THE confrontation between Greek teachers and the Greek state and its EU masters has erupted this week after all teachers were served at the weekend with ‘civil mobilisation’ papers, signed and stamped by an army brigadier.
Declaring a state of emergency in the education system, teachers have been subject to ‘civil’ conscription and placed under virtual martial law with striking declared illegal while they are forced to work on pain of imprisonment.
This represents a pre-emptive strike by the state to stop action against the cutting of 10,000 teaching jobs and pay cuts, and also at the basic right to strike of the working class.
Clearly, the next step for the Greek state and the crisis-ridden Troika (IMF, ECB and EU) will be to declare a national state of emergency and ‘conscript’ the entire Greek working class, outlawing all strikes and imposing a military-police dictatorship.
These moves are meeting massive resistance from Greek workers who experienced the dictatorship of the Colonels in the 1970s before bringing that regime down through revolutionary mass action.
This resistance was shown decisively by the teachers who responded to this attack with branch meetings held on Tuesday, in which an overwhelming 95% voted for strike action in defiance of all threats of illegality.
The teachers union, OLME, was inundated with messages of support and pledges of solidarity from huge numbers of trade union branches across the country for their stand.
The working class is eager for the fight. However the same cannot be said for its reformist and Stalinist leadership.
On the eve of the 95% vote for strike action by teachers, two members of the executive of OLME who are members of the KKE – the Greek Stalinist party – voted against striking on the grounds that it would be illegal and that the membership had no stomach for a fight.
The same line was followed by the Stalinist and reformist leadership of the GSEE (the Greek TUC) and ADEDY (public sector trade unions) who rejected the teachers’ call for a general strike on Friday and, instead, restricted action to a four-hour stoppage on Thursday.
While the teachers are fighting the full force of the capitalist state, the leadership of the GSEE is not only restricting any action to a few hours of protest, it is accompanying this treachery with ongoing talks with the bosses aimed at imposing even more draconian wage cuts and job losses on the Greek working class.
What these events prove conclusively is that the working class of Greece is more than willing to confront and take on the capitalist state, while the reformist and Stalinist bureaucracies in the leadership of the unions are determined to head off this movement at all costs.
They would rather betray their members than break the law, so subservient are they to the rule of capitalism.
This treachery is not confined to Greece – it is a common feature of every struggle unfolding across the globe and particularly in Europe, where the economic collapse of capitalism has been felt at its sharpest and is producing a massive revolutionary movement amongst workers and youth that is sweeping the Continent.
Exactly the same treachery is being carried out by the leadership of the TUC in Britain, which is sitting back and doing absolutely nothing as this weak, divided Tory-led coalition drives forward its plans to smash the Welfare State and impose abject poverty on workers as the necessary price for keeping bankrupt capitalism staggering on from one crisis to another.
By refusing to lead all-out general strikes to bring down capitalist governments and replace them with governments based on the working class that can advance to socialism, these reformists act as the main social prop of capitalism – without their treachery capitalism could not survive a single day.
The urgent task of the hour is the building of mass revolutionary parties of the Fourth International in every country to lead the fight to remove these leaders and take the working class forward to the victory of the European socialist revolution.