Paul Cockshott
3rd July 2010, 21:14
Posting by Heinz Dieterich warning of danger of military coups:
Jose Durao Barroso, former Prime Minister of Portugal and current President of the European Commission has warned the unions and popular movements in Europe that if they do not accept neoliberal austerity packages could be installed military dictatorships in Spain, Greece and Portugal.
Barroso, the chief executive of the European executive, "We are traumatized by an apocalyptic vision of the collapse of democracies in Europe because of its debt situation," says John Monks, Secretary General of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Your message "was blunt: if packages are not introduced austerity measures in these countries could disappear democracy as we know it today. There is no other alternative. "
The European bourgeoisie presents, in other words, an ultimatum to the labor movement and popular: dutifully pay the costs of the crisis that has caused the great capital, or make them pay by way of the jackboot. In political language: if they offer resistance to the reduction of living standards of bourgeois dictatorship spend evening (representative democracy) to open the bourgeois dictatorship.
The threat is real for several reasons. First, the status of the sender. Barroso is the chief executive of the European Regional State and, therefore, the capo di capi visible political class. Second, the status of the recipients of the message, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Finally, the fact that military dictatorships disappeared just thirty years ago of these countries. Falange in Spain's dictatorship formally lasted from 1936 to 1978, the last military dictatorship in Greece (G. Papadopoulos) from 1967-1975 and the Portuguese dictatorship of Salazar in 1932 survived until 1974. Reinstalling the state terrorism in the southern periphery of the European Union is openly --- and Greece in 1967 and in Honduras in 2010, or covertly as in Colombia to protect the dysfunctional --- capitalist production relations and interests of the powerful, is no problem on a continent whose rulers invented fascism, the Falange and nazism. And in whose cradle of modernity, France, the government (Pompidou, de Gaulle) surrounded the May 29, 1968 Paris with the French Army tanks to break the general strike of workers and students, if necessary.
The threat to use state violence against the resistance of the poor is complemented by a report that Merrill Lynch-Capgemini reports that the world's rich became even richer in the world's worst capitalist crisis since the Great Depression of the thirties . The number of millionaires worldwide rose last year to ten million (+ 17%), which together represent a total wealth of 39 billion dollars. Of these plutocrats, 2.87 million live in the U.S., 1.65 million in Japan, 861.000 477.00 in Germany and in China.
The reading of both information --- Barroso's warning and the perverse growth of wealth of the plutocrats in times of severe global financial crisis --- leaves no doubt about the class character of capitalism we live and the main subject, the big bourgeoisie. If it is necessary to establish concentration camps to protect profits, as in the thirties, these guys set them again.
For the majority, and critical intellectuals, the lesson is equally clear. It should emulate the attitude of European intellectual labor movement and 1847. When in 1847 it was clear that 1848 would be a year of great social and political upheavals, the European avant-garde commissioned Marx and Engels to draw up a Regional Programme of Action that would guide the masses to defend their legitimate interests. This program of strategic alternatives and tactical measures, was the "Communist Manifesto."
Today we know the mode of production of XXI Century Socialism --- democratic planning, work value and principle of equivalence and its political superstructure --- (Ueberbau), participatory democracy. What we lack, in contrast to 1847, trade unions and intellectuals are class-conscious and critical theory. Therefore, the majority in Europe are defenseless against the threat 'apocalyptic "bourgeois state terrorism of its highest officials just released.
Jose Durao Barroso, former Prime Minister of Portugal and current President of the European Commission has warned the unions and popular movements in Europe that if they do not accept neoliberal austerity packages could be installed military dictatorships in Spain, Greece and Portugal.
Barroso, the chief executive of the European executive, "We are traumatized by an apocalyptic vision of the collapse of democracies in Europe because of its debt situation," says John Monks, Secretary General of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Your message "was blunt: if packages are not introduced austerity measures in these countries could disappear democracy as we know it today. There is no other alternative. "
The European bourgeoisie presents, in other words, an ultimatum to the labor movement and popular: dutifully pay the costs of the crisis that has caused the great capital, or make them pay by way of the jackboot. In political language: if they offer resistance to the reduction of living standards of bourgeois dictatorship spend evening (representative democracy) to open the bourgeois dictatorship.
The threat is real for several reasons. First, the status of the sender. Barroso is the chief executive of the European Regional State and, therefore, the capo di capi visible political class. Second, the status of the recipients of the message, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Finally, the fact that military dictatorships disappeared just thirty years ago of these countries. Falange in Spain's dictatorship formally lasted from 1936 to 1978, the last military dictatorship in Greece (G. Papadopoulos) from 1967-1975 and the Portuguese dictatorship of Salazar in 1932 survived until 1974. Reinstalling the state terrorism in the southern periphery of the European Union is openly --- and Greece in 1967 and in Honduras in 2010, or covertly as in Colombia to protect the dysfunctional --- capitalist production relations and interests of the powerful, is no problem on a continent whose rulers invented fascism, the Falange and nazism. And in whose cradle of modernity, France, the government (Pompidou, de Gaulle) surrounded the May 29, 1968 Paris with the French Army tanks to break the general strike of workers and students, if necessary.
The threat to use state violence against the resistance of the poor is complemented by a report that Merrill Lynch-Capgemini reports that the world's rich became even richer in the world's worst capitalist crisis since the Great Depression of the thirties . The number of millionaires worldwide rose last year to ten million (+ 17%), which together represent a total wealth of 39 billion dollars. Of these plutocrats, 2.87 million live in the U.S., 1.65 million in Japan, 861.000 477.00 in Germany and in China.
The reading of both information --- Barroso's warning and the perverse growth of wealth of the plutocrats in times of severe global financial crisis --- leaves no doubt about the class character of capitalism we live and the main subject, the big bourgeoisie. If it is necessary to establish concentration camps to protect profits, as in the thirties, these guys set them again.
For the majority, and critical intellectuals, the lesson is equally clear. It should emulate the attitude of European intellectual labor movement and 1847. When in 1847 it was clear that 1848 would be a year of great social and political upheavals, the European avant-garde commissioned Marx and Engels to draw up a Regional Programme of Action that would guide the masses to defend their legitimate interests. This program of strategic alternatives and tactical measures, was the "Communist Manifesto."
Today we know the mode of production of XXI Century Socialism --- democratic planning, work value and principle of equivalence and its political superstructure --- (Ueberbau), participatory democracy. What we lack, in contrast to 1847, trade unions and intellectuals are class-conscious and critical theory. Therefore, the majority in Europe are defenseless against the threat 'apocalyptic "bourgeois state terrorism of its highest officials just released.