Sectarianism in Greece

[flouPOWER]

Hey guys. I live in Greece and I've noticed there is a lot of sectarianism.To Further explain: there is Revolutionary CPG (Communist Party of Greece), CPG, M-L CPG, CPG M-L, Movement for CPG and it goes on.
I'm a trotskyist and a member of SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left) and I believe everybody should be united (regardless of tendecy) under a platform party. SYRIZA is known to unite people of different tendecies of Marxism.
KKE (CPG) is very very dogmatic and manifests itself as Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist, anti-revisionist, anti-reformist (Κνίτες μην μου κάνετε επίθεση :P).
Should everybody unite their powers for socialism?? What is your opinion?

[PhoenixAsh]

KKE isn't very popular on this forum...except with a few people who are sympathisers/members.

I don't think a lot of people would want to work in a coalition with KKE or think working with them is possible. On the other hand...not a lot of members would think SYRIZA revolutionary. Perhaps as a member of SYRIZA you could enlighten us on that point?

[jullia]

Always better to unite the strengh. Especially in a country like Greece where there are some political murder.

[BIXX]

I'm opposed to left unity. Period.

[Tim Cornelis]

SYRIZA is also known to unite people of different social classes.

http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.article&id=1980
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014.../gree-j04.html

You should see the amount of far-left parties in 1970s Portugal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portug...election,_1976

[motion denied]

Left unity is only possible under a common program reached through everyday struggles. Unity in abstracto for the sake of unity is useless.

[jullia]

It's more useless to divide leftist people. Especially when nazi kill people on the street and when the country is in the middle of crisis who will probably have long term consequences.

[Zukunftsmusik]

What's idiotic is this idea that "sectarianism" (sometimes used properly, mostly not) is just some arbitrary product of fate that you could sweep away by pure will and - voilá!: strong working class! No left unity will cure Greece's crisis or rid them of neo-nazi gangs - only collective class activity can. As per usual, Pannekoek is spot on:

With the intensification of the workers' struggle, the might of the enemy also increases and besets the workers with renewed doubts and fears as to which road is best. And every doubt brings on splits, contradictions, and fractional battles within the labor movement. It is futile to bewail these conflicts and splits as harmful in dividing and weakening the working class. The working class is not weak because it is split up—it is split up because it is weak. Because the enemy is powerful and the old methods of warfare prove unavailing, the working class must seek new methods. Its task will not become clear as the result of enlightenment from above; it must discover its tasks through hard work, through thought and conflict of opinions. It must find its own way; therefore, the internal struggle. It must relinquish old ideas and illusions and adopt new ones, and because this is difficult, therefore the magnitude and severity of the splits.

Nor can we delude ourselves into believing that this period of party and ideological strife is only temporary and will make way to renewed harmony. True, in the course of the class struggle there are occasions when all forces unite in a great achievable objective and the revolution is carried on with the might of a united working class. But after that, as after every victory, come differences on the question: what next? And even if the working class is victorious, it is always confronted by the most difficult task of subduing the enemy further, of reorganizing production, creating new order. It is impossible that all workers, all strata and groups, with their often still diverse interests should, at this stage, agree on all matters and be ready for united and decisive further action. They will find the true course only after the sharpest controversies and conflicts and only thus achieve clarity.

If, in this situation, persons with the same fundamental conceptions unite for the discussion of practical steps and seek clarification through discussions and propagandize their conclusions, such groups might be called parties, but they would be parties in an entirely different sense from those of today. Action, the actual class struggle, is the task of the working masses themselves, in their entirety, in their real groupings as factory and millhands, or other productive groups, because history and economy have placed them in the position where they must and can fight the working class struggle. It would be insane if the supporters of one party were to go on strike while those of another continue to work. But both tendencies will defend their positions on strike or no strike in the factory meetings, thus affording an opportunity to arrive at a well founded decision. The struggle is so great, the enemy so powerful that only the masses as a whole can achieve a victory—the result of the material and moral power of action, unity and enthusiasm, but also the result of the mental force of thought, of clarity. In this lies the great importance of such parties or groups based on opinions: that they bring clarity in their conflicts, discussions and propaganda. They are the organs of the self-enlightenment of the working class by means of which the workers find their way to freedom

[flouPOWER]

. On the other hand...not a lot of members would think SYRIZA revolutionary. Perhaps as a member of SYRIZA you could enlighten us on that point?[/QUOTE]

Syriza is revolutionary. Socially and Economically. It will make Greece a secular and a socialist state. Most members here tend to believe that SYRIZA is reformist,but this is not the point.
Making the banks public, higher taxes for rich people, free electricity and water and it goes on... isn't that radical? Don't listen to members of KKE youth which criticise SYRIZA. Stupid Stalinists lol :P

[flouPOWER]

You're not even leftist. Please don't comment. You're not an anarchist, not a marxist.. You're just an anticapitalist. Anarcho-fascists are anticapitalist too you know. I dont appreciate your opinion (with all the respect ) (To dirty doxxer)

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Syriza is revolutionary. Socially and Economically. It will make Greece a secular and a socialist state. Most members here tend to believe that SYRIZA is reformist,but this is not the point.
Making the banks public, higher taxes for rich people, free electricity and water and it goes on... isn't that radical?

Well, no.

All of these things were done by bourgeois government of e.g. Roosevelt, Mitterrand and so on. And they were done, explicitly, to save the bourgeoisie from their own stupidity. What SYRIZA proposes is pretty much the same.

And if we don't think that what SYRIZA is doing has anything to do with socialism (to clarify the "we" thing a bit, I sympathise with, and have indeed talked to, members of the Trotskyist Group of Greece), why should we unite with them? Particularly since SYRIZA is a permanent popular front with bourgeois elements, so even critical electoral support for the purpose of unmasking the SYRIZA leadership is out of the question.

[Tim Cornelis]

You're not even leftist. Please don't comment. You're not an anarchist, not a marxist.. You're just an anticapitalist. Anarcho-fascists are anticapitalist too you know. I dont appreciate your opinion (with all the respect )

I don't know against who this was directed, but it's ironically sectarian. A lot of what you say contradicts Marxism, so are you a Marxist?

Syriza is revolutionary. Socially and Economically. It will make Greece a secular and a socialist state. Most members here tend to believe that SYRIZA is reformist,but this is not the point.
Making the banks public, higher taxes for rich people, free electricity and water and it goes on... isn't that radical? Don't listen to members of KKE youth which criticise SYRIZA. Stupid Stalinists lol :P

A social revolution in the Marxist sense is characterised by the supersession of the social relations of production, from which, combined with some other features, comprises the economic base on which the superstructure arises. Social revolutions happen when the development of the material productive forces come into conflict with the current social relations of production. In capitalism, production has a social character but it is executed privately, meaning the social character of labour has to be expressed through commodity exchange. A socialist revolution would entail the replacement of wage-labour by associated labour, after which commodity production disappears entirely. SYRIZA doesn't advocate this at all. How then can there be a 'socialist' or even a 'workers' state' in the Marxist sense? Base precedes superstructure, as per Marxism, not vice versa. In your scheme, a socialist state arises out of the superstructure somehow without even challenging the economic structure or relations of production. This is in direct opposition to how Marxism claims society works -- an inversion of the materialist method (this is of course a problem with Leninists in general, passed on from political generation to generation).

So no, SYRIZA is not revolutionary, barely radical, and not socialist.

[Per Levy]

someone should write a polemic called "left unity - an infantile disorder".

Syriza is revolutionary. Socially and Economically. It will make Greece a secular and a socialist state. Most members here tend to believe that SYRIZA is reformist,but this is not the point.
Making the banks public, higher taxes for rich people, free electricity and water and it goes on... isn't that radical?

that isnt radical that is just plain old reformism, any true social democrat would be pleased.

[BIXX]

You're not even leftist. Please don't comment. You're not an anarchist, not a marxist.. You're just an anticapitalist. Anarcho-fascists are anticapitalist too you know. I dont appreciate your opinion (with all the respect )

Lol there are no anarcho-fascists.

I think this was directed at me seeing as I'm not a socialist or an anarchist or any of that. I suspect though that you really don't know much about what I have to say and are just judging it based off of the words that have been used to describe me.

[Црвена]

Isn't the fact that SYRIZA is participating in a bourgeois election enough to rob it of any credentials as a revolutionary party it may have had? By running for election SYRIZA are failing to adhere to a pretty simple and fundamental principle of radical socialism: the notion that it is impossible to abolish capitalism by taking control of a state that is specially designed to protect the interests of the capitalist class. That is, if they even want to abolish capitalism at all. Most of their policies seem social democratic: raising the minimum wage, providing more welfare and creating public sector jobs are all just going to harm a capitalist economy and won't actually benefit workers at all in the long term.

[Tim Cornelis]

No participation in elections is not enough to rob it of any credentials as a revolutionary party. The KKE participates in elections, but harbours no illusions of taking over the power over the state by such means. It should be criticised for the notion of commodity-monetary exchange in the first phase of communism and central planning instead.

[Црвена]

No participation in elections is not enough to rob it of any credentials as a revolutionary party. The KKE participates in elections, but harbours no illusions of taking over the power over the state by such means. It should be criticised for the notion of commodity-monetary exchange in the first phase of communism and central planning instead.

Why do they participate in elections then?

[Tim Cornelis]

Platform and propaganda, organising around the immediate interests/demands of the working class and then voting for those demands.

[FSL]

No participation in elections is not enough to rob it of any credentials as a revolutionary party. The KKE participates in elections, but harbours no illusions of taking over the power over the state by such means. It should be criticised for the notion of commodity-monetary exchange in the first phase of communism and central planning instead.

The only way to immediately stop commodity production is to socialize everything, including one person-operated businesses which is nothing but adventurism. Even if you did that you'd just push all these people to join the capitalists or at the very least make them disgruntled workers.
I can't see how there won't be a need for a non-socialist sector in the economy immediately following a revolution. I'd say the point here is to not have it expand and include larger bussinesses employing the labor of others.

And as long as a non-socialist sector exists there will be some production of goods as commodities.

Syriza is revolutionary. Socially and Economically. It will make Greece a secular and a socialist state. Most members here tend to believe that SYRIZA is reformist,but this is not the point.
Making the banks public, higher taxes for rich people, free electricity and water and it goes on... isn't that radical? Don't listen to members of KKE youth which criticise SYRIZA. Stupid Stalinists lol :P

Banks have been nationalized in many countries over the last few years as a relief measure and the same thing has happened in Greece.
What are these taxes for rich people? No number has been mentioned as far as I know. Maybe you have a better idea? Still, these higher taxes are probably at odds with syriza's intention of attracting more investments than the new democracy government could.

And lastly Syriza proposes a 16 euros per month subsidy to 300,000 people to cover some of their electricity's cost. Not free electricity and free water.
Which is probably worse than what the current government is doing, giving a 20% reduction in the bills of 600,000 people.

This is the sort of debate we can expect in capitalism. Who will be kind enough to give more spare change to all the working people who can barely support their families.

[Tim Cornelis]

The only way to immediately stop commodity production is to socialize everything, including one person-operated businesses which is nothing but adventurism. Even if you did that you'd just push all these people to join the capitalists or at the very least make them disgruntled workers.
I can't see how there won't be a need for a non-socialist sector in the economy immediately following a revolution. I'd say the point here is to not have it expand and include larger bussinesses employing the labor of others.

And as long as a non-socialist sector exists there will be some production of goods as commodities.

I'm not going to debate what you believe, I'm just going to make the assessment that what you believe is not socialism in the Marxist sense. You want to accommodate petty bourgeois class interests in your 'social' revolution to produce a particular form of capitalism. 'Socially' managed capital and commodity production with petty bourgeois sympathies is not socialism. What you propose is the perpetuation of privately executed labour in reciprocal independence, and therefore commodity production, you freely admit so much. But as we know (I hope) this is consistent with the categories of capitalist production (the capitalist mode of production). It's inconsistent to style yourself a communist and Marxist if you advocate this. Unfortunately, many horrible proposals are advocated under the banner of Marxism (market socialism, Lange model, Stalinism). The aim of the communists is the abolition of private property. Anything short of it is not communism. If we advocate the expropriation of private property we may push all the petty bourgeois away from socialist revolution. But if we propose the expropriation of private property of big business we may push them away as well -- why not integrate their class interests into socialist revolution as well?