Fighting for a democratic Europe!
On January 1 the euro came into being. Already the movers and shakers in the City are making vast fortunes out of the new currency. But what about the working class?
At the weekend a new currency was born - the euro. By the beginning of this week, the City was dealing in euros. No meltdown, no chaos. The single currency did not abort on take-off. Just a few minor technical glitches - such as the investment bank Warburg Dillon Read making the same payment five times, resulting in a mistake in excess of £400 million. Still these things happen.
All this must have come as a bit of a disappointment to the prophets of doom, especially on the Conservative/Eurosceptic right. For some the impossible has happened, or is about to happen. The only setback so far was the 'cream-caking' of the Dutch foreign minister, Gerrit Zalm, by a euro-protester. It is unclear whether the cake-throwing miscreant was to the right or the left of Zalm.
Only diehard myopics will scratch their heads and mutter, 'Lenin in 1916 said it was impossible.' The advent of the new euro currency has potentially momentous implications. Yes, euro notes and coins are not in circulation at the moment. They are due to appear by the year 2002 in the participating countries, which does not include Britain of course. British pubs will continue to be euro-free zones. But not for long. In the near future Ken Clarke will be buying his pint in euros (currently £1 is equivalent to 1.4095 euros at the tourist rate). And that represents the nightmare scenario of course for Little Englanders of all hues and persuasions, as their beloved pound sterling faces extinction.
Unlike the high street, the City is awash with euros. Speculators and financial whizz kids are eyeing up the new challenger to the dollar. Traders who previously sought refuge in the US dollar, the Swiss franc and sterling as safe havens over the past couple of years will now be reassessing their strategies. It is estimated that $1,000 billion worth of assets will switch to the euro. You can already get travellers cheques in euros. You can take out a mortgage in euros. All government debts (so-called bonds) and most of the stocks and shares will be in euros. If a company borrows money on the capital markets, it will be in euros.
In other words, the euro is no fly-by-night operation or some utopian pipe dream. It means business, in every sense of the word. Jacques Santer, president of the European Commission, has confidently predicted that the euro will act as a counterweight on world markets between the yen and the dollar: "The single currency will be a credible currency accepted by the international markets." Some strike a note of caution though. George Magnus, the chief economist at Warburg Dillon Read, commented that the euro is appreciating against the dollar "more by default than there being anything intrinsically strong about the euro". Either way, the euro is not going to go away. And it is certainly not "a pig in a poke", the view of Lord David Owen.
The Economist, weekly bible of free marketers, made the following judgment on the euro: "It is the first time that countries of anything like this number, size or global economic weight have gathered together to share a currency, and thus to pool their monetary sovereignty. It is arguably the most momentous innovation since the establishment of the United States dollar in 1792" (January 2). It is hard to disagree. Christopher Johnson, UK adviser to the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe, has even speculated that the euro and European monetary union "could prove more durable than other monetary unions - at least until world monetary union is on the agenda" (The Independent January 4).
So, has a giant awakened? On a purely statistical level, the figures are impressive. Euroland, to use the parlance, is composed so far of France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Italy - the 'euro 11'. The combined population of Euroland is 292 million. The USA has 270 million while Japan has 127 million. The combined GDP of the 11 stands at £4,041 billion; in the USA it is £5,314 billion; in Japan £2,329 billion. Total Euroland exports for 1997 amounted to £533 billion - beating the US (£424 billion) and Japan (£260 billion).
Those countries currently outside the single currency will be subjected inexorably to 'eurocreep', which will eat away at national currencies from within. Exchange Rate Mechanism II is now in place - which will link the currencies of EU countries outside Emu to the euro. These countries - Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Greece - are euphemistically referred to in Brussels as "pre-ins". The door marked 'exit' is nowhere to be seen. Tony Blair knows this only too well, even if he does insist on playing a semi-Majorite, 'wait and see' game and for the moment is keeping Britain out of the single currency. But time waits for no man.
Clearly, the advent of the euro and the single currency represents yet another nail in the coffin of all national reformist or national socialist schemas. No wonder those like Arthur Scargill view the euro - and the EU in general - with abhorrence. A 'socialist' Britain governed by the SLP would, according to the Scargillite plan, 'get out of Europe' and trade with far-flung and dynamic countries like Cuba and New Zealand. The 'Brussels bureaucrats' have put paid to that one.
The single currency is a harbinger of political union - just as capitalism itself is the harbinger of socialism. Insofar as an 'EU superstate' lays the foundations for advanced socialism, it is to welcomed. But this in no way means we throw our hats in the air and exclaim, 'hurrah for the euro!' or 'three cheers for City bankers and speculators!' The single currency and Euroland represent an undemocratic union from above. The EU is the fiefdom of bankers, technocrats, bureaucrats and bourgeois politicians. It is a 'fortress Europe' whose gates are closing shut to the 'economic migrants' and whose central objective is to exploit the working class.
This has been signalled by Jacques Santer. If you believe the more irrational and chauvinistic rightwing press, you might be persuaded that Santer is part of a diabolical plot to undermine the 'free market' and legislate in 'socialism' from Brussels or Strasbourg. The truth is somewhat different. Santer has issued a call for labour market 'modernisation' and 'flexibility' - the classic buzzwords which august organs like The Telegraph or The Times normally salivate over.
Those in control of Euroland will do all they can to increase the rate of exploitation. This was unwittingly referred to by that great euro-enthusiast, Will Hutton: "What the euro will also sponsor is a great increase in the power of companies in relation to organised labour. Uniform pricing across a single market in a single currency will encourage firms to locate production in a low-cost European site to maximise competitive advantage: collective bargaining as a countervailing force will be hard to organise across the whole of the EU" (The Observer January 3).
This points to the crucial question of organisation. As the industrialists, bureaucrats and bankers of Europe attempt to come together, so must we. Instead of being split up into separate, national trade unions, the workers must come together in European-wide organisations. If British capitalists are happy to wheel and deal with German capitalists, why should British unions, for instance, not be allowed to affiliate to an expanded German TUC? More importantly, it points to the need for political unity. Specifically, this demands a Communist Party of the Europe Union, so workers can move beyond resistance to the plans of Jacques Santer and co to putting forward their own Euroland minimum programme - crucially an EU constituent assembly.
This central question of working class independence will become of even more importance when Blair finally decides to give the go-ahead for a referendum on the single currency. A recent Guardian/ICM poll indicated that 29% would vote 'yes' as opposed to the 52% 'no' voters. But you can be sure that will begin to change, once Blair gains the confidence to come out openly for British membership. True, the most backward sections of British capital still cling pathetically to go-it-alone narrowness. But the most dynamic, the most forward-looking, are totally committed to increased European integration. They will throw their weight behind the 'yes' campaign.
We must respond with a principled, internationalist stance. This can only mean that communists should call for a boycott of any such referendum - not vote 'no', as the SLP will urge, and as the Socialist Party has already pledged it will do. We say - neither the pound nor the euro, but the democratic interests of the European masses.
Eddie Ford
