The situation in Greece is growing day
by day, and is moving in the direction of a revolutionary situation.
Starting on Wednesday, 120-150,000 people thronged Syntagma Square and
other central squares in all the main Greek towns. The masses protested
the austerity policies of the government and the brutal aggression of
the European Union against the people of Greece.
The situation in Greece is growing day
by day, and is moving in the direction of a revolutionary situation.
Starting on Wednesday, 120-150,000 people thronged Syntagma Square and
other central squares in all the main Greek towns. The masses protested
the austerity policies of the government and the brutal aggression of
the European Union against the people of Greece.
Democracy in practice, in front of the gates of Parliament, May 28. Photo: Ionnis Poulopoulos.Officials
from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the
European Central Bank are in Athens checking Greece’s fiscal progress.
They are to approve a 12 billion euro aid tranche — the fifth under the
current bailout — and possibly new funding the country needs to avoid
debt default. In return, the EU wants Athens to impose yet more
austerity and reform, including privatizations. This amounts to the
systematic looting of Greece by foreign capitalists.
The 110
billion euro bailout stitched together by the European Union and IMF
last year came with strings attached. Now the bill is being presented to
the people of Greece. Under the terms of the bail-out, Greece was
supposed to go to the financial markets to borrow 24bn Euros in 2012.
However, as Greece has missed its deficit reduction targets, the chances
of it being able to borrow money commercially next year, as originally
planned, are negligible.
A 12bn-euro ($17bn; £10bn) payment is due
to be made to Greece on 29 June, 3.3bn Euros of which should come from
the IMF. This is the fifth tranche of the 110bn-euro loan package from
the EU and IMF and has not yet received final approval. Jean-Claude
Juncker, the prime minister of Luxemburg, warns that IMF rules might
stop it paying because Greece can not guarantee its solvency for the
next year. The IMF was assuming that if it decided not to make the
payment, the EU would step in and make it instead. But this is assuming a
lot. In countries such as Germany, Finland and the Netherlands,
opposition is growing and it is not clear the payments would be met.
A
spokesman for Juncker later said that if the EU and IMF inspectors
currently in Athens could be convinced by new Greek austerity measures,
there would be no problem with the next tranche of loans. Therefore
merciless pressure is being put on Greece to carry out further cuts and
privatizations. An IMF spokeswoman confirmed that the Fund would be
unable to lend more money to Greece unless it was sure that next year’s
financing gap would be filled. “We never lend when we don’t have an
assurance that there will be no gap,” said Caroline Atkinson at a
briefing in Washington. “That is how we maintain the safety of our
members’ money.”
Greek premier George Papandreou therefore finds
himself between a rock and a hard place. The Greek cabinet met on Monday
to discuss a doubling of budget cuts this year to 6bn euros, including
public sector pay cuts, civil-service redundancies and an increase in
value-added tax (VAT). The government has approached opposition leaders
with a view to arriving at the four-year cross-party austerity plan
demanded by Brussels. But the opposition parties are not anxious to
share responsibility for further cuts.
The right wing leader
Samaras refused to support the plan. And the opposition from the Left
was even more emphatic. “I didn’t come to discuss the looting of Greek
society with Mr Papandreou,” said Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Left
Coalition Syriza. “I came to tell him that he must not… go ahead with
this crime against the Greek people.”
The PASOK government will be
forced to do the dirty work on its own. It began a programme of
privatizations last Thursday. It has said it will begin to sell stakes
in a number of domestic corporations “immediately” in order to raise
cash to help reduce its massive debts. These include stakes in the
telecoms firm OTE, state-owned Postbank and the ports of Athens and
Thessaloniki. But Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker is not
impressed. He says the privatization plan needs to be “more ambitious”.
In
an interview with the Aachener Zeitung newspaper, the President of the
European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, delivered the same message:
“Greece must implement the programme fully and rigorously; this is very
important to correct the errors of the past,” he is reported to have
said. This arrogance has provoked a mood of fury in Greece, which has
found its expression on the streets.
Mass protests
Last
weekend, the people of Greece gave their reply to this blackmail. There
was the biggest demonstration since the start of the movement and the
biggest since the starting of the Greek-European debt crises, with
150.000-200.000 people in Athens and in many other big Greek towns. Tens
of thousands of Greeks vented their anger at the nation’s political
classes in Athens on Sunday, staging the biggest in a week of protests
as the government seeks backing for yet more austerity.
A mood of
despondency and despair is being transformed into a new and fearless
spirit that is prepared to challenge the status quo. Thousands of Greek
people – young and old, married and single, employed and unemployed –
have flooded Syntagma Square in a wave of protest. Greeks are angry.
They are angry at politicians who are never punished for corruption, at
bankers who cause a crisis and are rewarded by billions from public
funds, at faceless European bureaucrats who take decisions that impose
austerity plans on them from distant offices in Brussels. In short, they
are angry at the entire economic and political system.
demonstrations in Syntagma Square were inspired by similar
demonstrations in Spain. They were joined on Sunday night by a group of
Spaniards who had come to show their solidarity, raising banners in
Spanish. “Openly we say that we have been inspired by the demonstrators
in Spain,” said Simos Adamopoulos, one of the organizers: “Our motto is
‘the battle that is never waged is never won’. We will stay here, and in
squares up and down the country for as long as it takes.”
The peaceful crowds were made up of ordinary people, some of whom brought along their children.
The
mass movement is drawn from the broadest layers of the population:
workers and youth, the unemployed and the middle class, the political
activists and the unorganized and inexperienced. Mainly they are people
outside of the workers movement, without any experience of a class
struggle. The core of the movement is made up of the unemployed, many of
them young people who have academic qualifications but cannot find
work.
Some of them were carrying the Greek flag in the hands. This
has been interpreted in some “left” circles as a sign of reactionary
nationalism. That there are some reactionary elements mixed up in the
protest is hardly surprising in a movement of such dimensions. But it
would be entirely wrong to conclude that the mere act of carrying a
Greek flag is synonymous with reaction. The repulsive spectacle of the
bandits in Brussels holding the entire Greek nation to ransom, usurping
the democratic rights of the Greek people to decide their own destinies
is a gratuitous insult to a proud people, who express their indignation
by displaying their national flag. But beyond their hatred of Brussels,
this is above all a protest against the bankers, the rich and the
parasites of all nations – Greece included.
The huge crowd packed
Syntagma Square in front of the Greek parliament, booing, whistling and
chanting “Thieves! Thieves” as they pointed at the assembly building.
“We’ve had enough. Politicians are making fools of us. If things stay as
they are, our future will be very bleak,” a 22-year-old student who
gave his name as Nikos told Reuters. “We want our life, we want our
happiness, we want our dignity,” a banner declared. “So out with the
thieves and out with the IMF.” These views are representative of a
seismic shift in the psychology of the masses in Greece.
However,
spontaneous protests have limits. It is evident that merely to camp on
Syntagma Square will solve nothing. In Spain the protests in public
squares had an impact, but they are already declining. Naturally, if
they have no other perspective, such a tactic will lead nowhere,
although similar spontaneous protests will re-emerge continuously. The
Economist notes:
“With the local elections over, the
protests will probably fizzle for a while. But Mr Rajoy [leader of the
Conservative Party in Spain] should have no illusions. Unless he unveils
radical plans to improve the lot of younger Spaniards, they will be
back.”
Inevitability of default
The EU has
held out the promise of a “soft” restructuring, but only if the
government met demanding policy targets. Such restructuring would
involve a delay in repayments and a cut in interest payments, to be
agreed with the country’s lenders. But this was conditional on carrying
out a programme of draconian cuts, as well as the wholesale plundering
of the country’s assets through privatization.
emphasizes that any restructuring – and any additional rescue loans –
would only be forthcoming if Greece stepped up privatizations and
painful austerity measures. But none of this can succeed. Greece will
never be able to pay off its debts. At the end of the day, Greece will
be forced to default. Meanwhile, Greece’s cost of borrowing in bond
markets has continued to rise steadily, as expectations of an eventual
default.
The yield on Greek 10-year bonds rose another half a
percentage point to 16.8% on Monday, up from 15.3% a week ago. The
burden of debt is mounting inexorably. Greeks face an estimated €60bn in
maturing debt in 2012 and 2013. Everything points to the inevitability
of default. The only question is when.
The EU, fearing the
consequences of a default, may patch up some kind of new package that
will postpone the evil day. But this option will meet a rising tide of
opposition in the northern European states. In any case, it would merely
postpone the inevitable. The final decision will be taken neither in
Athens nor in Brussels but in the international money markets.
A
Greek default would cause enormous problems for Europe’s banks, which
would then have to accept billions of losses on their balance sheets.
The ECB has warned that a debt restructuring, however mild, could cause a
meltdown in Greece’s banking system and financial panic around Europe’s
indebted periphery. In its statement, the credit ratings agency Moody’s
said:
“It is apparent that the longer the current
state of uncertainty affecting Greece persists, the greater the
temptation on the part of both the Greek and the euro area authorities
to try to undertake some form of debt restructuring – in other words, to
allow Greece to default.“Moody’s believes that a default is
likely to have adverse credit rating implications for Greece, possibly
some other stressed European sovereigns, and the Greek banks, regardless
of the efforts made to achieve an ‘orderly’ outcome.“The full
impact on Europe’s capital markets would be hard to predict and harder
still to control. The fallout would have implications for the
creditworthiness (and hence the ratings) of issuers across Europe.”
It
is possible that at this moment Greece would be forced to leave the
euro zone. This in turn would provoke a crisis of the euro itself.
Moody’s has warned that any Greek debt default would hurt the credit
rating of other peripheral euro zone countries. Already other countries
are seeing their borrowing costs rise, as markets remain concerned that a
Greek default could trigger an all-European meltdown.
Leaving the
euro zone would not solve Greece’s problems but only exacerbate them.
The reintroduction of the drachma would solve nothing. Since the only
purpose of such a move would be to devalue the drachma to gain a
competitive advantage for Greek exports, the international money markets
would not be in a hurry to acquire the new currency. There would be a
sharp downward spiral, with soaring inflation, a collapse of investment
and rising unemployment. Revolutionary developments would be on the
order of the day.
What we see in Greece today is what we saw in
Tunisia and Egypt a few months ago. The views of the protestors on
Syntagma Square are as yet unclear: the movement is still in its
formative stages. But their motivation is clear enough and it is firm
and unwavering. Maybe they do not know exactly what they want, but they
know exactly what they do not want. And that is an excellent starting
point. “But,” says Adamopoulos, “we’re also really disgusted with the
system, with the political establishment, with all those crooks and
thieves. As we’ve got poorer they’ve got richer and that you could say
is also spurring us.”
Political general strike
The
demonstrations in Sintagma and other city squares is an expression of
widespread discontent with the existing political parties – including
the parties of the Left, and with the trade unions. We saw exactly the
same phenomenon in Spain. But this mood does not necessarily mean that
the people are either apolitical or anarchists. It reveals a profound
discontent with the remote and haughty bureaucratic apparatuses that
have long ago ceased to represent the ideas and aspirations of the
masses.
trade union leaders have been protesting the government’s austerity
programme with a series of one day general strikes and demonstrations.
But a one day general strike is just a demonstration, a show of force.
It brings the masses out onto the street and allows them to get a sense
of their own collective power. This is extremely important, but in and
of itself it is not enough.
Under certain conditions it can put
pressure on the government to change course. But such is the depth of
the crisis of Greek capitalism that such demonstrations have little or
no effect. The government can afford to wait until the demonstrations
are over, and then continue with its plans. Worse still, the trade union
leaders may use such strikes as a safety valve to allow the workers to
blow off steam and then sign a deal with the government.
The
calling of one day general strikes is subject to the law of diminishing
returns. The constant repetition of one day strikes and demonstrations
that achieve nothing can demoralise the workers and tire them out,
giving rise to a mood of apathy: “We have done everything to make the
government change its mind, but it is all useless.” The workers will
begin to look on one day strikes and demonstrations as a waste of time
and stop responding to the call. The government and the employers will
then go onto the offensive.
In the Greek context the demand for an
indefinite political general strike is a correct demand. The situation
has gone far beyond one-day general strikes. The Greek workers have
already participated in many such strikes, but in the given situation,
such strikes cannot achieve any substantial results.
The popular
assembly of some 2-3,000 people in Syntagma Square has approved the call
for a political general strike. In the given situation this can only
mean an indefinite general strike. This is the text of a resolution
stating the aims of the movement approved by the assembly:
POPULAR ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION OF CONSTITUTION SQUARE
For a long time decisions were made about us without us.
We are workers, unemployed, pensioners, youth and we come to the Constitution Square to fight for our lives and our future.
We are here because we know that any solutions to our problems can only come from us.
We
call all Athenians, workers, unemployed, youth in the Constitution
Square, and the whole society to fill every square and take their life
in their own hands.There, in the squares, we will be shaping all our requests and demands.
We urge all workers who are to strike in the next days to come and remain in the Constitution square.
We
will not leave the squares until they leave; Governments, EU/IMF
directors, Banks and all who exploit us. We send them a message; this
debt is not ours.DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW!
EQUALITY – JUSTICE – DIGNITY!
The only fight that is lost is the one that was never fought!
Action committees everywhere!
It
is necessary to carry the protest movement to a higher level. The fact
that the popular assembly voted for a political general strike reflects
the general radicalization of the movement. It shows that the workers
and youth are drawing lessons from their experience, they are thinking,
learning and their maturity and consciousness is developing by leaps and
bounds. The people have realized that the crisis is so deep that more
drastic methods are necessary.
Greek Marxists of Marxistiki Foni have called for an immediate 48 hour
strike as a step towards an indefinite general strike. But an indefinite
general strike must be organized. It cannot be improvised or convened
on Facebook. In order to prepare for a general strike it is necessary to
go to the factories and workplaces, convene assemblies of workers to
discuss strike action and elect workers’ committees that must be
answerable to the assembly and subject to recall at all times.
Pressure
must be put on the unions to mobilize the full force of the Greek
labour movement. The time for talking is over. Only a massive
mobilization throughout Greece can save the situation! Workers in some
industries threatened with privatization have already staged walk-outs.
That is the correct thing to do, but it is not enough. The strike
movement must be generalised. The unions must call a 48 hour general
strike immediately! If the government refuses to back down, set a date
for an indefinite general strike!
However, we must be clear.
Whereas a one day strike is only a demonstration, an indefinite strike
poses the question of power. It raises the question: who is the master
of the house, you or us? But who is prepared to take the power?
The
idea of popular assemblies is spreading, as an expression of the need
to provide the mass movement with an organizational form. Many
assemblies are being established in working areas of Athens. This is the
way to proceed! The establishment of popular committees should lead to
the setting up of broad based action committees based on the workers,
tenants, women, youth, students, unemployed, small shopkeepers and
peasants.
Such a movement from below has the potential to
overthrow the existing order, but only on one condition: that they are
led by genuinely revolutionary elements. Here the confusion of the
spontaneous movement can play a very negative role. Those who believe
that it is possible to reform the existing social order will try to
limit the scope of the assemblies to mere reformist talking shops, where
nothing is ever decided on.
In order that the action committees
should develop to their full extent, they must be linked up, first on a
local basis, then regionally and nationally. It should be made clear
that the purpose of the committees is to prepare for mass action
culminating in an all-Greece general strike. A national conference of
delegates should be convened at the earliest date to prepare for
national action. Such a body would be far more representative of the
people than the present discredited government.
Already a layer of
protesters are drawing correct political conclusions. They are
advancing correct demands such as “share out the work to combat
unemployment” (we should add: without loss of pay), and “confiscate
empty and unsold properties” to provide homes for people. These are
excellent demands which should be concretised and generalised to include
the expropriation of the banks and major industries under workers’
control.
As an immediate demand to unite the movement and draw in
the widest layers we demand the repudiation of the foreign debt. Not a
single euro to the international usurers and parasites! But this demand
leads logically to the demand for the expropriation of the Greek banks
and the centralisation of all credit in the hands of the state.
None
of the problems of Greece can be solved while the dictatorship of the
bankers and capitalists remains intact. Antonis Papaioannou, a 20-year
old student studying mechanical engineering in Athens, says that the
austerity measures have hit education. In the past year, spending cuts
have led to power outages at his college, walkouts by professors that
haven’t been paid, and even shortages of printing paper for student
computers.
“I’m indignant because all I see from the government
and troika is how they are trying to squeeze the Greek people dry
without spending any money on education,” he said. “The Greek government
represents big capital, not the Greek people.”
That is the
essence of the problem. The only way to solve the crisis is by the
revolutionary overthrow of big capital, in Greece and throughout the
world. The movements in Spain and Greece show that a powerful movement
is developing in many countries. Once this movement is armed with the
necessary programme and perspectives, nothing can stop it.
