INDIA • WESTERN EUROPE
Europe the knife slashed one of Thakhorebhai
Shah's buttocks. A comrade accompanying him chased the assailant, but under the cover of darkness, he escaped. Bleeding, Thakorebhai was rushed to hospital. It was found that the assailant had inflicted a
12cm-long wound, needing 14 stitches.
labour leaders, human
THE APPROACHING European elections have focused
Immediately rights organizations and other concerned discussion on the capitalist integration of Europe.
people condemned this attempt to assassi-
Revolutionary organizations have to take up the nate Thakorebhai. On April 1, hundreds of workers from Baroda marched in unison to challenge involved in the implementation of the Single protest against the assault. They demon-
European Act (SEA') for the workers' movement. The strated in front of the police commissioner's office. The pressure of public opinion starting point should be an analysis and an interpretation and press reports criticizing the governof the present phase of European integration, of the ment rocked the Gujarat State Assembly, capitalist project and of its contradictions.
forcing the chief minister to revoke the
Official Secrets Act.
The European sections of the Fourth International have
As already announced, in order to take the agitation to the state capital a hunger already begun this process. These organizations are strike of workers was to begin on April 3 in continuing the discussion while collaborating on front of the State Assembly, which was common campaigns and initiatives. In addition, a number then in session. However, in a sudden development, the Assembly was adjourned of the sections (in Portugal, Belgium, Luxemburg, Italy on March 31. So the workers decided to and Greece) will be presenting candidates in the June shift the venue to the office of the Narmada
Nigam in Baroda. Accordingly, on April 4, elections, either independently or in an alliance with after 65 days of strike, 65 workers began other forces.
their indefinite fast in front of the Narmada
Nigam office in Baroda.
This manifesto is a first step marking a process of collective reflection that will be continued in future
Dam workers set militant discussions.
example
DOCUMENT
All the signs are that the state has thrown its full weight behind the company, and that, as in the textile strike, it is taking the dam workers' action very seriously and is determined to smash it. In these efforts, the
Narmada Nigam and its chair, Sanat Mehta, a former socialist and labour leader, is actively conniving with the company to deprive workers of their rights.
Clearly, the government knows that if building workers are able to organize and win at one place, the unorganized workers at many other big construction sites would be encouraged to launch struggles against their inhuman exploitation. Therefore, it wants to nip the democratic aspirations of the unorganized workers in the bud.
However, the Narmada Dam workers have already thwarted the government's attempts for a long enough time to spread their message to thousands of such workers all over the county. They are determined to win their demands. But even if they lose, their movement has already set an example that will inspire more and more workers to rise to get their fundamental democratic rights.*
(Stop press: the workers decided to end the strike after 85 days. We hope to have an update shortly.)
HE JUNE 1989 European elections are going to be mainly centered around the theme of the "single market" of 1992 and the Single European Act (SEA). After years of austerity and growing unemployment, European unification is the focus of hopes for new growth and a big reduction in unemployment. Built up into a real myth in certain countries, the promises of the big internal market of 1992 constitute a major ideological offensive of the bourgeoisie. The European elections will be the occasion for attributing this Europe with miraculous virtues with the implication that the crisis, which cannot be overcome at a national level, can be transcended on a Europe-wide scale. For the United Socialist
States of Europe 1 For years we have defended the idea of a United Socialist States of Europe against all national chauvinism and concepts of
"national unity". We are for a Europe without frontiers, that develops comradeship between workers, brings down artificial barriers between the peoples and frees oppressed nationalities from the straightjacket of the old states. We are for a Europe that opens up new and broad horizons for the development of material wealth, of technological resources and of human capacities, which are today fragmented and confined in narrow nation states. We are for a Europe rid of all inequality between men and women. We are for a Europe that upgrades social gains (in wages, jobs and social protection) to the level of the most advanced and that promotes equal rights to jobs, health and education — the most basic of human rights. We are for a Europe oriented towards the future, capable of overcoming regional inequalities, of foreseeing the damage caused by the race for 1. The SEA, signed on February 17, 1986, marked a new stage of European integration, including the project for a total opening up of borders inside the Europe- an Community, for the free circulation of goods and 21 capital.
WESTERN EUROPE profit and the unbridled pillaging of natural resources. We are for a Europe of peace and disarmament, which uses the resources today squandered on military budgets to satisfy real needs, to carry out research and to protect the environment. We are, finally, for a Europe that overcomes - rather than deepens and consolidates — the split that has divided it for almost 50 years between an imperialist "West" and a bureaucratic and Stalinist "East".
The Europe of the SEA is a step towards another kind of Europe. The European "Community" is a Europe of capitalist plunder. This "Europe" divides Europe!
It is a Europe of sharpened competition, which has already created 16 million unemployed, and whose first effects will be new concentrations, restructuring and the dismantling of social gains - leading to more unemployment. It is a Europe of increased inequality between the countries, regions and peoples: a Europe that excludes immigrants and discriminates against women. A Europe of the nuclear and conventional arms race, which is trying to get out of the crisis on the back of the Third World. A Europe ravaged by increased competition between individual interests, where the pillage of natural resources goes along with unlimited exploitation of human labour. A Europe that presents itself as an open hunting ground for all multinational speculators and predators. A Europe that, far from encouraging "European" cultural creation, is opening up to the invasion of commercialized rubbish. A Europe that, far from pulling down the walls dividing it, consolidates them and creates new divisions that mutilate it. A Europe that reduces itself to simply Western Europe, at the very time when the people and especially young people of Eastern Europe are also seeking exchange and dialogue to overcome the twin crises created by the unbridled capitalist market and authoritarian bureaucratic planning.
A statement of free- market beliefs 2 This Europe is a statement of free-market beliefs. The single market means competition between national regulations and norms, tax systems, levels of productivity and working conditions. This "emulation" is supposed to produce a thorough reorganization of European industry and an economic upturn. Certain defenders of the "single market" even explain that abolishing the frontiers, eliminating all the non-tariff barriers?, and allowing the free circulation of capital will give rise to a new economic order once the laws of the market have finally purged the system of 22 all protectionism and too much state intervention. International Viewpoint #163 • May 15, 1989
3 The supporters of this Europe also want
to get the workers' agreement to this by brandishing the threat of competition from American and Japanese companies. The only way of saving jobs in this framework is to speed up the unification of the European market. They will thus try to fabricate a sort of European chauvinism to try to justify all the industrial restructuring — above all redundancies, productivity speed-ups, wage freezes, and so on.
There is nothing that indicates that a "European capitalism" is really on the agenda. The perspective of the "single market" is certainly one of the ways in which the big European companies can defend themselves in the world market, but it is not the only one. In certain branches, for certain products, research or markets, their solution has already been alliances or mergers with American or Japanese companies. The fundamental trend in the situation is an increased internationalization of the capitalist economy, the Europe of 1992 being only a link in the chain of this reorganization. The need for a single market, for a huge free-trade zone, does not mean that European bosses either want or can achieve a common industrial policy. The choice of inter-European alliances or extraEuropean alliances is made, as always, on the basis of the particular interests of the capitalists and not on the basis of a so-called ideological choice in favour of a
Thus, the ideological attempts to create a "European patriotism" — in reality "Eurochauvinism" — in order to make the bitter pill of the social costs of restructuring easier to swallow, have to be denounced in the same way as "national" chauvinism. 4 The SEA is thus completely oriented to capital accumulation. It is an answer to the needs of the biggest European corporations: to face up to competition, open the markets, deregulate and reduce production costs by economies of scale. But it is not by any stretch of the imagination a way of satisfying the main social needs, of attacking unemployment and poverty.
The social costs 5 The bosses want to make a "unified"
Europe with the same methods and same recipes that they have been implementing in each individual country for the last 15 years. The profits of "today" are supposed to be the jobs of "tomorrow", the restructuring of the European steel, textile or shipbuilding industries is supposed to be followed by an upturn in employment and an upturn in economic activity in the regions concerned. None of this has happened. So a new refrain appears: if this has not worked up to now it is because there has been too much "national egoBut the social cost of Europe has not been considered at all. At the end of the day, it will be workers who pay the price. The acceleration of industrial restructuring, mergers and take-overs, will create many redundancies. The promise of a "virtuous" regulation of the market will in fact lead to an increase in monopolization, to challenges to workers' status in the public sector and to de-skilling. 7 Privatization is an integral part of this framework, encouraging the exclusive use of free-market strategies with utter disregard for social needs, particularly in education, transport, energy, communications and the media. Challenging the particular status of personnel in these public services will go alongside the projects of restructuring or privatization. 8 The single market will not unify a homogeneous Europe. There are already significant differences between different countries or regions. The economic crisis has deepened these inequalities, and the single market — despite the compensatory mechanisms introduced a posteriori — will increase them. Certain regions will experience cumulative growth while others will sink deeper into crisis, deindustrialization and unemployment. The growing effects of unequal development will be added to unresolved national questions. In the rural areas of southern Europe thousands of small peasants will be pushed off their land.
Pressure on wages 9 The competition between different sets of regulations and standards is going to increase the pressure on wages and the deterioration of working conditions. The present disparities in social legislation in different countries of the Community are a means of exerting pressure on the workers, who are told that realism consists in maintaining the competitiveness of their companies with the hope of a return to full employment later.
In reality the trends introduced by the "single market" will be strict control of 2. Non-tariff barriers include all protectionist import regulations, excluding taxes and duties.
May 15, 1989 • #163 International Viewpoint wages and increases in flexible working. 10 Today in the EEC there are 44 million poor with an income of less than half the average earnings of their country. More than 16 million people are unemployed, 40% of whom are young people. None of this will be changed — quite the contrary. To the official unemployment figures will be added the spread of insecure, part-time, and temporary jobs, particularly aimed at women and young people. The Europe of 1992 will still be a Europe of unemployment. While certain sectors and companies could eventually benefit from the new markets offered by the removal of all the nontariff barriers, this will not in itself increase employment. Whole sectors are going to be affected by large-scale restructuring and rationalizations that will have a big fall-out effect on the job market. 11 The competition between tax systems, the need to bring VAT rates into line, and the attempts of each country to prevent the flight of capital towards more financially profitable countries will all lead to the introduction of governmental measures that will end up attacking the incomes of wage-earners more than those of the capitalists, either by increasing the tax burden on income or by severe cuts in social budgets.
A challenge for the workers' movement
12 The interests of the big financial and
industrial groups are increasingly intertwined; there are more and more alliances, making the confrontations between the workers and their bosses increasingly complex and difficult. The growing number of subsidiaries and alliances between European multinationals puts the decision-making centres definitively outside the national framework, and confronts the trade-union movement with new problems and dangers. 13 The introduction of the single market is a challenge for the European workers' movement. Already the bosses are using the argument of increased competition to refuse demands and attack previous gains. They are trying to introduce a better relationship of forces to fragment and divide the labour movement. The stakes are considerable. We have to unceasingly denounce these capitalist projects and this Europe of big capitalism, which is being built on the backs of the workers. During these European elections there will be a lot of noise about the problems of the European institutions, the relationship between the states and the political workings of the Community.
Convinced of its needs on the economic plane, the bourgeoisie is hesitating on the question of the European institutions and their relationships to the national states. The perspective of the single market does not remove regulatory functions from national governments. This is why there are contradictions accumulating between the project of a united Europe and the still irreplaceable control functions of the member states. The discussion on the European institutions, on the role of the European parliament and the European Commission are part of this question. The same goes for the conclusions of the Delors committee on the perspective of economic and monetary union. In certain countries this dilemma is increasing the crisis of the right-wing parties. Workers have no interest in these arguments and should not support one bourgeois camp against another.
14 The Europe that is being established
is the product of capitalists' needs. The European elections aim to give democratic legitimacy to the idea of a united Europe. But it is enough to see the disparity in the electoral systems to realize that each state intends to interpret in its own fashion the demagogic claim to involve the mass of the people in "building" Europe, through the electoral game and the election of parliament. The Brussels Commission is a new bureaucratic and technocratic power escaping all control. There is nothing democratic
For a workers' Europe
An expression of a real internationalization and concentration of capital, the Europe of the Common Market and the SEA remains at the crossroads between the formation of a real European capitalism and advances on the road to a European state on the one hand, and implosion and a retreat back into national borders on the other. The recessions of 1974 and 1981 did not resolve this dilemma. Industrial Europe has not really taken over from commercial Europe — but nor has there been a retreat into protectionism. Over and above its chronic crises, the Europe of Six, and then of the Twelve, has held together. After the shock of 1974, from 1977 on French President Giscard d'Estaing and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt took the initiative for a European upturn with the establishment of the European Monetary System (EMS4) and the election of the Strasbourg parliament. After 1981, François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl restarted the process, first with the extension of the Community to twelve countries and now with the Single European Act.
In fact, the bourgeoisie does not believe its own speeches on the virtues of economic liberalism. The bosses know very well that international relations do not simply boil down to market or economic relations. It is not enough for them to have competitive enterprises if they do not possess a currency, a diplomacy, an army, a state. In this, the United States still has a comparative advantage in the international arena, despite its relative decline. Without such instruments, Europe can only become a
WESTERN EUROPE huge free-trade zone open to pressure from all directions.
This is the problem that the European Commission and certain sections of the European bourgeoisies want to address. But they come up against the crisis or the lack of real political leadership. At the level of the different countries, neither France nor West Germany alone are able to provide the motor force, for different reasons. At the level of the different political forces, the right, prisoner of its pro-American traditions, is divided and hesitant.
The "Euro-left"
It is therefore social-democracy that increasingly presents itself as the most coherent and determined champion of Europe. Having experienced the ineffectiveness of its traditional Keynesian policies at the national level, it claims that capitalist Europe is the appropriate framework for an upturn or concerted expansion, on condition that industrial, regional and social policies are brought into line. They argue that there should be a European-wide social treatment of unemployment, and a gradual redistribution of public powers between the regional, national and European levels. But their total and unquestioning submission to the capitalist logic of the SEA leads them to accept and organize the social attacks implied in the 1992 project. The joint manifesto of the European social-democratic parties goes so far as to proclaim the necessity of nuclear weapons within the European defence system.
Faced with this, the traditional policy of the communist parties — for example, in France - of a reactionary withdrawal behind their national borders in the name of national unity, seems increasingly old-fashioned and inoperative. The direction taken by the Italian CP, in the name of its integration into the Euro-left, is significant. It relates both to the attraction of social-democracy, which seems to have a more credible reformist project at a European level, and the effects of the international policy of Gorbachev, who has decided to coexist, trade and cooperate with a Western Europe that is becoming gradually less attached to its Atlanticist roots. The recent hesitations of the French CP on Europe, putting the emphasis on "international cooperation" and the new criteria of management applied to Europe, are one significant example of this dilemma.
The growth of the Green parties testifies to popular disaffection with the traditional parties and worries by a growing section of the population about the main options chosen for society. The Greens are against the SEA, denouncing the threat of the free mar3. The European Commission is made up of 17 commissioners appointed by their goverments. It is charged with the management of community policies. 4. The EMS was set up in April 1972 by the six member states then belonging to the EEC. Its role is to limit The want in on is ho era 6 for the bia le) e 2 3 relevant currencies to 2.25% (6% for the Italian lire).
WESTERN EUROPE ket to the environment and the logic of European arms policy. But why separate the ecological commitment from class commitment as some Greens do, when the logic of profit, the reduction of human labour and of nature to commodities are at the root of the evils they are denouncing? This refusal to take a clearly anti-capitalist position and to turn towards the labour movement is gradually leading the Green parties to conciliatory positions. In the future it will not be enough to denounce the dramatic consequences of the free market, there will also have to be proposals for concrete struggle and a project for an alternative society to capitalism.
How far has European integration gone? 15 It is important to participate in all the discussions within the labour movement. The extent of the integration process already underway and its consequences for the working class have to be carefully measured. It would be wrong to think that this is just hot air: although there are obvious contradictions and divisions within the bourgeoisie on the question of economic integration and European unification, we should not lose sight of the objective needs of capitalism and the consequent actions taken by the big firms and the multinationals and thus by the European Commission and national governments. Our immediate problem is not to speculate on the capacity of the bourgeoisie to build a European state, but to measure the political and social damage for the labour movement that this attempt to pursue European integration is going to cause.
But we should not fall into the opposite trap - as certain Euro-communist currents do — of accepting this Europe as a fatality and thus give up the struggle at the national level. While a relationship of forces favourable to the workers has to be established at the European level as soon as possible, it is nonetheless the case that the first step is centred on the relationship of forces established in each country. We are against the EEC, and at certain decisive moments of the class struggle in a given country or when a real mass movement against the disastrous social consequences of capitalist European integration develops, the necessity to put forward the demand to break with the Community may be on the agenda. This is why it is legitimate for workers' and revolutionary forces in countries that have not yet joined the Community to fight The "social dimension" 16 Faced with the attacks and the risks, the workers' movement must unhesitatingly oppose the SEA. Against the bosses' Europe demands must be raised for cooper24 ation and unity, for a new internationalism that can meet the challenges of the situa International Viewpoint #163 • May 15, 1989 tion.
It is urgent for the trade-union movement to establish means of coordination and centralization of information and struggles on a company-wide basis. The separations, the national divisions have to be broken down and chauvinist prejudices swept away. The trade-union movement must create the necessary instruments within the multinationals and European companies. 17 Faced with austerity policies and the social dangers of the SEA, the answer must be to struggle, and not to have a utopian
"European" social dialogue between bosses and unions. After everything about the single market has already been decided, all of a sudden there is a concern about the social aspect. It is considered as a sort of amendment or addition to the SEA negotiated in carpeted offices in Brussels, sheltered from the discussions and control of the workers, and in any case at the mercy of a veto from governments as reactionary as Thatcher's — because the "social dimension" is precisely an area in which the rule of unanimity has been main-
"Social European Act" is being discussed among people who are already convinced that the "single market" is the miracle solution. In their negotiations, the European employers' associations and union leaderships organized in the European Trade Union Congress (ETUC) are all believers in the "benefits" of the single market. And in the name of deregulation and liberalism, the bosses and the Commission have already announced that there is no question of introducing regulations to impose common social meas-
While the bosses want to internationalize their capital as far as possible, they refuse the workers the benefit of the same advantages everywhere.
The workers' movement has nothing to gain from "co-management" of the introduction of the single market. It should first of all be concerned about the relationship of forces between the workers and the bosses. It is through struggles that the capitalist projects can be blocked, and not in first accepting the logic of the SEA and then adding on the social dimension as an amendment.
Before 1992, all the main social demands should be counterposed to the SEA and form the basis for a united, independent struggle of all organizations identifying With the working class. Strengthened by this unity, the trade unions could then demand, on the basis of their mobilization, the formalization of new social gains that would allow all workers to benefit. 18 Several major workers' mobilizations (the British miners' defence of the sliding scale in Italy, the fight for the 35-hour week in West Germany, the general strike in the Spanish state) have shown that it is possible on the basis of social struggles to fight against austerity policies and to block the free-market project of 1992, rather than choosing the utopian road of pressure on the European institutions.
The nurses' strikes in Britain and later in France, West Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, showed that struggles could be brought together and given common objectives. The same goes for the struggles by young people against austerity policies in education, for railworkers (France and Italy) and teachers (France, Spanish state,
Against downward "harmonization"
One of the goals must be to oppose the trend to drag wages, working conditions and social benefits down to the lowest common denominator. On the contrary, they should be upgraded, and the advantages acquired in one country or one sector applied to all the workers concerned in Europe. Attempts to introduce competition between workers in Europe through different wages, working conditions or levels of social protection should be resisted.
It is in this framework that the trade that the gains obtained in certain countries could be applied in their own. But here again such objectives can only be achieved by strug gles and the relationship of forces, and not by social consensus and incantatory appeals to a united and co-managed 19 Certain countries like Greece and Portugal, indeed the Spanish state and Ireland, suffer social situations that are quite different from those of other EEC states in terms of the level of wages, social benefits, the working week, working conditions, and so on. In these countries, the governments and bosses hold up the gains that the single market would bring if the "comparative advantages" for investors could be main-
In these countries the first objective for the workers' movement should be to fight against this logic and in the first place impose alignment with the social conditions in the other EEC countries (such as the 40-hour week for example).
But the European workers' movement as a whole has to adopt common objectives that demonstrate its united commitment to an alternative social project to that of the bosses' Europe. 20 There is now a big discussion among members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA5) on the usefulness of joining the European Community. The ruling classes are more or less in favour, certain sections think that it would be better to be associated in one way or S. EFTA has six member countries: Austria, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. Most EFTA countries have signed free-trade agreements with the EEC.
another rather than formally joining. Here again, the workers' movement must not fall into the trap of the comparative advantages of EEC membership for their own bourgeoisie. The workers and their organizations should first of all demand that there is no challenge to the social gains they have made, rejecting any downgrading for integration into Europe. The workers' movement should involve itself in these discussions, in complete independence from the arguments exchanged within the bourgeoisie, and starting from its demands and the goal of an improvement in social gains. It is only in this context that it is possible to say no to the bosses' Europe.
The Europe we want 21 In opposition to capitalist Europe we put forward another project, another Europe. The Single European Act is simply a free-market project for capital accumulation. The only alternative to the market economy and its destructive consequences is a socialist, democratic, fraternal, internationalist Europe, built on political and social institutions based on direct democracy and direct self-management.
Such a Europe would be able to combat all oppressions:
• That of women, for whom the Common Market and single market have been and will be - despite the everlasting "recommendations" of Brussels-based institutions - incapable of fulfilling their aspirations: equal pay for work of equal value; the right to work; the right to education and training and an end job insecurity; free contraception and abortion on demand; increased social services, particularly childcare; full participation in political
• That of immigrants from the colonial and semi-colonial countries, who suffer from racism, discrimination at work, in housing and access to social services, who are refused equal
• Those of the oppressed nations and nationalities in the heartlands of Europe, in particular in the North of Ireland and in
Euskadi; and outside Europe, in the colo-
22 The Europe we want is not a Europe of big capitalism, of imperialist ambitions, of militarism and of repression. The search for greater profits does not end with the rationalization of the Common Market, it also implies greater coherence of the different national policies towards the Third
World, a greater aggressivity of the European multinationals, and gradual military integration. From now on the Community countries will act as a group in negotiations with Third World countries on the debt.
They will act as a group in talking to the
US and Japan about the major questions for the world market and the monetary policies that are subsequently imposed on dependent countries. They will act together in intervening in negotiations in the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) or the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).®
The Lomé Convention, a mechanism regulating trade between the EEC and 66 countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, has not reduced trade inequalities. Under cover of protecting the exports of these countries and compensating for the ups and downs of the market, it has increased their economic and political dependence. It has ghettoized them into commercial dependence at a time when the international division of labour and the imperialist countries' needs for raw materials for industry are changing rapidly. The
CAPITALISTAS
DE TODO O MUNDO
UNIDOS!
Stabbex system®, which is supposed to regulate the receipts and the exports of these countries, has now been overtaken by these developments and deliberately holds back from taking into account the trade terms between export and import prices.
23 The Community countries spend between 2% and 4% of their Gross National Product (GNP) on their military forces.
Their military budgets are never reduced to the same extent as their social budgets. A growing portion of research is directed towards immediate military applications.
France exports 13% of world arms exports,
Britain 6%, Germany 2.8%, Italy 1%. A lot of this goes to reactionary and repressive regimes in the Third World. The bourg eoisie's European project implies a strengthening of these tendencies, greater military integration and a centralization of the arms industry. The Franco-German bri-
WESTERN EUROPE gade is the precursor of a project for gradual
European military integration after the resurrection of the Western European Union
We must oppose this military and imperialist Europe. We demand that all European countries that are members of Nato and the
Atlantic Alliance leave. Nato is having some difficulty in developing a new unified strategy in the present context where the peace movement has broad support and
Gorbachev is taking a series of initiatives to reduce nuclear weapons defence in general. In this situation, sectors of the bourgeoisie and the social democrats are trying to strengthen European military integration, going so far as to give military responsibilities to Community bodies. All should be fought against denounced. The French and British labour movements must fight for the unilateral destruction of the nuclear weapons in their own countries.
24
The Europe we want involves a complete restructuring of the economy, which takes into account the urgent need to put an end to the dramatic deterioration of environment and which radically resolves the problem of energy sources. Against the threats to the environment, to the misdeeds of the multinationals, to unequal regional growth we should put forward the need for a socialization of major firms and of the means of communication and democratic European planning for the big choices for energy and industry as well as the use of land.
25 In opposition to the capitalists' Europe we put forward the perspective of a European socialist
This Europe will be born out of the convergence of anti-capitalist struggles in the West and anti- bureaucratic struggles in the East.
Perestroika and glasnost are not miraculous solutions for re-establishing socialist democracy and freeing the workers of
Eastern Europe from the repressive and wasteful straightjacket of the bureaucracy.
6. GATT covers custom and trade tariffs, and is a multilateral agreement that came into force in 1948
Linked to the United Nations, it is the principal international body that regulates international trade.
UNCTAD aims at giving the "under-developed countries" advantageous prices for their manufactured and semi-manufactured goods.
7. The Lomé Convention consists principally of regulations governing access to the EEC of raw materials exported by participating countries, on the basis of tariff exemptions.
8. The Stabbex system is an EEC compensation procedure for the 66 countries participating in the Lomé
Convention, to guarantee stability in export receipts for
12 raw materials, in spite of stock exchange fluctuations and years of low production.
9. The WEU was created in 1954, and holds conferences of parliamentary delegates to discuss military ques
25 tions. It was originally set up to deal with the question of German rearmament.
WESTERN EUROPE
Comecon is no more a voice for internationalism and solidarity between the peoples than is the EEC. Bureaucratic unification, like market unification is a source of inequality and oppression.
But what is happening in Eastern Europe today makes it possible to improve links with the independent social movements in these countries. Without waiting any longer we have to organize a convergence of struggles, between the workers' movement in Western Europe and the independent organizations in Eastern Europe.
Unity of action against the bosses' Europe
So will these multinational bosses and politicians succeed in building the united
Europe of their dreams? Will they succeed in settling their differences, in unifying their interests, in overcoming their competition? Can they impose their plans on us?
They will only be able to do so if the workers' movement shows itself incapable of meeting this challenge and counterposing its own revolutionary and internationalist project to the bourgeoisie and its various hangers-on.
This is why the European challenge today for us is our ability to struggle together — sweeping aside national frontiers — for the same objectives.
The coming European elections will be an opportunity for defending this alternative conception of Europe. The only way to really oppose the free-market policy of the Single European Act is to take popular aspirations and the most pressing needs as our starting point. These initial demands
• Against all austerity policies, whether implemented by parties of the right or left. For workers' unity, against all class collaboration. For the intransigent defence of social security. For maintaining buying power through the sliding scale of wages. For joint campaigns on the indexation of wages. Against the dismantling of the public services. For the right to study; for free publicly-funded schooling.
• Against unemployment, for a shorter working week without loss of pay and with job creation, for the 35-hour
• Against Industrial restructuring which is carried out to the detriment of employment and the satisfaction of social needs. Against redundancies: the workers must keep their jobs with equal skills and equal wages, in the regions where they live. Control by the workers and their organizations over the use of new technology and vocational training.
• Against competition between European workers: for identical conditions of work, health and safety, paid holidays and retirement throughout the Community at the most favourable level. 26 control over exceptions For a general ban on nightwork and a stric International Viewpoint #163 • May 15, 1989
• Against all sexist discrimination:
for the right to abortion and contraception free and on request. For women's right to work and against discrimination in pay, training and promotion. For adequate childcare provision. For positive efforts to promote women's participation in political
• Against racism and oppression: Equal political and social rights including the right to vote and to stand for election for all immigrants. For a real European citizenship not limited to first category (EEC) Europeans, but open to all women and men working and living in Europe. For free East-West circulation. Against the visas imposed on non-EEC citizens, against the screening by race and class planned in agreements on control of the external borders. Against anti-democratic restrictions on the right to asylum, against a Europe which sends refugees back to their torturers, or which limits their free speech even in their countries of "refuge" Against the Europe of police and security. For the release of political prisoners.
• Against imperialism: cancellation of the Third World's debt. Britain out of Ireland! Independence for New Caledonia!
• Against militarism: No to the modernization of the nuclear arsenal. Immediate, total and unilateral nuclear disarmament. Withdrawal of American troops. Reconversion of the arms industry to production of social useful goods.
• Against the destruction of the environment: a stop to nuclear power stations and Super-Phoenix. 1° Ecological questions are never confined to national borders: the populations of several coun tries can be concerned by problems of land use or pollution. They should have, together, a right of veto!
Who decides?
All this poses the question of democra cy. Who decides? They claim that Europe is decisive but everything is being done on the sly, in the corridors. And the elections for the European parliament are in no way a democratic mechanism that allows for intervention around the main options already decided for the bourgeois, free- market Europe.
These are the reasons behind our opposition to the European Economic Community and the Single European Act. For revolutionaries there is nothing more urgent in
Europe than to start on the basis of demands and social needs to create a new internationalism, to take initiatives that make it possible for struggles to converge, to crossfertilize each other and defeat the capitalists' projects. *
• Sozlalistische Alternative (SOAL),
Austria
• Soclalistische ArbeldersParti]
(SAP/POS), Belgium
• British section of the Fl
• Soclalistisk Arbejderparti (SAP),
Denmark
• Ligue communiste révolutionnaire
(LCR), France
• Organosis Kommounistike
Diethnistike tes Elladas
(OKDE-Spartakos), Greece
• People's Democracy (PD), Ireland
• Lega comunista rivoluzionaria
(LCR), Italy
• Revolutionär sozialistische partel
(RSP), Luxembourg
• Soclalistlese Arbeldersparti]
(SAP), Netherlands
• Partido socialista revolucionarlo
(PSR), Portuga
• Liga comunista revoluclonario
(LCR), Spanish state
• Soclalistiska Partlet (SP),
Sweden
• Sozialistische ArbelterPartel
(SAP/PSO/PSL), Switzerland
• Steering Committee of FI members in the VSP, West Germany
May 1, 1989
10. Super-Phoenix is a fast-breeder nuclear reactor in the Grenoble region of France.