Across the European Union, the bosses’ governments have been announcing cutbacks in government services:
• In Ireland, the government adopted two austerity plans in 2009, cutting benefits across the board by 7 billion euros (US$8.75 billion). Government workers’ wages have been cut 5 to 15%, depending on their department and pay category.
• In January, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned that public spending would be cut in 2011 and that “grave decisions lie ahead.”
• On January 29, Spanish Finance Minister Elena Salgado announced 50 billion euros (US$62.5 billion) in budget cuts over the next three years. The government plans to “reform” the labor market and raise the legal retirement age from 65 to 67.
• On April 29, Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, said the austerity measures needed to tackle Britain’s budget deficit will be so unpopular that whoever wins the elections will not get back into government for a generation.
• On May 5, French Prime Minister François Fillon announced an austerity plan to freeze government expenses from 2011 to 2013. Taking inflation into account, this amounts to a 10% budget cut over three years. Bourgeois economist Jacques Attali put the cut at 50 billion euros (US$62.5 billion).
• The Portuguese government has frozen government workers’ wages (around 12% of the working population). It’s planning layoffs, privatizations and a two-year increase in the retirement age.
Racist Cutbacks
In every case, these measures and cutbacks are racist because they hit the poorest workers hardest, and in every European country the poorest workers include a disproportionate number of workers belonging to a “racial,” “ethnic” or “national” minority.
In each of these countries, the ruling class is carefully watching how much the Greek bosses will manage to take away from the workers. If the Greek government imposes its austerity package of 30 billion euros (US$37.5 billion) in budget cuts over the next three years, bosses across Europe will order their governments to ratchet down workers’ incomes accordingly.
Indeed, government services like health care, pensions, education, etc., are a part of workers’ income, i.e. payment for their labor power. The only difference is that these services are financed and distributed indirectly, through taxes and the government, whereas wages are paid directly by the boss.
As Karl Marx explains in chapter VI of “Capital,” the value of a worker’s labor power has two components: First, the satisfaction of “natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, [which] vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country.” Secondly, “the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants” depend to a great extent “on the habits and degree of comfort in which the class of free laborers has been formed.” Obviously, the “degree of comfort” that we expect as “normal” results from the class struggles of past generations of workers.
This means that, under capitalism, workers’ standard of living depends on the level of class struggle. The more workers fight, the more crumbs they may get, either directly from the boss or indirectly through the government. However, the bosses constantly attack to maintain or increase their profits by pushing back workers’ living standards. Whatever gains workers may win are usually reversed when the ruling class, using its control of state power, decides it can no longer allow these gains to limit their profits. Only with communist revolution can workers collectively distribute the full value they produce to our class, according to need.
The budget deficits that the bosses’ media are wailing about can be reduced in two ways: through budget cuts (taking income from the workers) or by taking income from the bosses (through taxes). The class struggle decides who will pay and how much.
In France, for example, a recent Senate finance committee report states that company exemptions on social security contributions cost the government 42 billion euros in 2009; while a National Assembly finance committee report states that tax breaks for the rich cost 73 billion euros. By eliminating tax breaks to the rich and their companies, the French government could take in 345 billion euros over three years, instead of cutting 50 billion euros in services to the working class over the same period!
Now is the time for workers across Europe to demonstrate concrete solidarity with workers in Greece. Defeating the austerity plan in Greece could help defeat similar plans being prepared in every country in Europe. And the international solidarity forged in fighting these austerity plans can — with communist leadership — become the sort of school for communism that will get our class out of the reformist traffic circle and onto the revolutionary highway to ending capitalism once and for all.
