Belgium’s Social Revolt
Tens of Thousands Rally Against Austerity and Rearmament Policies
For the 15th time in 18 months, tens of thousands of people demonstrated against reforms proposed by Belgium’s Arizona government seeking to reduce pension rights, introduce harsher working conditions, and cut social budgets to finance war and armament. On 12 May, “75,000 people filled the streets of Brussels: workers from the public and private sector, metalworkers, caregivers, teachers, public service employees, NGOs, cultural workers, youth, feminist, democratic and peace movements,” stated the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA).
“What is disputed today is not just one measure or the other,” the party added. “This is about the whole Arizona project: a model where the rights of the working class are sacrificed to give gifts to the ultra-rich and free up more and more millions for war. To this model, we oppose another choice: social justice, respect for work, solidarity and peace.”
Since coming to power, the current administration has proposed numerous measures that trade unions and progressive forces warn would harm the quality of life and working conditions of thousands of people. Among other things, the De Wever-Bouchez government pursued an increase to retirement age, penalties for workers retiring earlier than expected, and reducing protections for night work. Thanks to continuous popular mobilization, it was forced to backtrack on many of these measures—the pension reform, for one, has been postponed again recently.
“The backbone of our society has been pushing back against this government for 18 months now—and with success,” wrote Peter Mertens, PTB-PVDA General Secretary, on the day of the demonstration. “People are rediscovering their collective power. That is something you cannot undo.”
On Tuesday, he added, people were back on the streets “with a clear message to the government: nobody wants the pension reform, nobody wants the policy of working longer for less pension, nobody wants the pension penalty. Nobody wants exploding energy bills while billions flow to weapons and oil multinationals line their pockets.”
In addition to the country’s largest trade union organizations, FGTB-ABVV and ACV-CSC, mobilizations were joined by blocs from all parts of society. “Today we were at the national demonstration to demand an immediate end to measures that are making life even harder for those in the most vulnerable situations,” social services and health centers’ federations reported, echoing growing concerns about income levels and the cost of living crisis in Belgium. “Social services are facing ever-increasing demand under increasingly difficult conditions. This is unsustainable.”
Others pointed out that the erosion of workers’ rights in Belgium came hand in hand with falling possibilities of supporting popular struggles around the world. The organization Viva Salud, working in international health solidarity, wrote: “While the Arizona government is hitting people here with its attacks on our pensions, people elsewhere in the world are also suffering the consequences of cuts to international solidarity. In short, the price for this government policy is being paid by everyone, everywhere.”
The mobilization concluded with an appeal to join a new massive protest in Brussels on 14 June, focusing on resistance to European rearmament and war policies.
“Together, we’ve already forced the government to back down on several crucial issues, such as pensions and end-of-career provisions,” FGTB-ABVV wrote. “Together, we continue to make our voices heard. Together, we continue the fight. Because action pays off.”
 | A guest post by
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Imagine the healing of a world that will come from the leadership of a country that recognizes and abandons the ages long conceptual error of attempting to attach the features of a fungible commodity to their 'unit of measure' in their production and exchange and record keeping about 'value.' The leadership of every country must have its sights on what the Real Value is: the resources and labor and innovation and creativity and capacity of its land and people.
But can that full capacity manifest when the means by which the bookkeeping about their own economic activity holds an abstract Unit of AcCount - Money - to also BE an item of value akin to and/or equal, even superior, to the very natural resources of the land?
When we stopped using fungible physical commodities as 'trade goods' and moved to bookkeeping about the value contained in the goods and services of our interchange, we mistakenly and foolishly and illiterately assigned "value" to the number units themselves using symbols ($, etc.) as though those units were still commodities that had just lost their physical form.
The very conceptual subjugation of the full capacity of a society to an illiterate preoccupation with the preliminary acquisition of an abstract acCouting unit is a mistake of monumental proportions that even the best intentions cannot overcome while not correcting it. The 'inherited or imposed illiteracy' that surrounds money itself cannot be cured by holding the actors in this melodrama accountable for their actions within the illiterate paradigm. You see, one first has to think of, or be forced at gunpoint to accept, that money is an item of value that can also perform the function of 'unit measure of value.' But those two are mutually exclusive. The function called 'measure' is not sensible or reliable if the unit is constantly in flux and self-referential. That is the core illiteracy about money in the 'educated' class of the present day.
The 'reality transformation' that first occurs is the assumption that abstract units of representation possess the same characteristics of their predecessor trade goods and that some magical entity has the power to 'create' the abstract units of representation representing nothing but themselves!
But 'Money creation', from nothing and yet turned into a thing of 'value' - Poof! - is NOT a power that anyone actually has, not anyone, not any government, not any bank.
The first premise most people willingly go along with is the absolute illiteracy and illegitimacy of there being these so called "financial powers." WE ALL are the ones accepting the nonsense that the origination of the monetary unit is a magical process of 'creation' by some magical monetary power within government or banking. And we accept that this whole process must precede and subjugates economic activity of genuine value. And we accept this nonsense because we think that the monetary unit is an actual item of 'value'. It is NOT.
So, when the leadership of a society truly is motivated to establish "inclusive and sovereign endogenous development” it must realize that the present system and conceptual basis of money itself cannot assist but only interfere with this effort.
But won't it be amazing for a society's leadership to abandon this age old problem and correct the conceptual error by calling the world to genuine liberation through the establishment of a genuinely Logical and Mathematically Literate System of The Abstract Representation Of Value !?
Here are the Resolutions that can be presented in every jurisdiction that will call the world to correction of the conceptual error. https://www.moneytransparency.com/msta-resolutions
Remaining within the framework of the conceptual error leaves people thinking that they must contend with others in ways that can only bring more and greater cycles of conflict.
We cannot keep accepting self-declared 'authority' on the part of the "issuer" of the numbers we use to do the bookkeeping about our own activity. Nor can we accept that the numbers on the ledger (or the coins of the realm that came before) are items of value all by themselves.
Yet, most all are going along with this.
Money is not a resource at all. That is the core illiteracy that people struggle with. Holding back genuine economic activity waiting for the abstract units to record that activity is like waiting for some of the inches to be available so that you can measure the boards to build something. And the unit of money is itself an absurdity in the field of Applied Math. How can one make sense of equations using a term that is undefined and unstable?
https://bibocurrency.com/index.php/downloads-2/19-english-root/learn/292-risk-without-austerity-fallacy
Hi Ana,
You say 'Belgium’s Arizona government'. Is Arizona the name of a political party or the Capital of the Govt?
Asking from Australia, where we have a similar economic system of stagnant wages for the workers and tax cuts for the wealthy.