STATEMENT BY THE REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST LEAGUE
GREEK SECTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
WITH fast-track procedures that ridicule all democratic and constitutional statutes, the clique of a government headed by SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras is pushing through the Vouli (Greek parliament) this Thursday (13th August) the new austerity accords agreed with the European Commission’s agencies and the IMF.
This new third bail-out entitled ‘Loan Agreement’ has the support of the conservative, the social democrats and the media-formed parties. A Eurogroup meeting to be held today, Friday August 14th, is to ratify the new Greek austerity accords.
The new austerity accords bring disaster to workers, youth, farmers and the self-employed.
High taxes are imposed on all, while big business’ tax rates are lowered. Public social services, education and the health service are being driven to collapse.
Daily consumer goods prices and household bills will be increased. A 23 per cent VAT has now been imposed on food and all bills. Legislation, part of the austerity accords, will lead to mass sackings and pensions cut to 350 euros a month.
Labour rights are to be destroyed to aid the bosses who are desperate to employ youth on a daily casual basis, for a few euros, with no rights whatsoever. On top of these barbaric public expenditure cuts, mass unemployment and high prices, the so-called ‘Left’ government of Alexis Tsipras has agreed to hand over the control of all state income to ‘independent’ bodies dominated by EC-IMF appointed staff or commissioners.
A special ‘independent’ Privatisations Fund will sell off all Greek state properties to pay back the international bankers. Every single decision by the Greek government, will first have to be approved by EC-IMF commissioners, overlords who have a veto right!
The SYRIZA government and deputies are traitors to the working class, the youth and all of the Greek masses. They have no right whatsoever to vote for the new set of austerity measures. They were elected last January on a clear anti-austerity mandate and on July 5, in a referendum, the Greek people voted by 61.3 per cent against austerity accords.
The SYRIZA government has betrayed and has completely submitted to the EC and IMF. Their treachery knows no bounds. The SYRIZA government will betray again and again all the hopes and promises given to the Greek people.
Judas committed suicide but this Tsipras clique and the deputies that support him, will implement all the diktats of their EC-IMF overlords. This Tsipras clique, parading as a government, is no longer a democratically elected government. It has lost the necessary 151 deputies for a majority in the Vouli and survives on the support of the right-wing anti-working class parties.
It has been transformed into the instrument of the EC-IMF and bankers and it will stay in office only as long as they deem necessary, or until it is overthrown by the revolutionary mass action of workers, youth, poor farmers and the self-employed. This revolution of the masses will be led by the organised and united furious resistance of workers and youth, which will bring all of the oppressed together including the immigrants and refugees.
This revolutionary unity must be expressed in a united class front, by an indefinite general political strike that fights clearly and defiantly to overthrow the SYRIZA quisling government and for the smashing up of all austerity accords. Central to this struggle is the eviction of the treacherous trade union bureaucracy and the establishment of a Workers’ National Convention to organise the fight.
The overthrow of the austerity ‘left’ SYRIZA government by working class strike and occupation action, must get Greece out of the EC, euro and NATO, nationalise all banks and big businesses under workers’ control and management, write-off all public debt, overthrow capitalism and establish a workers’ and poor farmers’ government.
Only with such a strategy and action can the Greek working class and the majority of the Greek people rise up to smash up the conspiracies for a state dictatorship of the EC-IMF-NATO, the Greek bosses and their neo-nazi Golden Dawn squads.
Calls by trade union and left leaders for ‘everyone on the streets’ are empty unless they are concretely part of a programme for the victory of the struggle through the overthrow of the Tsipras government and the working class taking power.
The call of the Stalinist Greek Communist Party for a popular front to fight against the austerity accords without demanding the overthrow of the government and an EC-euro exit, is nothing but a diversion from the fight. Both the KKE and ANTARSYA leaders refuse to call for an indefinite political general strike, and to link this to the overthrow of the government and capitalism. These leaders of the working class are not ready for such a task.
The Fourth International Trotskyists of The Revolutionary Marxist League (RML), the Greek section of the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International, evaluate the momentous class struggles in Greece as a part of the developing world socialist revolution of the working class of the world, that is being driven forward by the world crisis of the capitalist system.
The RML believes that this is a revolutionary situation, and that the Greek working class must seize the opportunity to take the power and end austerity once and for all. The crisis in Greece is part of the historical crisis of world capitalism, which is once again breaking at its weakest link, as it did in October 1917.
This crisis can only be resolved by overthrowing capitalism and establishing a workers’ and poor farmers’ government based on popular assemblies, councils of action, trades unions, conscript soldiers’ committees, and poor farmers’ committees. The RML warns of coming attempts by the dictatorial conspiracies of the EC and the Greek bosses and bankers to impose violently, through the riot police, the army and the fascist gangs, the new austerity accords.
The RML states that today workers and youth in Greece are furious and ready to fight all the way. What is now absolutely necessary is the building of the RML into a mass party of the Fourth International to lead the working masses to power.
• Forward to the Greek Socialist revolution!
• Forward to the Socialist United States of Europe!
• Forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution.
Athens Wednesday August 12, 2015.
