Millions of Greeks against the IMF and the EU

ATHEN | 11 – 05 – 2010 | Hundreds of thousands workers in the private and public sector, unemployed, young people, pensioners, immigrants, small shopkeepers and more, filled the streets of all Greek cities on Wednesday, May the 5^th 2010 during the general strike. These were the most populous and angry demonstrations in decades.

The Athens demonstration was huge and went on for hours resisting the continuous police attacks and the raids of riot police. Great demonstrations took place also in Salonika, Patras, Ioannina, Larissa, and Volos, also in the Aegean and Ionian Islands and the major cities of Crete. In this way it became clear that the Greek people are overwhelmingly against the measures taken by the government together with the IMF and the ECB, and is determined to fight for their withdrawal.

The measures agreed by the PASOK government, the IMF and the EU call for big wage cuts in the public sector as well as thousands of lay-offs, pension cuts, deregulation of lay-offs in the private sector, reductions in the lay-off compensations, abolition of collective contracts, great raises in indirect taxes (raise of VAT), big cuts in government spending in health, education and social security, privatizations, etc. In essence all the above are a horrible policy of barbarity and a return to past decades with poverty, unemployment and misery for great parts of society. The purpose of these measures was to rescue the speculator lenders of the country, to make the workforce of this country cheaper so as to attract foreign predatory investments, to sell off chunks of the country’s resources and to protect the profits of the local bourgeoisie. With these measures Greece surrenders completely to the foreign imperialist capital and its organizations and becomes am economic colony of the foreign robbers. Its people become servants of the foreign economic aid and the orders of the IMF and the European imperialists.

This development did not arise abruptly. The admission of the country in the EU marked the submission of its economy to the European monopolies’ directives and the conquest by the multinationals and the European capital in a greater than before degree. Gradually the agricultural sector was liquidated, along with the light industry and the productive infrastructure, the exports collapsed and the local production was replaced by imports. This trend intensified with the entrance to the euro zone and the inability of the country to exercise an independent monetary and currency policy. Greece, along with other countries of the European periphery, became the best clients of the German – French exports which were subsidized by state lending and the credit expansion to the individual families. In Greece, the model of a country that would become a country of services and tourism, collapsed under the dictates of foreign capital and the consequences of the international economic capitalist crisis.

The debt crisis of Greece is part and the prologue of a general crisis of the European South economies as a result of the war of capital, currencies, exchange rates, and politics among the imperialist powers. This is a competition that is waged because of the deep capitalist crisis and of the attempts to throw the cost to each other. The attacks of the so-called speculators against Greece in order to bankrupt the country were made in order to subvert the Euro and to test the cohesion of the euro zone. Greece was chosen as the weak link of this chain. This attack will go on. And that is because the euro zone is a special case with serious problems, contradictions and national competitions that get aggravated and block the coordination of the policies.

Independent of the course of the Euro and the international crisis, the important part is that only the struggle of the working people and their struggle to repel the barbaric policies can be hopeful. The Greek workers are in the streets these days against police brutality and provocations by centers that want to frighten the people. They try to protect their demonstrations from the police but also from the blind violence that caused the death of three people in a bank. They send a message of international class solidarity and call the workers of Europe to rise up and fight against the austerity measures that are decided in many European countries.

The Greek workers, the unemployed, the immigrants, young and old people fight to expel the IMF and the European Bank and to overthrow the measures taken by the Papandreou government. They fight to get Greece out of the European Union. We must struggle for an independent and people’s Greece, and this is the only way out from the situation that the local capitalist bourgeoisie has thrown Greece into.

Athens 6/5/2010

Communist Party of Greece(marxist-leninist) – KKE(ML)