THE Greek working class and the youth are suffering under the ‘Iron Heel’ of the Troika (the European Union the European Central Bank and the IMF) as are all of the workers of Europe.
There is over 28% adult unemployment and over 60% youth unemployment in Greece. There is huge privation and an even greater anger at the way that the EU is treating the working class
The Syriza left bloc was driven forward by this massive revolutionary anger against austerity and the EU, and won an election on the basis that it would break with austerity and the EU, and refuse to carry out the massive repayments that the Troika is demanding.
This has proven to be just left talk as the News Line predicted, and now after the Syriza led coalition has ‘repaid’ some 450 million euros, it has announced that it is to privatise the railways, the vitally important port of Piraeus, and respect the privatisations that have already been carried out!
The promises that the thousands of trade unionists who were sacked under the previous regime would get their jobs back have also been broken!
The working class of Greece and the youth are now up in arms over the Syriza capitulation and more and more of them are now convinced that there is only one way out of the crisis and that is by carrying out the Greek socialist revolution.
This growing conviction has been strengthened by PM Tsipras’ visit to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin.
He came, he saw and returned to Greece with nothing.
It was spelt out to him by Putin and others that the Putin leadership has not the slightest interest in encouraging in any way the break up of the EU, since its political strategy has been based on the theory that the Stalinist regime will be able to drive a wedge in between the EU and the US, and even ‘neutralise’ the EU and turn it into a ‘semi-ally’.
This is after the Ukraine debacle when EU leaders addressed right-wing mobs in Maidan Square, ignored the deal that Yanukovych made with the opposition for elections and instead gave the go ahead for the violent coup and a civil war.
This critical development in fact pushed Putin further to the right, confirming that he would concentrate purely on the military defence of Russia, and go for deals and compromises with imperialism everywhere else, even when the enemy was completely opposed to such deals and compromises.
Following Tsipras’ visit to Moscow last Wednesday, the Russian government has reiterated its interest in Greece. This is that Russian companies will be bidding for the Greek Railways as well as the port of Thessaloniki ‘if they are to be sold’ as the Russian statement put it.
China then followed the Putin lead in stabbing the Greek workers in the back.
Tsipras learnt in Moscow that Putin is not prepared to risk an open break with the EU and Merkel by championing the cause of the Greek workers and youth.
Once again, the only progressive role that Putin plays is in organising the military defence of Russia against imperialism.
He then undermines that same defence by strengthening imperialism, by seeking to preserve the EU at the expense of the Greek workers, to the extent of participating in Greek privatisations. His foreign policy is to oppose workers revolutions, while at home he continues to balance precariously with one foot on the working class and the other on the oligarchs.
Putin’s foreign policy is to seek to make deals with imperialism that sacrifice the interests of the working class.
The results of the Syriza trip to Moscow can only be to strengthen the growing conviction of the Greek workers that there is only one way out of the crisis for them. This is for the the Greek working class to take the power and establish a workers and small farmers government at home.
This will give a lead to the entire working class of Europe that the way to deal with the crisis of the EU is to overthrow it and smash the Troika in the process, to replace the EU of the bosses and bankers with the Socialist United States of Europe.
This is the only way to defend both the workers of Europe and Russia by creating the conditions for a socialist Europe that will include the revolutionary restoration of the USSR.
