Greece in Revolt

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This article describes the significant rise in mobilizations in Greece in early June. It was written on June 13, two days before the first attempt to encircle the Greek Parliament— which was violently attacked by police. On June 28, Greek workers undertook a two-day general strike. Nevertheless, parliament, led by the “socialist” PASOK party of Premier George Papandreou , approved the EU/IMFbacked “Memorandum.” The new austerity legislation authorizes drastic cutbacks in social services, wages, and pensions; tax hikes; mass lay-offs; and the privatization of many state-owned enterprises.

ATHENS—The social resistance against the policy of the “Memorandum” in Greece, which has been imposed on the country since the beginning of last year by the “Troika”—a kind of committee of the ruling classes of the major countries of the EU and the USA, represented by the Brussels Commission, the ECB and the IMF in conjunction with the “socialist” PASOK government— has now entered a new and potentially decisive phase. The Memorandum has only one meaning: the ruthless plundering of the working population and its unprecedented degradation in favor of saving the exorbitant profits of Greek, German, French, and other banks—with young people, working women, and all other socially disadvantaged groups as particular victims.

Kostas Tsironis / AFP / Getty Images (Above) Young people rally in front of Parliament. (Below) Marchers against rollback of pension benefits.

take place. All important issues, claims, content and organizational suggestions, opinions and views are discussed and partially approved by voting. All decisions are posted on a special website. Some 3000 young people, most of them probably students, take part in these meetings. This form of organization is supported both by working groups on various topics—such as unemployment, education, schools and culture—and by public forums and panel discussions as on the debt crisis and possible ways out of it.

There is a general consensus that this is a unique historical opportunity to deal a serious, possibly fatal blow to the policy of the Memorandum, the government, and the terror of the ruling classes. There is also agreement that Greece is close to a social explosion. If we measure this using the criterion formulated by a revolutionary of the last century when he noted that “the rulers cannot govern as before, and the ruled refuse to be governed in the normal way,” then this is an accurate description of the situation that has now arisen in Greece.

Nevertheless, one cannot ignore that the movement has to go through a few more stages if it is to reach its full potential. The fight must be taken into all key areas of social life: into the factories, the offices of public administration, hospitals, schools and universities, which will be most affected by the vile “Midterm Program.” The systematic destruction of jobs, the abolition of collectively-bargained contracts, the cancellation of the gains resulting from a century of struggles conducted by the workers movement, the privatization mania, and the selling off of state property must be stopped.

Primarily, a clear statement of the content and programmatic goals of the movement is needed, which will be possible only in the context of a transitional program designed to overcome the domination of finance and big business. Here the claim for expropriation of the banks under workers control without compensation has to play a key role. All this can emerge only through a combination of the new movement and the rank-and-file trade union movement of the previous 18 months. This combined movement needs a clear anti-capitalist perspective and a strategy to ensure victory. n Socialist Action july 2011 7