Democracy instead of Fiscal Pact

by www.attac.de Friday, Apr. 27, 2012 at 12:39 PM
mbatko1@hotmail.com

Against the authoritarian-neoliberal EU, we champion a democratic and social-ecological Europe of the many!

DEMOCRACY INSTEAD OF FISCAL PACT

Call to resist an anti-social policy

[This proclamation published 3/15/2012 is translated from the German on the Internet.]

Spring 2012. Merkel and Sarkozy hurry from summit to summit to bailout the Euro. The gutter press agitates against the people in Greece. The battle over a solution to the crisis intensifies dramatic ally. Up to the beginning of 2003, an authoritarian-neoliberal alliance of capital associations, the financial industry, EU commission, the German government and other export countries recently pushed a financial pact crafted in Brussels through the parliaments on a fast track. The fiscal pact prescribes a socially-hostile austerity policy and includes penalties against countries that oppose this policy. The fiscal pact further limits democratic self-determination. It is a temporary peak of an authoritarian development in Europe.

We grieve over this unsocial and anti-democratic policy and the racist attacks on the Greek population. Let us speak about the misanthropic consequences of this policy. Let us speak about Europe’s authoritarian turn and low German wages as a cause of the crisis. Let us speak about the untouchable assets of a few and the suffering of the many. Let us speak of our admiration for the resistance and our solidarity with the Greek population. Let us demand what is self-evident: genuine democracy and a good life in dignity for everyone – in Europe and beyond Europe.

The crisis in Europe is the tip of an iceberg. A deep structural crisis of capitalism underlies this. Too much capital is searching for profit. However the profit rates are low. The competition is too great and the wages too low. Debt-financed growth and speculation bubbles only delayed the eruption of the great crisis. The authoritarian-neoliberal alliance now propagates a radicalized business-as-usual: socializing speculation losses – through permanent debt service of wage-earners. The profit rate should be raised – through precarious working conditions, wage- and pension cuts, social cuts and privatization. The consequences are drastic. What happens in Greece threatens all Europe: mass unemployment, impoverishment of broad sectors of the population, collapsing health systems, increasing mental illness and a falling life-expectancy.

These measures can only be enforced in an authoritarian way. Pinochet’s coup in Chile 1973, the IMF programs in African states of the 1980s and the transformation in Eastern Europe of the early 1990s are historical precursors for fiscal pact & Co. They are shock strategies. Gained with many victims and sacrifices, social and democratic principles are abolished by the fiscal pact at a breath-taking speed to ensure debt service and increase the profit rates. In Italy and Greece, non-elected technocrat governments with cudgels, tear-gas and water-cannons enforce these austerity dictates passed in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin by male-dominated groups of “experts.” The fiscal pact and the legal package on “economic governance” give organs like the EU commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Central Bank more and more power while they act beyond democratic control. It is perfidious. To prevent democratic decisions against neoliberal orthodoxy, the fiscal pact strengthens the dictates of the financial markets by punitive payments to the EU.

As in the world economic crisis of the 1930s, chauvinist and fascist forces gain influence in Hungary, Austria, Finland and elsewhere. Historical forgetting encourages the German government with its uncompromising austerity policy reactionary crisis solution.

Struggles against these policies rage worldwide from Syntegra plaza in Athens to Tahrir plaza in Cairo and Zuccoti Park in New York to the Puerta del Sol in Madrid. The movements of refugees and itinerant workers crossing Europe’s foreign borders are part of these struggles for a good life. These battles must cross borders and be waged in the centers of the authoritarian-neoliberal alliance in Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin. Therefore we call you to participate in the coming protests, the European Day of Action on March 31, the Global Day of Action on May 12 and the international mobilization in Frankfurt May 17-19. We support an alternative crisis solution:

- Don’t ratify the fiscal pact. Retract the EU legal package on “Economic Governance”;

- Cancel state debts, introduce capital transaction controls and transform banks into public services;

- Redistribute wealth from top to bottom through a new tax system;

- Build a social infrastructure with a social-ecological investment program and ecological reconstruction;

- Reduce working hours;

- Radicalize democratize politics and the economy on all planes;

- End the racist policy of border screening, affirm the right to stay and papers for everyone.

Against the authoritarian-neoliberal EU of the few, we champion a democratic and social-ecological Europe of the many!

first signers

Original: Democracy instead of Fiscal Pact