Germany's uncertain future
Helmut Kohl is still very much in charge. But recent labour unrest in this rich, powerful country is proof of what Marx called the
"structural crisis of capitalism."
Sozialabbui Manuel Kellner nit der
Mohn: One symptom of this structural crisis is the way mass unemployment (7-8 million workers) exists independently of the economic situation at any precise moment. This is "structural" unemployment.
This reserve of labour is an instrument which capital exploits to push all salaries down, weaken working conditions, and force working people to accept the dismantling of social gains won by previous generations. When the emancipatory alternative is absent. mass unemployment discourages solidarity. and encourages feelings of vulnerability and despair, even of radicalisation behind reactionary demands.
But mass unemployment is not simply the result of a conscious bourgeois strategy. It is also a symptom of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. This obliges capitalists everywhere to raise the rate of surplus value they extract from labour. In other words, the longterm crisis which obliges capitalists to intensity the exploitation of working people. This carries a number of risks: • Economic: the erosion of buying power makes it increasingly difficult for Germany's capitalists to realise profits. In the long term, neither exports nor consumption of luxury goods, nor speculation can compensate for this trend. And, as we have seen in recent months, speculation carries its own risks of synchronised collapse of financial markets. • Social: In Germany, in particular, the trade unions are a real obstacle to attempts to reduce the standard of living of the working population. Particularly the (relatively) privileged "battalions" where the unions are strongest. Recently, we have also seen a growing capacity for autonomous mobilisation among several sectors of the working population which are not under the direct influence of the trade union bureaucracy. • Political: Expansionist pressure towards Eastern Europe and the former USSR, Germany's growing influence within the European Union, and the growing interumpenalist rivalry with Japan and the USA is all increasing the risks of destabilisation in central Europe. While the short-term gains for Germany are insufficient to solve any of the fundamental problems of the capitalist class.
2 POSIVE EG kling: 9 PC S GGVäD
The globalisation of the world economy is also reducing state control over a sector of grand capital operating within Germany and its closest partners. This is causing increasing insecurity. And no-one can rule out the emergence of a new anti-capitalist force, even in the heartland of European capitalism. The bourgeoisie's exaggerated fear of the PDS (former ruling party in Eastern Germany) is hard to explain, given the party's current influence and policies. But the PDS is clearly the only German party which can articulate a socialist project, and be heard by at least a part of the masses. • Moral crisis: Germany's social consensus rests on the economic success which floated on the long wave of growth since the reconstruction of the country after WW2. This consensus includes the "social partnership between unions, employers and the state, which has proved to be a very efficient mec hanism for bourgeois control. But today, the bourgeoisie and their political servants find themselves obliged to break the country's politico-moral equilibrium, and re-establish it at a lower level of salaries and social security. This comes after a period when the credibility of political parties, and of "politics" as such has fallen to a new low point. The capitalist system is not threatened by this change in thinking, but the current leadership team, and the party system is!
The second aspect of Germany's structural crisis is the divide between the East and the West of the country. The population has realised that there will be no economic upsurge in former Eastern Germany. Nor will the standard of living in the East rise to meet
Nulld nel dank
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the western level. Quite the opposite. Chancellor Kohl's austerity measures also necessitate the dismantling of a number of programmes which camouflaged the true depth of the collapse in the East. Make-work (ABMMaßnahmen) and fake training programmes will be reduced or cancelled, as will a number of Western transfers to the East. Failure to realise the promised "inner unity' (innere Einheit) of the country will be a major blow to the credibility and stability of
Germany's elite is also struggling to accommodate the same process of fragmentation of society as is affecting the other imperialist powers, and the same multiplication of expressions of existential and lifestyle insecurity. These changes are not just a challenge for the proponents of social transformation. They are also a challenge to the hegemony of the bourgeois project. There may not be a feminist movement on the scale of the 1970s, but the penetration of fragments of anti-patriarchal consciousness into large layers of society has created a consciousness which disturbs the status quo
PDS Deputy Winfried Wolf has seen the effect of this consciousness, in the success of his initiative to have the country's ambassadors to Haiti and Columbia replaced because of their "racist and sexist" statements. The PDS group in parliament has now called for an examination of the attitudes of Germany's ambassadors in other parts of the third world, including the examination of rumours that some of these men have prevented the local prosecution of German businessmen suspected of the sexual abuse of children in these countries.
September 1996 #280 3
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(55 wversichert, ID Germany POSTVERBAND
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* Germany
Another, particularly German crisis of the 1990s is the relationship between pure raison d'Etat of the system, and the public political sphere. Between excessive police powers, racist violence, right extremism and the nazi past, the "phantoms" can re-emerge at any moment. The Zwickel initiative
A major turning point occurred when Klaus Zwickel, President of the powerful IG Metall trade union proposed, without the slightest mandate or consultation, a "pact for wage increases no higher than the rate of inflation (currently less than 2%) in the metal working sector, provided that the emp loyers and government Nir wollen create 110,00 jobs in 1996, and the same number in each of the next two years, including 30,000 hires of the long term unemployed. He also demanded more commitments to apprenticeships and professional training for the young, and a halt to cuts in those social security measures which concern the most defavourised in society.
This proposal unleashed an avalanche. Mass unemployment became the n° 1 issue of public debate, overnight. Public opinion on the employers was intense. They too were exhorted to break their "taboos" Zwickel in the "pact for jobs". After all, he had taken a crucial step forwards (from their point of view). For the first time, a trade union leader accepted the employers' claim that "high" German wages were a cause of unemployment.
Tripartite negotiations were quickly held. And, when the smoke cleared, all that was left of Zwickel's initial proposal were the 330,000 jobs. Except that the optic had changed. Employers and the media argued that existing plans called for cutting 100,000 jobs in 1996 alone. So, they argued, if these cuts were delayed, then Zwickel, in effect, had already "won" his new jobs. Now it was time for the trade unions to make their contribution! Across Germany, local "pacts for jobs" were created. The workforce was exhorted to make concessions on flexibility, surrender existing advantages and conditions, "in exchange" for management's promise to implement smaller cuts than those which would otherwise have been "inevitable". Government tactics
Chancellor Kohl manoeuvred superbly. Under the pressure of public opinion, the government presented itself as a peace-maker and a negotiator. For the first time, it won the support of the Trade Union Federation (DGB) for a specific cut in the welfare state, a 3% cut in low income support (Sozialhilfe). Unions claimed that their support was motivated by the government's willingness to retract its initial proposal for a 5% cut!
Kohl also won union support for a "Pact for Employment and for Germany as a Production Site" This document proposes to reduce unemployment by 50% or create two million new jobs by the year 2000. But it also 4 International Viewpoint includes almost all the neo-liberal dogma which has justified the policies which have pushed unemployment up. It also ties the trade unions to a nationalist conception of protecting the motherland's position as a production site, against the competition of the rest of the world.
Until March this year, the government had been in a rather more difficult situation. The Free Democrats (FDP), the minor partner in the Christian-liberal coalition, seemed likely to fall bellow the 5% minimum vote in a series of regional elections. This would have threatened the government majority and strengthened the confidence of the Social Democratic Party opposition n the end. the FDP did better than mos people expected. This encouraged Kohl to launch a hard anti-social austerity programme, with the goal of "saving" 50 million DM (£21.6 m./$33 m.) in the federal budget and the budgets of the states (Länder). At this point, the Trade Union Confederation left the negotiating table at the federal level as a protest. But the unions remained tied to the regional, local and enterprise "Pacts".
Public protest against the dismantling of the welfare state and working practices had been growing since April. There began to be a dialectical mous mobilisations of groups, and the marginalised, often supported by opposition platforms in the trade unions, and by ionary left groups. The 350,000 strong demonstration in Bonn on 15 June was the culmination of the first wave of
The trade union leadership is in a difficult position. The "Zwickel method" has failed, and discontent with the leadership is growing among the rank and file, who have started to express themselves publicly without waiting for the trade union leaders. This has obliged the union bosses to do their own mobilising. so as not to loose face. But, while mobilising enough to be credible, they cannot afford to let the struggle get out of hand, and loose control over the radicalisation.
Half a dozen collective bargaining agreements have been signed (textile, construction, banks-insurance-retail, steel, etc.). These have included Zwickel-style wage increases averaging 1.8% (1.3% in the public sector), which, when all things are considered, means a reduction in real salaries. And all this without a single new job being created. All the bosses have done is to "renounce" a number of cuts, while the government has stopped talking, for the moment, about reducing sick pay.
The Bundestag (parliament) may approve a package of new cuts on 13 September. Further cuts will presumably be approved in the Bundesrat (Federal Council), which represents the regional governments, mostly dominated by the Social Democrats.
Measures under discussion include cutting (employer-paid sick leave during the first five weeks from 100% of the average basic wage to 80% (or cutting one day of holiday for each five days of sickness. From the sixth week, reimbursement (from the health insurance "Mutual Funds" would be cut from 80% to 70% of basic wages. Workers would only be entitled to sick pay after four weeks in a new job. Protection against summary dismissal would only apply in enterprises with 10 employees or more (rather than five or more at the moment). Workers will need to work more years to build enough contributions to entitle them to a retirement pension. The tax on personal fortunes would simply be abolished.
The SDP will probably say "No!" to some of these measures, which will therefore be blocked by the Bundesrat. But they will come to a "realistic" compromise. After all, they accept the economic logic behind the cuts.
The Kohl government has a great sense of timing. It is not worried about new trade union demonstrations, or social movements 13
Kals-Ch Lohnraub! in September and October. Nor is it frightened about a new spirit of resistance among SDP and Green deputies. The austerity measures which have been proposed have been spaced out so that the victims will not all revolt at once, and so that the most determined opponents will eventually be weakened and defeated.
The political and trade union opposition is in a very weak position. They have no ideological alternative to propose. There is no alternative project to the pro-capitalist, neoliberal logic of the government. Because alternative might mean anti-capitalist, and the respectable opposition wants nothing like that!
Even the neo-Keynsian, reformist alternative economic strategy is dead in Germany
"opposition" defeated at any moment, by the basic arguments of the enemy camp, arguments which they accept to be true.
The socialist left, particularly its emancipatory and revolutionary components, and the opposition within the trade unions, face a very important challenge. Can they develop and articulate a new, common, credible alternative, to give direction to the growing social radicalisation? Can they convince people to fight the enemy, rather than collaborate with
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