THE Greek working class, Greek youth and the majority of the middle class and the small farmers have battled the EU imposed austerity programmes with a massive determination.
Now on January 25th there is to be a general election, that has been forced on the reactionary coalition that is carrying out the austerity programme for the EU bankers, bosses and governments, after it was defeated twice in the Greek parliament, and the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) is now poised to win the election, barring a pre-election intervention by the coupist military backed by the EU.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) urges the working class and the middle class to vote for Syriza, to clear the way for a socialist revolution and the working class taking power.
However the radicals of Syriza, and their ‘left government’, have not the slightest intention of organising a socialist revolution, and beginning it with a break with the European Union and a declaration for a Socialist United States of Europe in its place.
Within Syriza there are right wing forces who want to compromise with the international bankers and with the Troika. These right wing forces do not want to fight, they want to capitulate and betray the workers. They also want a coalition with certain sections of the social-democrats of PASOK and of the Democratic Left party who have voted time and again for the Austerity Accords! Workers must be prepared to smash these manoeuvres.
A Syriza government will be today’s equivalent of the Provisional Government that came into being in February 1917 in Russia as a result of a workers uprising against the First World War, and then decided to continue with the bloodbath, betraying the masses of the working class, until they were overthrown in October by Lenin and Trotsky.
The ICFI says vote Syriza to get rid of the EU imposed regime, but that the working class cannot halt at a treacherous ‘left government’, that will have behind it a section of the reactionary state forces, as well as the Stalinist parties and the trade union bureaucrats.
The working class, the youth and the small farmers need a workers government that will break with the EU and carry out socialist policies.
The preparations must be made now to carry the Greek revolution forward to and after the January 25th election.
This means building up rapidly the Trotskyist party, the Revolutionary Marxist League, which must mobilise the working class and the masses of the youth to set up Councils of Action in every city and town now, to guard the election from a counter-revolutionary intervention by the EU, in the form of an attempt to foist a new regime of colonels onto Greece supported by army units, the police and the Golden Dawn fascists.
The bringing down of the conservative-social democrats coalition government is a huge and historic victory of the working class and youth, of the sacked women cleaners, ERT workers, public sector workers and students who did not succumb, but fought daily against the riot police and the courts of the parliamentary junta.
The election of the Syriza government will create a huge crisis in the EU, and a major crisis and splits within Syriza.
The building of the Revolutionary Marxist League and the forming of Councils of Action now are vital to carrying the revolution forward,beyond a .general election victory to the working class taking power and forming a workers and small farmers revolutionary government.
The programme of the revolution must be:
• Kick out the Austerity Accords and the Troika – Quit the EU and advocate replacing the EU with a Socialist United States of Europe.
• Nationalise all banks, electricity, communications and transport. Renationalise all privatised state property and enterprises under workers control.
• Re-employ all sacked workers. Proper funding for the health service, state education and social services.
• Restore wages, pensions and labour conditions.
• Declare illegal the Golden Dawn party and all fascist and racist organisations. Disband the riot police, and smash the capitalist state.
• Reveal all the secret agreements with the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and international banks.
