[D66] Greece and the dictatorship of finance

[Antid Oto]

Greece and the dictatorship of finance
9 November 2011

Ancient Athens is considered to be the cradle of European democracy. Modern
Athens is threatening to become its grave. The events that have rocked Greece in
recent days are a lesson and a warning for all of Europe.

Three weeks ago a two-day general strike brought the country to a halt. Since
then there has been one crisis summit after another—in Athens, Brussels, Cannes.
The result is a new government in Greece without any democratic legitimacy
intent on imposing the dictates of the financial markets upon the working
population.

If one regards democracy to be the determination by the broad masses of the
people of their own destiny, or even just the composition of a government, then
there is no longer any democracy in Athens. There is no longer the pretense that
the sovereign power is the people. It is rather the “troika,” consisting of the
European Union (EU), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European
Central Bank (ECB). The prospective new prime minister, Lucas Papademos, a
former vice-president of the ECB, has been selected by, and is answerable to,
the troika.

What is happening in Athens is increasingly the rule rather the exception. In
recent months the four other highly indebted countries in the euro zone—Ireland,
Portugal, Italy and Spain—have either gone through, or are on the verge of, a
change in government. On each occasion the initiative came from the
representatives of finance capital and big business. The most important
prerequisite in the selection of each new government is its ability to implement
unpopular economic measures while resisting any concessions to public pressure.

Sooner rather than later other European countries will be the victims of the
same process. In France, the Fillon government has just announced a new
austerity program of over €65 billion. And export-oriented Germany is more
dependent than any other country on the rest of Europe.

The situation is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. Then, German Chancellor
Heinrich Brüning, a centrist politician, sought to impose the impact of the
international financial and economic crisis on the population with drastic
austerity measures. He ruled through emergency measures, relied on the powers of
the president and the parliamentary support of social democracy, and suppressed
opposition to his austerity policies with brutal police operations. Brüning
paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and their subsequent takeover of power.

The development in Greece is heading in the same direction. This follows
inexorably from the logic of the “government of national unity.” Declaring its
austerity program to be an expression of supreme national interests, the
government will denounce all resistance as treason to be forcibly suppressed.
The military will be encouraged to take over the reins of power, as it did in
1967. The sudden dismissal of the senior military leadership by outgoing Prime
Minister George Papandreou is a warning in this regard.

The emergence of dictatorship in Greece and throughout Europe can be prevented.
The ruling elites are divided and weak, and opposition is growing to their
attacks. But this resistance at present lacks a clear perspective, while the
ruling elites are quite conscious of their interests and have sophisticated
means of paralyzing and suppressing resistance.

In the front rank are the social democratic parties, which have long ceased to
represent the interests of workers and become advocates of cuts and austerity
measures with no less vehemence than their conservative counterparts.

Behind them stand the trade unions, which work closely with the EU, national
governments and business federations to support austerity programs and
systematically suppress any international solidarity with the Greek workers.

At the recent G20 summit, which sealed the change of government in Greece, the
unions of the participating countries (bearing in mind that unions are banned in
one G20 country—Saudi Arabia) and the employers’ association (Business 20)
issued a joint statement in which they reaffirmed their close cooperation.

Signed by the secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation
(ITUC), Sharon Burrow, and the president of the French employers’ federation,
Laurence Parisot, the statement urged the assembled leaders to stress that
“priority now has to be put firmly on creating an environment conducive to
enterprise and job creation.”

In Greece itself, the unions have limited opposition to austerity measures to
short-term protest actions in order not to endanger the PASOK government. This
in turn enabled the right wing to take the initiative in the change of government.

Then there are the numerous remnants of Stalinist organizations that operate
closely with the trade unions and social democracy and, as in the case of the
Greek KKE, whip up nationalist sentiments.

Finally, there are the numerous middle-class groups which declare they are
“anti-capitalist” or “socialist,” but collaborate with the social democrats,
Stalinists and unions and oppose any break with them. It is these organizations
which have sought to dictate the agenda in the “outraged” and “Occupy” movements
by raising the slogan of “no politics,” i.e., the deliberate suppression of
discussion on the need to build a revolutionary socialist alternative to the
existing parties.

Social and democratic rights can be defended only on the basis of breaking with
all of these organizations. Strikes and protests, while important, are not
enough. The struggle against dictatorship and austerity requires a socialist
perspective and the building of a new party. The ruling elites cannot be swayed
by pressure from the streets. They have too much to lose. They are determined to
defend their privileges and wealth in a capitalist system which has plunged the
world into crisis.

The European debt crisis is not due to a lack of money. According to
Handelsblatt, wealthy Greek individuals have stashed an estimated €560 billion
in foreign accounts—almost twice as much as the entire Greek national debt. And
the US investment bank Merrill Lynch has estimated that in 2007 no less than
three million millionaires resided in Europe, with total assets of €7.5 trillion.

This enormous sum of capital seeks new sources of interest and profit. To use a
phrase of Karl Marx, “Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by
sucking living labor.” The financial markets demand their daily toll. Increasing
amounts of surplus value produced by workers flow into banks, hedge funds and
other financial institutions, which themselves produce nothing of value.

Herein lies the importance of the debt crisis. It serves as a mechanism to
intensify the exploitation of the working class, decimate government social
spending, slash wages and re-establish the types of exploitation which prevailed
in the initial stages of capitalism.

A progressive resolution of the crisis is possible only on the basis of
transforming existing property relations. The banks, large corporations and
major private fortunes must be expropriated, subjected to democratic control and
devoted to serving society as a whole. Social needs must take precedence over
the drive for profit.

Such measures require a revolutionary movement of the working class. They will
meet with the fierce resistance of all the established parties, which are
intimately tied to the interests of the financial markets and big business.
Supporting the main bourgeois parties will be the trade unions and their
pseudo-socialist allies.

A socialist perspective can be realized in the economically and socially closely
knit continent of Europe only through the close international collaboration of
the working class. The aim must be to build the United Socialist States of
Europe. The alternative, as in the 1930s, is the balkanization of the continent
and a slide into dictatorship and war.

Peter Schwarz

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/pers-n09.shtml