IWL-FI Statement
Your struggle is ours!
On last 5th May, Greek working class and the toiling masses once more paralyzed the entire country against the brutal plan of adjustments of the European Union and the IMF applied by the “socialist” PASOK administration.
This is the fourth general strike since last December when the crisis of the Greek debt was triggered off. Crowds of people swept through the streets of Athens and all the other Greek cities. Tens of thousands of demonstrators besieged and attacked the Greek Parliament, the great institution of bourgeois democracy converted into a chamber of submission to the dictates of the great powers of the European Union. Clashes with the police were widespread. A new summons for a general strike is underway for the 20th May.
They want to turn us into poors!
The adjustment plan is Draconian: further unemployment, 25% reduction of salaries of civil servants, increase in age limit for pensions, reduction of public services, serious retreat in labour rights, such as the abolition of collective agreements and liberalization and reduction of the costs of layoffs, strong increase of taxes (The GHP rose from 19 to 23%) and gas oil, alcohol and tobacco a 10% while taxes for entrepreneur were reduced; they are privatizing everything that has not yet been privatized.
Greek workers have coined expressions to define accurately the objectives of the plan: “they want to turn us to paupers” and “they want to drive us back to the 50s”. It is a plan to bleed Greek people to death and so benefit German, French and Greek entrepreneurs and other financial vultures that are still getting richer and richer with the great business of the public debt. That is why they have turned Greece into an economic protectorate with no national sovereignty.
EU on the verge of the abyss
The Greek crisis and its contagious effect has triggered off a general crisis that has placed the Euro zone on the very verge of the abyss and threatens with a new world financial crisis, even more devastating than the one that was unleashed after the bankruptcy of Leman Brothers in 2008. In an attempt at a desperate rescue operation, the EU has passed a European macro plan with a dowry of 750,000 million euros meant for emergency loans to countries of the euro in danger of having to stop paying. The IMF (where the USA has the leading role) will take over a third of these funds. They have also agreed that the European Central Bank will buy the public and private debt of the countries in danger and maintain full facilities of bank credits. At the same time, the governments of Germany and France have imposed a very strict control system which, in the Greek way, transforms “peripheral” countries into veritable economic protectorates.
The key issue of the EU bail out is nothing but a historic retreat for European working class. That is why they have established drastic conditions to belong to the euro zone and the EU and draconian conditions to gain access to the rescue funds, according to the Greek model. It is outrageous to hear that these are loans to “help Greece” when Greek toiling masses will not see a single euro but will suffer the consequences and penalties.
Greece preannounces the plans for the entire Europe, beginning by the weakest countries, such as Portugal, Spain, Ireland or Italy. The governments of Spain and Portugal have already announced a drastic packet of toughening measures for their clash plans. Furthermore, these plans are doomed to go beyond all that because the economic slope down they cause will cause more public deficit and more debt… until the country bleeding and exhausted will no longer be able to pay and so will have to call for stop payment fee.
Out with the EU!
Greece has provided the evidence that there is no solution inside the EU or within the framework of respect for the basic rules of capitalism. EU has now been revealed as the stark expression of the Europe of the Capital and as an antidemocratic freak that cannot be reformed. The sharpness of the Greek crisis can only be challenged if we declare the non-acknowledgement of the foreign debt, splitting away from the euro and the EU and taking drastic and urgent measures to reorganize economy in the service of the vast majority: expropriating the banks, nationalizing the strategic companies, distributing labour, establishing the monopoly of foreign trade and seeking class solidarity of all European workers in a common strife of a workers’ and popular Europe, for the Socialist United States of Europe.
“We are all Greek Workers”
The Greek conflict is the first great test of forces between the financial capital and the European working class; it has been fortunate enough that this first phase took place in Greece, the country with the most combatant working class on the continent and where trade union bureaucracy finds it difficult to control a workers’ movement, the grassroots of which have a strong base of classist and combatant left.
Greek workers are a magnificent example of courage and combativity for the entire European working class. They are the ones who are showing us the way to go and deserve – as the vanguard that they are – the most ample solidarity of the class. We all have to respond to the call of the Greek workers, “People of Europe, arise!” The struggle of the Greek people is ours, everyone’s. Supporting Greece and joining forces against the plans of adjustments is the great task of the workers.
Organize the common resistance on European scale
Different European trade unions have signed a manifesto called “We are all Greek workers” where they assert that: “In order to save their capitalist system, entrepreneur and shareholders got internationally organized; trade unions must act breaking through the frontiers to impose a different system (…) We hope to advance in the instauration of an alternative trade union network in Europe, open to all the forces willing to fight against capitalism and liberalism. Let us develop and coordinate social struggles and build a common European resistance! It is necessary to confront the crisis with a general strike. We want to build that!”.
The European organizations of the International League of Workers – Fourth International (IWL-FI) pledge to support this statement and to take concrete steps in this direction to build a new political and trade union leadership for European workers, absolutely necessary to advance towards the defeat of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of socialism based on proletarian democracy.
