The internationalists

9 December was the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht agreement which eventually paved the way for the single currency. We were already discussing re-publishing the document Maastricht - A Squabble Between Capitalists which we issued in Workers’ Voice 63 (Second Series) in Nov-Dec 1992 before the latest news from Brussels to record what the issue was for workers at the time.

While the government’s arbitrary changes mean that everyone has to work longer to get a state pension, while the capitalist crisis is wiping out private pensions, when every day brings news of more job losses, when workers in general are facing wage cuts and harder working conditions the public sector unions are doing their best to limit 30 November to a single ‘day of action’ over a single issue...

Workfare - the idea that claimants should work for their benefits now that capitalist economic crisis and corporate moves to exploit Far Eastern cheap labour has thrown them on the dole - was imported from America by the last Labour Government [the so-called Flexible New Deal]. Naturally, the ConDems have picked up this nasty anti-claimant baton and have refined it as the Work Programme, pledging...

(The following articles are from Battaglia Comunista with an update from Internationalist Notes - US) · It was very unusual general strike that occurred on Wednesday, November 2 in Oakland, where thousands of people marched through the city centre for hours and blocked port activities (the city, with about 400,000 inhabitants, is in the heart of San Francisco Bay. It is the fifth biggest U.S.

(Since the last issue of RP we’ve seen disaffected youths rampaging and looting through the streets of major cities as wild fluctuations in stock markets leave governments and central banks perplexed about what to do next. In the UK Prime Minister Cameron insists the spending cuts must continue while the Bank of England issues another £75bn of ‘quantitative easing’ and the budget deficit keeps...