WeeklyWorker

25.02.2010

Crisis poses EU workers' unity

Jim Moody examines Greek left organisations' responses

The global economic crisis has had a particularly profound impact on Greece, leading to mass working class action against the European Union-imposed ‘growth and stability programme’ assault on living standards.

A one-day general strike on Wednesday February 24, organised by the General Confederation of Greek Labour (GSEE), the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), plus the Civil Servants Trade Unions (ADEDY), saw over two million workers walk out in protest against the savage wage cuts and tax rises demanded by the social democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).

There were a few clashes with riot police and some banks were attacked by anarchist groups. But in the main Greek workers acted with exemplary discipline and where possible avoided unnecessary and unhelpful violence. They also ensured that hospitals and other such services maintained a skeleton staff.

Significantly, Wednesday’s general strike coincided with a visit by high-powered delegations from the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They were in Athens to assess whether the government of George Papandreou is fully committed to forcing through the cuts they are demanding. With a r300 billion debt, the Greek government faces the real possibility that international money markets will not take up the full tranche of its much delayed 10-year bond issue. This has already sent jitters throughout the financial system and pushed the euro zone to the brink of crisis. Tellingly Fitch Ratings lowered its long-term rating of the four biggest Greek banks to a triple-B. Greece is seen as an unsafe bet and politically unstable.

Pasok was elected in a snap general election in October 2009, defeating the outgoing conservative New Democracy party by a huge majority. But Papandreou was forced to ditch his election pledges when it was revealed that the budget deficit amounted to no less than 12.7% of gross domestic product at the end of 2009 - more than four times the 3% limit set by the EU. The country was staring at bankruptcy and Papandreou claimed he had no alternative but to impose draconian austerity measures. Like all social democrat parties in office, Pasok saw no other way than to load the resulting crisis onto the backs of Greece’s working class.

The February 24 action follows a strike of tens of thousands on February 10, which was initiated by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). According to the KKE, this was a means of putting pressure on the “employer-led and yellow trade unionism that control the confederations of workers in the private (GSEE) and public sector (ADEDY)”.[1] ADEDY eventually backed the February 10 strike and called a rally in the centre of Athens.

But what strategy and tactics does the left propose? The KKE, which has 21 MPs, has been talking very militant, calling on union leaders to take the fight to “the government along with the employers, the EU, and the parties of the plutocracy that urge the working class to make the ‘sacrifices’ that the EU and the government demand”. But it goes without saying that the ‘official communists’ have no conception of taking the struggle beyond the confines of Greece by attempting to link up working class resistance to EU-coordinated attacks across the continent. They cannot see beyond Greek ‘solutions’.

Although the KKE helped found Synaspismos (Coalition of the Left of Movements and Ecology, or SYN) as an electoral front in the late 1980s, it left shortly after. Synaspismos now consists of erstwhile supporters of the extinct Eurocommunist splinter, KKE (Interior), plus assorted leftists. Synaspismos president Alexis Tsipras expressed a partial truth recently: “The problem that the Greek economy is facing today is not a Greek problem. It is a European problem. It has to do with the way the European Union is constructed. Today, Greece is being faced - heading the list - like a guinea pig for the profiteering market forces. Tomorrow it could be Spain, Portugal and who knows which other country in the place Greece is today.”

He went on to say: “The international financial crisis did not start either in Greece or in Spain. Those who created it want to use it as an opportunity for an even greater redistribution of wealth to the benefit of the powerful circles.”[2]

Synaspismos is now part of the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza), which has 13 MPs, with Tsipras as its parliamentary leader. Apart from Synaspismos, Syriza comprises nine other smaller far-left and ecological parties and groups, including the Socialist Internationalist Organisation, which is part of Peter Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers’ International.

On the day before the February 24 general strike, Syriza secretariat member Giannh Mpania said that scrapping the Pasok government’s ‘stability programme’ would only be achieved by “a wide alliance of social and political forces”. And further: “No pretext of real differences of vision, strategy and tactics between the forces of the left can allow them to stay out of such common fronts. Such absence will lead to isolation of those that choose it. Syriza will take the initiative for the promotion of this common front.”

As to the way forward in Greece and beyond, “The challenge by the forces of neoliberalism is pan-European. Correspondingly this should also be the answer of the forces of the working movement and left. We need to constitute a rival to capitalistic globalisation and aggressive neoliberalism ... The coordination of objectives and action by the European left constitutes today the big priority of our efforts. Syriza is already taking initiatives in this direction. A new, promotional internationalism for our times is necessary and feasible.”[3]

The Greek CWI itself calls for “not only 24-hour, but 48-hour” strikes, which hardly seems bold, to say the least. However, while it suggests a role for the Pasok-supported trade union centre, it also points to the EU-wide situation: “GSEE has a responsibility in current conditions to address the working movements (and not the governments!) in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland, which are in a situation as terrible as our own working movement, as a first step for the construction of pan-European front against capital and its political representatives.”[4]

The Socialist Workers Party’s Greek franchise, also called Socialist Workers Party (SEK), wants the GSEE and ADEDY to call a “permanent strike”. Not only must the union leaders be forced to organise fresh action, but there must be an “escalation of mobilisations with longer strikes, coordinated and organised by workers from below. Take the fight in our hands with general assemblies, strike committees ... We can send the message to our brothers in all Europe that the workers in Greece ... are here - alive and kicking.”[5] But that is all there seems to be in the special issue of SEK’s journal about the essential pan-European working class dimension that is required. It gives the distinct impression of pandering to Greek nationalism in the workers’ movement.

The SEK is part of Antarsya, or ‘mutiny’, which was founded in March last year by 10 organisations from the Radical Left Front and United Anti-Capitalist Left, including the Greek section of the Fourth International, OKDE-Spartakos. Sadly, coming together in Antarsya does not seem to have produced an internationalist workers’ agenda for the proposed mutiny.

In its most recent pronouncement, which strongly supports the strike on February 24, this coalition wants withdrawal from the EU and all its works: “Disobedience/rupture with the EU-EMU ... No future exists for workers in the framework of EMU, EU, and sovereign policy.” Antarsya looks “Towards a declaration of war against the EU, the forces of capital, and the Pasok/New Democracy/Popular Orthodox Rally black front ... the widest fightback for the defence and enlargement of rights, the overthrow of the stability programme, and governmental policy, and a rupture with the policies of the EU.”

Although its statement concludes with a stirring “Make the capitalists pay for capital’s crisis”, there is absolutely no perspective that workers throughout Europe ought to be in this fight together. No, instead we should all withdraw from the EU and fight our separate, unconnected, nationally based battles.[6]

Notes

  1. inter.kke.gr/News/2010news/2010-02-strike
  2. Madrid press conference, February 18.
  3. www.syriza.gr/press/anakoinoseis/omilia-g.-mpania-melos-grammateias-toy-syriza
  4. Xekinima February 2010 www.xekinima.org
  5. Working Solidarity issue 905: www.sek-ist.gr
  6. www.antarsya.org