* The political situation in imperialist Europe the trade union movement, of Social Democracy, of the recomposition of the left-wing landscape in respect of this, etc. 1.2. TWO SOCIAL CRISES
The European continent is gripped by two broad social crises, different in their concrete content and their geographic scope:
In the East, the collapse of the
Stalinist bureaucracy was combined with a defeat of the working class. But, the transition to capitalism thus begun is confronting enormous obstacles. It has created a chaotic situation, posing the possibility of enormous social, national and military explosions.
In the West, harsh bourgeois austerity policies are coming up against multiple and strong resistance from a workers and social movement, which, although weakened, remains "too strong" compared to the economic and political needs of European Capital. The European Union, on which were focused hopes of a way out of the crisis, is now associated - in the eyes of the masses — with social regression and an arbitrary technocracy. Paradoxically, in the East, it continues to appear as a lite raft in he context of shipwreck and total destabilisation. 1.3. THE RISK OF AN UNCONTROLLABLE BREAKDOWN IN THE EAST
The complete and rapid assimilation of the East European countries and the ex-USSR in western capitalism is highly improbable in the short or even medium term. Imperialist Europe, in economic crisis and politically divided, does not have sufficient means to stabilise the countries of the East with an "external" intervention. The interaction between the two parts of Europe continually feeds this instability. The risk of sudden and uncontrollable crisis in the East (wars, internal conflicts, social explosions, coup d'état, military of Fascist dictatorships), exerts strong pressures on the Imperialist West and its relatively stable but precarious political regimes. These include migratory flows that could transform 22 International Viewpoint into floods of refugees; the formation of a unified but segmented labour market, and the reorganisation of investment policies (otten accompanied by relocation) undermine the social conditions of the workers in the West; the rise of nationalism spilling over to the West; the absence, in the East, of an independent and mass workers and social movement, is a factor which divides and weakens the organised working class in Imperialist Europe; the disorderly dismantling of the nuclear apparatus in the East constitutes a direct menace ecologically and militarily, etc.
From now on, the workers movement and its revolutionary wing, in developing its programmatic positions, its tactics, and its activity, can no longer avoid giving consideration to this continental reality.
1.4. The European Union is coming up against numerous difficulties, giving rise to periodic crises of greater or lesser severity. These crises are linked to three factors which tend to intermingle:
• the intrinsic difficulty of putting in place, from above, a supranational proto-state_based on a broad unified market.
The important transfers of national sovereignty (currency, budget, political competition, fiscal policy, police, army, diplomacy) are in conflict with the too widely divergent structures of the countries and their national states (socio-economic structures, specific insertions in the global market, mode of domination and social and ideological relations, specific place of the workers and social movement, etc.) and therefore, their governments.
• the many forms of resistance on the part of the workers, women, and youth who identify the E.U. more and more as an instrument of the antisocial offensive of big capital. They constitute an important obstacle to the downward homogenisation of the
E.U. area. To this we can add, according to the country, the opposition of minority sectors of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie.
•the international economic context which tends to intensify all these difficulties and forms of resistance.
The original promise of European unification (to create a zone of peace and stability, of prosperity and democracy for the whole of Europe, and even to allow a way out of the economic crisis) has not been honoured
Despite the difficulties, the dominant sector at the heart of the European bourgeoisies has nevertheless the firm political will to follow the process of unification on the basis of the E.U., because it corresponds to colossal economic interests (intracommunitary exchange, centralisation of multi-national capital, world economic competition). But this is combined with a permanent battle between the imperialist bourgeoisies of the big countries (Germany, France, Britain), where contradictory short-term interests emerge, but are reabsorbed, bit by bit, by certain medium term common strategic objectives. For them the break-up of the E.U. through a conscious political process is excluded. External upheavals (banking or international monetary crash, widespread war on the European continent, inter-imperialist commercial war), with a sharp destabilising impact are not excluded. But they are not predictable.
The inter-governmental conference of the E.U. planned for 1996- playing the role of a despotic constituent assembly — will be a major centralising event of these tendencies and various options in debate.
Finally, a new leap forward for the European Union requires a two pronged reactionary offensive:
• a drastic social pruning of the
"Welfare State" or the "Social State".
• a drastic reduction in democracy, with the establishment of a semi-authoritarian state structure capable of controlling this melange of states — more and more dissimilar.
The workers and social movement watches these jolts and advances of the E.U. like a totally passive spectator. It's state is worrying in more than one respect:
(1) It lags far behind the bourgeois class
The reformist leaderships (social.. democrat, Christian democrat, and ex-communists) have given up any independent policy concerning the European Commission, to which they ascribe all the modernist and social virtues. And in order to do this they also renounce, in the name of Europe, any social struggle on a European level. On the national level in each country of the E.U., they try to stop mobilisations, to help "their" bosses occupy a better position at the heart of the E.U. They have thus put a two-fold obstacle in the
The Political situation in imperialist Europe *
14th World Congress of the Fourth International 23 war of the emergence of an active workers movement on a European level.
(2) As a result, competition between the working classes of the different countries is very strong, since no institutionalised or organised barrier exists on the scale of the E.U., whether minimal social legislation or an active and vigilant workers movement. For this reason there exists a generalised retreat. That is why it is through broad social struggles on a national level, that the working classes resist, but in a dispersed way and without having any unified response or demands.
(3) A partial success of the European Union -as a European protostate- would reintorce, by an internal logic, all the ongoing authoritarian mechanisms in each state of the EU (anti-democratic, anti-trade union, anti-immigrant laws, etc.).
(4) The delay in the development of an alternative promoting solidarity and ecology: internationalism in the face of the European Union creates the space for the development of a nationalist and social-populist right and extreme right, which succeeds in polarising the widespread disaffection with liberal and social-democrat Europeanism.
The working imperialist Europe remains -in spite of its partial integration into the state and organised core of the world proletariat. Its degree of organisation on the union level continues day to day to bear on the bourgeois state institutions and on the bosses in the workplace. Its capacity to pass to social struggles with big, important demands and, in certain to profound social confrontationsunemployment and the ideological and practical demobilisation brought about by the social democratic apparatusesconstitutes a big obstacle to the European bourgeoisies' projects. Thus, the working class and youth in imperialist Europe play a key role in defending their working conditions and its existence, in fighting the emergence of a unified imperialist superpower and maintaining strong links with the popular masses of the South and the East,
The Achilles heel for the proletariat of imperialist Europe resides in the triple hiatus between this capacity to resist on the on hand, and on the other, the absence of a general political perspective of starting it, the absence of a genuine alternative Socialist programme, and the delay in the emergence of mass and vanguard organisations of the workers and social movement to match the scale of these stakes. A historical cycle is finishing and the new cycle is late arriving. reorganisation (mutation) of the workers and social movement on a new base is decisive in engaging in the big social and political battles to II. THE CRISIS IN THE WEST 2.1. THE DYNAMIC OF THE CRISIS IN THE WEST
Spurred on by inter-imperialist competition, exacerbated by the globalisation of the economy and by the long wave of recession, the ruling classes in Europe are driven to confront a working class which overall is better organised and which has won more social gains than their principal competitors in Japan and the USA. The social impact is thus all the deeper and more difficult to impose The bourgeoisie aims to limit drastically the redistributive function of the state by (partially) dismantling the welfare state. Then again, it deepens the exploitation of labour through a vast reorganisation of its economic
What started, in the seventies, as a simple austerity offensive, overturning the balance of forces in the years 196875, increasingly focused on the social cohesion of the working class. Mass unemployment and the collaboration of the reformist structures helped in this.
PORONS
On the base of this first important retreat in years 1980-85, technological innovation could be used by the bourgeoisie in its multidirectional offensive of flexibilisation and deregulation. This brought about a real social and cultural upheaval which now affects the whole social and political field, and even individual behaviour. This conscious policy ot fragmentation and social inequality, in the context of prolonged economic stagnation, has undermined the social tissue. It affects social organisations in the broad sense ("civil society"), but also the intermediate para-state bodies (family, school, army). Those political instruments operation of this policy have been visibly discredited (crisis of "the body politic"). The political system which came out of the second world war has become very unstable.
The maintenance of social cohesion in western societies has become a bugbear for the ruling classes.
Big social confrontations and political convulsions will be unavoidable in the coming period. 2.2. THE EUROPEAN BOURGEOISIE: BETWEEN CLASS COLLABORATION AND AN AUTHORITARIAN STATE 2.2.1. THE NATURE AND FORMS OF THE BOURGEOIS OFFENSIVE
The bourgeoisie has unrelentingly increased its offensive against labour concerning its fundamental objectives: sharp rise in labour productivity; relative and absolute reduction in direct
* The political situation in imperialist Europe wages; reduction in the broader labour costs (social benefits); reorganisation of public services (privatisation, submission to the rules of the market) and of the state apparatus in general; fiscal policy favouring the better-off parts of the population; support for an aggressive commercial policy; etc. It has no hesitation in announcing, and eventually carrying out tests of strength whether on the national or the sectoral level. But it avoids a definitive rupture of the framework of class collaboration with the reformist apparatuses. Combining successes and defeats, this policy takes forms which vary according to the country (and its traditions).
Alone in Europe the Thatcher government has pushed confrontation with the working class to the point where it has finally inflicted a major defeat on the British trade union movement. But it has largely been helped in this by Labour which had previously weakened it itself, successfully leading a violent political struggle against the left-wing of the Labour Party and the TUC.
In Italy, Berlusconi, trying to impose an anti-social programme (similar to that of any government in the EU) had to resolve at the same time the enormous crisis of the regime in Italy. He opted in favour of a Bonapartist solution, combining use of plebiscites and the media, with a reactionary parliamentary base (Forza Italia plus MSI plus the right of the Christian Democrats). This was incompatible with the pursuit of class collaboration with the trade union bureaucracies, who moreover, were confronted with a raised level of workers militancy.
In France, the Balladur government, sustained by an enormous right-wing parliamentary majority, has retreated three times in two years, faced with the size of the social mobilisations, particularly of youth, and fearing a social explosion so much more unpredictable and uncontrollable than the weak and unreliable system of class
The big bourgeoisie is acutely aware of what the (organised) strength of the working class still represents, and consequently of the blow it must 24 International Viewpoint inflict in order to carry out its counter reform. Lacking the power to act brutally and abruptly, it pursues relentlessly and in many different ways its objective of inflicting a lasting and institutionalised weakening on the working class, in the workplace and in society.
On one side, it breaks up the high level of "objective" class solidarity which has combined, since 1945, social legislation, trade union power, muted power over the work process at the enterprise level and political weight (pressure) in state and para-state institutions. On another side, the bourgeoisie dissolves the main bastions and vanguard sectors of the working class, and tries to stop the "new"
proletarian generations from joining up with what remains of the militant and organised tradition of the traditional workers movement.
From a political point of view, the European bourgeoisie is not seeking to destroy the organised workers movement under its reformist leadership through massive and direct repression.
Its political-structural objective is to weaken it through a profound reorganisation of the organised workers movement, often termed "Americanisation" of the social conflict.
It consists of a double separation
The first is that between the union movement and the social democratic party, the latter becoming democrat/progressive "relieved" of the organised pressure of the working class. The second is that between, on the one hand, the national/central union bureaucracy, continuing to "represent" the workers in its links with the bosses and the government, and on the other hand, the sectoral and workplace unions, functioning exclusively in terms of disagreements between bosses and workers in the workplace and of immediate socio-economic demands. Social conflict -inevitable sometimes violent- will thus be limited geographically and socially; all institutional meaning or political dynamic will be stripped from it.
This option obviously fits in with the profound transformation of political life in general: withdrawal from active involvement and passivity of citizens; de-ideologicalisation of society and disappearance of party political allegiance; transformation of into electoral cartels; "commercialisation" of electoral campaigns subject to "marketing" "control" of public opinion by TV and opinion polls, etc.
Social fragmentation and strengthening of the state apparatus thus go hand in hand. But they can only go as far as the passivity and the weakening of social and popular resistance allows it. 2.2.2. A CRISIS OF THE POLITICAL REGIME WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN
Its depth is partially hidden by the inability of the workers movement to exploit it. It is a matter of a historic crisis of the bourgeois national state, shaken by a whole set of economic , social, national-ethnic, cultural and military processes, on the national and international level. The socio-political equilibrium established after the war, has been permanently affected. Faced with the length of the economic crisis globalisation of the economy, the development of international proto state institutions, the tensions due to the global social crisis and the loss of social framework for the reformist apparatuses (weakening of traditional union organisations, crisis of Social Democracy), the bourgeoisie strives, in parallel to its policy of class collaboration, for the establishment of a more authoritarian regime. This is different from the Fascist option, in that it rests fundamentally on the reinforcement of the state apparatus, and not on the elimination of the workers movement and democratic freedoms through a violent extra-parliamentary struggle.
The political crisis appears above all as a crisis of political representation: parliament and government (on the European, national, regional and local level); the traditional political parties; organisations. But this massive disaffection does not relate primarily to the organisational form or the so-called political culture of these organisations, but to their incapacity to resolve social problems, or worse, to seek to resolve them by brutally attacking the living conditions ot the ordinarv masses. Corruption scandals aggravate this and have a powerful demoralising effect on society in general and on the workers movement in particular.
It is also a crisis of democracy in its deepest sense, that is to say of the
The Political situation in imperialist Europe *
COT-FO• CEOT SU-NONSYNDÍQUÉS SUD: PTT 92 75
SNOF RATP MAPOSTE ENSEIGNANTS IMPOTS HOPITAUX ER.
14th World Congress of the Fourth International 25 growing impossibility for workers and citizens in general to actively intervene and to decide what is in the "common interest".
(1) Universal suffrage to assemblies which in turn choose the executive, has been shown incapable, after 15 years, of RETRAIT DU PLAN JUPPE stopping neo-liberalism PUBLIC/PRIVE 37,5ans POUR TOUS
(2) Money (i.e. the market) uniquely and openly makes the economic and choices directly affecting peoples' lives, and in the direction of a growing inequality.
(3) "Social" democracy is in disorder, because its trade unions are ineffectual, leaving workers voiceless.
(4) Television and PR have largely absorbed the political sphere, rendering void the free choice and autonomous activity of the citizen both during and outside election time
(5) Globalisation of the economy and the emergence of pre-state institutions at this level undermines what remains of the transmission belt between the population and power (in the workplace, in the municipality, in the national state, etc.).
At the most basic level, it is a profoundly anti-democratic operation, because it is anti-political. But even the "political", as a choice of society and of concrete economic, social and cultural orientation, loses its point. A solid economic rationality (the market) is substituting itself, aided by an invisible uncontrollable technocratic conditions, "democratic" activity itself -i.e. the capacity to influence, through the self-activity and self-organisation of societycan only wither in its turn. The bourgeoisie only believes in half of this political anaesthetisation, because it implies a total mastery of the objective social contradictions. Hence the pursuit of multiple forms of legal restrictions on democratic liberties and the reinforcement of the state apparatus.
The outline bourgeois solutions appearing do not in any way go in the direction of readjusting the old parliamentary system. On the contrary, they reinforce the executive state apparatuses to the detriment of the elected deliberative assemblies:
direct election of the prime minister, mayors, governors, etc.; government by legislature (i.e. a government reduced to a majority in parliament is immediately replaced by an alternative majority - without elections); numerous "finance laws", , "budget laws" , "competition laws" (deriving notably from laws coming from international institutions: the EU, the World Trade Organisation, etc.) which decide the concrete choices instantly and for a whole period; etc.
• electoral reform attempting the remoulding of the political parties to the detriment of free and integral expression of the opinions of society represented by universal suffrage: limitation (read abandonment) of proportional representation; raising of the electoral threshold; majority system, uninominal majority system in two or even one round, financial threshold raised for deposit,...
• unequal access to the media, in particular television. Restrictions on democratic liberties (press, strikes, demonstrations, workplace union activity) and growth in practice of constraints and controls over day to day life add to this. The construction of the European Union and the treatment of immigrants form important levers for progress.
Three elements directly favour this bourgeois policy: