WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update (en) Italy, UCADI #168: War economy, inflation, strikes (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In the past, when the proletariat was aware of its class consciousness, at the

first signs of a possible war it mobilized to oppose the fratricidal struggle
between peoples, aware that war is the bosses' tool for destroying and
rebuilding, re-launching profit and consolidating exploitation and class
domination . To stimulate him towards mobilization and struggle, in defense of
his interests, a revolutionary vanguard that had settled over time as a product
of class consciousness and the historical memory of the proletariat. ---- Today,
every point of reference seems to have disappeared and the masses watch war
amazed and disoriented, even when it is close and threatens to unleash a world
conflict that would cause immense and irreparable damage.
However, they intuit that this is one of the essential indicators for identifying
the class position of a political aggregation that defends the interests and
values of the proletariat and they do not recognize the soul and identity of the
political forces of the left, whether they declare themselves revolutionary or
even simply reformist when they promote war. The first reason for the loss of
identity of the left resides in the acceptance of the war, the profound cause
which, by denying the root causes of its being such, produces in cascade that
loss of values and planning that today sees the political project of the right
prevail and to roll back the positions of even just progressive and liberal forces.
With a particularly attentive look at Europe it must also be said that if it is
true that war is a constant in politics and that there are many of them in the
world, that of Ukraine closely affects the whole continent not only due to the
geophysical location of the country , but also for the immediate and direct
consequences it has on the political and economic balance of the whole world.
Because of the conflict, the economies of the EU countries and of the Union
itself, in particular, have allocated a non-insignificant part of their resources
to finance the war, removing them from a civil and social use, they have had to
restructure and redirect the use of production infrastructures and the neural
path of the commercial and development axes and much more will have to be done to
find a new set-up, nullifying the value of ten-year investments.
which have stolen resources that could and should have been destined to support
welfare in crisis, to fight the climate emergency, to contain and at least limit
poverty, investments aimed at containing the demographic crisis that is
depopulating the European continent.

The repercussions in Europe

All this could only have repercussions at a superstructural level and call into
question the role and function of the institutions, profoundly affecting the rule
of law and the whole of what is the most precious and original conquest of a
united Europe: the Community aequis, that is, that set of rights and juridical
obligations and political objectives which - despite many ambiguities and
insufficiencies - unite and bind the Member States of the European Union which
must be shared and characterize the legal systems of the countries that want to
join it. The candidate countries, in fact, must accept the "aequis" in order to
be able to join the European Union and to allow for full integration, they must
incorporate it into their respective national legal systems, adapting them to it,
But today the war risks making its upheaval possible: this would happen by
welcoming the entry of Ukraine into the union for political and strategic reasons
- a state endowed with one of the most foreign legal systems to the Community
aequis - which would end up profoundly changing the foundational structure of the
European Union more than it already has Done. Suffice it to say that already
today the countries of the Union find themselves in a state of undeclared but
effective war, without any state or Union Parliament having formally declared war
and without the citizens having been called to pronounce themselves on the
matter. Not only that, but elevating Ukraine to the first candidate to join the
Union mortifies the decades-long efforts of other countries that have aspired to
join it for years, creating a political vacuum in the Balkan area in which other
interests such as Turkey are entering, with serious damage to the cohesion of the
continent.
Despite this, the war effort in favor of Ukraine continues, intensifies, absorbs
resources, and is destined to grow even more over time, fueling old and new
emergencies, starting with internal migrations - the need to host and
redistribute fleeing Ukrainians - which are added to migrants from outside the
continent due to the climate food crisis and further wars, as well as the exodus
produced by natural disasters, such as the recent catastrophic earthquake in
Anatolia, Syria, Kurdistan and neighboring territories. It doesn't matter if in
public opinion the opposition to the war grows to over 50% throughout the
continent and in Italy it reaches 70%. Yet no one dared to observe in velinara
and war information,
It should therefore come as no surprise that all the many parties of the
so-called European left are in an identity crisis and are being beaten everywhere
by the right. They have lost their DNA and therefore it is no wonder that in the
face of the neophytes of the reaction the few left to vote choose the safe second
hand, that is, the parties and political forces that historically represent that
part of the wealthy social class which it constitutes the social and therefore
electoral basis of oligarchic regimes, or to put it as it is fashionable today,
of democrats, where the electoral body is reduced to 30-40% of those entitled,
because war also kills liberal democracies.
The institutional model of oligarchic government allows war to be declared by
decree, thanks to the fact that states, equipped with professional armies, do not
need to resort to popular mobilization to lead the country into war. Proof of
this is that Italy has currently engaged its armed forces in 37 "peace" missions
and no one knows or notices it: being in the military has become a job like any
other! A profession for which men and women have been training for some time,
preparing weapons: since 2014 NATO countries, and in particular Great Britain,
have been training Ukrainians for war and no one has given any sign of noticing
it, only to then declare Russia as an aggressor country and be surprised that a
war suddenly breaks out.

Inflation

As far as the lower classes are concerned, one of the most macroscopic effects of
when it is happening is the growth of inflation, triggered by an economic crisis
and by a war on the markets already evident before the pandemic[1], aggravated by
it and definitively unleashed with the war fought in the field and the goal
(achieved) by the USA of bending the competitiveness of the European production
model, raising the cost of energy and its incidence per unit of product to
exponential levels, to the benefit of the US economy and having as a side
effect/objective the attempted dissolution of Russia.
The duration of the war, the effect of the sanctions, the reorientation of the
Russian economy on the markets and the overall realignment of the economies
towards new areas are proving to be damaging not only for the European economy
but also for the US economy in the medium term. and in the long run. The
sanctions against Russia are a substantial failure and in the war its economy
grows, as evidenced by the data available to all. This does not mean that the
risks of recession have been overcome, especially as regards some countries
engaged in the war effort, such as Great Britain, for which a crisis is being
prepared which - hopefully on our part - will lead to its natural dissolution as
a state entity of this State, especially since the cohesion represented by the
monarchy has disappeared, Western and above all the EU monetary authorities - for
their part - are trying to tame an inflation that has exceeded the average level
of 10% by thinking of using rate hikes and exclusively financial instruments,
while in reality they are applying increasingly restrictive economic policies
which reduce welfare, lower wages and pensions, increase working hours and
exploitation, widen the gap between rich and poor, increasing the mass of the
incompetent (those who live below the minimum poverty line even when they receive
a salary) on the total population, privatize education and health care.
Nor is the action to the detriment of the proletariat sectoral; proof of this are
the more than 500,000 dead on the field of the war in Ukraine, the more than a
million wounded, the suffering inflicted on the Ukrainian and Russian population:
the costs of war, direct and indirect, are paid by the peoples. Inflation - which
is a tax on the poor - will therefore continue to grow, at least until the war is
put to an end and a cycle of struggles restarted that places the interest of the
exploited classes at the center of the mobilizations and struggles. This is what
English, French and Spanish workers are trying to do, driven by the immediate
defense of their increasingly precarious wage and living conditions.

Wage struggles in Britain

This is what is happening in Great Britain where the country, dragged into the
war by Boris Johnson, by Teresa Mey. Liz Trass, Rishi Sunak, in other times would
have seen his prime ministers tried for high treason or at least locked up in the
Tower of London at least for the ways in which they involved the country in the
conflict.
Well, a wave of strikes began in the country in June in response to the economic
and social crisis produced by Brexit, the pandemic and the war. It is true that
the objective is economic and concerns low wages, but the turmoil which has
continued intensely since then and is scheduled at least until the end of the
month of March concern the education and health systems reduced to the point of
exhaustion by years of disinvestment and by a fiscal policy that rewards the rich
to the detriment of the less well-off classes, on which war expenses have a heavy
impact. The privatization of services, the cost of living can no longer be met
with the low wages that support an increasingly weak economy that is unable to
bear the imperial costs of conservative and warmongering governments and a silent
and silent opposition Labor party prone to the choices of an increasingly
restricted elite.
The month of February began with a coordinated and simultaneous strike of half a
million workers across a wide array of public sector categories: including, for
the first time this season of great discontent, the teachers of the 85% of over
23,000 non-private schools in England, Wales and 2 counties in Scotland.
The agitation also involved train drivers, bus drivers, university personnel,
port or airport customs officers, paralyzing to a large extent key sectors for
the lives of millions of people and families, such as education and rail
transport. Semi-deserted stations, closed schools, empty offices, even if the
massive crowds that have risen in the last few days in Paris and in the rest of
France against the squeeze on pensions have not been seen in the square; however,
the pickets promoted on the island by the various trade unions have seen the
compact participation of male and female workers to the point of forcing almost
90% of the schools involved to partially or totally close.
For those who know the country it is an unprecedented picture "for at least 12
years" for the number of workers and categories concerned in unison, according to
the Trades Union Congress (TUC). Prime Minister Sunak insisted on denying that he
wants total confrontation, but also on invoking "reasonableness" against
"unsustainable" requests for keeping the accounts, otherwise he risks fueling the
spiral of inflation above 10% and fearing a recession . On this occasion he
lashed out against the teachers (the last time on strike in 2016) in defense of
the "right of children and young people to be able to go to school". The unions
instead accused the Minister of Education and the Prime Minister of negotiating
and ideological rigidity in the face of the collapse of the purchasing power of
the salaries of many civil servants.
Meanwhile the battle continues. In the first week of February, healthcare took
the field in the midst of a crisis amidst record waiting lists for healthcare
services, staff shortages aggravated by the post-Brexit, wages that have not been
updated enough for some time, fatigue from the Covid emergency - with the third
tranche of strikes by nurses and nurses from the National Health Service (NHS) on
6 and 7 February since December. The ambulance workers went on strike on the 10th
together with the first agitation of the midwives, followed by the firemen
enrolled in the Fire Brigades Union (Fbu).
As many as 150 UK universities are involved in a month-long strike to protest
against low wages. Their budgets are also in crisis due to the reduction in the
number of students from abroad and also because due to the end of the Erasmus
university program and other Community programmes, the flow of students from
Europe has greatly reduced, reducing the budget of Anglo-Saxon universities. They
were joined by workers from other cultural sectors, first of all those from museums.
Meanwhile, the tough dispute between the railway workers of the Rmt continues,
the most bellicose and organized union at the moment, the forerunner of the
struggles of these months since the autumn, behind the leadership of Mick Lynch,
critical of Labour, absent from the barricades, when not hostile to the
struggles, under the neo-moderate leadership of sir Keir Starmer.
The ongoing struggles in Great Britain, characterized by a calendar of strikes
scheduled at least until the end of March with the absence of the Labor party,
are not due to the scarce link between trade union struggles and politics,
typical of the country, but due to the total flattening of political positions of
Labor on foreign policy, due to the subordination that characterizes the politics
of all the parties of the "left" and its succumbing to a right firm in its
ideological and warmongering positions.

The fight over pensions in France

The demonstrations in France on the occasion of the strikes of 31 January (more
than half a million demonstrators in Paris), 7 February and 16 of the same month
saw massive participation both in adhesions and in street demonstrations, with
peaks of mobilization they reached 2 and a half million people throughout France,
from Paris to the deepest province (with peaks of 100,000 in Toulouse). The many
cities and small towns of the country have competed each time to contend for the
hospitality of the most numerous street demonstrations, despite the fact that the
Ministry of the Interior has systematically taken care to provide downward
estimates of the number of demonstrators to discredit the political scope of the
mobilization.
However, the strikes are characterized by a strong unity and the street
demonstrations in support, which took place during the holidays, gathered a large
popular participation, with the presence of entire families, a sign of social
mobilization in favor of the dispute. As the chronicles amply demonstrate,
participation was transversal to the various age groups. It was not only older
workers who carried out strenuous jobs or defending the particular pension
protection schemes won during tiring cycles of struggles who protested, but also
workers young people and women, seriously affected by the reform. It is no
coincidence that the deadlines for the struggle for the month of March foresee a
major trade union mobilization coinciding with 7 March which is added to continue
the mobilization for 8 March as the struggle is connected to that of women and
their rights, affected by decidedly penalizing rules.
However Macron has no intention of giving in and, strengthened by the alliance
with the Républicains, who hope in this way to increase their political weight
with respect to the Government, intends to force the parliamentary vote,
approving the reform by authority, receiving a response from all the unions the
promise of continued strikes, even after the eventual approval of the provision.
In this way the country is starting to experience a phase of continuous
mobilization and social conflict, with the difference compared to other European
countries of a significant presence in trade union and social mobilisation,
albeit on defensive issues, of the political parties of the left, mainly through
Mélenchon and de la France Insoumise.

There were only a few / All over the earth / Everyone thought they were alone /
Suddenly they were a multitude

Paul Éluard, pseudonym of Eugène Émile Paul Grindel

The indication of the struggle movement is clear in defense of the welfare state
and of living and working conditions, for a destination of resources for purposes
of peace by elaborating political platforms, strategies of struggle, in the
streets and in struggles, building the unity, broken and fragmented by a power
politics that becomes increasingly arrogant, leaving room for and expanding
consensus on the right.

Social struggles in Spain

The mobilization was raised in Spain by the citizens of the autonomous community
of Madrid on 12 February who took to the fight against the policies of the
governor of the region Isabel Diaz Ayuso, promoter of ever more radical cuts in
the resources allocated to health care. There were at least 250,000 Madrid
residents who took part in the demonstrations organized to ask the regional
government for more funds for public health. Madrid is the autonomous community
with the lowest per capita expenditure on primary care in all of Spain.
The marches that marched through the streets of the capital up to Piazza Cibeles
demanded better basic health services, a halt to the privatization of services,
especially in territorial and rural centers, where the cuts in health care costs
were even more serious .
The demonstration follows the November 13 mobilization which saw half a million
people take to the streets in Madrid alone and will be followed by a two-day
strike in which doctors from Madrid hospitals are called to participate on 1 and
2 March. Strike actions to protest health conditions have also taken place in
recent weeks in other Spanish regions. with a large participation; they are
echoed by a right-wing mobilization increasingly contrary to government policy,
supported by the Socialist Party and Podemos.
This dispute is accompanied by that on state funding for private schools
increasingly supported by the autonomous communities governed by the right,
exacerbated by the clash arising from two sentences of the Constitutional Court
which sanctioned the ban on public funding for private schools for men only or
women only (150 throughout Spain) which are a prerogative of Opus Dei, a very
powerful personal prelature of the Catholic Church which operates as a center of
elitist power in society, especially in Spain, a true training center for the
elites of the fundamentalist Catholic component in the country and in the world .

Opposition is formed in struggles

It would be enough for leftist parties in crisis to look out the window, leave
their offices and return to the squares and neighborhoods, frequenting the places
where they work. They would notice the growing queues at charity and social
assistance centres, at soup kitchens, they would see people on the street and
without a home or job, or with a job that does not provide a sufficient salary
for a minimally dignified life and then they would know how solve their identity
and program crisis, starting with ending a war between Ukrainian and Russian
oligarchs, where neither is better than the other.

[1]Newsletter, Phase Analysis, Number 163 - September 2022, Year 2022 from Ucadi.

The editorial staff

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/02/21/economia-di-guerra-inflazione-scioperi/
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