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Red Heretic
19th June 2012, 00:25
Hey RevLeft!

I'm here in Greece with a group of communist reporters. We have an awesome blog, Winter Has Its End (http://winterends.net/)where we are reporting from the struggle here in Greece.

I wanted to create a thread where we could share some of our reports with you and discuss with anyone who wants to know more. We've interviewed communist revolutionaries from a number of organizations and movements, and been in the thick of things in both 2011 and 2012. I thought we'd start with this report from yesterday's electoral stalemate:

Greece's election produce stalemate, for now

by Eric Ribellarsi

“Bringing down the memorandum is a national obligation… From Monday, we continue the struggle. The future is not for the terrorists. A new day of Greece is yet to come.”
–Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left, (SYRIZA)

ATHENS, GREECE—I’m sitting in a communist bar with thoughtful activists of the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), the second largest organization of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), watching the returns of the Greek election. The comrades attentively surf the various stations discussing exit polls and analysis of voting patterns. They periodically curse at the television commentators.


In most elections in the Western world, elections are meaningless affairs – because the choices are set by a political establishment, and few major decisions are up for grabs. They often play a role of co-optation, consuming the resistance and independent politics of the people.
But Greece, even Europe itself, is gripped by a major crisis.


It now appears New Democracy, Greece’s right-wing equivalent to the Republican Party of America, will win these elections, with SYRIZA coming in second. Even so, hundreds of thousands of the Greek people have shifted like a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle.


Hundreds of thousands of Greek people have decided to send a giant “Fuck you!” to the bankers and dominators of Europe’s big powers. Even amidst their obnoxious celebrations of poverty and terror, the Troika trembles with fear.


For this reason, the PASOK party (a government like the Democratic Party of America), is refusing—for the time being—to form a government with New Democracy unless SYRIZA joins that government. This bizarre power move is all about confusing and demobilizing the radical and militant base of people that have regrouped around SYRIZA. It is the same as the months of mass media mounted attacks on SYRIZA, both within Greece and Europe generally.


What now?


The air here in this bar is both angry and thoughtful. People have had a sense that these elections may have opened up a radical break with the previous politics of Greece, and given them a way out of endless austerity imposed by Euro-IMF technocrats. Hundreds of thousands of the people of Greece decided to give themselves a chance to fight and dream. But this election will not be the vehicle for those dreams.


Even if they had won, in a basic way, capitalism would still rule Greece: The economy would still work by profit. The poor would still be poor. Investment and employment would only appear where profits are made. Town squares would still be filled by desperate immigrants, squatting, stuck, far from their homes. The Army would still be conservative. The police still riddled with Nazi “Golden Dawn” activists.


The election of SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left, would not have changed those fundamentals. And it is not clear yet whether SYRIZA has definitively lost in this arena, as there may be yet another round of elections.


But what has changed no matter what is that millions of people have stood up – have dared to take an uncertain path that began in the street fighting of 2008 and the Squares Movement of 2011, and that the faith of millions of people in this system has been decimated.


In that sense, this election (even if it couldn’t and didn’t overturn the fundamental power and rule in Greece) represented a public demonstration of change – change in Greek politics, growth of determination to resist and fight the austerity, change away from conservative mainstream politics, despite the gloating of New Democracy that “the memorandum [of austerity and Troika] will not be withdrawn.”


It now seems apparent that SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left, which contains a minority wing of communist revolutionaries and as a whole, this coalition declared that it would tear up the austerity memorandum agreements between Europe and Greece, and will continue to struggle toward this end with the massive energy this movement has produced.


Around 25% of the voter base of the opportunist-liberal Democratic Left (a split from The Coalition of the Radical Left that chose to defend the austerity agreements) have left that party to support SYRIZA.
So what will SYRIZA continue struggling for?


SYRIZA’s program contains a number of radical transformations of Greek society.


This includes the end of the austerity memorandum agreements between Greece and the Troika (the Troika is the three pillars dominating Greece: the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the European Central Bank).


SYRIZA plans the nationalization of the banks of Greece, and the use of those funds to provide guaranteed wages, housing, and all public services. Its program includes declaring all of Greece’s debt based upon financial speculation to be invalid, and a moratorium that would research and ultimately find that the whole of the debt was illegal.


SYRIZA also fights for the issuing of travel papers to all immigrants seeking the ability to work in the European Union, against treaties and the demands of the E.U., along with the disengagement of Greece from NATO, and the expulsion of all foreign military bases from Greece, along with the refusal of all future cooperation with Israel (including in a possible war against Iran).


These things also mean that the threat of some form of coup d’etat from reactionary political forces is not out of the question should SYRIZA come to power in a future round of elections or a coalition government cannot be formed. SYRIZA and Alexis Tsipras, the leader of SYRIZA, plan for a radical restructuring of the state, including the disarming and dissolution of Greece’s hated riot police.


Within this mix, communists such as those of the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE) are planning to work for a particular red pole inside all of this. They are fighting to radicalize SYRIZA as a whole, while at the same time, if SYRIZA were to be elected, would likely plan to remain outside of key ministerial positions, so that they can lead as communists independent around any future SYRIZA government.


As extraordinary austerity has been unleashed on the Greek society, great crises and struggles, perhaps even a revolutionary crisis, may now emerge from the fall out of these contradictions.


This election was a manifesto for what is soon to come. Millions no longer believe in this system. People have started out on a certain road – and while we don’t know where it leads, we know what it rejects. This struggle will continue.


http://winterends.net/greece-stories/148-greek-elections-produce-a-stalemate-for-now (http://winterends.net/greece-stories/148-greek-elections-produce-a-stalemate-for-now)

Lenina Rosenweg
19th June 2012, 00:42
Thanks. I have seen your work on Kasama. I am glad you are here.

A few questions, if I may.

I was wondering if you know of any connection between Golden Dawn and the Greek police. As I understand 50% of all cops in Greece vote for GD? I have read somewhere that Golden Dawn basically developed as an adjunct of the police, in a way this outfit is the police. Would this be exageration?

As I understand you are a sympathizer with the KOE, a Maoist organisation which works within Syriza. Has Syriza been moving leftwards, especially after "Democratic Left" left? Are revolutionary groups having an influence on Syriza?

Would you say average people have a "socialist consciousness" yet or are they more angry at the overall situation?

Anyway, I appreciate what you are doing.

Red Heretic
19th June 2012, 11:34
Lenins writes:


I was wondering if you know of any connection between Golden Dawn and the Greek police. As I understand 50% of all cops in Greece vote for GD? I have read somewhere that Golden Dawn basically developed as an adjunct of the police, in a way this outfit is the police. Would this be exageration?

Ah, this is partially true. It was not the entire police, but the MAT who voted for Golden Dawn at 50%. The MAT are the riot police of Greece, and the Golden Dawn dominates them.

It is also worth mentioning the MAT is the main place from which the Greek left expects some sort of coup. This is why SYRIZA's program is to disarm, and then dissolve, the MAT, into the traffic police and other unarmed institutions.


As I understand you are a sympathizer with the KOE, a Maoist organisation which works within Syriza. Has Syriza been moving leftwards, especially after "Democratic Left" left? Are revolutionary groups having an influence on Syriza?

SYRIZA has moved rapidly to the left, actually. I will have an article soon that will get into some of the details of that.


Would you say average people have a "socialist consciousness" yet or are they more angry at the overall situation?

Unfortunately, no. They have a sort of revolutionary indignado consciousness... in other words.. they want a revolution, but think they don't like socialism and they don't like capitalism, and they are still trying to figure things out. It is why KOE, for example, doesn't think this particular phase will be the socialist revolution, but will open the door to that revolution.

Red Heretic
19th June 2012, 11:42
Here is an interview I have just done with some young members of the KOE.

They discussed their backgrounds, experiences, the student movement, the orthodox Communist Party in Greece (KKE), revolutionary strategy, and the political choices of revolutionary communists within the Greek crisis.


This interview is part of the Winter Has Its End (http://winterends.net/) project — and there is much more to come.


Can you tell me how some of you became communists? How did you come to join KOE?

Danae: I was involved with the anarchist movement. In 2006, I was a part of the student movement against the privatization of education. It was massive, four hundred departments were occupied. I came to see the need for organization and organized struggle, and I decided I would join KOE.

I had realized that in groups of anarchism, there is informal leadership. They informally lead, and it is not controlled. I realized that we needed leaders who were formal and acknowledged.

Eva: Growing up, my father was in Synaspismos, which made me think I didn’t like communists. When I decided to join KOE, he would always lecture me about Stalin and Mao, and joke

“The Maoists are going to take you up in the mountains!”

I had attended a week long summer camp of KOE where we would speak all day about different political questions. And yes, we would have to wake at 8AM and work hard, but I thought to myself

“I like this. I wish the whole world could be like this.”

I decided to join KOE.


So can you tell me a little bit about your work inside the universities?

Christos: We are a part of “Left Unity,” a student coalition related to SYRIZA inside the student union. In Left Unity, there are all the parties of SYRIZA. It is a coalition for organizing inside the universities. It is organizationally independent from SYRIZA, but politically related.

The way our universities work is that all students are members of the student union, but not all students are members of a student coalition in the union (like Left Unity or one of the coalitions of KKE, New Democracy, PASOK, or ANTARSYA).

[Editors note: KKE is the corrupt parliamentary mainstream party called the Communist Party of Greece -- it inherits the name of the influential post-WW2 communist movement in Greece and it expresses its politics in the language of nostalgia and orthodoxy. New Democracy and PASOK are the mainstream center-right and center-left parties. ANTARSYA (http://kasamaproject.org/2012/05/08/antarsya-another-radical-view-from-greece/) is an a smaller, separate radical left political coalition that believes "anti-capitalist" unity is the necessary platform for this moment].

We in KOE struggle for a common line in Left Unity that fights against the austerity Memorandum, and we work to connect the struggle of the Greek society to the students.

Eva: In 2006, Greece had a successful student movement around public universities after attempts to privatize the public universities. The bourgeois parties said they would “raise the value of our degrees”, but in practice they were lowering the quality of the knowledge and skills developed in the universities.

We had mass assemblies and occupations of the universities, and the police could not enter because of the determined resistance and because we have laws that prevent the police from entering the universities. We successfully stopped these privatizations from happening.

Then, in 2008: there was the death of Aleksandros, who was shot by the police. At that time, KOE made an analysis that this was the result of both a social and an economic crisis. [Alexandros Grigoropoulos (http://kasamaproject.org/2008/12/07/across-greece-streetfighting-youth-confront-police-murder/) was murdered by police, and a great upsurge of rebellion swept over Greek youth.]

After this point, we decided that the students of KOE would fight for the consciousness of the students to focus on the general political situation, and not on specifically the issues in the universities themselves.

If you wanted to be active, you have to fight against the IMF. If you do not generalize the struggle, you will be isolated and crushed.

Danae: The government tried to divide us into little individual struggles and petty interest groups through the reforms they offered. At this time, the KKE and ANTARSYA chose to attack us for not struggling over the direct student issues.

Meanwhile, PASOK and New Democracy get people to join their student union by having skiing trips, parties, and dinners.

Eva: Unlike the other parties, we were active not just around elections, but around the political, social, and economic struggle of the whole society.

Danae: Before the some of the other parties in the SYRIZA would only be active around the elections, but the situation has forced them to change as well.


You mentioned the general political struggle of the whole society. Could you tell me more about that?

John: We believe there is a general radicalization happening in Greek society. There is a general radical movement that is not necessarily left or communist, they are not conscious of many questions, but they are radicalizing.

Danae: Our first priority is to fight for a new, broad political front, much broader than SYRIZA. SYRIZA has to be in it, but this front must unite all of the struggles of the people.

John: Inside this front, we believe that people must agree on some key political questions. The main question is the overthrow of the special regime and that the Troika must leave. And it is not reducible to the elections. Everywhere we must target the European experiment. We have to win over the people who voted for PASOK when PASOK claimed to oppose the memorandum. This is principal focus of communists today. The youth of ANTARSYA and KKE refuse to acknowledge this.

You must fight in the reality of the Greek people.

Danae: We don’t think this movement will itself produce a socialist revolution, but if you fight against the Troika and the special regime it can create a new situation for revolution.

John: These other parties just try to repeat the revolutions of Russia and the revolution in China. We believe that we must root our revolution in the central political problems of the Greek people. We are in a country that is not independent and that does not produce anything. There are no factories in this country.

Consciousness is not yet to the point of communist revolution. But it tends to be very radical.

Eva: In Greece, there is capitalism with special characteristics, the financial occupation and the political dictatorship of the regime over Greece. This is an imperialist-dependent country. They are using this policy to pass memorandums in all of the PIIGS countries.

[editor note: PIIGS means Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain.]

Today we fight for the independence, real democracy, and the reconstruction of Greece.

We believe if we can implement these profound changes, we will be in a new situation for revolution. We don’t believe you can bring about communism by merely saying communism and socialism a million times a day. This is what KKE and ANTARSYA do, they say communism and socialism with no analysis of Greek society.

SYRIZA must be made to fight for these three things, if we can do this, there can be a new break with the status quo. We will have a new situation in society, and can go from there.


Can you tell me a bit more about KKE? In America and some other places, people perceive that the KKE is a revolutionary party. Is there any truth to this?

Danae [laughing]: To everyone in Greece, it is so obvious the KKE is not a revolutionary party. The KKE has a material basis: it has many Greek newspapers and professional bureaucrats.

Vassilis: In each of the major upsurges in Greece, the Communist Party [KKE] refuses to partake.

Since the overthrow of the fascist military junta in 1974, they have been aligned with the mainstream bourgeois parties. And it believes that all of the initiatives of the people must come from itself, from their party, not the actual initiatives of the people.

In the KKE program, there is mention of revolution, but in practice they fight against it. They fight against the people’s struggles. In the elections, they are ambivalent to the struggle against the Memorandum. They refuse to take part, and as a result they keep people from fighting against the Memorandum.

Eva: Their flier for the elections centers around attacking SYRIZA.

Danae: We must understand that they became this by becoming professional bureaucrats whose only purpose is to perpetuate their current condition in the society.

Their whole purpose has nothing to do with revolution, but to merely remain a small group in the left wing of the European parliament.

Eva: They have no faith in the people. And to the people that is obvious.

Danae: They are obsessed with purity. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in the RDSLP [Russian Social Democratic Labor Party] with the Mensheviks, and the Bolsheviks were in the minority at that time.

The Bolsheviks were in the ideological leadership of the RDSLP.
KOE tries to be in the ideological leadership of SYRIZA, even though we are not the majority.

Vissilis: And we intend to do this through our reliance on the people and our connection to the people. The KKE has never broken with the 20th Congress of Communist Party of the Soviet Union which advocated peaceful co-existence between the communists and the capitalists. They imagine a peaceful transition to socialism.
This is why they have never taken part in any conflict or revolt in society. They want to peacefully grow until a future date where they can peacefully take power. This is what their slogan “A Strong KKE” means. We believe you must struggle, fight, and influence the people.

Danae: “Dare to struggle, dare to win” — This slogan is KKE’s biggest enemy.
If SYRIZA were to be destroyed right now, it would decimate the entire communist movement. You have to have the courage to be in it, and fight, and have faith in the people.

Eva: Synaspismos also had this view. But this has changed through the struggles in SYRIZA.

Danae: KKE’s view from the 20th century, of being vaulted into power through the trade unions, is a fantasy. The economic basis of society has changed.


Earlier you had mentioned KOE’s slogan, “Independence, real democracy, and reconstruction.” Could you explain the reconstruction part of that slogan?

Danae: There are three levels to the reconstruction of Greek society. The three levels which this involves are political, economic, and social.
The first is to take the Troika and all of their Greek political allies, and throw them out of Greece.

The second is the economic: We must stop paying all of the debt. At first, we will declare that all of the debt based on speculation is illegal. And then we will declare the whole of the debt to be illegal. Tactically, first we will start with a legal national committee that will research this debt, which can then play a role in the legalities of the international aspect.

Eva: We must restore the production of Greece. We will free Greece from the reliance on globalized imperialist markets. We must produce what we eat. We import everything at this time and this must stop. A country that produces its own food cannot be forced to obey and borrow from the debt of the imperialists.

Danae: The fight against debt also has two levels. One is production, restoring it will free us of these loans. The second is the political struggle to refuse to pay these loans.

Eva: The third aspect of reconstruction is the social aspect.

Let me give an example: From 1968-1974, we had the Greek military dictatorship. After the change of the regime, there were right-wing governments until 1981. There was social turmoil after the fall of the dictatorship. This resulted in the rise of PASOK which had left rhetoric. They tried with every means they had to co-opt every resistance movement of the people.

They represented the rise of a middle class politics in Greece. This created illusions about the politics and the bourgeois democratic system of representation. The general ideology was individualism and clientelism. Brokers would offer jobs to anyone who could get 50 people to vote for them in the parliament. It resulted in the total corruption of Greek society, and people were forced into these kinds of relationships.
Jobs were not the right of people, but gifts from the parliament. And the KKE and the Eurocommunists did not play the role that was necessary. In the 1950’s the KKE had stopped being a revolutionary party. But it did have groups inside of it that played a different role. There were camps inside it, which the Greek Maoists came out of in the 1960’s. The KKE went through hell and torture during the dictatorship, and then in the 1970’s they became legalized and were immediately coopted. They accepted positions from the PASOK, heralded as heroes of resistance by the PASOK, and they said this was a new epoch. They moved to accept reforms and seats from the PASOK.

The communist movement was ripped apart at this time.

It became a movement of the past, not a fighting movement of the people. The values, loyalty, and solidarity of the people to one another were shattered. The orthodox Communists were corrupt, not role-models in the society.

These values were taken apart, and replaced with capitalist individualism.
Today, however, the situation has changed, and these capitalists can’t afford to give these bribes to people.

Danae: KOE believes the people need new values: Solidarity over individualism. Dignity against corruption. Emancipation over dependence.

This is a very hard struggle for us. It means the transformation of the people. It is why we take active part in things like giving healthcare to immigrants who are not legal. And we have been part of movements like “The Potato Movement” where the farmers in the north gave free potatoes to people starving in the south. We were facilitators and activists in this. This is solidarity, not charity.

Eva: If we want the people to fight, we must also give them a life. It is a parallel struggle to the struggle in health. We fight in a social system for health, but we also fight for the doctors themselves to give free healthcare.

Danae: Or with the Resistance Festival, we provide a space where people don’t have to pay much, and they can come and be a part of a new type of culture, new music and art, and be a part of engaging different movements that are happening.

Or we have places like this cooperative where people engage with one another in every way that they can. We have theatre performances, meetings of social movements, coffee and beer, football games, and concerts. Every activity of the culture of the Greek people is welcome here. Our members are a part of football clubs where we bring Palestinian flags to the games against Israel. We have even started football clubs, because we think that there could be a different kind of sports.

[Editorial note: Here, Danae is referring to the café/bar/community space we are sitting in, called @Roof. It is one of many such spaces that KOE has formed throughout the country]

There is a Greek song we like, that says:

“When we fight amongst ourselves it is sport. The world economy is saved.”

Struggling around this also helps us to struggle with our own comrades and raise their political level, to train them through the things they are a part of.

KOE is also trying to enter the struggle of women through changes in actual relations between people. In Greece, the academics and the Trotskyists are obsessed with using the male and female versions of every word whenever they say it. These are the people who are also obsessed with pointless activism.

We say we change the interactions of the people, which language reflects. If we change the relations among the people, we can then construct a new language. The Trotskyists refused to take part in the 2008 revolt because of the major slogan “Cops are ****s.” Instead they focused on making posters denouncing this slogan instead of being with the people.

In my opinion, this is also the problem with people like Lacan, who treat consciousness as words.

Danae: Another major part of reconstruction is stopping the emigration from Greece. The state pays massive amounts of money for the education of people in Greece, and then they are forced to go to countries like Germany, where they produce few doctors and scientists, but hire them away from Greece. It is like a famous paint of Greece as a thousand birds taking flight.

Christine Lagarde claims that this form of oppression is the solution for Greece. That Latvia already had Greece’s problem, and it solved it by 13% of Latvians emigrating away from Latvia.

Eva: In our city, Heraklion, KOE has about 50 representatives inside of the student union, and we are the largest group in the union.

We have used this position to host forums on students emigrating from Greece. Meanwhile, New Democracy hosts forums on how you can emigrate away from Greece.

Their posters feature pictures of people traveling away from Greece with the slogan “Let’s go abroad!”

Reconstruction requires convincing the people to stay in Greece and to reject these corrupt offers. It means people will have to sacrifice personal gain to resolve the problems created by this crisis.

Eva: Meanwhile, all our relatives tell us to us to just go away to other countries. It is very hard to convince people to live on exchange economy and volunteer doctors.


Can you tell me about how you see the role of communists in Greece?

John: The lack of strategy among communists causes harm to the people and their ability to fight the political system. It is very important that in movements like Occupy Wall Street there are profound changes in the consciousness and politics of the people. The role of the communists is to bring consciousness and organization to spontaneous mass movements such as this.

This is a basic point about how communists conceive of their actions. We must be in the spontaneous actions of the people, and not only be with ourselves or even in the things that only we believe. The way we will change things in society is acting with the masses, not shouting down at them with the things we personally believe. Things don’t work the way KKE believes.

Eva: I would like to share an example. In 2010, when the IMF came to Greece, many struggles were organized, without real results. However, one year ago, after all these struggles, the people went to the squares, our “Occupy movement.” KKE and ANTARSYA would always say before “you must be active.” But when there was a major upsurge of the people, they refused to join.

Yet for all of their constant activism, they produce no actual new movement or consciousness or changes in society. But the Squares movement brought profound changes in society.

We believe communists should be in the squares, and to raise the political consciousness of the people above their spontaneous basic needs.

Danae: I’ll give another example of KKE in the 1940’s. In the 1940’s, there was the most major political struggle of the history of Greece. The KKE played a major role at this time. They took the basic needs of food and the fight for freedom, and they lent organization and a program to these basic needs. If today a communist says that we must fight for communism and socialism and doesn’t have anything to say about the special regime of Greece, it is like saying people will fight without anything to eat. Our principal political struggle must be against the Troika.

There’s a Greek theorist, Dimitris Glinos, of the 1940’s who said that if we wait for the circumstances that communists want, it is like cooperation with the enemy.

Danae: In 1995, we had a slogan around our decision to form a communist organization. It was: “Transform the society and transform ourselves.”

Tamerlane
19th June 2012, 15:54
Thanks for the interview, Red Heretic.

But it sure seems like those interviewed like to fixate on the failings of the KKE, the Trots, how they didn't/don't participate in the popular upsurges and such... And all the while very little(or - very little details) about what these guys are actually doing.
I would love to hear more about that "Potato Movement". How many people have they involved in it? How easily did they convince the farmers in the north to help their hungry countrymen in the south? What about the urban gardens that I hear whispers of, that provide some people with a good deal of food? Medical aid to immigrants, good, how many immigrants have been treated? What about the recent racist attacks? Are they doing anything to organise self-defence groups of immigrants, or antifa?

One thing I've noticed is that Greeks get very passionate about certain obscure strands of dogma or ideology, and this hampers their ability to work together and unite against their common enemy. People who participated in 100 Days to Palestine (a trip by bicycle throughout Europe to Palestine) told me about how they stayed in a squat in Thessaloniki, its inhabitants/members had a ferocious rivalry with another anarchist group/squat that they deemed too soft, as a result each squat had attacked the other several times in the past year. Another story (anecdotal of course, but from someone who had participated in several large demonstrations) concerned intense rivalries between various factions of black blocs, that sometimes got so bad that the riot cops could just stand back and laugh as one group attacked another.

That's what interests me the most: Details of practical actions and what is being done to heal the (seemingly very deep) divisions in the leftist movement in Greece.

But keep up the good work.
Cheers!

Red Heretic
21st June 2012, 00:20
Hi Tamerlane, thanks for the feedback. We've tried to have reports about some of those things, actually, in some of our previous reports (including last year). We're headed down to Crete right now for a festival hosted by KOE, where they bring together some of the most important movements and revolutionary organizations for debate, art, and music.

But let me just say: the Greek movement is very developed, and there is a broad popular radicalism that is developing at the same time. These mass movements of the people have been attacked constantly by the stodgy old Greek left, and it is dividing everything (including as you noted, the anarchists!). I think this comes from comrades who have played tremendous roles in the movements of Greece (and who, for example, were the only communist organization to be part of the Squares Movement), and if you want a bit more background into them I might suggest this pamphlet:

Greece's Communist Organization: Learning to Swim in Stormy Weather (http://kasamaproject.org/2011/07/31/greece%e2%80%99s-communist-organization-learning-to-swim-in-stormy-weather/)

BTW, ever read Ten Days That Shook the World? It gives an idea of how intense line struggle often has become in our movement when real movements are positioning for a possible revolution.

TheGodlessUtopian
21st June 2012, 00:23
Thread moved :)

Red Heretic
21st June 2012, 00:27
but but but no one goes to the ongoing struggle forum!

:ohmy:

Workers-Control-Over-Prod
21st June 2012, 00:29
...It is why KOE, for example, doesn't think this particular phase will be the socialist revolution, but will open the door to that revolution.

WOW, this is exactly my opinion of what is happening in Europe now. This phase of crisis is not exactly radicalising Europeans, but making them think and that means leftist organisations will resonate with people's feelings and they can gain class consciousness once these organisations gain influence and money to propagate leftist ideas.

TheGodlessUtopian
21st June 2012, 00:29
but but but no one goes to the ongoing struggle forum!

:ohmy:

I'm a purist but it wasn't as if it was getting much exposure in Politics anyway :p

I will sticky it for a time until your reporting there is done. Fair trade, eh?

Delenda Carthago
21st June 2012, 07:04
Red Heretic, what is your opinion on this one?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i2KJmcKL9co/T7DbV7SQ4CI/AAAAAAABXJk/RP19Wi1_mXU/s1600/1.jpg

The Douche
21st June 2012, 16:17
Red Heretic, what is your opinion on this one?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i2KJmcKL9co/T7DbV7SQ4CI/AAAAAAABXJk/RP19Wi1_mXU/s1600/1.jpg

Can you explain the significance of this?

Zukunftsmusik
21st June 2012, 16:24
Can you explain the significance of this?

I think what Delenda Carthago wants Red Heretic's opinion on, is the fact that the flag with a hammer and sickle and the KOE initials is manipulated in the picture to the right (as you can see, it's made completely red). The newspaper is the party paper of Synaspismos, also a part of SYRIZA

The Douche
21st June 2012, 16:40
I think what Delenda Carthago wants Red Heretic's opinion on, is the fact that the flag with a hammer and sickle and the KOE initials is manipulated in the picture to the right (as you can see, it's made completely red). The newspaper is the party paper of Synaspismos, also a part of SYRIZA

Ah, now that you say that, I'm sure thats what it is, I remember that issue being discussed.


Attention to detail.;)