Greece: A million people march!

The
strategists of international capital are finally coming round to the
idea that a new bail-out for Greece is necessary. With it comes an even
harsher “memorandum” for the workers, involving the infamous “medium
term programme” already announced by the government, which includes
draconian austerity measures and the selling off of state assets. But
now the labour movement is beginning to put its imprint on the
situation.

Why a new loan?

June 5, Syntagma Square, Athens. Photo: George AmpartzidisThe
international usurious banking lobby that has interests in the Greek
bonds market is increasingly concerned about the possibility that it
could incur losses on their “investment” in Greek debt. The Greek state
is burdened with a mountain of debt totalling €112 billion payments on
which mature between 2012 and 2015, an impossible debt to service
properly without further borrowing. In 2012 alone Greece must find
€27billion and a further €38billion the following year. These amounts
are not covered by the existing loans provided by the “troika” [the
European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF].

Here we see
how the big usurers, through their international representatives, such
as the IMF and the ECB, during the last few days have been putting
tremendous pressure on European bourgeois governments to immediately
approve a new loan package for Greece, in order to protect their profits
by avoiding either a “restructuring” or a “controlled default”, which
would lead in one way or another to a reduction in the value of the
bonds they hold. They have even resisted any extension of the bonds that
mature in 2012 and 2013, spreading the idea that this would
“destabilize” the global economy and threaten the “liquidity” of the
international financial system.

It is in this context that one
should view the categorical statements of the president of the ECB,
Jean-Claude Trichet, who has ruled out the possibility of restructuring
the debt or of a controlled default. Even the possibility of an
extension of the payments, according to Trichet, should only be
considered as a “last option”, and even then “only with the consent of
creditors."

On top of all this we have the German parliament that
has voted a motion on the second loan package to Greece that stresses
that a prerequisite for the new loan is another round of austerity and
privatizations in Greece and “the involvement of private investors”.
This last point the German government has been insisting on for some
time now and it reflects the thinking of the more far-sighted bourgeois
circles in Germany, who have no trust in the ability of the Greek
government to properly serve its debt and who fear that a Greek default
would be off-loaded directly onto the national budgets of other European
countries and above all, of course, onto the shoulders of the German
state budget. [Note: The latest news is that the troika has indicated
that a privatization agency with an independent board, to which the
European Commission and eurozone countries could nominate members, would
soon be set up.]

Last week in a meeting with Angela Merkel,
Barack Obama insistently argued in favour of a new loan for Greece, in
order to avoid default. The reason why Obama is so concerned that Greece
should meet all its loan requirements – apart from the direct exposure
of US banks to the bonds of highly indebted countries in Europe – is the
same that is worrying the German bourgeois. That explains why with a
“cold heart” they have consented to a further loan to Greece. They view
with trepidation the prospect of an uncontrolled European and global
domino effect of banks collapsing and countries defaulting that would be
the consequence of a Greek default and the disruption this would
provoke in the already precarious international monetary system, that in
turn could push the whole of the world economy into the abyss of a new
and deeper recession.

New loan doesn’t solve problem

But
as we have already explained, the granting of a new loan does not solve
the problem of Greek debt. It simply grants a small extension to private
moneylenders, until most of the debt is concentrated in the hands of
the “troika”. On the contrary, the new austerity measures that accompany
the new loan will consolidate and deepen the recession in Greece and
therefore the debt as a percentage of GDP will remain at a high level,
merely postponing the default to the near future and giving it a more
acute and uncontrolled character.

At the same time, the new loan
to Greece will exacerbate conflicts within the EU. One should not forget
that apart from heavily indebted Greece, there are (currently) also
indebted Ireland, Portugal and Spain. The new Greek loan – once
eventually granted – will create a new precedent for those countries
whose “spreads” already are, or are becoming, increasingly prohibitive
to access the markets. A tendency to grant evermore new loans will be a
permanent source of conflict within the EU member states over whether
these loans can actually be effective and over who will bear most of the
burden to cover them.

And since the indebted “sick men” of Europe
will only be able to “contribute” to the EU with more debt, recession
and increasingly “fashionable” revolutions, at some point the “tap” of
the loans will be turned off and they will be probably be pushed out of
the Euro.

This scenario is likely to hit Greece at any time in the
coming period as a result of the uncertainty in the country produced by
the explosive combination of deep recession, political instability and
turbulent class struggle, regardless of whether the new loan is agreed
or not.

The PASOK government is trying to exploit the prospect of a
new loan, presenting it as a “national success". But we have to stress
once again that this loan will not be granted in order to pay salaries
and pensions. The current needs of the public sector are in fact covered
through taxation and the issuing of treasury bonds with short term,
mainly internal, lending. The new loan will be used exclusively to
service the mature bonds, i.e. to pay the usurious private lenders.

The
working people that have been demonstrating for more than two weeks in
the main squares of Greece’s cities can no longer tolerate any more such
games. They are determined not to suffer further sacrifices for the
sake of the usurers and are looking for a radical solution that would
release them forever from the yoke of debt, poverty and unemployment.

Economy at a standstill, government out of touch with the public

As
each day passes the government is sinking more and more into the swamp
of Greek capitalism’s economic impasse in the midst of the rising tide
of popular indignation.

According to a report of the Hellenic
Statistics Authority (ELSTAT) published on June 9, Greek GDP fell
year-on-year by 5.5% in the first quarter of 2011. The Index of
Industrial Production for April fell by 11% year-on-year, falling by as
much as 25% compared to 2005! Total expenditure on consumption fell by
6.9% as a result of the collapse in the purchasing power of the masses,
while unemployment reached 16.2%, bringing the number of registered
unemployed to 811,340, in a country of around 11 million people.

At
the same time, the government is facing loss of confidence, both from
its parliamentary group, and from the bourgeoisie itself. The PASOK’s
parliamentary group meeting a few days ago provided a picture of Members
of Parliament terrified that the popular unrest could be putting at
risk their political careers, and thus they are starting to oppose the
government in order to save their skins.

This picture of a
government in disarray has angered the bourgeoisie. A prime example of
this is the unprecedentedly bitter comment of Alexis Papachelas in Kathimerini on June 8:

“…The
people do not respect politicians that mutter indecisive excuses… A
friend gave me a sticker that would be good for the politicians to put
up somewhere in their offices: ‘What do you call a cockerel that fears
the rain? A chicken.’ They are chickens, and dangerous ones at that…”

The
bourgeois “centre-right” parties are beginning to distance themselves
more and more from the government. The leadership of New Democracy is
trying to avoid being sucked into this “consensus politics”, putting up
token opposition in an attempt to salvage what they can of their
flagging electoral appeal so as to remain a useful B-team for the
bourgeoisie, while LAOS [a small extreme right-wing party] and Dora
Bakoyannis’ Democratic Alliance [a small party founded in 2010 from a
splinter group of the New Democracy party] are both calling for early
elections.

The movement of the masses in all the main squares is
the determining factor in the latest political developments. The Greek
ruling class is truly terrified of the revolutionary connotations that
the movement is assuming. The mainstream media throughout last week
engaged in a hysterical defence of “parliamentary democracy". In reality
what this amounted to was a defence of the “democratic right” of the
bourgeoisie to lie and deceive the masses.

The publisher of the
daily newspaper “To Vima”, Mr. Psycharis, last Sunday expressed the
reactionary plans of the ruling class by sending the people in the
squares a barely veiled threat of a coup d’état:

“What
happens if the revolution starts? Summer Palaces or even Winter ones no
longer exist. A substantial disruption of public order would lead
inevitably to violent overthrow or armed combat. Within society there
are people who want the general bringing down of its structure. They
obviously cannot impose this because the vast majority of the people DO
NOT want this. However, under certain conditions that can lead to such
disorder what will be required are extraordinary measures. This means a
diversion from the constitutional order…”

The labour movement comes to the fore

Undoubtedly,
the most important new development in recent days has been the powerful
intervention of the labour movement which has placed itself at the head
of the struggle. With the workers having gained inspiration and
confidence from the mass movement in the squares, different sections of
the labour movement have launched a counterattack and are now
objectively posing as a leadership for the revolutionised masses.

Last
Thursday there was a public sector strike which paralysed the country.
Also GENOP-DEI (the workers’ union in the electricity company DEI)
decided to launch repeated 48-hour strikes, while the POE-OTA (local
government workers’ union) became the first mass workers’ union to
support the idea of calling an all out political general strike.

The
government is now weak and the final blow must be struck! We should not
wait for the day when parliament votes on the new bill at the end of
the month. The occupation of the squares and the encirclement of the
Houses of Parliament are useful weapons, but the “heavy battalions” of
the labour movement must be mobilised, starting with the 24-hour general
strike called by the GSEE-ADEDY [private and public sector trade union
confederations] for June 15.

So far the method adopted by the
trade union leadership has been that of periodic 24-hour general strikes
without any escalation in the struggle, combined with general demands
and abstract requests. What is required now is an all out general strike
with the clear political objective of bringing down this government
that is defending the interests of the usurers and to replace it with a
new one. Such a government can only come about as a result of the mass
movement of the workers, and its task would be to cancel the repayment
of the debt and take over the commanding heights of the economy as the
only way of putting an end once and for all to the nightmare of poverty
and unemployment.

Source: Μαρξιστική Φωνή (Greece) Tuesday 14th June.