One more government in the trash bin
Another government of the capital, the co-government ND-PASOK, collapsed long before the expiration of its 4-year term. The government ended up in the trash bin not because of the non-capability of the political parties of the system (led by the capital to their dissolution the one after the other) to restore the capital gains. The reason of this collapse is the failure of Samaras and Venizelos to complete the negotiations with the Troika, as they were aware of the fact that they would not be capable of taking more measures needed, they would not be able of standing a new frontal collision with the labor movement.
After all, it is the social outrage and the pressure exerted by the movement that made the government collapse, as they did with the governments before this one; the Papandreou and Papadimos governments. The labor movement may not have reached the amplitude of 2010-2012, but –even if it still has a lot of obstacles to overcome – the government headquarters know very well how quickly a general explosion can take place and what this could mean. During the summer of 2013 the ERT struggle cost to the government the resignation of Kouvelis party from it, weakening it in an important way. The antifascist movement in autumn 2013, just after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas form the Golden Dawn, obliged the government to bring to justice the Nazis and to stop the negotiations concerning the collaboration with them. The struggles of the public servants have blocked their so-called evaluation (meaning the massive dismissals), they made the Minister Mitsotakis seem like a fool and exasperated the Troika. The student movement at schools and Universities during the last autumn brought to memory the huge rise of the student movement of the years 2006-2007. The struggle of the Syrian refugees showed that the immigrants are not willing to passively accept the racist policy of the greek state and of the EU. The massive mobilization for defending Nikos Romanos, who was in hunger strike, obliged the government to step back, terrified of the possibility of a new revolt in the footsteps of December 2008.
Given the important heritage of the movement of the last years and some signs of struggle re-launching, the government chose to avoid the collision and open its own exit door. We are glad about the fall of the government and we consider it as our victory. We are not afraid of the never-ending alarmism from the part of the government, the employers and the EU headquarters for the disintegration of the country – our rights and our conquests have already been disintegrated. We are not concerned by the “destabilization”, because we do not have any reason to wish the stabilization of a system based on our exploitation and our oppression! We do not stop, we do not pin our hopes on the elections and the parliament, we do not put any “realistic” limits on our demands. Whatever we earn, we earn it through our strike, our struggle, our demonstrations, our occupations. The attack is the solution, not the defense!
Voting…on which criteria?
The fall of the government opened a new rupture in the political domination of the class of the capitalists. We should never allow for this rupture to be repaired and healed. We should never get back to normality. There is a need for new struggles, coordinated among them and self-organized. These new struggles will be based on the political experience that today’s militants have accumulated from the big movements in the years of the crisis, on the internationalist optimism coming from the struggles and the revolts from Brazil to Hong Kong and from Turkey and the Arab countries to South Africa. With common action and massiveness, the power and the system of those living by our sweat can be reversed. The crisis brought barbarism, but it also brought the revolution again to the fore.
However, in order for these huge possibilities for the emancipation of the oppressed and the workers to come true, there needs to be a political response. There needs to be understood that waiting until “the conditions are mature” and laying hopes on a future government that will bring the solution can only lead to defeat. The reformist left wing of the parliament and the bureaucracies of the syndicates carry serious responsibility on the relatively passive attitude that dominated (even though the struggles did not stop) after the times of the big strikes, the occupations of public buildings and the Occupy movement.
No government, even no left government, will ever offer anything to us if we do not stand for it. Because capitalism has nothing to give during its crisis. We understand the need of the workers and the unemployed to give an end to the memoranda and the austerity, but this cannot happen just by voting “in case that something changes”. For us to win, the next government must be the hostage of a strong labor and youth movement.
The crisis is not the result of bad government and bad policies. It is due to the capitalist system itself. In order to repel the attack against the working class, the system itself has to be shaken to its foundations and reversed.
These are the criteria according to which the militants should vote and not according to the lesser evil principle. There needs to be an independent anticapitalist left that will lead the struggles until the end and will not put any limits in the name of “realism” or “national unanimity”. There needs to be a combative workers’ opposition that will not give any period of tolerance to a potential left government; on the opposite, it will struggle decisively from the first day for the true needs of the workers. There is a need for a political body that will bring together most of the militants who consciously set the goal of the revolutionary overthrow. In spite of the difficulties and the problems of strategic orientation, ANTARSYA today is the front that gathers the largest percentage of this conscious potential, the people who fight in the frontline without being afraid of the consequences. This potential has to be reinforced in the political and in the electoral field.
No vote for the parties of the capital
Every vote for New Democracy is a vote for the chosen party of the capital, a vote for greek bankers, the ship owners, the bosses. It is a vote for the european technocrats, the multinationals, the IFM and the troika. It is a vote for nationalism, for the racism of the greek state, the cruelty of the police. It is a vote for the reactionary imperialist axe Greece-Cyprus-Israel and the dangerous competition on the exclusive economic zones (EEZ). It is vote of disaster for the workers and the unemployed.
Any vote for PASOK is a vote to the same government and the exact same politics. PASOK has long ago lost every bond with its old labor base and it has now also lost the trust of the bourgeoisie that kept it in power for a long period of time. PASOK has now become a simple crutch for ND and a beggar of governmental power. No delusion, no vote for PASOK, nor for the new party founded by G. Papandreou – the Prime Minister of the memorandum.
Every vote for Golden Dawn is a vote for the worst capitalist barbarism. The Nazis, auto-determined and promoted by the mass media as anti-systemic, are in reality the most decayed and wild form of the very same system. Not only is it not the counterweight to those who “brought us” here, but –on the opposite- it represents the most extreme part of its own wing. Golden Dawn is based on the blind hate of the petit-bourgeois against the weaker; it is a war machine against the workers and mostly against the poorest and most oppressed among them, the immigrants. It is a war machine, but a war machine crashed by the antifascist movement through its huge demonstrations, in work places and in neighborhoods and now begs for its deputies not to be put in jail. Now it is time for the Golden Dawn to vanish in the electoral field as well.
Every vote for Potami is a vote to the rawest neoliberalism. Having put on the mask of the “independent” and, being fully supported by the mass media, S. Theodorakis has managed to gather a bunch of disrespected politicians of the center and tries to impose himself on the political scene. Potami is for the dismissals, against the immigrants, for the private universities; it sows the seed of a dangerous depoliticalization, whereas at the same time it serves the same politics for the interests of the big capital.
Every vote for DIMAR and the Greens is also a vote for parties having supported and still support the idea that the working class should pay for the debt created by another class, the capitalists.
Every vote for ANEL is another vote for the right wing. ANEL wanted to express the part of the capital opposed to the memorandum, but at first chance they pass the one after the other on the other side and on ND. What stays in ANEL is its nationalism and the far right profile of its leader, Kammenos.
Parliamentary left wing is not enough
During 2011-’12 the electoral influence of the left wing and especially of Syriza, was importantly reinforced and still stays high, giving to Syriza the chance to claim governmental power. But this left wing to which the hopes of the working class are relied is not capable of answering to the working class needs. When thousands of militants were on the streets asking for the debt to be cancelled and trying to find global alternatives to this system, the only thing Syriza and KKE had to say was for the working class to wait until the elections so that it can be saved by voting.
The closest Syriza is to the power, the more it gives vows of faith to the system and to the capital. Within two years, it has passed from the “tearing the memoranda” to the negotiations with the Troika. From “no sacrifice for the euro” to “anything so that the euro can be saved”. From the promises for the radical redistribution of the wealth to the modest promises announced by Tsipras in Thessaloniki this September. According to these promises, every allowance for the workers is depended on the development, the european funds (really, how can one negotiate if one depends on these funds?) and the management of the State’s logistics. Not even a word anymore for expropriating the big capital, nationalizing the banks, unilaterally canceling the memoranda…just managing the poverty.
Even the older promise made by Syriza that it will establish the civil partnership for homosexual couples has now been submitted to the general ambiance of compliance and postponed to when “the financial and social life will be stabilized”. Even though we do not have any illusions concerning the bourgeois institutions, since we are aware that it is through the self-organization and the movement that the rights are conquered and the attitude of the working class changes, this retreat by the part of Syriza (as well as the Tsipras’s blessings to the orthodox faith and the Mons of Mount Athos) is indicative of its rapid conservatization.
The leadership of Syriza builds up bonds with parts of the greek and the international capital. They have warm conversations with the Business and Industry Association, they promise to the church that they will allow it to keep its huge fortune, concentrated during all the years of oppressing the poor and discusses with the European bankers and businessmen. The delegation of Syriza marched in Paris in the same demonstration with Samaras, Hollande and all the other leaders of the right wing or the socialdemocracy, who are the ones planning and realizing the attacks against the working class in Greece and in Europe. On the occasion of the tension in the inter-imperialist competition between the greek and the Turkish state in Cyprus, the leadership of Syriza announced that as far as the national matters are concerned, there needs to be a national unanimity, meaning the unity with the capitalists, the ship-owners and the bankers, those who wish to divide the markets of the eastern Aegean sea and the Balkans using the workers’ blood.
But the thousands of workers, unemployed and youth did not struggle nor did they sacrifice themselves for these things!
On the other side, KKE tries, using left speech, to win the part of the working class who is fairly disappointed by Syriza. In reality though, the political orientation of KKE is not that different. It stays focused on the electoral increase of its percentages and on the defense of the goals of its bureaucratic leadership. The speech for the “people’s power” just conceal the fact that the KKE is not willing to give real struggles that will question the capitalists’ power. Its demands are in reality modest and fundamental (low increases, lowering the retirement age etc). Its disruptive attitude in the movement shows its deep pessimism for the workers’ possibility to organize themselves, to struggle and to win.
In the strategic level, the KKE considers as first duty the exit from the EU and links it to “people’s power”. But “people’s power” itself is nothing but a step towards the workers’ power, as is cited in the party’s principles. In other words, there is still a stage before the workers’ power and this stage can be nothing else than the management of the capital economy; a capitalist way of development outside the EU.
There needs to be a left wing profoundly different from the reformist left wing of the Parliament, an anticapitalist and revolutionary left wing that will not be isolated from other currents in the movement, that will trust the self-activity of the masses, but that, at the same time, will not abandon its political and organizational independence at the first opportunity. In order for the anticapitalists of ANTARSYA to be able to accomplish this mission, they will have to build up a contemporary revolutionary strategy, independent from the capital and its state. They have to reject the blackmailing dilemmas and the pressure for creating alliances towards its right. They have to ignore the sirens of the easy ways based on a national currency or a national “reconstruction and development”, without any class overthrow. Based on the independence from the reformism, we have to organize equally and democratically the anticapitalist and revolutionary forces still insisting to walk alone. We have to deepen the anticapitalist program, to openly address to the tens of thousands of workers and unemployed, to struggle with them in the movements and to build up with them the anticapitalist left that we need!
This is the real perspective that OKDE-Spartakos will reinforce in the elections too!
A transitional program in rupture with capitalism is necessary:
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- Unilateral cancellation of the memoranda and all the laws resulting from them
- Cancellation of the debt, away from negotiations with bankers and loaners
- Expropriation of all the banks, without any compensation for the bankers and operation of a public bank under workers’ control.
- Expropriation of the big enterprises, without any compensation for the capitalists and operation of these enterprises under workers’ control.
- Occupation and self-management of the closing enterprises
- Prohibition of dismissals, direct rehiring of the dismissed employees of the public sector, total reoperation of ERT under self-management regime
- Decrease of the working hours and increase of the income, as the only solution for eliminating the unemployment
- Increase of the income in the level of the workers’ real needs and not based on the logistic limits and the market law
- Heavy taxation on the profits, expropriation of the church fortune and of the fortune of the big capital
- Cooperatives of small farmers and support them by the public bank
- Legalization of all immigrants and refugees, full political and social rights, open borders for all the working class
- Disarmament of the police, dissolution of the riot police and of all the special forces of the police, cancellation of the terrorism laws and the special prisons
- Free syndicalism in the army
- Dissolution of Golden Dawn, massive and combative antifascist assemblies everywhere
- Anticapitalist conflict and total disengagement from the euro and the EU, internationalist struggle for their dissolution
- Resignation from NATO and every imperialist mechanism
- No tolerance for the imperialist aggressiveness of the greek state, dissolution of the reactionary axis Greece-Cyprus-Israel, the internationalist solidarity between greek and turkish workers is the only solution to address the conflicts for the EEZ
- Equality and full rights for the turkish minority in Thrace, religious and educational freedom, recognition of any other minority in the greek territory
- For a new, socialist internationalism in Balkans, in Europe, in the Aegean sea
- For the protection of the environment, of free spaces and of common good
- For the women rights and feminist self-organization
- For the LGBT rights
- For a government of workers themselves, amenable to their general assemblies
- For the self-management, the self-organization and the workers’ power.
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This program can and should be adopted by the most combative part of the workers, starting from the anticapitalist left. OKDE-Spartakos fights for this political orientation and based on this orientation calls all militants to support ANTARSYA.
On January 25th vote for the anticapitalists of ANTARSYA
OKDE-Spartakos (greek section of the Fourth International)
