Come to the nationwide demonstration in Berlin on May 16 – Active resistance against shifting the burdens of the crisis on the blue- and white-collar workers

The pompous crisis management of the capitalist organizations and the governement has failed. For months the capitalist world economic crisis has been played down and the workers were told that the government had come to grips with it. There was just a small difficult path ahead. Short-time work, time accounts and taking off overtime hours would suffice to tide over the problem. But “tiding over” is not working any longer. The economic crisis is deepening and is threatening the livelihood of millions of people.

Since the end of April the mood is changing toward the struggle against the government and against shifting the burdens of the crisis on the people. At Conti in Hannover, French and German workers demonstrated together against factory closures; at Mahle and ThyssenKrupp the workforces organized group-wide strikes and days of action; the employees of Federal Mogul in Wiesbaden went on strike with no time limit, blocking the gates against annihilation of jobs. On the first of May in many cities young people were in the forefront of the struggle for getting regular jobs after training and in the criticism of capitalism.

Suddenly the term „social unrest“ is used everywhere. A term that should be questioned, because it assumes that up to now we've been living in „social peace“. But before the crisis, there was already an unofficial war of the monopoly organizations and the government against the working class and the broad masses. In the crisis it takes on a dimension not yet known and it becomes apparent.

• hundreds of billions of euros in guarantees and subsidies are being pumped into the groups and banks. The people are being appeased with one single payment of allowance for children or a tiny increase in pensions. Who will be paying for the gigantic state debts in the end is obvious. There is a saying: „The bill comes after the elections“.

• Hundreds of thousands of agency workers, colleagues with limited term contracts were dismissed just like that, mini jobs were ended and apprentices were not taken into regular work. Are these second class people, who don't count at all anyway?

• With short-time work it’s the workers who have the losses in wages. After six months of short-time work the companies already don’t have to pay social benefits any more. The costs of short- time work are shifted completely to the employees and the social insurances, only to be filled up again by the workers.

• Short-time work is a pre-stage of mass dismissals. This is shown by the development at Thyssen Krupp and Schaeffler/Continental, Opel and in many firms. Contracts in the firms with guarantees „no dismissals for economic reasons“ are declared null and void from one minute to the next. ThyssenKrupp wants to dismantle 2000 jobs, Schaeffler 5000, 17 car suppliers with more than 1 000 employees have declared insolvency and for the automotive industry alone they are talking about the destruction of 30 percent of the worksites. Not counted are the unemployed in the small firms which have already gone bankrupt.

• Since April the government is no longer talking about „avoiding dismissals“. According to their own assessments, the crisis will last at least until 2013. Nobody believes that this will be possible without mass dismissals.

• Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble demand a change in the constitution, making it possible to deploy the federal army inside the country and against workers' struggles. National crisis headquarters have been installed against the feared „social unrest“.

• It is a fatal error when the right-wing trade union leadership is giving in to the blackmailing of the bosses of the big firms and capitalists who are threatening with insolvency and is taking over the slogan „come out of the crisis as a winner“.

1. The new insolvency law was passed by the SPD/Green-government in 1999 and provides for the loss of all rights of the workers on tariffs and other rights. Since then the insolvency is a means of struggle on the part of the management of the big firms to annihilate acquired rights in one blow.

2. The wages of the workers have nothing to do with problems of the firms with their loans nor are they the reason for the crisis. The crisis is based on the problem that the banks and big companies have accumulated such a huge amount of capital out of the exploitation of the workers that they cannot invest it at a maximum profit rate. And: while the banks get billions from the state budget, they use their power to blackmail firms with the refusal of loans and to force them to intensify the exploitation of their workforce in order to gain the highest possible yields.

3. Sacrifice doesn't save jobs.This is shown by all the experiences of the workers' movement, whether at Siemens/BenQ in Kamp-Lintfort, AEG in Nuremberg or Nokia in Bochum. If you give the blackmailing of the big companies and the banks the small finger they want the whole hand!

4. The slogan „come out of the crisis as a winner“ is aimed at driving the workforces into a competition for the lowest wages and the worst working conitions. It is a direct betrayal of the international workers' movement, when right-wing union leaders are not ashamed of going with this fatal downward spiral and splitting the workforces.

Why should we take regard for this outdated capitalist system? Let's make our own calculation. Workers of all countries, unite !

Let's give a signal on May 16th: Put an end to the politics of class cooperation on the backs of the blue- and white-collar workers and at the cost of the youth ! Develop active mass resistance for the defence of social rights and for every job and apprenticeship and connect it with offensive forms of struggle and offensive demands:

• Instead of dismissals and short-time work – for the 30-hour workweek with full wage compensation. Give regular and unlimited jobs to young people completing training and a 10 percent quota of trainees in big industry.

• Down with the pension at the age of 67 – Lowering of retirement age to 60 for men and 55 for women with full pension compensation.

• Down with Hartz IV! Full payment of social-security contributions through the capitalists by a tax on turnover.

• For a full legal right to strike in all matters!

• Put an end to the crisis chaos – Foreward to genuine socialsim !

Meeting point of the rebellious youth – Whitsun Youth Meeting 2009

The youth - especially the working class youth - are hit by the world economic crisis the hardest. 25 per cent of all firms want to train fewer young people than last year. 60 per cent of the male and female workers under 30 years of age are agency workers, in short- time jobs or mini-jobs or unemployed.

The 14. International Whitsun Youth Meeting in 2009 is taking place in the situation of the world economic crisis. Here all those meet who want a future different from the one capitalism has to offer.

Two days of information, exchange, international solidarity, culture, bands, music, sports, games, education, culinary specialities, new friends – non-party-aligned and self-organized.

All necessary information at „www.pfingstjugendtreffen.de“

Bank of Commerce against MLPD

On the instructions of the management of the Commerzbank the private account of Stefan Engel, chairman of the MLPD, was terminated without given reasons! Since 2005, over 20 banks in Germany have refused credits or loans, for instance for refinishing buildings – despite solid finances of the MLPD. This bank boykott, which is unconstitutional, is even extended to the private finances of the party chairman.

Is that how they want to silence the sharpest critics of capitalist mismangement?

As a consequence of fascism it was laid down in the constitution, that no one could be denied a bank account because of his political opinion, his race or conviction. The chairman of the board of the Bank of Commerce, Klaus-Peter Müller, – until midst of March also chairman of the German bank federation – apparently thinks he can ignore that. Make this illegal boykott known in public and protest at the Bank of Commerce.

Donate to the MLPD’s election campaign !

Focus on human interests ?

The DGB (German Federation of Trade Unions) in its appeal for the demonstration of May 16 in Berlin demands: „Politics at last have to provide for the people being in the focus again.“ A policy where the people again are in the center ? What policies are they talking about: The Agenda 2010 politics of Schröder/Fischer? The social dismantling of Helmut Kohl ? The atomic armament of Helmut Schmidt? The emergency laws of Willy Brandt, the reactionary politics of Konrad Adenauer, fascism ?

Hopeful beginnings of such politics existed after World War II in the GDR. But even there the socialist construction was suffocated following the restoration of capitalism in the 1950s. In capitalism maximum profit was and is always in the center. Whoever wants a society where the people are in the centre cannot go backwards! He must go forward to a revolutionary change in society. Towards genuine socialism!

The „left“ dream of of the democratic control of the banks

Finally it has been done ! The federal government starts with “Taking over banks and big corporations into public ownership under democratic control“. This is an old demand of the DKP, Left Party and ATTAC. For the beginning, the HRE(Hypo-Real-Estate-Bank) is taken under the guard of the state with the consent of the federal parliament. The taxpayer has to shoulder the billions of losses. At the same time „Bad Banks“ are to move billions of foul credits of the needy banks into public ownership. The banks by that are able to color their balance-sheets, push the quotation of the shares upwards and get the merry-go-round of speculation going again. If that is not a success to be cheered at !

Maybe those who call for transferring things into „public ownership“ better should have read Karl Marx and Frederick Engels instead. 130 years ago he already declared: „The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.“ (Marx-Engels, Coll. Works, vol.25, ps.254-270)

What is the difference between the behavior of the state banks from that of the private banks ? What is the difference between state controlled managers like Hartmut Mehdorn and Klaus Zumwinkel and private managers like Josef Ackermann and Gerhard Cromme? Weren't the state banks the first ones which got into trouble because of their speculations?

Whoever wants to put up the question of the state seriously, has to put up the question of power. Is this a capitalist state that is based on the systematic plundering of the big majority of the population to the advantage of a few super-rich and defends these?

Or is it a state that is going to the root of all evil and abolishing capitalist relations of exploitation - a dictatorship of the proletariat as real democracy for the broad masses under the guidance of the proletariat against all exploiters who want to restore the dictatorship of the monopolies ?

The MLPD - workers' party of a new type

The MLPD is working in over 400 cities and towns in Germany, for almost 5 years it has been a part of the Monday demonstrations "Down with Hartz IV" and is taking part in many self-organized workers' struggles and offers its know-how.

The MLPD puts its campaign for the federal elections 2009 completely into the service of the struggle against laying the burden of the crisis on the masses. It promotes a mass-discussion about the socialist alternative.

In the voter initiative groups anybody can cooperate according to his/her abilities, check the MLPD and its members and candidates and learn to take a stand for his own interests. The MLPD is a genuine workers' party - three quarters of its members are themselves workers or ordinary employees and 40% are working in giant firms. The percentage of women is 42 per cent.

Support and check the MLPD or become a member.

Where does the world economic crisis come from ?

For years it was a taboo to talk about "capitalism" in Germany. Now even the chairman of the Federation of German Industry, Hans-Peter Keitel, takes this outlawed word into his mouth.

For the financial and world economic crisis he quickly had an explanation at hand: "The casino should not be reopened and play with even more money than before because there is more state money on the table," he declared on April 24^th at the G8-summit in Italy.

If things were that simple, you would just have to make a few reforms within the framework of capitalism, could exchange the bankers that are too extreme or introduce strict rules which everyone would have to follow.

The MLPD is rather sticking to Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism. He prooved, that economic crises are the necessary consequence of the capitalist mode of production and will only disappear after this mode is replaced by the socialist mode of production.

At present we are faced with the deepest crisis capitalism has gone through in its 200 years of existence. The MLPD has done research on this which will appear in short as a supplement to its weekly newspaper „Rote Fahne“ and as a brochure. Title: „Bourgeois political economy before its ruins – Some additions to the Marxist-Leninist crisis theory of the MLPD.“ It is mainly about the new questions which are put by the current crisis and is arguing with the failure of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois crisis theories and practices.

It will be available starting May 22 everywhere from the MLPD or verlag@neuerweg.de

Fascists, deadly enemies of the workers' movement

More and more openly the fascists are aiming their attacks against union-members, left forces and revolutionaries. Provocative Nazi-marches on May 1^st in Ulm and Mainz were successfully prevented. In Dortmund 3000 fascists insidiously attacked the DGB demonstrators. It shows the real face of the fascists as brutal enemies of the workers' movement. On the background of the world economic crisis, those in rule are afraid of an upswing of workers' struggles. For that they need the fascists as an assault troop against the workers' movement.

Fight it from the beginning !

Ban all fascist organizations and their propaganda !