published on “Resistenza”, n. 3, March 2012
Greek workmen have been offering for two years a brave, generous and tenacious resistance to the measures and the “aid” packages “to avert the financial catastrophe” with which the “Socialist” Papandreou before, and then the “technician” Papademos are bringing Greek popular masses to the catastrophe, tearing economy to shreds, clearing the way for political, economic and military occupation of the country.
President of Republic Napolitano warned: “In Italy demonstrations crossing the lawfulness won’t be allowed”. What does he refer to? To the wildcat, general and all-pervading strikes, some of which protracted for several days, to the barricades in the streets and to the sieges to Parliament building, to the crowd pressing against police cordons and spreading out when the “black bloc” come, while greeting them with lengthy applause. Or else to the squatting, the occupation of buildings, schools, public offices, to the proletarian expropriations as the best instrument for coping with poverty, to the mass and widespread disobeying the payment of taxes and charges. Or else more to the occupation and self-management of Kilkis hospital by the workmen, which in the statement explaining the form of struggle they used, affirm: “The present and persisting problems of national health system and of correlate organizations cannot be solved with claims which are specific and isolated or which avail our particular interests, since these problems are the product of a more general and anti-popular government’s policy and of global neo-liberalism. (…). We besides acknowledge that, keeping at standing up for this type of claims (particular, sectorial – Editor’s Note), we contribute to the merciless game of the authorities (…), on this account we set our particular interests within a general framework”. The unlawful acts Napolitano does not allow are the thousand forms of resistance, the thousand forms of struggle, the thousand activities to reappropriate decorous living conditions. His threats are the swan song of a class sitting on a powder keg. Courage, combativeness, generosity of hundreds of thousands of Greek workmen and of their families are contagious. They teach. To rebel is possible. To rebel is right.
The leader of Metal Workers Cremaschi and some exponents of grass-roots trade unions say: “Let’s do as Greeks do”. But the fact is that Greek workmen, despite strikes and struggles, are still under the yoke of speculators’ international community. Why? (new) Italian Communist Party gives this answer: “because to protest against the poverty imposed by masters, government, authorities and by the institutions of world imperialist system is not enough! It also needs saying what one needs to do and to be determined to do it. It needs cancelling the national debt, withholding payment of interest, instalments and commissions, pointing out the steps to take to cope with the sabotage, the boycott, the freeze on Greek possessions abroad, the refusal of standard banking transaction connected with trading and international trade and to cope with other similar measures the governments, the financial and trade institutions, the banks and other authorities of world imperialist system will take. It so needs above all being ready (and declaring to be ready) to establish a government which takes the measures pointed out, which imposes them, with the aid of organized popular masses, on that part of Greek ruling classes which supports world imperialist system’s authorities, a government which enters into solidarity, collaboration and exchange relations with governments and authorities of the countries they too want to escape world imperialist system’s grip, which leads the action of Greek popular masses to kick-start country’s economy and to develop the rest of social relations and of services. Under these conditions the struggle of popular masses against the dictations of world imperialist system’s institutions can be successful. This is a great teaching for us too. Such a teaching is also coming to us from popular masses of Ireland, Portugal and Spain, which are facing up to the same dictations of EU”.
We wish popular masses, workmen and Communists of Greece to manage to find their way: not only to make things very hard for Papademos government, but to succeed in establishing their popular government, coping with the crisis and being an example to all European peoples!
This is the struggle in which popular masses and Communists are engaged in Italy as well, to free themselves from the noose of banks, financiers, masters and, in our country more than in Greece, of Vatican. With this spirit we raise the watchword: Let’s stand beside popular masses and Communists of Greece, let’s go ahead to build a new country, a new Europe, a new world!
Before, it has been called off the referendum on diktats of EU, ECB and IMF, and along with the referendum he has also been fired Papandreou which, forced by the occupation of squares and by the siege to Parliament building, had imprudently proposed it. But it is not even enough a new government, appointed from above, supported by a cross-party majority in a Parliament which represents above all else a betrayal of its own people, led by Papademos, the equivalent of the Italian Monti, ex-official of banks and bankers. European troika now hypothesizes the cancellation of general election, scheduled to be held next spring: the mask of bourgeois democracy drops too, the banks, the financial circles and their institutions actually decide if and when election will be held. Equally they decide if, when and on what conditions “aid” needed to pay interest on national debt can be granted, what services have to be privatized, what state-owned possessions have to be sold off… To whom? To the sharks of the banks and of finance and to their renowned clients. And as the government has difficulty leading the country, mobilizations follow one another. One of the main police unions (the POASY) announces that “next time the troika will meet in Athens, we will arrest its members for crimes against humanity”. European gendarmerie is coming as well, special squads of policemen from other countries with shock troops’ tasks. In breach of every law, rule, treaty, sovereignty.
What is to be done HERE AND NOW to advance towards socialism? Two lines are compared:
“If, participating in a government, we could prevent the consequences of the crisis and solve people’s problems, we would do it: we don’t fear to assume risks, but that is impossible. (…) We hope it comes a time when the formation of a new government will be impossible and people will intervene. (…) We are unable to define a date for political system’s change and to envisage a plausible space of time of one, two, three years for that, as it depends on people’s majority. It is not a matter relating to KKE alone. If people doesn’t make the decision, the change won’t take place” (Aleka Papariga, secretary of KKE).
“Today it is a matter of building new socialist countries in imperialist ones, facing up and giving solution to the effects of capitalism’s general crisis, beginning with the most grevious ones and going systematically on. For that purpose it needs starting from getting together and mobilizing the existing forces, waging the necessary revolutionary people’s war in a systematic way and uninterruptedly, one stage after another, launching the campaigns which every stage involves, winning the battles which make up the single campaigns with the tactical operations peculiar to every battle. The watchword of the establishment of People’s Bloc Government is for us Communists the way the new society forms making use of “tools and material” of present society, the existing ones. There is no other way: the history goes ahead like that. Nowhere in the world a pure capitalism changing into a pure communism exists or ever existed.
The establishment and the activity of People’s Bloc Government besides remedying, though uneasily and provisionally, the most disastrous effects of capitalism’s crisis and of the manoeuvres of bourgeoisie, clergy and of their authorities, just thanks to the activity which working-class and popular organizations will put into the field to make it work and to defend it against external and internal enemies’ attacks, will quicken communist movement’s rebirth and will so create the conditions for socialism’s establishment which will bring farther, to a higher level, the work the People’s Bloc Government, by nature, will only have started” (new Italian Communist Party).
The establishment and the activity of People’s Bloc Government besides remedying, though uneasily and provisionally, the most disastrous effects of capitalism’s crisis and of the manoeuvres of bourgeoisie, clergy and of their authorities, just thanks to the activity which working-class and popular organizations will put into the field to make it work and to defend it against external and internal enemies’ attacks, will quicken communist movement’s rebirth and will so create the conditions for socialism’s establishment which will bring farther, to a higher level, the work the People’s Bloc Government, by nature, will only have started” (new Italian Communist Party).
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