Greece: The pseudo-left and the trade unions

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Greece: The pseudo-left and the trade unions
20 March 2010

Greece is currently a focal point of the international economic and
political crisis. It is where the European and international financial
elite is testing its methods for imposing unprecedented attacks on the
working class not only in Greece, but in every country.

Workers and youth in Greece have begun to fight back against austerity
measures aimed at reversing the social gains won over decades of
struggle and drastically lowering working class living standards. This
is forcing all political tendencies to reveal the social forces which
they objectively represent.

The events in Greece cast a sharp light on political issues that have
a significance far beyond Athens and Thesaloniki. In particular, the
actions and policies of the petty-bourgeois political groupings that
present themselves as “left” reveal their critical role in helping to
block an independent movement of the working class and thereby
preserving the bourgeois order.

What characterizes the current political situation in Greece?

The social democratic PASOK government is acting on behalf of
international finance capital by imposing draconian cuts to make the
working population pay for the bankruptcy of the state, resulting from
its bailout of the banks, and the overall crisis of the capitalist system.

PASOK, in turn, relies on the trade unions, with which it has a long
association, to divide, dissipate and exhaust the resistance of the
workers by restricting it to fruitless protests. While union leaders
criticize the cuts at protest rallies, they back the government and
devote their efforts to stabilizing the capitalist system. This means,
in practice, creating the conditions for PASOK to impose the cuts
demanded by the banks.

Under conditions where the unions’ treachery is ever more apparent and
they face increasing criticism from workers, the union bureaucracy, in
its turn, relies on the pseudo-left groups. Their role is to prevent a
rebellion by workers against the organizational and political
straitjacket of the union apparatus.

Political organizations like SYRIZA, which calls itself a “Coalition
of the Radical Left,” and Antarsya, which was established last spring
as the “Cooperation of the Anti-Capitalist Left for the Revolution,”
insist that no struggle against the austerity measures is possible or
legitimate unless it is headed by the unions.

They ignore the fact that the leaderships of the two main union
federations, GSEE in the private sector and ADEDY in the public
sector, are largely comprised of PASOK members, and that both
organizations are allied to the very party that is carrying out the
attacks on the working class.

The central demand of SYRIZA and Anrarsya is for the “unity of the
left” in support of trade union action by GSEE and ADEDY. This
programme of “unity” behind the unions is a betrayal of the interests
of the working class. Its purpose is to uphold the authority of
right-wing organizations that are working for the defeat of the workers.

Real unity of the working class can be established only on the basis
of a rebellion against the unions and the establishment of new,
democratic organs of struggle based on a socialist perspective—the
fight to mobilize the working population to bring down the PASOK
government and replace it with a workers’ government.

There is nothing accidental about the orientation of these fake
“lefts.” It does not arise from the impulses of individual leaders.
The line-up of petty-bourgeois ex-left organizations with the trade
union apparatuses is a universal political phenomenon. It can be seen
on every continent and in every country—the ex-radicals in the US, the
New Anti-Capitalist Party in France, the Left Party in Germany, the
Socialist Workers Party in Britain, Rifondazione Comunista in Italy,
etc., etc.

Everywhere, these groups argue that the unions, which have for decades
openly colluded with the employers and their respective governments,
and, as a result of their treachery, lost most of their members, are
the true and legitimate representatives of the working class.

This is not the result of a political misunderstanding. The
identification of the ex-lefts with the trade union bureaucracy and
their personal ascent into the highest echelons of the union apparatus
represent an important mechanism for the integration of these forces
into the framework of bourgeois politics.

They justify support for the social democratic parties by arguing that
they have close links with the unions. Conversely, if they promote the
establishment of new parties, they measure success by whether they
have won the support of an important section of the trade union
bureaucracy.

Many of these forces were deeply integrated into the welfare state,
which in past decades enabled an entire layer around the trade union
bureaucracy to enjoy a thoroughly pleasant and privileged life. They
regarded the welfare state as a force for order, and were viscerally
hostile towards any independent movement of the working class.

Today, they feel threatened by the social and political implications
of the economic crisis—above all, the intensification of the class
struggle—and cling to the trade unions all the more adamantly. In
essence, these political groupings are a component of petty-bourgeois
layers which the crisis is pushing to the right, and which see the
unions as a bulwark against social revolution.

That is what underlies the rapid rightward movement of organizations
such as SYRIZA and Antarsya in Greece and their counterparts in other
countries.

It is no coincidence that the acting chair of the German Left Party
and leader of the European Left in the EU Parliament, Lothar Bisky, a
few days before a one-day general strike in Greece said: “The general
population has to participate in the debt reduction, but in moderation.”

That leaves nothing to the imagination. At the conference of SYRIZA in
Athens at the end of February, Bisky spoke for both organizations when
he emphasized their close cooperation.

Bisky confirms what the International Committee of the Fourth
International said in its statement of March 17 on the European debt
crisis—a successful struggle against austerity measures in Greece and
in every country requires a radical break with the unions and their
defenders among the ex-lefts. (See: The Greek debt crisis signals a
new stage in class conflict”)

Ulrich Rippert

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m20.shtml

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