Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-14-Speech-4-140"
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"en.20020314.6.4-140"2
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".
The ‘steel crisis’ is proof most positive of the shortcomings of the market economy and neo-liberal system which the USA and the European Union are determined to impose on the world. It demonstrates yet again that the capitalist system is in too deep a state of crisis to respond to any measures to manage it, even the World Trade Organisation's ‘rules of good conduct’ for free trade and free competition. The United States has no hesitation in violating any agreements made in order to defend their interests.
This crisis has once again brought the antagonism within the international imperialist system and the more general conflict between the centres of imperialism vying for hegemony to the surface. The American imperialist system has no hesitation in taking measures which hit the economy of the European imperialist system and the European imperialist system has no hesitation in hitting back, despite its amazing willingness to tread the same path and vie for its share of the spoils of military opportunism. The demands of the American trades union have clearly been used as a pretext for the decision by the Bush administration to impose customs tariffs, a decision taken on the back of the more general crisis to hit the capitalist economy after the worst year's international trading for 25 years and after a fall of 38% in American steel imports over the last three years.
The workers stand to gain nothing from this wrangling. In the end, American workers will not escape restructuring and unemployment and European workers will not ward off the spectre of redundancies by running to the WTO. What the USA and the ΕU are doing their best to save are the profits of the steel industries. But even if they manage to limit the fallout from the present crisis, another one will be along shortly. This is typical of social systems which have long run out of anything to offer society, and capitalism is one such system. The only way out is to overturn it, however difficult that may seem under present circumstances. Crises like the steel crisis bring new opportunities for action by the working classes; they can be used to rally the workers and they lay bare the ugly face of capitalism.
The European Parliament resolution only skims the surface of the problem and tries to deal with it within liberalist parameters. It is interesting that the European Parliament resolution accuses the United States of failing to restructure the steel industry promptly, as the European Union did. In other words, it accuses it of failing to close enough companies and make enough workers redundant unlike, for example, the Greek steel industry. That is why the MEPs of the Communist Party of Europe voted against the resolution."@en1
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