Even if social democratic illusions are being spun out (take Peter Jankowitsch's statement, for instance: "The European societies have become more open to the integration and collaboration." Vranitzky [the social-democratic premier] is not excluding membership at a later time, if a way can be found to get around the problem of Austria's neutral status. process cannot go fast enough for the industrialists' association, big agri-business (Raiffeisen) and the FPO [Freedom Party, the far-right bourgeois party], which would like to see Austria become a full member of the EEC overnight.
Reservations about closer links with the EEC (today it already accounts for 68% of Austria's imports and 63% of its exports) are held by sections of the rather middle-class Federal Chamber of Commerce and the farmers organizations. They fear, rightly, that they will be flattened by the EEC monopolies. The big papers (Kurier, Krone, Presse) are all out for the EEC. As so often happens, nothing has been heard from the unions, except that they are gallantly relaying the government's policy
The public argument of the EEC advocates is a simple one. What is involved is access to a market of 320 million people. Inside it, there are a lot of possibilities and also, to some extent, opportunities for exercising influence; outside of it, we face marginalization and isolation. Privately, the argument goes quite differently. Generally, markets are contracting, the pressure of competition is rising, only the toughest will survive. Therefore, we need rationalization (that is, more unemployment), increased cooperation with the multinationals, deregulation and so on, even if the sectors (the nationalized industries, sections of the farmers) go to the wall.
FOR THE Communist Party (CP), the EEC question offers chance to to replay the old record of "defending Austrian interests" and of "anti-
For a Eur workers, l and op
ALTHOUGH Austria was pledg ended Soviet occupation of a p capitalists are increasingly eage
EEC, which also involv
One special problem that the eliminate as quickly as possibl which is largely a result of the p phase of the world economic presided over by a right-wing notable stability. But as the capitalists also have grown mor constraints of "
The following article from the magazine of the Socialist Alterr of the Fourth International - ol
"EE( HERMANN BRU
STRASBOURG world (including the third world), more social and more modern"), and the Eurocommunists fantasize about "democratizing the
EEC," European imperialism is not one whit better than its American and Japanese counterparts.
2
TODAY, the EEC is marked by numerous crises. It suffers from an especially serious one in agriculture (gigantic overproduction), which eats up more than half of the EEC budget. Nonetheless, the outlook is for further integration. The next major stage is supposed to be the achievement of a "free internal market" for goods, services, capital and labor by 1992. The locomotives of integration are France and
West Germany, which are also establishing joint military units.
3
THE APPROACH of 1992 and the changed political situation in recent years (the end of the Socialist Party [SP] government, the "Austro-Turn"') have put wind in the sails of the Austrian EEC lobby. The Great Coalition [of the OVP and
14
' the SP] is striving for "the greatest possible
International Viewpoint #139 • April 18, 1988 monopoly coalition." Characteristically in the CP's positions on European integration, the working class takes a back seat. What is in the forefront is "the threat to our status under international law," "the danger to our economic independence" and so on - as if Austria were not a capitalist country and did not have a bourgeois class state.
THE STATEMENTS of the Greens on the EEC question so far have been contradictory. On the one hand, they have correctly pointed to the closeness of the EEC to NATO and explained that a tighter integration of Western Europe will be accompanied by more democracy, more social security and more concern for the environment. Austria is said to be threatened by a sort of "cold Anschluss" and to risk becoming "the eastern frontier of the Western alliance."2 Quite correctly, they have also pointed up the fact that the transnational activity of the monopolies needs a transnational answer from below.
However, what the Greens offer concretely runs counter to such an overall point of view. "The agrarian question can
Drawing by Plantu from Ça manque de femmes, editions La Découverte/Le
Monde, Paris pe of the employed ressed o neutrality by the treaties that f the country, the country's big join the "rich man's club" of the ssociation with NATO. trian capitalists are eager to the considerable state sector, al Soviet occupation. In the first s, the size of the state sector, al democracy, gave Austria a is has deepened, Austrian d more anxious to throw off the are capitalism." Jary issue of Die Linke - the e (SOAL), the Austrian section es a counterattack against the ver." VORCZAK LLES be more easily and better solved nationally than internationally," small, manageable units are better and more human," "our own [sic] production and our farmers have to be protected..."
AS REVOLUTIONARY Marxists, we have no interest either in a primitive process of concentration and centralization of capital or any backwardness, no matter how it is organized. Therefore, we do not make any fetish out of the "ceaseless growth of the EEC" and so-called progress in it. But nor are we going to fall back into narrow nationalism and sing the praises of the red-white-red Alpine Republic.
We are against the EEC, because it goes hand in hand with more influence for the big bourgeoisie, more unemployment, less respect for the environment, a new impetus to the arms race, a tighter grip on the third world and so on. However, we do not in any way defend Austria's small-time capitalism and its political wildlife preserve against its international competition.
IN ORDER to understand the negative consequences of joining the EEC, the most important thing is not to refer to the disastrous results of the integration of the "border lands" such as Greece, Spain or Ireland. It is enough today to take a closer look at the expertise of the apostles of the EEC to understand what we are
For example, in order to " bring Austrian universities closer to the EEC standard," a "Council for Educational Reform" has already been set up. The chair of this illustrious body is the general director of the Neusiedl paper mill. The concrete objectives of this council are to "reduce study time," "to change the content of studies" and to introduce "accelerated courses"
-that is, to tighten the screws of the technocratic university reform.
For the VOEST-Alpine Donawitz steelworks, entry into the EEC would be a death
AUSTRIA answers. The problem of unemployment calls for an international campaign for the immediate introduction of the 35-hour week without loss of pay (on paper, the European Confederation of Labor has already decided this. The steel crisis calls for a conference of European steel workers to adopt measures for a cross-border struggle
Defenders of the environment have to cooperate internationally against the ecological catastrophes. A Europe of the workers, unemployed and oppressed has to be counterposed to the Europe of the monopolies through real activity from below.
THE LEFT in Austria has so far hardly given a thought to the question of the EEC. That situation has to be changed quickly. Haider [leader of the FPO, a far-right demagogue] goes along with the demand for a referendum, which in and of itself is not incorrect. To counter the manipulative oversimplification in the Euro-craze, there is a need to explain concisely how the EEC is in fact set up....
In the present unfavorable relationship of forces, it is appropriate to concentrate on clarifying the left, parts of the workers' movement, the Greens, "sensitized layers" and so on. A serious policy of alliances (with farmers threatened by economic extinction) will be possible only when "heavy battalions" have gone into motion, to which potential allies could really relate.
Even if alliances, by definition, involve certain retreats from pure proletarian positions, the support of sections of the petty bourgeoisie can serve only to win such a future, not to defend their present miserable status quo. An effective answer to the problem of agriculture would therefore have a transitional character - nationalization of agri-business under the control of the small- and medium-sized farmers, as well as the consumers; nationalization of the Raiffeisen complex under similar conditions; voluntary combination of small farmers in producers' cooperatives.
LUXEMBOURG
PLANTE sentence. Enormous overcapacities in the EEC steel industry would mean immediate "adjustments," that is, closures. In the language of the VOEST-Alpine personnel paper, Blick, it is put as follows: "Above all, the production and supply quotas that exist in the EEC would replace current export relations."
While the weekly Profil is taking up the cause of the EEC, to bring down the "monopolies," narrow trading margins and bring fresh air into Austria so that it will finally become "a competitive country," it is precisely the Austrian sugar industry that is centralizing further in order to prepare for the EEC. It is planning to close its factories in Enns and Siegendorf.
ANY nationalistic measures (protective tariffs, quotas, still more subsidies for agriculture) will lead us into an abyss, above all because they split the international working class. The manifold crises of capitalism demand international
10 BESIDES carrying on its own activities, SOAL has to confront the Greens with the EEC question. The problem of Austria moving still closer to the EEC is much too important a matter to be left to the government and the parliament. As in the cases of Zwentendorf, Hainburg and the fighter planes?, the decision should be left to a referendum. So that the EEC lobby and FPO leader Haider will not win, "EEC-No Thanks!" committees should be formed throughout Austria at the proper time that are able to wage a colorful, imaginative and forward-looking campaign. * 1. A "Tum" toward openly anti-labor policies; the term is borrowed from the Kohl government in Germany, which proclaimed a tur to free-enterprise principles, a sharp break from Social Democratic policies 2. Austria arose as an eastem frontier state of medieval Catholic Europe. Its name derives from that role. 3. Zwentendorf and Hainburg were ecological strug- gles; the fighter planes were a major military purchase 15 against which a struggle was waged. April 18, 1988 • #139 International Viewpoint
Krupp-Rheinhausen — an exemplary struggle lay-offs before. What's new is the duration of this particular struggle, and its radicalism"
But these experiences have also been mixed. In some factories, the workers were prepared to talk, give solidarity, lead demonstrations, distribute information and collect money. But in others, such as Krupp in Bochum and the "Rheinpreussen" pit, the process has been more complicated. The workers there have been very reserved
This is no accident. In these sorts of places there hasn't been any good union work for many years, and the majority of the factory councils are committed to a social partnership perspective.
WORKERS at the Krupp Rheinhausen steelworks have launched strike actions and a "stop-go" work protest since last
November, when the management let slip plans to close the plant [see IV 134]. Their struggle - massively supported by other workers and the local population at large in
Duisburg-Rheinhausen — has become a national and international focus for the fight against closures and redundancies.