Down With the Capitalist EU! For a Workers Europe!

Greek Workers Battle Austerity, State Repression

FEBRUARY 5—In the early morning hours of January 25, Greek riot police stormed the main train depot of the Athens metro system, breaking up an occupation by striking workers who had courageously defied the government and courts by keeping the metro shut down for nine days. Strikers were served with orders to return to work or face imprisonment and firing under a government “civil mobilization” order issued the day before. “Civil mobilization” was invoked again today to break a seamen’s strike, which has for six days paralyzed ferry service between the mainland and Greece’s many islands. A form of martial law for so-called peacetime emergencies, it is an open declaration of war on the working class. Its name harks back to the civil mobilization decrees for forced labor that the Nazi occupiers issued during World War II, which were turned into a dead letter in Greece by mass protests and general strikes in 1943.

As soon as the widely-despised coalition government of the right-wing New Democracy (ND), the bourgeois Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the Democratic Left announced the “civil mobilization” order against the metro workers last week, bus and trolley workers began a four-day-long solidarity strike, holding out in defiance of court orders deeming their strike illegal. The public power workers also organized a 24-hour strike in solidarity with the metro workers on January 31. The government is now planning to ban such solidarity strikes.

In breaking the metro workers strike and now taking aim at the seamen, the Greek government has made it perfectly clear that it intends to crush all resistance to the increasingly savage rounds of austerity measures. The government crackdown on the unions comes on the heels of the arrest of 100 anarchist activists in Athens in December and January, and a bourgeois propaganda campaign to smear the entire left as “terrorists.” Bonapartist pronouncements are the order of the day, with the Minister of Public Order Nikos Dendias ominously stating that “the country must finally settle its accounts with the post-1974 era.” This is a reference to the period following the fall of the bloody military junta that ruled from 1967-74, that is, the beginning of the current period of bourgeois democracy in Greece.

The wave of strikes sweeping Greece has been sparked by the implementation of a further $17.25 billion in killer cuts to wages, benefits and social services. This is the price that the imperialist masters of the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded the Greek working people pay in exchange for billions more in bailout money for the bloodsucking banks of the EU and the Greek bourgeoisie. With massive unemployment and poverty ravaging the country, the metro workers and other public sector workers now face pay cuts of up to 25 percent, having already lost on average nearly half their income through successive rounds of cuts since the start of the economic crisis. Even as wages are repeatedly slashed, inflation keeps rising, and the government levies more and more taxes on the necessities of life, like heating oil. Athens and Thessaloniki have been blanketed with toxic smog this winter because people have been forced to burn wood to stay warm.

The fascist menace of Golden Dawn continues to grow—its sympathizers claimed yet another victim with the racist murder of 27-year-old Pakistani immigrant worker Shehzad Luqman on January 17 in Athens. The police, many of them supporters of Golden Dawn, also terrorize immigrants and foreigners. On February 1, the Athens police chased a Senegalese immigrant onto metro tracks where he was electrocuted. They later tear-gassed people protesting this crime. Since Greece completed its border fence with Turkey in December, more than 20 desperate immigrants have drowned in the Aegean Sea trying to reach Greek islands off the Turkish coast as an entry point to the EU.

As the worldwide capitalist financial crisis continues and the economic and military ravages of imperialism drive millions more to leave their home countries in search of an escape from abject poverty, it is crucial for the workers movement to take up the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Furthermore, it is a basic measure of self-defense of the unions and the working class in Greece, with its heavy immigrant component, to mobilize in mass united-front actions to crush the fascist scum of Golden Dawn. As our comrades of the Trotskyist Group of Greece explained in their November 2012 leaflet “Capitalists Bleed Greek Working Class” (reprinted in WV No. 1013, 23 November 2012):

“What is necessary is to fight to remove the political obstacles to mobilizing the power of the trade unions against Golden Dawn. The KKE [Communist Party of Greece] has the social weight in the trade unions to take the lead in doing this, but its promotion of illusions in bourgeois democracy and its nationalist populism are barriers. The reformist organizations that compose groups such as Antarsya also reinforce the political obstacles, in particular by tailing the pro-EU Syriza coalition, which promises to provide immigrants more ‘humane’ conditions of imprisonment and to put more cops on the streets to fight ‘crime’.”

A January 19 demonstration in Athens was organized by KEERFA, an “anti-fascist front” led by the Socialist Workers Party (SEK), which is affiliated with the British SWP and part of the Antarsya coalition. However, the SEK’s pretensions to be fighters against fascism were exposed by a grotesque article called “Patriotism and Internationalism” (Workers Solidarity, 9 January), which argues that nationalism and internationalism are “synonymous and interdependent.” The SEK perpetuates the lie that there is a common national interest between the exploiters and the exploited: “The national (identity) connects him [the worker] with all his fellow countrymen with whom he fights to resolve the different national issues.”

Genuine Marxists are staunch opponents of nationalism, a bourgeois ideology that serves to tie workers to the class enemy. In Greece, nationalism means the oppression of national minorities such as the Macedonians, Vlachs, Pomaks, Turks and Albanians. Our comrades of the TGG fight for full democratic rights for the national minorities, for the right of self-determination for the Macedonian minority in Greece and for a socialist federation of the Balkans as the only way to resolve the myriad national questions in the region.

It is telling that as the forces of the capitalist state were rounding up anarchist activists and smashing the metro strike, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) leader Alexis Tsipras was on an international tour to meet with representatives of the imperialist rulers in Germany and the U.S. Tsipras, who rose to prominence after Syriza came in second in the last elections, was clearly seeking to reassure the imperialists that Syriza represents absolutely no threat to their interests in Greece. In a speech to the Brookings Institution, a U.S. bourgeois think tank, Tsipras said: “Those who engage in scare-mongering will tell you that our party will come to power, rip up our agreements with the European Union and the IMF, take our country out of the euro zone. My party, Syriza, doesn’t want any of these things” (Dow Jones Business News, 25 January).

In contrast to the fake Trotskyist organizations inside Syriza and in the Antarsya coalition who all salivated at the prospect of a “left government” around the last elections, the TGG has always told the truth about Syriza—that it accepts the capitalist order and the EU, seeking only to (barely) ameliorate the terms of extortion. There is no way forward for the workers and poor of Greece and indeed, the workers of all of Europe, without a sharp struggle against the imperialist EU, the central mechanism by which the combined capitalist powers have imposed austerity on their own working classes, slashed wages and rolled back trade-union rights and work conditions.

While the KKE tops have made a point of opposing the EU and of rejecting the call to join a capitalist government of the left with Syriza, their consistent refusal to defend anarchists against capitalist state repression is a clear example of their fundamental loyalty to bourgeois democracy. Far from standing up to the recent propaganda campaign by the government and bourgeois press branding everyone on the left, and even Syriza, as defenders of “terrorism,” the KKE has echoed the bourgeois denunciations of violence. It has also condemned anarchists for occupying offices of the Democratic Left—one of the ruling parties.

The 100 anarchist activists arrested in raids in December and January were themselves violently evicted and arrested by the cops for the “crime” of occupying abandoned buildings in downtown Athens. The KKE’s refusal to defend anarchists paves the way for attacks against its own supporters. The KKE’s trade-union activists from the PAME formation were victims of a vicious police attack on January 30 when riot cops used tear gas and batons to break up a protest at the office of the Minister of Labor by PAME members, resulting in 35 arrests. The TGG demands: Drop all charges against the anarchist activists and the PAME protesters!

The government may have succeeded in forcing the metro workers back to work, but as the seamen’s and other recent strikes by transport workers, shipyard workers, doctors and nurses have shown, the government has not succeeded in extinguishing class struggle. This wave of strikes and protests demonstrates the deep anger and militancy of the Greek working class, which has the power to fight in the interests of all those thrown on the scrap heap by the capitalist crisis. The government response to the metro and seamen’s strikes underscores just how fearful the bourgeoisie is of such strikes spreading.

In a January 29 statement, the New Left Current (NAR), which emerged from a 1989 split in the KKE and is the biggest force inside Antarsya, correctly noted that the reformist labor bureaucracy of the GSEE and ADEDY union federations failed to organize united struggle by all the unions to defend the striking metro workers. NAR calls for coordinated action by the whole of the working people in a front “for anti-capitalist overthrow” of the policies of the government. Yet its statement says nothing about who or what is to replace the existing government. And when it says that Syriza will be judged on its response to the current struggles, it is obviously leaving the door open for a left capitalist government led by Syriza.

Uniting the power of the trade unions in coordinated action against the capitalist assault—instead of dissipating that power by having rolling strikes at different times in different sectors—is certainly called for. But bringing to bear the full power of the working class would represent a challenge to the whole capitalist order in Greece, and hence is unacceptable to the pro-capitalist GSEE and ADEDY union tops. The working class urgently needs a revolutionary leadership that links the daily struggles against capitalist austerity to the need to overthrow the capitalist order.

Such a leadership would mobilize around transitional demands such as a shorter workweek with no loss of pay and a massive program of public works to provide jobs, the indexing of wages to inflation, and that the capitalists open their (real) books to expose their exploitation and robbery of the workers. Such demands point to the need for the proletariat to organize more broadly to fight for the expropriation of the capitalist means of production and the establishment of a planned economy under workers rule, where production would be based on social need, not profit. In other words, the working class must fight for the overthrow of the capitalist state, not to take control of the existing state in the form of a left capitalist government. Such revolutionary struggle would necessarily need to extend from tiny, dependent Greece to other countries of the region and in particular to the imperialist centers where workers are also being starved. This is the perspective that our comrades of the TGG fight for.

The following article, translated from German and adapted for Workers Vanguard, is taken from Spartakist No. 196 (January 2013), newspaper of the Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, German section of the International Communist League. It is based on a forum by our comrade Sylvia that was held in September 2012.

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I visited Greece a few times between November 2011 and July 2012. Although the austerity programs had been in force for quite a while, the effects were not all that evident that November. In contrast, many changes had occurred by May and even more by July-August. I’m not talking about the buildings in central Athens that burned to the ground in the course of protest demos and weren’t rebuilt but rather about seeing real despair on people’s faces, with their increasing poverty evident in their clothing.

I lived in Greece for a couple of years. Homelessness, previously rare, has grown tremendously since then. Youth unemployment now stands at around 50 percent and, while this has been a fact of life in Spain for years, it hadn’t been that way in Greek society. Whenever I’m in Athens, I always revisit the districts where I’ve lived to take a look at the shops and the people. In November 2011, about a quarter of the stores had shut their doors—a bakery or a pet store—but in July-August it was at least a third, on many blocks even half the stores.

The drastic change became more evident when talking with friends or people on the street. This was apparent with health care. There were big protests at every public building, particularly hospitals, and just this week a group of furious pensioners stormed the Ministry of Health because they have to pay for their medicine now. The state isn’t paying and many who were just barely getting by have slid into total poverty. On top of all the job cuts there have been massive pay cuts for those still working—in many fields as much as 25 percent. Pensions have also been slashed.

All this is taking place at the behest of the Troika, a group consisting of the EU, IMF and the European Central Bank (ECB). The Troika’s aim is to make sure the Greek working class pays the German and French banks and insurance companies. When then-prime minister George Papandreou suggested holding a referendum on the Troika’s austerity dictates in November 2011, he was gone in a matter of days, replaced by a technocrat named Lucas Papademos who, interestingly enough, had once been vice president of the ECB.

Since then there have been two elections. It’s obvious that traditional voting patterns have changed. Whereas in the past either PASOK or the conservative New Democracy ruled, since the June elections a coalition of the ND, PASOK and the Democratic Left has been ruling the country. But Syriza—to which former Eurocommunists, Maoists and a number of fake Trotskyist groups belong—emerged as the second most powerful force in both elections. Previously Syriza had been, in terms of votes, a relatively insignificant group, but in May it obtained 16 percent and in June over 26 percent.

Politically, the situation in Greece is extremely polarized. While participation in the elections has steadily fallen over the years—in 2004 it was 76 percent, now it is 62 percent—political discussions take place everywhere in the streets, whether you’re going out for a coffee or buying cigarettes. People are very politicized, very furious and most of those who voted for Syriza in 2012 did so because they regarded it as a lesser evil.

For Workers United-Front Action to Stop the Fascists!

The deepening crisis is fueling the flames of nationalism, chauvinism and racism. People are looking for scapegoats, and hunting down immigrants has reached incredible proportions since the June elections. The fascists of Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) got around 7 percent of the vote in both elections. They have a lot of support in the army and the police. The Greek paper To Vima (11 May 2012) found out that approximately half the police force voted for Golden Dawn in the May elections. Golden Dawn is of the same ilk as the notorious Nazi-loving Security Battalions and the “X” group of General Georgios Grivas—counterrevolutionary terror bands that murdered Communists in the Second World War and the ensuing Greek Civil War.

The fascists are the shock troops of national chauvinist reaction. They are kept in reserve by the bourgeoisie because they serve as a useful weapon against the workers in times of crisis. Today in Greece, we can see very clearly that fascism is a product of collapsing capitalism, fed by joblessness and the pauperization of the petty bourgeoisie. So, for us Marxists it’s obvious that fascism can be eradicated only when the system of wage slavery is eliminated. And the decisive force for this is the working class because, with its hands on the levers of production, it generates profit for the bourgeoisie. Elevating the working class to consciousness of its historic task—overthrowing capitalism—requires a revolutionary party.

It was with horror that I learned from our comrades of the Trotskyist Group of Greece about the explosion of terror against immigrants, “illegals,” non-Greeks. Fascist terror against immigrants goes hand in hand with state repression. The state has set up camps and is carrying out mass arrests in an operation cynically titled “Xenios Zeus” (Zeus as protector of guests and hospitality). In early August, 2,000 immigrants were arrested in Athens and similar actions were carried out in major cities like Patras and Thessaloniki. By the end of August, over 12,000 immigrants had been arrested or imprisoned. The Greek police’s “Special Units for the Restoration of Public Order” went into the cities and arrested people, working hand in glove with the largely fascist citizen militias that exist in some towns.

In August, there was a TV report about a guy who shot two Albanian people. Normally, someone suspected of manslaughter or murder is put into investigative detention. Not here. At the same time, there are commercials on TV showing supposedly happy “illegals” with shopping bags in detention camps, who are then deported. In July, a Golden Dawn fascist physically assaulted a representative of Syriza and a KKE member of parliament on a TV panel discussion. This, of course, provoked widespread furor. Syriza protested immediately and organized some demos. We went to one that was organized by the SEK, the Greek fraternal organization of Marx 21 in Germany, i.e., the Cliffites. The demo was relatively small, attended almost solely by their own members. They demanded a state investigation into the ties between the fascists and the police. That is, they promote the illusion that the capitalist state can do away with the fascists.

But what is urgently necessary are defense actions to smash the fascists. These must be carried out with the broadest participation of the working class, joining together with the victims of the assaults. In areas with a high percentage of immigrants, workers defense groups must put an end to the attacks. Itself a prime target of fascist terror, the KKE possesses, through its trade-union formation PAME, the roots and authority in the working class to stop the Nazis by linking up with all those organized in the unions in united-front actions. But its reformist program of class collaboration prevents the KKE from doing this. The KKE’s reaction to the fascist assault on its own MP was to call upon those who had voted for the Nazis to instead vote for the KKE. This is incredible, but it truly encapsulates the KKE’s nationalism, populism and electoral cretinism. What is required is a revolutionary Leninist-Trotskyist party based on the working class. This party must be a tribune of all the oppressed as opposed to wooing votes on the basis of nationalism.

For a Socialist Federation of the Balkans!

The Greek working class is relatively small but militant. This underlines the need for it to seek allies outside the country, for instance, its class brothers elsewhere in the Balkans as well as in Turkey and Germany. But when you preach nationalism like the KKE, then you’re undermining this international solidarity. This is one of the reasons we regard nationalism as the main ideological obstacle to the struggle for socialism in Greece. One example: the region in the north of the country around Thessaloniki is called Macedonia in Greek. Following the destruction of the Yugoslav deformed workers state at the beginning of the 1990s, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia sought to include “Macedonia” in its name, triggering a gigantic wave of chauvinism in Greece. The KKE wrote at the time: “We don’t let any foreign nationalist lay claim to even a centimeter of Greek soil” (KKE pamphlet “Positions on the Balkans,” February 1992).

We of the ICL are unambiguously for Macedonia’s right to self-determination, including the right of Macedonians in Greece to secede and join Macedonia. The Greek bourgeoisie fears that this part of “their” country called Macedonia could be taken away from them if Macedonians were granted the right to self-determination. In discussions you see just how touchy the Macedonia question is, no matter what the political coloration of your discussion partners might be. Either they become enraged, or they won’t talk about it with you. It is very difficult to find someone who considers socialism and opposition to national oppression more important than the boundaries of a capitalist Greece, which were drawn up through a series of wars and expulsions. This shows that nationalism is one of the core questions.

Down With the Imperialist EU!

Unfortunately, solidarity actions with the Greek populace are few and far between in Germany. This can be attributed partly to the fact that the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Left Party, as well as the trade unions they lead, support the EU—a truly classic example of class collaboration. Thus, former chancellor Helmut Schmidt of the SPD warned of a return to nationalism should the EU come apart, while Sarah Wagenknecht of the Left Party stated that the euro had to be defended. In this manner, any possible protests of the German working class are to be channeled into support for the bourgeoisie. We of the ICL oppose the EU on principle, fighting for its destruction through international class struggle. Our starting point is what is in the interests of the working class on this question. We are for the United Socialist States of Europe. The EU is an instrument of the European capitalists for the exploitation of the working classes of Europe, led mainly by the axis of the German and French imperialist powers.

The euro is a monetary instrument of the EU. Through it, Greece has no control over its currency. It cannot devalue its currency to improve its competitiveness and keep debt under control. Perhaps Greece would be better off without the euro, although a Greek currency wouldn’t protect the working class from capitalist devastation either.

The EU arose in the fifties as an economic alliance of the imperialists against the Soviet Union. The Soviet state, created in the October Revolution of 1917 through the expropriation of the capitalist class and the collectivization of the means of production, remained a workers state despite its subsequent bureaucratic degeneration under Stalin. We Trotskyists offered unconditional military defense against the imperialists and against internal counterrevolution while fighting for proletarian political revolution to overthrow the Stalinists. Our defense of the Soviet Union is one reason why we were against the European Union from the outset.

The present crisis illuminates the age of imperialism. You can see how countries are ever more tightly integrated into the world market, finance capital is exported and industry is concentrated in monopolies. At the same time, capitalism rests upon nation states that come into conflict with one another in the worldwide pursuit of profits and new spheres of exploitation. Thus, the nation state constitutes a fetter on the further development of the productive forces. For the working class and the oppressed there is only one way out—socialist revolution that expropriates the bourgeoisie and establishes an international planned economy under workers rule. Every battle against the austerity measures, whether in Greece or in Spain, is a Europe-wide and an international struggle. Resistance to the EU is only the starting point. Since the cause of the crisis lies in the system of world capitalism, the solution is its overthrow.

The German bourgeoisie is unyielding in its demand that its austerity diktats be realized. If this causes its foreign markets to collapse, the German ruling class will have shot itself in the foot since its economy is so highly export-oriented. Even within the central axis of the EU—France and Germany—there are differences. While France is suffering from a trade deficit of 32 billion euros, Germany has amassed a 73 billion euro export surplus relative to the other euro zone countries.

The SPD and trade unions have contributed to the austerity diktat by promoting the protectionist scheme “Standort Deutschland.” Among its spawn is “Agenda 2010” with its massive cuts in wages, expansion of contract labor and the like. Other European capitalists can see how these increased the rate of profit for the German bourgeoisie and consider them worth copying in their own countries. Conversely, the assaults on the Greek working class provide a model for attacks elsewhere.

Fake Trotskyists Tail Syriza

While supporting the capitalist EU, Syriza campaigned against the Troika’s austerity memorandum and argued for renegotiating the conditions that were set. Syriza chair Alexis Tsipras has promised economic and political stability and is in favor of working with the Troika to provide Greek banks with new capital. Many reformist groups in and outside Greece have signed up as water boys for Syriza, e.g., the Grantites of Marxistiki Foni and the Cliffites of the Democratic Workers Left (DEA), who are linked to the International Socialist Organization in the U.S.

The DEA portrayed its support to Syriza as proletarian internationalism and said, “We are confronting the fact that in a month’s time, Syriza will be the leading party in the country. So we will be called on at that point to form a government that can transform things for the people of Greece” (Socialist Worker [U.S.], 23 May 2012). Then there is the Antarsya coalition, in which the Cliffite SEK as well the OKDE-Spartakos of the Pabloite United Secretariat (USec) participate. Antarsya ran its own candidates in the elections. Their intent was to pressure Syriza and use it to strengthen the “resistance.” Leading British SWPer Alex Callinicos said: “Antarsya has made it clear that it sees itself working alongside and in dialogue with those who support Syriza. The stronger its voice is, the greater the pressure will be on Syriza” (Socialist Worker [Britain], 2 June 2012). Particularly charming was that the USec, the “International” of OKDE-Spartakos, didn’t even support the candidates of its own section in Greece but rather those of Syriza!

All these reformist groups are not about socialism but rather are fighting for a “government of the left” with better policies, which is nothing but a capitalist government. At their core, such politics are pro-EU and pro-capitalist. Illusions in a left capitalist government are an obstacle to leading the working class on the path to revolution, for which the political independence of the working class is indispensable. Racism, poverty, exploitation and imperialist dominance cannot be ended through reformist pressure politics but only through the seizure of power by the working class. And for this what is needed is an authentic Leninist-Trotskyist party.

Greek Trotskyists Said: Vote KKE! No Vote for Syriza!

We gave critical support to the KKE in the June elections. Our starting point as Marxists is that the working class cannot achieve significant victories through bourgeois elections, but we do utilize them as an opportunity to attain a hearing among broader masses of workers. For this, we also employ tactics like critical electoral support.

On the other hand, reformists, whether supporters of the DEA, Antarsya or the anarchists, fundamentally share a bourgeois conception of elections. While the reformists believe that a better system can be attained through elections, the anarchists think that if people didn’t vote the system would break down. I was there and assisted our comrades of the Greek section in their critical support campaign. We had some discussion with people from Antarsya, but it was amusing to talk with the anarchists in their center “Notios.” They’d probably never voted before in their lives, but now they were tying themselves in knots and admitted that they were going to vote for Antarsya or Syriza—but really only as “lesser evils”!

We approach bourgeois elections from a revolutionary standpoint. Of course, we’re willing to employ the talk shop of parliament as a platform, but we make clear to the masses that the core of the state is special bodies of armed men like the police, the army and prisons. This core is not subject to election and is not reformable. Marx concluded that the state had to be smashed and destroyed in the course of a revolution if the capitalist system was to be overthrown. Reformism helps keep capitalism alive. Our campaign offering critical support provided us with the opportunity to talk with members of the KKE, and naturally with other leftists as well, about the KKE’s program and our own.

Generally, it’s difficult to approach KKE members at major demonstrations and forums. It’s a very well-organized reformist, Stalinist mass party. A genuine phenomenon: being face-to-face with a Stalinist party with hundreds of thousands of supporters twenty years after counterrevolution in the USSR and East Europe, a party deeply rooted in society and the historic party of the Greek working class. They have a daily paper, many members of parliament and have the trust of the most politically advanced workers in Greece. Anyone who’s been in Greece and seen a KKE demo—well, it’s very impressive how well organized they are. And we were able to come into much more contact with them as a result of our campaign. In any case, we’re almost the only leftists to approach the KKE and talk with them since other leftists won’t debate the KKE out of anti-Communism.

The basis for our critical support was the KKE’s refusal to join with Syriza in building a coalition of the left. The British SWP and SEK immediately termed the KKE’s position “sectarian”—a very popular term of reproof. Additionally, the KKE was for canceling the Greek debt and had for some time called for withdrawal from the EU and NATO. We put out a flyer “Vote KKE! No Vote for Syriza!” (see WV No. 1005, 6 July 2012). Had the KKE won the elections, it would have been a black eye for the EU and the Greek bourgeoisie.

The Greek section’s campaign was supported by an international team of comrades from the U.S., Britain, France and Germany. Critical electoral support, of course, means that we’re also critical. Central to our criticism is the KKE’s nationalism, expressed for example in their terming themselves patriots and continually talking about the “people.” This is an anti-Marxist concept because “the people” also includes the class enemy of the Greek workers, the Greek bourgeoisie, while excluding their most important allies, such as the Turkish or German proletariat.

In discussions with KKE members they say, “Of course, the Greek bourgeoisie isn’t part of the people.” Nonetheless, it’s a concept that is diametrically opposed to a class understanding. At the same time, the slogan “Workers of the World, Unite!” always appears on the title page of the KKE paper Rizospastis. This is, of course, a contradiction. The KKE argues for making use of Greece’s resources in the interests of the Greek people, an expression of the Stalinist program of building “socialism in one country.” The concept of socialism in Greece alone, with an economy largely based on tourism and ownership of an international merchant fleet, is a bit ridiculous. This is even more so the case when you consider that it didn’t work out in one of the most resource-rich countries on earth, namely the Soviet Union.

The Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky was internationalist through and through, and this enabled it to lead the multinational working class of tsarist Russia to power in the October Revolution of 1917. It was clear to the Bolsheviks that the revolution could not be maintained over the long term, nor could socialism be constructed, as long as the Soviet workers state remained isolated. Socialism is based on abundance for all, which will be brought about through the all-sided development of the most modern forces of production, socialist planning and an international division of labor. For the Bolsheviks, the October Revolution was to be the first in a series of revolutions around the world, and they founded the Third (Communist) International as the instrument for the working class to conquer power in other countries.

Due to the sustained isolation, poverty and backwardness of the newly founded Soviet Union, a bureaucratic caste arose that usurped power in a political counterrevolution in early 1924. The theory of building “socialism in one country” promulgated by Stalin in late 1924 codified the conservatism of this bureaucratic layer. This layer feared the proletariat, against whom it defended its privileges, and sought to make peace with the imperialist powers. Simultaneously, its privileges were derived from the collectivized economy of the Soviet Union, where the capitalist class had been expropriated. At every turn, the Left Opposition led by Trotsky battled the degeneration of the Soviet Union and the Communist International. In the Trotskyist analysis, the Soviet Union became a bureaucratically degenerated workers state. The imperialists confronted the Soviet Union with unyielding hostility despite all its attempts at appeasement.

For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!

Virtually every fake Trotskyist current on the planet is represented in Greece, and their rotten politics have given Trotskyism a bad name—it is often seen as anti-Communist and social-democratic. When we were doing election campaigning at 6 a.m. in Athens’ port of Piraeus, someone turned and asked, “How come Trotskyists are supporting the Stalinists?” and he started a debate. Our Greek group doesn’t share the petty-bourgeois, anti-Communist prejudices of other leftists. And in order to make a revolution in Greece and the rest of the Balkans, you must break the working class from its false leadership and win it to a genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist party.

Other questions played a large role in the founding of our Greek section in 2004. The woman question is a truly central one for Greece. One example is the bride price, which was officially done away with only in 1986. Greece is not a secular country, there are Orthodox priests running around everywhere, all the time—I even observed a woman confessing on the street. Another example: the schools are blessed every year. When the government is sworn in, a priest is present. The questions of the church, capitalism and women’s oppression go hand in hand. One can fight for the liberation of women only if one fights to overthrow capitalism, and one cannot overthrow capitalism if one doesn’t fight for women’s liberation.

The Balkans are a veritable mosaic of national minorities, and if you lack a program to address the national question, then you really can’t be a proletarian revolutionary. Hence, this was an important point in the founding of our Greek section. You really need an internationalist perspective, otherwise all there will be is national oppression and the spilling of blood, only a fight for a Greater Bulgaria or a Greater Greece, which is counterposed to socialism and all-sided liberation, i.e., to the interests of the multinational working class of the Balkans.

The other important question is Cyprus. We struggle against the all-pervasive anti-Turkish chauvinism in Greece. Turkey is, after all, the historic enemy of the Greek bourgeoisie, but the Turkish proletariat is not the enemy of the Greek working class. On the contrary, it is really its most important ally. Thus, we call for the withdrawal of all troops from Cyprus—Greek, Turkish, British and UN. In contrast, the Greek left, including the KKE, tells you only how bad the Turkish troops are.

The KKE’s program contains a whole series of reformist demands right down to nationalist positions in defense of Greece’s boundaries, but it also contains a lot of rhetoric that suggests socialism sometime in the future. However, the Greek CP lacks any program that would link up the necessary struggle for people’s daily needs with the struggle for the conquest of power by the working class. And this is really the main task of a revolutionary Trotskyist party, preparing our class and leading it to power. Our role as a small international propaganda group is to lay the basis for the construction of such a party, a party that will be part of the reforged Fourth International, which we fight for here in Germany as well.