AS details emerge of the desperate measures hammered out in Europe on Wednesday night in an attempt to save the eurozone from collapse and the entire banking system from meltdown, it is clear that a massive plank in the deal entails European capitalism going cap and begging bowl in hand to the Stalinist bureaucracy in China.
The sight of these masters of the capitalist universe being forced to beg from the leaders of the degenerated workers state of China for a hand-out to stave off financial ruin is beyond irony, given that just over twenty years ago capitalism and its hired apologists were triumphantly declaring an ‘end to history’ and the complete triumph of the capitalist system over the socialised property relations of the Soviet Union and China.
Today the situation looks very different, with French president Sarkozy on the phone to his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, on Thursday to plead for the Chinese Stalinists to put $100 billion into the bailout fund that is supposed to keep the bankrupt Greek economy from imploding and bringing down the entire European banking system with it.
This plan is dependent on a number of extremely vague promises.
Firstly, it is dependent on the banks accepting a write-down of 50% of the Greek debt.
Although the banks appear to have reluctantly accepted a loss of half the money they are owed, it is a ‘voluntary’ agreement with no guarantee that they will abide by it.
Along with this write-off by the banks is a proposed new loan of 100 billion euros to Greece.
Both these moves would, however, only reduce the Greek sovereign debt to 120% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
It is still an unsustainable debt and one that French and German capitalism will demand is paid for by the Greek working class with even more savage cuts.
Central to this ‘rescue plan’ is the beefing up of the European Financial Stability Facility by injecting one trillion euros into the fund to bail out Greece – a sum that is half what even the IMF reckon is necessary.
Again, Wednesday’s plan is woefully short on any detail about where this extra money is to come from, only that Germany and France have agreed to ‘leverage’ the bailout fund.
In other words, the fund will be created using financial juggling, not through putting any hard cash in by these two countries.
This is where the grovelling approach to the Chinese Stalinist leadership comes in.
While the Stalinists are only too ready and willing to bail out capitalism, with a spokesman saying ‘China is ready to work with the international community to promote stability in the international financial market’, the bureaucracy faces huge problems in this respect.
Not least is that they can see that the European debt crisis is one huge financial black hole, and any amount of money ploughed in by them will inevitably be lost in a futile bid to keep Europe from going bust.
They are demanding cast-iron guarantees that any buying up of government bonds by them will be secure, along with large interest rate repayments on any loan.
That capitalism today can only exist with the support of Stalinism internationally and a reformist leadership of the working class at home, brings out starkly the counter-revolutionary nature of reformism in its Stalinist and social-democratic guises, and the objective weakness of the capitalist system. It is in fact senile and in its death agony, waiting for its gravedigger to put it where it belongs, six feet under.
The working class of the world, as typified by the Greek workers, is being driven forward to carry out the historical role of the working class, the gravedigger of the capitalist system.
What this situation requires is the building of sections of the Fourth International in every country to provide the revolutionary leadership to carry through this operation and to overcome any problems that arise in the course of the burial.
Successful socialist revolutions in the West will bring down the Stalinist bureaucracy in the East, to bring about the victory of the world socialist revolution.
