Athens Meeting 18-20 November 2005, Contribution of CP of
Sweden
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From: SolidNet, Tuesday, November 29, 2005
http://www.skp.se , mailto:skp@skp.se
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International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties
"Current Trends In Capitalism: Economic, Social And
Political Impact. The Communists' Alternative"
Athens, 18-20 November, 2005

Statement of the Communist Party of Sweden (SKP)

Workers' rights and the single wage within the EU

On 3 October 1940, representatives of the German Industrial
Employers' Confederation met in Berlin with Dr. Gustav
Schlotterer, a senior director in the Hitler government's
Ministry of Finance. The subject of the meeting was the
Europ�eische Gemeinschaft the European Community that was
to be formed after the end of the war. Dr. Schlotterer's
remarks included the following:

"The countries of Northern and Western Europecomprise an
economic system that is closely related to our ownwith
largely similar social and economic structures. They are
also closely related to us in terms of culture,
civilization and race (!), which means that there exists a
foundation between Germany and thesecountries for a single
market and single levels of prices, incomes and wages. Thus
a customs and currency union between these countries and
Germany is not only possible but is also desirable from an
economic perspective".

Asked "Why do we need a European Community?", Dr.
Schlotterer answered "Namely because we want to create a
rational division of labor in agriculture and industry,
because we want to achieve the lowest possible production
costs within Greater Europe, which means that we must
discontinue production that is not viable"

Economic cooperation in the New Europe was to be
implemented by "businessin our view the economy of Greater
Europe will be generated by the initiatives of the business
community. Obviously as a State we can enter into economic
agreementsbut they will remain abstractions if they are not
implemented by business"

The uniform level of wages to which Dr. Schlotterer
referred naturally remained a primary goal for the
directors of the European Community that developed in the
decades after 1945. But a number of factors made it
difficult to achieve this goal. These included the strength
of trade unions and Communist parties in Western Europe,
and the existence of the Soviet Union and other socialist
economies in the East.

Nonetheless a steady decline in real wages in Western
Europe began in the late 1970s. This trend intensified
after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the
establishment of the EU. Together with continuously rising
unemployment levels, this has enabled capital to exert
greater downward pressure on wages. Although over the past
ten years labor unions in Western Europe have repeatedly
accepted lower wages and degraded working conditions as the
price of continued employment, unions are still seen by
capital as a major obstacle to achieving a minimal and
uniform wage level.

The expansion of the EU in 2003 gave capital new ammunition
in its assault on labor unions, wages and working
conditions. The issue has come to a head in a conflict in
Sweden that has been referred to the EU's Court of Justice
in Luxembourg.

The Laval case dumping wages

In 2004 a Latvian company called Laval un Partneri
submitted the winning tender for construction of a school
in Vaxholm, a municipality outside Stockholm. The company
set a Swedish subsidiary, brought in construction workers
from Latvia and paid them wages amounting to about 30% of
the Swedish union wage. They worked a 56-hour week.

The Swedish Building Workers' Union asked Laval to sign a
collective bargaining agreement that would ensure the
Lettish workers of Swedish union wages and working
conditions as well as sickness insurance and pension
contributions. When Laval refused the union organized a
blockade of the construction site, which is permissible
under Swedish law. Other Swedish unions cooperated, and
Laval's subsidiary was forced into bankruptcy in the winter
2004-05.

At the same time, Laval filed a suit against the union in
the Swedish Labor Market Court, which comprises
representatives of both capital and labor. The company
claimed that the union's action was in violation of EU law
on two counts it discriminated against foreign companies,
which is prohibited by the Treaty of Rome, and it prevented
the free movement of capital and people, two of the
cornerstones of the EU.

An EU directive of 1996 governs posting of workers from an
EU-country in another member country. In April of this
year, the Swedish Labor Market Court decided that this
directive is unclear, and referred the Laval case to the EU
Court for guidance. This is of course a direct admission
that EU law has precedence over Swedish law.

A new directive prepared by EU-Commissioner Frits
Bolkestein is currently being discussed in Brussels but has
been delayed by what the mass media call "political
disagreements". In all probability, the directive is in
line with Dr. Schlotterer's hopes and the disagreements
involve its form but not its substance.

In September, the EU's Internal Market Commissioner Charles
McCreevy stated that the Commission supported the Latvian
company's claim.

Marketing the EU Court's decision

The EU Court is not expected to issue a ruling on the case
until mid-2007. Why does the court need more than two years
to decide an issue of such profound and immediate
importance for capital and labor in 25 countries?

We believe that the main reason is the predicament of the
Social Democrats in Sweden and other countries. There is no
question that the Maastricht Treaty is designed to enable
Dr. Schlotterer's uniform wage level, and the Laval
company's position seems to be consistent with the spirit
and the letter of the Treaty. It is difficult to understand
how the EU Court could rule against it.

When in 2003 the Swedish working class voted against
joining the EMU, Social Democrat spokespersons announced on
the day after the referendum that the result reflected a
"marketing failure". They had not been able to "sell" the
concept of the EMU. to their working-class constituency.
Their problem now is, how will they be able to market the
EU Court's decision, assuming that the Court rules in
Laval's favor?

In general, European Social Democratic parties strongly
support the European Union, and the Swedish Social
Democrats are particularly enthusiastic. It was a Social
Democrat prime minister who applied for EU membership for
Sweden, about a year after an election campaign in which
the question was never discussed. During the run-up to the
referendum on membership in 1994, the prime minister
repeatedly marketed the Maastricht Treaty as "a socialist
project".

The next parliamentary elections in Sweden are scheduled
for September 2006. Opinion polls show that a large and
growing majority of both working-class and petty bourgeois
Swedes are anti-EU. If the EU Court were to rule in favor
of Laval before the elections, the Social Democrats would
experience a political disaster of enormous magnitude at
the polls. Social Democrats throughout the EU would be in a
similar situation.

As mentioned previously, in recent years unions in Western
Europe have repeatedly retreated in struggles over wages
and working conditions, not least in Sweden and Germany,
where General Motors pitted Swedish auto-workers against
their German counterparts and won major concessions from
both. The current status of class conflict within the EU is
definitely not favorable to the working class.

It seems probable that the Social Democrats and their
colleagues in the EU Commission are playing for time in the
Laval case, hoping for two things. One, that the working
class in Western Europe will be at even greater
disadvantage by mid-2007 as a result of higher
unemployment, continued export of jobs to low-wage
countries, and continued dismantling of national social
insurance systems within Western Europe, in which Social
Democrats eagerly participate. Two, that the new directive
from Frits Bolkestein will not be formulated as an
excessively brutal confrontation.

Fulfillment of these hopes would make it much easier for
both Social Democrats and bourgeois parties to market the
EU Court's decision. One of the main themes in this
marketing campaign has already been stated. Sweden's
leading daily newspaper is currently running a series of
articles calling for solidarity across borders, i.e.
Swedish workers should allow workers from Poland and other
comparatively low-wage countries to share in the general
prosperity.

Whether these hopes will be fulfilled is anoher question.
Awareness of the EU as an instrument of monopoly capital is
definitely increasing in many Western European countries.
For example, in the aftermath of the defeat of the new EU
Constitution in France, an opinion poll was commissioned
jointly by French public TV and the newspaper Le Monde in
order to determine the main factors behind the No vote.

The results showed that the main factor was the fear of
losing jobs. The second factor was deep and intense
dissatisfaction with the EU as a whole. The Swedish Social
Democrats described the No vote in France as a chauvinistic
reaction to the prospect of EU membership for Turkey. But
the poll showed that this issue was of minimal importance,
even among the minority of right-wing No voters.

Historical continuity of Fascism

The continuity of capitalist plans for a Europ�ische
Gemeinschaft under Fascism and the Maastricht Treaty that
was devised by the European Round Table is obvious.

As the general crisis of capitalism has deepened over the
past 30 years or so, a new and higher form of Fascism has
been evolving.

It matches the Fascism that arose in the 1920s and 1920s in
substance, but is higher in the sense that it is global and
not restricted to 2-3 countries. It shows some differences
in terms of tactics and methods, which is only natural
given the development of the class struggle since 1945. I
would like to underline that the new Fascism is evolving
but has not reached maturity. The main points of
correspondence are the following:

Annulment of classical bourgeois democracy. Under the
Fascist dictatorships before WW2 the working class and
other class fractions no longer had even a formal legal
right to influence management of the affairs of State. And
they had no insight into the decision-making process within
the government.

In the US the exclusion of a majority of the population
from the governing process is a de facto trend. But it has
been institutionalized in the very structure of the
European Union. The annulment of bourgeois democracy
includes massive privatization - a frontal assault on the
public sector within the EU and at the global level,
implemented by such organizations as the WTO, the IMF and
the World Bank.

"The State must be limited to its purely political and
juridical functions. Let the State give us police to
protect decent people from villains, a well-organized
system of justice, an army ready for any eventuality, and a
foreign policy to serve the national interest. All the
rest, and I do not exclude the secondary schools, must
return to individual private initiative. If you want to
save the State, you must abandon the collectivist State
handed down to us by the force of eventsand go back to the
Manchester State".

Although this could have been said by any director of the
EU, it was actually said by Benito Mussolini during an
election campaign in 1921.

Intensified and widespread integration of the State with
monopoly capital, often in the form of joint committees
that make vital decisions and formulate strategy.

E.g. in Germany, Schr�der's 2004 "reform program" for the
German social insurance system was written by Peter Hartz,
personnel director of the Volkswagen corporation. In
1935-36, the rearmament program for the Third Reich was
written by a director of IG Farben. There is no need to
elaborate on the extent to which monopoly capital has
penetrated the State apparatus within the OECD countries.

Intensified expansion of monopoly capital, continued
concentration of power and wealth in the hands of less than
1% of the population.

Ruthless use of force, when necessary. Acts of armed
aggression that violate international law, treaties and
conventions are justified by appeal to principles that
transcend them, such as the Nazi doctrine of the supremacy
of das volk, the requirements of homeland security, or the
need to protect against purported violations of human
rights in other countries.

NATO forces currently total about 3.2 million men and
women. The Fascist army that invaded the Soviet Union in
1941 totalled about 5.1 million and was then regarded as
the most powerful military force in world history. Given
the tremendous advances in technology over the past 64
years, especially in electronics and aviation, the
resulting increase in firepower, and the deployment of
nuclear warheads, NATO undoubtedly surpasses the Fascist
armies of 1941 in destructive power.

What is the function of this military organization in a
world where "Communism is dead"? The function of NATO is
twofold it will be used to keep the EU population in check
when necessary, and to counter a resurgence of Communist
movements in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Mysticism. The ideological flim-flam generated by Fascist
movements in Italy, Spain and Germany is paralleled by the
current demonization of Islam and the dark-skinned hordes
who want to destroy our civilization. Production of this
type of propaganda has become a major sector in the Western
media industry.

Mysticism is also inherent in the use of the term
"globalization" which means imperialism. Globalization has
attained the status of a natural law in the mainstream
media. It is described as an inevitable development that is
beyond our control.

The focus of Fascism old and new is of course intensified
exploitation of the working class, which is the essence of
capitalism. This includes increasing use of slave and
semi-slave laborers both within and outside the OECD
countries, as well as violent attacks juridical and
physical - on trade unions.

We believe that the Laval case has become a central
component in capital's efforts to establish a uniform wage
level across the EU, and eventually over the entire
Eurasian land-mass, just as the directors of IG Farben had
dreamed when they built the synthetic fuel plant at
Auschwitz. We urge the Communist parties of Europe to
launch a coordinated information campaign to publicize the
Laval case and defend the rights of the working class.