Mass Strike in Greece

[Rafiq]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...alexis-tsipras

Greece’s leftist-led government will get a taste of people power on Thursday when workers participate in a general strike that will be the first display of mass resistance to the neoliberal policies it has elected to pursue.

The country is expected to be brought to a halt when employees in both the public and private sector down tools to protest against yet more spending cuts and tax rises. “The winter is going to be explosive and this will mark the beginning,” said Grigoris Kalomoiris, a leading member of the civil servants’ union Adedy.

“When the average wage has already been cut by 30%, when salaries are already unacceptably low, when the social security system is at risk of collapse, we cannot sit still,” he said.

Schools, hospitals, banks, museums, archaeological sites, pharmacies and public services will all be hit by the 24-hour walkout. Flights will also be disrupted, ferries stuck in ports and news broadcasts stopped as staff walk off the job.

Greek general strike: Petrol bombs and teargas during anti-austerity protest - as it happened
Youths throw Molotov cocktails in Athens, as thousands protest against the ‘vicious cycle’ of austerity in Greece during the first general strike since Alexis Tsipras became PM
Read more
“We are expecting a huge turnout,” Petros Constantinou, a prominent member of the anti-capitalist left group Antarsya told the Guardian. “This is a government under dual pressure from creditors above and the people below and our rage will be relentless. It will know no bounds.”

The general strike – the 41st claim unionists since the debt-stricken nation was plunged into crisis and near economic collapse in 2010 – will increase pressure on prime minister Alexis Tsipras, the firebrand who first navigated his Syriza party into power vowing to eradicate austerity.

On Monday eurozone creditors propping up Greece’s moribund economy refused to dispense a €2bn rescue loan citing failure to enforce reforms.

Snap elections in September saw Tsipras win a second term, this time pledging to implement policies he had once so fiercely opposed in return for a three-year, €86bn bailout clinched after months of acrimony between Athens and its partners. But Tsipras himself said he did not believe in many of the conditions attached to the lifeline, the third to be thrown to Greece in recent history.

In a first for any sitting government, Syriza also threw its weight behind the strike exhorting Greeks to take part in the protest. The appeal – issued by the party’s labour policy division and urging mass participation “against the neoliberal policies and the blackmail from financial and political centres within and outside Greece” – provoked derision and howls of protest before the walkout had even begun.

But leading Syriza figures insisted that the party continued to see itself as being true to its leftist ideology. “We agreed to take these measures under pressure,” the Syriza MP Christos Simorelis told local TV. “In Syriza we continue to see the party as one thing, the government another.”

Tsipras, who has repeated his earlier coalition joining forces with the populist, right-wing Independent Greeks party, has already pushed one multi-bill of reforms through parliament. A second, viewed as key to unlocking €10bn for the recapitalisation of banks – which will further slash pensions and freeze wages – is due to be passed in the coming weeks.

Seated in Adedy’s headquarters, his office walls covered with posters denouncing the inequities of austerity, Kalomoiris accuses the government of hypocrisy. Greece may not face default or eurozone exit as it did this summer but the crisis, he says, is far from over.

The prospect of home repossessions for Greeks who fall foul of mortgage repayments will add an incendiary element to a climate already at boiling point.

“Syriza may now be trying to save its soul but it has gone back on all its promises,” said Kalomoiris, a life-long leftist who joined a rebel group, Popular Unity, formed by Syriza dissidents when Tsipras signed up to the bailout in July.

“In this country a graduate starts off in the public sector with a salary of €775 a month, or €9,300 a year, and we are being told that wages will be frozen for the next decade and that every tax imaginable will be increased. How will people make ends meet? It has got to the point where a social explosion is inevitable and it will come sooner rather than later.”

Syriza is not only refusing to condemn the strike, it is calling for mass participation. This surprises even me: It shows that the Greek state and Syriza are not in fact synonymous as many would suggest.

[Antiochus]

Really? You don't think this is opportunistic huckstering? I mean, tea-party idiots love to claim they are "on the outside" despite being ingrained in the "government" they hate. Syriza has opted to take policies even the major neo-liberal players didn't ask for.

[Comrade Jacob]

What good will it do? I hate to sound overly pessimistic but Syriza has disappointed the left a lot.

[Црвена]

It's so easy for bourgeois parties to have rhetoric and ideology which completely contradict what the party is actually doing in practice. That's what's happening here. SYRIZA are screwing over the workers, undoubtedly, but they have no choice but to keep up the illusion as best as they can so as not to lose support.

[Comrade #138672]

Well, at least it is better than breaking up the strike with violence.

[Nordic.Anarchist]

As always I continue to support the class war.

[Aslan]

I have disagree. SYRIZA is NOT anywhere near communist. They have devolved to to free market liberalism. Just like other parties in South America and Africa anti-imperialist government parties like this have turned into a Neo-liberal government parties. No if, ands, or buts I was skeptical of any change for the better from Tsipras and I've not been disappointing.

Quote: Tsipras, who has repeated his earlier coalition joining forces with the populist, right-wing Independent Greeks party

I know I'm sounding ridiculous saying that Tsipras should've been a dedicated communist when he was elected. But at least take the Hugo Chavez route of thing! Tsipras is a bourgeois politician now. And he will do everything in his power to maintain the status quo. I fear the resurgence of the right wing in Greece will turn Greece into a the 21st century equivilant of the Wiemar Republic.

This is exactly the same formula in the 1920s:
1.Weak, non-popular government
2.Extensive presence of right-wing extremism
3.Mass protest
4.Failure of centrist control over class anger
5.vigilantism
6.Crushing imperialist sanctions
7.underground war between right and left
8.Huge debts to imperialist powers

[Rafiq]

Really? You don't think this is opportunistic huckstering? I mean, tea-party idiots love to claim they are "on the outside" despite being ingrained in the "government" they hate. Syriza has opted to take policies even the major neo-liberal players didn't ask for.

Opportunistic huckstering might be suspect had they simply not condemned it, but the Syriza government is actively encouraging people participate in it.

And this is for a very simple reason: As far as Syriza's agreement to draconian measures, they are being enforced reluctantly. They are a condition of Greece's membership in the EU, which most Greek voters thoroughly want to remain in, which Syriza has been committed to staying in since it seized power.

If anything, Syriza sees the strike as giving it some breathing space - right now it is literally asphyxiated, they are desperate for anything.

When Syriza sais they are not synonymous with the government, this is really incomparable to the libertarian (or Fascist) "anti-government (or corporate)" rhetoric - I mean the tea party, for one, would be right to say they are not 'in' the government or synonymous with it.

Syriza on the other hand is the ruling party - at the same time they have no power and little influence over the police, military and various other state organs of repression. The point is a rather simple one - although the state is far from neutral, there is still space for fighting within it. Take the early 20th century. In France and Germany, there were radicals and socialists who served as mayors, administrators of districts, ETC. - that does not mean they are a "part" of the state in the context of how we refer to it.

We must understand the state as something that exists independently of which democratic party gains power. In liberal democracies, in Europe specifically, the state apparatus exists independently of this or that governing party. Syriza does not "control" this apparatus, or even necessarily direct it, for the state is irreducible to a party or a handful of actors.

[ckaihatsu]

Second general strike in a month rocks Greece



By Brad Sigal

Athens, Greece - More than 40,000 workers marched from Omonia Square to Syntagma Square in front of the Greek parliament Dec. 3 as part of a nationwide general strike against austerity measures.

The general strike was initiated by the All Workers Militant Front (PAME), Greece’s class struggle union. Other unions also mobilized. The strike had strong participation from Greece’s key industrial sectors including shipping and construction. Contingents of workers marched from many workplaces and sectors, along with large contingents of pensioners, the self-employed and students also participating. The march in central Athens was just one of more than 60 rallies that PAME organized all over Greece.

The strike today comes two days before the Greek parliament is scheduled to vote on the budget which includes draconian attacks on workers. The ‘troika’ of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have imposed painful austerity measures on Greece for more than five years which have led to massive unemployment and perpetual economic crisis. The Greek government is now attempting to impose the third round of painful cuts demanded by the Troika.

Today’s strike protested the cuts, aiming to defend social security rights, protect pensions and demand the reinstatement of all losses that workers have suffered the previous years. It also responded to the new offensive that is being prepared against workers’ salaries and against even more massive layoffs.

Today’s strike comes two weeks after another nationwide general strike. PAME is calling on all unions and other sectors of society to escalate their resistance to stop the government’s anti-worker plans.

A delegation of U.S. trade unionists who are in Greece for a seminar with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) attended PAME’s march to Syntagma Square and were warmly welcomed by the striking workers. According to Rafael Justo, a seminar participant from SEIU 1199 in New York, “The workers wanted to be out in the street. It didn’t take much to convince them to come out. They understand. I was very impressed by that.” Another seminar participant, Cherrene Horazuk, president of AFSCME 3800 from Minnesota said, “There are so few strikes taking place in the U.S. that many don’t realize the power that we have as workers. Today’s strike shut down transportation, malls, factories and shipping lines. It was awe inspiring to see the Greek working class standing up and fighting back in a massive way against austerity.”

See more photos of the general strike here: https://plus.google.com/+PamehellasGr/photos

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Only goes to show how material conditions in the long run supersede all other factors of theory, belief, ideology etc. I found an interesting quote of Lenin which this reminded me of.

Originally posted by V.I. Lenin, July 1918:
He who thinks that socialism can be constructed during peaceful, untroubled times is deeply mistaken; it will everywhere be constructed in a time of breakdown, in a time of hunger, and that is how it has to be.

[piet11111]

Opportunistic huckstering might be suspect had they simply not condemned it, but the Syriza government is actively encouraging people participate in it.

Syriza knows how successful those 24 hour strikes are so no wonder they encourage it.

Let the masses vent for a day and then business as usual while next time there will be even less people that will bother to turn up and Syriza can proclaim far and wide that they tried to fight but that the people just wouldn't go along with it.

Syriza is a bourgeois party through and through.