THE President of the German bosses association ASSON has called for Greece to be turned into a huge ‘Special Economic Zone’.
Hans-Peter Keitel, President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), proposed in an interview published on Monday on Spiegel-on-line that the whole of Greece should be turned into a huge ‘special economic zone’ within the Eurozone, watched over by European Union officials.
The cure for Greece, Keitel said, is to place the country into an ‘oxygen room’, the ‘’special economic zones’.
This is a declaration for an open dictatorship of the EC over Greece, and the creation of a vast concentration camp where workers will be made to work as virtual slaves without any rights at all.
The German bosses’ spokesman proposes a slave economy for Greece on the model of Nazi fascism’s concentration camps.
Such is the catastrophe that the Eurozone has entered that bosses and bankers see modes of slave economy out of the crisis. Keitel’s road to barbarism for Greece is meant for Europe as a whole.
Greece would be the testing ground for 21st century slave economy.
Echoing the German bosses plans for Greece, the representatives of the troika EC-IMF-ECB have demanded a 13 hour 6-day week and the abolition of minimum wage.
After meeting with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and with his coalition government partners on Sunday and Monday, the troika insisted on its diktats to sack 150,000 public sector workers, and to total ‘flexible’ working conditions and starving level wages.
Greek workers are mounting up a fight this week against the troika despite a treacherous trade union bureaucracy.
Striking bank workers of the state Postal Bank (TT) staged a mass demonstration in Athens on Sunday against the visit to Athens of the representatives of the hated troika EC-IMF-ECB. On Monday morning they occupied the HQs of the TT bank while all branches remain shut. The government insist that the bank must be sold off as demanded by the troika.
Teachers, hospital doctors, university and college lecturers, public sector workers and civil servants are coming out on strike today along with the Postal Bank workers. Even high court judges have declared their intention to strike against the slashing of their wages from 17 September. The ADEDY (public sector workers’ federation) have called just a 3-hour stoppage for today but have agreed on a 24-hour general strike to be co-ordinated with the GSEE (Greek TUC).
On Sunday the fascist gangs of the Golden Dawn party attacked street sellers as immigrants at a religious fair in Rafina, about 30 miles east of Athens. Despite the outcry of people at the fair the facsists were allowed to walk away as police stood by idle.
The Greek government has been forced to sack the area’s chief of police and have withdrawn police protection from the Golden Dawn parliamentary deputies. Over 40 per cent of police voted for Golden Dawn in the last general election as shown by a research published in a top bourgeois Athens newspaper.
Greek riot police were in full action against demonstrators on Sunday near the small town of Ierissos in the Chalkidiki district of northern Greece renown for its natural beauty.
Protestors have been campaigning for years against Canadian Gold’s mining operations which they say pollute the whole area due to the chemicals used such as the deadly arsenic.
On Sunday afternoon armed riot police launched an all out attack on demonstrators with tear-gas and smoke and noise bombs in the forset area close to the mines. There were many injured, icluding the Coalition of the Radical Left parliamentary deputy Vagelis Diamantopoulos who was hit in the shoulder by a tear-gas cannister. The riot police action resulted in setting the forest on fire.
Meanwhile 25,000 Greek workers and youth staged a militant anti-government demonstration in the northern city of Salonica last Saturday evening.
The national protest was called by the GSEE (Greek TUC) against the new barbaric austerity measures of the coalition government under Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and demanded by the troika of EC-IMF-ECB.
Supporters of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and several trade unions that have openly accused the GSEE of treachery organised their own separate marches.
The most popular slogans on all marches were for a general strike and for workers’ action against the racist attacks of the fascist Golden Dawn gangs. Recently both the KKE and SYRIZA have called for a 24-hour general strike.
More than 15,000 workers and students took part in the GSEE march supported by all the major trade unions, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), small left-wing parties and local solidarity committees.
There was also a contigent of supporters of a local football team carrying a huge banner stating ‘Down with the junta!’
Trade union speakers at the GSEE rally condemned the new troika-imposed Accord of slashing wages and destruction of health, education and welfare, but said nothing about a general strike.
The invited General Secretary of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) said that the European working class are in a fighting mood and national rallies and general strikes are planned in Spain, Italy, Portugal and other countries this and next month.
But the GSEE march’s front banner simply stated ‘Stop to neo-liberalism’ as if this was the 1990s.
The GSEE leaders led the march to the building of the Ministry for the North where they handed out a protest letter and decided that was the end of the march. They were followed by all the large public trade union sections.
But the vast majority of the march refused to stop there and carried on through the streets of Salonica city centre; now the calls for a general strike being dominant.
Some powerful section of the working class, such as energy and refinery, local government, transport and hospital workers and teachers, followed this march in defiance of the GSEE bureaucrats’ orders.
Engineers, steel-workers, construction and apparel workers formed the bulk of the KKE’s march shouting for a general strike but refusing to fight against the GSEE leaders.
At the front of the third march, organised by a number of smaller trade unions, were the banners of the Industrial Mettalurgy (BIO.ME.) workers who have taken over the firm’s factory when it shut a few months ago and are demanding support to re-open it on a workers’ management and control basis.
Their front stated: ‘We have not been paid for 17 months – the factory must operate – not another 70 unemployed’; another banner stated: ‘We demand the immediate operation of the factory! It is time we all say yes to workers’ coperative firms.’
Behind them was the banner of the Solidarity Committee to the BIO.ME.’s workers which demanded: ‘The factory in the workers’ hands’.
The Solidarity Committee contigent kept up a constant chant of slogans throughout the march such as: ‘The Mettalurgy struggle is only the start – a general workers’ insurrection is on its way!’ and ‘Victory to the workers’ struggle at Mettalurgy – production must be under workers’ management!’.
The President of the BIO.ME. trade union Makis Anagnostou spoke to the News Line explaining why the union decided to participate in this march rather than in the GSEE or the KKE demonstrations.
‘We are here,’ Anagnostou said, ‘because the GSEE have refused to support us and because the KKE say that we should not be calling for workers’ self-management.’
There followed the banners of the state Athens Metro workers and of the Athens Metro sacked workers involved in a continuous fight against management over privatisation, high fares, slashing of wages and the imposition by diktats of ‘flexible’ working conditions. But the Salonica Metro workers marched under the GSEE banner.
In constrast to previous demonstrations, not a single students’ banner was present. Students explained that the present leaders have given in to the government and are refusing to mobilise even the students at the nearby University of Thessaloniki.
With the BIO.ME. banners leading the way, marchers reached the entrance to the Salonica International Trade Fair shouting anti-government slogans.
Earlier hundreds of small farmers had thrown fruit in front of the entrance in protest against the government agricultural policies.
Dozens of armed riot police rushed to confront the BIO.ME. and other workers but police hesitated in front of a determined march. After a while workers withdrew back to the city streets.
The Revolutionary Marxist League participated in this march with its newspaper calling for an indefinite political general strike to bring down the government, kick out the troika and get rid of capitalism.
But a few hundred students and so-called anti-state power youths remained at a distance to the Fair’s entrance shouting slogans.
The riot police decided that was to be their target for the night and they attacked viciously along with tear-gas cannisters and smoke and noise bombs.
Despite the treacherous undermining of the Salonica rally and demonstration by the trade union bureucracy (totally inadequate organisation, refusal to call for mass delegations from the trades unions, complete lack of a programme of action and demands), the marches showed the fighting spirit of the working class and youth and their determination to stage a general strike.
There have been some 20 one and two days general strikes in Greece since April 2010 when the Greek government called in the IMF and agreed to the first bail-out Accord with the troika of EC-IMF-ECB which imposed the first round of massive public cuts and slashing of wages and pensions.
Two years later unemployment has reached 25 per cent, youth unemployment 55 per cent (the highest in the whole of Europe), wages and pensions have been cut by some 30-40 per cent on average, and the state education system and the national health service are literally collapsing.
Workers realise that something more is needed to beat the troika and the Greek Quislings in the coalition government.
Last year public sector workers occupied most ministries for over a week amid massive demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of workers in front of the Vouli (Greek parliament).
They were attacked and beaten up by the armed riot police using tonnes of tear-gas.
Greek workers have entered this autumn’s fight determined but still with a trades unions leadership dominated by a treacherous bureaucracy, a reformist coalition of social-democrats and right-wingers.
The ‘lefts’ of the Coalition of the Radical Left preach ‘patience’ until they win the next general election, while the Stalinist leaders of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) have betrayed the recent strikes of steel workers and bank workers.
But the current revolutionary situation in Greece is maturing to the point of explosion inseparable from the struggles of the workers in Europe and of the Arab Revolution.
The policies of the Coalition of the Radical Left and of the KKE are completely inadequate and counter-revolutionary in today’s conditions.
It is true that workers are attracted to the slogan of the Coalition of the Radical Left for a ‘left’ government which will ‘negotiate’ with the European Commission Greece’s debt.
But the unfolding collapse of the European Union and of the Euro, which forced the European Central Bank last Thursday to announce a desperate and hopeless programme of buying up debt, is pushing workers and youth in Greece to demand revolutionary action as they are confronted with poverty.
They are looking beyond a ‘left’ capitalist government.
But the counter-revolution is also preparing as can be seen in the riot police operations, new Bills for the curtailment of strikes and demonstrations and by the terrorists attacks on immigrants and workers of the fascist gangs of the Golden Down party aided by the riot police.
The central task is the smashing of the troika and the austerity measures Accords, but this is refused by the Coalition of the Radical Left and rejected by the KKE who hold in contempt the revolutionary nature of Greek workers and youth.
Thus the issue of the day is the building of a new revolutionary political and trades union leadership set for the overthrow of capitalism through workers’ mass mobilisations, occupations and People’s Assemblies in all areas.
This is the task for the Revolutionary Marxist League in Greece.
It must be built up rapidly recruiting thousands of workers and youth to lead the working class to smash the EC-IMF-ECB Accords and the capitalist state through a socialist revolution to form a workers’ and small farmers’ government to write off the debt and instigate a nationalised planned economy, to begin the European socialist revolution.
