Class struggle is cutting through the whole of Greek society. The Winter of Discontent is not over; it is just starting.
It is the duty of the revolutionary left to place itself in the vanguard of struggles against the poverty and destitution of the working class, with a revolutionary anti-capitalist manifesto, and a united front logic and culture, in connection with the strategic aim of the revolutionary overthrow of the system.
Greece needs a revolutionary left which is going to reinvent politics not as a technique to manipulate the masses but as a medium for the self-liberation of the masses.
History has proven that revolutions cannot be ended in parliament and elections. The Greek working class is the potential agent of a solution which can end the rotten capitalist rotten system and open the doors to socialism from below, to a festival of the oppressed, to a truly democratic accountable radical socialist society.
Slogans like exit from the eurozone, or from the European Union, cannot offer an exit from the crisis. Such slogans cannot connect with the strategic aim of the revolutionary overthrown of capitalism.
Both content and form of struggles should match the level and aggressiveness of the bosses' attacks. Rather than the reformist parties' timid calls for parliamentary elections (KKE and Syriza), we should organise and fight for a general continuous strike.
Greek workers should aim at a continuous general strike alongside the poor peasants, the ruined small shop owners, the pensioners, the unemployed, the school and university students and the neighbourhood community movements resisting the degradation of services and quality of life in their communities.
In every workplace workers should form workers' committees to organize and direct the struggle from below.
A central organ should be formed that supports, organises, coordinates and defends every struggle. It is of crucial importance for the workers to create and empower their own organs and structures of struggle in order to safeguard themselves against the hesitancy and tendency to compromise of the union bureaucracy.
As the struggles evolve and escalate the workers are looking at solutions, to defend their lives and rights, outside the “whole system” and its laws and structures.
• Down with everyone responsible for the crisis: Troika, financial speculators, productive and unproductive capitalist asset-strippers and predators;
• Refuse to pay for the crisis, in euros or in drachmas
• No sacrifice for the Euro
• Abolish the debt. Not a penny to the creditors
• Freeze and abolish workers' debts
• Abolish VAT on basic necessities (food, drink etc.)
• Civil disobedience and refusal to pay the new government-imposed taxes
• Increase the taxation of capital
• Nationalisation under workers' control of the banks and the big business with no compensation
• Abolish the political and legal protection of companies that are declared bankrupt. Demand that the workers get paid all the wages that are owned to them. Expropriate the employers' wealth (both personal or in other companies) at every company that is declared “bankrupt”, in order to compensate all workers
• Wage increases, reduction in working hours, work for all
• Pension increases in line with wages, reduction in the age of retirement
• Ban redundancies. Unemployment benefit in line with wages
• For a public sector in the service of the people's and society’s needs, replacing today’s public sector, which is interrelated with corporations, contractors and corruption
• For an extension of education, health, public-transport, and welfare state provision.
Both the big union federations, GSEE and ADEDY, have refused to back the 17 January strike in the Athens region called by rank and file committees in the private sector.
ADEDY is hiding behind the excuse that it represents the public sector workers. GSEE is currently participating in “talks” with the bosses' federation SEV (equivalent to CBI) within a framework exclusively defined by the government, the Troika, and the employers.
Under discussion, basically, is legislation to give employers right to violate and ignore collective bargaining agreements. And the government has made it clear that independent of whether or not the GSEE and the bosses arrive at an agreement to reduce labour costs, they will implement the changes demanded by the Troika by amending the Greek constitution.
In the words of the minister of labour, Koutroumanis: “Everything is at stake; all workers' gains should be brought on to the negotiation table”.
The GSEE claims that it is only discussing cuts in the “non-wage” part of labour costs. But the end product of the GSEE talks with the employers is sure to be more attacks on the working class.
GSEE is discussing cuts in employers' contributions to pensions and insurance funds — contributions which come from the workers' unpaid work and not from the bosses' generosity- and that threatens bankruptcy for those funds or in any case further reductions in pensions and social benefits.
GSEE has endorsed and reproduced capitalist axioms: “The workers do not produce all social wealth, via their work. The workers are cost-centres for the capitalists and our duty is to relieve the capitalists' burden by reducing indirect labour costs”.
GSSE puts the clock back to 150 years ago, before Marx introduced the theory of surplus value, which ideologically arms the working class in struggle against the capitalist class.
A quick look at the numbers from the two decades of development in Greece between 1990 and 2007 dispel the myth that cutting workers' incomes will restore prosperity.
Between 1990 and 2007 the GDP grew 5.5 times. Business profits increased by 28 times. The minimum wage only doubled, from 15 euros per day to 30 euros per day.
All the talk about the “rescue of the country” having wage cuts as its starting point “seems to forget” the gross overcharges (up to 90%) by private contractors on public sector projects.
It is very hard to believe how the reduction of the minimum wage from €750 per month to €600 per month will save the country from bankruptcy. GSEE should have asked the employers and government to explain why Spain does not experience a “process of development and prosperity”, but rather 25% unemployment, when Spain's minimum wage is 150 euros lower than Greece's.
Wages and pensions for Greek workers have been dramatically cut already, and so has welfare provision, but inflation is running over 5% and big companies and multinationals are making massive profits.
