As Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos knows only too well, the measures being imposed on all but the super rich in Greece are raising the spectre of massive social division.
Venizelos, popularly known as the “Bull of Athens,” due to his thickset features and heavy shoulders, perhaps ironically bears the name of noted revolutionary and Greek founding father Eleftherios Venizelos.
It was today's Venizelos, a former opponent of Papandreou, who did the dirty work for the former Prime Minister by persuading the left in Pasok to agree to accept the EU-IMF imposed austerity measures.
He has made repeated appeals for national unity, imploring members of parliament not to resist the massive cuts that will wreck Greek society. He warned: "We are running the risk of burning ourselves. We must steer the ship to the safe harbour of debt restructuring. It requires national unity and for us to send a message of credibility.”
In response, the Greek parliament agreed massive minimum wage and pensions cuts in a bid to secure the bail-out deal intended to stave off the first bankruptcy of a eurozone state.
They have imposed a 22-percent cut on the standard minimum monthly wage of €751. For those under the age of 25, the cut will be even more brutal, a 32-percent reduction.
In addition, in another form of collective punishment for workers still holding on to jobs, they imposed wage freezes on some staff groups until the unemployment rate, currently 21 percent, falls below 10 percent.
Monthly pension payments above €1,300 euros will be reduced by 12 percent. Supplementary’ pensions, which are paid for out of workers' own contributions, will be slashed by up to 30 percent.
The trigger for the default, as Moritz Kraemer, S&P’s Head of Sovereign Ratings for Europe, the Middle East and Asia, explained it, was the Greek government’s ‘retroactive insertion of collective action clauses’ against private holders of Greek debt.
The crux of the matter is this: the bail-out deal depends on a sufficient proportion of bondholders agreeing to accept losses of 53.5 per cent on the nominal value of their Greek holdings, with actual losses put at around 74 per cent, but, according to S&P’s classic capitalist ‘methodology’, the Greek decision to replace agreement to losses with enforcement against investors was enough to send its assessment off the credit rating scale and into default.
In times of crisis it requires the remnants of democratic forms of government to impose a brutal collective punishment on those who depend on wages and pensions for their livelihoods, shrinking the economy bloated with decades of credit and debt, whilst protecting the “rights” of investors to compete for the last remaining profits to be squeezed out of those still in work.
Central banks are pouring hundreds of billions more into the monetary clouds buying themselves time to ‘restructure’ economies in trouble. Portugal and Spain are next in the firing line.
No amount of austerity will solve the crisis in Greece. Placing the burden on the 99% in society, as the supine parliamentarians have done, only makes things worse. Even the one-day general strikes undertaken by the Greek trade unions, and fighting outside Parliament have not brought about a change of direction from the political parties. Support for Pasok, which is the governing party, has fallen to only about 20 percent according to current polls.
But Venizelos is right about his country’s “historical and existential crisis”. Greece has indeed lost its right to self-determination, which it fought for so hard centuries ago. But there is an alternative for all those who want to free themselves from diktats from Brussels, the IMF and the ratings agencies. That is to form networks of democratically controlled assemblies and to reshape its economy on a not-for-profit basis, alongside other countries inside and outside the European Union.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label EU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EU. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Down with the 21st century Troika!
Whoever coined the term ‘Troika’ for the combined staff of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission has a grim sense of recent history.
During the 1930s, Troikas – commissions of three appointees - were instruments of Stalinist repression operating at every level of administration. They were introduced to circumvent the legal system with a means for quick execution or imprisonment following a conviction without trial.
Troikas were responsible for sentences of death or exile for more than 600,000 Soviet citizens. They had other punishments available too. They and other parts of the Stalinist machine were used to consign upwards of 20 million people to forced labour camps.
And forced labour camps using and consuming 15 million workers from close to 20 European countries were also the basis of the economy in Nazi Germany before and during World War Two.
What have all these terrible episodes of 20th century European history got to do with today, you may ask? Surely the EU-ECB-IMF version of the Troika has nothing like labour camps in mind?
Well, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt on that one. But the logic and the consequences of the actions they are pursuing in Greece (soon to be visited on other countries) – unless they are halted – are just as terrifying.
Greek workers are to be reduced to pauperism to deliver the terms of the €130 billion bail-out agreed in principle this week. For the Greek economy to approach anything like competitiveness, its workers would have to be driven to work for lower levels of pay than anywhere else. That is equally certain to stoke up the revolt.
Germany’s stronger economy, is already dependent on ultra-low rates of pay. Its low wage sector grew three times as fast as other employment in the five years to 2010. Pay in Germany, which has no nationwide minimum wage, can go well below one euro an hour, especially in the former East German region. Greek workers will have to labour for less.
Having done its work in Greece, the Troika must now turn its attention back to the rest of Europe where conditions are deteriorating fast. But their efforts won’t be enough to keep a lid on the volatility and growing social resistance around Europe.
Back in December, Pedro Nuno Santos, vice-president of the Socialist Party in Portugal’s parliament, transmitted something of the feeling of the protests in the streets against the new right-wing government’s plans to raise the working week to 42 hours. and cut wages by 16% for the higher paid, and 8% for lower paid public workers.
"We have an atomic bomb that we can use in the face of the Germans and the French: this atomic bomb is simply that we won't pay," he said. "Debt is our only weapon and we must use it to impose better conditions, because recession itself is what is stopping us complying with the (Troika) accord. We should make the legs of the German bankers tremble," he said.
Santos’ call for southern European states to join forces to resist the austerity dictates of the stronger northern economies was quickly replaced by the 17 eurozone countries agreement on a stricter fiscal discipline which will loom large in the Troika’s armoury over the coming period.
The scale of today’s global crisis, prepared by decades of ballooning fantasy finance, overshadows the 1930s. We cannot begin to imagine the consequences of allowing capital to continue to its reign. Strikes and street protests have to become part of a wider revolutionary struggle for power over capital and crony political state systems. We cannot defeat the modern Troika without that perspective. And to succeed, we need a global network of organisations that are committed to seeing this struggle through to the end.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
During the 1930s, Troikas – commissions of three appointees - were instruments of Stalinist repression operating at every level of administration. They were introduced to circumvent the legal system with a means for quick execution or imprisonment following a conviction without trial.
Troikas were responsible for sentences of death or exile for more than 600,000 Soviet citizens. They had other punishments available too. They and other parts of the Stalinist machine were used to consign upwards of 20 million people to forced labour camps.
And forced labour camps using and consuming 15 million workers from close to 20 European countries were also the basis of the economy in Nazi Germany before and during World War Two.
What have all these terrible episodes of 20th century European history got to do with today, you may ask? Surely the EU-ECB-IMF version of the Troika has nothing like labour camps in mind?
Well, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt on that one. But the logic and the consequences of the actions they are pursuing in Greece (soon to be visited on other countries) – unless they are halted – are just as terrifying.
Greek workers are to be reduced to pauperism to deliver the terms of the €130 billion bail-out agreed in principle this week. For the Greek economy to approach anything like competitiveness, its workers would have to be driven to work for lower levels of pay than anywhere else. That is equally certain to stoke up the revolt.
Germany’s stronger economy, is already dependent on ultra-low rates of pay. Its low wage sector grew three times as fast as other employment in the five years to 2010. Pay in Germany, which has no nationwide minimum wage, can go well below one euro an hour, especially in the former East German region. Greek workers will have to labour for less.
Having done its work in Greece, the Troika must now turn its attention back to the rest of Europe where conditions are deteriorating fast. But their efforts won’t be enough to keep a lid on the volatility and growing social resistance around Europe.
Back in December, Pedro Nuno Santos, vice-president of the Socialist Party in Portugal’s parliament, transmitted something of the feeling of the protests in the streets against the new right-wing government’s plans to raise the working week to 42 hours. and cut wages by 16% for the higher paid, and 8% for lower paid public workers.
"We have an atomic bomb that we can use in the face of the Germans and the French: this atomic bomb is simply that we won't pay," he said. "Debt is our only weapon and we must use it to impose better conditions, because recession itself is what is stopping us complying with the (Troika) accord. We should make the legs of the German bankers tremble," he said.
Santos’ call for southern European states to join forces to resist the austerity dictates of the stronger northern economies was quickly replaced by the 17 eurozone countries agreement on a stricter fiscal discipline which will loom large in the Troika’s armoury over the coming period.
The scale of today’s global crisis, prepared by decades of ballooning fantasy finance, overshadows the 1930s. We cannot begin to imagine the consequences of allowing capital to continue to its reign. Strikes and street protests have to become part of a wider revolutionary struggle for power over capital and crony political state systems. We cannot defeat the modern Troika without that perspective. And to succeed, we need a global network of organisations that are committed to seeing this struggle through to the end.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Everyone's a 'suspect'
Just in case you thought New Labour’s planned new anti-terror laws were bad enough, pay attention to what the European Union is cooking up. This undemocratic, bureaucratic organisation is bringing forward a raft of measures that add to the growth of a European-wide authoritarian state.
The workings of the EU are obscure but thanks to Statewatch we can just about fathom out what’s going on. In its latest bulletin, the independent monitoring group analyses new terrorism laws planned by the European Commission. These would create three new categories of criminal offence: provocation to commit terrorism, recruitment for terrorism and training for terrorism. The "provocation" offence is extremely broad, as it does not require a direct encouragement to commit terrorist acts but applies to any statements which create a "danger" of such acts being committed. Statewatch warns:
“The wording of this definition is clearly likely to result in the criminalisation of the expression of political views (for example on the situation in Middle East or on certain conflicts within Member States) even if that expression does not in any way include the advocacy of terrorism to support those opinions. It will be enough that the authorities deem that there is a ‘danger’ that this will happen.”
Then there are the plans to fingerprint all children over six for EU passports. The commission would have included even younger children but the idea was rejected because the under-6s don’t yet have fully-identifiable fingerprints! Finally, this week the European Commission announced plans for a PNR (passenger name record) scheme to monitor all travel in and out of the EU. Similar data is already being collected under a EU-US scheme that sailed through without parliamentary approval.
All passengers, including visitors from the USA, will be “profiled” to see if they constitute a “risk”. If they are, they can be refused entry. The "profile" will be updated and held for 13 years. This will involve millions of quite innocent people being kept on record. Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "This is yet another measure that places everyone under surveillance and makes everyone a ‘suspect’ without any meaningful right to know how the data is used, how it is further processed and by whom. We have already got the mandatory taking of fingerprints for passports and ID cards and the mandatory storage of telecommunications data of every communication, now we are to have the mandatory logging of all travel in and out of the EU.
“The underlying rationale for each of the measures is the same - all are needed to tackle terrorism. Yet there is little evidence that the gathering of mountain upon mountain of data on the activities of every person in the EU makes a significant contribution. On the other hand, the use of this data for other purposes, now or in the future, will make the EU the most surveilled place in the world".
Bunyan says that the "profiling" of all airline passengers has “no place in a democracy”. He is right. The trouble is that behind the façade of parliamentary democracy, a terrifying authoritarian state is nearing completion. It’s an EU-wide project in which the New Labour government plays the leading role.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
The workings of the EU are obscure but thanks to Statewatch we can just about fathom out what’s going on. In its latest bulletin, the independent monitoring group analyses new terrorism laws planned by the European Commission. These would create three new categories of criminal offence: provocation to commit terrorism, recruitment for terrorism and training for terrorism. The "provocation" offence is extremely broad, as it does not require a direct encouragement to commit terrorist acts but applies to any statements which create a "danger" of such acts being committed. Statewatch warns:
“The wording of this definition is clearly likely to result in the criminalisation of the expression of political views (for example on the situation in Middle East or on certain conflicts within Member States) even if that expression does not in any way include the advocacy of terrorism to support those opinions. It will be enough that the authorities deem that there is a ‘danger’ that this will happen.”
Then there are the plans to fingerprint all children over six for EU passports. The commission would have included even younger children but the idea was rejected because the under-6s don’t yet have fully-identifiable fingerprints! Finally, this week the European Commission announced plans for a PNR (passenger name record) scheme to monitor all travel in and out of the EU. Similar data is already being collected under a EU-US scheme that sailed through without parliamentary approval.
All passengers, including visitors from the USA, will be “profiled” to see if they constitute a “risk”. If they are, they can be refused entry. The "profile" will be updated and held for 13 years. This will involve millions of quite innocent people being kept on record. Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "This is yet another measure that places everyone under surveillance and makes everyone a ‘suspect’ without any meaningful right to know how the data is used, how it is further processed and by whom. We have already got the mandatory taking of fingerprints for passports and ID cards and the mandatory storage of telecommunications data of every communication, now we are to have the mandatory logging of all travel in and out of the EU.
“The underlying rationale for each of the measures is the same - all are needed to tackle terrorism. Yet there is little evidence that the gathering of mountain upon mountain of data on the activities of every person in the EU makes a significant contribution. On the other hand, the use of this data for other purposes, now or in the future, will make the EU the most surveilled place in the world".
Bunyan says that the "profiling" of all airline passengers has “no place in a democracy”. He is right. The trouble is that behind the façade of parliamentary democracy, a terrifying authoritarian state is nearing completion. It’s an EU-wide project in which the New Labour government plays the leading role.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Opposing the new EU treaty
The gathering storm over the new European Union treaty, focused on the growing demands for a referendum, raises deep issues about the nation-state and its place in the globalised market economy. At the heart of the proposed treaty is the further development of the EU as a regional bloc better able to compete in increasingly tough capitalist market conditions. This in any case is what the EU has been doing for some time, compelling member countries, for example, to open up industries and services to competition and ruling out hidden state subsidies. The British government, under both Tories and New Labour, has gone faster than the rest of EU in imposing what some call the neo-liberal agenda of free markets and a flexible labour force. Central to this is the continuing opt-out from the clauses which set out a minimum framework of social rights for employees. In fact, one of Blair’s last acts as prime minister was to ensure that this was carried over into the proposed new treaty and his successor is in full agreement with this approach.
So one strand of opposition to the new treaty comes from the trade unions, led by Bob Crow of the RMT rail workers and Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB. Crow says: “Whatever you call the EU Reform Treaty, it contains the same anti-democratic mix that was in the constitution supposedly killed off by French and Dutch votes in 2005. It is the back-door constitution which would still transform the EU into a state, and transfer power to an unelected EU government. For working people it would be a disaster, further institutionalising the mis-named economic ‘liberalisation’, forcing more privatisation of public services and abolishing vetoes over transport and a host of other areas.” Kenny says GMB “members are sick and tired of being treated as second class citizens in Europe. If these rights are good enough for French, German and Spanish workers then they should be good enough to apply to UK workers too”. Both unions have tabled resolutions against the treaty at next month’s TUC Congress.
Another strand of opposition comes from the Tory right-wing, led by the Daily Telegraph. This is a nationalist, anti-European trend that is based on days long gone when there was such a thing as “British capitalism” powerful enough to defend its own interests. The global point of view comes from the Financial Times, which yesterday declared: “Most generals avoid fighting the last war. The motley band calling for a referendum in Britain on the European Union’s constitutional treaty has failed to learn this.” The paper of global rather than national big business claimed that their ultimate goal was “either withdrawal or a do-nothing Union” and that neither “serves the national interest”.
The fact is that the British ruling elites have had to surrender large measure of political and economic sovereignty in the last 30 years, not just to the EU but to supra-national bodies like the World Trade Organisation. This is one of the main consequences of the corporate-driven globalisation process, which Gordon Brown in particular has embraced wholeheartedly and driven forward. The trade unions are right to oppose the new treaty and to join New Labour MPs demanding a referendum. But to distinguish themselves from Little Englanders, union leaders have to go further. Even a refomed British state – which itself is a highly unlikely prospect - would have little control over economic and financial processes that transcend borders and state bodies like central banks in their operation. In opposition to the corporate-dominated EU, unions have to adopt a perspective of a democratic alternative to the EU, based on shared common ownership of the region’s resources and new political structures that reflect the aspirations of the disenfranchised majority.
Paul Feldman, communications editor
A World to Win
So one strand of opposition to the new treaty comes from the trade unions, led by Bob Crow of the RMT rail workers and Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB. Crow says: “Whatever you call the EU Reform Treaty, it contains the same anti-democratic mix that was in the constitution supposedly killed off by French and Dutch votes in 2005. It is the back-door constitution which would still transform the EU into a state, and transfer power to an unelected EU government. For working people it would be a disaster, further institutionalising the mis-named economic ‘liberalisation’, forcing more privatisation of public services and abolishing vetoes over transport and a host of other areas.” Kenny says GMB “members are sick and tired of being treated as second class citizens in Europe. If these rights are good enough for French, German and Spanish workers then they should be good enough to apply to UK workers too”. Both unions have tabled resolutions against the treaty at next month’s TUC Congress.
Another strand of opposition comes from the Tory right-wing, led by the Daily Telegraph. This is a nationalist, anti-European trend that is based on days long gone when there was such a thing as “British capitalism” powerful enough to defend its own interests. The global point of view comes from the Financial Times, which yesterday declared: “Most generals avoid fighting the last war. The motley band calling for a referendum in Britain on the European Union’s constitutional treaty has failed to learn this.” The paper of global rather than national big business claimed that their ultimate goal was “either withdrawal or a do-nothing Union” and that neither “serves the national interest”.
The fact is that the British ruling elites have had to surrender large measure of political and economic sovereignty in the last 30 years, not just to the EU but to supra-national bodies like the World Trade Organisation. This is one of the main consequences of the corporate-driven globalisation process, which Gordon Brown in particular has embraced wholeheartedly and driven forward. The trade unions are right to oppose the new treaty and to join New Labour MPs demanding a referendum. But to distinguish themselves from Little Englanders, union leaders have to go further. Even a refomed British state – which itself is a highly unlikely prospect - would have little control over economic and financial processes that transcend borders and state bodies like central banks in their operation. In opposition to the corporate-dominated EU, unions have to adopt a perspective of a democratic alternative to the EU, based on shared common ownership of the region’s resources and new political structures that reflect the aspirations of the disenfranchised majority.
Paul Feldman, communications editor
A World to Win
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