Protest against Austerity Measures

Belgium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHAeInhkuJ0

It would appear that the proverbial is hitting the fan in Portugal. I have no idea how the 'Bail-out' loan will go, but I've a feeling this is the start of the big one all across Europe. Now I know that we have one Portugese comrade, Leon Mcnicholl, but Portugal is a big country and we desperately need to increase our membership, not only across Europe but at the moment in Portugal specificaly.
I don't know how to do it, but I'll do what I can to help our comrade so that he knows, and those he talks to know, that Portugal is not alone.
Today comrades, I think we are all 'Portugese'.

Thank you comrade. Indeed the situation is dire. There is a lot of mistrust about politics now here, and for good reason. Suddenly, the "avoidable" begging for financial aid became an "inevitability", and now we will all foot the bill in europe again for the actions of a few.

The banks here had a secret meeting, and to assure their existance and their profits, blackmailed the government into accepting the money. Our "socialist party" prime minister obeyed imediatly of course, and now we will all suffer because the banks here want to keep having their credit lines and their investments.

The souless nature of capitalism was well demonstrated when the Fitch speculators classified my country as "junk", in order to sink it faster. "Junk", a nation called "junk" by some wall street hotshots who play games with entire countries for the sake of their wallets...

The next elections will be strange. The only party with any coherent speech and a leader resembling any thrustworthiness is, ironically, the Communist Party. Hell, i am even considering voting for them if that means we can have some "priority" shifted towards the workers.

What I don't understand is that Portugal no longer has a government as it was forced to resign over the economic problems. As a result Portugal is now run by a 'caretaker' government (ostensibly the former government). When offered the 'bail out' money an attempt was made to point out that whether it was acceptable to the Portugese people or not should be decided 'after' the next election. However the powers that run the E.U seem to have dismissed that claim and told the caretaker government to sign up. Which seems to me begs the question who runs Portugal, the Potugese government, and people, or some gathering of European (miss)leaders?

What happens if the 'bail out' package is forced on the Portugese and then the next democraticaly elected government says "Get stuffed we never agreed to your loan"? Does 'Europe' then proceed to declare war on Portugal?

That is indeed a good question.

For me it's clear what who is running the show now around here are the banks, pressred by the economical agents from outside. The EU wanted us to ask for the money, in order to save their euro, so they did nothing to stop the process, and rushed the money along to try to keep the control. But they are at this moment less in control of the european economy than they would like, and our current political situation helps them to try to keep some control over matters.

Our government is indeed on the way out, and things will be somewhat "frozen" until a new one is elected. The problem is, only two parties won elections here in the last 30 years, the current "socialist" party, and the "social democrats" party, with are a bit more right wing. They are favorites for the next election, and they are already planning to privatize important sectors of our state. So no hope there.

If by a miracle, a government was elected that would say no to the "loan", they would declare an "economic" war on us, much like they did to Iceland, or actually even worse, because that would mean that we would drag the euro with us. We could try to blackmail them with that, but like i said, the EU is not in control of things anymore, and those speculators would just drag all the eurozone to the mud. Personally, i am not that scared of that, but the capitalist powers that be sure are.

Isakenaz wrote:What I don't understand is that Portugal no longer has a government as it was forced to resign over the economic problems. As a result Portugal is now run by a 'caretaker' government (ostensibly the former government). When offered the 'bail out' money an attempt was made to point out that whether it was acceptable to the Portugese people or not should be decided 'after' the next election. However the powers that run the E.U seem to have dismissed that claim and told the caretaker government to sign up. Which seems to me begs the question who runs Portugal, the Potugese government, and people, or some gathering of European (miss)leaders?

What happens if the 'bail out' package is forced on the Portugese and then the next democraticaly elected government says "Get stuffed we never agreed to your loan"? Does 'Europe' then proceed to declare war on Portugal?

There is no core difference between the situation in Europe and that which occurred in the United States three years ago with the massive bailouts. The international banking cartels are all unified in their collective interest: to perpetuate their casino economies at the expense of the real world workers and nations. Irresponsible speculation creates financial bubbles that are doomed from the outset. Those who orchestrate these disastrous "games" profit immensely at the expense of the common man, who is left to bear the enormous financial strain after the financiers extort the government for protection. "If we collapse, we take the economy with us!" is their pernicious and odious threat to society. The situation is quite repugnant and illustrates the dearth of social responsibility intrinsic to capitalism.

For one, I am firm in my position, and I believe most comrades stand with me, that the financial market (a.k.a., the casino economy) is the single greatest capitalist threat to healthy nation states. In its privatized form, it constitutes a menace of biblical proportions. It is a method of exploitation that pales even the other repulsive capitalist practices. Here you have wealthy leeches, who produce nothing and risk very little, using their wealth in order to drain the real economy and manufacture a worthless byproduct. The privatized gambling economy produces absolutely nothing of real value and yet it expands grotesquely. As the various options used to "diversify" portfolios become more sophisticated, so in proportion does real economic corrosion increase. The so-called "investment" scheme is nothing of the sort; it is simply the postponement of personal enrichment. All of it could be replaced with a more socially conscious and efficient investment policy.

The stock exchange is the essence of capitalism. Here, capital "produces" for the owner of said capital. If ever the economy is in recession (which, as we all know, is integral to the capitalist "cycle"), the bourgeois "investor" seeks out the bourgeois financier so as to salvage "losses" by practicing what amounts to gambling. This, of course, results in further stagnation and an exacerbation of the economic downturn (possibly leading to a depression). Let us analyze what actually occurred here. Is there a shortage of raw materials, capital goods, and labor? No. In fact, the converse is true. What, then?

The real reason is financial insecurity. The capitalist no longer has faith that a reduction of labor and other such neoclassical equilibrium theory nonsense will compensate for the decrease in revenue (often due to the capitalist tendency to overproduce), so the capitalist turns to speculation in other, more wealthy, enterprises or activities until the recession fades, presumably when the neoclassical Free Market God decides to bless us with bounty once more—or rather, when the government intervenes. Hence we have Keynesian economics and the resultant "neoclassical synthesis." Of course, John Maynard Keynes was hardly the first to document the capitalist boom and bust cycle; he simply provided the first coherent orthodox solution. Karl Marx outlined this process in some detail more than half a century prior, especially how this relates to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

What I have described in the two preceding paragraphs is the stock exchange from the perspective of the finance seeking capitalist, or "entrepreneur" if one wishes to provide a noble face to a sordid affair. However, the capitalist system is structured so as to offer strong incentives to the capitalist financier to participate in high risk investment practices (e.g., sub-prime and predatory lending, overleveraging, etc.). It is this type of financial capitalism that is truly malignant. These are the international banksters who pull the strings of world affairs, and I, for one, seek to abolish their speculative zoo of reckless greed.

Culled from http://libcom.org/library/red-flags-torn-brief-sketch-some-problems-unions-ed-goddard
But worth a read for any who think socialism can be advanced by the ;present' unions.

Red flags torn: a brief sketch of some problems with unions - Ed Goddard


An article by Ed Goddard, that originally appeared in Black Flag, briefly explaining some of the problems inherent in the official trade unions and the need for workers to take control of their actions out of the hands union bureaucrats.

The ’80s have been back in fashion for a while now. It started ironically: a stonewashed denim jacket at a fancy dress party, a “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt. But like all ironic jokes, it’s been taken too far.

As if getting an economy to match our shoes, we now have rising unemployment, attacks on benefits, and public sector pay cuts. And as it obviously didn’t matter who got in, we thought a Tory government would complete the look with the Labour Party back as the defenders of the poor, even using phrases like “working class” again.

We all know that any fightback will not come from the Labour Party (or any other party); it’ll be from workers, public service users, parents, pensioners, students, the unemployed. If we see a mass working class fightback, we can expect the trade union leaders to be there, at the rallies and demonstrations, urging us forward.

But looking at the struggles of the past few years, should this fill us with confidence? Are these union leaders behind us?

Some recent defeats and ‘almosts’
In 2009, Visteon factories in London and Belfast were occupied. After dragging its heels and giving poor legal advice, Unite encouraged workers to leave the occupied factories.

Eventually a deal was done behind closed doors and the union recommended acceptance of a partial offer that left the crucial issue of pensions untouched.

In 2008, strikes were prepared across the public sector. Workers in Unison, NUT and PCS all took action against the government’s 2% pay-cap, sometimes even on the same day.

After only two days of strike action Unison, the biggest of the three unions, took its dispute to ACAS.

The arbitrating body’s decision being legally binding, this effectively removed its members from the dispute. The other unions soon followed suit.

In 2007, as the government threatened 40,000 job cuts at Royal Mail and attacked pay and pensions, wildcat strikes spread across Britain with postal workers refusing to cross each others’ picket lines.

The CWU soon called off all action to enter ‘meaningful negotiations’ which lasted weeks and came to no firm conclusion.

Demoralised and demobilised posties accepted an agreement basically unchanged from the first one.

But the CWU declared victory: they were guaranteed a ‘consultation’ role in the cuts.

These are just some examples; you can pick many more from recent and not- so-recent history. And they all raise the question: why are our unions so bad at what we expect them to do? Not being a force for revolution or anything, but bog-standard, Ronseal-advert, doing-what-it-says-on-the-tin, fighting for their members’ interests.

Union troubles, outside and in..
Trade union officials will blame the membership, saying they don’t want to fight. This might be true sometimes but didn’t the wildcatting posties want to fight? The Visteon workers, after occupying their factories, didn’t want to fight? There’s more going on than just the ‘workers aren’t up for it’...

It’s not all the unions’ fault. Since the Thatcher years we’ve seen so many new laws restricting strike action that British industrial relations legislation is amongst the most anti-worker in the developed world.

Where once wildcat strikes and secondary picketing were common, now they are a rarity. Even things like forcing ballots to be done in secret, posted from home, where workers can’t sense the solidarity of their workmates, is intended to discourage militant action.

But there’s a problem with this argument too. These laws were pushed through as a result of working class defeat, a defeat that the unions were complicit in. Unions had been disciplining their members for decades before these laws were even a twinkle in Thatcher’s eye.

Whether it be NUM official Will Lawther’s 1947 call to prosecute wildcatting miners “even if there are 50,000 or 100,000 of them” or the UPW slapping members with fines totalling £1,000 and threatening expulsion from the union (thus losing their jobs, as it was a closed shop) for refusing to handle post during the 1977 Grunwick strike, one thing seen time and again is union leaders moving against the militant action of their members. Putting it down to legislation passed in the last 20-30 years does nothing to explain such actions before then.

Bureaucrats
So the problems aren’t just external: we can’t just act like proud parents and say they fell in with a bad crowd.

The fact is the unions have come to resemble the companies we expect them to fight with highly paid executive decision makers, a downward chain-of-command and a career ladder that goes beyond the union and into the halls of social democratic governing institutions (think-tanks, Labour Party etc). Such a structure needs people to fill it: bureaucrats, who by definition are separate from the lives of the workers they represent. This is true even of former shopfloor militants.

Having left the workplace, their everyday experiences are not the same as those they used to work alongside. Their priorities and, more importantly, their material interests are not the same.

A victory for a worker means an improvement in working conditions; a victory for a bureaucrat means a seat at the negotiating table. But this seat for the bureaucrat doesn’t necessarily mean any improvement for the worker, as the CWU’s consultation ‘victory’ proves.

To say union bureaucrats have different priorities and interests is not just spite. It’s to underline that it’s not about them being “baddies.” Many committed militants become union officials because they want to be employed spreading struggle rather than just working for some arsehole boss. But the trouble is that ‘struggle’ and ‘the union’ are not the same thing and spreading the latter does not mean encouraging the former.

This has always been the case. The contradiction between workers and union bureaucrats has been going on in the UK for over a century. One such example was with the anarchist John Turner, an unpaid leader of the United Shop Assistants Union for seven years who in 1898 became a paid national organiser, travelling up and down the country recruiting to the union.

Though it grew massively, Turner had also started to change his approach. As conflicts flared up so would branches of the union; but as conflicts died down so did the branches. To keep a stable membership, he introduced sickness and unemployment benefits as perks of union membership.

The plan worked. A stable membership was established and by 1910 the Shop Assistants Union was the biggest in the London area. But the nature of the union had changed.

And even if Turner couldn’t see it, the workers could. The union bureaucracy became seen by many as an interference with local initiative and in 1909 Turner was accused of playing the “role of one of the most blatant reactionaries with which the Trades Union movement was ever cursed” .

The tragedy of John Turner1 is not as simple as him ‘selling out’; he remained an anarchist to the day he died. But as a full-time organiser paid by the union his priority began to be perpetuating the union rather than organising conflicts and soon his union was no different from the other unions.

This is because in the eyes of a trade union official, the union is not just the means to encourage struggle but the means through which struggle itself happens. Building the union is top priority and stopping things which get the union in trouble (like unofficial action) take on the utmost importance; after all, if the workers get the union into too much trouble, how will struggle happen?

Of course, an individual can take on a full-time union job and concentrate on organising conflicts rather than just recruitment.

But full-timers aren’t freelancers, their bosses (the union they work for), like any other boss, needs to see results. And ‘results’ doesn’t mean class conflict, it means membership recruitment and retention. Because without members, official trade unionism can’t do what it most needs to.

Meeting employers half-way
Criticisms of the bureaucratic nature of the trade unions are not uncommon on the far-left. Many conclude that we need to democratise or ‘reclaim’ the existing unions, while others more radically conclude that we need new unions, controlled by the rank and file.

However, this misses the point about what bureaucracies are and why they happen. Unions don’t play this role because they’re bureaucratic, they’re bureaucratic because of the role they play. That is, they try to mediate the conflict between workers and their bosses. The primary way this happens is through monopolising the right to negotiate conditions on behalf of the workforce.

What is crucial when trying to do this is maintaining as high a membership as possible, regardless of how detached from the workplace such a union becomes. As union density drops generally, unions solve this problem with endless mergers as high membership figures help maintain their influence with management (not to mention the TUC and the Labour Party).

If a union is to secure its place as the negotiator in the workplace, it not only has to win the support of its members but also show bosses that they can get the workforce back to work once an agreement is reached.

By having membership figures which they can point at to make sure management recognise them as the body able to negotiate wages and conditions, unions are also able to use this position to retain and attract members.

Equally, this influence with the workforce is what’s useful to management. Union bureaucrats offer stability in the workplace, diverting workers’ anger into a complex world of employment law, grievance procedures and casework forms.

As Buzz Hargrove, leader of the militant Canadian Auto Workers union, wrote in his autobiography: “Good unions work to defuse [workers’] anger – and they do it effectively. Without unions, there would be anarchy in the workplace. Strikes would be commonplace, and confrontation and violence would increase. Poor-quality workmanship, low productivity, increased sick time, and absenteeism would be the preferred form of worker protest.

“By and large, unions deflect those damaging and costly forms of worker resistance. If our critics understood what really goes on behind the labour scenes, they would be thankful that union leaders are as effective as they are in averting strikes.”

The legal restrictions on unions mentioned earlier are often called “anti-union” laws. However when looked at like this, it becomes apparent that these laws are not so much anti-union as anti-worker.

If anything, it strengthens the union’s hand by giving it a total monopoly on all legally recognised (and therefore protected) forms of action.

The same laws which help employers maintain order in the workplace can also be seen helping the union maintain its half of the bargain with the employers.

As a result, pro-union radicals often propose the ‘wink and nod’ strategy: that is, the union officially saying “come on, back to work, the union doesn’t condone this...” while giving a sly little wink while the boss isn’t looking.

But if bosses don’t think a union can keep up its end of the bargain then they won’t recognise them as negotiating “partners.” Why would they? Why would anyone repeatedly reach an agreement with someone else if they knew that person wouldn’t uphold their side of the bargain?

In order to function as representatives of the workforce, unions have to play by the rules including, where necessary, policing the workforce and directing militancy into the “proper channels.” The anti-strike laws reinforce this pressure by threatening unions with financial ruin if they don’t rein in legally unprotected actions.

This is where the pressure to discipline members comes from. It’s not a question of the right leaders with the right politics or of having the right principles written down in a constitution. It’s not about individuals, it’s about how structures work to fulfill their needs.

From John Turner through to today via the French CGT, American CIO, Polish Solidarnosc and countless others, unions have turned, through their role as mediators, away from their origins as expressions of class anger and into organisations disciplining the working class against its own interests.

Notably, the unions that avoided this fate are those that adopted explicitly revolutionary perspectives and consciously refused to play a mediating role, such as the Spanish CNT’s refusal to participate in works councils and union elections2.

So what then?
This article is just the start of a wider criticism of unions. But where unions seek to act as mediators and representatives they necessitate the creation of bureaucracies to take on this task and bureaucrats, separated as they are from workers’ lives, have different interests from them. They need primarily to maintain their seat at the negotiating table.

Therefore it’s no surprise that where gains have been made (even within a union framework) it has been through the threat or actuality of unmediated direct action: from the Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes to the wildcat-prone refuse workers of Brighton to the solidarity of truck drivers not crossing Shell truckers’ picket lines.

These strikes, which ended in unqualified victories for the workers, pushed the boundaries of trade union action, breaking anti-strike laws and taking place outside the official union structures (even if organised by lay-reps at local union level).

Our task is to encourage this sort of independent activity, to encourage the control of struggles through workplace meetings of all workers affected (regardless of union affiliation) and to encourage the use of direct action to get results.

These should be the guiding principles for us in workplace organising. Leave ‘reclaiming the unions’ to the Trots, they can build career ladders for bureaucrats. If union density is what creates militancy then the UK (at 27%) would be far more militant than France (8%). Clearly this is not the case.

We’re done building new bureaucracies; we need to take action without them.

Again culled from the 'Libcom' site. Shame we have to get our information from the left, but we have to get it from somewhere.

Lawlessness and crisis in Greece while Portugal begin bailout talks

Lawlessness and crisis in Greece while Portugal begin bailout talks

As the Greek government struggles to enforce austerity on its protesting citizens, Europe's bankers whisper about the possibilities of never getting their money back and its likely consequences.

As hard as the Greek government might try to push the costs of this crisis onto its citizens, the Greek working class are having none of it.

On top of EU discussion about whether the government will default on their debt or not, the Greek working class are continuing their protests against austerity.

In the early hours of April 14th, in the Athens suburb of Keratea, locals furious over the building of a new landfill site dug a two-meter deep ditch across the Lavriou Highway, leading to Keratea – permanently blocking traffic. Hours later, scuffles broke out with police who rushed to the spot. Athens' top police officer has also recently asked for his men to be removed from the area.

"There is clearly a breakdown of the rule of law, and without the rule of law there can be no economic development," said political analyst Takis Michas.

The refusal of austerity by Greek workers has seen thousands sign up to the "can't pay, won't pay" movement. In reaction to this, the government is announcing reductions of up to 50% in road toll fees. As the nation struggles to rein in a debt of €340bn, the logic of appeasing protesters – an estimated 8,000 Greeks a day were refusing to pay tolls – has outweighed antagonising them further. "Our hope is that this will calm things down," the deputy transport minister Spyros Vougias said.

Greece has also seen numerous strikes, occupations, demonstrations and riots, all of which are causing many to wonder if Greece is becoming ungovernable.

Haunted by a recession that has exceeded even the worst predictions of the EU and IMF almost a year after they moved to rescue the country with their bailout last May, austerity has hit Greece as never before. Last week it emerged that hospitals were facing severe shortages of beds and supplies while schools could no longer afford cleaners. Disposable incomes have dropped dramatically as wages and pensions have been slashed, taxes have been raised and unemployment has reached a record 15%.

Eighteen months after the economic crisis erupted, Papandreou said last week that more cuts were needed to meet deficit-cutting targets

Portugal
Meanwhile, talks to negotiate Portugal's bailout are due to begin in Lisbon. Representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are meeting Portuguese authorities on Monday to discuss what would be the eurozone's third bailout since the global economic crisis.

The negotiations, which are expected to last weeks, will set the terms for what is expected to be a $116bn deal.

Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission and a former Portuguese prime minister, has said it "will be a medium-term programme with strict conditions".

The aim is to come up with a radical economic reform plan, including privatisations, labour market reforms and steps to shore up fragile banks by mid-May, weeks before Portugal is due to hold a snap election.

Portugal itself has also seen an increasing wave of protests with strikes on the Lisbon subway in recent weeks as well as demonstrations across the country organised through the Facebook which attracted over half a million people.

The Portuguese government is now facing added pressure from Finland, where the anti-EU True Finns party, made big gains in an election on Sunday. Timo Soini, the party's leader, said that there would "have to be changes" to the bailout plan.

It may take weeks to know whether the party can back up that threat, but its success in the election potentially poses a huge risk to Lisbon, which has said that come June, it will run out of funds to keep the country running.

Any delay in approving the bailout deal beyond the mid-May target could leave European leaders scrambling to find other means of funding for Portugal.

The EU and the IMF have each warned that Lisbon will have to implement more public spending cuts, tax rises and far-reaching privatisation to secure its lifeline. The debt rescue is already highly controversial in Portugal, where unemployment has been increasing for almost a decade and education levels are below th eurozone average.

'Defaults' and their consequences
A default is when a country misses a repayment on its debts. This would probably lead to investors shunning a country's debt, making it hard for the government to borrow.

If Greece is unable to push the cost for their economic crisis onto the working class this could lead to them defaulting on their debt. What the EU's policymakers are scared of is that the German and French banks would declare massive losses. Also, Portugal (and possibly Ireland) might default on their debts.

The last major default on a national debt was Argentina in 2001 which resulted in massive protests across the country.

What the EU's policymakers are scared of is that the German and French banks would declare massive losses.

This sums it up. The EU are pushing this, and Portugal doesn't have a government,or anybody responsible to accept it or refuse it, and nobody seems to even aknowledge that it wasn't the spendings that ruined Greece or Portugal, was the speculations to keep the euro and their precious profits afloat.

So basically the EU decides the agenda without recourse to any elected government?

Basically yes. There is no elected government right now, and supposedly, the "temporary" doesn't have the power to aprove such important measures, but it seems that the EU and the IMF will just dictate the rules, and we will accept them without even questioning, wich is the kind of behaviour that brought us to this mess in the first place.