EUROPE was engulfed on Saturday by a rising tide of demonstrations against brutal austerity and in opposition to the preparations by European governments for a war to be paid for by the working class and youth.
These demonstrations and marches that have gripped France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and across other European nations have spread to Germany, the largest economy in the EU.
Tens of thousands took part in nationwide protests across 34 German cities under the banner ‘Gen Z regelt’ (‘Gen Z takes charge’).
‘Gen Z regelt’ said that over 120,000 youth and workers answered the call for mass demonstrations in over 30 major cities including Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg.
In common with the ongoing protests sweeping Europe, German youth took to the streets to voice their opposition to the cost of living crisis, a crumbling education system and the preparations by the right-wing coalition government of Friedrich Merz to introduce military conscription for German workers.
The war preparations being carried out by governments across Europe, including the UK, are being paid for by brutal austerity demands imposed on the working class.
The position of German youth was succinctly expressed by Philipp Groschel, a 27 year-old demonstrator in Berlin, who said: ‘War only serves the rich, so funding should go into education and aid instead.’
He added: ‘I don’t think that preparing for war will prevent it from happening.’
Youth can clearly see through all the lies and propaganda spouted by bourgeois political leaders like Merz, Macron in France and Burnham in the UK, that the capitalist state must pour billions into ‘defence’ to protect it from non-existent threats from Russia or Iran.
They insist that the working class and youth have a ‘moral duty’ to sacrifice their future to pay for imperialist wars to reconquer the world for exploitation by the capitalist class.
Germany was held to be a model of capitalist stability, the strongest economy in the EU, whose iron grip over the European Central Bank (ECB) enabled it to impose brutal austerity on countries like Greece when they plunged into bankruptcy following the 2008 global financial crisis.
In the past weeks, the mainstream UK press tended to concentrate on the eruptions of the class struggle across Europe with references to the ‘volatile’ nature of the working class in these countries, but they cannot easily dismiss the German uprising in this way.
The fear that the ‘contagion’ of revolution is spreading and threatens to explode in Britain is becoming more apparent.
An article in The Daily Telegraph, headed ‘France’s crisis should be a wake-up call for Britain’ stated:
‘The French fiscal and political crisis is not new. It has been building for decades’ before continuing: ‘It often takes a long time for deep-seated problems to have their full effect. France has been living not just on borrowed money but also on borrowed time.’
The article added: ‘Much the same can be said of us. We too face a reckoning.’
The day of reckoning for capitalism internationally is fast approaching as the working class, with youth in the vanguard, rise up against a capitalist system that in its death agony can only offer a future of wars and abject poverty for workers and young people.
The main barrier to the working class going forward to a final reckoning with bankrupt capitalism is the leadership of the trade unions who are determined to divert the revolutionary wave into one-day general strikes in France, Spain and Italy at different dates in November.
Workers must demand that these one-day strikes become general strikes to bring down the capitalist governments of Europe and for the working class to take power.
In the UK, the working class must force the TUC to end its collaboration with the Burnham government and call a general strike to bring it down and bring in a workers government and socialism.
The urgent task today is to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International to provide the leadership required for the victory of the world socialist revolution.
