly the nation has moved to carve up its economy, the ECB has told Greece to start privatizing up to $70 billion by 2015. The sell-offs are to be headed by prime tourist real estate and the remaining government stakes in the national gambling monopoly OPAP, the Postbank, the Athens and Thessaloniki ports, the Thessaloniki Water and Sewer Company and the telephone monopoly. Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister and chairman of the Eurozone’s group of finance ministers, warned that only if Greece agreed to start selling off assets (“consolidating its budget”) would the EU agree to stretch out loan maturities for Greek debt and “save” it from default.[2]
The problem is that privatization and regressive tax shifts raise the cost of living and doing business. This makes economies less competitive, and hence even less able to pay debts that are accruing interest, leading toward a larger ultimate default.
The textbook financial response of turning the economy into a set of tollbooths to sell off is predatory. Third World countries demonstrated its destructive consequences from the 1970s onward under IMF austerity planning. Europe is now repeating the same shrinkage.
Financial power is to achieve what military conquest had done in times past. Pretending to make subject economies more “competitive,” the aim is more short-run: to squeeze out enough payments so that bondholders (and indeed, voters) will not be obliged to confront the reality that many debts are unpayable except at the price of making the economy too debt-ridden, too regressively tax-ridden and too burdened with rising privatized infrastructure charges to be competitive. Spending cutbacks and a regressive tax shift dry up capital investment and productivity in the long run. Such economies are run like companies taken over by debt-leveraged raiders on credit, who downsize and outsource their labor force so as to squeeze out enough revenue to pay their own creditors – who take what they can and run. The tactic attack of this financial attack is no longer overt military force as in days of yore, but something less costly because its victims submit more voluntarily.
But the intended victims of predatory finance are fighting back. And instead of the attacker losing their armies and manpower, it is their balance sheets that are threatened – and hence their own webs of solvency. When Greek labor unions (especially in the public enterprises being privatized), the ruling Socialist Party and leading minority parties rejected such sacrifices, Eurozone officials demanded that financial planning be placed above party politics, and demanded “cross-party agreement on any overhaul of the bail-out.” Greece should respond to its wave of labor strikes and popular protest by suspending party politics and economic democracy. “The government and the opposition should declare jointly that they commit to the reform agreements with the EU,” Mr. Juncker explained to Der Spiegel.
Criticizing Prime Minister George Papandreou’s delay at even to start selling state assets, European financial leaders proposed a national privatization agency to act as an intermediary to transfer revenue from these assets to foreign creditors and retire public debt – and to pledge its public assets as collateral to be forfeited in case of default in payments to government bondholders. Suggesting that the government “set up an agency to privatize state assets” along the lines of the German Treuhandanstalt that sold off East German enterprises in the 1990s,” Mr. Juncker thought that “Greece could gain more from privatizations than the €50 billion ($71 billion) it has estimated.”[3]
European bankers had their eye on the sale as much as $400 billion of Greek assets – enough to pay off all the government debt. Failing payment, the ECB threatened not to accept Greek government bonds as collateral. This would prevent Greek banks from doing business, wrecking its financial system and paralyzing the economy. This threat was supposed to make privatization “democratically” approved – followed by breaking union power and lowering wages (“internal devaluation”). “Jan Kees de Jager, Dutch finance minister, has proposed that any more loans to Greece should come with collateral arrangements, in which European state lenders would take over Greek assets in the event of a sovereign default.”[4]
The problem is that ultimate default is inevitable, given the debt corner into which governments have recklessly deregulated the banks and cut property taxes and progressive income taxes. Default will become pressing whenever the ECB may choose to pull the plug.
The ECB makes governments unable to finance their spending by central banks of their own
Introduction of the euro in 1999 explicitly prevented the ECB or any national central bank from financing government deficits. This means that no nation has a central bank able to do what those of Britain and the United States were created to do: monetize credit to domestic banks. The public sector has been made dependent on commercial banks and bondholders. This is a bonanza for them, rolling back three centuries of attempts to create a mixed economy financially and industrially, by privatizing the credit creation monopoly as well as capital investment in public infrastructure monopolies now being pushed onto the sales block for bidders – on credit, with the winner being the one who promises to pay out the most interest to bankers to absorb the access fees (“economic rent”) that can be extracted.
Politics is being financialized while economies are being privatized. The financial strategy was to remove economic planning from democratically elected representatives, centralizing it in the hands of financial managers. What Benito Mussolini called “corporatism” in the 1920s (to give it its polite name) is now being achieved by Europe’s large banks and financial institutions – ironically (but I suppose inevitably) under the euphemism of “free market economics.”
Language is adopting itself to reflect the economic and political transformation (surrender?) now underway. Central bank “independence” was euphemized as the “hallmark of democracy,” not the victory of financial oligarchy. The task of rhetoric is to divert attention from the fact that the financial sector aims not to “free” markets, but to place control in the hands of financial managers – whose logic is to subject economies to austerity and even depression, sell off public land and enterprises, suffer emigration and reduce living standards in the face of a sharply increasing concentration of wealth at the top of the economic pyramid. The idea is to slash government employment, lowering public-sector salaries to lead private sector wages downward, while cutting back social services.
The internal contradiction (as Marxists would say) is that the existing mass of interest-bearing debt must grow, as it receives interest – which is re-invested to earn yet more interest. This is the “magic” or “miracle” of compound interest. The problem is that paying interest diverts revenue away from the circular flow between production and consumption. Say’s Law says that payments by producers (to employees and to producers of capital goods) must be spent, in the aggregate, on buying the products that labor and tangible capital produces. Otherwise there is a market glut and business shrinks – with the financial sector’s network of debt claims bearing the brunt.
The financial system intrudes into this circular flow. Income spent to pay creditors is not spent on goods and services; it is re-invested in new loans, or on stocks and bonds (assets in the form of financial and property claims on the economy), or increasingly on “gambling” (the “casino capitalism” of derivatives, the international carry trade (that is, exchange-rate and interest-rate arbitrage) and other financial claims that are independent of the production-and-consumption economy. So as financial assets accrue interest – bolstered by new credit creation on computer keyboards by commercial banks and central banks – the financial rake-off from the “real” economy increases.
The idea of paying debts regardless of social cost is backed by mathematical models as complex as those used by physicists designing atomic reactors. But they have a basic flaw simple enough for a grade-school math student to understand: They assume that economies can pay debts growing exponentially at a higher rate than production or exports are growing. Only by ignoring the ability to pay – by creating an economic surplus over break-even levels – can one believe that debt leveraging can produce enough financial “balance sheet” gains to pay banks, pension funds and other financial institutions that recycle their interest into new loans. Financial engineering is expected to usher in a postindustrial society that make money from money (or rather, from credit) via rising asset prices for real estate, stocks and bonds.
It all seems much easier than earning profit from tangible investment to produce and market goods and services, because banks can fuel asset-price inflation simply by creating credit electronically on their computer keyboards. Until 2008 many families throughout the world saw the price of their home rise by more than they earned in an entire year. This cuts out the troublesome M-C-M’ cycle (using capital to produce commodities to sell at a profit), by M-M’ (buying real estate or assets already in place, or stocks and bonds already issued, and waiting for the central bank to inflate their prices by lowering interest rates and untaxing wealth so that high income investors can increase their demand for property and financial securities).
The problem is that credit is debt, and debt must be paid – with interest. And when an economy pays interest, less revenue is left over to spend on goods and services. So markets shrink, sales decline, profits fall, and there is less cash flow to pay interest and dividends. Unemployment spreads, rents fall, mortgage-holders default, and real estate is thrown onto the market at falling prices.
When asset prices crash, these debts remain in place. As the Bubble Economy turns into a nightmare, politicians are taking private (and often fraudulent) bank losses onto the public balance sheet. This is dividing European politics and even threatening to break up the Eurozone.
Breakup of the Eurozone?
Third World countries from the 1960s through 1990s were told to devalue in order to reduce labor’s purchasing power and hence imports of food, fuel and other consumer goods. But Eurozone members are locked into the euro. This leaves only the option of “internal devaluation” – lowering wage rates as an alternative to scaling back payments to creditors atop Europe’s economic pyramid.
Latvia is cited as the model success story. Its government slashed employment and public sector wages fell by 30 percent in 2009-10. Private-sector wages followed the decline. This was applauded as a “success story” and “accepting reality.” So now, the government has put forth a “balanced budget amendment,” to go with its flat tax on labor (some 59 percent, with only a 1 percent tax on real estate). Former U.S. neoliberal presidential candidate Steve Forbes would find it an economic paradise.
“Saving the euro” is a euphemism for governments saving the financial class – and with it a debt dynamic that is nearing its end
regardless of what they do. The aim is for euro-debts to Germany, the Netherlands, France and financial institutions (now joined by vulture funds) are to preserve their value. (No haircuts for them). The price is to be paid by labor and industry.
Government authority is to lose most of all. Just as the public domain is to be carved up and sold to pay creditors, economic policy is being taken out of the hands of democratically elected representatives and placed in the hands of the ECB, European Commission and IMF.
Spain’s unemployment rate of 20%, much as in the Baltics, with nearly twice as high an unemployment rate among recent school graduates. But as William Nassau Senior is reported to have said when told that a million Irishmen had died in the potato famine: “It is not enough!”
Can anything be enough – anything that works for more than the short run? What “helping Greece remain solvent” means in practice is to help it avoid taxing wealth (the rich aren’t paying) and help it roll back wages while obliging labor to pay more in taxes while the government (i.e. “taxpayers,” a.k.a. workers) sells off public land and enterprises to bail out foreign banks and bondholders while slashing its social spending, industrial subsidies and public infrastructure investment.
One Greek friend in my age bracket has said that his private pension (from a computing company) was slashed by the government. When his son went to collect his unemployment check, it was cut in half, on the ground that his parents allegedly had the money to support them. The price of the house they bought a few years ago has plunged. They tell me that they are no more eager to remain part of the Eurozone than the Icelandic voters showed themselves last month.
The strikes continue. Anger is rising. When incoming IMF head Christine Lagarde was French trade minister, she suggested that: “France had to revamp its labor code. Labor unions and fellow ministers balked, and Ms. Lagarde backtracked, saying she had expressed a personal opinion.”[5] This opinion is about to become official policy – from the IMF that was acting as “good cop” to the ECB’s “bad cop.”
I suppose that all that really is needed is for people to understand just what dynamics are at work that make these attempts to pay in vain. The creditors know that the game is up. All they can do is take as much as they can, as long as they can, pay themselves bonuses that are “free” from recapture by public prosecutors, and run to their offshore banking centers.
*This article is an excerpt from Prof. Hudson’s work in progress, “Debts that Can’t be Paid, Won’t Be,” to be published later this year.
Footnotes
[1] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Iceland offers risky temptation for Ireland as recession ends,” The Telegraph, December 8, 2010.
[2] Bernd Radowitz and Geoffrey T. Smith, “Juncker Calls for Greek Privatization Agency,” Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2011, based on Juncker’s earlier interview in Der Spiegel magazine.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Peter Spiegel, “Greek assets could go to ‘fund of experts’,” Financial Times, May 24, 2011, Dimitris Kontogiannis, Kerin Hope and Joshua Chaffin, “Greece to sell stakes in state-owned groups,” Financial Times, May 24, 2011, and Alkman Granitsas, “Greece Speeds Up Plans to Sell Off State-Held Assets,” Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2011.
[5] Alessandra Galloni and David Gauthier-Villars, “France’s Lagarde Seeks IMF’s Top Job,” Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2011.
This article is an excerpt from Prof. Hudson’s upcoming book, “Debts that Can’t be Paid, Won’t Be,” to be published later this year and is taken from the authors website www.michael-hudson.com
Things to do for Palestine this week...
Things to do for Palestine this week...
(1) Palestine Education: Educating for Justice
Read more and take action: http://www.palestineeducation.co.uk/
(2) Call to Action: Flashy Stones and Broken Bones - Boycott Israeli Diamonds
Read more and take action: http://www.ipsc.ie/diamonds
(3) Tell CRH to Stop Colluding with Apartheid Israel! (Petition and lots more)
Read more and take action: http://www.ipsc.ie/crhdivest
(4) Donate to the Irish Ship to Gaza Campaign
Read more and take action: http://www.irishshiptogaza.org
(5) IPSC 'Boycott Israel Map of Ireland': Your help is needed
Read more and add you input: http://tinyurl.com/2fqdq3b
(6) Irish Art For Gaza: Buy Art to Help Break the Siege
Read more and buy art: http://www.irishart4gaza.com/
Taken from the IPSC Newsletter
Check out www.ipsc.ie
(1) Palestine Education: Educating for Justice
Read more and take action: http://www.palestineeducation.co.uk/
(2) Call to Action: Flashy Stones and Broken Bones - Boycott Israeli Diamonds
Read more and take action: http://www.ipsc.ie/diamonds
(3) Tell CRH to Stop Colluding with Apartheid Israel! (Petition and lots more)
Read more and take action: http://www.ipsc.ie/crhdivest
(4) Donate to the Irish Ship to Gaza Campaign
Read more and take action: http://www.irishshiptogaza.org
(5) IPSC 'Boycott Israel Map of Ireland': Your help is needed
Read more and add you input: http://tinyurl.com/2fqdq3b
(6) Irish Art For Gaza: Buy Art to Help Break the Siege
Read more and buy art: http://www.irishart4gaza.com/
Taken from the IPSC Newsletter
Check out www.ipsc.ie
Friday, July 1, 2011
Greetings Comrade Chavez
Message to President Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan people
The World Federation of Democratic Youth has received the message sent by President Hugo Chavez, where he bravely informs of the results of the surgery he was submitted to recently and from which he recovering well.
In the last days we have been assisting to a dirty propaganda offense from the Latin American and international right-wing forces trying to manipulate the information about the actual situation of health of President Chavez. In his message he clarified that he keeps needing medical treatment and that despite his rest he has kept on working as head of state, taking the necessary measures for the well being of the Venezuelan people.
WFDY, on behalf of its member and friend organizations and the progressive youth of the world, sends a message of support and solidarity to President Chavez, wishing him a rapid recovery to continue giving an example to all those who wish a better world. We reaffirm also our support to the people and youth and Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, that is building a free people and sovereign country that inspires the progressive and anti-imperialist young people of the entire world.
Budapest, July 1, 2011
The CC/HQ of WFDY
The World Federation of Democratic Youth has received the message sent by President Hugo Chavez, where he bravely informs of the results of the surgery he was submitted to recently and from which he recovering well.
In the last days we have been assisting to a dirty propaganda offense from the Latin American and international right-wing forces trying to manipulate the information about the actual situation of health of President Chavez. In his message he clarified that he keeps needing medical treatment and that despite his rest he has kept on working as head of state, taking the necessary measures for the well being of the Venezuelan people.
WFDY, on behalf of its member and friend organizations and the progressive youth of the world, sends a message of support and solidarity to President Chavez, wishing him a rapid recovery to continue giving an example to all those who wish a better world. We reaffirm also our support to the people and youth and Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, that is building a free people and sovereign country that inspires the progressive and anti-imperialist young people of the entire world.
Budapest, July 1, 2011
The CC/HQ of WFDY
Latest from Greece...
GREECE GOES ON STRIKE - 48HOUR - STRIKE!
AGAINST THE POLICIES OF THE GREEK GOVERNMENT - EUROPEAN UNION - IMF
A big nationwide mobilization started on Monday 27th with the 48-hour strike.
SYMBOLIC OCCUPATION OF THE ACROPOLIS MONUMENT
“The peoples have the power and never surrender. Organize, Counterattack” was the slogan written in Greek and in English on the banner that the all Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) hung from the Acropolis on 27th June, on the eve of the 48-hour strike against the barbaric anti-people measures of the social-democratic government, the EU and the IMFthat starts on Tuesday 28th June and is expected to embrace every workplace.
Early in the morning hundreds of members and cadre of PAME carried out a symbolic occupation of the Acropolis raising two huge banners. This initiative of PAME had a very positive impact not only on the Greek working people but also on the tourists who were visiting the country and the Acropolis. The access of tourists to the Acropolis was allowed within the framework of the symbolic occupation of the forces of PAME.
PAME notes in its statement: “We call on the working people, the youth, the unemployed and the women to a carry out a people’s uprising. We struggle along with the peoples all over the world against the capitalist barbarity. The barbaric measures that lead the people to bankruptcy must not pass”.
In the afternoon the forces of PAME organised placard protests and mass rallies-in order to conduct propaganda for the strike-in many neighbourhoods in Athens as well as in other cities in Greece.
--
1st DAY OF THE STRIKE
The flags of All Workers Militant Front (PAME) waved in workplaces, enterprises, construction sites, ports, public authorities. Thousands of workers responded to the militant call of PAME. The strike has succeeded! Self-employed, poor farmers, pensioners, immigrants and students were there too.
Hard Battles took place at the gates of the factories and the ramps of the ships in order to picket the strike and make the capital feel the power of the working class where it hurts most, as it happened yesterday that hundreds of thousands took part in the strike.
During the dozens of demonstrations held throughout the country thousands of protesters voted unanimously against the measures in streets and squares.
The working people reject the new anti-people measures, refuse to become slaves of the plutocracy. We should note that the new anti-people measures reduce wages and pensions, increase further retirement ages and indirect taxation from 13% to 23%, strike a blow on social security and the list of hazardous occupations, increase the daily unpaid working time, establish particularly low wages for young people, abolish collective labour agreements, establish the temporary contracts which entail dismissals without compensation, reduce “social” benefits etc. In addition, they privatise companies, land, water supply services, ports, airports etc that were owned by the state in order to bring money to the state funds and pay the debt, as they claim themselves. Nevertheless, the reason is that they want to hand over new sectors of economy to the capitalists in order to invest their over-accumulated capital.
The workers and the popular strata defied the intimidations and participated in the yesterday morning’s strike demonstrations as well as to the dozens of demonstrations that took place yesterday afternoon. Today they continue their struggle which is a significant legacy for new struggles, for the escalation of the struggle. The vast majority of the protesters who participated in the strike demonstrations held in 65 cities of the country demonstrated with the flags of PAME and not with the so-called “indignant citizens” or with the leaderships of the yellow unions GSEE-ADEDY.
The Executive Secretariat of PAME saluted the hundreds of thousands of strikers who fought decisively for the strike. At the afternoon of the first day of the strike PAME organised a massive demonstration in the centre of Athens which extended up to the parliament. The strong picket lines of the demonstration prevented small provocateur groups from setting up provocations with the aim to dissolve the demonstration.
Although hundreds of thousands of strikers struggled dynamically for the strike, which succeeded in all over the country, although streets and squares flooded by the demonstrations, the international TV media showed the activity of the provocateurs as if it was the main issue in Greece and hardly spent a few seconds for the strike. This is their allegedly objective information! We have to do with a massive scale operation for the distortion of reality in Greece, that intends to conceal the resistance, the struggle and the demands of hundreds of thousands of working people.
The Press Office of the CC of KKE noted in its statement: “quite accidentally” the various groups of the hooded persons appear during the strike demonstrations with the police riot forces. This fact is one more evidence that enables the people to see that the movement which the system and the repressive mechanisms are afraid of is the movement in the factories and the enterprises, the movement of the working class that gives a perspective to the people. The class oriented workers’ movement knows how to struggle and protect itself from the provocateurs. The struggles continue undiminished.
Furthermore, the Executive Secretariat denounced the stage-managed games of some dozens of hooded individuals with the police riot forces because they seek to slander the workers’ struggles, intimidate the working people and the youth and prevent their participation in the strike demonstrations. PAME called on the workers to defy them and give an organised answer to the provocative action of these mechanisms through their mass participation in the demonstrations.
In an interview at MEGA TV channel on 28th June Aleka Papariga, GS of the CC of KKE, underlined that the activity of the hooded individuals “benefits the government too” and added that “there are many cores both within and outside the government at each time or others created by relative mechanisms that utilise these incidents or even create them”. Talking about the possibility of bankruptcy in case that the parliament does not adopt the anti-people measures of the government the GS of the CC said:
«Bankruptcy is a fact. Perhaps now they agree on the conditions or the distribution of the possible losses among the creditors.” Aleka Papariga called on the people to struggle for the disengagement of the country from the EU and for parallel radical changes in society and economy.
----
2nd Day of the STRIKE
At the second day of the strike PAME along with PASEVE (Nationwide Antimonopoly Rally of the Self-employed and the small Tradesman ), PASY (All Farmers’ Militant Rally ), MAS (Students' Militant Front ) and OGE (Greek Women Federation) held mass strike demonstrations in 65 large cities of the country.
In Athens the demonstration took place in Omonoia square. A delegation of the CC of KKE headed by the GS Aleka Papariga participated in the demonstration. Afterwards followed a march in the streets of the city that ended to the Omonia square where the protesters stayed till the voting of the package of the new anti-people measures which was adopted at the afternoon by the parliamentary majority of PASOK, with 155 votes. The parliamentary group of KKE voted against the measures as a whole and headed towards the demonstration of PAME where Aleka Papariga extended a greeting stressing the need to continue the struggle for the overthrow of the anti-people choices of the government, the capital and the EU.
For more information, photos and videos you can visit:
http://inter.kke.gr/
http://es.kke.gr/
Communist Youth of Greece
www.kne.gr/english.html
Tel: 00302102592307
Fax:00302102592611
AGAINST THE POLICIES OF THE GREEK GOVERNMENT - EUROPEAN UNION - IMF
A big nationwide mobilization started on Monday 27th with the 48-hour strike.
SYMBOLIC OCCUPATION OF THE ACROPOLIS MONUMENT
“The peoples have the power and never surrender. Organize, Counterattack” was the slogan written in Greek and in English on the banner that the all Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) hung from the Acropolis on 27th June, on the eve of the 48-hour strike against the barbaric anti-people measures of the social-democratic government, the EU and the IMFthat starts on Tuesday 28th June and is expected to embrace every workplace.
Early in the morning hundreds of members and cadre of PAME carried out a symbolic occupation of the Acropolis raising two huge banners. This initiative of PAME had a very positive impact not only on the Greek working people but also on the tourists who were visiting the country and the Acropolis. The access of tourists to the Acropolis was allowed within the framework of the symbolic occupation of the forces of PAME.
PAME notes in its statement: “We call on the working people, the youth, the unemployed and the women to a carry out a people’s uprising. We struggle along with the peoples all over the world against the capitalist barbarity. The barbaric measures that lead the people to bankruptcy must not pass”.
In the afternoon the forces of PAME organised placard protests and mass rallies-in order to conduct propaganda for the strike-in many neighbourhoods in Athens as well as in other cities in Greece.
--
1st DAY OF THE STRIKE
The flags of All Workers Militant Front (PAME) waved in workplaces, enterprises, construction sites, ports, public authorities. Thousands of workers responded to the militant call of PAME. The strike has succeeded! Self-employed, poor farmers, pensioners, immigrants and students were there too.
Hard Battles took place at the gates of the factories and the ramps of the ships in order to picket the strike and make the capital feel the power of the working class where it hurts most, as it happened yesterday that hundreds of thousands took part in the strike.
During the dozens of demonstrations held throughout the country thousands of protesters voted unanimously against the measures in streets and squares.
The working people reject the new anti-people measures, refuse to become slaves of the plutocracy. We should note that the new anti-people measures reduce wages and pensions, increase further retirement ages and indirect taxation from 13% to 23%, strike a blow on social security and the list of hazardous occupations, increase the daily unpaid working time, establish particularly low wages for young people, abolish collective labour agreements, establish the temporary contracts which entail dismissals without compensation, reduce “social” benefits etc. In addition, they privatise companies, land, water supply services, ports, airports etc that were owned by the state in order to bring money to the state funds and pay the debt, as they claim themselves. Nevertheless, the reason is that they want to hand over new sectors of economy to the capitalists in order to invest their over-accumulated capital.
The workers and the popular strata defied the intimidations and participated in the yesterday morning’s strike demonstrations as well as to the dozens of demonstrations that took place yesterday afternoon. Today they continue their struggle which is a significant legacy for new struggles, for the escalation of the struggle. The vast majority of the protesters who participated in the strike demonstrations held in 65 cities of the country demonstrated with the flags of PAME and not with the so-called “indignant citizens” or with the leaderships of the yellow unions GSEE-ADEDY.
The Executive Secretariat of PAME saluted the hundreds of thousands of strikers who fought decisively for the strike. At the afternoon of the first day of the strike PAME organised a massive demonstration in the centre of Athens which extended up to the parliament. The strong picket lines of the demonstration prevented small provocateur groups from setting up provocations with the aim to dissolve the demonstration.
Although hundreds of thousands of strikers struggled dynamically for the strike, which succeeded in all over the country, although streets and squares flooded by the demonstrations, the international TV media showed the activity of the provocateurs as if it was the main issue in Greece and hardly spent a few seconds for the strike. This is their allegedly objective information! We have to do with a massive scale operation for the distortion of reality in Greece, that intends to conceal the resistance, the struggle and the demands of hundreds of thousands of working people.
The Press Office of the CC of KKE noted in its statement: “quite accidentally” the various groups of the hooded persons appear during the strike demonstrations with the police riot forces. This fact is one more evidence that enables the people to see that the movement which the system and the repressive mechanisms are afraid of is the movement in the factories and the enterprises, the movement of the working class that gives a perspective to the people. The class oriented workers’ movement knows how to struggle and protect itself from the provocateurs. The struggles continue undiminished.
Furthermore, the Executive Secretariat denounced the stage-managed games of some dozens of hooded individuals with the police riot forces because they seek to slander the workers’ struggles, intimidate the working people and the youth and prevent their participation in the strike demonstrations. PAME called on the workers to defy them and give an organised answer to the provocative action of these mechanisms through their mass participation in the demonstrations.
In an interview at MEGA TV channel on 28th June Aleka Papariga, GS of the CC of KKE, underlined that the activity of the hooded individuals “benefits the government too” and added that “there are many cores both within and outside the government at each time or others created by relative mechanisms that utilise these incidents or even create them”. Talking about the possibility of bankruptcy in case that the parliament does not adopt the anti-people measures of the government the GS of the CC said:
«Bankruptcy is a fact. Perhaps now they agree on the conditions or the distribution of the possible losses among the creditors.” Aleka Papariga called on the people to struggle for the disengagement of the country from the EU and for parallel radical changes in society and economy.
----
2nd Day of the STRIKE
At the second day of the strike PAME along with PASEVE (Nationwide Antimonopoly Rally of the Self-employed and the small Tradesman ), PASY (All Farmers’ Militant Rally ), MAS (Students' Militant Front ) and OGE (Greek Women Federation) held mass strike demonstrations in 65 large cities of the country.
In Athens the demonstration took place in Omonoia square. A delegation of the CC of KKE headed by the GS Aleka Papariga participated in the demonstration. Afterwards followed a march in the streets of the city that ended to the Omonia square where the protesters stayed till the voting of the package of the new anti-people measures which was adopted at the afternoon by the parliamentary majority of PASOK, with 155 votes. The parliamentary group of KKE voted against the measures as a whole and headed towards the demonstration of PAME where Aleka Papariga extended a greeting stressing the need to continue the struggle for the overthrow of the anti-people choices of the government, the capital and the EU.
For more information, photos and videos you can visit:
http://inter.kke.gr/
http://es.kke.gr/
Communist Youth of Greece
www.kne.gr/english.html
Tel: 00302102592307
Fax:00302102592611
Trade Union Day of Action
International Day of Action
The World Federation of Trade Unions has declared 30 October “International Action Day” in its demands for public social security for all, collective bargaining and collective agreements, trade union and democratic freedoms, a 35-hour week, and better wages.
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