OVER a million Greeks stopped work yesterday in a general strike while tens of thousands of Greek workers, unemployed and youth rallied in front of the ERT (Greek state TV and Radio network) building in Athens, which had been closed by the Greek dictatorship on the orders of the EU’s Troika.
The ERT is occupied and is still defiantly broadcasting through the internet after the riot police and other state forces took over the transmitters.
The response of the workers to the closure and mass sackings order was immediate and revolutionary – they occupied the building and turned it into an instrument for overthrowing the EU and Troika-imposed Samaras government, while thousands of workers rallied outside.
The action ordered by the EU’s Troika touched off the demand for a general strike with such force that the trade union bureaucracy was unable to stop it. This has created the conditions for an indefinite general strike to bring down the EU-imposed government and bring in a workers and small farmers government that will carry out a socialist reorganisation of Greek society, and begin the socialist revolution in Europe.
In taking this road, the Greek workers have been inspired by the historic Turkish workers and youth uprising against the Erdogan dictatorship and its attempts to end the secular Turkish state and crush the trade unions.
Last Tuesday there was a march of Greek workers and youth alongside Turkish workers to the Turkish embassy in Athens to demand the release of all Turkish political prisoners. The Greek and Turkish workers are now as one in a historic unity that has a very great importance for the socialist revolution in Europe and the Middle East.
The response of the Turkish ruling class, through Erdogan, to the uprising has been to unleash a massive state violence. This has injured tens of thousands but has actually led to greater numbers of workers and youth taking to the streets. Now they have given the masses ‘one last chance’ to leave Taksim Square – but the Turkish and the Greek masses are now on the march and will not be halted by threats.
The attempt to close the ERT was the last straw, and provided the spark to ignite the Greek revolution. Meanwhile, the Turkish masses have shown that they will not tolerate the imposition of an Islamic dictatorship at home over their secular society, with the trade unions the main target, or the frantic efforts to refound the Ottoman empire abroad, with the carving up of Syria and northern Iraq the first objectives.
The discussion amongst Greek workers and youth massed in the ERT grounds is centring on the dictatorial measures of the Samaras government, the reactionary nature of the trade union bureaucracy who called just a one-day strike which workers condemn as ‘a blank shot’, and on giving full support to the Turkish workers’ and youth uprising.
Neither the Coalition of the Radical Left party (SYRIZA), nor the Greek Communist Party (KKE) nor the centrist ANTARSYA ‘anti-capitalist’ formation have demanded an indefinite strike.
The ERT occupation and the workers’ action have created a huge political crisis for the Samaras parliamentary junta that rules Greece through dictatorial edicts, completely bypassing and ignoring the Vouli (Greek parliament).
The Greek workers and youth have been forced on the revolutionary road to overthrow this government and capitalism.
The situation is now at hand for the rapid building up of the Greek section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Marxist League, to mobilise the masses of the working class and the youth to carry out the Greek socialist revolution, the first blow of the European socialist revolution that will overthrow the EU and bring in a Socialist United States of Europe.
The situation is now rotten-ripe for the building of sections of the Fourth International in Turkey and in all of the European states.
The EU has led the working class of Europe and its youth into an unmitigated disaster with a massive destruction of the productive forces in every country, many of which now have over 20% unemployment and over 50% youth unemployment.
The Greek and Turkish workers are showing the way.
Forward to the European Socialist revolution!
