January 16th, 2015
GREECE
To contain the constant assaults of the masses and to try to reinstate the institutions of the badly damaged Greek regime under the tutelage of the counterrevolutionary Troika of bankers and the finance oligarchy, president Papoulias, the commander in chief of Greek Armed Forces, anticipates the parliamentary elections...
With a class-collaboration government, Syriza arrives in order to save the bankrupted imperialist bourgeois regime and to divert the masses from the path of revolution
Down with the electoral trap! Out with Papoulias! Down with Maastricth!
Out with the Troika of Obama, Merkel, Goldman Sachs, the European Union and the IMF!
The "Greece from below" must rise!
The true power of the working class must rise up!
Open the road for the committees of employed and unemployed workers, poor peasants and tenants! Open the road for the solider committees!
National Congress of employed and unemployed workers, militant youth and the rank and file soldier committees!
Expel the bureaucracy from our organizations and unions! Prepare the revolutionary general strike! Defeat the capitalist's government attack! Conquer a true Emergency Workers Plan!
To get bread, housing, health, education, defeat the attack of Troika, defend the workers gains and get decent work for all...
EXPROPRIATE THE BANKERS AND THE TRANSNATIONAL COMPANIES!
FOR A PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT OF THE WORKER AND SOLDIER COUNCILS!
For a socialist worker Greece, for it to be a bastion of the revolution in the entire Europe together with the worker and soldier councils of Ukrainian Donbass!
From Portugal to the Russian steppes,
For the Socialist United States of Europe!
The bankruptcy of Greece gets deeper and deeper. The capitalists, Troika's regime and the transnational companies have thrown the entire burden of the crisis over the working class and the exploited masses. And they need to do it even more. The constant assaults by the masses against such an attack have left all the institutions of the Greek regime and government completely discredited. A revolutionary situation in Greece is getting deeper. Greece has become the weakest link of the imperialist chain of domination.
In the midst of the world economic crisis opened in 2008, Europe was driven into economic stagnation, plunging the minor imperialist powers such as Greece, which was dislocated from the world division of labour and bears a usurious foreign debt of more than 175% of its GDP (near to 322 billion euros).
Unemployment is almost 26% and affects especially the working youth and the ruined middle classes. The Greek masses are paying the debt to the bankers of Maastricht's Europe and the IMF with tax hikes, cuts in pensions and the health public service, eviction of thousands of workers, thousands of exploited eating from the garbage, tens of political prisoners, attacks on the workers organizations and cruel police suppression in every demonstration.
Nevertheless, the Greek exploited have waged huge battles against the capitalist's attack. If they couldn't take over power throughout a victorious revolution it was not due to the lack of predisposition to fight but due to the leadership they had at their head. The latter prevented the former to set up the dual power organs (i.e. the worker and soldier councils) and the workers militia for smashing fascism, defeating Troika's regime and demolishing each one of the institutions of the murderous state.
Since 2008, the Greek working class has staged huge revolutionary struggles, with 32 general strikes that paralyzed the country and won over sectors from the rank and file of the army who have put in place their rank and file soldier committees. This way, the Greek working class has responded to each of the traps of the "democratic sectors" and to the attacks of the fascist "Golden Dawn" that tried to smash it. Thus the Greek exploited have left each one of the institutions of the infamous bourgeois regime completely discredited.
This road of mass political fight had new days of actions and got deeper in September and October 2014, before the enforcement of last part of the "rescue plans" of the Troika. The masses expressed their rage stressing and showing their forces through their strikes, picket lines and barricades. Greek proletarians and the combative youth fought to the cry of “Out with the Troika!” and “The government must go away!”
Taking over schools, demonstrations by civil servants, health and education workers, and a impressive general strike that November 27 put 40,000 workers on the streets of the major cities of Greece, the masses gave a new step forward in their fight against new “austerity” schemes
Days later, the demand of freedom for Nikos Romanos (young anarchist jailed for fighting) unified in a single claim all the demands of the exploited masses and the poor people, deepening the political crisis opened by the crac, the recession and the collapse of the Greek economy. This was happening at a time when soldier committees threatened to enter the fight would something happen with the life of Nikos and in support of the struggle of the whole of the exploited against poverty and slavery.
The exploited of all over Greece, especially the more seasoned combative youth, staged huge days of fighting during the weekend of December 6 and the early morning of 7 (date of the anniversary of the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, the 15 year old boy who was murdered with three shots by the police of the murderous Greek State in 2008). Combatting in barricades, with occupations of schools and universities, looking for forging international solidarity between worker organizations and the fighters, in solidarity with the Syrian refugees camped at the gates of Parliament for demanding legal rights, Greek combative youth fought for the freedom of political prisoners.
The continuous waves of political struggle of the masses left the regime of the Troika mortally wounded and the Government and the bosses’ parties without any legitimacy to pass the austerity plans to the service of the bankers
Yet, there was no “sweetening” for the "trimming" –such as reformist currents of the World Social Forum, like Syriza in Greece, had promised- which retarded the assault of capitalists and their Governments against the masses. The economic struggle, as a method of pressure on the Greek Parliament, exposed itself as helpless when it came to meeting the needs and demands of the masses. As well as the promise of fighting against fascism by relying on Greek courts and judges, could not stop the fascist pogroms against immigrant workers, or the fierce raids and police repressions against the exploited.
work, salary, housing and health... without defeating the Government of Papoulias, his regime servile to the Troika and the whole of the capitalists and moreover, without crushing the fascists.
In Greece, we are in the presence of an open revolutionary situation, where, as Lenin used to say in “The bankruptcy of the 2nd. International” (1915) the distinctive symptoms are:
“(1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time”, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the “upper classes” themselves into independent historical action”. (The Collapse of the Second International, Chapter 2)
The bankruptcy of Maastricht and of Greek finance capital in particular imposed "an aggravation, more than the usual" of all hardships of the masses; the latter are full of boiling hate. A demonstration of this was the sayings of Samaras, the Prime Minister, who - demonstrating the awe caused to Greek bourgeoisie by the struggle of the masses - warned the regime of the Troika that the application of the last section of the "rescue" plans would sink Greece into a new "social explosion".
In multiple independent actions, tracing a 180 ° angle from the treacherous politics of reformist and Union political leaderships that submitted them to partial and pressure struggles to influence the puppet Parliament, the masses weakened the bourgeois regime by delegitimizing its institutions and leaving the ND and Pasok Government completely discredited.
The two-party regime fell that was supported by new democracy, PASOK and its President Papoulias, the Commander in Chief of the armed forces at the service of the Troika, which had tried to strangle the struggle of the masses and impose them to pay for all the costs of the crisis. None of the institutions of the bourgeois State has any legitimacy to govern.
That is why the call to early elections this January 25, means the emerging of a new trap against the exploited, orchestrated by the Greek, US and European financial capital together which need a class collaborationist government with the "anti-capitalist" bunch of Syriza in order to save from death a seriously wounded regime, prevent the working and popular masses make of power and pass the attack of the Troika and the IMF.
Appealing to Syriza is not the best scenario for the bourgeoisie. Not because what their social-imperialist politicians do but for the danger which it means for the capitalists, their State and their property: the masses may consider this as their Government and begin to press it to meet its promises; a question that would make it a weak, unstable Government and one besieged by the exploited. Stability or otherwise of this Government and whether Syriza is able to re-legitimize the institutions of the State and save the capitalist parasites from the beginning of the socialist revolution in imperialist Europe: that still remains to be seen.
Before the hatred of the masses, the Government of Papoulias called early elections...
With Syriza they have prepared a Popular Front Government, to save the Greek bourgeois regime and divert the masses out of their struggle for revolution and the seizure of power
In these conditions parliamentary elections are anticipated for January 25, 2015, after the failure of all three presidential polls, also called in "advance", on 17, 23 and 29 December 2014. In these three failed attempts to choose a President, the only candidate presented, the conservative Stravos Dimas (ND) failed to achieve in the Parliament the 180 votes, the minimum needed to be elected. Thus, according to the Greek Constitution, this forces the President to dissolve the Parliament and call the citizens to vote for the 300 members that compose it so that a new Parliament can choose the next President. The aim of this new trap against the exploited is to prevent the complete opening of the revolutionary crisis and that this results in a power vacuum… bringing in the scenario of a Papoulias "fleeing by helicopter" like, for example, Argentina’s President De la Rua in 2001.
To do this, imperialist finance capital has put all its stakes on the whole forces of reformism and the popular front, to disorganize the masses, and in particular the left wing of the Greek proletariat. With this election the bourgeoisie will put at their head a Government of Syriza (which all polls put as the most possible winner of the contest), who will take charge of deceiving the masses, by lulling them and legitimizing the rotten institutions of domination of the Troika. The Government of Syriza will have to impose on the exploited masses worse still austerity plans. Therefore, if this Government is unable to turn off the revolutionary energies of the Greek labor movement and exploited, the Troika regime will prepare a future blood bath against the exploited with the breed of murderous army officers and the fascists of "Golden Dawn". In any case, a Government of Syriza will not be more than a simple detour that prepares the coming of fascism.
Syriza - which has 71 parliamentarians since 2012 - is today at the head of the electoral surveys with approximately 30.4% of the voters, followed by ND with 27.3%, To Potami (a new "Social Democratic Party") with 7.1% and the Golden Dawn fascist party with 6.8%.
The bourgeois media dress up Syriza as a "so-called demon". But this is plainly a vile deception and the demonstration of the cynicism of the bourgeoisie. They don’t at all fear Syriza coming with its deceiving left wording, as it comes to serve as a manager of all businesses of the big capitalists and bankers, and to guarantee the payment of the debt to the IMF. They will voluntarily allow Syriza to take the Government because it is the only institution with legitimacy to rule in Greece.
Its aim is to flirt with the exploited masses, sell cheap demagogy, disrupting the former’s ranks and annihilating the alliance of workers and the people to leave the proletariat with tied hands, subjected to the bourgeoisie and its businesses. And first of all to preserve and legitimize the caste of murderous officers in Greece - under the command of the NATO-which are responsible for protecting and safeguarding private property of the whole of the imperialist bourgeoisie. That’s why Alexis Tsypras on his tour at the beginning of 2013 across Latin America said: "I think that many things have been changing since the 1960s (...) (the time of the Greek colonels’ coup de etat and dictatorship, NT). And I think that our army officers respect and will respect democracy, I am sure of that."
For this reason we can not support this Government. The Greek exploited need to know about the tragic experience of Spain in the 1930s; the Fourth international at that time warned - with good reasons- that
“The government Stalin-Caballero (popular front governmet)’ was trying to turn the army into ‘the democratic guardian of private property. This is in escence the popular front. It was because it defended property that the Popular Front prepared the triumph of fascism”. (Leon Trotsky, ‘Is victory possible?, 1937, www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/broue/works/1967/04/trotsky-spanish-revolution.htm)
For this reason we cannot support this Government. The Greek exploited need to know about the tragic experience of Spain in the 1930s; the Fourth international at that time warned - with good reasons- that “the coalition with the bourgeoisie under the slogan of Popular Front (of those years, N.Ed.), the participation in the Popular front Government, the political support to a government of this kind, giving up the independent agitation and the organization for the revolutionary overthrowing of the bourgoise government, cannot in the best cases, but to extent the agony of the bourgoies democracy and make easier the success of fascism”.
Leon Trotsky, Answer to Questions Concerning the Spanish Situation, Translation ours.
Apart from any differences that may exist between the situation in Spain and the current situation in Greece; what remains clear is that nothing good will come to the exploited from a Government in which the parties claiming to defend the working class are allied with the representatives of banks and multinational corporations.
Syriza and the social-imperialist left: neither "radical" nor "anti-capitalist", they are new 'left' managers for the imperialist bourgeois regime
Syriza’s proposal for "debt renegotiation": to let a bad debt become a collectible one to benefit the international financial capital at the expense of the hunger of Greek people
The leadership of Syriza (which already has 71 representatives in the Greek Parliament and not a single "Act for the exploited") claim that if they reach the Government with a majority, they will propose to negotiate with the Troika a reduction of 50 billion euros from the second rescue. What "anti-capitalism" do these people speak about? They propose the negotiation of a miserable sum when the Greek debt currently reaches more than 175% of GDP (€321.700 according to the latest data published for 2015). Usurious 240 billion have been imposed on the Greece sunk in the crisis only by rescue plans!
Let's say the truth. What Syriza proposes to the European Union is to transform a bad debt in a collectible one. Since with its renegotiation of removing 50 billion euros, not only Syriza will cancel the debt, but it will do so on a higher scale due to the predatory interests. And all this merrymaking for financial capital will be made with workers’ blood, sweat and tears.
The same as the Bolivarian Governments of the likes of Venezuelan Chávez, Bolivian Evo Morales and the Kirchners in Argentina, Tsipras will guarantee the profits of the banking imperialist pawnbroker at the expense of the exploited masses and the poor people, at the expense of wages of misery as in Latin America that do not exceed 200 - 400 dollars, with the surrender of the Nations to imperialism. And it will need to guarantee that as the Bolivarians have done, by attacking workers as the sentences to life imprisonment to the comuneros of Ayo Ayo in Bolivia or the oil workers of Las Heras in the South of Argentina, with massacres and repression as in Mexico, with 7 military bases as in Colombia.
This is the plan of Syriza supported by the entire world left, the same one applied by their Bolivarian friends, who are depicted as "an example for emerging from the crisis". Their model are these minions of Obama and Wall Street that have sunk in misery and deepened the looting and the delivery to the imperialism of all Latin America in a worse manner than their 'neo-liberal' predecessors of the ' 90s. All of them are lackeys to imperialism!
No doubt that this practice of parties with many members of Parliament, which is used in Greece to contain the revolutionary mass struggle, will be also implemented in other European countries. So they are preparing PODEMOS in Spain, friends of the Bourbons and enemies of those "Outraged" youth who just a few years ago were fighting for the "Republic" in the Plaza del Sol in Madrid. Both examples, Syriza and PODEMOS, are sustained, supported and in some cases integrated by social-imperialist currents as the SWP (England) and the NPA (France), among others.
These currents are the same as those now kneeling before their masters in the French Fifth Republic, or before Merkel and the British Crown and the Spanish monarchy crying "democracy" and "freedom of expression" before the events of the last few weeks in France, while accusing of being tribes and barbaric peoples the heroic masses that rise up in the Maghreb and the Middle East. They are the same ones who slandered yesterday the rebel heroic masses of Libya telling the exploited of the world that they were "ground troops of NATO"; they are the same currents that have isolated the miners of Asturias and their cry: "if our children are hungry yours will shed blood," leaving them at the mercy of the bureaucracy of the UGT and the CCOO. Their true role is to prevent the beginning a “Prague spring", an "Italian hot autumn" or a French May", i.e. the advent of the socialist revolution within an imperialist power.
The world working class must raise its guard and not cede one iota to the siren song of the Popular Front and the policy of reconciliation of classes driven by this social-imperialist left, a friend of Merkel, Obama and Wall Street, and an enemy of the revolution.
Let's break with the bourgeoisie!
That worker organizations break Syriza, left managers of the Troika!
Let's centralize the forces of the exploited!
For a National Congress of employed and unemployed workers, combative youth and rank and file soldiers’ committees!
There have not been shortages of forces or energy by the masses in their combat against the capitalists. What the masses lacked was a leadership at the level of their fight, which could show them the way to victory in the fight for the revolution.
In 2008 anarchists led combative youth to make cultural centers in the union locals of Thessaloniki where workers soured kicks to the bureaucracy of the CP; they thus saved its life to Stalinism, who a few years later broke their head to the combative youth and the exploited that jostled for opening their revolution at the door of the Parliament. Today, thanks to this role of anarchism, the rotten bureaucracy of the PC was saved from the workers’ hate and - without representing anyone — it still holds the leadership of the unions. Down with the trade union bureaucracy!
Parliamentary cretinism about everything being resolved with laws in this "democracy" for the rich as is proclaimed by the social-imperialista left and the thousands of scattered so-called "direct actions" led by anarchists (who have a leg on the streets and the other in "anti-capitalist" left Antarsya) have prevented workers from setting up their self-determination, direct democracy and armament organs to fight against the exploiters and their "rescue plan". They have prevented the working class to take power, while the conditions are more than mature: they are rotting and the bourgeoisie is trying to safeguard its domination at any cost.
When the fascists killed Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013 they moved beyond the balance of power. Combative youth claimed revenge executing two of the murderers of Pavlos and started increasingly violent battles against this force of financial capital in bankruptcy that is "Golden Dawn". This strip of the youth, its more hardened and combative sector does not believes the lies of Syriza’s charlatans. As young Nikos Romanos defined them, these are "merchants of hope".
This, the most combative youth sector, once again is being today capitalized on by the leadership of the anarchist currents, which unfortunately refuse with a "left-wing" wording to organize these true vanguard forces to kick the bureaucracy of the CP off the unions and bring the best combative youth to the path of the fight for the worker and soldier councils, for setting up militias of workers, peasants and poor ruined middle classes of the city and the countryside, to crush the fascist gangs armed and financed by the murderous caste of army officers. Only from this position one can speak seriously about fighting against the austerity plans of the Troika-Obama-Merkel. Fighting against "any power", as Anarchists do, mean: leaving the power in the hands of the enemies of the exploited masses.
The regime of the counter-revolutionary Troika of bankers and the financial oligarchy tries to hide its bankruptcy and weakness behind Syriza’s umbrella. It is necessary to call all labor organizations to break with Syriza, the new left manager of the regime of the Troika. It is necessary to defeat the electoral trap and prepare a counteroffensive of masses which put a brake to the attack of the capitalists and create the conditions for the victory of the exploited of all over Greece.
Let's defeat the electoral trap! Revolutionary General strike!
It is regrettable that the anarchists’ leadership call to "boycott" the election, without a simultaneous call for a revolutionary general strike, without disputing the leadership of the unions to the Greek Communist Party and moreover without striving to build a body of the masses in struggle that calls for the strike. Their "boycott" and cretin anti- parliamentary policy is harmless and will only subtract some votes to Syriza, which will win the election by a wide margin.
What the masses need is to prepare a real political struggle, which goes far beyond this election. It is necessary to organize the power of the exploited that directs and coordinates large mass actions to defeat the bourgeoisie and its new Government. All organizations who call themselves defenders of the working class, as the EEK for example, must put their electoral platform to organize this fight for the revolution and the conquest of power by the masses in struggle. Enough of class-reconciliation policies! It is imperative to demolish the rule of the bourgeoisie and put on that of the workers and the exploited. We must regroup all our class forces. We must impose the rupture of our organizations with the bourgeoisie and their parties and institutions. We must take this path just now.
For that we need to put up bodies of self-determination, direct democracy and arming of the masses in struggle by developing factory councils, plus councils of immigrants, unemployed workers, poor peasants, militant students and tenants and supply committees. They should fight alongside the committees of rank and file soldiers that already exist and vie for entering combat; there and in the working class who has presented battle in each general strike, in the youth who fought on the barricades and confronted fascism, are the forces for setting up the revolutionary leadership that the Greek working class needs and deserves in order to succeed, under the program and the strategy of the 1938 Fourth International.
We must centralize the forces of the whole of the exploited in a COUNCIL OF WORKERS AND RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS whose tasks are the setting up of the worker and peasant militia to crush the fascists, dissolve the police and the whole repressive apparatus of the murderous bourgeois State and organize a REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL STRIKE to confront and defeat the institutions of the bourgeois-imperialist regime in decline, the plans of the Troika and the Government.
THAT THE CAPITALISTS PAY FOR THE CRISIS! EMERGENCY WORKER PLAN!
Decent jobs and wages for everybody! Sliding scale of wages and distribution of working hours among all the available hands so the unemployed can get back to work! Let's conquer full rights for all the workers, starting by giving citizenship to all immigrants! We must be fighting alongside the German workers, to conquer a wage equal to which qualified workers earn in Germany! Plan of public works under control of labor organizations, to put an end to unemployment!
Not to pay the debt! Expropriation without compensation and under workers control of all transnational and all businesses that go shut, or suspend or dismiss workers! Expropriation without compensation and under workers control of all banks, to conquer a single State Bank that allows giving cheap credits to all ruined small tradesmen and small producers! Expropriation without compensation and under workers control of all private hospitals and schools to conquer free and quality healthcare and education!
Free Nikos, Andreas, Yannis and all political prisoners! Workers’ and popular Courts to punish the murderers of Foundas, Alexis, Pavlos and all migrant workers attacked and killed by the murderous police and fascists gangs!
Out with Papoulias!
The Troika of Obama, the Merkel, Goldman Sachs, the European Union and the IMF go out!
The working class, conquering its political independence, needs to make its way towards the revolution PUTTING ON FOOT ITS OWN POWER: PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT OF THE COUNCILS OF WORKERS AND SOLDIERS which is the only one able to guarantee our heartfelt demands, such as decent jobs, wages and housing, end of the unemployment, the freedom of political prisoners and everything that is necessary for a fair and dignified life.
This is the way that the committees of soldiers and Greek combative youth struggle to open, who despite and against the division imposed by the traitors of the European social-imperialist left, take as an example the struggle of the heroic revolutionary masses of Eastern Ukraine with the cry of "Our victory lives in the Donbas!".
There, in its international unity to fight, is the concentrated force of our class. In Belgium and Italy it has fought with the General strike; in Spain, Hungary and the Netherlands it went to the streets to fight for the freedom of political prisoners and against the austerity plans. The European working class is showing that it wants to present battle. It is high time for it to go ahead and concur to the aid of its most exploited sectors, such as the Eastern Ukrainian Donbass workers.
FROM THE DONBAS TO ATHENS, FROM RUSSIA TO PORTUGAL
the workers and their fight organizations need
TO ORGANIZE A CENTRALIZED COMBAT ALL OVER EUROPE!
DOWN WITH THE EUROPE OF MAASTRICHT, THE TROIKA, THE IMF AND ITS ANTI WORKER GOVERNMENTS! DEATH TO CAPITALIST EUROPE! LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOCIALIST UNITED STATES OF EUROPE!
Mara Samoudi and Julián Juarez
