À procura de textos e pretextos, e dos seus contextos.

29/05/2010

Coupe du monde de foot 2010 Ce qu’on attend dans la township d’Alexandra

Dans quelques mois, l’Afrique du Sud accueillera la Coupe du monde de football. À Johannesburg, d’immenses panneaux publicitaires annoncent partout l’événement, le secteur de la construction s’active autour des stades, des routes. Depuis la fin de l’apartheid il y a quinze ans, le pays est devenu un géant régional et une puissance émergente sur la scène mondiale. Mais si la croissance économique a permis de financer des politiques sociales et de faire reculer la pauvreté, plus d’un million de familles vivent toujours dans les townships. Leurs espoirs et leurs attentes se tournent vers Jacob Zuma, qu’elles ont élu à la présidence du pays en avril. ALEXANDRA (AFRIQUEDUSUD).

ENVOYÉE SPÉCIALE

Leur petite maison n’a rien d’un palace. Une pièce unique divisée par un rideau pour séparer le coin cuisine de la chambre. Un bout de jardin et l’eau courante. Cela fait six ans qu’IvyetsonmariGoodman vivent ici avec leur petit garçon de 5 ans. « Avant, on habitait chez mon frère, près de la rivière. Cette maison, c’est un début, une façon de nous donner une chance dans la vie », explique le jeune père de famille. Sans emploi stable, le couple ne paie pas de loyer, juste l’électricité. Comme eux, dans ce quartier d’Alexandra, l’une des plus grandes townships de Johannesburg, des centaines de familles ont pu s’installer dans des maisons construites par le gouvernement. Un logement en dur, l’accès à l’eau et à l’électricité, des rues goudronnées et le ramassage des ordures y sont assurés. Depuis la fin de l’apartheid, 3 millions de maisons ont été construites dans le pays par le gouvernement de l’ANC. Et ce sont aujourd’hui 13 des 48 millions de Sud-Africains qui bénéficient d’aides sociales. « Beaucoup a été fait ici depuis des années, confirme Ivy, même si beaucoup de gens attendent encore, et depuis très longtemps, un logement. »

Malgré les progrès réalisés, les problèmes – en premier lieu le logement et le chômage – demeurent aigus. Près de 43 % de la population vit en dessous du seuil de pauvreté, le chômage est officiellement de 20 % (mais certaines estimations avancent le chiffre de 40 %) et 1,1 million de familles vivent encore dans des bidonvilles. À Alexandra, la majorité des habitants – entre 350 000 et 500 000 – vit dans des « shacks », ces baraques insalubres faites de bric et de broc. Assis à côté de son échoppe, Potter, le visage fatigué, soulève le tee-shirt de son petit-fils, découvrant des plaques de boutons. Pour toute explication, il désigne non l o i n d e l à quelques cabines alignées, seuls sanitaires du quartier, et le petit ruisseau qui charrie les d é t r i t u s e n l’absence de tout-à-l’égout. Arrivé à Alexandra en 1995, l’homme, aujourd’hui âgé de 62 ans, attend un logement social depuis douze ans, pour lui, sa femme, ses trois enfants et deux petits-enfants. Avec la retraite qu’il touche du gouvernement (1 200 rands par mois) et son petit commerce, il gagne de quoi nourrir sa famille, la soigner (il y a bien un centre de santé gratuit mais il ne fournit pas les traitements), mais pas de quoi économiser pour un logement. « Je n’ai pas voté au mois d’avril, expliquet- il, je ne vois pas pourquoi je le ferais. J’attends depuis si longtemps.

Le problème avec les politiques, c’est qu’ils font des promesses mais qu’on est toujours assis là. » Si Potter n’est pas allé voter lors des dernières élections, ils ont été nombreux à se déplacer dans les townships. Ce sont eux qui ont élu Jacob Zuma à la tête du pays. Après les années de politiques libérales qui ont aggravé les inégalités, le nouveau président a fait de la lutte contre la pauvreté son principal thème de campagne, reprenant le slogan de l’ANC « Une vie meilleure pour tous » (« A better life for all »). « Ce qu’il dit nous fait penser qu’il y a un espoir que les choses changent », confirme Jerry, la trentaine. Arrivé à Alexandra en 2003, ce jeune menuisier n’a pas travaillé depuis deux mois. Il reconnaît que, « depuis la fin de l’apartheid, il y a eu un grand changement. On peut le voir, le sentir, mais quand va-t-il arriver jusqu’à nous » ?

Les attentes des habitants des townships sont devenues une urgence sociale et politique. Il y a un an, c’est notamment à Alexandra qu’ont éclaté les violences contre les immigrés, venus du Zimbabwe, du Malawi… et rendus responsables des problèmes sociaux. Si la situation semble revenue à la normale, la frustration est toujours là, comme le confirment les paroles de cette jeune mère de famille, qui élève seule ses quatre enfants dans une sombre bicoque. « Cela fait huit ans que j’ai fait une demande pour avoir une maison, mais ceux qui les obtiennent, ce sont les étrangers, parce qu’ils paient cash », pense-t-elle savoir.

Plus récemment, de violentes manifestations ont eu lieu dans plusieurs townships du pays pour exiger des logements décents, un accès à l’eau potable et à l’électricité. La pression sur le nouveau président sud-africain est d’autant plus forte que la crise économique n’épargne pas le pays. L’économie est entrée en récession pour la première fois depuis dix-sept ans. Lors de son congrès annuel en septembre, la COSATU, principale confédération syndicale du pays qui a soutenu l’élection de Zuma, l’a appelé à réformer la politique économique, en favorisant l’emploi sur les seuls intérêts financiers. L’Afrique du Sud a déjà perdu 475 000 emplois et pourrait en perdre 1 million d’ici à la fin de l’année, a rappelé son président.

CHARLOTTE BOZONNET

LA GRANDE PAUVRETÉ RECULE, MAIS LES INÉGALITÉS RACIALES AUGMENTENT

Si de nombreux Sud-Africains sont sortis de l’extrême pauvreté depuis 1994, les inégalités, notamment raciales, ont beaucoup augmenté. C’est ce qu’indique le ministère du Plan, qui a publié fin septembre un long « rapport sur les indicateurs de développement 2009 ». En 1995, un an après l’élection de Nelson Mandela, 31 % de la population vivait avec moins de 283 rands par mois (environ 1 dollar par jour) contre 22 % aujourd’hui. De même, 53 % vivaient avec moins de 524 rands par mois (2 dollars par jour, le seuil de pauvreté) contre 49 % actuellement. « L’amélioration des conditions de vie peut être attribuée à la croissance économique (…) ainsi qu’aux initiatives du gouvernement contre la pauvreté, comme les aides sociales et le logement social », souligne le rapport. Jusqu’en 2007, l’Afrique du Sud a enregistré une croissance annuelle dépassant les 5 %. Si cela a permis de créer des emplois et de financer les politiques sociales, les politiques libérales qui ont accompagné ce décollage ont abouti à une forte augmentation des inégalités. Ainsi, le revenu des 10 % les plus pauvres a augmenté de 33 % en quinze ans alors que celui des 10 % les plus riches a crû de 37,8 %. Sur la même période, le revenu mensuel moyen des Noirs a augmenté de 37,3 %, celui des Blancs de 83,5% ! « Ce rapport est sans complaisance, mais il doit servir dans la planification de l’action du gouvernement », a commenté le ministre du Plan, Trevor Manuel, prévenant dans le même temps que la crise économique « va handicaper notre marge de manoeuvre ».

http://www.humanite.fr/2010-05-26_Sports_Coupe-du-monde-de-foot-2010-Ce-qu-on-attend-dans-la-township-d

Le doute existentiel des chantres du libéralisme

"L’avenir du capitalisme", c’est le thème d’un récent Forum de l’OCDE, où les participants, chantres du libéralisme anglo-saxon, s’interrogent sur l’avenir de leur système. Récit.

« Jusqu’où cela va-t-il nous mener  ? » Le vieux lord Skidelsky, historien et membre du Parti conservateur britannique, en lèverait les bras au ciel. « Cela », c’est la crise, une crise qui pour lui n’est pas seulement économique et financière, mais aussi idéologique. Après la « crise des démocraties sociales » de la fin des années soixante-dix et le développement de la révolution conservatrice de Reagan et Thatcher, on assiste aujourd’hui, affirme-t-il, à la « crise du conservatisme ». Il faut mesurer la portée de tels propos prononcés dans une telle enceinte. Ils ont été tenus hier, à Paris, dans le cadre d’une table ronde ayant pour thème « l’avenir du capitalisme », à l’occasion de la seconde journée du Forum de l’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, l’OCDE. Cette institution a été créée en 1960 à l’initiative des États-Unis afin de propager dans les pays développés les conceptions américaines du développement économique. Une telle interrogation traitée dans un débat public au sein d’une institution traditionnellement sous l’emprise des Anglo-Saxons aurait été impensable il n’y a ne serait-ce que deux ans.

une société à deux vitesses

« Les dirigeants politiques ont dû intervenir pour renflouer un capitalisme en capilotade, a poursuivi le lord anglais. Cela a nourri l’idée que les États sont au service d’une finance dont il faudrait pourtant couper les ailes car elle est devenue trop puissante. Et cela a aussi entretenu le sentiment que les banquiers s’en mettent plein les poches, ce qui est vrai. » Jusqu’où ira ce retour de balancier  ? Le baron Robert Skidelsky, aujourd’hui homme d’affaires et membre de plusieurs instituts, n’en sait rien. Il pense, certes, qu’« il faut trouver un juste équilibre entre État et marché », mais il considère « que l’on n’y arrivera pas, car c’est une sorte de quête du Graal ».

Ce doute qui saisit la finance n’est pas le fait d’un individu isolé. Anatole Kaletsky, chroniqueur économique au Times, de Londres, considère également que l’idée que « la révolution conservatrice allait créer plus de richesses aura été une illusion ». Pour lui, « l’après-crise devrait être une période de moindre croissance ». Adrian Blundell-Wignall, directeur adjoint des affaires économiques et des entreprises à l’OCDE, fait lui l’hypothèse (vraisemblable) d’une « prochaine plus grande crise que celle traversée, qui forcerait à réaliser des changements ». Lesquels  ? Pour Sharan Burrow, syndicaliste australienne et présidente de la Confédération syndicale internationale, il faut en finir avec « une société à deux vitesses dans laquelle le décalage dans le partage des richesses s’accroît ». Pour elle, « il y a des éléments fondamentaux comme l’accès à l’eau qui ne peuvent pas être laissés au marché », il y a aussi « besoin d’accroître la protection sociale, la négociation, de développer les conventions collectives, de renforcer les dépenses d’éducation et de formation ». Autour de la table, y compris chez la responsable syndicale, il y a cependant une incapacité à envisager un après au capitalisme. Les intervenants, sollicités depuis la salle par un participant demandant si l’on ne courait pas le risque d’un « retour du communisme », se sont bien gardés de répondre à la question. L’une des oratrices à la tribune, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, créatrice d’une association de femmes qu’elle définit elle-même comme « très sensible à la culture d’entreprise », a certes affirmé que l’avenir du capitalisme n’est autre que la femme et que si « Lehman Brothers s’était appelé Lehman Sisters, il n’y aurait pas eu de crise », mais elle n’a convaincu personne.

l’austérité pour tous

Christina Romer, chef des conseillers économiques du président des États-Unis, n’a pas d’états d’âme. Tout donne à penser que pour elle, l’avenir du capitalisme, c’est Obama. Chargée par les organisateurs du Forum d’intervenir sur le thème « Emploi et croissance », elle a clairement laissé entendre que la politique de réduction drastique des dépenses publiques, c’est peut-être bon pour les Européens, mais qu’il n’en est pas question dans l’immédiat aux États-Unis. Outre-Atlantique, en effet, le souci de l’emploi est davantage affirmé comme une priorité de l’action publique que sur le Vieux Continent. Interrogée sur le sujet, elle a répondu que si « certains pays doivent en passer par des mesures d’austérité, aux États-Unis et dans certains autres pays, on peut prendre davantage de temps ». Pour elle, pourtant, « la consommation des ménages ne sera pas le moteur de la reprise ». La responsable économique mise plutôt sur deux autres facteurs  : la dépense publique, qui doit continuer à soutenir l’économie, et le développement des exportations. Pour stimuler ces dernières, les États-Unis comptent moins sur l’Europe, dont la croissance est trop faible, que sur les pays émergents, particulièrement la Chine. Pauvre Europe  !

Pierre Ivorra

http://www.humanite.fr/Le-doute-existentiel-des-chantres-du-liberalisme

Gestion de l'euro: mission impossible!

Samir Amin

L'économiste Samir Amin démontre, en six points, pourquoi, selon lui, la zone euro est dans l'impasse. La seule porte de sortie — l'abandon de l'euro et la création d'un serpent monétaire européen — supposant une remise en cause du pouvoir de oligopoles lui apparait comme désormais impossible.

1. Il n’y a pas de monnaie sans Etat. Ensemble, Etat et monnaie constituent dans le capitalisme le moyen de la gestion de l’intérêt général du capital, transcendant les intérêts particuliers des segments du capital en concurrence. La dogmatique en cours imaginant un capitalisme géré par le « marché », voire sans Etat (réduit à ses fonctions minimales de gardien de l’ordre), ne repose ni sur une lecture sérieuse de l’histoire du capitalisme réel, ni sur une théorie à prétention « scientifique » capable de démontrer que la gestion par le marché produit – même tendanciellement – un équilibre quelconque (a fortiori « optimal »).
Or l’Euro a été crée en l’absence d’un Etat européen, substitut aux Etats nationaux, dont les fonctions essentielles de gestionnaires des intérêts généraux du capital étaient elles mêmes en voie d’abolition. Le dogme d’une monnaie « indépendante » de l’Etat exprime cette absurdité.
« L’Europe » politique n’existe pas. En dépit de l’imaginaire naïf appelant à dépasser le principe de la souveraineté, les Etats nationaux demeurent seuls légitimes. Il n’y a pas de maturité politique qui ferait accepter par le peuple d’une quelconque des nations historiques dont l’Europe est constituée le résultat d’un « vote européen ». On peut le souhaiter ; il reste qu’il faudra attendre encore longtemps pour qu’une légitimité européenne émerge.
L’Europe économique et sociale n’existe pas d’avantage. Une Europe de 25 ou 30 Etats reste une région profondément inégale dans son développement capitaliste. Les groupes oligopolistiques qui contrôlent désormais l’ensemble de l’économie (et au-delà la politique courante et la culture politique) de la région sont des groupes qui ont une « nationalité » déterminée par celle de leurs dirigeants majeurs. Ce sont des groupes qui sont principalement britanniques, allemands, français, accessoirement néerlandais, suédois, espagnols, italiens. L’Europe de l’Est et en partie celle du Sud sont dans un rapport à l’Europe du nord ouest et du centre analogue à celui qui commande dans les Amériques la relation entre l’Amérique latine et les Etats Unis. L’Europe n’est guère dans ces conditions qu’un marché commun, voire unique, lui-même partie du marché global du capitalisme tardif des oligopoles généralisés, mondialisés et financiarisés. L’Europe est, de ce point de vue, ai-je écrit, la « région la plus mondialisée » du système global. De cette réalité, renforcée par l’impossible Europe politique, découle une diversité des niveaux de salaires réels et des systèmes de solidarité sociale comme des fiscalités qui ne peut être abolie dans le cadre des institutions européennes telles qu’elles sont.

2. La création de l’Euro a donc mis la charrue avant les bœufs. Les politiciens qui en ont décidé ainsi l’ont d’ailleurs parfois avoué, en prétendant que l’opération contraindrait « l’Europe » à inventer son Etat transnational, replaçant par là même les bœufs devant la charrue. Ce miracle n’a pas eu lieu ; et tout laisse entendre qu’il n’aura pas lieu. J’avais eu l’occasion dés la fin des années 1990 d’exprimer mes doutes sur cette manœuvre. L’expression (« placer la charrue avant les bœufs »), qui fut la mienne a été récemment reprise par un haut responsable de la création de l’euro, lequel, en l’occurrence, m’avait fait part de sa certitude que mon jugement était pessimiste sans raison. Un système absurde de ce genre ne pouvait donner l’apparence de fonctionner sans grave accroc, ai-je écrit, que tant que la conjoncture générale demeurait facile et favorable. Il fallait donc s’attendre à ce qui est arrivé : dès lors qu’une « crise » (fut-elle dans un premier temps d’apparence financière) frappait le système, la gestion de l’Euro devait s’avérer impossible, incapable de permettre des réponses cohérentes et efficaces.
La crise en cours est appelée à durer, voire à s’approfondir. Ses effets sont différents, et souvent inégaux, d’un pays européen à l’autre. Les réponses sociales et politiques aux défis qu’ils constituent pour les classes populaires, les classes moyennes, les systèmes de pouvoirs politiques, sont et seront de ce fait différentes d’un pays à l’autre. La gestion de ces conflits appelés à se développer est impossible en l’absence d’un Etat européen, réel et légitime ; et l’instrument monétaire de cette gestion n’existe pas.
Les réponses données par les institutions européennes (BCE incluse) à la « crise » (grecque entre autre) sont de ce fait absurdes, et appelées à faire faillite. Ces réponses se résument dans un seul terme – austérité partout, pour tous – et sont analogues aux réponses données par les gouvernements en place en 1929-1930. Et de la même manière que les réponses des années 1930 ont aggravé la crise réelle, celles préconisées aujourd’hui par Bruxelles produiront le même résultat.

3. Ce qu’il aurait été possible de faire au cours des années 1990 aurait dû être défini dans le cadre de la mise en place d’un « serpent monétaire européen ». Chaque nation européenne, demeurée de fait souveraine, aurait donc géré son économie et sa monnaie selon ses possibilités et ses besoins, même limités par l’ouverture commerciale (le marché commun). L’interdépendance aurait été institutionnalisée par le serpent monétaire : les monnaies nationales auraient été échangées à taux fixes (ou relativement fixes), révisés de temps à autre par des ajustements négociés (dévaluations ou réévaluations).
Une perspective – longue – d’un « durcissement du serpent » (préparant peut être l’adoption d’une monnaie commune) aurait alors été ouverte. Le progrès dans cette direction aurait été mesuré par la convergence – lente, progressive – de l’efficacité des systèmes de production, des salaires réels et des avantages sociaux. Autrement dit le serpent aurait facilité – et non handicapé – une progression possible par convergence vers le haut. Celle-ci aurait exigé des politiques nationales différenciées se donnant ces objectifs, et les moyens de ces politiques, entre autre le contrôle des flux financiers, lequel implique le refus de l’absurde intégration financière dérégulée et sans frontières.

4. La crise de l’Euro en cours pourrait fournir l’occasion d’un abandon du système absurde de gestion de cette monnaie illusoire et la mise en place d’un serpent monétaire européen en consonance avec les possibilités réelles des pays concernés.
La Grèce et l’Espagne pourraient amorcer le mouvement en décidant : 1) de sortir (« provisoirement ») de l’Euro ; 2) de dévaluer ; 3) d’instaurer le contrôle des changes, au moins en ce qui concerne les flux financiers. Ces pays seraient alors en position de force pour négocier véritablement le rééchelonnement de leurs dettes, après audit, répudiation des dettes associées à des opérations de corruption ou de spéculation (auxquelles les oligopoles étrangers ont participé et dont ils ont tiré même de beaux bénéfices !). L’exemple, j’en suis persuadé, ferait école.

5. Malheureusement la probabilité d’une sortie de crise par ces moyens est probablement proche de zéro.
Car le choix de la gestion de l’euro « indépendant des Etats » et le respect sacro-saint de la « loi des marchés financiers » ne sont pas les produits d’une pensée théorique absurde. Ils conviennent parfaitement au maintien des oligopoles aux postes de commande. Ils constituent des pièces de la construction européenne d’ensemble, conçue elle-même exclusivement et intégralement pour rendre impossible la remise en cause du pouvoir économique et politique exercé par ces oligopoles, à leur seul bénéfice.
Dans un article publié sur de nombreux sites web, intitulé « Open letter by G. Papandréou to A. Merkel », les auteurs grecs de cette lettre imaginaire comparent l’arrogance de l’Allemagne d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. Par deux fois au XX ième siècle les classes dirigeantes de ce pays ont poursuivi le projet chimérique de façonner l’Europe par des moyens militaires, chaque fois surestimés. Leur objectif de leadership d’une Europe conçue comme « une zone mark », n’est il pas à son tour fondé sur une surestimation de la supériorité de l’économie allemande, en fait relative et fragile ?
Une sortie de la crise ne serait possible que si et dans la mesure où une gauche radicale osait prendre l’initiative politique de la constitution de blocs historiques alternatifs « anti-oligarchiques ». L’Europe sera de gauche ou ne sera pas, ai-je écrit. Le ralliement des gauches électorales européennes à l’idée que « l’Europe telle qu’elle est vaut mieux que pas d’Europe » ne permet pas de sortir de l’impasse, ce qui exige la déconstruction des institutions et des traités européens. A défaut donc le système de l’Euro, et derrière lui celui de « l’Europe » tel qu’il est, s’enfonceront dans un chaos dont l’issue est imprévisible. Tous les « scénarios » peuvent alors être imaginés, y compris celui qu’on prétend vouloir éviter, celui de renaissance de projets d’ultra droite. Dans ces conditions pour les Etats Unis, la survie d’une Union Européenne parfaitement impuissante ou son éclatement ne changent pas grand-chose. L’idée d’une Europe unie et puissante contraignant Washington à tenir compte de ses points de vue et de ses intérêts relève de l’illusion.

6. J’ai donné à cette réflexion un caractère concis, pour éviter les redites, m’étant étendu sur différents aspects de l’impasse européenne dans des écrits antérieurs :
L’hégémonisme des Etats-Unis et l’effacement du projet européen, section II, 2000
Au-delà du capitalisme sénile, chapitre VI, 2002
Le virus libéral, chapitre V, 2003
Pour un monde multipolaire, chapitre I, 2005
La crise, sortir de la crise du capitalisme ou sortir du capitalisme en crise ? , chapitre I, 2008

http://www.marianne2.fr/Gestion-de-l-euro-mission-impossible!_a193348.html

Carvalho da Silva reitera luta contra o PEC

No final da manifestação da CGTP, Carvalho da Silva frisou que é preciso continuar a luta contra as medidas de austeridade e propôs diversas medidas de corte na despesa.

O secretário-geral da CGTP insistiu, este sábado, no final da manifestação da central sindical que dirige, na luta contra o PEC e contra as medidas de austeridade.

«Estamos aqui porque temos de agir com todas as nossas forças contra as medidas anunciadas e para que muitas destas medidas sejam revogadas, todas aquelas que sejam contrárias aos trabalhadores, povo e ao desenvolvimento do país», explicou.

Perante milhares de pessoas que aderiram a esta concentração, nos Restauradores, Carvalho da Silva disse ainda que era favorável a «cortes na despesa».

«Que cortem nas parcerias publico-privadas, que alimentam um capital parasitário e que nos lavam 28 mil milhões por ano», foi uma das propostas que reiterou.

O líder da CGTP propôs ainda o corte nos «estudos e estuduzinhos que levam 1400 milhões num ano» e nos «quatro mil milhões de euros disponibilizados para o BCP e BPN e nos outros muitos milhões que disponibilizaram».

«Que cortem nos benefícios fiscais socialmente injustos. Que cortem nos desperdícios e gastos desnecessários e há tanto a cortar naqueles que estão no poder», acrescentou.

Carvalho da Silva apelou ainda à concertação de todos os sindicatos, apesar das declarações feitas pela UGT a propósito deste proposto.

«É tempo de reforçarmos a nossa unidade, de convergirmos e debaixo das nossas bandeiras e afirmando a justeza das nossas propostas lutarmos pela mudança e por um rumo diferente para o nosso país», concluiu.

http://tsf.sapo.pt/PaginaInicial/Vida/Interior.aspx?content_id=1581607

Carvalho da Silva deixa greve geral em aberto

O líder da CGTP, Carvalho da Silva, criticou hoje a actuação do Presidente da República perante a crise, exigiu que as medidas de austeridade apresentadas pelo Governo sejam revogadas e não descarta a possibilidade de uma greve geral.

“O Presidente da República assiste a tudo numa atitude de apoio implícito e, para compor a participação no cenário, vai fazendo discursos moralistas. Não é isto que precisamos. Precisamos de um Presidente que trate dos problemas com rigor e transparência”, afirmou.

Carvalho da Silva falava perante os cerca de 300 mil pessoas que, segundo números da CGTP, participaram na manifestação que aquela central sindical promoveu hoje em Lisboa.

Questionado pela Lusa fonte do Comando Metropolitano de Lisboa da PSP disse não dispor de dados sobre o número de manifestantes.

No discurso, o líder da CGTP não descartou a possibilidade de uma greve geral, afirmando que depende da actuação do Governo. “O nosso compromisso é de adoptar todas as formas de luta que a constituição consagra. Nenhuma será excluída e será sempre em função da actuação do Governo e do contexto político”, disse.

Carvalho da Silva criticou as medidas de austeridade apresentadas pelo Governo, afirmando que apenas prejudicam quem mais precisa e que “são contrárias às necessidades e interesses dos trabalhadores”. “Temos de agir com todas as forças contra as medidas anunciadas, para que muitas delas sejam revogadas”, sublinhou.

Perante os aplausos da multidão, Carvalho da Silva criticou ainda os partidos de direita e apelou aos jovens para terem confiança e força para lutar por um país melhor. “A juventude tem de estar sempre presente nas grandes transformações da sociedade. Contamos convosco”, afirmou.

Carvalho da Silva propôs cortes nas parcerias público-privadas e o combate à fraude e à evasão fiscal como medidas para sair da crise. A dinamização da indústria e de todo o sector produtivo, o estímulo à economia interna e o combate à economia paralela e à corrupção foram outras medidas apresentadas.

Criticando as afirmações do líder da UGT, João Proença, de que esta manifestação irá prejudicar a imagem de Portugal no estrangeiro, Carvalho da Silva apelou a todo o movimento associativo para se unir e lutar pela mudança. Quando o líder da CGTP iniciou o seu discurso ainda estavam pessoas a chegar ao Marquês de Pombal para participar na manifestação.

http://publico.pt/Pol%C3%ADtica/carvalho-da-silva-deixa-greve-geral-em-aberto_1439627

"todas as formas de luta consagradas na Constituição".

Cerca de 300 mil pessoas marcaram presença na manifestação nacional de hoje, em Lisboa, segundo a CGTP.

Os números daquela que será a maior manifestação de sempre em Portugal foram revelados pelo secretário-geral da Inter Sindical, mas ainda não foram confirmados pelas forças de segurança.

A marcha de protesto contra as medidas de austeridade do Governo começou no Marquês do Pombal e terminou nos Restauradores com um discurso do líder da CGTP.

Carvalho da Silva exigiu a revogação das medidas de austeridade que atingem os trabalhadores acordadas entre PS e PSD e admitiu novas formas de luta, que poderão passar por uma greve geral.

“Apelando à mobilização, aqui assumimos convosco, queridas e queridos camaradas, o nosso compromisso de adoptar todas as formas de luta que a Constituição consagra, decidindo do seu tempo e da sua forma em função dos actos que o governo vá assumindo e das práticas patronais. De todas as formas que forem necessárias não excluímos nenhuma”, declarou.

O líder da CGTP deu algumas sugestões ao Governo para reduzir despesas e aumentar receitas e criticou a actuação do Presidente da República, Cavaco Silva, perante a crise.

"O Presidente da República assiste a tudo numa atitude de apoio implícito e, para compor a participação no cenário, vai fazendo discursos moralistas. Não é isto que precisamos. Precisamos de um Presidente que trate dos problemas com rigor e transparência", afirmou.

http://www.rr.pt/informacao_detalhe.aspx?fid=92&did=106215

(Re)veja na íntegra o discurso de Carvalho da Silva

CGTP contou 300 mil participantes em manifestação

Trabalhadores do sector privado tanbém participaram na marcha da CGTP

Appel : Pour une mobilisation européenne contre la dictature des créanciers

Depuis des mois, des manifestations ont lieu en Grèce pour s’opposer au plan d’austérité que le gouvernement, les dirigeants européens et le Fonds monétaire international ont décidé d’imposer au peuple grec. Aujourd’hui, la direction du pays n’appartient plus à ses élus mais est placée sous la tutelle du FMI et des institutions européennes échappant à tout contrôle démocratique.
Plusieurs grèves générales ont déjà eu lieu à l’appel de l’ensemble des syndicats et des partis politiques de gauche depuis le début de l’année 2010.
Cette lutte exemplaire fait écho à celles des peuples d’Europe orientale (Roumanie, Hongrie, Lettonie...), à celles des autres pays des Balkans (Bosnie...), d’Irlande et récemment d’Islande confrontés à des plans d’austérité similaires.

Les peuples de tous les pays d’Europe ont été, sont ou seront concernés par ces attaques qui veulent faire payer aux salariés, aux retraités, aux chômeurs, les effets d’une crise profonde dont ils ne sont en rien responsables.
En effet, ce sont les ‘marchés financiers’ (banques, assurances, fonds de pensions...) qui, par leurs pratiques spéculatives au service des actionnaires et des rentiers, sont responsables de cette crise financière qui prend pour cible la dette publique des pays.

D’où vient cette dette publique ?

Elle est principalement le fruit des politiques fiscales favorables aux individus les plus riches et aux grandes entreprises. La baisse des recettes que ces cadeaux aux riches ont entraînée a amené les gouvernements à financer par l’emprunt une partie croissante du budget. Plus récemment, la baisse d’activité économique a entraîné une réduction des recettes fiscales. Enfin, la mise en place des plans de sauvetage des banques a aggravé encore davantage les déficits publics sans que les pouvoirs publics n’en profitent pour prendre le contrôle du secteur financier afin d’en changer les pratiques.

Qu’a-t-elle financé ?

La dette publique des Etats n’a pas servi à financer des créations d’emplois, des améliorations des services publics et des infrastructures, elle a seulement servi à sauver la mise des coupables et à combler les déficits budgétaires ainsi provoqués.

Qui en profite ?

Ce sont justement ceux qui ont déjà bénéficié des réductions d’impôts (les ménages les plus riches), les banques et les grandes entreprises qui, dans le même temps, spéculent sur les titres de la dette publique et empochent les intérêts des obligations d’Etat. C’est ainsi une double récompense pour les fautifs.

Qui va payer ?

Mais c’est une double peine pour les victimes ! Ce sont les populations pauvres, ceux et celles qui vivent de leur travail qu’on veut pressurer aujourd’hui pour voler au secours des profiteurs de la dette :

• Baisse des salaires et des retraites,

• Casse de la protection sociale,

• Destruction des services publics,

• Remise en cause du droit du travail,

• Augmentation de la fiscalité sur la consommation, notamment la TVA.

Non seulement ces plans d’austérité ne règleront en rien les causes réelles de la crise, mais ils vont plonger des millions d’êtres humains dans la misère et la précarité.

Le réseau CADTM-Europe appelle l’ensemble des forces politiques, syndicales et associatives, à organiser dans l’unité, à l’échelle nationale et européenne, les mobilisations nécessaires pour s’opposer à ces attaques concertées contre les peuples d’Europe.

Refusons de payer leur crise. Préparons un vaste mouvement social contre la dette et les causes de cette crise !

Au lieu de ces plans d’austérité, il faut s’attaquer à la racine du problème :

• En expropriant les banques pour les transférer au secteur public sous contrôle citoyen

• En réalisant un moratoire unilatéral (sans accumulation d’intérêts de retard) sur le paiement de la dette le temps de réaliser un audit (avec participation citoyenne) des emprunts publics. Sur la base des résultats de l’audit, il s’agira d’annuler la dette illégitime.

• En instaurant une véritable justice fiscale et une juste redistribution de la richesse

• En luttant contre la fraude fiscale massive dont sont responsables les grandes entreprises et les plus riches

• En remettant au pas les marchés financiers, par la création d’un registre des propriétaires de titres, par l’interdiction des ventes à découvert...

• En réduisant radicalement le temps de travail pour créer des emplois tout en maintenant les salaires et les retraites

• En socialisant les nombreuses entreprises et services privatisés au cours des 30 dernières années.

Créons une vaste mobilisation populaire dépassant les frontières car il faut faire converger les luttes locales sur le plan international pour venir à bout des politiques de régression sociale.

P.-S.

Adopté à La Marlagne (Namur-Belgique), le 24 mai 2010, lors du séminaire international CADTM intitulé : « Du Nord au Sud de la planète : Des clés pour comprendre la dette publique »

http://www.cadtm.org/APPEL-POUR-UNE-MOBILISATION

Stop police brutality against high school students

Caleb T. Maupin

Anger exists in Cleveland against the routine brutal practices of the police department. Over 11,500 people have watched the YouTube video of cops attacking DeAsia Bronaugh and Destiny Bronaugh, two African-American high school students and sisters, as they participated in a peaceful student walkout at Collinwood High School against mass school closings and cutbacks.

The Bail Out the People Movement was able to mobilize thousands of people to send e-mails and make phone calls to local elected officials, Cleveland School District officials and the Cleveland Police Department to express outrage at the police attack and demand the charges brought against the Bronaugh sisters be dropped and that they not face school disciplinary action.

With e-mails and phone calls coming in from all across the country as well as internationally, Collinwood High School has halted the process of expelling Seth Barlekamp, leader of the student walkout. He and his mother were informed that no further disciplinary action would be taken by the school against him or any of the dozen students who walked out of school on May 13.

While this victory is important, the two young women still face criminal charges of assault on a police officer, aggravated disorderly conduct, truancy and resisting arrest.

Tina Bronaugh, mother of the two brutalized sisters, spoke with Cleveland’s News Channel 5, while her daughters sat on either side of her, their faces bruised and scarred from the brutal police attack. She said how horrified she was by what had happened to her daughters, and how if she had treated her daughters in that way she would quickly have lost custody of them and would have been charged with child abuse.

Outcry throughout the community over this police attack on students of color continues. A community meeting was held at the Collinwood Branch Library, and it drew a number of college students, community activists and other victims of police terror.

The protest campaign to fight the unjust charges against the young women needs your help. Please call the Cleveland Prosecutor’s Office at 216-664-4850 and demand that charges against DeAsia Bronaugh and Destiny Bronaugh be dropped and that the truancy fines against the 12 students who walked out of school in a peaceful protest be waived as well.

More actions on behalf of the Bronaugh sisters and the other youth wrongfully arrested are currently being planned.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/high_school_0603/

Two choices for UAW — class struggle or suicide: Profits whet appetite for lower wages

This is Part 2 of a two-part report. Read Part 1 at www.workers.org/2010/us/uaw_0429/.

It was front-page news. General Motors, for the first time in three years, posted a profit — and no small profit. In January, February and March combined GM raked in $865 million.

Media analysts are quick to cite the drop in interest payments to GM’s lenders. Since cleaning out much of its debt in a government-orchestrated “quick rinse” bankruptcy, the company’s quarterly interest obligation has fallen from $1.2 billion to $337 million.

You would think this was the prime reason for GM’s speedy turnaround. No mention is made of the huge concessions — made while labor productivity soared and GM closed plants and cut the workforce by more than half — from the United Auto Workers. Yet it is by driving down the cost of labor power that profits — including the segment gobbled up by the banks and other bondholders — are increased.

GM cried poverty in 2005 and again in 2007, and during last year’s Chapter 13 bankruptcy threatened Chapter 7 liquidation. Each time, GM was able to squeeze huge wage and benefit cuts from UAW workers. Break time was shortened and a paid holiday was taken away. The givebacks, especially the most recent contract modifications, represent a huge transfer of wealth from labor to capital.

Similar contract changes were obtained during the Chrysler bankruptcy, which was portrayed as a dress rehearsal for GM. They went beyond concessions at Ford, which did not undergo bankruptcy. Last fall workers at Ford voted down the GM/Chrysler pattern, which took away the right to strike when the current contract expires in 2011, by a 4-to-1 margin.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President for Ford Bob King pitched the concessions as necessary to make Ford competitive. The day after the “no” vote, Ford reported a third-quarter profit of more than $1 billion. The company’s profits for 2009 came to $2.7 billion and were $2.1 billion for the first quarter this year.

Even Chrysler has improved its cash position dramatically, posting marginal first-quarter losses, and then only after taxes and interest payments were deducted from “operating profit.”

Prior to GM’s announcement, former White House “car czar” Stephen Rattner hinted that GM would have positive news. Rattner hailed the work of the Auto Task Force in crafting the deal that allowed auto companies to reap profits when the seasonally adjusted annualized rate of car sales hovers around just 10 million per year — compared to over 16 million before the recession. Before, the decrease in sales income and increase in cash incentives generated a negative cash flow.

This capitalist milestone was only reached by paying workers less while increasing the hours of work.

It should be expected that the UAW would insist, at a minimum, on getting back everything workers gave up prior to the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy. “When there’s equality of sacrifice, there’s got to be equality of gain,” stressed Bob King, who is expected to replace Gettelfinger at the UAW convention in June. “We just want to make sure when things turn around we share in the upside,” he said during a speech to executives and analysts. (New York Times, May 12)

There is no “equality of sacrifice” under capitalism. Over the past three decades autoworkers have made concessions in every single contract. Yet even when profits take a beating, executives collect millions in salaries, bonuses, stock options and other perks. In good years and bad, untold billions in interest and “servicing” fees have filled the coffers of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and their cohorts — no concessions there!

Thus far the companies have offered the workers nothing in the way of gratitude for their sacrifices. On the contrary, the restored liquidity of the Detroit Three has only whetted their appetites for a deeper plunge in the price of labor power.

For the UAW, one of the most humiliating concessions of 2009 was the freezing of wages of all future employees, other than skilled trades, at $14 per hour until 2015. This is only 1.25 times the federal poverty rate for a family of four. Now that the “traditional” UAW workforce has been cut to the bone, it is expected that thousands of workers will be hired at the below-union-scale wage. “That’s where the big economic gains would come, said Aaron Bragman, an analyst with research and consulting firm IHS Global Insight in suburban Detroit.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 17)

Two-tier: a menace to all labor

In 1983 a new phrase was added to the lexicon of collective bargaining: “two-tier.” That year American Airlines and two unions, the Air Line Pilots Association and the Transport Workers Union, ratified a contract allowing the company to cap wages of new hires at a rate much lower than what then-current employees made. Within three years all but two airlines — two whose overall pay scale was below average — had gotten workers to agree to the two-tier structure. By then 10 percent of all union contracts — with the next big wave occurring in the grocery industry — had this major concession.

Two-tier pay was a big win for the bosses, who for the first time in decades saw average labor costs go down. For the labor movement, however, it is a poison pill that has dragged down the overall union pay scale and has sown division among workers making unequal wages for identical work. All too often, union leaders have become the salespeople for concessions such as two-tier, advancing them as necessary to keep a company or an industry “competitive.”

For members of the UAW, who are commemorating the union’s 75th anniversary this year, the dual pay rate virus began infecting their contracts in the 1990s.

In 1998 — after a six-and-a-half-year dispute that included two long strikes, prolonged slowdown campaigns, spontaneous walkouts and numerous charges of unfair labor practices — workers at the world’s largest construction equipment manufacturer, Caterpillar, accepted a six-year contract with a permanent two-tier pay scale. Previous UAW contracts only had a “graduated” two-tier system that gave new hires top rate eventually. Twelve years later Caterpillar has become a one-tier company where attrition — the separation by retirement, death, discharge or voluntary quitting of higher paid employees — and concessions have brought everyone’s pay down to the lowest level.

The setback at Caterpillar had a domino effect. In 1999 Ford and General Motors spun off their parts divisions, creating two new but dependent companies, Visteon and Delphi. Later, with the cooperation of the UAW leadership, those companies were able to get workers to swallow two-tier. The same happened at American Axle, an earlier GM spinoff. At all three companies new hires’ pay was frozen at around $16.50 an hour.

In 2005, after the company declared bankruptcy, Delphi boss Steve Miller threatened to drive down the hourly rate for production workers to $12 or lower and all but eliminate pensions and benefits — and to close more than 20 plants. Fearful for their future, the majority of the higher seniority workers took retirement buyout packages.

Will struggle ignite over high profits, low wages?

By 2007 bottom tier workers were the majority at Delphi and voted for a one-tier contract that raised their pay but eliminated the higher pay scale. Later that year UAW members at Ford, GM and Chrysler agreed to their first two-tier contract — although a sizable minority voted no. In 2008, after a hard, three-month strike, American Axle workers making the higher rate took pay cuts in the range of $10 per hour.

Two-tier wages — which have dragged all wages down — have created what would once have been an oxymoron: low-wage autoworkers. Their numbers will increase as the Detroit Three replace workers who, uncertain of their future or unable to relocate after a plant closing, have taken incentive packages designed to get them to quit or retire.

Many of these new hires will be young and many will be workers of color and women workers. As profits rise, anger among all workers will grow as the spread of substandard wages combines with line speedups and demands for more work. If the capitalist economy shows signs of even a temporary recovery and thousands are hired, economic confidence could spawn a rebellious attitude in the plants, especially with young workers.

The UAW needs to undergo a radical change, or its numbers will continue to plummet and workers will see the union as irrelevant or unnecessary. Business unionism must go. The militant tradition of the sit-downs of the 1930s and the lengthy, valiant strikes of the following decades must be revived.

In 2007 the United Food and Commercial Workers won a contract with California grocers that raised wages for lower-paid workers and ended two-tier. Storeowners were not eager to suffer a repeat of the grocery strike of 2005.

King’s comments, however weak or misplaced, open up the possibility of a revived class struggle in auto. High on the agenda at the UAW Convention in June in Detroit ought to be this basic demand: “Equal pay for equal work — union wages for all.”

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/uaw_0603/

Resistance grows to racist Arizona law

Paul Teitelbaum

Momentum is growing for the national march to stop SB 1070 to be held May 29 in Phoenix. The march will demand the repeal of SB 1070, Arizona’s “Show me your papers” law, and an end to racist immigrant-bashing and the blaming of immigrants for economic and social problems which in reality result from the capitalist economic crisis.

The march to the state Capitol and rally will be followed up on May 30 with community forums and strategy sessions on building a fightback movement against the racist offensive. In the wake of Arizona’s SB 1070, at least 10 other states are now poised to introduce similar laws.

SB 1070’s passage by the state Legislature in late April unleashed an endless storm of protest and resistance. The “Boycott Arizona!” campaign continues to grow and the Arizona bosses have already felt the impact. Gov. Jan Brewer is scrambling to “change Arizona’s image” and has created a task force charged with responding to the boycott. (azcentral.com, May 13)

The Arizona Diamondbacks, whose owners are major contributors to the coffers of those who pushed this law, are met with protests in every city they visit. Intense pressure continues to mount as demands are being made on Major League baseball to move the 2011 All-Star game out of Phoenix.

In the streets of Tucson protests continue. With the passage of anti-ethnic studies law HB 2281, student protesters continue to hold demonstrations and sit-ins demanding the right to learn their own history. On May 17 a group of openly undocumented students staged a sit-in at Sen. John McCain’s office to demand passage of the DREAM Act, a stalled congressional proposal that would offer legalization for some undocumented youth.

The students defiantly announced their status as undocumented and refused to leave McCain’s office until he pushed for passage of the DREAM Act. The students were arrested and risk deportation, but their action sparked similar actions by students in California, New York and other places.

On May 21, Indigenous activists from the Tohono O’odham Nation occupied the Tucson Border Patrol headquarters located on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The activists chained themselves to structures in the Border Patrol office and disrupted operations there as they brought attention to the continuing war against Native peoples and the disregard for national sovereignty and Indigenous culture being waged by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Tohono O’odham Nation is located in southern Arizona and extends into Mexico. For centuries the O’odham people have lived on and walked this land, long before there even was a U.S. or Mexico or a border of any type. DHS decided to extend the border wall separating Mexico from the U.S. through O’odham land, effectively cutting the nation in half. Additionally, the three roads on the U.S. side that provide access to the nation all have checkpoints and federal agents swarm the area. The militarization of Indigenous lands and the intrusion and harassment by federal agents has become intolerable.

Courageous actions like these are going to continue. Calls for “Freedom Summer Arizona” are attracting support as activists across the country plot out a strategy for galvanizing all those affected and their supporters into a unified, militant movement that can defeat SB 1070 and the entire racist, anti-immigrant, right-wing agenda which produced SB 1070.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/arizona_0603/

Immigration: Don't Let "Reform "Be an Excuse for Increased Repression

Michael Lerner - Global Research, May 29, 2010

The deeply flawed plan for immigration reform put forward by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York (and backed by Obama) is not a positive place to begin the discussion.

While the nation's media attention was focused on health care reform, hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters massed on Washington, D.C. They rejected the notion that reform should prioritize a portrayal of Democrats as "tough" on illegal immigrants by placing harsh enforcement strategies at its heart. Yet that is what Schumer and Graham seem to agree on. As the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights points out, the Schumer/Graham plan "emphasizes increases in worksite and border enforcement as an apparent tradeoff for a 'tough but fair' legalization program." And it relies on the idea of providing temporary worker visas to lower-skilled immigrants who are apparently expected to send their money home, providing American farmers, agribusiness, and other employers with a source of cheap labor that can depress the wages of other laborers. These temporary workers can easily be exploited and may even soon become a new group of undocumented workers.

The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights calls for a different approach based on core reforms:

Suspend detentions and deportations while humanitarian policy alternatives are being put in place, and reinstate due process.

Support legalization without the onerous hurdles of past proposals that will limit applications.

Uphold family reunification as a core principle of immigration policy.

Expand and expedite legal immigration.

End the criminalization of immigrants by repealing employer sanctions, stopping the militarization of the border, and ending local police collaboration with such programs.

Strengthen labor law enforcement for all workers, regardless of citizenship or immigrant status.

Ensure immigrant access to social services.

This is just one of many attempts to refocus the policy debate on humane principles. Yet when we state the underlying principles, we immediately run into a political roadblock: the fear that residents of the world's richest country have of being overrun by others seeking our wealth and taking our jobs. While in the short run this fear is not well-founded, it has a logic to it -- would we really allow everyone who could figure out a way to cross our borders to become citizens? If not, what should we do to help make their lives at home in their own countries more attractive to them? Isn't that a smarter alternative than further arming our borders? These questions are rarely answered persuasively, even by those who speak to the deeper level of problems facing immigrants.

To its credit, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights acknowledges that immigration is tied to policies that create displacement and forced migration. It calls for policymakers to support policies that promote sustainable economic development, livable environments, job creation, and peace "so that migration is an option and not a last resort for economic survival."

We spiritual progressives need to enter the national debate with an ever more forceful insistence that immigration reform should include a commitment to the Global Marshall Plan (GMP) developed by the Network of Spiritual Progressives and introduced this January as H.Res.1016 by Congressman Keith Ellison. The GMP is the only coherent answer to the legitimate fear that fair treatment of illegal immigrants could bring tens of millions more to our shores in the next few decades. The answer is ending global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate health care (i.e., implementing our proposed Global Marshall Plan). If we make these long-term reforms, people en masse will have a far greater incentive to stay in their home countries.

But what about those who do want to come, even when a GMP has eliminated global poverty and put the rest of these changes in place? The simple and consistent answer from the standpoint of a spiritual progressive should be: LET THEM IN! OPEN OUR BORDERS!

Spiritual progressives take seriously the moments in the Torah where God responds to the "realists" who warn that the elimination of debts every seven years, and the return to the original equal distribution of land every fifty years called for by the Jubilee, can't possibly work. God's response: "The land belongs to me." Which is another way of saying the land doesn't belong to us and we have an obligation to share what we have. It belongs neither to the humans who were first there, nor to the people who took the land by conquest, nor to the people who later bought it, an understanding shared by many indigenous people who found it difficult indeed to wrap their minds around concepts of "ownership" brought by Western colonialists. Spiritual people need to teach this message: we humans don't have a "right" to any part of the earth, but only an obligation to care for it and share it with all other human beings and with the animals and plant life.

Take that seriously and you can immediately see what a crime it is against God, spirit, Gaia, the unity of all being, the consciousness of the universe, or what our ethical commitments ought to be when people stand on the borders with guns and kill, wound, torture, imprison, or deport others who want to come to live with us.

"Well," you may argue, "that position is so utopian for the current period we'd better not even put that into public discourse." And our response is this: It's no more utopian than to think that you can get people to treat undocumented immigrants with respect and decency in a society that believes that: 1) we have an absolute right to the earth or the part of it called the United States, 2) we have the right to use violence against those who want to come here illegally, and 3) that if we don't use that violence but instead treat undocumented immigrants humanely we will be overrun by even more who will abuse our "generosity" by using our health care, social services, and educational systems, which are already under-financed, over-used, and requiring more and more of our tax dollars to keep running.

So, take your pick about which utopian fantasy you want to go with. For spiritual progressives, it ought to be the one that reflects our fundamental commitment to generosity and caring for others, and that means that we should be insisting that anyone who talks about immigration reform should simultaneously be talking about the goals of the Global Marshall Plan, even as we fully embrace the proposal of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, remembering the love that the Bible instructs us to show toward not only our neighbors but also to "the stranger."

Eurozone Economic Crisis: Call For a European Mobilisation Against the Dictatorship of the Creditors

Text of the La Marlagne Declaration by Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt - Global Research, May 28, 2010

Protests have been taking place regularly for months in Greece to express opposition to the austerity plan the Greek government, European leaders, and the International Monetary Fund decided to impose on the Greek people. Today, the leadership of this country is no longer in the hands of its elected officials, but has been placed under the authority of the IMF and European institutions, which means an absence of any democratic control.

Several general strikes have already taken place since the beginning of 2010 in response to a call from all the unions and left-wing political parties.

The exemplary Greek struggle echoes what happened in Eastern Europe in Romania, Hungary, and Latvia, and in other Balkan countries such as Bosnia, or in Ireland and more recently Iceland, which have all faced similar austerity plans.

The peoples from all European countries have been, are, or will be concerned by these attacks, which want to make wage earners, retired people, and the unemployed pay for the effects of a profound crisis for which they are in no way responsible.

It is indeed the ‘financial markets’ (the banks, insurance companies, and pension funds) that are responsible for this financial crisis, which they created through their speculative activities in the interest of shareholders and the independently wealthy, and which have decided to take the public debt of European countries as their target.

What are the origins of this public debt?

It is principally the fruit of fiscal policies in favor of the wealthiest individuals and the major corporations. The drop in tax revenues brought about by the gift to the wealthy has led governments worldwide to finance a growing part of their national budgets through loans. The recent economic slowdown has brought about another decrease in tax revenues. Finally, bank bailout plans have further worsened public deficits, yet public authorities have failed to act decisively to take back control of the financial sector so as to change the practices there.

What has it financed?

National public debt has not been used to finance job creation, or improvements to public services and infrastructure. It has only been used to salvage the investments of the guilty parties and to make up for the budget deficits resulting from their irresponsible behavior.

Who is profiting from it?

The people and institutions that have already benefitted from tax decreases: the wealthiest households, banks, and major corporations, which at the same time have been speculating on public debt and pocketing the interest coming from National bonds. So it’s a double reward for the culprits.

Who is going to pay?

The same people, who are punished twice: The poor, and the men and women who work to simply survive, are once again being squeezed in order to save the very people who are earning money from public debt, with:

· A drop in salaries and retirement benefits,

· The destruction of the social protection system,

· The elimination of public services,

· The undermining of labor laws,

· An increase in taxes on every day purchases, via VAT.

These austerity plans will not solve anything in terms of the real causes of this crisis, and they are also going to plunge millions of human beings into misery and precariousness.

The European CADTM network is calling on all political, union and association forces, at the national and European levels, to organize the mobilizations needed to oppose these premeditated attacks against the peoples of Europe.

We must refuse to pay for their crisis, and prepare a massive social movement against public debt and the causes of this crisis!

Instead of implementing these austerity plans, we must attack the root of the problem:

· By expropriating the banks to transfer them to the public sector and under citizen control

· By adopting a unilateral moratorium (with no accumulation of interest) on debt reimbursement for the time required to make an audit of public loans (with citizen participation). On the basis of the results of the audit, any illegitimate debt will be cancelled.

· By putting into place real fiscal justice and a fair redistribution of wealth

· By fighting against the massive fiscal fraud committed by major corporations and the wealthiest individuals

· By putting the financial markets under control by creating a directory of stock owners and forbidding short sales

· By drastically decreasing the work week to create jobs while maintaining the same levels of salaries and retirement benefits

· By re-socializing many corporations and services that were privatized in the last 30 years.

We must create a massive popular mobilization extending beyond national borders, because our local struggles must converge at the international level to put an end to socially regressive policies.

CGTP fala em mais de 300 mil pessoas na manifestação

CGTP fala em mais de 300 mil pessoas na manifestação

18.26h - O secretário-geral da CGTP, Carvalho da Silva, discursou para os presentes na manifestação que decorre hoje em Lisboa, apelando à união dos sindicatos na luta contra as medidas de austeridade impostas pelo Governo.

A CGTP fala em em mais de 300 mil manifestantes presentes no protesto de hoje.

17.25h - Presente na manifestação convocada hoje pela CGTP, o coordenador do Bloco de Esquerda Francisco Louçã disse que "quando há crise o Governo retira medidas, como por exemplo na quinta-feira, que retirou medidas de apoio a 187 mil desempregados".

Para o bloquista, o Governo "beneficia e premeia a especulação, prejudica os desempregados ", enquanto "aumenta as dificuldades para as famílias".

"Por isso é tão importante que a CGTP tenha organizado esta manifestação, para as pessoas dizerem de sua justiça" e protestarem contra a aliança "Passos Coelho - Sócrates" que são "irresponsáveis", afirmou.

17.05h - O secretário geral do PCP, Jerónimo de Sousa, considerou hoje que a adesão à manifestação convocada pela CGTP mostra ao Governo que os portugueses estão dispostos a lutar pelos seus direitos e não vão ficar calados.

Questionado sobre as afirmações do dirigente da UGT (ver artigo relacionado à direita), João Proença, de que esta manifestação irá comprometer a imagem de Portugal no estrangeiro, Jerónimo de Sousa afirmou que essa é a "posição de um vencido".

16.28h - A manifestação da CGTP arrancou hoje, pelas 16:00 do Marquês de Pombal em direcção à Praça dos Restauradores, com milhares de pessoas vindas de todo o país a responderem ao apelo da central sindical.

Com bandeiras e faixas em punho os manifestantes protestam pela avenida da Liberdade, em Lisboa, contra a actual situação do país. O desemprego, o aumento dos impostos, a baixa dos salários e o PEC são os principais "alvos" dos portugueses que estão no protesto.

15.50h - Bombos, apitos e cornetas começam a ouvir-se na zona do Marquês de Pombal, em Lisboa, a poucos minutos do início da manifestação convocada pela CGTP para protestar contra as medidas de austeridade.

Com autocolantes a dizer "Basta" nas camisolas e alguns a empunharem bandeiras, largas centenas de manifestantes já estão concentradas na Praça do Marquês, onde o desemprego, as medidas de austeridade e o Pacto de Estabilidade e Crescimento (PEC) dominam as conversas.

15.00h -
A CGTP convocou os trabalhadores de todo o país para a manifestação que hoje realiza em Lisboa contra as medidas de austeridade e prevê que este seja um dos maiores protestos de sempre.

O secretário-geral da Intersindical estima que participem "muitos milhares de trabalhadores" e que esta "manifestação poderá ser uma das maiores de sempre". Só o Sindicato dos Trabalhadores da Administração Local (STAL) fretou 100 autocarros para transportar os seus associados que vão integrar a manifestação.

http://dn.sapo.pt/inicio/portugal/interior.aspx?content_id=1581521

O ambiente no arranque da manifestação da CGTP em Lisboa

CGTP espera 200 mil trabalhadores contra medidas do Governo

CGTP manifesta-se contra as medidas de austeridade do governo

British Telecom workers tell bosses to raise pay or face strike

Yuri Prasad

Workers at British Telecom (BT) will vote on strike action unless bosses raise a paltry 2 percent pay offer by Friday 4 June.

Furious delegates to this week’s Communication Workers Union conference unanimously agreed to ballot their 60,000 members at the firm for action. They are demanding a rise of 5 percent.

Their decision came after it was revealed that top BT boss Ian Livingston received a bonus of £1.2 million last year. That is on top of his £860,000 salary.

Another big winner was the former Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, who doubled her salary after being promoted to “executive director”. She is now paid £150,000 a year.

Union delegate Colin, who has worked for BT for 19 years, told Socialist Worker that the mood at his workplace is bitter.

“BT made profits of almost £6 billion last year. And we’re being offered peanuts while directors are raking-in cash,” he said.

“We’ve had a pay freeze for the past two-years and now they want us to accept a rise that’s less than half the rate of inflation. That’s not on.

“People at my place are always scrabbling around trying to get overtime to make ends meet. But BT has been cutting back on that, so now lots of us really struggle just to pay the bills.

“If we end up on strike, it will be for the first time since 1985. So it’s quite a bit deal for us.”

Colin describes the mood of the conference as “very determined”.

“We were really lifted when hundreds of delegates from the union’s postal conference came into our hall to cheer us on,” he said.

“As union reps, we are going to have to work hard to get a good yes vote in a ballot—and I think we can.

“Lots of people are worried about their jobs, and about losing money. But there is a lot of anger at the company we can work on. We must now go out and convince the membership that we can win.”

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=21366

The crisis: over or just beginning?

Joseph Choonara

The state of the economy will continue to mould British politics after the election. Economics will constrain the room for manoeuvre of the political elite, pressing them to drive through a series of attacks. It will also create the terrain on which workers will have to organise and resist. The prospects for the system are, then, of keen interest to those who wish to challenge it. After almost three years of chaos, what lies in store?

It is worth reminding ourselves of the enormity of the crisis that has unfolded around us. It is estimated that lost output, the goods and services that went unproduced during the crisis, amounts to $4 trillion - enough dollar bills to stretch to the sun and back twice over. That sum would also be sufficient to provide basic education, healthcare, sanitation and nutrition to all those on the planet currently denied them, and to do so for 30 years. According to Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England's director of financial stability (an oxymoron if ever there was one), the permanent long-term impact of the crisis could magnify these losses to anywhere from $60 trillion to $200 trillion.

One of the oldest and most powerful arguments for socialism is the gap between what the system ought to make possible, the capacity of collective human labour to enrich the lives of those who undertake it, and the miserable reality of what it actually delivers. And every sign is that the impact of the crisis, which has already mutilated nations, tortured millions with hunger and sparked both instability and resistance, will continue to be felt.

A new phase of the crisis

A year ago economists Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke published research showing that the "Great Recession", as it has been dubbed, was closely tracking the trajectory of the Great Depression that began in 1929. But history seldom repeats itself. In a recent update to their original paper they show how the global economy has begun to diverge from the path of that earlier meltdown (see graph).

The action of states across the globe, which engineered a series of financial bailouts, stimulus packages and liquidity injections on a scale hitherto unseen, is largely responsible for preventing a 1930s-style slump. But this intervention has come at a great price. Socialising the risks associated with the crisis, at the very moment when tax revenues were spiralling down, has replaced the danger of a private-sector meltdown with that of entire nations becoming bankrupt.

Events in Greece this spring are the clearest example. After months of insisting that it would not bail out the heavily indebted Greek economy, the German government, along with the other eurozone countries and in partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), agreed to do just that. The bailout comes with strings attached - Greek workers, a fifth of whom already live below the poverty line, will now face a structural adjustment programme as savage as that imposed on many Third World countries in the past. In return the IMF and eurozone government will guarantee that Greece can, in the short term, roll over its debt. Even this may well merely postpone the inevitable as markets continue to bet on an eventual default.

But even if Greece does avoid bankruptcy, this is not the end of the matter. Several financial columnists likened the bailout to that of Bear Stearns, which in spring 2008 became an early casualty of the crisis on Wall Street. Few people now remember Bear Stearns, but most do remember the next big Wall Street bank to collapse - Lehman Brothers - and the meltdown that followed. Speculators are already looking for the next domino set to topple after Greece. It might be one of the other weak eurozone countries, with Portugal tipped as the most likely, but it might well be Britain.

As the Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott writes, "Greece's...projected budget deficit in 2010 is lower than those for the US, Ireland and, of course, Britain. The UK is helped by the long maturity of its existing debt, which removes some of the short-term pressures on government bonds, and by its floating exchange rate, which allows the currency to take the strain during a financial crisis. On the other hand, there are plenty of off-balance-sheet liabilities, a record peacetime budget deficit, a dysfunctional financial system and a grotesquely unbalanced economy.

"The assumption is that the US is too big to fail because the dollar is the world's reserve currency... The assumption is that Japan is too big to fail because a debt-to-GDP ratio in excess of 200 percent can always be financed by high levels of domestic savings. The assumption is that Britain is too big to fail because, well, just because those sort of things don't happen here."

As Elliott points out, this is hardly reassuring.

The weak recovery

All this is happening despite the fact that the major economies are technically out of recession. The recovery can be characterised in three words: "weak", "fragile" and "uncertain". The recovery is weak because the crisis, in spite of its severity, has not resolved the underlying problems capitalism faces.

The conditions for the crisis were created by three decades of sustained low profitability. This argument, often made by Marxist commentators, occasionally finds an echo in the mainstream press. So a recent column in the Financial Times lamented the collapse of the "return on capital", roughly equivalent to what Karl Marx called the "rate of profit". It pointed out that after the Second World War this held up at about 15 percent in the US. By the 1980s it was 10 percent, and today it is just 5 percent. If these figures are to be trusted, the system has gone from a situation in which US firms could double the scale of their investment in just six years to one in which it would take two decades - hardly a great advert for the dynamism of global capitalism.

Marx placed just such a long-term decline in the rate of profit at the centre of his theory of crisis. He also argued that profitability could be restored by crisis itself, through what he called "the annihilation of a great part of the capital". During a recession some companies fail and are bought up by rivals, and others have to sell off parts of their business or dump their stock on the market to meet their obligations. Those companies that survive can take advantage of this, grabbing assets at a fraction of their real value and putting them to highly profitable use in the recovery that follows. Depressed wages and high unemployment also allow capitalists to squeeze more out of workers. A process of "creative destruction" may lead to a boom following a slump.

But this is not some automatic process that pushes the economy back towards some natural equilibrium. The post-war boom followed only after the prolonged horror of the 1930s slump and the destruction of the Second World War, which also forced states to intervene to reorganise whole national economies.

The current crisis has led to a surge in firms failing. In the US the asset value of publicly listed companies filing for bankruptcy in 2008 and 2009 was greater than the total for the preceding 28 years. However, so far the current crisis has not been long enough or deep enough to clear out the system and pave the way for a boom like that of the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the big multinationals have been able to survive by reducing their output for a time in an attempt to ride out the storm. And, more importantly, states have intervened to keep failing businesses afloat, for instance by rescuing car manufacturers Chrysler and General Motors along with large chunks of the banking system.

Eichengreen and O'Rourke contrast the length of the Great Recession with that of the Great Depression: "Global industrial production now shows clear signs of recovering. This is a sharp divergence from experience in the Great Depression, when the decline in industrial production continued fully for three years." Paradoxically, staving off a catastrophic slump may have simply guaranteed that problems linger on, ensuring that recovery remains weak.

The recovery is also uneven. Initial estimates suggested that British growth slowed to just 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010. The US is growing faster, and is also faring better than Germany and Japan, which are more export-oriented and have suffered more from the decline in world trade than from the initial financial meltdown. China was also hit by falling demand for its exports but has continued to boom due to a massive state-sponsored domestic investment programme. This has revived the fortunes of some of the developing economies that supply it with raw materials. But even in China there are fears that growth is unstable, with widespread concerns about an emerging property bubble, a glut of lending raising the prospect of colossal levels of bad debt, and the danger that too much is being produced for still-limited markets.

The weakness of the global recovery means that workers will continue to suffer. In some countries this takes the form of high unemployment and attacks on wages, as in the US, Spain and Ireland. In others, such as Germany and Japan, where unemployment has not risen as fast, companies have sought to hold on to workers but have cut pay rates, reduced hours or shifted workers onto part-time contracts. Britain lies somewhere between the two extremes. Wages have been held below the rate of inflation and unemployment has increased significantly. In April the jobless rate hit 8 percent, the highest it has been in 14 years. This figure excludes the growing number of people no longer looking for employment, which currently stands at over 21 percent of those of working age. In addition, the number of people working part-time because they cannot get full-time work is at its highest level since 1992.

Unemployment and underemployment will persist well into any recovery. A recent IMF report argues that employment falls further and takes longer to recover during recessions that have a significant financial component. The report indicates that it could take a year and a half from the end of the recession for any substantial improvement, assuming that the recovery continues.

Accompanying the weakness of the recovery is its fragility. This is a product of changes to capitalism that took place during the past few decades. Faced with continued low profitability, capitalists began to shift their investment towards the financial system, where they hoped to be able to grab short-term paper profits. This created a series of bubbles as asset prices boomed, from the dotcom bubble of the 1990s through to the subprime mortgage and commodities bubbles that had swollen to huge proportions when the crash came.

These bubbles flattered economies with the impression of dynamism and kept the system ploughing forwards. Underlying them was a "mega-bubble" of credit, fuelled by low interest rates and excess savings seeking a profitable outlet.

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, one of the ruling class's most brutally honest spokespeople, argues, "Quite simply, the financial system has become bigger and riskier. The UK case is dramatic, with banking assets jumping from 50 percent of GDP to more than 550 percent over the past four decades... A large part of the financial system seems to be a machine to transfer income and wealth from outside to inside, while increasing the fragility of the economy as a whole." He concludes that the financial system produced "illusory gains on the way up and real pain on the way down".

The excesses of the bubble era now emerging are astonishing. April saw the beginning of a series of litigations against those who created the arcane financial instruments traded in the run-up to the crash. Goldman Sachs stands accused of repackaging loans, including what it knew to be toxic debts, in an asset it created for the Paulson hedge fund. Paulson could then bet on its failure, while unsuspecting buyers lost out. So too did companies who insured the investment, including RBS and AIG, in which the British and US governments respectively are now the majority shareholders. Goldman Sachs denies the allegations, but whatever the outcome of the case it sheds light on the increasingly bizarre and bloated world of finance.

There is little evidence that the crash has "tamed" finance, as some left-leaning economists had hoped. Indeed, all the features of the bubble era are returning. Financial profits are growing far faster than profits in the wider economy; the housing market, which tumbled with the recession, is shooting back up, as are oil prices; speculation on exchange rates continues; banking bonuses are back. The super-rich are also returning to the conspicuous consumption to which they are accustomed, as evidenced by the 33 percent growth in sales of Dom Pérignon and similar high-end champagnes in the first three months of 2010.

Financialisation means each new problem that emerges is amplified as panic spreads rapidly through the system. This is what happened just before Christmas with the Dubai property crash and then in spring with events in Greece. All of this lends an additional fragility to the already weak recovery.

An uncertain future

Finally, any recovery is and will remain uncertain. State interventions replaced private borrowing and investment with mountains of public debt, and falling tax revenues made it difficult to recover the money spent. Now governments everywhere face a dilemma. Do they cut back to pay off their debts, risking a "double-dip recession" as the stimulus is withdrawn? Or do they continue spending and risk a run on their currencies, as the eurozone experienced amid fears of a Greek default?

Chris Giles writes in the Financial Times, "Never has a UK government borrowed more in peacetime than Labour did last year, when it was in the red to the tune of 11.8 percent of national income. Never has a government had to obtain £1 for every four it spends from investors rather than tax payers. And never has a government borrowed £6,000 annually, as in 2010-11, on behalf of every household, with a further £25,000 expected over the course of the coming parliament."

Even if Britain avoids a complete loss of faith on the part of its financiers, the political elite is committed to an assault on the public sector the likes of which we have never seen. The general election result was unknown as Socialist Review went to press but the consensus between the parties in the run-up to polling day was greater than the differences. As Giles argues, "In terms of defined spending cuts, each [party] has outlined less than £10 billion worth - far less than the minimum £40 billion needed in the first three years." In order to appease the City of London real government spending will have to be slashed by about one fifth, he concludes.

Similarly, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, a body representing human resources professionals, predicted "a 10 percent reduction in the 5.8 million core public sector workforce...the likelihood of 500,000 jobs being shed in the next five years dwarfing the figures the parties have been prepared to acknowledge".

Challenges for the left

The scale of the challenge facing the left can seem paralysing. But it is important to remember that crisis also weakens and divides our rulers.

Capitalism has been discredited in the eyes of many who live under it as once solid certainties have melted into air. The crisis has sharpened the divisions within the ruling class, setting its representatives against each other as they each seek to find ways to preserve their profits at the expense of their rivals. Different groups of capitalists are coming into conflict on a global and national level, further fracturing the ideological consensuses of our age and creating cracks that the left can exploit by putting forward its own arguments.

The political elite who claim to preside over the system have suffered blow after blow to their legitimacy. Any incoming government will be a weak one, lacking real hegemony over those it seeks to rule. But it will be under pressure from the wider ruling class to drive through attacks on an unprecedented scale, whether it does so enthusiastically or reluctantly. This is an explosive combination, and in this context there will be further struggles, both local eruptions and national disputes.

Politics will be crucial to these battles. For instance, in order to break out of the commonsense view that some part of the public sector has to be slashed, it will be necessary to argue that there are other ways of raising the money - through cutting the budget for the Trident nuclear programme, for example, or closing tax loopholes exploited by the rich, or by increasing the top rate of income tax. That means challenging the agenda of the mainstream political parties. Politics can also bridge the gap between local campaigns to defend public services and struggles by groups of workers in these services who also wish to defend their wages and their jobs.

The Right to Work initiative, set to hold an emergency conference on 22 May, can begin to draw together a network of solidarity and resistance, strengthening each of the different battles and maintaining a permanent relationship between all those who want to fight back.

At the heart of the resistance, we also need a growing core of revolutionaries committed to a socialist alternative to capitalism and capable of arguing for a way forward for the working class movement as a whole. The situation in the coming months can change very rapidly indeed. To rise to the challenge, the left must be able to match the pace of events.

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11255

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