Monday is Demo-Day

//by Wladek in Berlin //REVOLUTION[uk] #65

Every Monday hundreds of thousands of people across Germany go out onto the streets to protest. This has been going on since the beginning of August, and the numbers of protesters are swelling constantly - at last count it was 200,000 people in 200 cities.

They shout: "Weg mit Hartz IV!" What’s that in English? "Hartz IV must go!"

So who is this Hartz? Peter Hartz is a manager at the car company Volkswagen. He has had incredible success making work at the company more "flexible" - in management-speak that means cutting wages and introducing the 40 or even 42-hour-week. So much success has he had, that the social democratic government of Gerhard Schröder invited Hartz to lead a commission about how to reduce unemployment in Germany.

Schr�der was elected in 1998 with a promise to drastically reduce unemployment. Now, six years later, more than five million people capable of working are without a job - that means over 10% of Germany's population is unemployed. And Schr�der's approval ratings have been dropping as the unemployment rate has gone up.

Hartz’s commission on the "flexibility of the labour market" aims to force workers to work more hours for less money. The theory presented by Hartz is that so many people are unemployed because the unemployment benefits in Germany are too high. This is the same poor argument capitalist governments have been using to persecute the unemployed for the last 300 or so years.

REVOLUTION says: The only solution is to divide the work fairly amongst all people capable of working: 30 (or even 20) hour week with no loss of pay. But the capitalists see things differently.

The Hartz Commission proposes that the state "encourage and force" the unemployed. That means benefits drop to just €331 (£235) a month - well below the poverty line. In addition, recipients of benefits will be forced to accept any job offered to them, regardless of their qualifications.

And, as if all this weren't horrible enough, the government plans to introduce 60,000 jobs for one euro per hour! The people forced into these jobs would fall off the unemployed register. So to put it clearly: The government is introducing forced slave labour to reduce unemployment!

These reforms have been introduced as part of Gerhard Schr�der's grand vision "Agenda 2010". The plan is that Europe, under German leadership, is to become the "most dynamic economic region in the world" by the year 2010. This means wages have to be lowered to American levels or below, multinational companies have to be freed from tax obligations, and German imperialism needs an army capable of foreign interventions. Which, in turn, means that there have been drastic cuts in all social services.

Now demos are being held in 225 cities. Attempts by Nazis and right-wing populists to join and spread their racist filth have been fought back in every case. Now a national demo has been coordinated for the beginning of October. REVOLUTION has been active in "Montagsdemos" in different cities, handing out flyers in front of schools to bring young people out on the streets. In Bernau we initiated an Anti-Hartzdemo in opposition to a racist demo.

We have started a campaign along the following lines: "Everywhere there are cuts: in education, health care, pensions. But there is one area where there are no cuts at all: the profits of big companies. With the help of tax subsidies and wage cuts, German companies are making record profits. We say, if the treasury is empty, we need to cut something:

WE NEED TO CUT CAPITALISM!"

Our perspective at the "Montagsdemos" is anti-capitalist - in contrast to the populist direction of most of the organisers, who chant "we are the people" and work together with priests, bourgeois parties, and even the police! They are trying to "build up pressure" on the government and use the protests to negotiate a bit more "social justice" into the cuts. We say: The Monday demos are a good start, but no amount of negotiation with the government or the capitalists can stop Agenda 2010. We need to bring the gears of the system to a halt: with strikes in schools, universities, and factories. Hartz IV must go! Agenda 2010 must go! Capitalism must go!

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