Capitalist Europe, the Europe ruled by the European Central Bank, the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, the Europe of “free and fair competition”, the tool of the offensive of the multinational corporations and their states against workers and peoples, is now in crisis.

All the European governments have widely used public subsidies to save financial system and banks after the subprime crisis in 2007 and 2008. These policies have increased budgetary deficits. All the European governments have imposed their will on Greece and now they use the deficit to impose stringency and austerity to ordinary people. The profits of the banks are higher than ever. But it’s up to workers to pay the bill! The reason for the deficits is very well known and obvious: the scale of subsidies given by states to the bosses and the rich. On one hand they distribute gifts to them; on the other hand, they exempt them from taxes. And in order to raise, finance they borrow money from these people ! So the finances of states are being privatised. The balance sheet is clear: the forecast economic recovery hasn’t happened and everybody can hear the new cracks opening up in their system. Everywhere unemployment is increasing, except partly in Germany. Wages are stagnating or decreasing. Public services are being dismantled and sold off cheaply to private sector. On a worldwide scale, a currency war is raging. A new financial crisis is threatening.

The governments are trying to divert the anger emerging from popular layers of society; they are encouraging xenophobia and racism, linked with laws who refuse to recognise immigrants as citizens at all. In order to divide workers, they refer to immigration - or the Roma in France – as scapegoats. So they pave the way for a new far right populism that is now rising up everywhere. Once more, women are mainly paying for this crisis, the effects of which come on the basis of profound gender inequalities. The threat of unemployment and increased pressure towards “going back to being a housewife”. The decay of public services and the lack of facilities force millions of women into domestic slavery.

The political bankruptcy of the ruling classes and their states is ruining the conditions of living of an endlessly increasing section of the people. It also threatens previously won democratic rights. We need urgently to put an end to this dangerous and destructive approach; unite the working class and its forces; reverse the balance of power; refuse be divided by old fashioned borders. Already the austerity policies being pursued right across Europe have provoked widespread resistance. This has been highest in Greece – above all with the quasi-insurrectionary general strike of 5 May – but in recent months we have seen massive protests in France, the Spanish state, and other countries, and further mass action is in prospect. The first task of the anti-capitalist left must be to build these struggles on as broad and a militant basis as possible, and to seek to ensure that they are not undermined by the efforts of the trade-union bureaucracy and social-democratic politicians to limit and control them. It’s also important to support the calls for the unity of the trade union movement, to help them come into being on a europe-wide level, like on 29 September in Brussels,

The same policies are hitting us; we need to fight them altogether. All together we have to coordinate at the European level in order to popularize emergency measures – social, democratic and ecological measures, which are mandatory if we don’t want to pay for their crisis.

We refuse to pay for their crisis

To get rid of the plague of unemployment and casual work, it is necessary to share work among all workers, to give everyone a job and wages and to impose massive recruitments in public services. Against poverty and inequality, it is necessary to increase all wages and to guarantee everyone the right to enjoy a decent retirement pension. Rights to enjoy housing, health care and education need to be protected by stopping the sabotage of public services. They need to be reinforced, under the control of people. Unity of oppressed and exploited people doesn’t fit with borders and discriminations. All men and women living and working in the territories of Europe are full citizens. Identity papers for everyone! While states are cynically imposing sacrifices to people, they are squandering billions of euros in military expenses and on the war in Afghanistan for the exclusive purpose of defending their imperialist interests. Stop that waste! Stop that dirty war! Stop NATO and military expenses!

The crisis also shows clearly the predatory character of the profit system, by recklessly exploiting natural resources, annihilating peasant agriculture, destroying ecosystems, causing global warming. As never before, justice and self-management, emancipatory projects and a socialist horizon are becoming consubstantial with the environmental struggle.

To fulfill fundamental human needs, it’s necessary to abolish the illegitimate public debt. This means getting to an end with the voluntary submission of governments to the banks and hedge funds. These must be put out of harm’s way by being expropriated in order to socialize credit.

Conquering democracy, rights and the means to decide and control

This break with capitalism requires a growing and sustained mobilisation by millions of people, which raises the consciousness of the power of the working class movement and opens up the conquest of democracy, allowing workers and the people to develop everything needed directly to intervene in the management of society, of workplaces, of public services and local communities.

This break needs a democratic upheaval, a new organization of the people to assure their control of every area of economic social life. This upheaval means a break with the institutions devoted to the defence of the privileged social classes. It also requires - through social and political mobilizations - a government born from the mobilizations, under their control and able to impose respect for workers’ rights. To make this easier we need to defend the political participation of workers and the demand for unity in the struggles of those forces claiming to be of the working class and of the left against the right and neoliberal policies.

Breaking with a Europe ruled by finance, Building a workers’ and peoples’ Europe

We want to take a step further on the road of coordinating struggles at a European level. We want to work together and formulate demands and perspectives, and to implement them. We want to open the road to the Europe for the workers and the people we are fighting for, right now.

Our purpose is to prepare the future. Wealth and the means to produce wealth already exist. Unemployment, precarity, poverty and that subsequent trail of social pains and violence are nothing but the consequences of an unfair social organization. This system of exploitation is based on private ownership of the main means of production. The crisis shows every day how absurd it is.
The future belongs to socialism, to social ownership of all the main means of production, whose management already depends on the cooperation of billions of men and women at international scale.

First signatories :

Belgium : LCR/SAP
Danemark : Red/Green Alliance
France : NPA
Germany : ISL
Great Britain : Socialist Resistance, SWP
Greece : Okde spartakos, SEK
Ireland : People before profit, Socialist Resistence, SWP
Italy : Sinistra critica
Netherlands : Internationale Socialisten
Norway : The Red Party
Poland : Polska Partia Pracy
Portugal : Bloco de Esquerda
Spanish State : En Lucha, Izquierda anticapitalista, POR
Sweden : Parti socialiste
Switzerland : Gauche anticapitaliste, Mouvement pour le socialisme, Solidarité
Turkey : DSIP