STATEMENT of the Ergatiki Antistasi (Workers Resistance), newspaper of the Revolutionary Marxist League (RML), Greek Section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
FOR AN INDEFINITE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE, FOR THE OVERTHROW OF GOVERNMENT,
AUSTERITY ACCORDS, TROIKA AND CAPITALISM!
From Ireland and Britain to Lithuania, and from Portugal and Spain to Greece and Cyprus, the European Union and the euro are collapsing under the impact of the world economic crisis of capitalism and the resistance of the working class, youth, small farmers and middle-class professionals.
Throughout Europe general strikes and huge demonstrations express the uprising of workers against austerity measures.
The aim of the Austerity Accords imposed by the troika of EC-IMF-ECB is to turn the whole of Greece into a Taiwan-type special economic zone with wages of 400 euros per month, 12-hour shifts and 6-day weeks on 6-month contracts without labour rights.
Despite the differences between the EC and the IMF, their common objective is the destruction of the state welfare, health and education systems.
Already the official unemployment rate has gone over 25 per cent, while in the 15-24 age group the unemployment rate is the highest in Europe at 55.5 per cent.
New tax hikes, fare increases and rises on daily consumer goods are to be imposed at a time when EuroStat have stated that the prices of dairy products in Greece are 30 per cent above the European Union average.
Millions of workers and unemployed will suffer from cold this winter since they will not be able to afford the new price for heating oil, increased by 80 per cent.
The Austerity Accords signed between the EC-IMF-ECB troika and successive totally subservient Greek governments since the spring of 2010, constitute the most savage counter-revolution against the working class.
The troika want to impose 19th century conditions of extreme labour exploitation, to extract as much value as possible from workers’ labour power to put it back on the useless bonds and shares.
The current coalition government is reducing tax rates for bankers, ship-owners and industrialists, it refuses to collect 13.5 billion euros the big business owes to the state, while it prepares to hand out another 25 billion euros to the banks as re-capitalisation!
But despite all this the economy continues to collapse, as it was made clear a few day ago in Tokyo by the Managing Director of the IMF, Lagarde.
Against the counter-revolution of the Austerity Accords, imposed through the violence of the riot police and the fascist gangs of the Golden Dawn party, the working class must demand from the GSEE (Greek TUC) and the major trade union federations that they ADOPT a victorious perspective in calling an Indefinite General Political Strike.
This will be in combined action with occupations and Peoples Assemblies.
Every one knows that a one-day strike and demonstration, however big it is, does not get the results that are needed.
In the struggle for such a permanent-until-victory strike, the treacherous bureaucracy at the GSEE must be thrown out.
In today’s revolutionary period, workers will win only by overthrowing the Austerity Accords and the capitalist governments.
This must be with a programme for the write-off of the debt, an exit from the EU and NATO, the nationalisation of banks and big business without compensations and under workers’ control and management, within the framework and perspectives of a centralised, nationalised economy and of a Federation of European Socialist States.
Join us to build the mass revolutionary party to lead workers to the socialist revolution:
• For the Socialist Revolution!
• For a Workers and Small Farmers government!
• Join the Revolutionary Marxist League.
Athens 16 October, 2012
