photo: Communist youth cadre of the KKE
source: posted by Morning Star in Features
This article was produced by the International Section of the Communist Party of Greece.
When in local government Syriza supported reactionary changes to industrial relations and hiving off municipal services to NGOs, none of which bodes well for the future, argues the Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
Kevin Ovenden’s article Athens Stands on the Verge of its Liberation painted a picture of the situation in Greece today which has nothing to do with reality and misleads the Morning Star’s readers.
He argued that Syriza belongs to the “radical left” and that the impending election of a Syriza government marks a rupture with the European Establishment.
He attempted to depict Syriza as the historic successor of the titanic struggles of the communist movement in Greece in the 20th century.
Greece’s anti-fascist resistance forces the National Liberation Front (EAM), the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) which fought the US and British-backed imperialist government between 1946 and 1949 came into fierce confrontation with the fascist occupier, imperialism and the class enemy in Greece, paying the price with thousands of dead, years of persecution, torture and exile.
By contrast the president and leading officials of Syriza are feted in the mansions of the plutocracy, the IMF, in Texas, in the Bilderberg Group meeting at Lake Como in Italy, in the City of London.
They loudly declare that Greece’s membership of the European Union and Nato is not disputed.
We must not restrict ourselves to the title of a party and how it describes itself — “left wing,” “anti-austerity” — if we want to examine its true character.
The reality is that Syriza accepts the strategy of the EU and capitalism. It has emerged as the new social-democratic party in the place of Pasok, a new pole in the two-pole bourgeois political system.
That doesn’t mean that New Democracy and Syriza do not have differences — simply that their differences express existing differences inside the eurozone countries, among sections of the financial elite, bourgeois class and businessmen.
The one view, which at the moment prevails in the European Commission, the EU and Germany, talks about a restrictive political line, continuing austerity measures so each country can move out of the “crisis phase” and so the eurozone does not further slide into crisis.
There is another view that talks about an “expansive” political line, as the IMF and Mario Draghi from the European Central Bank do.
They say that ready money must be provided to the businessmen in order for the capitalist economies to start to develop again.
This is the essence of the debate and it has nothing to do with the interests of the working class or its allies.
Its lack of strategic differences with the line taken by New Democracy is expressed by Syriza’s electoral lists, which include many “pro-memorandum” (the accord signed between the Greek government and IMF pledging huge spending cuts) figures from Pasok and other parties. These include Pasok theoretician Konstantinos Tsoulakos, former minister Theodora Tzakri and former Defence Ministry chief of staff Nikos Toskas.
Syriza has abandoned its radical demagogy, especially in relation to membership of the imperialist inter-state union that is the EU.
Its president Alexis Tsipras has repeatedly made clear that Greece will retain membership: “Greece has some institutional obligations as an equal member of the EU, our obligations are to achieve the fiscal goals.”
“We have an institutional obligation to have balanced budgets.”
“We must observe the founding treaties of the EU, this is an absolute obligation.”
We should bear in mind the consequences of these “institutional obligations” for healthcare, pensions, education, foreign policy, immigration and so on.
Tsipras is equally clear on the issue of Greece’s membership of Nato.
“Our country is committed to the institutional framework and agreements in relation to Nato.”
A Syriza government would continue to provide Nato with access to Greek airspace and waters, the use of its infrastructure and the Suda base from which it can continue to butcher people.
It would continue to provide frigates for Nato missions in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere.
We would continue to be entangled in imperialist plans in a region full of flashpoints and tensions — the Aegean, Cyprus ...
Some say we are hasty to judge. That we should wait and see how Syriza in government will operate.
But Syriza is not an untried, untested political force. It supported the Maastricht Treaty. It supported Greece’s accession to the euro.
In local government it supported reactionary changes to industrial relations and hiving off municipal services to NGOs.
Syriza’s candidate for the prefecture of Attica Rena Dorou said before local elections that she would abolish the memorandum in the region if elected.
After the election, as the new prefect, she has voted for and implemented the budget drafted by her predecessor, a pro-memorandum figure from Pasok.
This is a budget that provides tens of millions of euros to business interests and crumbs to projects related to people’s living conditions, such as anti-flood and anti-earthquake infrastructure.
In the municipality of Drapetsona-Keratsini, the Syriza-controlled council decided to end permanent, stable work with real rights for local government workers and hired 485 workers on two-month contracts, contracts for only 135 days a year and contracts that provided only five days’ work a month.
This at a time when Communist mayors are fighting to ensure that no workers are dismissed, against “flexible” labour relations, for the reduction of taxes, the abolition of nursery fees and the expansion of municipal services.
We can also look at Syriza’s stance in the trade union movement. Over the past two years, it has not tried to utilise its increased electoral support to mobilise trade unionists but has fostered passivity and the softening of workers’ demands.
It has told workers to stay at home and wait for a Syriza government, their alleged “saviour.”
It wages war on the class-oriented trade union movement PAME.
Trade union elections in Greece are different to those in Britain — we vote for a slate for the executive committee as a whole and not for individual posts.
Each trade union grouping puts forward its own slate of candidates and elects the number of seats on the basis of the percentage they receive.
Syriza participates in joint electoral slates with PASKE, the Pasok-oriented movement, and DAKE, the New Democracy aligned movement, against PAME in dozens of trade unions.
In the private sector, where it has a trade union majority, it signs unacceptable agreements — recently in the Veropoulos supermarket chain it agreed to wage reductions of between 10 and 12 per cent.
There should be no illusions that the “leftwingers” in Syriza will have a positive effect. They are the same
people who voted for Maastricht and the euro.
First they said they would never accept any “pro-memorandum” figures on their electoral lists. Now they have them, they say there should be no “pro-memorandum” ministers.
They’ll probably end up with pro-austerity ministers and adjust their demand to saying there should be no “pro-memorandum” prime ministers.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has a diametrically opposed approach. Through important struggles and mass political work it demonstrates that whatever bourgeois management formula is followed, while Greece remains in the framework of the EU, Nato and capitalist development it will not benefit the working class.
We fight for the emancipation of the working class and the people from social democracy and opportunism.
We struggle to isolate fascism in neighbourhoods and workplaces.
We fight for the regrouping of the labour movement and the formation of a people’s alliance against the monopolies and against capitalism.
The KKE calls on the workers to support it in the elections so that there can be a strong workers’ and people’s opposition inside and outside parliament the day after the elections.
The KKE will not support any government that is bound by the anti-people strategy of the EU and capital.
We are ready to play a role in a workers’ government, where the people will be the masters of the economy and control state power — a government that will unilaterally cancel the debt, disengage from all imperialist organisations and socialise the monopolies.
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