LAST weekend the French government collapsed as the splits within the cabinet turned into open warfare between President Holland and his finance minister, Arnaud Montebourg.
The decisive issue splitting the French socialist government down the middle was over how to deal with the economic collapse of France, a collapse that is mirrored in every single one of the eurozone countries and beyond, to encompass the entire capitalist world system.
While Hollande was insisting on ‘structural reforms’, that is the implementation of vicious austerity measures to force the French working class to pay for the bankers crisis – reforms insisted upon by the European Central Bank (ECB) – Montebourg was pleading for the ECB to drop austerity and for the ECB to try and print their way out of the crisis by a Quantitative Easing programme.
It now transpires that on the weekend that Montebourg was being thrown out for economic heresy, the ECB boss, Mario Draghi, speaking at a meeting of the world’s central bankers in the US, dropped a very heavy hint that a eurozone version of QE was inevitable.
It is a mark of the desperation of the ECB that, at a time when the US is trying to ‘taper off’ QE – which pumps $65 billion a month of valueless paper money into the banks to stop them collapsing – the ECB is adopting precisely the same measures.
This rush to try and save European capitalism by printing worthless paper money will bring about a split within the entire eurozone that will make the French split look like a vicars tea party spat over the scones.
It puts the ECB on a major collision course with Germany who has acted as the paymaster of Europe and has insisted on austerity throughout the eurozone. Germany, with its bitter memories of the Weimar Republic in the 1920’s and the hyper-inflation caused by printing worthless money, has a constitution that outlaws such a policy.
Piling on the agony for the European Union is the abject failure of its imperialist adventure into re-conquering the lands denied to it by the 1917 Russian revolution.
Attempts to expand the EU and NATO into Ukraine have come unstuck thanks to the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian workers in the east who are winning the war launched by the imperialist imposed coupist government.
The capitalist dream of a united capitalist Europe is being destroyed by the resistance of the working class across the continent to the attempt to smash their living standards as the price for keeping a bankrupt capitalist system afloat.
These splits in Europe are mirrored by splits within the ruling class and Tory party in Britain. The defection of the Tory MP Douglas Carswell to the right-wing UKIP has rocked the Tory party to the core, to the extent that it is not unthinkable that Cameron may not even last as Tory leader for next years’ general election.
With Farage boasting that eight more Tory MPs are in the UKIP bag, the Tories have never been more split. With the ruling class and its political representatives in Britain and Europe hopelessly split and at war with one another, there has never been a better time to bring these governments and the system they serve down once and for all.
The only thing keeping them in power is the steadfast refusal of the reformist leadership of the working class to lift a finger to bring them down. This situation cannot be allowed to continue for a minute longer.
The working class must take advantage of the weakness and splits and demand that the TUC organise a general strike to bring down the government and go forward to a workers government and socialism.
If the leaders of the TUC refuse to lead such a fight they must be kicked out and replaced with a new leadership. This is the demand of the Young Socialists March for Jobs to lobby the TUC meeting in Liverpool on 7th September.
Every worker and young person should join the march and lobby, this is the only way to secure the future for workers today.