Month: May 2022

After Germany refused to relax sanctions in exchange for the unblocking of Ukrainian ports by Russia, the EU “is weighing” whether to launch its military structure and send a war fleet to carry out the Ukrainian grain. The excuse: the danger of famine in third countries. But this is hard to believe: since when is the EU willing to risk open war with Russia for the needs of semi-colonial countries? Wasn’t it going to increase its own exports to alleviate the global price increase? What lies behind the plans for a new “Crimean war”?

The entry into a historical epoch marked by militarism is transforming labor relations. Ranging from brutal legal changes in Ukraine, but also in South Korea or Hungary, to “spontaneous” forms of imposition of overwork in Great Britain or the USA. At the same time, the campaigns and ideological pressure are targeting a new generation of workers who are massively “burning out” in the workplace, unable to get out of their individualistic and identitarian prison.

NATO is preparing its “2022 strategic concept”. It will be officially presented at the Madrid summit in June. The movements and pressures of the states follow one after the other to outline the “novelties”. The most disturbing of them: a new “Russian front” in the Sahel with strong reverberations and possibilities of destabilization in the Maghreb and the whole of West Africa. Great Britain, Germany and Spain are leading the push that promises to open a new imperialist battle for the control of Africa.

While it is obvious that we must defend ourselves against anti-abortionism, we must also confront the feminist arguments that render invisible the discrimination of working women and reduce them to the status of animals in order to hide and justify ignominious conditions of exploitation. We need to confront both “pro-life” and “pro-choice” from our own class terrain. For if we let them we will have neither a life worthy of being called that nor any other choice but to resign ourselves to choose as women workers between being midwives or beasts of burden… to end up being both.

Workers on oil rigs in the British North Sea have begun a wildcat strike that is affecting oil production. Employers and unions are pressuring them to give up the struggle. And yet the strike continues to spread. It could mark a turning point in the workers’ response to the crisis across Europe.

The British government announced yesterday a unilateral review of the Northern Ireland Protocol. The EU has responded immediately with a threat of sanctions. Beneath, the historic breakdown of balances between Northern Irish factions and the prospect of the annexation of Ulster by Ireland. The opening of a period of intra-European trade war could however be the prologue to a new phase of low-intensity wars on the continent.

While the US approves the umpteenth support package to the Ukrainian state, this time of 40 billion euros to sustain the war, France, Germany and behind them Italy and Spain begin to recognize a strategic defeat… vis-à-vis Washington. Growing ideological resentment, political impotence within the EU and the increasingly accepted prospect of breaking the EU in two are expressed. It is not “only political”: the development of the imperialist contradictions within the EU and in relation to the US can only accelerate the offensive of national capitals against the living conditions of the workers.

Predictably, xenophobia is growing with the war and is now also affecting Ukrainian refugees themselves. What is fueling the fear and rejection of refugees?

Macron burst into the proceedings of the “Conference on the Future of Europe” yesterday with a proposal to reform the EU’s constituent treaties which immediately divided the states into two sides. It is the response to a US strategy in Ukraine which, irrespective of its effects on Russia, is increasingly undermining the power enjoyed by the Franco-German-Italian axis within the EU.

The differences in social roles between men and women are fundamentally due to the impositions of the social organization of work. That is to say, they are neither based on “essential” differences nor can they be overcome through ideological and cultural campaigns. For this reason, ending discrimination requires transforming the relations of production.

Germany’s famous economic powerhouse flounders. Rising rates push the US into recession. Central banks start to look warily at the housing market again. And the “new austerity” is taken for granted so naturally in France and Spain that its implementation depends only on the timetable of the elections.

Summary of strikes collected in our “Strike Channel” during the month of April 2022

The “trade union celebration” has left its messages: support for the war and celebration of the war capitalism that is being imposed on us and that is beginning with a direct attack on the purchasing power of wages.

What has May 1 become? What is the significance of this “trade union holiday” today? What message do they spread about the working class at this point?