The coalition government PASOK – Troika (Eur.Committee, International Monetary Fund, European Social Fund) has succeeded in a short space of time – and with the consent of the Mass Media – in ripping out what had been conquered through long and frequently bloody, social and class struggles to impose an unprecedented, ferocious exploitation of the social majority by a shameful minority composed of the economic elite. The recent measures of Loverthos for labour and pensions are in the same direction and will not be the last. Already Greece is steadily transforming itself into a paradise for bosses and hell for the workers.
This new intense class attack is for economic and political authority “an essential condition in order to overcome the crisis”, since – according to the neoliberal economic analysis – decreasing labour costs ensures the conditions for competitiveness, and the bosses can hope for new profits for capital, wounded by the economic crisis. With the prospect of an increase in profits, the productive process will come to life again, growth will get an impulse and the road to get out of the crisis will open, a fact that will help the country get over its severe budgetary problems. In reality, and despite whatever arguments of the decriers of neoliberalism, about how unorthodox and a “no way out” economic model the above is (it’s sure that the conclusion of such a plan is an even deeper recession and intensity of the crisis), what the state wants is the biggest possible exploitation of the deep economic crisis in order to impose the new class and social terms of oppression and exploitation.
The formation of this new dictatorship of capital and state presupposes that large parts of society will fall into complete indigence, will be marginalized so that they can become easy prey for the callous exploitation that the bosses envisage imposing. For the pigs of plutocracy, from now on human life will be worth as much as the crumbs they give for wages while, according to their plans, there will be many waiting in line to have all their production squeezed out of them and be thrown away when they aren’t needed anymore.
In order to ensure that the lenders to the Greek state can be paid back, Papandreou and his government have imposed austerity measures of unprecedented ferocity, with continuous cuts in wages and pensions, in state expenditure for hospitals and social benefits, leading hospitals and pension funds to their final collapse, imposing the privatisation of the pension system and health services, while at the same time they sell off cheap anything remaining the property of the state.
The measures of “budgetary discipline” that, according to the government, will lead to the “country’s exit from the budgetary crisis”, in reality – and combined with the labour measures – will lead with mathematical precision to a greater budgetary dead-end for the country that sooner or later will have to call for a pay suspension or, in the best case, to re-negotiate the Greek debt.
Besides all this, the specific, wild neoliberal policies that are imposed by the economic and political elite of the planet are not some “wrong economic choices”, neither can some changes in the direction of economic policy reverse the climate of deep crisis the system is going through. The main issue for the economic and political power that controls the planet is that the given systemic crisis be exploited for the redevelopment of the conditions of life and work everywhere, but also for the redefinition of correlations of power on the planet, with the supernational economic and political elite gaining more and more force and power in their hands, the markets to imposing their increasingly energetic role in the configuration and exercise of political power and the co-governing of countries takes a more tatalitarian character. Consequently, on the grounds of the crisis and, mainly, the crisis of countries in debt, a new totalitarian form of political and economic authority is imported and imposed on one country after another, and with the collaboration of governments, a new fascism, that makes older forms of oppression and exploitation seem lenient.
A main element of this new international dictatorship is the exploitation of countries’ debts in order to pass the social wealth of the country into the hands of the economic oligarchy. The ravens of supernational capital are ready to dash and devour anything valuable in Greece, when the government will be unable to cope with the demanding lending obligations imposed by the loansharks of the debt. The way for this new occupation via the confiscation of the public wealth of the country was opened by Papandreou with the relative memo towards the lenders, according to which “neither the borrower nor his possessions have immunity because of national sovereignty”.
In other words, the IMF, E.Committee, ESF and the states of the European Union that lent to the Greek state can, from the moment the payments of the loans are delayed, proceed to the confiscation of public assets and of the social wealth of the country, while the borrower (the borrower is obviously considered the totality of the Greek society, irrelevant of the fact that the loan is not intended for the majority) goes into a state of literal occupation by the lenders.
* * * * *
Against this new fascist state they are forming, whichever form of mobilization limited to a fight in the “trenches” to maintain any labour, political and social vested interests is condemned to defeat.
Thats why they constitute a mockery, not only the painless protests that the great trade unions desire but also the ridiculous leondarisms of the governmental Left that participates in parliament, which not only has no intention of making a rupture with the governmental political order – a rupture that, amongst other things, would harm the political and economic privileges of their representatives in parliament- but does whatever it can to deter society from expressing its rage and even reaches the point of going against majoritarian parts of society when they are expressing themselves against the totality of the political system. Hence, for the governmental left – and for the Media- expressions used now by majoritarian areats of society, such as “they are all the same”, meaning all the politicians that participate in the parliament, are fascist. Fascist is, also, the chant “burn the brothel Parliament” that thousands of demonstrators shouted in the mobilization of May 5th outside the parliament, while the attempt to invade the Parliament by the demonstrators was “an attempt to abolish democracy that would open the way for the imposition of a coup d’etat”. For the KKE (Communist Party of Greece), those who attempted to invade the parliament were, also, fascists and provocateurs.
Finally, none of those who participate in the parties of the governmental Left considers the policy of government-troika and the new totalitarian state that is being formed fascist. What they want is to succeed in leading social mobilizations and in containing them within the limits that are ordered by state legality so that they do not threaten the state and its representatives. We believe it’s pointless to think they will succeed.
Everything shows that social reactions will receive more and more intense characteristics of rupture and conflict with the state and the parties of the Left incorporated in the system, not only will not manage to reap the fruits of social dissatisfaction but will be marginalized more and more and they will follow the governing parties in their downfall and in social contempt.
Our fight should be a fight of attack against the totality of the state political order and its representatives and not only to be against certain persons and a limited number of political choices. Besides, the deep economic crisis into which the country is sinking in this period is not simply the result of the bad handling of previous governments. The crisis in Greece is a result of the world crisis of the system that is rotting and is trying to stay alive by sucking the blood of societies. In this crisis everyone that participates in the system of representative democracy has contributed in their own way, a democracy which we also owe with our struggle to abolish.
We shall not allow our fight to degenerate with proposals and policies that aim for the exit from the economic crisis, with the excuse that this is in the interest of the social base. Each such proposal will seek to restrain struggles to within the limits of the state and will prevent every genuinely liberatory proposal for the future from being proposed socially and being tried in practice. It is a given that no solution that wants Greece to remain inside the system of the market economy and representative democracy will remove us from the systemic crises which are payed with the blood of the social majority of the non-privileged. As radical as some proposals might sound (exit from the E.M.U. or even the E.U, returning to the drachma, nationalization of enterprises such as the banks, increase of tax imposition on the rich in order to pay the debt, etc.), do not guarantee anything more than a leap into the void that, sooner or later, will lead us back, to the same state of exploitation and oppression. The only real exit from the crisis that can ensure the social survival of the non privileged and can prevent the destruction that the political and economic authorities have in store for us, is the complete exit from the system of capitalism, the market economy and representative democracy. We are not speaking of anything less than a social revolution, which has become an imperative need from now on, not only for reasons of value, moral and social rightiousness, but for reasons concerning the survival of all of us. Either way, it’s the political and economic order itself that puts us on a daily basis in the dilemma “us or them”.
We live in the historical moment where the privileged political and economic castes cannot coexist with the big majorities of the non-privileged. Our fight has to be a fight of conflict and rupture with every privileged individual or group of individuals that looks at the current crisis and the wild attack against workers as an opportunity to get rich. It must be a fight against everyone that sees the budgetary problem of this country as a occasion to seize the social wealth that belongs to all of us. The time has come to completely get rid of all these amoralists and adventurers, the thieves and criminals. The time has come to teach a lesson to all the privileged.
Our fight should be a fight to take back what they have stolen from us and belongs to us. It should be a fight to abolish every form of slavery, a fight for the freedom of all people. So that there are no social and class segregations ever again, no rich and poor ever again, so that there’s no exploitation of person by person.
So that there’s no organized power, state, oppression and lack of freedom. Our fight should be a fight for economic equality and the political freedom of all.
It should be nothing less than a radical inversion, a social revolution. Such a revolution’s prelude could be the attempt of storming parliament that was attempted and was not completed on May 5th. A storm that will not simply be satisfied in just bringing down the current government, but will be a decisive moment of the fight for liberation from the parliamentary junta whose only prospect will be to not allow any dominating political formation – whether it comes from the parliament or not- to take power into its hands and perpetuate the rotten state. We should not allow the various defenders of the system, wearing the mask of the “liberator”, to seek and gain the trust of society so that they can climb to power and rescue the state. The social base itself should define, with values such as equality and the refusal of every form of organized power, the organizational structure that will manage and determine the political and economic life of the country. An organizational structure with a horizontal character, without representation and professionals of politics, without guidance.
With such a political organization we can leave this parliamentary dictatorship behind us once and for all. All society that lives under the new junta of the markets and state should move forward to a sweeping expropriation of all wealth that is in the hands of the economic oligarchy and give to to society, to pass it in its entirety into the hands of collective social organs that will manage it. Expropriate all the church’s fortune.
All social wealth that at this moment is in the possession of local political and economic power should be passed into the hands of the social base and we should expropriate all financial wealth that the multinationals and part of the foreign economic elite that act in Greece have in their possession. We should take in our hands all means of production and the productive units and socialize them. The working assemblies themselves should determine what will be produced and for who, in collaboration with the local assemblies in the communities, the cities, the neighborhoods. Outside of any logic of competition and growth, outside of the morals and values of the market economy, far from any logic of concentration of wealth, the new economic organization and productive process should be determined by the social base with the main values being economic equality, horizontal management, quality in work and production, protection of the environment, the quality of all produced products and the discovery of new technologies that will suit our revolutionary undertaking and will finally leave behind the technologies of mass production of capitalism that only suits a centralized economic model. All this cannot fail to be but matters that will concern a revolutionary society that will decide for itself. The communities, the small cities, the neighborhoods should become the core of the new social organization, the holder of social wealth and the main pillar of decisions, economical and political.
We ourselves should take over every economic and social activity, we should at last, take life in our own hands. If we do not rebel now against the modern dictatorship of market, capital and state, if we do not fling off the shackles of slavery immediately, if we do not raise our head high today, there will be no future for us and we will have condemned future generations to live in the darkest social and economic conditions of human history.
The only solution we have in our hands to get out of this dead end, to get rid of modern fascism once and for all, is social revolution.
The members of Revolutionary Struggle
Kostas Gournas, Pola Roupa, Nikos Maziotis
http://revolutionarystrugglecase.blogspot.com/2010/09/only-answer-to-modern-totalitarianism.html