THE CRISIS IN EUROPE

Political Statement of the International Secretariat of the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the IV International (CRFI)

1. Conflicting powerful centrifugal and centripetal forces are building up the conditions for an explosive crisis in Europe.

The European imperialists have celebrated the expansion of the European Union to 25 members, on May 1st, 2004 as a milestone in the integration of the Continent and a gigantic leap forward in their competition with U.S. imperialism and Japan. But very soon, particularly after the June 2004 Euro-elections with the unprecedented abstention of the majority and the repudiation of all European governments by the voters, followed by the dispute on the EU Constitution, euphoria has evaporated and the bitter truth has emerged: Europe rather than being an expanded and stable basis of capitalist development, has become a focus of the contradictions of the world capitalist crisis. Internally divided, with all its social economic structures historically outmoded and its political system discredited , it is vulnerable to the pressures of America. Particularly, it is deeply affected by the implications of the war in Iraq and the stalemate one year after the invasion and the occupation of the country.

2. American imperialism remains both the center of world capitalism and the center of its crisis. Despite all the rhetoric about it's latest "jobless recovery", the US economy is floating in a sea of consumer debt, with huge budget and current account deficits, which are financed by the rest of the capitalist world, particularly by China and Japan buying U.S Treasury bills and bonds, and using the weakness of the U.S dollar and its role as a world reserve currency to beat its competitors, particularly the EU.

U.S. capitalism is a super- giant whose economic supremacy is based not only on higher productivity, labor flexibility and an integrated market but also above all on a monstrous fictitious capital expansion. While the US GDP is around 11 trillion dollars, the finance bubble of the derivatives' market is around 128 trillion dollars!

The historical paradox is that now U.S and world capitalist development depends a lot on a so-called industrial expansion in China based upon cheap credit from the state banks and a huge inflow of foreign capital. This frenetic rate of bubble industrial investment disguises the reality of over-accumulation of capital, un-sellable commodities and over appreciation of fixed investments; for this reason decisions are taken to check the flow of credit from the Chinese banks to cool the overheated economy. The worst nightmare of world capitalism is now the bursting of the Chinese bubble. It will have devastating results directly on Japan, Taiwan and South Korea and moreover on America and Europe. And with every new sharpening of its own contradictions, U.S capitalism exports its crisis to Europe, whose economy is already struggling on the brink of stagnation (with a growth rate for the past 12 months only 0.6 % versus 4.3% in the United States and 3.4% in Japan).

3. The splits are deepening not only between the European and the American ruling classes but also among the capitalists in Europe, between the European capitalist countries and inside each ruling class.

The conflict on the EU Constitution between the "federalists"(including France and Germany) and the "anti-federalists"(like Britain and Berlusconi's Italy) is interconnected both with antagonistic national capitalist interests as well as with the conflict between pro-American and anti-American factions among the rulers. Particularly the rulers of the restorationist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, whilst these countries are crucial in the conflict between U.S. and EU imperialisms to control the former Soviet space, are functioning in fact as a pro-US Fifth Column. The result of these splits is the tendency towards a paralysis of the EU institutions and the inability to elaborate a common foreign policy or to develop the so-called "European defense initiative" beyond the framework imposed by NATO.

The most important divisive factors are economic: the viability of the Stability Pact itself is brought into question as several countries, particularly the "hard core" EU countries, Germany, France and Netherlands, had deficits in 2003 that far exceeded the limits imposed by the Pact. The issue also of the so-called "structural reforms" needed, according to European capital, to become more competitive against the US flexibilized labor market, privatizations, taxes, new pension legislations- divide the ruling circles. Some sections of the bourgeoisie want to move directly into an offensive against the labor movement and its social gains, others are promoting a more cautious course, frightened by the possibility of social upheavals and mass strikes (as already seen during the last decade, in the mass strike movements in defense of pension rights in Italy, France and Greece).

The fighting capacity and the potential for social resistance of the working class and of other popular strata in Europe are not broken, as under Fascism before World War II. A return to the conditions of the thirties is impossible because of fundamental changes in world capitalism but also because an unprecedented historic confrontation with the working class would be necessary. The revolutionary potential of European workers is the most important strategic factor in the class struggle to be taken into account by the capitalists as well as by the workers vanguard. Only the European proletariat, at the head of all the oppressed, exploited and socially excluded masses can open up a way out of the growing crisis and the threatening catastrophe.

4. The results of the recent European elections and the draft of the new Constitution of the Union indicate that the elements of political crisis in the Old Continent are far from having been solved.

The most salient data of the elections has been the mass abstention and the "punishment" of almost all the ruling governments, with a loss of votes which particularly hits hard, just where coalition governments exist among diverse political forces, those most closely incarnating the government and its policies (in the same way as the votes fell for the SPD in Germany and Berlusconi's Forza Italia, although their partners --the Greens in Germany, the other right-wing parties in Italy-- maintain their positions or have even advanced). The exception to this rule has been Greece and Spain, coming from a recent change in government; with respect to the Spanish case, the determining factor has been the prestige won by Zapatero's government by keeping the election campaign promise of withdrawing the troops from Iraq.

The governments are paying the cost of the dissatisfaction of the masses over their social policies of attacking worker gains and of supporting the war, without the differentiation on the second question being sufficient to bring about "acquittal" on the first, as shown by the results of the German SPD and of the pro-Chirac coalition in France.

The character of this vote of "no confidence" is still contradictory. The discontent favors the opposition forces, independently of their position, whether of the left (as in the case of the Socialist Party in France, the Sinn Fein in Irland, the Communist Party in the Czech Republic) or of the right (the CDU in Germany, the UK Independence Party, various right-wing formations in Poland, etc.). Together with the development of abstentionism, which is a response of passivity, all of this underlines the limits of the consciousness of the masses and the incapacity of the majority of the proletariat to spontaneously find the path towards class independence. The development of such important struggles on social terrain and, moreover, on the more general political terrain --particularly the mobilizations against the war-- do not translate by themselves into an advance in the consciousness of the class more than for one sector of the vanguard. Only a constant political battle of the revolutionary forces for the conquest of the hegemony of all the most significant mobilizations in the class struggle and in the political struggle, with the method of struggle with transitional objectives, can make for the advance of an anti-capitalist consciousness of the masses.

5. From this point of view the role of the left-wing forces may be considered (of those that place themselves to the left of the formations of the Socialist International). All of them have played a role, in the class struggle and in the mass mobilizations, which has been exactly the opposite of what we have pointed out. In diverse manners and forms, they have either adapted to the level of consciousness, with a completely minimalist conception or, worse, have tried to utilize the force of the struggles and of the movements as a lever for rebuilding the alliance with Social Democracy and the "liberal" sectors of the bourgeoisie.

This is the case of what is today the main force of the European left, the recently born PIE ("Party of the European Left") and, in the first place, of its "leading party", the PRC (Party of Communist Refoundation) in Italy --whose Secretary General, Bertinotti, who not through coincidence is also sole president of the European party, is preparing for an alternative to the government in alliance with the direct representatives of the big bosses.

The results of the election for the forces of the PIE reflect the national situations, although in general they appear to have been moderately positive (from the maintaining of the vote for the PCF in France, to the modest growth of the PRC in Italy and the PDS in Germany, to the success of the Czech CP). Really, in general, they have not been able to solidly capture the levels of popular dissatisfaction, objectively due to their contradictory character already pointed out, subjectively due to the fact, as pointed out, that they do not present themselves as a third class pole with respect to the confrontation between "reactionaries" and "progressives" in the sphere of the bourgeois forces.

6. To the left of the PIE and the more traditionally Stalinist formations (such as the Greek CP), the results of the left-wing "alternative" forces have an analogous value, closed in up against the objective limits and the subjectively reformist character of their proposals. In this way they have obtained results, positive in Portugal (Bloque de Izquierda - Left Bloc) and in Holland (Socialist Party of the Left), unsatisfactory in England (Respect), and completely negative in France.

These last two examples are particularly significant due to the role of the forces claiming to be revolutionary Marxists. In England, the prime mover behind Respect has been the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The latter liquidated all perspectives for a class struggle slate, choosing to build a mini-popular front with the demagogic former Labor Party leader and ferocious adversary of the right of abortion, Gallowey, and with the bourgeois BMA (British Muslim Association - the most positive results for the slate were seen where the BMA is the strongest; in this way the just struggle to regroup the oppressed Muslim community is transformed into adaptation to its current bourgeois leadership).

The results obtained by Lutte Ouvrière and the LCR (Liga Comunista Revolucionaria) in France have particular significance. This is a united front coming from a certain prior consistency that was presented and has been presented with the label of "Trotskyist" and has declared its opposition to the policy of alliance with the center-left and with the "pluralist left." The results were completely negative. LO/LCR got 2.6 percent of the votes (to which, in order to round out the picture of support for French Trotskyism, the 0.7 percent obtained by the Lambertist Workers Party must be added). This is half the vote, measured as a percentage, obtained in the last European elections, that had allowed the two organizations to choose five members of parliament, and 40 percent fewer of the regions when compared to last March. Above all, they appear to be far from the results of the two presidential candidates of 2002, Laguiller y Besancenot, who together obtained more than 10 percent and, above all, when compared to the (certainly generic) polls taken this (European) autumn which posed the hypothesis of a vote potentially higher than 20 percent among the entire registered vote in the country (on the contrary, the vote is similar to that of the serious failure in the national parliamentary elections of 2002, after Chirac's victory).

After the failure of the LO/LCR slate internal strife has opened up inside the LCR in which the forces of the broad right-wing minority, that had opposed the alliance with LO, is advancing towards the perspective of re-opening a process of alliance with the FCP and the Greens, which had already been the policy of the League during the eighties and nineties, but which now would openly be part of a perspective of joining a future bourgeois government as "left-wing alternate," which would signify the passing of the LCR over to the bourgeois order, as has already occurred in the case of the Brazilian section of the USec, Democracia Socialista, which entered the government of Lula.

Regarding the Lambertist Workers Party, their programmatic proposal is absolutely reactionary. It is in fact based on a "pro-sovereignty" defense of the national French State (bourgeois and imperialist) against the European Union, in the name of the "interests of the working class." An undignified mystification for any proletarian organization and which indicates the level of degeneration and the distance between any revolutionary and socialist perspective, on the one hand, and this group, which used to defend "orthodox Trotskyism" in its confrontation with revisionism, on the other.

The results of the European elections themselves and the determining objective situation again strongly indicate that the perspective of a positive development for the proletariat is indissolubly linked to that of the refoundation of revolutionary internationalism, that is to say, of the Fourth International and its sections. This necessity is underlined by the general perspective of the overall continental picture pointed to at the start of this text.

7. Over the past decades, the crisis of capital has pushed, even on the Old Continent, towards a constant attack upon wages, direct, indirect, and conscious, and upon other gains of the proletariat and the popular masses. This offensive has been carried out by all the governments, of all colors, which have followed in succession in the various European countries, whether they were right-wing, center-left or of the "pluralist left." In spite of the successes achieved, in spite of the working class resistance, this offensive is far from being over. With all its contradictions, the capitalist crisis persists, and with it, the need for capital to defend and regain the rate of profit. The future will bring new and very strong attacks.

This is made manifest considering, also, the difficult new "constitutional" structuring of the European Union. The text of the Constitution established last June 18 expresses on the formal terrain the general contradictions to be found in the EU. On this plane development is always stronger than in reality, the contrast between a line determined to build Europe within the structure of a cohesive and unified imperialist alliance, progressively in opposition to US imperialism (the position of the Franco-German axis and that of the outgoing President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi), and that which seeks to make it a faithful and definitively subordinate partner of the dominant imperialism (Great Britain, Berlusconi and various countries recently incorporated from the East, such as Poland). Beyond the relative reinforcement of the Franco-German axis after the events of the post-war in Iraq, the outcome has not yet been decided and this contradiction continues to be a potentially explosive factor within the present-day EU; none of the maneuvers in favor of the qualified vote adopted in the wording of the constitution will be able to solve it.

8. It is therefore necessary for the Marxist vanguard in every country in Europe to indicate clearly the alternative proposal to capitalism, to its permanent anti-worker and anti-popular offensive, to its war policy, to its economic and social crisis, to the crisis of all those governments expressing themselves in the way we have indicated. The perspective to put forward is that of overthrowing, with the development of actions of the masses, the bourgeois governments of all stripes and colors and of creating a workers government, based on a program of transitional, anti-capitalist demands (for workers control over the sliding scale of working hours; over the dissolution of the bourgeois army and the other repressive bodies of the State; over the expropriation without compensation of the large-scale means of production, banks and insurance companies).

This perspective can and should be launched in every country, even if the conditions of the crisis and the contradictions and the potential of the proletariat movement are not equal. In this way, it has been a political crime for the three main organizations claiming to be Trotskyists in France not to have put forward, in the course of the big mobilization of May-June 2003 against the retirement pension reform of the Raffarin government, the perspective of the general strike for an indefinite period in order to defeat and overthrow the government, a position which was totally inscribed in the potential of the movement (LO pronounced itself openly against; the LCR call for the general strike but without connecting it to the perspective of the fall of the government).

Today one of the countries in which the greatest contradictions are concentrated is Italy. It is, out of the large countries of the European Union, the one in which there are most elements of economic crisis, as shown by the cases of Fiat and Parmalat. The "Italian system," that is, the mixture of dispersed small and medium companies, combined with big industry, in great part semi-public (iron and steel industry, naval construction, thermonuclear, energy), side by side with a small number of large industrial groups (Fiat, Olivetti, Pirelli, etc.), strongly aided and financed by the State, which in another epoch were responsible for making the fortune of Italian imperialist capitalism, have been in crisis for a long time, without the policy of massive privatizations or the development of "high technology" being capable of solving the situation. The right-wing government headed by Silvio Berlusconi is going through great contradictions, because due to the impossibility of its being able to offer the bourgeoisie as a whole a way out of the crisis, it may fall before the 2006 elections, although this is not definite. There is a good possibility of its being substituted by a center-left government, to include the Party of Communist Refoundation. The center-left today enjoys the support of the Center of Industrialists and of all the trade union bureaucracy. The big bosses and big finance have assigned it the task of returning the situation to equilibrium in favor of the overall interests of capital. In spite of how illusory this perspective may be in the face of the reality of the international crisis, those who will pay the cost of the attempt will be, as always, the working class and the popular masses.

However, the struggle of the proletariat has seen important developments over the last few months. The transport workers as well as the metal workers have carried out radical battles, sometimes with success, sometimes not, but in any case with a leap in quality in comparison to the preceding phase. All this has culminated in the splendid 21-day strike for an indefinite period (in contrast to the traditions of struggle in Italy for decades) by the workers of the Melfi Fiat plant in the south of Italy, who with their struggle have won a great battle and have shown the way for the proletariat all over the country. At the same time, in terrains other than the plants and factories, very broad struggles are underway, such as that dealing with environmental questions, that have involved the direct action of the masses, with roadblocks and blocking of railway lines that have affected entire regions.

Although there has not yet been a generalization of these forms of struggle, due also to the reactionary role of the trade union bureaucracy, the potential exists. The main thing is to build upon it in order to show the need to unify the different struggles and the different demands through a prolonged general strike based on a platform of demands that includes the regaining of wage levels, the reductions of the workday, the abolition of labor flexibility, the hiring as permanent staff of all non-contract workers, a dignified social wage for all the unemployed, the defense of the "welfare state" with increases in benefits and retirement pensions; and which clearly defends as its political objective the overthrow of the reactionary, anti-worker and anti-popular government of Berlusconi.

At the same time, it is necessary for the revolutionaries to alert the workers and the popular masses against a new center-left government as the alternative for the bourgeoisie. The slogan should be "Overthrow Berlusconi but not to govern with Confindustria and the bankers." The alternative to put forward is that of a workers government. This should go out to all the organizations which form part of the workers movement. Last year some 11 million persons (30 percent of the electorate) voted in favor of a referendum which proposed extending to small businesses the protection against dismissals, which exists under Italian legislation for companies having more than 15 employees. This was the majority of the Italian proletariat. And this in spite of the call to boycott the referendum in conjunction with Confindustria not only by right-wing parties but also by most of the center-left (the law stipulates for the validity of the referendum the participation of the majority of those with the right to vote, leading the bosses' forces to a call for boycott, knowing that otherwise there would be a victory for the "yes" vote in any case). Those calling to participate and for a "yes" vote include parties to the left of the Demócratas de Izquierda (Left-wing Democrats, a bourgeois liberal transformation of the old Communist Party), the left-wing social democratic current of the latter, and, at the last minute, the main trade union confederation, the CGIL (Confederación General del Trabajo). It is to these forces in their entirety that it is necessary to direct the slogan "break with the bourgeoisie; construct an autonomous class pole, in opposition to the reactionary center-right and the pro-industrialist center-left (Confindustria, the forces of the bosses), which puts itself forward as an alternative of government on the basis of an anti-capitalist program." It is with this policy that an alternative way forward can be shown to the proletariat and an alternative leadership be constructed. It is with this approach that the comrades of the Asociación Marxista Revolucionaria Progetto Comunista are acting, conscious of the fact that the only guarantee for the perspective of a class struggle alternative will be the building of a revolutionary party, in the framework of the refoundation of the Fourth International.

The necessary construction of revolutionary parties in the European countries, in the framework of the Refoundation of the Fourth International, may have no other perspective.

· For a working class solution to the crisis, for workers governments in all the countries of Europe.

· Down with the European Union, imperialist coalition of big capital.

· No to all governments of the bourgeoisie, including those of the center-left and of the "pluralistic left."

· For the building of revolutionary parties of the proletariat in all European countries.

· For the refoundation of the Fourth International.

· For the class independence of the proletariat and its organizations.

· Down with all the imperialisms, the US as well as the European. Proletarian revolution. United Socialist States of Europe.

INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF THE CRFI

Rome, July 23th, 2004