The European summit produced some highflown rhetoric about European unity and some energetic attempts to ensure that little or nothing concrete was done to more in that direction. The bourgeois press has sensibly devoted most of its comment to gossip about the relative technical skills of the different leaders. While Peter Shore, the Labour Party's Europe spokesman, adopted the ridiculous posture of pretending August 1971 as a reply to Nixon's protectionist economic and monetary measures. He no doubt hoped to le: d the European But sinc. then a lot of as Dosed under the es of Europe. The British govern dond the pound thus harming Frenc erman employers, the German bourbie is irritated by Pompidou's attempts do munate the scene, and the European capitals have been involved in a dog-fight as to whether the new secretariat should be in Paris or Brussels.
So the summit was given more modest goals: a public relations spectacular for the Prime Ministers of Europe. To be honest many of them needed it. Brandt is close to an election and requires every percentage point he can get to beat the Christian Democrats. Pompidou himself is close to an election with his party divided and shaken by a whole series of public scandals. And our own Prime Minister is hardly a national hero. Lest there should be any misunderstanding, the organisers announced before hand that nothing much was expected from the conference. THE STAKES The end of the long capitalist boom and increased international competition demands in creased state intervention in the economy. The question of which institutions to rely upon for protection is an increasingly important one for big capital. The alternatives are either to step back from European integration and rely upon national state institutions or to push ahead towards European planning and the creation of a European supra-national power. In the immediate future this contradiction does not appear insurmountable: economic interests push the big capitals towards unity; but political interests divide them. The interpenetration and concentration of capitals, the intensification of international competition would justity the creation of a federal state, with a huge protected internal market. But the countries whose economies are most fragile, such as France and Britain, would thus be deprived of all customs protection. Small capital, which still occupies an important place in France, would thus be exposed to the risk of rapid bankruptcy. Big capital would emerge from integration strengthened economically, but it could lose the allegiance of social layers which may be indispensable to the maintenance of its political power in the face of Pompidou, Heath, and Andreotti of Italy at the summit talks a powerful organised workers' movement. This unresolved conflict prevented any significant steps forward towards a federal ~ state in Paris: neither close monetary union, nor strong industrial unity, nor the strengthening of the central administrative institutions. Between the perspectives of a federal state and a confederation of the states the weight of contradictions still favours the second.
The revolutionary vanguard in Europe will unify itself more easily and quickly than the state machines of the various countries. The international demonstration in Berlin in 1968, the internaional conference in Brussels in 1970, and the international demonstration in Paris for the centenary of the Paris Commune in May 1971 are symbolic landmarks of this unification. Today the Fourth Internaitonal is present in all the European countries. The dismemberment that Stalinism inflicted on the workers movement is drawing to a close. WORKING CLASS The working class itself is pushed on by the inter penetration of capital to internationalist action. In September last, Dutch, Belgian and German workers made the giant trust Akzo submit. The trust exploits 100,000 workers. It had forecast the closing of the factory in Breda, Holland and the sacking of 6,000 employees. On 18 September, these workers stopped work and occupied the factory. This is the first occupation in Holland since 1944!
Thanks to the telex, the occupation committee communicated to the other centres of production the letter that they had just addressed to the management: "From now until a new order, the workers will only accept instructions from the occupation On 20 September, 3000 workers of Akzo at Wuppertal (Germany) replied to the call by going on strike with an occupation. On the 21st Akzo gave way and gave up the idea of sackings. The precedent is also educating others. International solidarity spread during the recent strike at the PK workshop in Michelin. The workers of Hamburg-Saar in Germany and those of Trento in Iraly refused a management request to work overtime to compensate for the strike in Clermont Ferrand. However, the management tried to cover up the strike, pretending a breakdown! The Spanish workers' commissions and the Canadian unions of Michelin have also demonstrated their solidarity.
ONE INTERNATIONAL CLASS RESPONSE Only the workers' movement can give a fundamental answer to the question of Europe's future. Unhappily the Labour Left is so stuffed with chauvinist and Parliamentary illusions that it is incapable of developing any perspective for an international struggle against European capitalism. To Labour's call to "Defend the British Parliament" and Heath's perspective of a European capitalist federation, we must counter-pose the slogan of the Communist International in the early 1920s: "For the United Socialist States of Europe"