Democratic deficit in Europe

Right across the Euro zone and beyond the crisis in capitalism is deepening by the day. When all seems calm and stable another shock is set off the latest in Cyprus where people’s personal bank accounts have been raided by 10% on their savings to bail the country out. Were people asked first? No they weren’t this is the democracy of the Euro in action. Or not. Since the onslaught of austerity was placed on the shoulders of working people and the poor across Europe people’s democratic rights as limited as they always are under capitalism are being slowly eroded under our very eyes. This crisis is not just a financial crisis it’s a series of crisis’s and one that myself and certainly the Committee for Workers International CWI including our own MEP Paul Murphy MEP have pointed out for a while now the democratic deficit we are seeing in Europe now. The ruling class is not afraid to take away democratic rights if their system or profits are under threat and wish to safe guard their interests. Although now Greece has a elected government back in power and Italy well who knows they are still trying to figure something out already we have seen the lengths the ruling class will go to safe guard their system by installing their own men in power. The imposition of the 'technocrats', in reality bankers, in both Italy and Greece, shows the seriousness of the crisis for the capitalist class nationally and across Europe. To try to save their system across Europe, the democratic rights of people to decide who will govern them have been trampled on. The markets, through the Troika of the IMF, EU and ECB, have usurped democracy and placed their own men in charge to ensure that the cost of this crisis is placed on the shoulders of the working class, unemployed and poor. The technocrats elevated to rulers in Greece and Italy, Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti, are the banking sector's choice of leader. Monti was an as advisor to Goldman Sachs until his appointment. Papademos was a former vice-president of the European Central Bank, and has publicly been opposed to the write down of Greek banking debt as it would hurt the banking sector. Goldman Sachs was described in a 2010 Rolling Stone article as: "The world's most powerful investment bank" and "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It can manipulate "whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts." These 'technocrats' have been presented to the world as the experts who will be able to solve the financial crisis, as some sort of wise men who can rise above politics. It has been put out that these men will put the 'national interest' first. This is a lie. The 'dictatorship of the technocrats' is an attempt to divorce economics from politics. The technocrats will act, not in the interests of the mass of the people, but in the interest of the people they represent - the financial elites. The protest movements and strikes that have swept across Greece and Italy need to be intensified against this anti-democratic and anti-working class move by the national and European establishment. No matter how much they try to persuade us that the technocracy is above politics, a mass movement of workers, the unemployed and young people which builds its own party, can brush away this dictatorship of the markets and start to create a society that is democratically run in the interest of the mass of the people.

End the dictatorship of the market

The dictatorship of the markets has become a practical reality in Italy and Greece with the imposition of technocrats as Prime Minister in each country. This anti-democratic move is being portrayed as putting a ‘safe pair of hands’ in charge in each country. This is simply untrue. Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti, are the banking sector’s choice of leader rather than the people’s. Monti was an as advisor to Goldman Sachs until last weekend. Papademos was a former vice-president of the European Central Bank, and has publically been opposed to the write down of Greek banking debt as it would hurt the banking sector. These technocrats represent the interests of the banking sector and have been put in place to make sure that austerity is forced through so that the banks can be paid back their bad gambling debts at the expense of the working class in these countries and internationally.

you can watch Paul Murphy MEP of the socialist party in Ireland part of the CWI oppose these new technocratic governments in Greece and Italy when he speaks in the European Parliament. No one else is speaking up about this and how undemocratic imposing a government of bankers on a country. I feel it will only be a matter of time before people realise what is going on and fightback. As paul says in the clip we need a european wide fightback and a european wide struggle a general strike across europe even.

Where in the world 300 families control 40 % of the worlds wealth it is a hugely unfair system where the wealth of many is held in the hands of a few families and super rich elite.

You can even look back to last year in the UK where there was a period of negiotiating with the political class to decide who joins with who to form a government based on austerity. We did not vote for that government of lib dems and tories it was imposed on us so again you can say it is another government acting on the interest of the 1% and the city. We were told that the markets need political unity and not instability so a decision had to be come to.

At the moment the markets rule and the political elite bow down to their paymasters in the markets. It is a worrying sign that unelected governments are taking control in places like Italy and Greece. It is a dangerous route to start eroding democracy. Even what little democracy we had before.

It is time to end the dictatorship of the market and build a working class alternative. With mass workers parties dedicated to ending the rule of the market and putting peoples needs before profits. Ending the idea of greed and moving towards a new, farier, socialist society.