Internationalist Perspective

Appeal to Sympathisers of the Communist Left (Australia) – A Reply

The following is an appeal distributed by sympathizers of the communist left in Australia along with IP’s reply.

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Appeal to Sympathisers of the Communist Left (Australia)

Comrades!

Today humanity faces the same ultimatum posed to it since the eve of the First World War, in the words of Rosa Luxemburg and Friedrich Engels before her – Socialism or Barbarism.

The world capitalist system has seen its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with the working class taking the brunt of the blow, everywhere facing wage-freezes, job-cuts and worsening working conditions. The threat of global environmental catastrophe looks more possible than ever before. Bloody and brutal conflicts rage on around the globe – from Iraq to Afghanistan, Somalia to Sudan, Colombia to Mexico.

In contrast to these emanations of a moribund society we also see the germs of a new world – without exploitation or oppression, without poverty or scarcity, without wars or national borders – in the class struggle of the international working class.

The Communist Left has its origins in the Left currents of the Communist International which came into being as a proletarian response to its opportunist slidings when faced with the retreat of the international revolutionary wave in the 1920s. Whilst the Communist Left had expressions in many countries its most prominent representatives were to be found in Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Russia. In the period of counter-revolution which opened at the end of the 1920s, it was the Communist Left which proved to be the most intransigent defenders of proletarian internationalism and the most rigorous in drawing up the balance sheet of the revolutionary wave.

Whilst sympathisers of the Communist Left do exist in Australia, at this point they do so only as individuals suffering largely from political isolation. In order to effectively intervene in the class struggle, it is necessary that revolutionaries organise themselves into a political organisation, founded on the basis of shared positions and principles.

However, at the present hour the immediate formation of such a group is not on the agenda in Australia. What is needed at present is the coming together of internationalists for discussion conducted with the goal of initiating and maintaining contact between comrades (particularly those who are geographically isolated) and collective political clarification of the positions which define the communist programme today.

Thus, we appeal for the initiation of organised discussions between all sympathisers of the Communist Left in Australia. It is proposed that the discussions are conducted under the name: ‘Internationalist Communist Affiliate Network’.

We propose the criteria for participation is agreement with the most elementary positions of left communism today:

- Imperialist war and national movements of all stripes have nothing to offer the working class but death and destruction. The working class must oppose all bourgeois camps. By calling on them to take the side of one or another faction, the bourgeoisie divide workers and lead them to massacre their class brothers and sisters.

- Parliament and bourgeois elections are a masquerade. Capitalist ‘democracy’ does not differ at root from any form of capitalist dictatorship. Any call to participate in the parliamentary circus can only reinforce the lie that elections offer any real choice for the exploited.

- All unions are organs of the capitalist system and act in its service. The fundamental role of the unions is to police the working class and sabotage its struggles. In order to defend its immediate interests, and ultimately to make the revolution, the working class must struggle outside and against the unions.

All who may be interested in taking part are encouraged to write to InternationalistWorker[at]gmail.com. We also welcome any comments, questions and criticisms.

With fraternal communist greetings,

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Reply by Internationalist Perspective

Dear comrades

We were very heartened to receive your Appeal to sympathizers of the Communist Left in Australia, along with the accompanying letter inviting us and others to contribute to your proposed discussions. We of course applaud your effort of organizing yourselves and initiating the process of collective political clarification of — as you say — the positions which define the communist programme today. We in IP would emphasize here the word “today”, while perhaps de-emphasizing the word “programme”. The latter term is undoubtedly fetishized by some groups in the revolutionary milieu, those who seem to see their role as one of offering the working class a fully completed programme, to be accepted and acted upon in a way that gives the(ir) Party the role of organized ‘leader’ and ‘vanguard’ of the class and its revolution. We would emphasize the word “today” because we are convinced that the historic Communist Left did not provide us with a fully completed programme, one which revolutionaries can merely ‘update’ and apply to today’s conditions. The Communist Left’s programme (or programmes, since there were differing currents) had gaps and insufficiences even its own time, especially in its theoretical foundation. Today, more than 70 years after the outbreak of WWII, the capitalist world has changed enormously, and Marxist revolutionaries need to develop their theoretical arsenal if they are to be adequate to the role they aspire to, that of providing the class with its communist programme.

We think you have chosen the best method to develop yourselves politically, given the conditions that you find yourselves in in Australia. By forming a discussion circle, and informing and inviting others in Australia who sympathize with the Communist Left to join you, you are providing yourselves with the means to move forward as revolutionaries. With input from existing communist groups, you will hopefully be able to sort out many of the most important issues and positions which face the working class today, and then decide which step to take from there. This process may take some time and should not be rushed as a result of an impatience to ‘do something’. The process of theoretical clarification *is* doing something, something absolutely essential to the success of the proletarian revolution. And the need for such clarification is not something that ends when one forms or joins a communist organization. Any such organization which does not encourage such clarification and involve all its members in this process in an open manner, recognizing the paramount importance of it, is, we would argue, an organization not worthy of the respect of the working class. We would encourage you to keep this in mind as you move forward, whether you choose to form a new separate communist organization, to join one existing such, or to separately join different organizations.

We aren’t sure which questions you plan to make the initial focus of your discussions, so when you have decided on that please inform us and we will try to provide you with one or more of our texts which we think will be helpful for you. Of course, we would hope to continue in this manner as you progress through the various questions and issues you choose to discuss.

We would also be most interested in being kept informed of the results of your discussions. We will post your Appeal on an email list that we have been active on, but which is relatively quiet lately, although it does act as a sort of network of contacts, and does have at least a couple of members from Australia. (It was initially formed, in 2000, as a discussion network and so is named the Internationalists’ Discussion Network, otherwise know as Intsdiscnet; perhaps some of you have heard of it.)

Last year, in response to the rapid deepening of the international economic crisis, we produced an Appeal of our own to pro-revolutionaries throughout the world, to work to engage in common activities and to overcome their mutual competitiveness and sectarianism. We attach the Appeal to this letter. We wish to point out, since there has been some confusion about this within the revolutionary milieu, that our aim in putting forward our Appeal is *not* to put ourselves forward as a new ‘pole of regroupment’.

We hope to hear back from you once you have decided on the (initial) contents of your discussions, and to remain in regular contact with you after that. We offer you our best wishes for fruitful and fraternal discussions leading to your organized involvement in the global revolutionary milieu.

In the meantime, comrades, please accept our warmest internationalist communist greetings,

E.R., for Internationalist Perspective

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P.S. We think that you might want to consider adding one point to your criteria for participation, specifically, concerning there having never existed any form of communism in the modern world, either in Russia or China or Cuba, etc., and that Stalinism, as well as Social Democracy and Trotskyism, is part of the capitalist political Left, defenders of state capitalism and enemies of the working class.

Re-arranging the Deckchairs

Leaflet distributed June 26, 2010 at the G-20 demonstration in Toronto by IP

The meeting of the G-20 summit in Toronto this weekend, and the G-8 in Huntsville earlier this week is ostensibly about how some of the world’s largest economies arrange their affairs. The reality is very different. As we approach the two-year mark for the current world economy crisis, it is clear that the global capitalist class is merely re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

What began as a housing or mortgage crisis, became a banking crisis, and has now become a sovereign debt crisis, which has thrown many economies into crisis and threatens to pull down many more.

Governments and Finance Ministers across the globe have repeatedly announced the beginnings of recoveries, even as they simultaneously preach restraint and austerity. Yet the crisis continues to deepen: The capitalist system is in a deep recession from which its managers have no exit strategy except to mouth tired formulas. At today’s summit, behind the fences and a massive police presence costing upwards of $1 billion, sit the frightened and uncomprehending managers of capital who cannot control their own system.
Why? The heart of capitalism is the law of value. Things, goods, services are produced, not for their social worth, but for their exchange-value, for the profit they can return. But the continuance of this system guarantees greater disasters ahead.

For the United States, the fragility of the Euro, and the consequent threat to the political and economic integrity of the EU, the world’s second largest economic bloc, has brought some respite: capital from all over the world seeks refuge in what seems to be the strongest, most stable center of capitalism. Europe certainly wanted to be this center, but it has been unable to do so. Now the EU Central Bank, the German government, and the new British Conservative government are planning to impose the sharpest austerity measures aimed at the European working class, since the end of World War Two. It’s only the beginning. More attacks on wages and pensions will follow, and the working class in North America will not be spared.

For the G-20 and the other managers of capital, there is no other choice: Consumers, workers, companies, governments must spend less to make room for future payments to capital because otherwise, the value of existing capital collapses. However, these austerity measures undercut demand. The overcapacity of the economy increases. The opportunities for productive investment diminish, and this trend pushes the owners of capital towards speculative investment, to the formation of new bubbles of fictitious wealth whose implosions will create new and greater shocks.

From the perspective of capital the workers must pay, and so attacks on the working class are logical. If workers don’t accept wage-cuts and other austerity measures, “their” economy won’t be competitive, so again, from the logic of capital, it’s entirely reasonable to ask the workers to sacrifice themselves: just as long as you continue to look at the world through the framework of the value form.

And yet, it need not be so. Workers, most spectacularly in the battles in Greece and the wildcat strikes in China, have refused to accept the logic of capital; that they are commodities to be discarded when capital no longer has use for them. Their struggles call into question capitalism, the law of value and the continued commodification of existence. Their struggles raise the question of a way beyond this wretched system that offers nothing but misery for a future.

But to create that alternative, means the rejection of this system, lock and stock. Many of those protesting today seek a return to more “enlightened” policies of capital: of spending on the welfare state, on education, health care and social services. But to argue for these things within a frame work of capital is a dead end. Throughout history, “Socialist” governments and their leftist allies no less than “free market” ones have bowed before the alter of capitalism, carrying out attacks on living standards every bit as vicious as those who work openly in the name of capital. The policies the left proposes today such as massive deficit-spending would not stop capitalism’s crisis, they would merely affect its symptoms. Their framework remains capital, the value form. It is only by rejecting the commodity form, the value system, that a human society can ultimately be constructed.

The task of revolutionaries is to try to show where the horrific logic of the value form will lead. In this age of a vicious social retrogression, we seek to provide different answers to the questions that are beginning to be asked, to intervene in all the cracks that open up in the body of “capitalist normalcy”; to devote ourselves to the work of that old mole of revolution, and to the possibility of the creation of a genuine human community.

Internationalist Perspective

On the text by “Woland pour Blaumachen.”

Blaumachen #3, editorial

This is a very interesting text that provides a detailed account of the December “riots” in Greece and attempts to draw lessons from it that go beyond the specifically Greek context. There is a great deal in it with which we in IP agree: a call for the abolition of the value form and wage labor; the rejection of the unions and of self-management; the need for class unity (involving different strata of the collective worker (our term), full time, part-time, students, immigrants, illegals, etc., across racial or ethnic lines; most important a rejection of the fetish of legality or respect for capitalist property, public or private; a need to spread the struggle beyond sectoral or national frontiers; a clear sense that within the framework of the value form, there is only one direction that society can take: a course towards growing barbarism.

But we also have disagreements on two important issues.

First, on Blaumachen’s view of destruction as capable of creating the conditions for the necessity of communism, because “generalized destruction would make it impossible to go back”. There is a focus on destruction of “buildings, means of production, networks of distribution,” as vital to the class struggle. Woland is not talking about the destruction that capital brings in its wake and imposes on the collective worker, but about the destruction wrought by the proletariat in struggle, which involves “the destruction of the urban space. “The abolition of value necessarily begins with the destruction of things”, Woland writes. Not the destruction of the value form, or the state apparatus, but the destruction — not the expropriation/appropriation/seizure — of the productive apparatus by the collective worker. Isn’t that appropriation the step that becomes revolutionary, as opposed to burning or looting stores? And that quite apart from how capital can and does use the images of destruction to win popular support for its own violence. It is true that pillage can transform commodities into use-values (the text on Chile in the last IP is an illustration of that, and it should not need an earthquake to provoke such action), but pillage can also be either an orgy of destruction or the looting of goods for re-sale and individual profit, which Woland does not criticize (contrary to the text on Chile). One can understand rage, more so in the case of the précaires or sans papiers than the student perhaps, but is this in itself the way forward, tactically or strategically? The idea that the class that is responsible for the production of life in all its facets can and should seize the apparatus within which it is compelled by capital to labor, not burn it down, seems entirely absent here.

The value-form is a social relation, not “things”. Destroying things is not necessarily a blow to the value-form. And while we agree that the practical destruction of the value-form does not begin after the revolution but through it, we disagree with the view that this takes the form of a mere destruction of things. Especially not since capital, at this time of massive overaccumulation, is itself bent on a course of increasing destruction of things (of superfluous value).

The other issue is the rejection of demand struggles, which, in Woland’s view, are condemned to be unionist struggles, even when unions are absent. Still, he states, “we participate in demand struggles that concern us” because “by their failure”, they create the conditions to go beyond unionism.

Our view of demand struggles is in part similar: we too see them as necessary learning experiences in which the workers begin to understand the impossibility to prevent the worsening of their conditions under capitalism. We certainly don’t see it as the role of pro-revolutionaries to tell the workers what demands they should raise nor to encourage illusions about what demands capitalism can accommodate. But there is more. We have always emphasized the dynamic relation between the objectives and means in the struggles of the working class. As the means change, become more powerful because of the growing extension and self-organization of the struggle, the objectives can change too. Through the praxis of self-organization and of overcoming divisions within itself, the class begins to see what seemed once impossible, as possible. The objectives radically change. What other possible road is there to revolution? That struggles begin as resistance against wage-cuts, etc, is to be expected and does not condemn them to remain “unionist” in content forever.

Blaumachen argues that extension and self-organization do not guarantee this transformation of the content of the struggle (which is true) and that real advances are measured by manifestations of the understanding that there is nothing to defend in capitalism, that it has no future for us, which take the form of struggles without specific demands, that are necessarily violent confrontations, riots, etc. In its view, expecting defensive struggles to become automatically revolutionary because of increasing class antagonism and extension of the scale of the struggle, would reflect a teleological view of the class struggle, with the working class realizing its revolutionary “essence”, as prescribed by “history.” We agree that there is no automatism and that this teleological view is indeed implicit in the different strands of productivist Marxism. But that does not mean that this link between goals and means is non-existent. The history of the working class struggle shows both that it is real and not automatic. The complexity of the question defies simplistic schemes.

There is something healthy in Blaumachen’s insistence that the content of the struggle does not automatically change, that it is foolish to equate revolution with the working class becoming a “class for itself,” since revolution would mean the destruction of itself as a class. But its critique throws out the baby with the bathwater. How they see revolution as a practical possibility if the experience of self-organization and extension in struggles for demands would not stimulate class consciousness and thereby change the content of the struggle, is unclear to us.

Sander and MacIntosh

New Communist publications

Two new publications which might interest readers of IP.:

Insurgent Notes - an online journal features contributions by Loren goldner, John Garvey, Henri Simon and others.

Endnotes - the second issue of this book-length journal is now available. The issue is focued on misery and the value form.

Internationalist Perspective Public Meeting in New York

INTERNATIONALIST PERSPECTIVE invites you to an open discussion meeting on

THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM AND THE PERSPECTIVE OF A POST-CAPITALIST WORLD

The crisis keeps escalating, despite all the talk about the nascent recovery. First appearing as a housing or mortgage crisis (the bursting of the credit bubble), it led to a banking crisis, and has now morphed, as we predicted, into a sovereign debt crisis. What this string of disasters exposes is not a crisis of neo-liberalism or any other style of management but a crisis of the value form itself, of the commodification of life. Continuing to produce things for their exchange-value, for the profit they can yield, continuing to base human relations on the wage-labor/capital relation, while destroying all those relations that fall outside of it, guarantees far worse disasters ahead.

The plunge of the Euro, and the threat to the political/economic integrity of the world’s second largest economic entity (the EU), while themselves expressions of the escalation of the crisis, have brought some respite to American capital: capital from all over the world seeks refuge in what seems to be the strongest, most stable center of capitalism. The anchor. A role Europe envied but could not capture. The envy is understandable, since this position allows the US to increase its debts while keeping interest rates low. It has done so massively in response to its worst economic crisis since the 1930’s, while China has heated up its own economy to compensate for declining export markets and the social danger of economic slowdown. Now the EU Central Bank and the German government are planning to impose the sharpest basket of austerity measures aimed at the working class throughout Europe, since the end of World War Two. It’s only the beginning. More attacks on wages and pensions will follow, and the working class in America will not be spared.

For the ruling class, there is no other choice. Consumers, workers, companies, governments must spend less to make room for future payments to capital because otherwise, the value of existing capital collapses. But all these austerity measures undercut demand. The overcapacity of the economy increases. Opportunities for productive investment diminish. The trend pushes owners of capital towards speculative investment, to the formation of new bubbles of fictitious wealth whose implosions will create new shocks.

Governments are inevitably driven to contradictory policies. What they create with one hand, they destroy with the other. Their austerity measures undermine their recovery policies, and the latter, by creating new debt, new claims on future profit, undermine the former. Is there a way out of this dilemma? Some pin their hopes on the growth of the “green economy” (renewable energy, etc), others believe that information technology can give capital a new lease on life. But, as we will show, neither of these can reverse the downward trend of the creation of surplus value, the ultimate source of profits. The crisis pressures capital even more to replace living with dead (machine) labor in an effort to re-establish its profitability. Reducing living labor reduces the source of profit even though it seems the way out for the capital since it improves its competitiveness. While overproduction acts as a brake on technological change, it also accelerates the expansion of casualization and “precarious” conditions of labor, and leads to the expulsion of masses of workers from the productive process, thereby further reducing demand.

The continuous high unemployment combined with the austerity measures by the EU today, and the US tomorrow, amount to a major assault on the standards of living of the working class. Greece is now the first site of such a concerted attack by capital, one being imposed by a “Socialist” government. It can’t be denied that, if workers don’t accept wage-cuts, the Greek economy can’t be competitive. It can’t be denied that, if workers in China push up their wages, capital will go to where wages are lower. So it’s entirely reasonable to ask of the workers to sacrifice themselves, as long as you look at the world through the framework of the value form.

By refusing to obey the logic of capital, workers in Greece are refusing to be good commodities. Capitalism is threatening our survival. In struggles that spring from the will to live, the commodification of life may itself be questioned, first implicitly, then overtly. That will open the way to a post-capitalist world, to real communism.

QUESTIONS WE WANT TO DISCUSS AT THE MEETING:

- What are the ways in which capitalism can overcome its crisis?
- What can we learn from the struggles in Greece?
- Why is there not more working class resistance in the US?
- The position of Chinese capital and the struggle of the working class in that country.
- What should pro-revolutionaries focus on?

The discussion meetings of IP are characterized by their open atmosphere, in which everyone gets ample opportunity to explain her/his position.

WHEN:

Thursday, June 17
7:30pm

WHERE:

TRS Professional Suites
Room 6
44 East 32 St., 11th floor
New York, NY

In Critical and Suffocating Times

A report from a pro-revolutionary organization in Greece, TPTG.

- Internationalist Perspective

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What follows is a report on the demo of the 5th of May and the one that followed the day after and some general thoughts on the critical situation the movement in Greece is at the time being.

Although in a period of acute fiscal terrorism escalating day after day with constant threats of an imminent state bankruptcy and “sacrifices to be made”, the proletariat’s response on the eve of the voting of the new austerity measures in Greek parliament was impressive. It was probably the biggest workers’ demonstration since the fall of the dictatorship, even bigger than the 2001 demo which had led to the withdrawal of a planned pension reform. We estimate that there were more than two hundred thousand demonstrators in the centre of Athens and about fifty thousands in the rest of the country. There were strikes in almost all sectors of the (re)production process. A proletarian crowd similar to the one which had taken to the streets in December 2008 (also called derogatorily “hooded youth” by mainstream media propaganda) was also there equipped with axes, sledges, hammers, molotov cocktails, stones, gas masks, goggles and sticks. Although there were instances that hooded rioters were booed when they attempted or actually made violent attacks on buildings, in general they fitted well within this motley, colourful, angered river of demonstrators. The slogans ranged from those that rejected the political system as a whole, like “Let’s burn the Parliament brothel” to patriotic ones, like “IMF go away”, and to populist ones like “Thieves!” and “People demand crooks to be sent to prison”. Aggressive slogans referring to politicians in general are becoming more and more dominant nowadays.

At the GSEE-ADEDY demo people started swarming the place in thousands and the GSEE president was hooted when he started speaking. When the GSEE leadership repeated their detour they had first done on the 11th of March in order to avoid the bulk of the demo and come to the front, just few followed this time…

The demo by the PAME (the CP’s “Workers’ Front”) was also big (well over 20,000) and reached Syntagma Square first. Their plan was to stay there for a while and leave just before the main, bigger demo was about to approach. However, their members would not leave but remained there angered chanting slogans against the politicians. According to the leader of the CP there were fascist provocateurs (she actually accused the LAOS party, this mish-mash of far-right thugs and junta nostalgic scum) carrying PAME placards inciting CP members to storm the Parliament and thus discredit the party’s loyalty to the constitution! Although this accusation bears some validity because fascists were actually seen there, the truth is –according to witnesses– that the CP leaders had some difficulty with their members in leading them quickly away from the square and preventing them from shouting angry slogans against the Parliament. It’s maybe too bold to regard it as a sign of a gradual disobedience to this monolithic party’s iron rule, but in such fluid times no one really knows…

The 70 or more fascists stationed opposite the riot police were cursing the politicians (“Sons of a bitch, politicians”), chanting the national anthem and even throwing some stones against the parliament and probably had the vain intention to prevent any escalation of the violence but were soon swallowed into huge waves of demonstrators approaching the square.

Soon, crowds of workers (electricians, postal workers, municipal workers etc.) tried to enter the building from any access available but there was none as hundreds of riot cops were strung out all along the forecourt and the entrances. Another crowd of workers of both sexes and all ages stood against the cops who were in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier cursing and threatening them. Despite the fact that the riot police made a massive counter-attack with tear gas and fire grenades and managed to disperse the crowd, there were constantly new blocks of demonstrators arriving in front of the Parliament while the first blocks which had been pushed back were reorganizing themselves in Panepistimiou St. and Syngrou Ave. They started smashing whatever they could and attacked the riot police squads who were strung out in the nearby streets. Although most of the big buildings in the centre of the town were closed with rolling shutters, they managed to attack some banks and state buildings. There was extensive destruction of property especially in Syngrou Ave. because the cops were not enough to react immediately against that part of the rioters as the police had been ordered to give priority to the protection of the Parliament and the evacuation of Panepistimiou St. and Stadiou St., the two main avenues through which the crowd was constantly returning to it. Luxury cars, a Tax Office building and the Prefecture of Athens were set on fire and even hours later the area looked like a war-zone.

The fights lasted for almost three hours. It is impossible to record everything that happened in the streets. Just one incident: some teachers and other workers managed to encircle a few riot cops belonging to Group D –a new body of riot police on motorcycles– and thrash them while the cops were screaming “Please no, we are workers, too”!

Demonstrators pushed into Panepistimiou St. kept returning in blocs to the Parliament and there were constant clashes with the police. The crowd was mixed again and would not go. A middle-aged municipal worker with stones in his hands was telling us moved how much the situation there reminded him of the first years after the fall of the dictatorship when he was present at the 1980 demo in commemoration of the Polytechnic uprising when the police murdered a woman, the 20-year old worker Kanellopoulou.

Soon the terrible news from foreign news agencies came on mobile phones: 3 or 4 people dead in a burnt down bank!

There were some attempts to burn down banks in various places but in most cases the crowd didn’t go forward because there were scabs locked in them. It was only the building of Marfin Bank in Stadiou St. that was finally set on fire. Just a few minutes before the tragedy started, however, it was not “hooded hooligans” who shouted “scabs” at the bank employees but organized blocks of strikers who yelled swears at them and called them to abandon the building. Given the bulk of the demo and its density, the turmoil and the noise by the chants, it’s obvious that a certain degree of confusion –common in such situations– makes it difficult to provide the accurate facts concerning this tragic incident. What seems to be closer to the truth (from fragments of information by eye-witnesses put together) is that at this particular bank, right in the heart of Athens on a general strike day, about 20 bank clerks were made to work by their boss, got locked “for their protection” and finally 3 of them died of suffocation. Initially a molotov cocktail was thrown through a hole made on the window panes into the ground floor, however, when some bank clerks were seen on the balconies again, some demonstrators called them to leave and then they tried to put the fire out. What actually happened then and how in no time at all the building was ablaze, remains unknown. The macabre series of events that followed with demonstrators trying to help those trapped inside, the fire brigade taking too long to take some of them out, the smiling billionaire banker being chased away by the angry crowd have been probably well reported. After some time the prime minister would announce the news in the Parliament condemning the “political irresponsibility” of those who resist the measures taken and “lead people to death” while the government’s “salvation measures” on the contrary “promote life”. The reversal was successful. Soon a huge operation by the riot police followed: the crowds were dispersed and chased away, the whole centre was cordoned until late in night, Exarchia got under siege, an anarchist squat was invaded and many were arrested, the Immigrants’ Haunt was invaded and trashed and a persistent smoke over the city as well as a sense of bitterness and numbness would not go away…

The consequences were visible the very next day: the media vultures capitalized on the tragic death representing it as a “personal tragedy” dissociated from its general context (mere human bodies cut off from their social relations) and some went so far as to criminalize resistance and protest. The government gained some time changing the subject of discussion and conflict and the unions felt released from any obligation to call for a strike the very day when the new measures were passed. Nonetheless, in such a general climate of fear, disappointment and freeze a few thousands gathered outside the parliament at an evening rally called by the unions and left organizations. Anger was still there, fists were raised, bottles of water and some fire crackers were thrown at the riot cops and slogans both against the parliament and the cops were chanted. An old woman was begging people to chant to “make them [the politicians] leave”, a guy pissed in a bottle and threw it to the cops, few anti-authoritarians were to be seen and when it got dark and the unions and most organizations left, people, quite ordinary, everyday people with bare hands would not go. Attacked with ferocity by the riot police, chased away, trampled down Syntagma square steps, panicked but angered young and old people got dispersed in nearby streets. Everything was back in order. However, not only fear was in their eyes; hatred was visible as well. It is certain they will be back.

Now some more general reflections:

* Cracking down on anarchists and anti-authoritarians has already started and it will get more acute. Criminalizing a whole social-political milieu reaching out to the far left organizations has always been used as a diversion by the state and it will be used even more so now that the murderous attack creates such favourable conditions. However, framing anarchists will not make those hundreds of thousands who demonstrated and even those a lot more who stayed passive but worried forget the IMF and the “salvation package” offered to them by the government. Harassing our milieu will not pay people’s bills nor guarantee their future which remains bleak. The government will soon have to incriminate resistance in general and has already started doing so as the incidents on the 6th of May clearly indicated.

* There will be some modest effort from the state to “put the blame” on certain politicians in order to appease the “popular feeling” which may well turn into a “thirst for blood”. Some blatant cases of “corruption” may get punished and some politicians may be sacrificed just to pour oil into troubled waters.

* There is a constant reference to a “constitutional deviation” coming both from the LAOS or the CP in a recrimination spectacle, revealing though of the ruling class increasing fears of a deepening political crisis, a deepening of the legitimization crisis. Various scenarios (a businessmen’s party, a proper junta-like regime) get recycled reflecting deeper fears of a proletarian uprising but in effect are used as a re-orientation of the debt crisis issue from the streets to the central political stage and to the banal question “who will be the solution?” instead of “what is the `solution’?”

* Having said all that, it is time to get to the more crucial matters. It is more than clear that the sickening game of turning the dominant fear/guilt for the debt into a fear/guilt for the resistance and the (violent) uprising against the terrorism of debt has already started. If class struggle escalates, the conditions may look more and more like the ones in a proper civil war. The question of violence has already become central. In the same way we assess the state’s management of violence, we are obliged to assess proletarian violence, too: the movement has to deal with the legitimation of rebellious violence and its content in practical terms. As for the anarchist-antiauthoritarian milieu itself and its dominant insurrectional tendency the tradition of a fetishized, macho glorification of violence has been too long and consistent to remain indifferent now. Violence as an end in itself in all its variations (including armed struggle proper) has been propagated constantly for years now and especially after the December rebellion a certain degree of nihilistic decomposition has become evident (there were some references to it in our text The Rebellious Passage), extending over the milieu itself. In the periphery of this milieu, in its margins, a growing number of very young people has become visible promoting nihilistic limitless violence (dressed up as “December’s nihilism”) and “destruction” even if this also includes variable capital (in the form of scabs, “petit-bourgeois elements”, “law-abiding citizens”). Such a degeneration coming out of the rebellion and its limits as well as out of the crisis itself is clearly evident. Certain condemnations of these behaviours and a self-critique to some extent have already started in the milieu (some anarchist groups have even called the perpetrators “parastatal thugs”) and it is quite possible that organized anarchists and anti-authoritarians (groups or squats) will try to isolate both politically and operationally such tendencies. However, the situation is more complicated and it is surpassing the theoretical and practical (self)critical abilities of this milieu. In hindsight, such tragic incidents with all their consequences might have happened in the December rebellion itself: what prevented them was not only chance (a petrol station that did not explode next to buildings set on fire on Sunday the 7th of December, the fact that the most violent riots took place at night with most buildings empty), but also the creation of a (though limited) proletarian public sphere and of communities of struggle which found their way not only through violence but also through their own content, discourse and other means of communication. It was these pre-existing communities (of students, football hooligans, immigrants, anarchists) that turned into communities of struggle by the subjects of the rebellion themselves that gave to violence a meaningful place. Will there be such communities again now that not only a proletarian minority is involved? Will there be a practical way of self-organization in the workplaces, in the neighborhoods or in the streets to determine the form and the content of the struggle and thus place violence in a liberating perspective?

Uneasy questions in pressing times but we will have to find the answers struggling.

TPTG
9th of May

The Issue of Violence in Greece

The statement written by “Occupied London” is being posted as a contribution towards a frank discussion on the issue of violence in demonstrations and specifically as it erupted in Greece on May 5th, 2010 resulting in the tragic deaths of 3 bank workers. We salute the willingness of “Occupied London” to raise the issue of these events and to question the aims and the means appropriated among the anarchist movement during this demonstration. We think that the desire to make an assessment of what transpired on 5/5/10 is extremely important. When they say “The time has come for us to talk frankly about violence and to critically examine a specific culture of violence that has been developing in Greece in the past few years”; we strongly agree. There is no excuse for throwing petrol bombs into a building full of people. The problem with blind violence is not only that it plays into the hands of capitalism, but also that it follows in the tradition of class society. It is not anti-capitalist.

Carol H. for IP

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The text below summarises some initial thoughts on Wednesday’s tragic events by some of us here at Occupied London. English and Greek versions follow – please disseminate.

What do we honestly have to say about Wednesday’s events?

What do the events of Wednesday (5/5) honestly mean for the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement? How do we stand in the face of the deaths of these three people – regardless of who caused them? Where do we stand as humans and as people in struggle? Us, who do not accept that there are such things as “isolated incidents” (of police or state brutality) and who point the finger, on a daily basis, at the violence exercised by the state and the capitalist system. Us, who have the courage to call things by their name; us who expose those who torture migrants in police stations or those who play around with our lives from inside glamorous offices and TV studios. So, what do we have to say now?

We could hide behind the statement issued by the Union of Bank Workers (OTOE) or the accusations by employees of the bank branch; or we could keep it at the fact that the deceased had been forced to stay in a building with no fire protection – and locked up, even. We could keep it at what a scum-bag is Vgenopoulos, the owner of the bank; or at how this tragic incident will be used to leash out some unprecedented repression. Whoever (dared to) pass through Exarcheia on Wednesday night already has a clear picture of this. But this is not where the issue lies.

The issue is for us to see what share of the responsibilities falls on us, on all of us. We are all jointly responsible. Yes, we are right to fight with all our powers against the unjust measures imposed upon us; we are right to dedicate all our strength and our creativity toward a better world. But as political beings, we are equally responsible for every single one of our political choices, for the means we have impropriated and for our silence every time that we did not admit to our weaknesses and our mistakes. Us, who do not suck up to the people in order to gain in votes, us who have no interest in exploiting anyone, have the capacity, under these tragic circumstances, to be honest with ourselves and with those around us.

What the greek anarchist movement is experiencing at the moment is some total numbness. Because there are pressurising conditions for some tough self-criticism that is going to hurt. Beyond the horror of the fact that people have died who were on “our side”, the side of the workers – workers under extremely difficult conditions who would have quite possibly chosen to march by our side if things were different in their workplace – beyond this, were are hereby also confronted with demonstrator/s who put the lives of people in danger. Even if (and this goes without question) there was no intention to kill, this is a matter of essence that can hold much discussion – some discussion regarding the aims that we set and the means that we chose.

The incident did not happen at night, at some sabotage action. It happened during the largest demonstration in contemporary greek history. And here is where a series of painful questions emerge: Overall, in a demonstration of 150-200,000, unprecedented in the last few years, is there really a need for some “upgraded” violence? When you see thousands shouting “burn, burn Parliament” and swear at the cops, does another burnt bank really have anything more to offer to the movement?

When the movement itself turns massive – say like in December 2008 – what can an action offer, if this action exceeds the limits of what a society can take (at least at a present moment), or if this action puts human lives at danger?

When we take to the streets we are one with the people around us; we are next to them, by their side, with them – this is, at the end of the day, why we work our arses off writing texts and posters – and our own clauses are a single parameter in the many that converge. The time has come for us to talk frankly about violence and to critically examine a specific culture of violence that has been developing in Greece in the past few years. Our movement has not been strengthened because of the dynamic means it sometimes uses but rather, because of its political articulation. December 2008 did not turn historical only because thousands picked up and threw stones and molotovs, but mainly because of its political and social characteristics – and its rich legacies at this level. Of course we respond to the violence exercised upon us, and yet we are called in turn to talk about our political choices as well as the means we have impropriated, recognising our -and their – limits.

When we speak of freedom, it means that at every single moment we doubt what yesterday we took for granted. That we dare to go all the way and, avoiding some cliché political wordings, to look at things straight into the eye, as they are. It is clear that since we do not consider violence to be an end to itself, we should not allow it to cast shadows to the political dimension of our actions. We are neither murderers nor saints. We are part of a social movement, with our weaknesses and our mistakes. Today, instead of feeling stronger after such an enormous demonstration we feel numb, to say the least. This in itself speaks volumes. We must turn this tragic experience into soul-searching and inspire one another since at the end of the day, we all act based on our consciousness. And the cultivation of such a collective consciousness is what is at stake.

The austerity that batters Greece is that which awaits the workers everywhere in the world. Let’s resist the crisis of Capitalism everywhere (Draft)

Please read our joint statement on Greece. Spread it, discuss it, criticize it.

IP

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The stakes of the struggles in Greece

In 2008, all states came to the aid of a capitalism at the brink of bankruptcy, lending astronomical sums. But nothing was resolved because the gap left by the crisis was filled by public deficits. Those became so enormous that certain states are now on the brink of bankruptcy. It is, thus, no longer only the private financial institutions and firms that are threatened by shipwreck, but now whole countries. A phenomenon formerly limited to the Third World, has today reached the heart of capitalism, which is now directly threatened by cardiac arrest.

These astronomical sums will indeed have to be repaid. The task posed today for the ruling class is to make the workers pay. It is what is brutally required in Greece under the name of an anti-natural solidarity between capital and labor, between exploiters and exploited, but it is also what awaits us all, everywhere tomorrow. The austerity that batters Greece constitutes a true testing ground of measures that are being prepared in all countries: Will the bourgeoisie and its states succeed in making the workers pay the costs of the crisis? What degree of resistance will the working class succeed in developing?

The attack which is being carried out in Greece is particularly violent: two years added to the minimum age necessary for retirement, lower wages for civil servants, drastic cuts to traditional yearly bonuses, increases in the tax on consumer goods, no replacement of four out of five retirees, and the layoff of a third of those under contract to work in the public sector, etc. Confronted by this brutal degradation of their living conditions, the resistance of the workers is essential: to accept these cuts without reacting would be to give a green light to the bourgeoisie to strike even harder. The struggles in Greece are the harbinger of the battles that we all will have to fight. The world working class has no other alternative than to fight, while avoiding all the false solutions that promise a way out within the framework of capitalism.

Illusions and false solutions

As the Greek group TPTG explains very well, it is the Socialist government of Papandreou that is spearheading the austerity policy against the working class. It is supported in this dirty work by the two principal trade-union confederations (the GSEE for private sector and the ADEDY for the public) that “are completely controlled by the Socialist government and trying to prevent any real resistance to the recent austerity offensive.” Thus, these two trade unions have organized separate days of action, work stoppages and demonstrations, in order to calm the worker’s anger, to divide and disperse their struggles, and to divert the struggle from its real objectives. They say they are ready to accept “austerity measures which would really permit the country to overcome the crisis,” and call for an “equitable austerity.” This thinly veiled support by the trade unions for the austerity policy proposed by the Socialist government led to vigorous protests at the time of the March 5 demonstrations: jeering and pelting the leader of the GSEE – Panagopoulos – with debris, so that his safety could only finally be assured by the anti-riot police.

Greece thus again confirms that the left and the trade unions are in no way less brutal than the right in the imposition of austerity measures and in the unconditional defense of capitalism and of its institutions.

In the same way, we have nothing to expect from the negotiations and “solutions” advanced by the bourgeois states. They are all trying to find the means to make us swallow the pill of austerity. There is no durable solution within capitalism. The bourgeoisie has only one program: to reduce its deficits and spending on the backs of the working class. Indeed, for capitalism, there is no choice outside of brutal austerity. In the same way, there is no longer any choice for the collective worker outside of brutal struggles against the attacks directed against its working and living conditions.

Perspectives

Only by the working class taking the struggles into its own hands, and an extension to all sectors, could a power relationship be created that is able to make the bourgeoisie retreat and open another perspective. The workers can build this solidarity only by having confidence in themselves, starting from the development of their own struggles and by means of their own forms of organization (general assemblies, delegates that are elected and revocable), and not by leaving the struggle in the hands of the trade unions and the traditional organizations of the left, or by watching on TV the bombs placed by elements who only seek to portray the workers as terrorists, to discredit the class struggle, and to make the population believe that the class struggle provides no other perspective than anarchy and violence.

To raise our struggles to the level demanded by the present situation, it is necessary for us to learn the lessons of what is happening in Greece and, in our turn, to engage in resistance in every country against the increasingly harsh measures that the bourgeoisie and its states are imposing on us. The obstacles and illusions met by Greek workers; will be met by all of us because our enemies are the same everywhere, whatever the country or the political color, right or left, in which they are clothed. Only a massive social mobilization can offer a perspective for the future, and this mobilization must be at the level required to answer the brutality exercised by the ruling class: it is the only “ethic” which the ruling class really understands.

The struggles of the Greek workers have inaugurated a resistance to the social devastations caused by the latest crisis of world capitalism. The question is posed in Greece, but the answer can be given only at the international level. Consequently, only one watchword is needed: extension of the struggles everywhere in the world against austerity. Workers of the whole world unite in struggle against the measures of international capitalism. To win, let us impose a power relationship beyond national borders. That is how we will be able to become aware that capitalism is a system in bankruptcy; that it has nothing else to offer humanity than ever more misery and destruction. In short, that it is time to destroy it, and to build another world putting an end to the exploitation of man by man.

In this struggle revolutionary minorities have and will have an important role to play in spite of their still weak forces. Their responsibilities are enormous and we call all and each to rise to the level that the situation demands. This common position taken by all the participants at the public meeting of “Internationalist Perspective” on 3/10/2010 is intended as a modest contribution to that end, open to all who wish to support it.

3/28/2010.

Internationalist Perspective

Forum for the Communist Left Internationalist – Controverses

The majority of the Internal Fraction of the International Communist Current

Tumulto

After the riots in Greece – A Report

This article originally appeared on the Occupied London blog. We include the introduction provided by Occupied London for purposes of information – Internationalist Perspective

Tonight’s tragic deaths in Athens leave little space for comments – we are all very shocked and deeply saddened by the events. To those (on the “Occupied London” blog even) who speculate that the deaths might have been caused purposefully by anarchists, we can only reply the following: we do not take to the streets, we do not risk our freedom and our lives confronting the greek police in order to kill other people. Anarchists are not murderers, and no brainwashing attempted by Greek PM Papandreou, the national or the international media should convince anyone otherwise.

That being said, and with developments still running frantically, we want to publish a rough translation of a statement by an employee of Marfin Bank – the bank whose branch was set alight in Athens today, where the three employees found a tragic death.

Read the letter, translate it, spread it around to your networks; grassroots counter-information has a crucial role to play at a moment when the greek state and corporate media are leashing out on the anarchist movement over here in Greece.

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I feel an obligation toward my co-workers who have so unjustly died today to speak out and to say some objective truths. I am sending this message to all media outlets. Anyone who still bares some consciousness should publish it. The rest can continue to play the government’s game.

The fire brigade had never issued an operating license to the building in question. The agreement for it to operate was under the table, as it practically happens with all businesses and companies in Greece.

The building in question has no fire safety mechanisms in place, neither planned nor installed ones – that is, it has no ceiling sprinklers, fire exits or fire hoses. There are only some portable fire extinguishers which, of course, cannot help in dealing with extensive fire in a building that is built with long-outdated security standards.

No branch of Marfin bank has had any member of staff trained in dealing with fire, not even in the use of the few fire extinguishers. The management also uses the high costs of such training as a pretext and will not take even the most basic measures to protect its staff.

There has never been a single evacuation exercise in any building by staff members, nor have there been any training sessions by the fire-brigade, to give instructions for situations like this. The only training sessions that have taken place at Marfin Bank concern terrorist action scenarios and specifically planning the escape of the banks’ “big heads” from their offices in such a situation.

The building in question had no special accommodation for the case of fire, even though its construction is very sensitive under such circumstances and even though it was filled with materials from floor to ceiling. Materials which are very inflammable, such as paper, plastics, wires, furniture. The building is objectively unsuitable for use as a bank due to its construction.

No member of security has any knowledge of first aid or fire extinguishing, even though they are every time practically charged with securing the building. The bank employees have to turn into firemen or security staff according to the appetite of Mr Vgenopoulos [owner of Marfin Bank].

The management of the bank strictly bared the employees from leaving today, even though they had persistently asked so themselves from very early this morning – while they also forced the employees to lock up the doors and repeatedly confirmed that the building remained locked up throughout the day, over the phone. They even blocked off their internet access so as to prevent the employees from communicating with the outside world.

For many days now there has been some complete terrorisation of the bank’s employees in regard to the mobilisations of these days, with the verbal “offer”: you either work, or you get fired.

The two undercover police who are dispatched at the branch in question for robbery prevention did not show up today, even though the bank’s management had verbally promised to the employees that they would be there.

At last, gentlemen, make your self-criticism and stop wandering around pretending to be shocked. You are responsible for what happened today and in any rightful state (like the ones you like to use from time to time as leading examples on your TV shows) you would have already been arrested for the above actions. My co-workers lost their lives today by malice: the malice of Marfin Bank and Mr. Vgenopoulos personally who explicitly stated that whoever didin’t come to work today [May 5th, a day of a general strike!] should not bother showing up for work tomorrow [as they would get fired].

- An employee of Marfin Bank [greek original]

Democracy – No Escape

IP received the following text from a comrade in Greece

Democracy

There’s no escape.

The big pricks are out.

They’ll fuck everything in sight.

Watch your back.
Harold Pinter (February 2003)

At the historical point we are now in, the contradiction of capital is increasingly clear worldwide. Proletarians around the world are in turmoil as the reproduction of their existence becomes more and more difficult. But while it is already difficult for proletarians to continue their lives, it is capital itself, as a relation of exploitation, which is in a crisis of reproduction: The current struggles of the proletariat are the expression of the current form of this relation of exploitation.

During the last year in China, where the economy is still growing very quickly, all kinds of contradictions were rising. Clashes of workers with the police are common for a number of reasons: the demand for the increase of the very low wages on which the steep economic growth is based; attempts to prevent land enclosures in villages; struggles to get compensation for dismissed workers, and against the inadequacy of a health system which results in a high mortality rate for children. In the U.S.A., where there is a historical low in workers’ struggles, thousands of homeless and unemployed people have occupied vacant houses which had been seized by banks. Students have occupied universities in California and New York writing on their banners: We have decided not to die. They are demanding what was until recently taken for granted, just their ability to continue being students. Proletarians in South Africa and Algeria, from their much more desperate position imposed by the hierarchy of capitalist states, have made the same demands, of water and electricity, against being forced to live in slums, as they clash with police. In India as well, workers fight because the price of bread has suddenly risen, and they are starving to death. Last year in Spain, workers in shipyards which were shut down burnt police cars. In South Korea, dismissed workers occupied factories and clashed with police for two and a half months. In Bangladesh, dismissed workers clashed with police and burnt factories. In France and Belgium, dismissed workers kidnapped their bosses, placed explosives in the factories and threatened to blow them up if they were not compensated for their dismissal. In India and China, they kill their bosses during the conflicts because of thousands of upcoming dismissals. In this historical phase, proletarian struggles are objectively struggles for the right of the reproduction of existence itself.

At the same time, the restructuring of labour relations has accelerated and precariousness is the predominant situation for everyone now. Precariousness is manifested in the worst conditions: there have been 43 employee suicides in France Telecom in two years; in the U.S. 1,000,000 unemployed are desperately waiting to see whether Obama will once again extend the unemployment benefit, which runs out in April, or if they will be left with nothing. Unemployment numbers in most countries have surged, hitting records higher than in any other historical period.

In this historical phase we are in, there are more than enough proletariats for capital as the latter cannot effectively exploit the former, cannot produce the amount of profit needed so as a part of it to be anew put into profitable investments. This is the essence of any capitalist crisis regardless of the form it takes. The present form of crisis objectively puts proletarians’ reproduction at the center of the contradiction. The crisis first appeared as debt crisis of proletarian households in the U.S.A. It has already been transformed into a generalized debt crisis, and it is possible it will be transformed into a monetary crisis; that is, a debt crisis of large countries with strong currencies or even whole blocs of capitalist states such as the European Union. The debt crisis forces capital to turn to its only choice at the moment, which is to continue the strategy that created this crisis. It must further reduce wages and benefits in every possible way. This is the only choice of capital, because the debt crisis is the result of globalization and the restructuring of capitalist relations from which there is no turning back.
From the proletariat’s standpoint: “[it is] caught in the stranglehold of competition that can only reduce prices by reducing wages, in the servitude of debt which has become just as indispensable as income in order to live. The waged have, to cap it all, the chance of being tyrannised at their own cost, since the savings [are] instrumentalised by stock-exchange finance, savings which demand to be repaid without end, are their own.” (Le Monde diplomatique, March 2008). From capital’s standpoint, it is a relentless pursuit of the lowest possible price of labour power across the planet, but which has a limit: the existence and reproduction of labour power as this is socially defined in every capitalist state.
Capital is forced to try to resolve the crisis by destroying fixed capital (buildings, machinery, infrastructure) and variable capital (humans) in order to recreate the conditions of its reproduction, without being, at the moment, able to do it through its only directly effective manner, widespread global war. Thus, for the time being, the restructuring will inevitably deepen. The wage cuts are reaching the point where the lowest wage and the unemployment benefit tend to be equal, resulting in the explosive growth of debt for more and more proletarians. The privatization of “public” sectors (health, education, social insurance) is increasing dramatically. The unemployed have smaller and smaller benefits and are forced into slave-like working conditions with wages below the level of reproduction. The present historical period has reached its limit. That’s why the state places police guards outside schools in France or inside schools in the U.S.A. to arrest ‘undisciplined students.’ Capital’s only way out today is repression, but there is absolutely no way out of the crisis. This is obvious in cases of natural disasters such as in Haiti and Chile. In such cases, the capitalist system is directly put into question by proletarians, who, temporarily unable to be exploited as labour power, organize the expropriation of commodities and use them according to their needs in order to survive. Here, the only way to maintain capitalist property is by using military violence: Curfews during the night and straight assassinations are imposed in Haiti, while or imprisonment without trial takes place in Chile. Suddenly life looks like a prisoner’s life in concentration camps for the undocumented migrants who live in the thousands, imprisoned at the borders of each capitalist state.

The attack of capital against part of the working class in Greece is an aspect of this crisis of reproduction of capitalist relations. Greece today is in the eye of the storm of the debt crisis for many reasons. The most important is that the most precarious part of the proletariat rebelled in a way we all know in December 2008. Greece is an experimental lab for the new phase of the absolutely necessity of capital’s global restructuring. The bourgeoisie in Greece, as has happened many times in the past, has asked for help from more powerful bourgeois classes in order to impose a new form of exploitation. From the very beginning, the new government announced a higher national debt than the previous government in order to accelerate the introduction of the Stability Program). But the bourgeoisie itself is at the centre of the global crisis. The entire international economical press is waiting to see the reaction of the proletariat here in Greece and then to have an overview of the situation internationally. The biggest stores of loan sharks are competing with each other in order to lend and, thus, control the future of the Greek state, and thus the form and intensity of the local proletariat’s exploitation. The creation of the European Monetary Fund to IMF standards clearly shows that the contradiction of competition between capitals can now be solved temporarily, but it also shows that it does not matter who the boss of the proletariat is.

Any attempt to present the situation in a “better” way than it really is a meaningless effort. Any attempt to present the restructuring as Germany’s attack against Greece is suitable only for second rate TV-stations. SYRIZA (a leftist parliamentary party) has tried this approach, issuing nonsense about “sacred money” as compensation for a German Nazi occupation. An Orwell-type propaganda of the mass media has been mobilized, and restructuring is being presented as a natural disaster. At present, this propaganda has been partly successful. Some workers in the private sector have welcomed the reductions in the salaries of the employees in the public sector. The employees in public sector are divided on the basis of who is “truly privileged” and who is not. But all of them are in danger. If someone is wondering what being privileged means, they can ask the dismissed workers of Olympic Airways who occupied the State General Accounting Office. 15 days ago they accepted “the difficult and quite heavy program of the Ministry,” while the deputy-minister ignored them after they had begged him for a meeting. If someone is wondering about the impact on workers’ daily lives because of the attempted restructuring, one can ask the workers at the National Printing Office who after reading the text of the austerity plan’s law and realizing that 30% of their income was to be cut, decided to occupy the building they work at in order to prevent the printing of the Gazette! One can also ask them about the role of their trade union leaders who ended the occupation because they were orally “promised by the government” a circular amending the law!

There is nothing that can improve the situation. The ceremonial demonstrations called by leftists, as long as they remain as such, result in nothing but dead-ends. We are unmasking reality from the veils of politics. The stones that were thrown last Friday (March 5), and which covered the sky are not enough to make them listen to us. As more and more unemployed people occupy buildings and the police repress them; as more and more precarious workers and the unemployed clash with the forces of repression at any slightest opportunity; as the social chaos leads to organization on its own and takes the form of class revolt, then, the smiles of the showmen on the TV-news will freeze on their faces. The battles will be of similar levels to the violence accumulated over many years through the accumulation of capital and the expropriation of proletarian lives.

“What will happen in history, tomorrow, it can only be compared with the major geological disasters which change the face of Earth …”

- Victor Serge

agents of chaos