Adopted by the MRCI conference, April 1988
The European Community (EC) was founded by the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux states after the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1958. The main objective of this Treaty was to further the economic integration of the member states that had already begun in 1948, under the protective domination of US imperialism, through the Marshall Plan and the establishment of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. Political integration was also an objective. The formation of the EC has to be seen in the context of the cold war. US imperialism tried, after the creation of Nato in 1949, to encourage the European bourgeoisie in the building of a powerful capitalist European bloc against the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
The objectives at the time of the founding of the EC were a customs union, establishment of free movement of capital and labour and the working out of a joint plan for transport, scientific research, energy, currency, industry and agriculture. As a consequence, from 1962 on there has been a common agricultural policy, the progressive removal of tariffs between member states and, from 1978, the introduction of the European Monetary System. To date the number of members has risen to twelve.
The EC consists of four major imperialist powers and their subordinated imperialist and semi-colonial satellites. Its character is that of an imperialist economic alliance closely interconnected with the European wing of Nato.
The EC is a creation of the imperialist epoch in the postwar boom phase. In 1958 it was at first only the richest imperialist powers who united, not the European bourgeoisie as a whole. Since then a number of weaker states (Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Spain) have been admitted largely as cheap producers of labour power. In addition, the EC has established economic hegemony over a number of Mediterranean states via the status of associate membership.
As a customs union it created higher tariffs for the rest of the world. Despite their economic co-operation, the special spheres of interest of each of the European powers in the semi-colonies were not given up. An original and continuing objective for the major European imperialist powers is the creation of a vast home market and thus to increase their economic and political strength vis a vis USA and Japan.
From the 1960s sections of the European bourgeoisie have from time to time expressed the hope that closer economic integration would lead to the creation of a supra-national European state. This state, based on a European integrated capitalism, would have sovereign political power, able to subordinate the individual interests of any nation state to the collective interests. The European Parliament, however, could not take on this task. Since the late 1970s repeated crises have delayed the development and threatened to undermine the existence of the EC. On the other hand the growing rivalries in the world economy between the United Staes, Japan and the EC drive the major imperialisms of the continent towards greater integration. This finds its most developed expression in the project of a ‘single Europe’ in 1992 with the removal of all internal economic barriers.
Of course, major contradictions obstructs the road to the dissolution of several rival imperialist powers into a common western European imperialism. Moreover, these contradictions could blow the EC apart.
It is not the task of the European proletariat to support or aid the formation of a ‘European imperialism’ but to unite itself against its own combined bourgeoisies and to hold out the hand of class solidarity to workers outside of Europe and to national movements of struggle against oppression by imperialist power, whether within Europe (e.g. Ireland) or worldwide.
At the same time neither can it link up with the most backward sections of existing national capital to preserve the existing separate states of obstruct the development of the productive forces on a European scale. We do, however, defend the jobs, social welfare conditions and democratic rights of all workers against attacks on them arising from the rationalisation and reconstruction involved in this process. The major EC states are members of Nato—a reactionary imperialist alliance against the USSR and eastern European degenerate workers’ states, and against the semi-colonial countries. Therefore, the European workers must fight to break up Nato, must oppose the entry of any presently neutral state into the Nato system, and must also fight the emergence of a new European military superpower.
The Austrian bourgeoisie and the EC
After the unsuccessful attempt at the beginning of the 1960s and the Association Agreement with the EC of 1972, there has been for the last two years a major discussion over joining the EC. The basis for these exertions is that the creation of a unified internal market in 1992 will raise the external barriers and this will make it very difficult for Austrian capital to be competitive within the EC. In addition, some sections of Austrian capital have limits to their sales and their ability to make profit that could only be solved at a higher level, i.e. in the context of a pan-European domestic market. Because of international economic interpenetration, the great export dependency of Austrian capital and likewise the strong influence of foreign, especially Federal German, capital in Austria there appears to be no alternative for Austrian capital but to go into the EC and try to survive there.
Consequently, the biggest proponents of the fastest possible entry are industrial capital and agribusiness who certainly have the best chances to profit from a common market and, equally, can see no other chance of surviving. That ‘on the way to Europe there will be some corpses by the wayside’ (Krejci, head of the Industrial Association) is to be expected. Alongside the small farmers and the small and medium sized businesses, it will be mainly the wage workers who will be affected. In order to make Austria ‘ripe for Europe’ there have to be tens of thousands of redundancies, more social service cuts, a worsening of working conditions such as flexibility and increases in work speed, etc. At the same time, it has to be said that if there is no entry to the EC, Austrian capital will have to take similar measures, with similar consequences, in order to survive.
However, Austrian workers must clearly understand that entry into the EEC is a direct result of the same crisis that has led its bourgeoisie to make workers pay for the capitalist crisis. It will mark the stepping up of ‘rationalisation’ and restructuring at the expense of Austria workers and small farmers.
However, a nationalist campaign by reformists around a future parliamentary decision of referendum could only weaken the unified Europe-wide resistance required by workers. The capitalists will use the EC as a means of masking the fundamental roots of the problems workers face. For these reasons we have no interest in voting in a referendum or having the SPÖ vote in a parliamentary decision, which would offer them the false alternatives of capitalist exploitation in Austria or the capitalist club of the EC. Revolutionaries should therefore actively seize the opportunity provided by such a national debate in order to advance an international programme of opposition to the capitalist EC and its anti-working class plans, to the attacks of the Austrian bourgeoisie, and for abstention, thus posing the only real alternative for Austrian workers: international links between workers throughout Europe, a concerted fight against capitalism at home and abroad, and for the Socialist United States of Europe.
The Austrian workers and the EC
What are the concrete tasks facing the Austrian working class now that joining the EC is ever more openly discussed?
A whole range of mistakes has to be avoided if we are not to be betrayed and demoralised either in or out of the EC. Firstly, the EC will not solve any of the burning problems with which the working class is confronted today. On the other hand, under the cover of patriotism and Austrian independence, it is precisely the weaker capitalists, who won’t be able to stand the competition in the EC, who will try to oppose entry. On this point the working class position must be clear: we can have no interest in sticking up for either section of capitalists against the other and marching with them for their profits. Our defence of workers’ present conditions is based exclusively on the international interests of the proletariat.
Whether Austria enters or stays out of the EC, the attacks on workers’ living standards will intensify. Whether or not these attacks occur more rapidly or more intensively inside the EC is not of decisive importance for the strategy of the Austrian proletariat. In or out it will face unemployment, social cuts, worsening of working conditions, etc.
Whether in or out of the EC the main interest of the working class lies in the struggle against unemployment and cuts. We do not oppose the inevitable centralisation and concentration of capital in Europe, or its necessary political consequences, in a sterile manner. We fight against capitalism within its own development. We do not pose against the bourgeoisie a backward-looking programme of national development but an international programme of struggle. The increased public discussion can be utilised to make propaganda for such a programme.
However, we cannot simply counterpose the goal of socialism, proletarian democracy, against the massive interests of the industrial associations and the Socialist Party bureaucracy which marches in step with them. Obviously, the socialist revolution will do away with all these imperialist alliances, including the EC, and replace a capitalist unification of Europe with a Europe of the workers. We must take care to ensure that the cost of the bourgeois unification is not borne by us but that the capitalists themselves pay for their entry into the EC. They expect better profits for themselves in the EC, they want entry, so they must accept responsibility for the ‘corpses by the wayside’ which entry will demand.
Only a fighting working class can challenge Austrian and EC capitalism. During the process of integration into the EC the big bourgeoisie may try to offload its costs onto the backs of the small farmers and petty bourgeoisie, etc. These strata could become a force for reaction and even fascism unless the working class can show them that a fight against capitalism can prevent ruin and social misery.
Our aim is the building of a European labour movement pledged to the worldwide struggle of the working class. However, we cannot expect the trade union bureaucracies or the social democratic or Stalinist politicians to lead the way to such a movement. On the contrary they are the main obstacles to it within the working class.
Only by forging revolutionary Trotskyist parties throughout Europe in a world Revolutionary Communist International can capitalism be overthrown and a socialist united states of Europe be built. This is the aim of the MRCI. In the trade unions we fight for the building of Europe-wide rank and file links between workers in order to meet the co-ordinated attack of the multinationals (international combine committees, popularisation of, and solidarity with, all workers’ struggles). These should, of course, demand that the officials take action to defend workers’ interests and put pressure on the union bureaucracies and condemn them for passivity and obstruction. If they will not take such action then the rank and file organisations should pursue their goals independently.
For European working class unity!
- In any referendum or parliamentary vote we call for workers or their representatives to abstain on the question of EC membership.
- Against economic nationalism! Against the chauvinist demand for import controls. Against the capitalist EC and its anti-working class plans.
- For factory occupations against closures.
- For work-sharing without loss of pay.
- For the 35-hour week without loss of pay throughout Europe. For the nationalisation of threatened industries without compensation and under workers’ control.
- No to immigration controls. No to the expulsion of immigrant workers and their families. For full political and social rights for all immigrant workers including the right of residence for their families.
- For international workers’ solidarity in struggle and for international boycotting action.
Fight European imperialism!
- Defend the gains of the October Revolution in the USSR and the eastern bloc. Against the control of the Stalinist bureaucracy and against any attack by imperialists. Against any involvement by Austria in Nato.
- For the breakup of Nato.
- Against the formation of a European imperialism.
- Against the formation of a European military alliance; not a penny or a person for the military.
- For solidarity with the semi-colonial regimes in their resistance to European imperialism; cancel the debts to the EC.
- For the United Socialists States of Europe.
This statement was passed by the MRCI with Pouvoir Ouvrier (France) dissenting from the paragraph typed in bold. Pouvoir Ouvrier believes that entry into the EC will increase the tempo of the attacks on workers though this in itself can be no basis for opposing entry.
