THE Troika of the IMF, the ECB and the EU have imposed such a massive austerity programme onto the backs of the Greek working class and the middle class that Greece is now exploding in a series of revolutionary confrontations that pose the working class taking power and putting an end to Greek capitalism.
Many tens of thousands of workers and youth are to demonstrate in Athens tomorrow against the visit of German Chancellor Merkel, following the call of the GSEE (Greek TUC) who have declared a three-hour Athens-wide stoppage on the day.
The Greek government, with its appointed, not elected chiefs, has done all that it could do to strip the working class and the middle class bare, like locusts, and is now asking Merkel to show some mercy in a situation which is unbearable.
In an interview last week, Samaras described his government as ‘Greece’s last chance for survival’, and pleaded that it must have more billions in loans or run out of cash completely by November.
Greek workers are now gearing up for indefinite general strike action to remove the government, as the daily clashes between the riot police and working class testify.
The local government workers trades union federation POE-OTA has called for the occupation of town halls and their transformation into ‘centres of resistance’, known historically as ‘soviets’.
Today, the National Federation of Metal Workers is staging a national strike demanding the release of 106 shipyard workers who have been arrested and whose trials have begun.
During last Thursday’s demonstrations, protesters clashed with police both at the defence ministry and outside Greek police headquarters.
They forced open the shuttered entrance to the defence ministry complex, crossed the courtyard and blocked the entrance to the general staff building. When General Michalis Kostarakos emerged to speak to them he was shouted down and his order to ‘Get off my base’ was ignored.
Police made many arrests, prompting an even bigger protest outside the police headquarters.
Angry demonstrators said they have not been paid for several months and that their place of work, Hellenic Shipyards, is threatened with bankruptcy.
As well, on Thursday, hundreds of farmers on the island of Crete tried to storm the runway of Heraklion airport and clashed with police.
The Greek quisling regime is pleading for a 33.5bn euro (£27bn; $43bn) instalment from its second bailout of 130bn euros.
The gangster troika of international lenders – the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank – are demanding further cuts of 11.5bn euros in return.
Samaras says it will be ‘very difficult’ to make further cuts to pensions and wages, and warned that Greek society is in a situation like that ‘towards the end of the Weimar Republic in Germany’, when the betrayals of the Communist Party and the German Labour Party allowed Hitler to come to power legally, in 1933.
Samaras said the threat came from far-left movements and ‘the rise of an extreme right, you could say fascist, neo-Nazi party’.
He said that ‘chaos awaits’ if the Troika continued to undermine his government, and it fell. In fact, the chaos is the responsibility of the Troika and his government’s policies.
Greece is now rotten-ripe for revolution. Every effort that is required must be made to build the Revolutionary Marxist League, the Greek section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, into the revolutionary leadership of the Greek workers and youth.
This must be done in the process of the organisation of an indefinite general strike, and a network of workers councils (soviets), to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers and small farmers government to carry out socialist policies.
There is no doubt that this Greek socialist revolution is the beginning of the socialist revolution throughout Europe.
