August-September 1988 issue of Marxistike Syspeirosi, the theoretical journal of the Greek section of the Fourth
International.
DIMITRIS KATSORIDES
T THE BEGINNING of the
A nineteenth century, the productive forces developed by capitalism were already suffocating within national boundaries and in the bonds of individual ownership of the means of production. They were trying to expand the market, to leap over national borders and, economic ultimately, to achieve unification.
However, this contradiction of capitalism cannot be solved today by war, as happened with the first two world wars. An attempt is being made to solve it by means of agreement and negotiation. This is precisely the source of the dynamic of unification of the
Common Market.
Especially today, when the international economic crisis is sharpening inter- imperialist competition, this process is forcing the bourgeois forces to step up their efforts to unify the Common Market in order to become more competitive with the
United States and Japan.
The efforts at capitalist reconversion, in the conditions of economic decline, by means of such measures as closing unprofitable enterprises, introducing new technology, decreasing production of commodities for which demand is weak, speed-ups and so on are attempts to to restructure the world market, which mean redividing it.
This process is given even greater impetus by the decline of the US's role in the world economy, which is leading the EEC and Japan to challenge the hegemony the United States has enjoyed, and thus to entertain the ambition of becoming the dominant economic formations in a new international division of labor.
However, the unfavorable conjuncture internationally is sharpening inter-imperialist rivalries, bringing a resurgence of the protectionist tariffs that were on the decline in the period of capitalist prosperity. The international capitalist class has be careful. It fears such a return to protectionism, because it narrows the international market — as in the 1930s - and brings catastrophic consequences for the international economy Nation states obstacles to real unification
The striking fact is that when protectionism expanded in the international market after the 1973 economic crisis, it did not develop very much among the EEC member countries. At least its structures held up. The basic reason for this is the interpenetration of their economies. In fact, a breakup of the EEC would hit the exports of all its member countries hard, as well as, naturally, the world market.
There is a serious obstacle that faces EEC countries with respect to achieving their the world market, in these conditions, the Americans and the Japanese companies, which are based on states and united markets, are much stronger than every individual European imperialist power.
### Meeting competition from the US and Japan
Thus, maintaining and strengthening the Common Market is seen by all the European companies as an essential material condition for being able to meet increasing American and Japanese competition. This logic gives rise to the effort being made by the member countries of the Community and the entire bourgeoisie to transform the EEC from a loose confederation of coun
However, although the EEC is not yet a unit, either economic or political, the international capitalist crisis is forcing all the bourgeois forces to step up their efforts for unification. From that flows the goal "for 1992." But it has to be said that this demand for unity is at the same time creating sharp rivalry. The situation, therefore, is a very peculiar one. On the one hand, there is propaganda for unification. On the other, there is a sharp rivalry over who is going to get the biggest slice of the Common Market
European capitalists are sure of only one thing. It is that they are using the same methods to attack the workers' movement - privatizations, freezing wages, cutbacks of social gains, assaults on unions, speedups and so on. They know very well that only by attacking the workers' movement, by subjugating it, by defeating it, can they achieve unification. In fact, the only way to make the EEC more competitive with respect to the US and Japan is to get a tractable working-class movement that they can force to work to increase production and
Why is this happening? What is the reason for this whole bourgeois capitalist offensive? It is happening because in recent years European imperialists have fallen back in their race with American and Japanese imperialism. There has been an important deterioration of the position of
European capitalism in the high-tech areas.
Alone, no EEC country can afford more than a second-rate technology. However, all the countries of the Common Market together, with their combined financial, technological and scientific forces — at least the most developed capitalist countries of
Europe — can finally change the situation.
International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988
GREECE
This is the source of the EEC educational programs (Erasmus, Comett, Esprit, and so on). Scientific personnel will be needed to carry out research and develop the technology for the Community to compete with the US and Japan, in order to meet the crisis successfully.
An explosion of national antagonisms
All these are the plans of the bourgeoisie, and therefore only one side of the coin. It is all conditional. The good intentions of some governments, some political personalities or entrepreneurs are not enough to unite Europe or, in the longer run, to create a supranational state.
The laws of the capitalist economy - the anarchy of production and the sharp competition that imposes these laws of motion of capitalism — are laying the bases for an explosion of national antagonisms, a return to which the bourgeois forces fear. They are preparing the way for protectionism, the threat of countries going bankrupt. Therefore, for the EEC the long-term economic decline means a long phase of crisis and doubt.
The igniting of national antagonisms on the world scale and in the Common Market by the explosion of an economic crisis such as the 1929 crash would bring catastrophic results to the member countries of the Community. Consequently, the most likely perspective for the Common Market is not breakup and disappearance, but an intermediate stage between a simple free-trade zone and a European bourgeois confederation. The idea of a supranational state appears, at least for the moment, to be a pipedream.
However, economic development is tied up with class struggle, and it is only from this standpoint that we should view the attempts to unify the EEC. The only correct class solution that can really create a united
Europe is the establishment of a revolutionary workers government that would nationalize big capital and establish an economy based on socialist planning, developed by the working people themselves.
Such a process, together with the overthrow of the bureaucracy in the countries of so-called actually existing "socialism," is the only way to open the road for a United Socialist States of Europe. This is the only sound alternative for today's divided Europe, which is facing a parallel crisis of capitalism in the West and of the bureaucracy in the East.
The anarchy and competition of capitalism in the West, like bureaucratic ossification in Eastern Europe, cannot offer the solution of a united Europe. This is something that can be achieved only by working people and socialism, and only from that standpoint can the EEC be correctly analyzed.
However, in the imperialist stage of capitalist development, the national state becomes an obstacle to the development of the productive forces. Therefore, in order for the system to develop and live, it is compelled to constantly widen its markets. The creation of the EEC was the result of this.
However, with the opening up of the economic borders of the EEC countries, sharp competition was unleashed between the companies and monopolies for the lion's share of the united European market. It was precisely this logic that created the terms for the adjustment of the national economies.
For the Greek economy such adjustment means bourgeois modernization, as for the other economies, and the need to become competitive within the EEC. The 1985 measures, the so-called incomes policy imposed by the PASOK government, was inspired by such a perspective of "adjusting" the Greek economy to the "new internaE 0 K
?
tional conditions of competition."
Thus, for Greece, capitalist restructuring means squeezing the incomes of working people, tying wages to productivity, speed-up and an authoritarian organization of work, privatization and the closing of problematic enterprises, new forms of "flexiblepartial" employment and fragmentation of the working class, as well as a sharpening of unemployment. It means, moreover, a system of job evaluations for workers and the fragmentation of labor contracts, state intervention in the labor movement and so on.
For all these reasons, in order to increase the competivity of "our economy," Greek capital and the politicians that represent it are using the following arguments to convince workers and young people to work harder: the "national interest," the interest of the economy and industry, an alleged defense of jobs, proposals for "economic development," and so on. The main objective of this is to mount an ideological attack on the workers' movement. Its purpose is simply to strike at workers' gains and to overcome the crisis by imposing sharp austerity on working people.
Sacrifices, austerity and submission
So, this policy of bourgeois modemization will concentrate production in the EEC in the hands of a few monopolies. The strong will win out over the weak, and the means required for this modernization will come from the people. In plain Greek, this means that competition requires sacrifices, austerity and the people's submission to authoritarianism. This is precisely what the so-called capitalist restructuring offers.
However, with the unification of the EEC, we will have an unbalanced and distorted economic development, because the strongest economies will gain the most ad-
November 28, 1988 • #152 International Viewpoint vantages from the widening of the European market, since the less-developed economies are also the least competitive.
The success of the European Monetary System (EMS), depends on combating inflation in the weaker member countries in particular, such as Greece. This means wage freezing, a fall in the standard of living and naturally an increase in profits. This is the policy that is being applied primarily with the "stabilization" and austerity measures of 1985
At the same time, the EEC has two objectives in trying to open up southern Europe and Greece. One is to create springboards and channels for extending its commercial relations with Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. The other is to increase its margins for maneuver, so that it can systematically shift the weight of any crisis onto the shoulders of the weaker economies, in particular in southern Europe.
The international division of labor imposes on Greece the role of imperialism's bridge to the countries of Africa and Asia. Greece was a party to the Lome Treaty. Lome is the capital of the African country of Togo, where in 1975 a an economic cooperation treaty was signed between the EEC and 53 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (the ACP Zone). Today, with adherence of other countries has raised the number of signatory states to 66.
The neo-colonial Lome
Treaty
This treaty involves the signature of a renewable protocol for funding by the 12 EEC member states of programs for the economies of the 66 other states. It is a treaty of a strictly neo-colonial character, because most of these ACP countries were colonies of England, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Belgium. Every country that has adhered to the EEC automatically accepts the Lome treaties. This naturally will include Greece, which did not have any colonies but has now acquired
Greece is today a party to the exploitation of those countries. Its "aid" to the countries of ACP Zone comes under three categories: the construction of public works; providing machinery; and technical aid.
This fact alone demolishes all the views about a "peripheral" Greece, a "backward" third world country and so on. In fact, with the Lome Treaty, it becomes a partner — a junior one, to be sure — of the big imperialist countries of the EEC in one of their major imperialist enterprises.
This connection of Greece to the EEC is of course the result of the political course of Greece since the war and the advance of Greek capitalism. Capitalist conditions are being consolidated and extended by the connection. The Greek economy is becoming a part of the imperialist big capital of the EEC, in a subordinate, sub-imperialist role. This role of Greek capitalism needs to be exposed systematically in order to uncover the real physiognomy hidden under the characterization of the country as "peripheral" or
"underdeveloped."
In fact, with its ties to the
Common Market, Greek capitalism is trying to find the economic means and the capital needed to speed up its development. Its development has necessarily to go through bourgeois modernization, which means its adjustment to the international social division of labor.
Greek capital is also supporting the connection with the EEC for another reason.
Facing a sharpening of the international crisis and the threat from working people, it needs to put the management of the Greek economy officially in the hands of the Eumonopolies.
objective is to share the profits and the responsibilities with them in order to shore up their domination. Moreover, from the political standpoint, this means putting the problem of dealing with the Greek workers' movement in the hands of a better organized, experienced and collective leadership - the
Of course, the EEC does not yet represent either an economic or political unit in the proper sense of the word. The capitalist crisis, however, has forced all the European firms to step up their efforts to achieve this much-talked-about unity.
Despite everything, as a result of the economic crisis, the Greek economy cannot solve its problems - inflation, budget deficit, lack of investment, public debt, dependent industrialization and so on. So, there is no solution other than incorporation into the Common Market. Because of the international crisis, the dependent Greek economy cannot survive "independently" and
"with a free hand" in the framework of
EEC the only refug for
Greek capitalism
Therefore, either inside or outside of the
EEC, the Greek economy will be hit harder than those of the other partners, and the crisis of Greek capitalism is preparing difficulties and calamities for Greek working people. In a nutshell, Greek capitalism in the framework of the EEC knows that it will have the help of big monopoly capital to confront the crisis.
So it is clear that the incorporation of
Greek capitalism into the EEC is the only refuge. At the same time, this is the only way it can compete with the newly developing countries of the so-called third world
4992) (Taiwan, South Korea, and so on), which are more developed than Greek capitalism.
The anti-imperialist and anti-American feelings of the Greek people are being skillfully exploited to convince people of the "positive" aspects of incorporation into the Common Market.
The basis of this argument is the effort that the EEC is making to achieve political independence from the USA in order to become more competitive than it and Japan. In fact, this fundamentally reveals the inter-imperialist character of the conflict between these three poles — the US, the EEC
It would be a tragic mistake for working people to fall into this trap - since this policy is designed to repair capitalism, indeed to help it survive - by taking one or the other side in this rivalry. But this is precisely what the reformist parties of the establishment left want to do.
However, the position of "no to the EEC" is also a mistake, when it is used as a sort of stage in the transition to socialism, precisely as it is being used by the KKE [the pro-Moscow CP] and was earlier by the PASOK. It needs to be linked to the struggle against the bourgeoisie of this country (which looks forward to linking up with that of the EEC), and with the perspective of a socialist federation of a United States of all Europe.
If the position "no to the EEC" is not put forward with this perspective, then it remains in the sphere of the bourgeoisie, of "self-propelled economic development," "competitiveness," and so on.
Any consistent analysis and policy for the intemational and Greek left has to consider these questions in order to include them in its program and to pursue an intransigent 19 struggle to defend workers' gains. *
International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988