Against Social Cuts

By Rainer Roth

[This speech at the November 1, 2003 Berlin demonstration in Berlin is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.ba-linke.de/roth.html. Rainer Roth is a professor of sociology at the University of Frankfurt.]

A) Germany is in a deep crisis. Who is responsible? We hear this incessantly. Wage earners are too expensive. Pensioners live too long. Women have too few children. Youths only want to play and the unemployed are lazy. Complaining continues even when the people sacrifice so corporate profits soar. The rulers are hostile to reform. Who will be their next target?

B) Productivity increases rapidly thanks to the technical revolution. For example, the total working hours of all industrial workers fell in the 1990s around 2.8 billion hours. Two million workers were unnecessary in Germany. At the same time the invested capital in Germany doubled to an unimaginable 15 trillion Euro. This money is mainly planted in financial investments. Capital increases as more and more persons become superfluous. Meaningful work exists. Working hours can and must be drastically reduced without cuts in payment. This must be our agenda. However capital wants to extend working hours to 40 hours with wage cuts. This makes even more persons redundant.

C) The so-called problem groups are sorted out. These groups include youths, seniors, women, foreigners and the severely disabled, thus the majority of the people. The head of Infineon speaks of “weak performers”. Amid increasing productivity, whoever produces little is forced into unemployment and annuity. This is ultimately the cause of the crises of social security and state finances, not the claims of the unemployed and pensioners. Isn’t capital that makes so many people superfluous itself a problem group? Capital is responsible for unemployment. However capital should pay for a decent basic security of the dismissed. The social wealth makes this possible.

D) The over-capacities built up by capital in the upswing are destroyed in the current crisis. The profit rates have fallen. Increasing these profit rates is the main goal of Agenda 2010. The abolition of unemployment assistance is its core. For 2 million unemployed, the assistance has fallen below the level of income support. The unemployed should be forced to work at poverty wages. This is state organized wage dumping. The attacks on the unemployed are directed against all wage earners. This must be made clear. The fairy-tale of the lazy unemployed is told to divide wage earners. But isn’t something rotten in this economic system rather than in the unemployed?

E) The German government tries to lower the so-called non-wage labor costs. Every less percentage point in social spending brings an additional 7.5 billion Euro to capital. Whether the unemployed, children, seniors and the sick live in poverty or not, what counts is the prospect for profit. The fairy-tale of the responsibility of the childless is told to market lowering pensions to the poverty level. Seniors and the young should be at war with one another. Still the problem is with capital itself. Capital dismisses more and more seniors into annuity and simultaneously denies adequate jobs to the young rising generation.

F) The budget holes of social security are caused by the logic of capital exploitation. The profits and assets of the owners of capital must be used to close them. This is our agenda. Whoever causes the problems should pay for them. Nevertheless the SPD, the Greens and the CDU/CSU have given 50 billion Euro in corporation taxes to corporations since 2001. They throw more money to the top-earners, 6 billion Euro in income tax. For example the board of directors of the Deutsche Bank receive at least 20,000 Euro more a month. Everything is naturally done to promote domestic demand and growth. The unemployed are told brutally: no benefits without return favors. The opposite is true for capital. There is no kind of return favor for dozens of billions in tax relief. According to the statistics of the Ifo-Institute, the tax gifts of the tax reform flow to foreign countries since capital gains greater profits there. The reductions of the capital gains tax must be cancelled. Or should we all renounce so others can increase their capital investments?

G) Workers and employees have made possible the whole wealth. But when they make legitimate claims, they are told: there is no money. Persons who gained billions on the stock market, made windy unreliable investments in the sand or moved them abroad say this. The persons who first empty the treasuries and then protest with an air of innocence say this: the chests are empty. Capital doesn’t know any social responsibility. Working people should not leave their fate to capital any longer. They should take responsibility for themselves in their own hands. There is no alternative.

H) Full employment is promised us. We need only agree with drastic wage cuts. Wages and non-wage labor costs should fall until the last worker commodity finds a buyer. “The market for the commodity labor isn’t different from the market for apples,” according to the director of the Ifo-Institute, Prof. Sinn. We don’t want to stand on the same level with apples. How nonsensical! Besides wage cuts, capital uses the technological revolution to make more and more people superfluous. The social wealth will increase in the future. Shouldn’t we stand up so our wages and living standard do not fall to the bottom? There is no alternative to blocking this fall. The promised full employment will never be realized. Social cuts will make impossible the lasting security of the social state. Wage cuts and social cuts are not our agenda.

I) Capital promises us prosperity if we step up our international competitiveness. This competitiveness will increase in all countries through wage cuts, longer working hours and cuts in pensions. The spiral turns downward. Ruining the workers of other countries is not the way to the promised enhancement of our future prosperity. We do not want this. We want international solidarity, not international wage dumping.

J) Agenda 2010 is the greatest attack on the living standards of workers and employees in post-war history. Even stronger attacks will follow. The DGB German union managers are not responding with a nationwide demonstration. Unions organized general strikes in France, Austria and Italy. The DGB leadership is not internationally competitive. For this leadership, partnership with capital and camaraderie with the SPD-Greens has priority before the interests of paid workers. This is not our priority. Everyone who wants to resist must unite more strongly in alliances all over Germany. This is urgently necessary. These alliances must address everyone whether unemployed or employed, in annuity or in training. They must be targeted internationally against capital.

A jolt through Germany is necessary. Today’s demonstration is an encouraging beginning.