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	Workers Vanguard No. 848	13 May 2005

No to Capitalist European Union and Its Constitution!

MAY 10—On May 29, French voters will go to the polls to decide whether France will approve the proposed Constitution of the European Union (EU). For weeks, opinion polls had been running strongly in favor of a "no" vote, though in recent days the "yes" vote has been gaining. An electoral defeat would be a considerable embarrassment for conservative president Jacques Chirac and for the French ruling class, which has been heavily involved in negotiating this latest move toward greater European capitalist integration.

Against the backdrop of this referendum, much of the left is working feverishly to put together a new class-collaborationist alliance to pose as an alternative to Chirac's discredited neo-Gaullist government. This alliance is being brokered by the Communist Party (PCF), with Alain Krivine's pseudo-Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) in tow.

Underlying the strong sentiment for a "no" vote is an increasingly combative mood in the working class in recent months. On February 5 and March 10, there were significant "days of action," with strikes and demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of workers. At the Citroën automobile plant in Aulnay, there was a week-long strike in early March, the first significant auto strike in France in many years—and it won. A national holiday on May 16 was cancelled by the government, supposedly to pay for health care for the elderly, but now it looks as if it may become, despite the moderation preached by the trade-union leaders, a de facto one-day general strike.

Hoping to diffuse working-class resistance, the bourgeoisie seeks to use racism to turn French workers of European origin against their dark-skinned class brothers from the former colonial world. New racist campaigns are constantly being devised. Amnesty International recently denounced the "de facto immunity" that exists for rampant police violence (Le Monde, 7 April). Deportations of asylum-seekers are on the rise. On April 15, at least 24 people died in a fire in a Paris hostel, victims of the inhuman conditions in which many asylum-seekers and their families are forced to live.

Many workers view a "no" vote on the European Constitution as a way to register their opposition to the current French government and to other attacks on workers' gains, such as through privatizations and the Bolkestein Directive. This European Union directive, which was endorsed last year by the French members of the European Commission—including by Socialist Party (PS) member Pascal Lamy, who is now scheduled to lead the World Trade Organization—would enable companies in West Europe to hire East European workers for pitifully low wages and benefits.

The Bolkestein Directive was the target of a huge Europe-wide demonstration by nearly 100,000 workers on March 19 in Brussels. The demonstration was called by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), following an initial call by the European Social Forum (ESF) last October in London. That ESF, like those before it, was a popular front, a class-collaborationist confab featuring trade-union bureaucrats and representatives of various reformist workers parties, as well as bourgeois liberals, Islamic clerics, a speaker from the Iraqi puppet government, and so on. It was funded by London's Labour government. ETUC general secretary John Monks recently declared: "We are very much in favour of the Constitution."

While most French trade-union bureaucrats who mobilized for the Brussels demonstration saw it as a platform to promote a "no" vote on the Constitution, they fundamentally share Monks' vision of a "social Europe" under capitalist rule. They would also have no quarrel with his chauvinist statement at the Brussels demonstration that, "We don't want Europe to become America." Attacks such as the Bolkestein Directive—which has now been put on hold until after the French referendum—were devised before the European Constitution, and others will follow, whatever the outcome of the referendum in France. The key to stopping them lies through class struggle by the working class.

As our comrades noted in Le Bolchévik (March 2005):

"Today the bourgeoisies of West Europe seek to dismantle what remains of the welfare state, a series of concessions—such as national health insurance, retirement pensions and public services—that were instituted in order to calm working-class militancy in the period following the Soviet victory of 1945. The bourgeoisie is hardly predisposed to spend money on improving the condition of the masses unless it is forced to, and, since the counterrevolution in 1991-1992 which destroyed the Soviet degenerated workers state, it has been seeking to take back these concessions in order to increase its competitiveness against its rivals. It is necessary to fight tooth and nail against these attacks. As long as capitalism exists, the fight to win reforms and to prevent their dismantling will remain permanently on the agenda. The task of a revolutionary party is, starting from the relentless struggle to defend the gains and social conquests of the workers and oppressed, to bring to the workers an understanding of the necessity for workers revolution."

We print below a translation of an article published in Le Bolchévik No. 171 (March 2005), newspaper of the Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the International Communist League.

Last June, the heads of state of the European Union agreed on a draft European Constitution. Chirac announced that on May 29 he would hold a referendum on it, hoping through a plebiscite to consolidate his authority, which has been damaged by three years of savage attacks against workers and minorities and by rivalries within [Chirac's] UMP. The PS and the Greens, hoping to be re-elected to government in 2007, have called for a "yes" vote to show their respectability and loyalty to the basic foreign policy choices of the French bourgeoisie.

Against this new joint campaign by the PS, the Greens and Chirac, we call for a "no" vote because we are against the capitalist EU, an alliance centered on the main European imperialist powers to improve their competitiveness against their American and Japanese rivals. Such an alliance can only be at the expense of the multiethnic working class in Europe and of those under the boot of neocolonialism.

Our principled opposition to capitalist Europe differentiates us from the French "left." Disregarding the bourgeois party led by Chevènement, some ultrachauvinist sectors of the PCF and Pierre Lambert's Parti des Travailleurs (PT—known particularly for its "defense of the Republic," that is, French imperialism), most opponents of the draft Constitution swear that they are not against capitalist Europe per se. The PCF and the LCR, who are practically running a joint campaign for a "no," insist that they are for (capitalist) Europe but against the "neoliberal" Europe of "Giscard's Constitution" [referring to the former French president who helped negotiate it]. These reformists propagate the myth that there is a "good" European capitalism, a "social and democratic" one for which it is necessary to fight, and a "bad, neoliberal" capitalism.

Likewise, Lutte Ouvrière (LO) has for years supported capitalist Europe. They abstained on the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht Treaty [which laid the basis for a common European currency]. This time, they are voting "no" while continuing to praise European capitalist unification. In a recent article, LO wrote (Lutte de Classe, February 2005):

"We are for European unification.... Even as is, on a capitalist basis, with all the accompanying injustices and insufficiencies, the European Union represents progress in a certain number of areas. If only for the end of the economic partitioning and customs barriers, as well as freedom of circulation for people on part of the continent, this represents an appreciable advantage compared to [immigration] controls and barbed wire, although this freedom is not fully recognized for immigrants who live and work in the EU."

In this eight-page article, LO simply disappears the rivalries between Europe and the U.S. and among the European imperialist powers themselves. They paint an idyllic picture of the EU to cover their support to the imperialist EU. "Freedom of circulation"? Go tell the Roma [Gypsies] fleeing pogroms in Romania, the Balkans or Slovakia (which is part of the EU) and who are harassed by cops everywhere. An "advantage compared to barbed wire"? An estimated 4,000 Africans drowned in the past few years trying to cross the Straits of Gibraltar in order to enter this racist fortress, the European Union. The EU ministers are openly discussing setting up EU-financed concentration camps in Libya—or elsewhere, but in any case far from LO's chaste gaze. A Moroccan worker, who manages to obtain legal status in Spain, has the right to "travel" in France—as long as he never stops, because he has no right to stay here.

We consider that the European Union is a reactionary imperialist consortium, and we recall Lenin's prescient words in August 1915:

"Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists...but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America."

The European Union: From an Anti-Soviet Alliance to an Imperialist Consortium

The origins of the European Union go back to the 1950s when the West European imperialists, led by the U.S., sought, through improved economic cohesion, to consolidate their alliance against the Soviet Union. In spite of its degeneration, as a parasitic bureaucratic caste led by Stalin appropriated political power starting in 1924, the Soviet Union remained a workers state based on the expropriation of the capitalists and the collectivization of the means of production, resulting from the October 1917 Revolution. That is why we Trotskyists defended the Soviet Union, and it is why the imperialists wanted to destroy it in order to regain unlimited access for their investment capital throughout East Europe.

Our principled opposition to both NATO, which was a military alliance against the Soviet Union, and to its economic corollary, the European Economic Community [forerunner of the EU], flowed from our defense of the Soviet Union. The character of the European Union changed with the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92. France and Germany, two separate imperialist powers with two distinct and rival bourgeoisies, are seeking to improve their joint coordination—and are maneuvering with capitalist Russia, among others—with the sole aim of pursuing their respective interests. Obviously, Germany, which is stronger than France, is the dominant partner in this relationship. In December 1989, only a month after the fall of the Berlin wall, [French president] Mitterrand negotiated with German chancellor Kohl a deepening of economic relations between Germany and France, the two main West European powers, through an agreement, in principle, to create a common currency. This was supposed to become a weapon in a monetary war against the international hegemony of the dollar. It became the euro.

However, under the pressure of the American imperialists, whose economy is considerably more dynamic and whose military power is incomparably greater, this alliance has evolved in contradictory ways. The U.S., with the active help of Britain, is seeking to put the brakes on the construction of a rival imperialist pole, and the dollar continues to be the international currency of reference. Furthermore, the European Union is undermined from within by rivalries among its various constituent powers, including France and Germany, as can be seen from a number of industrial disputes. [The pharmaceutical giant] Aventis, a "model" Franco-German company, was swallowed up by the French company, Sanofi-Synthélabo, while [the French heavy engineering firm] Alstom is fighting desperately against being absorbed by the German company, Siemens. Even the "success stories" of Europe, like Airbus, which is now defying Boeing, are not without tensions. The Airbus A380 was launched only after endless bargaining over the distribution of tasks (and profits) between Toulouse and Hamburg.

The draft European "Constitution" is not really that because it is not a question of creating a European capitalist state, even a federated one. It is a treaty between states by which they relinquish some sovereignty in order to define the rules of competition between the various national capitalist classes of Europe, to improve their competitiveness vis-à-vis the U.S. and other rivals, and to strengthen their attacks against European workers, and immigrant workers in particular. When Chirac or German chancellor Schröder speak of a multipolar world, they simply mean that they want to ally their forces and rein in their own rivalries in order to better confront their more powerful common rivals, the U.S. and Japan.

In such alliances between some imperialists against others, there is nothing that the workers can support, nothing that protects their gains! The whole history of the European Union, even before the Maastricht Treaty, has shown that improving "European competitiveness" means taking from the workers to give to the bosses in order to reinforce the latter in their struggle against their American and Japanese competitors. When reformists pretend that the workers' interest is in a strong, "social and democratic" Europe, they once again act to tie the working class to its own bourgeoisie. They propagate the lie that European imperialists are less ruthless than their American or Japanese rivals. Twenty years ago, the PCF was raising the call to "produce French"; now they call for a "social Europe." But they are still tying the workers to their own exploiters—and strengthening the latter. This is what Marxists call class collaboration. On the contrary, workers of all countries must unite against the bourgeoisies of all countries.

The attempts to create an imperialist pole in Europe to compete with the U.S. are accompanied by efforts to rearm militarily—discussions to set up integrated European arms manufacturers, attempts to be independent from American intelligence systems by creating a network of satellites that can be used for military purposes (Galileo), sending European military units that are now policing the Balkans, etc. There is justified hatred and anger against American militarism on the part of the working masses, but, if this opposition to American militarism is not based on proletarian internationalism, it will inevitably be sidetracked into strengthening the military power of the capitalist state here. Indeed, the PCF, far from opposing this rearming, is worried about these military means being dependent on the U.S. via NATO, instead of being independent! And Besancenot—the LCR's "little postal worker"—adds his two cents by whining in a February 9 statement to AFP [news agency] that "future European defense will be in the framework of NATO, that is, under the boot of George Bush Junior." The anti-Americanism of the LCR is an obstacle to anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism.

Why Internationalist Marxists Oppose the Extension of the EU

LO correctly noted that, with the extension of the EU to 25 countries, not only imperialist countries or intermediate countries but also very poor countries now coexist in the EU. These countries have experienced the capitalist counterrevolution that devastated the East European economies and reduced them to semicolonial status under the domination of, especially, German, Austrian and French capitalism, whose penetration into these countries is greatly facilitated by the extension of the EU. Yet LO supports the extension of the EU! Just like its own bourgeoisie. And just like its own bourgeoisie, LO supported the capitalist reunification of Germany 15 years ago and, more generally, supported counterrevolution throughout the ex-Soviet bloc. For example, LO declared in Lutte de Classe (December 1989): "Even if this reunification [of Germany] is carried out entirely under capitalist rule, communist revolutionaries have no reason to oppose it."

Regarding the extension of the EU, it is useful to consider the creation, in the early 1990s, of NAFTA, which is an economic treaty between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. At the time, our American, Canadian and Mexican comrades published a joint declaration against NAFTA (Workers Vanguard No. 530, 5 July 1991). Calling on American, Canadian and Mexican workers to unite in class struggle against this "Free Trade Agreement" (FTA), the declaration stated:

"Overall the stronger U.S. economy would have the upper hand. In addition, American capitalists want to use the FTA to gut labor and environmental regulations on both sides of the border. Yankee imperialism wants to turn Mexico into a giant maquiladora, or free trade zone—'free' of unions, and 'free' for capital.

"Far from 'freeing' trade internationally, the pact is aimed at setting up a private hunting preserve for the American imperialist bourgeoisie, their Canadian junior partners and their lackeys in the Mexican ruling class."

That is exactly what happened. Against the devastation that this agreement meant for them, the Mexican peasants of Chiapas arose on 1 January 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect. At the time, the entire French left, and the LCR in particular, solidarized with the Zapatista uprising against NAFTA.

Today, these same leftists—who, at times, still cynically call themselves "Zapatistas"—are expressing their satisfaction that Poland is joining the EU and are demanding that Turkey do the same! NAFTA is not the EU, but the inclusion of Poland—and, in the future, Romania and possibly Turkey—will deepen the oppression of workers and peasants in those countries. As our German comrades of the Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands declared (Spartakist No. 156, Fall 2004):

"During the negotiations over joining the EU, the European imperialists raised a series of criteria for entry that represented a program of brutal social attacks. For example, in Poland the mining sector was 'rendered competitive,' that is, miners were laid off en masse and pits were closed. Unemployment compensation is so low that it is insufficient for survival. Today, in the historically important mining region of Jelenia Góra (where the unemployment rate is above 40 percent), one can find many mines in the forest which were dug by laid-off miners digging with spades in search of coal.... This is the result of the counterrevolution, which was led by Solidarność in Poland."

However, it is the question of Turkey which, above all, has triggered hysterical protests. [The fascist] Le Pen, [the far-rightist] De Villiers, [the neo-Gaullist] Sarkozy, [the Socialist] Fabius and their ilk go berserk at the idea of 70 million Turkish and Kurdish Muslims being able to enter the EU. In fact, people of Muslim and North African origin in France are also targeted by this rotten racist campaign. But this is not a reason to be for Turkey's entry into the EU, as is claimed by LO and the LCR, who find themselves in a bloc on this question...with Chirac and the French PCF. Alain Bocquet, the head of the PCF parliamentary fraction in the National Assembly, repeating Chirac's arguments, clearly expressed the reasons why the chauvinist PCF is for Turkey's entry:

"In the view of Europe preferred by the Communists, proceeding along this road is better than having an isolated Turkey at the doors of Europe. Otherwise, Turkey will be prey to several possible outcomes. The first one is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism—recall in this regard that Turkey, a mainly Muslim society, is, as far as its institutions are concerned, a secular state. A second possibility is intensified militarism—the army is an important pillar of Turkish society, providing a means for social advancement. And the third possibility is the danger of a pro-Atlantic shift, since the U.S. still considers the maintenance of Turkey within the framework of NATO as a strategic objective of the first order."

—L'Humanité, 9 February

When French leftists take up the idea that the European Union will bring freedom to the Kurds and democracy to Turkish workers, they only demonstrate their profound illusions in the supposedly progressive character of their own bourgeoisie. Such illusions disarm the working class and prevent it from waging revolutionary class struggle. Bocquet's declaration goes to the heart of the question of Turkey's entry into the EU—countering American supremacy in the region. While the left declares itself pro-Europe and internationalist, even voting "no" on the draft Constitution, they actually serve as a left cover for French chauvinism. They simply have a different approach on how to strengthen their own bourgeoisie, while hoping to get a few crumbs for the French working class.

Apparently, many Kurdish workers and peasants imagine that the European Union will bring an end to age-old national oppression. Nothing could be more mistaken. Not only will the European Union not accept the partition of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran for the purpose of forming an independent Kurdish republic, but even in the most advanced countries of the European Union, the national question has not been resolved. Irish Catholics are oppressed in Northern Ireland, as are Basques in Spain and France, not to mention the Corsicans and the colonial oppression in Guadeloupe and elsewhere. As for Greece, an EU member for nearly 25 years, it continues to oppress Turks, Slavo-Macedonians, Albanians, Roma and a multitude of other minorities.

Factory Relations and the Fight Against Racism and Chauvinism

Today many workers feel threatened by plant closures by companies seeking to move their operations to East Europe, Turkey, the Chinese deformed workers state or elsewhere. Since the union bureaucrats accept the capitalists' viewpoint, they necessarily buy into the need for their own national enterprises to increase their competitiveness on the world market. They thus sign deal after deal dismantling hard-won gains in terms of wages, hours and working conditions.

The capitalists seek to turn the workers' anger against their class brothers of other nationalities abroad and within their own country. That is why we insist that the fight against these attacks by the bourgeoisie, including factory closings in the name of increased competitiveness, can only be carried out if accompanied by an uncompromising fight against racist terror and chauvinism. Full citizenship rights for everyone in this country! As our German comrades wrote (Spartakist No. 157, Winter 2004-2005):

"As a result of capitalist counterrevolution in the DDR and East Europe, the German bourgeoisie today has at its disposal a vast reservoir of unemployed skilled workers, and it is trying to export unskilled jobs to countries where the rate of profit is significantly higher. The Turkish and Kurdish workers remain a large strategic component of the working class in Germany, but the racist German leaders have less and less economic need for a large part of the Turkish and Kurdish population, particularly the second and third generation, for whom there are no jobs. They are viewed by the ruling class with racist contempt as well as fear as the tinder for a social explosion."

During last October's powerful Opel-Bochum strike in the industrial bastion of the Ruhr, our German comrades reported in the same Spartakist:

"There are also a lot of discussions about the Opel factory in Gliwice, Poland. We did not hear any open anti-Polish chauvinism. Nevertheless, there was a mood of 'We couldn't compete with the wages that they have over there.' And why should they? Workers in Germany must help workers in Poland to fight for decent wages and working conditions against the greed for capitalist profits which was unleashed by the counterrevolution. For this, a revolutionary party is necessary, based on a program of internationalist class struggle. Ultimately, only a planned economy under the control of the working class can eliminate the glaring economic and social differences between various countries."

It is on the basis of this perspective that we raise our slogan of a Socialist United States of Europe. Only by overthrowing the bourgeoisies of Europe through workers revolutions is it possible to proceed toward a socialist society, superseding the framework of nation-states.

The LCR and the PCF Rehabilitate the Social Democrats

The joint campaign by the PCF and the LCR for a "no" vote is the LCR's contribution to restoring the image of French social democracy, which has been seriously tarnished—particularly in the case of the PCF—by its five years of dirty work in the [PS-led] Jospin government. They manage to rehabilitate Laurent Fabius, spokesman within the PS for a "no" vote, who has long personified "neoliberalism" in the PS thanks to his savage attacks on the working class when he was Mitterrand's prime minister in the 1980s. In the 1986 legislative elections (which he lost to Chirac), Fabius even bragged that, "It's our turn to do the 'dirty work'" (supplement to Le Bolchévik No. 68, 8 December 1986)! However, Red (January 2005), the newspaper of the LCR's youth group, the JCR, relates the following fable about the anti-Constitution "reformists" (obviously including Fabius):

"This Constitution divides the former 'Plural Left' [the name of the Jospin government's popular-front coalition] between the social-liberals who are in favor of it and the reformists, who understand that with this Constitution there will no longer be any room for any social policy. The task of revolutionaries is thus to further this contradiction in order to trigger a movement of political reorganization which we, from the side of the revolutionaries, will try to draw toward the radical left."

In fact, the PCF and the LCR are counting on a large number of "no" votes in order to negotiate with the PS, after the referendum, a better distribution of seats in the next "left" alliance for the 2007 elections in view of entering the capitalist government. A Fabius-Buffet government emerging out of a victory for a "no" vote would be as fiercely anti-working-class as its predecessors. This would be true even if it had the LCR's Krivine as a government minister (or, more likely, an undersecretary) and even with a member of the JCR as secretary of youth and sports (their comrade Miguel Rossetto has already been a capitalist minister in Brazil for two years), whatever the good intentions (or in any case, the fine words) of these reformists.

There is no other way to administer capitalism than to attack the workers. What is needed is a fight to overthrow the whole capitalist system through workers revolution.

We are voting "no" on this referendum, but, above all, we warn the workers against the maneuvers by the LCR and the PCF to reconstitute a new "Plural Left" governmental coalition. Down with class collaboration! Join our fight for a truly internationalist communist party in France, section of a reforged Trotskyist Fourth International!