The political crisis for the European bourgeoisie deepened yesterday following the results of exit polls at the end of the first round of voting for the French National Assembly.
These polls predicted an outright win for the new French President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party at next Sunday’s final round of voting, giving it an outright majority along with Green Party allies.
These two parties have campaigned on a programme of ‘anti-austerity’ and ‘pro-growth’ and look set to secure 40% of the vote at next Sunday’s final round of voting.
This vote will coincide with Greek elections designed to break the political paralysis that has gripped since the last election on May 6th when anti-austerity parties all but wiped out the traditional bourgeois parties, creating conditions where no government could be formed.
It is expected that Syriza, (coalition of the radical left) led by Alexis Tsipras, will come out on top again on a policy of re-negotiating the savage austerity measures imposed on the Greek people by the European bankers and politicians.
This rejection by millions of workers and sections of the middle class, who have been impoverished and face complete destitution as a direct result of the world crisis of capitalism, is adding to the panic engulfing the Eurozone.
It is an open secret that the deal to pump 100 billion euros into the Spanish banks to stop them drowning in their own debt was pushed through last weekend in order to put some kind of rescue plan in place before the Greek elections.
Without any plan, no matter how temporary, in place it was calculated that the expected victory for Syriza would send Greece out of the euro immediately.
The knock-on effect on the European banking system would be catastrophic and it would certainly tip the Spanish banks over the edge.
By chucking 100 billion euros into the bottomless pit that is the Spanish banking debt, it is desperately hoped that this catastrophe can be delayed.
It is a mark of the desperation gripping capitalism that the deal to ‘rescue’ Spanish banks did not even say where this 100 billion was coming from.
That the economic crisis is now expressing itself as a political crisis for the capitalist class, and this political crisis is, in turn, feeding back and accelerating the economic crisis, is not confined to mainland Europe.
In Britain a shock opinion poll conducted last Friday revealed that the Tories had crashed to their lowest level of support in a decade.
The poll put support for the Tories on 29%, the LibDems on a derisory 9% and Labour on 43%.
Given that the Labour Party has no significant policy or economic differences with the Tories, both agree that the working class must pay for the debt crisis caused by the banks, this dramatic upsurge in support means only one thing, that the working class in Britain is lining up with the working class of Europe to oppose having its living standards and very existence sacrificed to keep a bankrupt capitalist system afloat.
Hollande, Tsipras and Miliband are peddling the illusion that there is some peaceful, parliamentary way out of this crisis, that it is possible to negotiate compromises with the banks and conjure growth out of thin air.
They seek to divert workers away from the real issue, namely that bankrupt world capitalism in its death agony can only survive by taking on the working class and driving it back to the dark ages.
The working class equally has no choice; it must mobilise its massive strength to confront the class enemy and put an end to this bankrupt capitalist system once and for all through the socialist revolution.
