THE crisis in Greece has reached breaking point this week with the unelected European Commission threatening to declare a ‘state of emergency’ in the country over the refusal of the Syriza government to agree austerity cuts demanded in return for a further bail-out of the bankrupt Greek economy.
The cuts, that the troika (the EU, European Central Bank and IMF) are demanding that Syriza agree to by the end of the week, are so savage that even the left reformists, who have cravenly capitulated to previous demands, are baulking at signing up to them. The troika are demanding further cuts to workers’ pensions – pensions that have already been cut by 44 per cent during the five years of savage austerity – and increases in taxes on vital services like gas.
The troika have rejected Syriza’s proposals to increase taxation and cut the defence budget in order to pay off the debts run up by the EU and IMF forcing loans on Greece in 2010 in order to ensure that the banks and speculators who held that debt got their money back. It is no accident that the troika is demanding cuts that hit at the working class and rural poor the hardest.
They have borne the brunt of five years of austerity and been bled dry to pay off the bankers, and now the troika are demanding that their very bones be crushed up to bail-out a bankrupt European capitalist system. The plan by the troika is that if Syriza does not capitulate completely then a default on the debt will result in an economic blockade of Greece with banks closing and all money cut off.
The result, the bourgeoisie calculate, will lead to riots in the streets as wages, pensions and cash withdrawals cease while medical facilities and energy supplies dry up in weeks. In the words of Germany’s EU commissioner, Guenther Oetinger, Greece will collapse into a ‘state of emergency’, and the ‘creditor powers’ must draw up urgent plans to deal with ‘social unrest’ in the country.
Syriza leader, Alexis Tsipras, on Monday accused these creditors of having ‘political motives’ for demanding these cuts and that the real aim is to provoke either complete capitulation or economic breakdown, with riots in Athens, in order to force through regime change. A coup is precisely what the European capitalist class is planning.
A coup to oust the reformist Syriza and bring in a dictatorship, a new regime of Colonels. The coup being planned is a sign of the desperation of the capitalist class which faces a mass movement of workers and young people across Europe who are refusing to see their lives shattered by permanent austerity while the bankers and oligarchs wallow in unheard of wealth.
So the Greek working class, and behind them the working class of Europe, must be taught a lesson in blood and fire. This is a huge risk for capitalism. Already, the stock markets of the world have lost billions overnight at the prospect of a Greek default and the implications of an enraged working class not rioting but going forward to revolution.
All Tsipras can do in the face of this threat is to threaten that Greece will go to the European Court of Justice for an injunction to stop the economic war and coupist plots of the troika. This appeal to the capitalist courts for protection underlines the complete bankruptcy of reformism. There is only one way forward for Greek workers and small farmers and that is in the overthrow of bankrupt Greek capitalism through the socialist revolution.
The demand must be for a workers’ and small farmers’ government that will expropriate the bankers and bosses, repudiate all debt and break with the capitalist EU. This must be accompanied by a call for the working class of Europe to overthrow the EU and abolish the troika, replacing them with a Socialist United States of Europe.
Central to this task is the building of a new revolutionary leadership of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to lead the socialist revolution to victory.