Confronting a global austerity agenda

Around the world, a generation of workers is discovering the power of resistance.

Confronting a global austerity agenda
27 November, 2012 – SocialistWorker.org

Spanish workers march during the recent multinational strike in Europe (Ana Rey)Spanish workers march during the recent multinational strike in Europe (Ana Rey)

REVOLUTION AND reaction, austerity and resistance. That was the shape of world politics in 2012 as the rulers of governments around the globe attempted to force working people to bear the brunt of an ongoing global economic crisis.

The particulars of the crisis and the struggle vary from country to country. The Middle East, where revolutions shook world politics last year, has seen a revolutionary civil war in Syria, resistance to another Israeli military onslaught against the Palestinians of Gaza, and–in the last weeks of November–a renewal of struggle in Egypt against a power grab by the ruling Islamist party that won the country’s first post-revolutionary elections.

U.S. ally Bahrain has spared no effort to crush the democratic movement in that country, but another Washington-backed monarchy, Jordan, is ending the year panicked by a new wave of protests.

The fightback has continued in Western Europe, the old heartland of the capitalist system. Merciless austerity programs that cut wages and pensions while slashing social spending have provoked a series of strikes and protests–most impressively, the recent pan-European general strike in Spain, Portugal and other countries.

But the wave of workers’ struggle has spread beyond Europe. India saw its biggest-ever general strike in February. In China–a one-party dictatorship where independent unions are illegal–strikes, mass worker protests and riots are commonplace.

In the U.S., workers’ resistance has been less dramatic compared to the 2011 uprising in Wisconsin against Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union legislation and the emergence of organized labor as a crucial part of the Occupy Wall Street movement a year ago.

Yet though strikes remain at their lowest levels in decades, a nine-day walkout by Chicago teachers in September was one of the most important U.S. union battles in decades. In the face of an all-out ideological offensive by the Democratic-controlled city government, the teachers nevertheless won widespread solidarity and showed the potential for a renewed labor movement.

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DESPITE THE many differences from country to country, a common factor is at the heart of these protests–a global economy that’s still too weak to overcome the effects of the financial crash of 2008.

As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted in its World Economic Outlook published in October, “The recovery continues, but it has weakened. In advanced economies, growth is now too low to make a substantial dent in unemployment. And in major emerging market economies, growth that had been strong earlier has also decreased.”

The IMF has lowered its forecast for growth in the advanced countries–mainly the U.S., Europe and Japan–from an already weak 2 percent to just 1.5 percent. That’s the result of much of Western Europe sinking into outright recession.

As the economy falters, voters have tended to kick out the parties that presided over the debacle. In Greece and Spain, it was center-left social democratic parties that were sent packing in recent elections, while in France, right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy was ousted in favor of the Socialist Party.

But whichever mainstream parties European voters have chosen, the austerity agenda remains. From liberal to conservative, all these parties share a consensus of continued cuts in wages and social spending, differing only on how fast and deep the cuts should come. And if workers in Greece or Spain object, officials from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF can demand that the cuts go through anyway–or else the debt-wracked countries will be cut off from the loans and financial assistance that have their financial systems from total collapse.

When it comes to democracy versus austerity, big capital insists that austerity wins–in every case.

That’s why U.S. politicians are using the so-called “fiscal cliff”–a January 1 deadline before higher taxes and across-the-board spending cuts go into effect–as an excuse for austerity, American-style. The message is that we better accept further spending reductions in exchange for a small increase in taxes on the rich–or risk the economic contraction that result from going over the cliff.

The message is the same, repeated in many languages around the world: “We hate to do this, but we have no choice.”

But behind the rhetoric about “shared sacrifice,” the real agenda in the U.S. and Europe is a deep and permanent cut in the standard of living for working people. Governments need to enable corporations to remain profitable while meeting the rising competition from China, Brazil and other industrializing countries. Cutting workers’ wages and benefits is no longer enough. The social wage–government spending on education, health care, retirement systems and more–must be slashed, too, in order to keep taxes low for business and the wealthy. …more