• No to the destruction of the state pension system
• Down with the junta of the IMF-European Commission-Papandreou!
• For an indefinite Political General Strike!
Statement by the Revolutionary Marxist League Greek section of the International Committee of the Fourth International
FOLLOWING the historic and huge 5th of May general strike in Greece, millions of workers in Spain and Portugal are to participate in general strikes set for the beginning of June.
These are against their own capitalist government’s subservience to the IMF and the European Commission.
This is the same subservience as is shown by the Greek regime of Prime Minister Papandreou, the racist party LAOS, and the right wing ex-Foreign Minister Bakoyianni.
Last Monday in Britain the High Court banned the strike in British Airways despite the fact that over 80 per cent of the crews have voted for the strike.
These are reflections of the main characteristics of the revolutionary period we live in, a product of the biggest crisis of capitalism: on the one hand the massive attacks of the IMF-Commission backed capitalist governments for the destruction of wages, pensions and rights, and on the other the tremendous revolutionary resistance of the working class throughout Europe.
Following Papandreou’s parliamentary coup, in the vote in the Greek parliament on the austerity measures dictated by the IMF, the junta of the IMF-Commission-Papandreou now attempts to demolish the state pensions system and also prepares new Bills against collective bargaining and agreements, mass sackings and for the oppression and banning of workers’ demonstrations and mobilisations.
The IMF and the European Commission will demand ever more new austerity measures.
In order to comply with their diktats the Papandreou regime will continuously violate the Greek Constitution and parliamentary rules, and attack ever more violently workers’ demonstrations with the riot police and whateverother forces are at their disposal.
In Greece unemployment and inflation are galloping while industrial output fell by 4% in the first three months of this year as compared to 2009.
The IMF-Commission austerity measures have created the biggest economic recession in Greece.
The huge political crisis of the IMF-Commission-Papandreou junta and of the whole of the bourgeois political system, has led the Industrialists’ Association and the capitalist Press to demand a government of ‘national salvation’.
They realise that the Papandreou regime won’t last long; they want to overthrow it from the right before it is overthrown from the left by the strikes of the working class.
It was the policies of the Papandreou regime and the lack of trade unionism at the Marfin Bank which produced deaths.
The working class and the youth must realise that the ‘deep state’ of the riot police, the secret services, the courts and the army, have set up a mechanism to confront the general strike of the 20th May.
They will use it one way or the other. The labour and trade union movement must protect the march and the demonstrations and be ready to react to any provocation by the riot police.
At the Eurozone summit of 8-9 May the formation of a ‘support mechanism’ of some 750 billion Euros was decided, to prop up the Euro and assist those countries near economic collapse.
Within a few days top officials of the European Central Bank stated that this sum is not enough.
German and American bankers and economists emphasise that the austerity measures imposed on Greece won’t bring the country out of the crisis.
The capitalists have lost trust to their own system and their huge disagreements are coming to the fore.
The immediate task of all workers is the organisation of an INDEFINITE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE for the overthrow of the barbaric austerity measures and of the Pensions Bill, through the revolutionary overthrow of the IMF-Commission-Papandreou junta.
Class conscious workers should take up the call and fight to turn the one-day general strikes called by the trade union bureaucracy into an indefinite political general strike.
Under such perspectives there should be formed:
• STRIKE and OCCUPATION COMMITTEES in every work place.
• A UNITED FRONT of all workers with national and local assemblies of representatives from all trade unions.
• AN ALLIANCE OF ALL PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS with an assembly of representatives.
• COUNCILS OF ACTION (Soviets) in every district, town and village, with assemblies open to all, to forge the unity of workers with the youth, the unemployed, the immigrant workers, the small farmers, and the self-employed.
The aim of the treacherous bureaucracy of the GSEE (Greek TUC) and of the ADEDY (public sector trades union federation) is the deflation and wearing out of the struggle through one-day general strikes.
The Greek Communist Party, the Coalition of the Radical Left and the other parties of the Left, refuse to fight for an indefinite political general strike and for the overthrow of the IMF-Commission-Papandreou junta.
They do not accept the revolutionary conditions we live under today, the revolutionary nature of the situation, and the big opportunity that is being created for the working class to overthrow the capitalist class, smash its state apparatus, and establish workers power in Greece.
A new revolutionary leadership in the labour and trade union movement is urgently needed.
The Revolutionary Marxist league calls on you to join us in the building of a mass revolutionary Marxist party which will lead workers to victory and socialism.
Our programme is for the nationalisation of the banks, shipping and large industries without compensation and under workers’ control and management within a socialist planned economy; for the repudiation of Greece’s capitalist debt; for support to the Palestinian revolution and for all the struggles of the oppressed of the world.
Today in Greece workers and youth are not fighting by themselves!
By our side stands the Portuguese, Spanish, British, and Romanian workers and the powerful working class of all Europe.
We demand:
Down with capitalism!
Forward to a workers’ and small farmers’ socialist government in Greece!
Bring down the European Union, and forward to the United Socialist States of Europe where the working class will hold the power and the bankers and bosses will be expropriated.
Athens 19 May 2010
