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Introducing
this issue
"Europe 1992" is the theme of a huge propaganda campaign currently being waged by the European Commission in Brussels, some of the EEC member governments and European social-democracy. The united Europe which is supposed to be brought about by the Single European Act (SEA) taking effect on 31 December 1992 is the panacea for all ills. It will solve the economic crisis, reduce unemployment, stimulate an economic upturn, enable Europe to face down American and Japanese competition.
At the root of the 1992 project lies the capitalist crisis, the increased internationalization of the economy, the fast-moving changes in the international division of labour. The increase in economies of scale and the ability to determine world strategies encourage industrial restructuring, mergers and alliances. All major companies are faced with this problem, whether in Europe, North America or Far East Asia. The proposed "free market" between the United States and Canada illustrates that this is not simply a European question.
But big capitalism has not made the political choice of a united Europe. It is only in certain circumstances that the "European dimension", the "single market" and the establishment of a coalition of European interests become imperative for some companies. The single market Europe is thus not a political
4 International Marxist Review choice, a sort of new patriotism. Its rationale is economic, how to solve the economic crisis.
This Europe is a manifesto for free-market ideas for which the workers will pay the price. There are already 40 million people living below the poverty line in the European Community. This Europe is one of oppression, of the people in the North of Ireland, and in New Caledonia. It is a Europe where there will be two categories of immigrants, those originating from the EC with equal political rights and those from outside: Arabs, Africans, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Turks condemned to second-class status. It is a Europe where national chauvinisms will be encouraged to give way to European chauvinism, for workers to make sacrifices to help "European capitalism" win out over American or Japanese capitalism.
This ideological campaign and the "greater Europe" single market present a big challenge to the workers' movement. While big capitalism is refining its international strategy, striving to shape political instruments to suit its economic ambitions, the workers' movement remains in the straightjacket of its national and chauvinist outlook. Social democracy is putting itself forward as the best advocate for the Europe of the SEA. The perspective of a so-called "Single Social Act" proposed by social democracy is understood as a simple amendment to the SEA — in other words entering into its logic. There will be no defence of workers' demands, nor any attempt to bring social benefits into line with the most advantageous conditions existing in one of the member countries unless the workers' movement itself takes on the fight for this.
In Britain, where Thatcherism has inflicted some significant defeats on certain sections of the working class, the idea that 1992 could help win back some of the ground lost by an extension of conditions existing elsewhere in the context of Community-wide legislation has a certain attraction. But this is dangerous thinking and will lead to severe disillusion.
Europe should become a central preoccupation of the workers' movement, but in the sense of an opportunity for building a new internationalism based on struggles and active solidarity. Nothing positive will come out of European co-management and negotiations in offices in Brussels, Luxembourg or Strasbourg. The workers' movement will have to build through action and mobilizations a sufficiently favourable relationship of forces to force the bosses to accept not the lowest but the highest common denominator of social benefits, with particular attention to the specific needs of immigrant, women and young workers and unemployed. There is now a big discussion among the European members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) on the usefulness of joining the European
Introducing this issue 5 Community. The ruling class are more or less in favour, certain sections think that it would be better to be associated in one way or another rather than formally joining. Here again the workers' movement has no interest in arbitrating the arguments between the different political parties and sections of the employers on the usefulness or not of joining the EEC. The workers and their organizations should first of all demand that there is no challenge to the social gains they have made, rejecting an adaptation downwards for integration in to Europe. In these discussions, the starting point should be the demands of the workers' movement as the only way it is possible to say no to the bosses' Europe.
The organizations of the Fourth International must involve themselves in this process without delay. There must be an alternative point of view to that of the official propaganda, and an explanation of the social dangers of the SEA. But this is not enough, there must also be initiatives in action: to lay the basis for continuing solidarity between sectors of workers in struggle, as we have already seen to a limited extent with the nurses' strikes in France and Britain; for joint campaigns around the the 35-hour week; trade-union coordination and joint action in the same sector or the same company; joint campaigns around demands of social movements, such as young people against educational cuts, against racism, against the arms race; or women's actions against sexual violence, for the decriminalization of abortion, against night work; against the coordination of European imperialist interests in the third world, on the third world debt etc.
This special issue of IMR is a first step in providing the information and the arguments for this counter-offensive the bourgeois propaganda campaign: What is the Common Agricultural Policy and how does it work? What are the much-vaunted EEC programmes of "positive action" for women and what have they achieved? What are the real social dangers incurred, what is the current attitude of the European workers' movement? Why has the European bourgeoisie chosen this path and what does it hope to gain? Contributors from the European sections of the Fourth International start to answer some of these questions.
PIERRE BRON