Sunday, November 21, 2021

European Communist Initiative: "The price rises in basic goods did not fall from the sky"

In a statement concerning the constant price rises in electricity, fuel and goods of popular consumption, the Secretariat of the Initiative of Communist and Workers' Parties stresses out:

In the recent period an acute rise in prices of different basic goods, including electricity, fuel, and other essential commodities is being registered. This situation, which is particularly worrying when we are on the threshold of winter season, is affecting the working class and the popular strata of our countries, who have been the victims of the bourgeois governments and their management of the recent crisis against the peoples.

The price rises in basic goods are not a surprise or an unwanted consequence of the crisis, did not fall from the sky. It is the intensity of the exploitation itself, the pursuit of maximum profit, the competition, which leads to the increase of the prices of the products, it is the "extensive policy", providing billion of euros in great capital boosting inflation.

They derive from the fact that the energy and the food markets are conceived to satisfy the interests of the capitalists and not the people’s needs. The total liberalization of markets, the so-called "green transition" strategy with the pollutant trade, the “monoculture” of very expensive and unstable RES and the speculation with the basic goods causes high prices and not cheaper ones as the representatives of the interests of capital claim.

This price rise in electricity and fuel is already affecting the production of other goods, which contribute to a general price rise that is deepening the already existing problems of growing poverty and making even more difficult for working class and popular families to meet their basic needs.

At the same time, there is higher risk of confrontations between imperialist powers for the control of the energy sources, markets, and transport channels, coming from the fact that imperialist states and alliances will not remain quiet while the interests of the monopolies that they represent are at risk. In fact, the EU dependence on energy resources coming from third countries has already been pointed out as an “strategic weakness” which will be dealt with through more aggressive actions in the Eastern Mediterranean. The peoples will again be the victims of the imperialist plans.

The EU powers are already using this situation for boosting the “green capitalism” agenda, which in fact means the creation of conditions for new profitable investments promoted by the capitalist states. The huge propaganda campaign for promoting the so called “Green New Deal” does not worry about the people’s interests or the protection of environment, but it is aimed at defending the interests of different sectors of monopoly capital.

Both capitalist crises and profit-driven growth have serious consequences on the working class and popular strata express how unsustainable this system is. There is no future for the benefit of peoples under capitalism.The daily struggle for relief from acute problems is linked to the struggle to satisfy the people’s needs through central scientific planning of the economy based on workers’ power and social ownership of the concentrated means of production.

initiative-cwpe.org