The working class under pressure from the economic crisis and militarism

Submitted by ICConline on

Printer-friendly version

After the demonstration on 13 February, which brought together more than 100,000 protestors, the 24-hour general strike on 31 March confirmed once again that the indignation and anger against the federal government's austerity plans[1] are deeply felt by a growing number of workers in all sectors and regions of Belgium, and that combativity remains high. However, the sectoral and regional fragmentation imposed on the movement illustrates that the bourgeoisie has launched its counter-offensive through its unions, and this is in a context of trade war and exploding defence budgets that herald massive new attacks on the working class, in Belgium and around the world.

 

A break with passivity and disarray

This major wave of struggles in Belgium is not isolated, but represents a break with years of passive submission by workers to the attacks of the bourgeoisie, of atomisation, but also the subterranean maturation, the ongoing process of reflection. “The recovery of worker’s’ combativity in a number of countries is a major, historic event which does not only result from local circumstances and can’t be explained by purely national conditions. Carried forward by a new generation of workers, the breadth and simultaneity of these movements testify to a real change of spirit in the class and represents a break with the passivity and disorientation which has prevailed from the end of the 1980s up till now”[2].  The summer of discontent in the UK in 2022, the movement against pension reform in France in the winter of 2023, and the strikes in the United States, particularly in the car industry, at the end of the summer of 2023, remain the most spectacular manifestations of the development of workers' struggles around the world. The current movements in Belgium also illustrate the context in which workers' struggles will develop, particularly in the industrialised countries, with attacks on all fronts as a result of the accelerating economic crisis, interacting as if in a whirlwind with the expansion of militarism and chaos.

The programme of the new De Wever government provides for a total of almost €26 billion in budget cuts in order to reduce the State debt (105% of GNP). The government's programme includes deep cuts in social budgets, in particular savings on pensions (by penalising early retirement and attacking the pension schemes of civil servants and teachers), as well as limiting unemployment rights to a maximum of two years, which would result in the exclusion of 100,000 unemployed people this year. In addition, half a million long-term sick people risk losing their benefits because of ‘insufficient or uncooperative’ efforts to return to work. Payments for overtime and night work are also being drastically reduced. The ‘social partners’ are expected to propose a reform of the automatic indexation of wages and benefits (i.e. a cut!) by the end of 2026. What's more, less than two months after the announcement of this programme, Europe's generalised rearmament plans will mean that Belgium, which is lagging behind in terms of defence budgets, will see its budget almost double in the next few years.

Opposition to the measures was voiced as soon as the plans were first leaked. In order not to lose control of the situation, the unions decided to organise a first day of action on 13 December 2024, with the aim of diverting discontent towards the directives of the European Union. This first day brought together some 10,000 demonstrators. The manoeuvre did not succeed, however, and discontent continued to grow, as was shown by the second day of action on 13 January, when the unions again tried to restrict the mobilisation to ‘defending pensions in education’. In reality, participation reached around 30,000 demonstrators from a growing number of sectors and all regions of the country. On 27 January, a ‘historic’ regional sectoral demonstration by French-speaking teaching staff brought together 35,000 participants against the drastic cuts imposed by the regional government. The formation of the new federal government and the announcement of its austerity programme only fuelled the protest and the third day of action on 13 February, organised under the misleading slogan of ‘defending public services’, brought together over 100,000 demonstrators from all sectors who expressed their desire to break the sectoral and regional division of the movement organised by the unions. The demonstrators called for a global fight against the government's attacks.

 

The union counter-attack: controlling, fragmenting and exhausting workers' fighting spirit

Faced with the rise in workers' combativity and the push towards unity, the unions launched a counter-attack aimed at preventing any mass mobilisation against the full range of government plans: the feeling of belonging to a single class, of fighting together and in solidarity to build a balance of forces, had to be countered! At a time when solidarity in the struggle was becoming increasingly clear, the unions organised the fragmentation and division of movements between sectors, with specific demands, and between the unions themselves. Instead of joint demonstrations, scattered strikes lasting one or two days were organised in education, urban and regional transport and the railways, with a timetable spread over 6 months! A one-day general strike was declared six weeks later, on 31 March, without any call for demonstrations. The message was now to remain passively at home, with a multitude of small pickets of strikers centred on their company or sector, well separated from each other. The so-called ‘general’ strike has been used as a means of paralysing mobilisations and isolating workers, exhausting their fighting spirit and against any tendency towards unification.

The counter-offensive by the government and the unions is therefore attempting to exhaust the movement before the summer period. A call for a new ‘general strike’ has been launched for 29 April. The fact that sectors such as rail transport and education still have strikes and days of action planned for April, May and June underlines the fact that the unions are ‘pulling out all the stops’ in order to isolate the combative sectors and above all, in the end, to exhaust them in actions cut them off from the rest of the working class[3]. If, on 22 May (three months after the previous mobilisation!), a new national demonstration is announced by the unions, obviously around demands specific to the public and voluntary sectors, it is clearly with the hope of being able to see that combativity is on the wane and that discouragement is setting in.

The trade union offensive is all the more necessary as new attacks are looming on the horizon: ‘Look at the international context’ said the President of the Flemish Socialists (the ‘Vooruit’ party). The bourgeoisie has less and less room for manoeuvre to cope with the effects of economic war and growing militarism. The decision to significantly increase the defence budget from 1.3% to 2% of GDP this year is eloquent proof of this, and is only the first step towards a level of 3% of GDP, financed by even more brutal austerity measures. On the other hand, the massive investment in military budgets was seen as a provocation by many of those who mobilised against the 5.1 billion savings plans on unemployment and pensions.

The leftists are obviously trying to prevent the radicalisation of thinking and to bring it back within the ideological framework of the bourgeoisie: for example, Trotskyist groups are calling for a fight for a ‘real’ left-wing government and helping to strengthen democratic and pacifist campaigns. For its part, the populist left-wing Parti du Travail de Belgique (PTB/PvdA) is organising a march on 27 April under the slogan ‘Money for workers, not for armaments’. In so doing, it is fuelling the illusion that a ‘democratic’ choice within capitalism is possible.

The current context will therefore tend more and more to demand a more politicised level of struggle from the working class if it is to succeed in pushing back the bourgeoisie, as the situation in Belgium illustrates. Faced with a further worsening of the economic crisis, the pressure of militarism and the ever-present threat of barbaric war, we must resist the deceptive and misleading rhetoric of the bourgeoisie, which demands ever greater sacrifices from us. The economic crisis, ecological destruction, murderous wars, the massive flows of refugees thrown onto the paths of despair and death are the product of decomposing capitalism. Only solidarity and unity in the struggle against the attacks on our living conditions will enable us to develop demands that will unite the different sectors of the working class. A first step in this direction could be to use the trade union mobilisations to initiate the broadest possible discussion between workers on the general needs of the struggle, rather than passively listening to the rhetoric of those who are organising our division and impotence.

 

Lac, 15 April 2025.

 

[3] In particular, the unpopular strike action on the railways, with 19 days of strike action in March and dozens more in the months to come, illustrates this desire to organise attrition and isolation from the rest of the class.

 

Rubric: 

Belgium