Greek unions to strike for pensions

[blake 3:17]

Greek workers march to parliament to protest pension cuts
15 hours ago

Greek workers marched through the streets of Athens on Saturday to protest against the leftist-led government's planned pension reform, which the country's international creditors have demanded as part of its third bailout.

About 3,000 public and private sector workers, pensioners and students rallied outside parliament. They held banners reading "You cannot bargain with social security" and chanted "Your hands off our pensions!"

"We will fight to protect our rights and force the government to withdraw this monstrous plan that it calls a reform," the secretary-general of the private sector union GSEE, Nikos Kioutsoukis, told Reuters.

Turnout in recent protests has been weak, mainly due to austerity fatigue and resignation after five years of belt-tightening and two bailouts that have shut businesses and pushed up unemployment but have not pulled Greece out of crisis.

On Feb. 4, labour unions will stage a 24-hour general strike against the planned reform, the third such walkout in three months. Turnout will indicate the level of resistance the government faces as it pushes through unpopular measures.

This week lawyers staged one of their biggest rallies in recent years. They have threatened to step up labour action and farmers are also preparing pension protests.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was first elected a year ago promising to end austerity. After tough negotiations, he signed up to a third bailout in July and was re-elected in September on a mandate to implement it while protecting the vulnerable.

Greece's first bailout review is expected to officially begin next week. The lenders currently see a fiscal gap of well over 1.5 percent of GDP for 2016, according to sources close to the talks, and expect tough talks on pension reform.

"We will defend what is non-negotiable for us," Labour Minister George Katrougalos told Greek Skai TV, referring to pension cuts. Economy Minister George Stathakis told the Real News newspaper he expected a compromise to be reached.

http://www.dailysabah.com/europe/2016/01/16/greek-workers-march-to-parliament-to-protest-pension-cuts

[PikSmeet]

Well, that is one in the eye for those who support anti-austerity left-wing parties. A powerful warning that the class struggle carries on regardless of whom is in power.

[reviscom1]

The fiscal crisis afflicting all European governments at the moment will very soon lead to the final revolution.

Contrary to what anti-austerity parties maintain, these governments genuinely have run out of money. Contrary to what pro-austerity parties claim the cause is not "overspending". The cause is that under Capitalism, too much of the available wealth is concentrated in too few hands, so that governments no longer have enough to meet their obligations.

There is only one viable solution - forcible requisition of excess wealth.

Governments of all stripes here are currently doing everything they can to avoid thinking about this very obvious fact. As can be seen from the article above, they are not finding it easy.

[PikSmeet]

I'm sorry reviscom but your last part is absolute rubbish. All you will be doing is moving money around, you will not actually increase the amount of money in the economy. Plus, you cannot spend your way out of a depression, Britain learnt that the hard way, by 1976 after 30 years of taxing and spending, inflation stood at 16% and unemployment was over 1 1/2 million...and both showed no sign of falling.
The answer is to replace capitalism with socialism.

[reviscom1]

I'm sorry reviscom but your last part is absolute rubbish. All you will be doing is moving money around, you will not actually increase the amount of money in the economy. Plus, you cannot spend your way out of a depression, Britain learnt that the hard way, by 1976 after 30 years of taxing and spending, inflation stood at 16% and unemployment was over 1 1/2 million...and both showed no sign of falling.
The answer is to replace capitalism with socialism.

Indeed, but the trigger by which that will happen is a revolution caused by the collapse of public services/pensions etc.

I am not talking about a recession, I am talking about a crisis in government finances.

[ckaihatsu]

One way of thinking of it is what happens when your average everyday 'economic nationalist' can no longer truthfully say to themselves that their nationalistic 'faith' is supportable -- ? If the economy isn't working for political *nationalists* then what's the point -- ?

As revolutionaries we already *know* that the bourgeois state is unsustainable, but once people begin to *experience* that reality for themselves the whole set of social relations called 'a nation' will no longer be relevant or socially supportable.

[Decolonize The Left]

I believe the term for what is being discussed here is "relative deprivation." This said, I'm not sure that Greece, or any nation-state really, is anywhere close to the conditions necessary for a revolution or even "forcible requisition of excess wealth." Note that the workers are marching to keep their pensions, i.e. state-executed management of capital.

[PikSmeet]

It's one in the eye for those Stalinists at the Morning Star, who supported this lot until they realised that you cannot end austerity by changing government! Yet still try to convince the working class that even though it failed in Greece (and everywhere else) we can still end austerity in the UK by voting for Jeremy Corbyn!

[reviscom1]

I believe the term for what is being discussed here is "relative deprivation." This said, I'm not sure that Greece, or any nation-state really, is anywhere close to the conditions necessary for a revolution or even "forcible requisition of excess wealth." .

I would submit that it is.

The Greek government is in an impossible bind (impossible under Capitalism, anyway). No money to pay for the services its people have come to expect, no money to fulfil its functions, no credit, and stringent bailout/credit terms from its capitalist creditors (which its people just will not accept - see above). The creditors do not realise that the Greek people just will not accept the retrenchments being demanded.

The Greek people do not realise that the creditors will not (and cannot under capitalist assumptions) accept any other terms.

The elephant in the room is that the only solution to this impasse is requisition of wealth from the wealthy, and then the substitution of socialism for capitalism, both of which will require a revolution.

Nor are these dynamics exclusive to Greece. Exactly the same parameters operate throughout Western Europe, including the UK. True, Greece has been one of the most profligate and inefficient managers of Social Democracy but that only affects the amount of time to destination, not the destination itself.

If I were you, folks, I'd start booking your sealed train tickets now ;)

[PikSmeet]

Yet under the austerity measures imposed on Greece they would not be able to take vast amounts of wealth from the wealthy to give to those that need it. Even if you did that all you would be doing is taking money from one pocket and putting it in another, so the amount of wealth in Greece would still be the same.
But, as soon as the wealthy got wind of this all their capital would disappear...out of Greece and probably they would follow it. End result? Greece would be worse off, but we, as socialists know, that you cannot spend your way out of depression. The New deal never worked and after in 1976, after 30 years of tax and spend in the UK, inflation was 16% and unemployment was 1.5 million. Neither showed any sign of falling.

[Decolonize The Left]

I would submit that it is.

The Greek government is in an impossible bind (impossible under Capitalism, anyway). No money to pay for the services its people have come to expect, no money to fulfil its functions, no credit, and stringent bailout/credit terms from its capitalist creditors (which its people just will not accept - see above). The creditors do not realise that the Greek people just will not accept the retrenchments being demanded.

The Greek people do not realise that the creditors will not (and cannot under capitalist assumptions) accept any other terms.

The elephant in the room is that the only solution to this impasse is requisition of wealth from the wealthy, and then the substitution of socialism for capitalism, both of which will require a revolution.

Nor are these dynamics exclusive to Greece. Exactly the same parameters operate throughout Western Europe, including the UK. True, Greece has been one of the most profligate and inefficient managers of Social Democracy but that only affects the amount of time to destination, not the destination itself.

If I were you, folks, I'd start booking your sealed train tickets now ;)

If the Greek economy fully collapses, it will create massive chaos and civil unrest. This will be a political vacuum that each party will attempt to fill. Neighboring countries will tighten borders and attempt to influence the sway of the political struggle. You just assume the left will prevail and come out on top--and you further assume that, should this happen, they would be able to maintain power. Simply put, I think there are too many large assumptions on your part.

In all likelihood, if the situation is as drastic as you frame it to be, the conditions of foreign credit will be modified enough to prop up the economy and maintain conditions sympathetic to foreign capital.

[reviscom1]

If the Greek economy fully collapses, it will create massive chaos and civil unrest. This will be a political vacuum that each party will attempt to fill. Neighboring countries will tighten borders and attempt to influence the sway of the political struggle. You just assume the left will prevail and come out on top--and you further assume that, should this happen, they would be able to maintain power. Simply put, I think there are too many large assumptions on your part.

.

The left will fill the vacuum because the situation calls for a redistribution of wealth followed by a change to the economic system.

In all likelihood, if the situation is as drastic as you frame it to be, the conditions of foreign credit will be modified enough to prop up the economy and maintain conditions sympathetic to foreign capital

Never underestimate the short-sightedness of a late period ruling class.

[reviscom1]

Yet under the austerity measures imposed on Greece they would not be able to take vast amounts of wealth from the wealthy to give to those that need it. Even if you did that all you would be doing is taking money from one pocket and putting it in another, so the amount of wealth in Greece would still be the same.
But, as soon as the wealthy got wind of this all their capital would disappear...out of Greece and probably they would follow it. End result? Greece would be worse off, but we, as socialists know, that you cannot spend your way out of depression. The New deal never worked and after in 1976, after 30 years of tax and spend in the UK, inflation was 16% and unemployment was 1.5 million. Neither showed any sign of falling.

Again I am talking about a fiscal crisis (the government running out of money) not a depression.

It is not a case of moving money around.

It is the fact that money needs to be taken from the wealthy or the government will not be able to fulfil its functions. That is not the be all and end all of the revolution but that is what will cause it.

[ckaihatsu]

We should note that, counterintuitively, conditions of abundant production ('overproduction') make for a *bad* capitalist economy, because then prices *fall*, leading to a glut in the money supply, and low (economic) demand for output or the requisite labor for further production.

I'd go so far as to say that these conditions were reached at the beginning of the twentieth century, if not earlier, and that they remain the 'shadow' baseline ('default', or line of regression) for the mechanism that capitalist economics is, as we're also happening to see these days as well.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States#Free_Banki ng_Era_to_the_Great_Depression




US recessions, Free Banking Era to the Great Depression

Name Dates[nb 2] Duration Time since previous recession Business activity [nb 3] Trade & industrial activity[nb 3]
Characteristics

[...]

Recession of 1913–1914 Jan 1913 – Dec 1914 1 year 11 months 1 year −25.9% −19.8%

Productions and real income declined during this period and were not offset until the start of World War I increased demand.[22] Incidentally, the Federal Reserve Act was signed during this recession, creating the Federal Reserve System, the culmination of a sequence of events following the Panic of 1907.[24]


Post-World War I recession Aug 1918 – March 1919 7 months 3 years 8 months −24.5% −14.1%

Severe hyperinflation in Europe took place over production in North America. This was a brief but very sharp recession and was caused by the end of wartime production, along with an influx of labor from returning troops. This, in turn, caused high unemployment.[25]


Depression of 1920–21 Jan 1920 – July 1921 1 year 6 months 10 months −38.1% −32.7%

The 1921 recession began a mere 10 months after the post-World War I recession, as the economy continued working through the shift to a peacetime economy. The recession was short, but extremely painful. The year 1920 was the single most deflationary year in American history; production, however, did not fall as much as might be expected from the deflation. GNP may have declined between 2.5 and 7 percent, even as wholesale prices declined by 36.8%.[26] The economy had a strong recovery following the recession.[27]


1923–24 recession May 1923 – June 1924 1 year 2 months 2 years −25.4% −22.7%

From the depression of 1920–21 until the Great Depression, an era dubbed the Roaring Twenties, the economy was generally expanding. Industrial production declined in 1923–24, but on the whole this was a mild recession.[22]


1926–27 recession Oct 1926 – Nov 1927 1 year 1 month 2 years 3 months −12.2% −10.0%

This was an unusual and mild recession, thought to be caused largely because Henry Ford closed production in his factories for six months to switch from production of the Model T to the Model A. Charles P. Kindleberger says the period from 1925 to the start of the Great Depression is best thought of as a boom, and this minor recession just proof that the boom "was not general, uninterrupted or extensive".[28]

[PikSmeet]

Again I am talking about a fiscal crisis (the government running out of money) not a depression.

It is not a case of moving money around.

- Yes but as far as the economy is concerned that is all you will be doing, the amount of money in the economy will not change, the same amount will be spent.

It is the fact that money needs to be taken from the wealthy or the government will not be able to fulfil its functions. That is not the be all and end all of the revolution but that is what will cause it.

- Yet if you take more money from the wealthy then they will have less to spend in the economy and that will lead to an increase in unemployment.

[Decolonize The Left]

The left will fill the vacuum because the situation calls for a redistribution of wealth followed by a change to the economic system.

Hopefully you see how this is simple speculation; one could easily counter-argue that the right will fill the vacuum with anti-refugee propaganda and nationalist rhetoric.


Never underestimate the short-sightedness of a late period ruling class.

Short-sighted they may be, but operating in their own interest they always are. It is vastly more short-sighted to think that the ruling class will simply abandon the mechanisms of capital because they didn't 'see it coming,' "it" being civil unrest. They are well aware of the situation and will seek to capitalize upon it. It is foolish to discount the means and will of the enemy.

[tarihselmaddeci]

That was an old news but it may be useful to show how we can show a solidarity.

wftucentral.org/turkey-nakliyat-is-organized-a-solidarity-demonstration-in-front-of-the-greek-consulate

[Philosophos]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw2yVbbRMiE

here's a link from a greek chanel that shows stuff about the strike

another link http://www.zougla.gr/live

I haven't really found a link for english coverage on this

[PikSmeet]

So we now that Syriza (or any political party) cannot end austerity, so who do they vote for now?

[Philosophos]

So we now that Syriza (or any political party) cannot end austerity, so who do they vote for now?

Well as SYRIZA had the slogan "first time left", people have made the assumption that SYRIZA is actually left (and communist by a big number), so I believe that people will once again go to the right New Democracy, mostly working with some other parties. But you can't really be sure because the polls show different stuff (largely affected by the media) and people are not sure about anyone anymore.

But since Greece is a rather concervative country, I strongly believe that New Democracy will rise up again and Golden Dawn the fascists will grow even bigger, unfortunately

[PikSmeet]

Well as SYRIZA had the slogan "first time left", people have made the assumption that SYRIZA is actually left (and communist by a big number), so I believe that people will once again go to the right New Democracy, mostly working with some other parties. But you can't really be sure because the polls show different stuff (largely affected by the media) and people are not sure about anyone anymore.

But since Greece is a rather concervative country, I strongly believe that New Democracy will rise up again and Golden Dawn the fascists will grow even bigger, unfortunately

Well, in the UK we have a "communist newspaper" called the Morning Star
That will say “told you so” about Syriza and say they should vote KKE, whilst telling us to vote for Jeremy Corbyn at home.
Well if the Greeks turn to the hard right they will also get a shock as they won’t be able to solve the problems of austerity.
How many changes of government will there need to be before the Greek electorate realise that?
munist newspaper" called the Morning Star.

[Philosophos]

Well, in the UK we have a "communist newspaper" called the Morning Star
That will say “told you so” about Syriza and say they should vote KKE, whilst telling us to vote for Jeremy Corbyn at home.
Well if the Greeks turn to the hard right they will also get a shock as they won’t be able to solve the problems of austerity.
How many changes of government will there need to be before the Greek electorate realise that?
munist newspaper" called the Morning Star.

I have explained lots of times what I see through my conversations with people and things haven't really changed that much. People have been voting for the same two political parties PASOK the socialdemocrats and New Democracy the right wings. There were some exceptions from here and there but still it was always one of these parties that was in the government. All that changed when SYRIZA came, but it was practically a desperession move. We have nothing to lose, we are alradey fucked, they can't do any worse etc. But as we all know now, SYRIZA was just another PASOK, since what they were saying was more of a socialdemocratic, rather than radical left (they also absorbed lots of PASOK people too).

Anyway the situation in Greece, is still bullshit for tons of reasons.
-The media makes on of the worst wars against greek people as a whole and the missinformation and propaganda is off the charts.
-People are still naive thinking that it's not the systems fault for all these stuff, but it's the fault of the, and I quote, "traitors fucking politicians"
-They still have the same ideology about the country, state, government and the rest, as they had since the begining of the modern greek state (1831).
We still try to cover up for "our own people", we vote according to family/personal interest (this guy said that he will hire my daughter to that place). Also it's not only "ethically" bad, it's also impractical, cause most people get huge wages and they don't work at all. WE STILL THINK THIS IS OK. Lot's of people tend to say now big words like "I will never do that" but when they get the chance, they all do.
-The whole voting system is based on the previous principles.
-The left parties, keep on insisting with the same old, wooden tongue and don't try to approach people in the best way possible. They tend to care more about micro-political stuff and so on ( of course they are not doing everything wrong, but there are better ways to get more supporters). An example of this is when the administration of a university decided to make the baths work only 4 days per week, for saving up money. Now the people who live in there were furious so the major students parties (yes we have these) gathered so they could find a solution. The New Democracy students party was the classical right wing let's do this shit, vote for us we are going to give you free stuff, SYRIZA's youth said a couple of good things about how to resolve this and so on, while KNE, the youth of KKE started saying stuff like "if we had communism, this would never happen, Marx was right" etc. Now don't get me wrong, but when you try to convince people that you are right, you also have to give a couple of suggestions, prove that you can find solutions. I know that they believe that this system is bound to fail BUT STILL SAY SOMETHING FOR NOW, otherwise lots of people are going to lose their right to take a bath whenever they fucking want, for "saving up money".

This whole political philosophy is mirrored everywhere in Greece, with a huge pessimistic view of political issues, since the 2000's where there was the market meldown (I don't know how exactly to say it, just search for Simitis).

How many government changes should there be, for the UK too? You still have a queen for crying out loud.

If I write all the social reasons behind these political behaviors of greeks, I should also probably write a book, become a petite-bourgeoisie move to Paris and never have to think about these stuff again.

[blake 3:17]

Greek police turn to teargas as tempers flare over pensions

Scuffles broke out and police used teargas during a mass rally in Athens on Thursday as Greeks railed against government pension reforms needed to meet demands of international creditors.

Demanding an end to austerity, about 50,000 Greeks marched peacefully on parliament in central Athens chanting for the government to ditch the proposals, which many see as a betrayal of the leftist values of the main governing party, Syriza.

Public health workers carried black balloons, and a large banner depicting a hunched-over nurse with a walking stick. "This is retirement at 67," it said, a reference to the later pension age that will come from the reforms.

Breaking away from the main march, black clad youths hurled stones and petrol bombs at police, who responded with rounds of teargas and stun grenades. Some of them smashed bus stops and set a car alight after the march, during a cat-and-mouse game between police and protesters in the back streets of central Athens.

The angry backlash is piling pressure on leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, first elected just over a year ago. With just a three-seat majority in parliament, he is stuck between either pushing the reforms through to appease international creditors, or attracting the wrath of thousands of Greeks.

"They should be strung up here, in Syntagma Square," said pensioner Nikos Ghinis as he walked along with thousands of others in central Athens. "I'm getting 740 euros ($826.21) a month for 40 years of work ... I'm (demonstrating) here for my children and grandchildren," he told Reuters.

It was the second nationwide walkout since Tsipras took power in January 2015 on a pledge to end years of austerity, only to cave in under the threat of expulsion from the euro zone and sign up to new belt-tightening reforms under an EU-IMF bailout package worth up to 86 billion euros.

"They are raiding our souls not just our pockets," said 70-year old George Stathopoulos. "They betrayed us."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-greece-strike-idUSKCN0VD0O0

[PikSmeet]

They sure did betray them, but in their defence "they" had their hands tied by the system, it is to blame and not politicians. Changing government won't end austerity.