Kohl and Mitterrand speed up plans for bourgeoisie and traders who feared that excessive Llosa's "free enterprise" program would bring them to an economic situation similar to the Chilean or Bolivi-
Vargas Llosa recognizes that he is poorly placed for the second round, and nearly
PERU / WESTERN EUROPE
European unity decided not to run. He knows that on June
5 he will have a hard time topping 30%, while Fujimori can count on getting the vote (respectively 20% and 11%), regardless of what the leaderships of these forces call for. He also knows that in order to apply his economic
ON APRIL 18 the Brussels-based Commission of the policy, he will need an absolute majority
European Economic Community (EEC) put forward a plan for and full powers, which he will not get.
the phased integration of East Germany Into the EEC. The following day France's President Françols Mitterrand and the
United Left pays heavily for
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl proposed speeding split things up so that "economic and monetary union as well as
The left came out of this election in a political union could be achieved by January 1, 1993." These still more weakened state. First of all, it two events demonstrate the ways in which the majority of the suffered a rebuff by the voters, with the
United Left getting 7% and the Socialist
EEC's members are trying to overcome the existing
Left, 4%; while before the split it got 30% in the 1983 municipal elections and 23% in 1986. Its administration of city governments did not involve any break with the system. It was not able to develop elements of direct democracy or attack the rich. Today, it is asking nothing more from Fujimori in order to call for a vote for him in the second round than that he clarify his program. As for the Maoist guerilla organization Shining Path, its sectarianism (it is more and more often attacking left activists) is isolating it. Its call for a boycott of the vote had very little impact.
APRA's defeat and the results of this election reveal the impasse in which Peru finds itself. If he wins, Fujimori will not be able to stand up to the pressures of imperialism or those of the big Peruvian capitalists. But the defeat dealt to Vargas
Llosa has shown the mass opposition to the ultra-free-enterprise schemes.
The Peruvian state is getting weaker by the day. Shining Path controls some areas of the country. The mass movement is resisting in important sectors. The army rules in whole regions (the number of deaths has risen in these last years to
18,000, and that does not include the
"missing"). In other areas, the drug traffickers rule the roost. This disintegration of Peru will continue if Fujimori wins, and it can wear him out very quickly. *
*Hugo Blanco, is a leader of the Mariateguista Unity
Party (PUM) and also has leadership responsibilities in the Peruvian Peasant Confederation (CCP). He was a deputy in 1983 and between 1980 and 1985. He ran in the elections for the Senate on the slate of the United
Left (a coalition including the PUM, the Communist
Party of Peru and the National Union of the Revolutionary Left, a formation of Maoist origin).
1. APRA, the party of Alan Garcia, who was president
1990. This formation
1986 and of Peru between belongs to the Socialist Intemational.
2. The Socialist Left was formed by Barrantes, a former mayor of Lima and by the Revolutionary Socialist
Party (PSR), which left the United Left.
difficulties and contradictions. CLAUDE GABRIEL T and above all the collapse of the HE EVENTS in Eastern Europe
Stalinist regime in the GDR are as dangers for the European unity project. In reality, despite all the restructurings, far from embodying a coherent, rationally structured and centralized economy, the EEC today remains a field for intense competition between firms and financial companies enjoying the support of the
In such a context and given West Germany's economic power, it might have been expected that Bonn would make its priority imperialist expansion eastwards rather than West European integration. The priority given to absorbing the GDR and the West German chancellor's brief period of hesitation over support for European economic and monetary union seemed to give credence to such an expectation.
Drive to integration still powerful
However, in fact, the new problems for the EEC project arising from the dramatic developments in Eastern Europe do not necessarily call into question the powerful tendencies towards integration, as is shown by the Brussels' Commission proposals and the Kohl-Mitterrand state-
At stake in the immediate future in
Eastern Europe is commercial expansion, the opportunities for relocating production to a region of low wage costs, and a controlled transfer of technology financially underpinned by the states and international financial institutions. At stake in the long term in the EEC, however, is the centralization of capital, the creation of a vast united market with 323 million inhabitants, and the establishment of institutional and financial tools for overcoming the obstacles to modernization of production and the employment of new technologies, in the face of American and Japanese competition. It is not just a matter of a difference in quantity between the potential of the East and the perspectives of the West. The difference is qualitative.
This is not to gloss over the difficulties lying in the path of European capitalist construction, but, even so, it is an essential factor for understanding what the real policies at work are. Spending on mergers and purchases of enterprises involving European actors was $11.1 billion in 1988. FRG plays preponderant role in EEC more than half of the
Furthermore, FRG's foreign investments are in the EEC, which means that the FRG plays a preponderant role in the EEC, whatever the competition between the individual
EEC countries with regard to expansion in the East. Such facts determine capital's main needs. The choice being made in Brussels, Paris and Bonn to deal with the new problems and us time Caster to 27 and political union. The most interesting
(central agency AMRO, Rembrandt Plein 1)
WESTERN EUROPE aspect is the attempt to combine the most rapid possible carrying through of economic and monetary integration (EMU) and political union.
In their joint statement on April 19, Mitterrand and Kohl propose launching "preparations for an inter-governmental conference on political union." "The aims of this are to reinforce the democratic legitimacy of the union; make its institutions more effective; ensure the unity and coherence of the union's actions in the economic, monetary and political spheres; to define and put to work a common foreign and security policy." The slump in Mrs. Thatcher's domestic popularity is also a factor working to the benefit of a project that horrifies the British government.
Obstacles to European state remain
There is, of course, a gap between desire and reality. A European state will not come into being because the Brussels Commission gets some executive powers, the European Parliament the right to make more decisions or the Council of Europe gets stronger. Surmounting the contradictions between the internationalization of capital and the maintenance of "national" states remains a hard task.
But even in this realm, the objective needs are becoming more and more pressing. How, for example, can there be monetary union without central control of open market, the EMU has to be accompanied by a corresponding political and institutional project.
It goes without saying that this transfer of power will pose important problems of "legitimacy". There is a gulf between popular perceptions of the existing states and of a technocratic administration in
This is why Kohl and Mitterrand are so preoccupied with giving democratic legitimacy to the political union. They have a lot on their plate. There are other problems that have to be solved at the same time — in the first place, the reorganization of the Atlantic Alliance, the march towards European defence and, as a consequence, the integration of the European armaments industry. There is also the need to define a common coherent policy towards Eastern Europe, where the risk of political crisis and social collapse is very
This is why the Brussels Commission is also keeping a close eye on economic and financial interventions in the East. There will be an increasingly closer connection between the economic and industrial perspectives of these countries and their political evolution.
The final overcoming of these problems will involve a centralized intervention by the EEC states and regional financial institutions.
As far as East Germany is concerned, the Commission states that is necessary to "pass from information to consultation, and this demands appropriate procedures, ensuring the best possible transparency in the development of the interim phase of adaptation."
In other terms, the Community will get its oar in since it will also be intervening there, including at the financial level. The GDR operation carries important risks for the whole of the EEC and the stability of the European Monetary System (EMS). Inflationary pressures risks being very strong.
But on the other hand the European governments hope that the possibilities for extra growth in the FRG (estimated at 1%) will permit Western Europe as a whole to avoid following the United States, not to say Japan, into recession. There is thus not at the present time a big contradiction between the maintenance of the EMU and the political and economic opening to the East (at least in terms of starting both processes going at the same time for in the long term the overall costs will begin to bear down).
Things might however be different if the whole of the imperialist world went into recession. To avoid such a scenario is another reason why Paris and Bonn have decided to make a dash for the finishing line. *
Invest in the new Europe!
monetary and fiscal policies to establish rigorously fixed rates of exchange between the national currencies?
AT A TIME of great upheavals in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
The Financial Times of January 17, in at a moment when the world is changing so quickly, the ideologues of an article not at all favourable to the free market and capitalism are rushing Into the breach to substi-
Mrs. Thatcher's
"nationalist"
theses tute a new mystification for the old Stalinist polson.
explained: "The liberalization of the flow
Their methods are those proper to "really-existing" capitalism — the of money will greatly weaken the good weight of the multinationals, state blackmail, the power of money, and functioning of the exchange mechaso on. Soclal democracy has not hesitated to offer Its services to this nisms....
"If exchange rate stability is to be main-
Our goals are entirely different. We remain, today as yesterday, falthtained, the liberalization of capital moveful to the fight against all oppression and exploitation, revolutionaries ments has to go hand in hand with against both Stalinism and capitallam! Despite their arrogant bluster, substantial efforts by the monetary authorities on two fronts. In the first place, it is those who wish to pass off the Stalinist caricature as the Inevitable outcome of socialism have not succeeded. Democratic sociallam will necessary to coherently formulate the remain an Ideal for oppressed humanity, and, In reallty, represente the monetary targets of the individual counonly way out of the crisis facing the human race.
tries so that the direction of the evolution
The collapse of Stalinism In Eastern Europe brings new hope, but also of the money supply is compatible with new responsibliltles, for revolutionary socialists. Our voice must be fixed exchange rates. In the second place, a firm and well-structured support is needheard in the great debates taking place in these countries. It is necessary to ensure that the advocates of capitalism do not have a monopo.
ed for the bilateral parities, in order to convince the markets that the stability of
For this reason the United Secretariat of the Fourth International is the exchange rates is going to last."
launching an International financial campaign to gather the means to respond to the new situation, to make known its opinions and analy
Transfer of authority to EEC ses, and to help Its supporters In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Implied
These processes therefore imply a growing transfer of authority from the national governments to community institutions.
In order to cope with the assymetry between the Deutschmark and the other
28 cure and that obehe on erecentries in an
, currencies, and between the German econ-
International Viewpoint #184 • May 7, 1990 new crusade.
ly of the press.
to organize themselves.
Donations should be addressed to;
Eastern European Soildarity
AMRO bank
Account no. 444 531 092
Amsterdam
Holland