Euro-banks bully Greece Will SYRIZA fight back?

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On election day, Jan. 25, working people in Greece stood up to the bloodsucking Euro­ pean banks and said, “No more!” The 36.3% vote for the SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) party made it the highest vote getter in a crowded field. For the first time in many decades, an ostensibly anti-capitalist party won a national election in Europe. The elec­ tion victory raised hopes in many countries, particularly among youth, for a showdown with Europe’s rulers.

Post-election analysis showed that SYRIZA was the first choice of Greek workers, receiv­ ing 35% to 40% in the Athens area, where some one-third of Greeks reside. SYRIZA’s new Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, pledged an end to austerity and the dictatorial rule of the big banking institutions known col­ lectively as “the Troika,” which has brought misery to millions of Greeks.

Because SYRIZA was 2% short of a neces­ sary majority, its leaders felt compelled to ask the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party (ANEL, with 4.8% of the vote), which maintains its opposition to the “mor­ atorium,” to form a majority government.

ANEL is a racist, anti-immigrant, homo­ phobic capitalist party that supports NATO, a sore point for many Greeks who remem­ ber Western aid to Greek dictatorships, much of it from the U.S. Incredibly, the ANEL leader, Panos Kammenos, was given leadership of the De­ fense Ministry!

An election night crowd of 5000 celebrated out­ side the parliament building in Athens, the nation’s capital. In Spain that night, a joyous crowd of 10,000 poured into the streets of Madrid to show their soli­ darity with SYRIZA. The SYRIZA message resonated with Spain’s fight against poverty and joblessness, a condition that affects much of Europe, particularly in the South. The Madrid demonstration was called by the newly formed left-of-center Podemos Party, which will challenge the neoliberal People’s Party in an election later this year.

Today, unemployment in Greece is over 25%, com­ parable to the aftermath of the 1929 U.S. stock market crash. The economy has shrunk 25% in the last five years. Unemployment for youth is a devastating 50%. Public jobs have been slashed; the minimum wage has been cut by more than 20 percent. Half of the Greek people live in poverty. There’s a lack of electrical pow­ er for thousands without jobs. Homelessness is ram­ pant. The sight of people eating out of garbage cans is not uncommon.

Greece is a member of the 28-member European Union (EU) and trades in its currency, the “euro.” The EU was established formally in 1993 as an imperialist alliance of European states. The German government is its most powerful member, rigging conditions in fa­ vor of the northern EU nations over the less prosper­ ous South—Spain, Italy, Greece, etc.

Greece is way behind in its loan payments. Tax ar­ rears have reached $65 billion, rising by nearly $1 bil­ lion a month. The new SYRIZA government needs to pay out about $19 billion in several payments, with the main deadlines in March, July, and August. Greece is in line to receive an over $6 billion loan installment in May, in time to meet the $6 billion of repayments that are due in July and August—or possibly to de­ fault. Everything depends on the Troika’s satisfaction with the implementation of SYRIZA’s economic plan.

Default could lead to an exit from the EU or “Grexit,” as it is often called, leading to a crisis of the EU as an institution, not to mention a far deeper crisis within Greece itself. Prime Minister Tsipras has pledged to stay within the EU, although left critics of Tsipras within SYRIZA argue that not using the Grexit threat was a major capitulation.

The Troika represents the European bankers and their politicians, who have economically ravaged Greece with a massive bank bailout that went mostly to pay off bad (that is, crooked) loans. The Troika’s fi­ nancial elite consists of the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF is the enforcement arm of the U.S.-dominated World Bank, despised worldwide for imposing its starvation economic plans on millions—often at gunpoint.

Some 80% of Greek debt is in the hands of the Troi­ ka; the deal is commonly referred to as the “memo­ randum.” Extravagant weapons purchases, the high­ est percentage of any government in Europe, and the waste lavished on the Olympic Games, only added to its debt. Greece now has a national debt of $270 bil­ lion, 177% of its yearly Gross National Product, the highest in Europe.

Greece’s bank bailout was similar to the $16 tril­ lion bailout by George Bush and Barack Obama in the United States, virtually none of which went to help working people. Both bailouts were funded mainly by working taxpayers as hundreds of billions in both countries went to pay off inflated price tags on bank loans and rip-off deals.

The international nature of this crisis shows that the capitalist system, an inhumane system based on private profits, remains in deep trouble. It is a huge laboratory for European and international capital to see how far they can push working people into a hole.

The international capitalist crisis reached a head in Greece beginning in 2010, with the shock waves of the recession and the first Troika loan of about $100 billion. Public spending was slashed, public workers fired and taxes increased in accord with the Troika’s (Above) Large SYRIZA rally in Athens several nights before the Jan. 25 election victory.

austerity plan, i.e., spending cuts and massive pov­ erty. What followed were dozens of general strikes of mostly short duration and innumerable protests, some resulting in death.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, SYRIZA’s chief negotiator with the Troika, called the misery imposed on Greece by Europe’s banks, “Fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony.” Even the establishment journal Financial Times called Greece a “quasi slave economy.” Corporate media pre­ fers to shift discussion of the Greek crisis away from the ruthless, corrupt banks to a discussion of “debt” and “over-spending.” Greeks are even slandered as “lazy.”

Capitulation to the Troika Unfortunately, for all the celebration over the SYRIZA victory, including a 100,000-strong solidarity march in Athens on Feb. 11 in support of SYRIZA during ne­ gotiations, the SYRIZA leadership agreed on Feb. 20 to a four-month extension of the bailout, something they had categorically rejected during their election campaign. In negotiations they sought “a bridge” last­ ing six months.

Despite the “reasonable” demands from SYRIZA, the Troika showed no meaningful flexibility The Europe­ an capitalists wouldn’t budge, hitting the middle-class SYRIZA leadership right in the jaw. They discovered that there are no reasonable, humanitarian capital­ ists—just the bottom line! Meanwhile, Greek banks are losing $1 billion a day in so-called capital flight by nervous capitalists.

The Troika was re-named “the institutions” in the February agreement to take the sting out of the deal for working-class Greeks. Later, Yanis Varouflakis, who calls himself an “erratic Marxist” and who served in a previous capitalist government, bragged that he had employed “vague language” to entice the Troika into a deal. It was a hollow boast. Every step of the way the Troika will oversee the implementation of the loan and then determine whether to disburse funds!

The austerity deal is a threat to jobs and wages and poses the potential threat of further privatizations of public institutions, although SYRIZA says there will be no new privatizations. SYRIZA agreed that it would (continued on page 11, in “University workers walk out”)

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12 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2015 The SYRIZA leadership agreed to a four-month extension of the bail­ out—something they’d rejected during the election campaign.