International Scene

Crisis of International Crisis Management

(Extracts from interview with com. Stephan Engel by Red Flag, the theoretical journal of MLPD – Red Star)
Red Flag: At the beginning of the year (see ‘Red Flag’ interview of 20 December 2009) you described the politics of the government and the monopolies with their crisis dampening measures as a “dance on a volcano”. How have things developed since then?
Stefan Engel: In the meantime, the volcano has started to emit lava. The international crisis management has cost a lot of money since November 2008 and has been immensely burdening the national budgets. An estimated worldwide total of 27 trillion US-dollars has been spent for this up till now. This inconceivable amount is about half of the yearly world gross national product. In our brochure “Bourgeois Political Economy in Shambles”, published in May 2009, we already criticized that bourgeois crisis management does not tackle the root of the evil. It can only dampen or overcome the current crisis at the cost of future, even deeper and more sweeping crises. At that time we had already predicted that this gigantic crisis management will bring about a tendency toward state bankruptcies and bring the destabilization of social relations to a head. In the meantime, in some countries of the European Union an acute danger of state bankruptcy has arisen. In this context the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” of May 11th, 2010 talked of an “historically unique emergency, which could have drastic effects on the stability of the Eurozone.” According to this mouthpiece of the monopolies, the “euro crisis and the dangers arising from it … are putting the international financial crisis into the shade: It is no longer merely a matter of preventing a breakdown of banks, but one of states.” It is evident that the so-called “euro crisis” is actually a new quality of the international world economic and financial crisis. It has to be described as a crisis of international crisis management. This naturally changes the general starting situation for which we have to prepare ourselves tactically.
Red Flag: But hasn’t the danger of state bankruptcies been averted by the new 750 billion “protective umbrella”?
Stefan Engel: By no means! It’s like a story from “A Thousand and One Nights” when they claim that the problem of imminent state bankruptcy only exists in Greece. In fact, the debts of Greece amount to only 0.273 trillion euro. This is 3.14 per cent of the debts of 8.69 trillion euro in the EU¹. The legend that the Greek people have lived beyond their means is not becoming more true by repeating it over and over again and by constantly adding new horror stories in a foul smear campaign by the “Bild” newspaper. It is a fact that in the past years the accelerated erosion of the mass basis of the bourgeois parties through the change of tactics. That is why after the elections the subsidies for the monopolies, disguised as plans to ‘lower taxes’, or the flat rate in the health care were put into cold storage. The latent political crisis has intensified considerably.
Red Flag: The federal government and the different bourgeois institutes for economics have unanimously predicted a significant recovery of the economy in 2011. What do you think about that?
Stefan Engel: The deepest slumps in the world economic and financial crisis have in fact given way to a stagnation, and the economy has generally turned into a depression.
However, that does not mean that the crisis has been overcome! In Germany, the increase of the gross national product by a tiny 0,2 per cent in the first quarter of 2010 has been hyped up to become the harbinger of an economic revival in spring. 4) At the same time industrial production in the year 2009 has slumped by 17.9 per cent as compared to the level of 2008. 5) At the rate of the small growth in the economy up till now, it will take years until the level before the crisis will be reached. The ongoing economic weakness in the country is only poorly concealed by the high increase in exports due to the cheap euro on the world market.
Red Flag: Up to now the monopolies and the government have succeeded in avoiding a major increase in mass unemployment, in spite of a big slump in production. Nevertheless you get the impression that discontent in the factories is growing.
Stefan Engel: Through short-time work, reduction of overtime and cancellation of many company agreements for the increase of the weekly working hours beyond the 35-hour workweek, they actually succeeded in avoiding 1.2 million dismissals. In 2009 the paid weekly working hours in industry declined to 36.7 hours. This has led to a much smaller increase of the official unemployment rate compared to all economic crises since 1981 and was doubtlessly the decisive factor for the restraint of the masses towards the crisis management of the government. However, we should not forget that the above mentioned measures can at best be accepted by the workers only temporarily. If a workforce today has already been on short-time work for one and a half years, this is making a big hole in the family budget, and this can hardly be shouldered for a long time by any working-class family. In addition, especially in the big industrial enterprises, short-time work has been misused to intensify speedup and to lower real wages. In 2009 the workers in the industrial enterprises already lost 4 per cent of their real wages on the average. This has not happened for decades! Taking all this, no worker can be sure of keeping his job. All this is increasing discontent in the enterprises.
Red Flag: On May 1st, you did not get the impression that the smear campaign against the “left extremists” of the MLPD has an effect in the working-class movement in Germany.
Stefan Engel: The relation of the masses of participants to the MLPD on this May 1st was actually remarkable. While in the run-up a rigid anti-communist exclusion campaign against the MLPD was launched by parts of the DGB leadership , we were greeted and protected everywhere by the participants as a natural part of the May 1st activities. Boastfully announced bans against stands of the MLPD – which by the way have no legal basis – could not be enforced anywhere. The colleagues shielded and protected the MLPD, in some places united action had even been organized to protect the MLPD stands. In Berlin, where they attempted to remove the stand of the MLPD, a mass discussion and rallye of 200 colleagues took place and prevented it. Naturally we did not aim our main attack against the DGB leadership, but against the anti-worker policies of the government and monopolies. But it is quite clear that we will not allow such attempts of exclusion – which, by the way, have something to do with the fact that DGB- and IGM-leadership at the moment are more and more taking sides with the government and trying to prevent struggles at any cost. The strengthening of the revolutionary direction in the left trend among the workers could already be observed in the works councils elections as well, where class-conscious workers could improve their positions. Very good results were reached especially by those colleagues who had run during the federal elections in 2009 on the open lists of the MLPD and where in the run-up anti-communist attacks had been responded to offensively. In this situation the leading board of the metal workers union is arrogantly ignoring a clear decision by the union congress of 2007: Instead of lifting the divisive incompatibility rulings against the MLPD, they were not only underlined in a session of the leading board on 9th February 2010, but even further sharpened. Many union members find it scandalous that this is being justified not only with the unspeakable lies of the secret service about the MLPD, but also with ultra-right “scientists” - belonging to the fascistoid camp – who have been used as crown witnesses. The right-wing IGM leadership under the direction of Berthold Huber is especially annoyed by the MLPD’s rejection of the politics of class collaboration, the propaganda for companywide cross-border struggles in entire branches and the commitment to genuine socialism. They are especially attacking the scientific concept of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat in socialism, as elaborated by Karl Marx as an alternative to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It shows its own political inadequacy when the leading body of the IGM classifies self-organized strikes as being in competition with the IG Metall, knowing quite well that the possibilities of union strikes are extremely limited, because there is no full legal right to strike in all matters in Germany. The leading board of the IGM could learn a lot from the example of the federal conference of the Industrial Union for Construction, Agrarian and Environmental Workers, where the demand for a political right to strike has even been written into the statutes. What many people might not know is that until 1980, Berthold Huber had been a leading functionary for more than 12 years in the forerunner organization of the MLPD, and here he had a special responsibility for the guidance and control of the factory and trade-union work. It is pure hypocrisy when he maintains that the democratic centralism within the MLPD would make it impossible for MLPD members to support decisions of the metal workers union. If that were right, Berthold Huber himself, as an active party member in the early seventies, would never have been able to become a union functionary at the same time. For us the unions are and will remain to be ‘überparteilich’ self-run organizations, in which blue and white-collar workers with different party affiliations and different world outlooks are active together for the defense and improvement of their wages and their working conditions. Berthold Huber should stop currying favor with whomever by taking an anticommunist stand in promoting such decisions. The unity of the unions is too precious for such obvious ambitions. The incompatibility rulings against the MLPD split the unions and weaken their combative strength, because militant and active union members are placed under a steady threat of expulsion from the union and are defamed as being union enemies.
Red Flag: With 150,000 participants in the anti-nuclear-power demonstrations in
April, the environmental movement has come back powerfully. What was the starting point for this?
Stefan Engel: The clearest turning point in the struggle against the global environmental catastrophe was the failure of the world climate summit in Copenhagen. This is in line with the federal government’s massive attempts to extend the running time of nuclear power plants to 60 years , as well as the construction of more coal-fired power plants, in spite of the immense and generally recognized risks for humans and nature . The Schröder/Fischer government, with its decisions for a step by step moratorium on the use of atomic energy, had more or less suggested to the old environmental movement that it could dissolve itself. Now people are seeing that without active resistance against the profit-greed of the monopolies, the environment will not be saved. As far as I know, this was the biggest antinuclear demonstration ever in Germany. This is a sign of hope! Because with the dramatic development to the global climate catastrophe, a much more comprehensive and harder struggle is necessary to save the earth for human life.
Red Flag: You get the impression that with every dead soldier, the deployment of the federal army in Afghanistan is meeting with more rejection in the German population. How will this continue?
Stefan Engel: In the meantime far more than 100, 000 NATO soldiers are in Afghanistan to pacify the so-called “nest of terrorism”. It is implausible that this military deployment is necessary to overwhelm some 100 Al Kaida and about 5000 Taliban fighters. In the meantime the NATO is apparently confronted with a broad rejection in the Afghan population, which in our media is consciously and indiscriminately being defamed as belonging to the Taliban. The NATO aggression cannot overcome this broad resistance of the Afghan people! With each dead soldier, the rejection of the people in the NATO countries is growing. The government of the Netherlands broke apart a short time ago for this reason. And in Germany people can only be pacified by announcing the withdrawal of the German troops in 2011 over and over again. But nobody should believe that the NATO will withdraw from Afghanistan voluntarily without succeeding. Therefore the anti-militarist struggle and the struggle for the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan have to be strengthened.
Red Flag: The intensification of the latent political crisis is, of course, not only a material basis for the left trend. On the basis of a low level of class consciousness among the masses, it can also provoke rightist or neo-fascist tendencies in connection with aggressive anticommunism. Has the neo-fascist danger in Germany increased?
Stefan Engel: We should not underestimate that the same material basis for the left trend can promote right and neo-fascist ideas as well, especially among backward people. We shouldn’t underestimate the election gains of fascist and right-wing populist parties in France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy and partly at the Land elections in North-Rhine Westphalia, too. Objectively they constitute a mass basis for the fascistization and the state terror against the revolutionary working-class movement.
The more meaningful is the upswing of the anti-fascist struggle, which reached a peak in the prevention of a European-wide Nazi march in Dresden by massive active mass resistance.