The Left and the crisis in Germany
[Bristol] antifa | 04.06.2010 15:22
The drama of the economic situation is hard to overlook. Many states of the European periphery are verging on bankruptcy, and an emergency loan of 750 billion Euro is supposed to save the single currency. An increasing national debt will affect the main part of those populations, with yet unforeseeable consequences. In Germany, too, massive social decline is on the agenda. Social benefits and wage payments are cut back, life’s risks privatized, and the national labour administration further tightened. More and more people have to accept crappy working conditions and labour leasing, with even more stress and less security. More and more have to supplement their low wages with unemployment benefits. Even more drop out of the economic process completely, and are harassed by Job Centres and employment programs.
The aggravated competitive constraints don‘t spare schools and universities. Through the selective procedures of a divided school system, “elite schools” and the Bachelor/Master-scheme, the training and utilization of the human capital are optimized. What keeps together winners and losers of the capitalist system is their shared dependence on national success within the global market competition. Individual powerlessness in the face of overwhelming social conditions is compensated by an ideological bond, based on the supposed common destiny of the national collective.
Widespread agitation against Greece is an expression of this hostile setting of national economies. The real crisis is capitalism! As long time “Export Champion of the World”, Germany has effectively ruined competing economies like Spain, Portugal or Greece, and now reproaches them for the disastrous consequences of this remorseless contest. With patronizing credit lines by EU and IMF, Greece is being forced under the yoke of rationalization for years to come. Broad levels of its population – from students to unemployed and wage laborers, right up to retirees – already have to put up with drastic cutbacks. But many of them have met this onslaught with resolute resistance, from general strike to militant actions in the streets.
Within capitalism, one thing is for certain: Its crises. For more than a century, the obsessive competition of companies, business regions and entire national economies has generated one crisis after another. Every business – be it the production of vegetables, cars, weapons or equity derivatives – is started as a venture for profit. Those who want to survive the struggle for markets and investments have to take unpredictable risks, and ruthlessly exploit any chance for private gain.
To believe that this capitalist order could be tamed, be it by the forces of the market or the state, has always been illusory. The imperatives of capitalist accumulation and exploitation defy any regulatory effort. Every crisis-induced rationalization enhances the constraints of competition, and thus the danger of new crises. Governmental stimulus packages for trusts and banks only reinforce the capitalist crisis-carousel.
The inevitability of exploitation under capitalism is a constant assault on a good life. The rat race of competition is not about personal bliss and social needs, but about private profit and national interests. We don’t want this murderous nonsense.
Join the anticapitalist block! Let us take our radical critique into society! We only get what we fight for. For the social revolution!
Contact: www.umsganze.de
[Bristol] antifa
Original article on IMC Bristol:
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/692564