A REFERENDUM has been called by the Pasok Prime Minister, Papandreou, on the austerity programme that the EU bosses and bankers have been seeking to force onto the Greek working class, youth and peasantry.
Papandreou, on Monday, told a meeting of his governing Socialist Party that the Greek people would have the final say on the austerity programme, which has met an avalanche of opposition from the Greek workers.
The latest austerity measures include mass sackings and huge wage, pensions, education and health cuts. At the moment, workers are left with just a few euros, with the state taking the rest, when they are paid their wages. As far as they are concerned ‘Enough is Enough’.
‘The command of the Greek people will bind us’, Papandreou told Pasok MPs yesterday. However, the Greek people are demanding that he go now!
The Greek bourgeoisie has, in fact, broken at its weakest link which is the Pasok Socialist government. This was after it has been fought to a standstill by the Greek workers who have shown once and for all that the massive austerity cuts programmes cannot be foisted on them, or on the workers of Europe, including the UK, by a bourgeois democratic party, and that their implementation will require a military police dictatorship.
Yesterday Sarkozy said that he was ‘dismayed’ by the referendum call. And the rest of the eurozone leaders were in shock, complaining that they were not even consulted by Papandreou. Their spin doctors and advisers ran out of spin. They were speechless as their ‘rescue programme’ and their plans to strip the Greek workers bare, like a plague of locusts, to save the euro and the EU, ran aground on the resistance of the Greek workers.
The bosses internationally gave their verdict to the Greek events with a massive collapse of share prices!
This deepening crisis is not going to wait on referendum results. Already sections of the European bourgeoisie have put forward their opinion that what Greece needs is another military dictatorship like the regime of Colonels, and that they will not stand idly by and watch the euro, the eurozone and the EU be destroyed by a ‘few million’ Greek workers.
The collapse of the demoralised Pasok regime has placed the essence of the situation in front of the working class of Greece and the world, this is that the working class must take the power.
The Greek working class has shown its enormous power, and would undoubtedly prevail in a referendum. However, the situation will not wait on referendums. The desperate Greek and EU bourgeoisie will take extra-parliamentary action to defend the EU by attempting to impose a right wing regime on the Greek workers.
The Greek working class must take the power, through a socialist revolution, expropriating the bosses and the bankers, and bringing in a workers and small farmers government, and a socialist planned economy.
This urgent task requires building the revolutionary leadership of the Fourth International in Greece to lead this struggle for the Greek and European socialist revolutions, since the Greek crisis cannot be separated from the crisis of the EU and European capitalism.
A failure to build this leadership, to put an end to the rule of the Greek ruling class, will see Greece consumed by a civil war, with its ruling class inciting EU military intervention.
For the workers of Europe the message is clear. Follow the example of the Greek workers. Fight all the cuts and the closures and demand indefinite general strikes to bring down Cameron, Sarkozy and Merkel, to create the conditions for carrying out the German, French and UK socialist revolutions, to replace the Europe of the bankers and bosses with the Socialist United States of Europe.
Central to this historic and absolutely necessary struggle is the building of sections of the Fourth International throughout Europe to lead the struggle to victory.
The Greek working class has shown that the working class is stronger than the bourgeoisie. Now the revolutionary leadership must be built throughout Europe to give the coup-de-grace to European capitalism, which will constitute a huge step forward for humanity.
