Mark Booth<\/i><\/p>\n
Another general strike has rocked Greece. Millions have struck across the country, and angry crowds surrounded the Greek parliament demanding that the \u201cSocialist\u201d government of Papandreou must fall. It looks like they will get their wish, writes Mark Booth<\/p>\n
Violent clashes erupted in Athens between strikers and police, and in response the Prime Minister has offered to resign in favour of a unity government. The strike is in response to the governments austerity package \u2013 this time of cuts of $40.5 Billion \u2013 in an attempt to comply with the terms of the IMF and EU bailouts. This is alongside wholesale privatization of most state assets, destruction of pensions and cuts to wages.<\/p>\n
This is the tenth general strike since the government began to implement it\u2019s austerity package. The resistance of the Greek workers has been fierce, but their leaders have backed away from a direct confrontation with the government. Despite the ferocity of the government\u2019s attacks and the pillaging of the country by the EU and IMF, the workers leaders have refused to escalate their one day general strikes into an all out indefinite strike.<\/p>\n
The sheer anger of the masses directed against the ruling classes demonstrates how unpopular the Greek budget cuts are \u2013 the result of the crisis of capitalism, the recession tangled up in the web of finance capital, state debt and corruption which have become the over-riding features of the modern economy. The collapse of the PASOK government is a worthy scalp for the workers movement \u2013 one that shows that victories can be gained if the strikes are solid and serious \u2013 backed up by mass protests on the streets. But the calls for a unity government are a dangerous trap designed to demobilise the protests.<\/p>\n
Papandreou is reported to have told opposition leader Antonis Samaras that is he was the problem\u201d then he was willing to go into unity talks. Certainly Papandreou is seen as part of the problem \u2013 but he is not the problem. The problem is the crisis of capitalism which is causing these austerity budgets across the world as bankers pay sky rockets. A unity government will still implement the same strategic cuts – maybe in a slightly modified form – because it will certainly not be a unity government of all the people. Rather it represents attempts by the Greek political class to find a suitable alignment which can deliver the cuts with the least amount of resistance.<\/p>\n
For our side the problem is that the working class can bring down governments through mass action \u2013 but we currently have nothing to replace it with. No mass revolutionary party exists in Greece that has a clear programme for struggle and revolution. No mass committees have yet been created to co-ordinate the resistance, the kind of committees that could form an alternative base of power in the country in the event of a collapse of the government in the parliament.<\/p>\n
Greece is in a prolonged crisis which has revolutionary implications \u2013 it is not inevitable that the working class and poor will be made to pay the cost of the state debt and EU bank bail out and the resistance can lead to a revolution if the right leadership can be formed to bring down not only the government but also to take power in the work places and the streets.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Booth Another general strike has rocked Greece. Millions have struck across the country, and angry crowds surrounded the Greek parliament demanding that the \u201cSocialist\u201d government of Papandreou must fall. It looks like they will get their wish, writes Mark Booth Violent clashes erupted in Athens between strikers and police, and in response the Prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,17],"tags":[104,188],"class_list":["post-2667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-working-class-fights","tag-archive","tag-strike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6442,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/6442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}