YESTERDAY millions of workers across Europe took strike action against the austerity programmes of ‘their’ bosses, bankers and governments.
These programmes are creating millions of unemployed – with up to 25 per cent of workers now out of work and 50 per cent of youth – and with wages and pensions reduced to nothing.
This is their cruel remedy for the capitalist crisis that has driven the EU working class together to defiantly fight back, and blaze the trail for the socialist revolution in Europe.
The attempt of the bourgeoisie to force through a united Europe, under the heel of the bosses and bankers, has produced a Frankenstein that can only continue to exist by creating hundreds of millions of paupers, and by moving from parliamentary to military police regimes.
It is no accident that the Greek army has announced that on orders from chief general Michalis Kostarakos an exercise on ‘releasing hostages held by hostile forces in an urban environment’ of the Army’s Rapid Reaction Force began yesterday.
‘The exercise titled “Fire Raiser 11” is the latest in a series of such exercises and involves helicopters raiding buildings on the special Greek Army camp in Skydra, northern Greece.
‘Two other Greek Army, Navy and Airforce exercises are being carried out at the same time.’
The bourgeoisie understand that the capitalist crisis and their remedy for it is driving the working class to revolution, thus they are desperately seeking to organise the counter-revolutionary forces.
Millions of workers yesterday engaged in strike action called by the ETUC, while the cowardly British TUC stood on the sidelines, watching, and sending a letter of support!
All UK workers know that they are in the same trench as the workers of the rest of Europe. British workers are facing the same onslaught, a product of the world crisis of capitalism, as the workers of Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy.
If the TUC had called them out they would have stopped in their millions. But the Labour Lieutenants of capitalism wouldn’t.
But the crisis grinds remorselessly on. Yesterday the bourgeois press was discussing the future of British capitalism in the most draconian terms.
Much quoted was Michael Cohrs, a member of the Financial Policy Committee. He said that ‘Allowing financial companies to blow themselves up, and then try to deal with the fall-out, may be, whether we like it or not – the reality of where we end up.’
For good measure he added: ‘We shouldn’t pretend that we can eliminate financial crises completely. Nor that the next crisis will necessarily be a carbon-copy of the last one.’
The bourgeois perspective of allowing the British banks to blow themselves up and then deal with the consequences, ie the working class, is the immediate future of the UK.
The truth of the situation is that this world crisis created, some time ago, the conditions where the ruling class cannot rule in the old way and where the working class can’t live in the same way. This was Lenin’s classic definition of a revolutionary situation.
The moment of revolution comes when workers decide that they would prefer to die fighting than put up with the capitalist crisis. This is the moment that is fast approaching in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, and is well on the way in the UK, France and Germany.
We must demand that the ETUC and the TUC call a series of general strikes to stop the whole of Europe, and mobilise the working class for revolution.
We must also prepare for the socialist revolution by building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International all over Europe.
Forward with the European socialist revolution! Forward to the Socialist United States of Europe! Forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution!
