[D66] Defend the Greek working class!

[Antid Oto]

Defend the Greek working class!
2 November 2012

The fifth austerity package dictated by the EU and presented to the 
Greek government on Wednesday is to be approved next week by parliament. 
Like its predecessors, it contains a massive assault on the working 
class—including an increase in the retirement age from 65 to 67; a €4.6 
billion cut in pensions; a €1.17 billion cut in salaries; and a €455 
million cut in health care spending. Those who will benefit are the 
banks and speculators, while the vast majority of the population will be 
plunged further into misery.

According to official government estimates, Greece’s debt will rise next 
year to the unprecedented level of nearly 190 percent of gross domestic 
product. Its economy is forecast to shrink by seven percent this year 
and by over five percent next year. Unemployment has reached 25.1 
percent, a new record, and will continue to rise as lay-offs hit the 
public sector.

The attacks on Greece are the most brutal of a wave of austerity 
measures being imposed across Europe. The critical political question 
today is the independent revolutionary mobilization of the working class 
against the European Union (EU), its austerity policies, and the 
governments carrying them out.

A critical political precondition for such an offensive is solidarity 
with the embattled Greek working class, and uncompromising hostility to 
racist campaigns to blame them for the ongoing debt crisis and social 
catastrophe in Greece.

The financial elite can only carry out its brutal attacks on the 
European working class because workers lack a perspective to oppose EU 
diktats. The main responsibility for this situation lies with various 
reactionary pseudo-left groups, such as the Greek Coalition of the 
Radical Left (SYRIZA) and the Left Party in Germany. They insist that 
the EU can be reformed, subordinating workers to the reactionary EU 
institutions.

This absence of an independent political party of the working class, 
under conditions of growing economic desperation, poses the gravest 
dangers. If the petty-bourgeois “left” blocks the working class from 
advancing a revolutionary solution to the crisis of capitalism, 
fascistic tendencies can and will appeal to middle class and 
impoverished layers of the Greek population.

The violent fascist organization Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) has risen to 
14 percent in the polls. Public attacks on political opponents, artists, 
homosexuals, or immigrants by government officials or fascist gangs now 
occur daily in Greece. The aim is above all to intimidate and terrorize 
the working class.

The press now widely compares the devastation inflicted on Greece to 
that visited on Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic, before the 
Nazis came to power.

The German ruling class also responded to the crisis at that time by 
continually implementing more austerity measures, seeking to squeeze the 
working class dry. With the support of the Social Democratic Party 
(SPD), Chancellor Brüning introduced massive cuts in wages, social 
benefits and pensions in 1930-1932, through no less than 62 emergency 
decrees.

The German ruling class met resistance by workers with increasingly 
authoritarian measures. Following the semi-dictatorial governments of 
Papen and Schleicher, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor on January 
30 with the support of all the main bourgeois parties, the military and 
representatives of big business. The latter were determined to utilize 
the Nazis to destroy the organizations of the working class.

Today in Greece, the connection between brutal social attacks and the 
rise of anti-democratic and fascistic tendencies is unmistakable. The 
work of government is now conducted in Brussels, and not by the Greek 
cabinet or parliament. Just last year the EU removed an elected 
government and replaced it by a government of unelected technocrats. 
Since then, there has been a steady increase in attacks on striking 
workers, immigrants, and protesters.

The police cooperates directly with Golden Dawn, which entered the Greek 
parliament for the first time in June.

These tendencies not only arise from the social devastation caused by EU 
austerity measures; they are also tacitly tolerated by the EU. When 
anti-fascist demonstrators were tortured by the Greek police, EU 
representatives were silent.

As social attacks intensify, authoritarian tendencies are spreading 
across the continent. In Spain and Portugal, workers demonstrating 
against cuts have been regularly beaten and abused by police. Now the 
Spanish government is preparing to introduce a law penalizing those who 
document police brutality.

Across Europe, Roma and other minorities are being chased through the 
streets and deported by security forces. In Germany, far-right and 
fascist structures are being built up and financed by the secret services.

The working class can only defend itself by establishing its fighting 
unity against austerity measures and the rising fascistic and 
authoritarian tendencies in Europe. This will take place through a 
determined struggle against the paralyzing influence of the 
petty-bourgeois groups such as SYRIZA. Fearing working class revolution 
far more than the ultra-right, they will function only as obstacles in 
the struggle against fascism and authoritarian tendencies in Europe.

Workers need a new party that unites across all borders in a struggle 
against the EU and for the United Socialist States of Europe. This means 
building sections of the world socialist party, the International 
Committee of the Fourth International.

Christoph Dreier

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/pers-n02.shtml