Призыв к действию: Европейский День Действий против капитализма — 31/03/2012

Call for Action: European Day of Action against Capitalism — 31/03/2012

Europe is in a continuous state of upheaval. For months now, its credit- and sovereign debt crises have been escalating. A number of hectic European Union (EU) summits have introduced emergency measures to rescue capitalism. Should these measures fail, governments and the media assure us, collapse, recession and mass poverty would be the result. This apocalyptic rhetoric paves the way for even more neoliberal reforms whose social impact will be felt for decades to come – if we don‘t resist. Throughout the crisis, we were told that capitalism needed to be reined in, and that banks and corporations would have to carry some of the burden they, too, had created. What is happening now is the exact opposite: The EU, its member states and other European countries are intensifying competition and introducing devastating public austerity programmes to secure private profits. In doing so, however, they are reproducing the destructive logic of capitalism. The existence of crises, widespread powerlessness and poverty, contrasted by private, i.e. exclusive wealth, are inherent elements of capitalism. Let’s get organized for a better society!

It‘s the system!

Over the past decades, capitalist globalisation has intensified competition between private corporations and national economies alike. All leading industrial nations have thoroughly deregulated their markets, and have imposed that model on others. They have cut benefits, privatised public goods, cut labour rights, and increased social control – all in the interest of unimpeded capitalist growth. In Europe, supposedly on the sunny side of world capitalism, our lives are becoming ever more precarious, and social divisions increase. The so called “emerging markets” find themselves in a state of constant social crisis, with rigid expropriation and ruthless exploitation, backed by governments in the interest of a national growth that only serves the privileged few. In an obsessive hunt for competitive advantages, neoliberal policies have brought financial markets to a boiling point. Be it the dotcom boom, the bonanza of real-estate-funds and derivatives – those bubbles have burst one after the other. This is not the result of individual “greed” or the “corruption” of a tiny elite, as many claim, but of the trivial systemic imperatives of capitalism as a social order. That’s why the system needs to be changed.