CPA - The Guardian

On May 20, millions of strikers and tens of thousands of protestors, workers and young people, gave a strong response to the austerity measures recently announced by the PASOK (social democrat) government of Greece. It was the ninth successful strike of the All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) in five months.

A few days before the 24-hour general strike there was an attempt to criminalise the activities of PAME. There were attacks on the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) which was behind the establishment of PAME and is playing a leading role in the struggle to defeat the government’s measures and bring about a change in the social system.

On Saturday Mary 15, the KKE in its own right held a highly successful rally in Pedion Areos Sqaure in Athens. At its meeting in May, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Australia heard a report from CC Member Stratos Mavrantonis on the situation in Greece. The following are extracts from that report*:

To be fully understood the current situation in Greece must be seen as directly connected with a now unfolding drive by the world’s finance capital, aimed at savagely attacking the people’s living standards, taking back all workers’ gains won in the last 50 years and making the labour power as cheap as possible for employers all over the world. This is the underlying fundamental cause of the current crisis in Greece.

In the European Union (EU), the drive by monopoly circles against the peoples is manifested at the same time as the US war against the Euro. Many people are so terrified by the intensity of the crisis they are asking: What is going to happen? Is the Euro collapsing? Is the European Union collapsing? Neither of those things is going to happen, on this occasion.

Both the attack against the Euro and the attempt by European monopolies to increase their profitability by undermining workers’ rights is being carried out against the smaller and weaker economies first. It is not a crisis confined to one country. It concerns the whole European Union and not only the EU.

Greece first victim

Greece was picked by the financial speculators as the first victim, because of the particular circumstances of its economy – namely, the high public debt, the recurring budget deficits and its non-productive character. Production of commodities is not the strong point of the Greek economy, being mainly based on services and tourism. Greece could have one of the strongest economies in Europe. The country’s mineral resources are bigger than the resources of all the other EU countries combined. With a different social system Greece could present an entirely different picture today. What has failed there is capitalism itself.

The specific factors that have contributed to the exacerbation of the economic problems of Greece are:

The subservience of the Greek ruling class to foreign monopoly powers and its dependence on them. Greece never actually gained full independence. The ruling class has failed to invest its own capital and capital received from the European Union in productive projects, infrastructure and programs for developing the economy. Instead huge sums of money were squandered for private enrichment, for bribes and a luxurious, parasitic life style. Even in today’s crisis with the country’s foreign debt approaching 300 billion Euros, the deposits of Greek businessmen in Swiss banks are a staggering 240 billion Euros. Instead of officially requesting Germany pay Greece the 200 billion Euros it owes in war reparations and the loan it extracted from the Greek people during the occupation period (1941-1944), it is appealing to Germany and the other European partners to assist Greece to borrow money from the EU and the IMF.
The government’s overspending in the period 2002-2004 for the staging of the Olympic Games, catapulted the foreign debt to unprecedented levels. The conservative government that followed increased the debt by another 100 billion Euros.
The government handout to the banks to “assist then to overcome the financial crisis” and to improve their liquidity. The previous conservative government handed the banks 28 billion Euros, while the present “socialist” government of Mr Papandreou has made it known that out of the 110 billion Euros the country is going to receive in loans from the European Union countries and the IMF in the next three years, it will immediately hand 10 billion to the banks with the possibility of a further 20 billion at a later stage. The banks which are primarily responsible for the financial mess are being bailed out while the people are called to pay the bill.

Highway robbery

According to the European Union Charter, the banks of member states can borrow from the European Central Bank (ECB) at the interest rate of one percent. However the governments of the member states cannot borrow from the ECB. Consequently the Greek Banks borrowed huge sums of cheap money and lent this to the Greek government at a rate of six percent, thus making huge profits without having to lift a finger for them. The end result of this highway robbery was that the Greek banks recorded profits of 300 billion Euros in the last three years!

Part of the plan of international finance was to put such pressure upon the Greek economy, through the big game speculators, so as to make it impossible for the country to borrow on the international market with affordable interest rates. The idea was to force Greece to default its payments and thus be dropped out of the Euro Zone (the group of 16 EU countries having Euro as their currency).

The expectation was that as soon as that happened the Euro could take a dive. Then they would turn the attention to other weak economies, such as Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and even Italy. The crisis is therefore a crisis for the whole European Union.

Finally the EU decided to involve the 110 billion Euros IMF in the rescue package and lend Greece from both sources in the next three years (80 billion from the EU and 30 billion from the IMF), but on what conditions and at what price? Representatives of the IMF, the EU and the ECB visited Greece and laid down the rules. According to these rules the most savage austerity measures must be enforced upon the Greek people.

Savage austerity measures

These measures include wage cuts of all public servants by 20-30 percent, a reduction of all pensions of both the public and private sector; raising the pension age to 65 years for both men and women immediately and to 67 years after 2015; lowering the minimum wage to 540 Euros a month; doing way with all collective bargaining; institutionalising so-called “flexible” forms of employment; and repealing the existing law which prohibits enterprises employing more than 100 people from dismissing more than two percent of their work force.

These measures amount to a complete dismantling of the industrial relations system and will have a disastrous effect upon the people’s living standards and trade union and democratic rights.

It must be noted that the Treaty of Rome which set up the EU stipulates that as far as the social security systems of the member states were involved, the EU has no right to intervene in the member states or put any demands on them for changes or conditions to social security matters. That’s why it was necessary for the IMF to come into the picture. Its involvement was the result of an agreement between the US, the EU and Greece. The deal was agreed with the collusion of the Greek government.

The social democrat government, as part of the capitalist establishment, planned the introduction of these measures all along and now uses the IMF and the EU in order to shift the blame and save face with the people.

The response of the workers, the organised working class, to these measures has been decisive and all indications are that the strike actions and the resistance to the measures will intensify. On May 5, the whole country was in the grip of the 24-hour general strike organised by the General Confederation of Labour and PAME.

A few days earlier there was a 48-hour strike by teachers and local government employees, a 24-hour strike by public servants and a 24-hour strike by seafarers. There are massive public meetings and protest marches on a daily basis in Athens and the other large cities. All indications are that the strike movement and the resistance movement generally, involving large numbers of people, will develop further and will intensify as the effect of the measures are felt by the people.

The KKE is at the forefront of this resistance movement. The Party’s General Secretary, comrade Aleka Papariga, has officially declared that these measures must be defeated and swept aside. She has called upon the people to effectively resist the measures and to overthrow the capitalist government and install a people’s government.

One thing is certain, the class struggle will intensify in Greece and in some other European countries. The other certainty is that the Greek crisis is directly connected to similar processes in the whole of Europe and all over the world and as soon as the dust settles in Greece, other countries will be targeted by international speculators. This is part and parcel of the drive by monopoly capitalism to attack workers’ rights and the living standards of the peoples of the world.

*The full report will be published in the next Australian Marxist Review. If you are not already a subscriber, then phone Cecilia on 02 9699 8844 or visit our AMR section on this site.

You can watch videos from the KKE rally on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSjwwf91rEg )

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