A few words about the current situation in Greece

After the announcement of the new austerity measures on Wednesday 3rd of March (cut of the total income of the public sector workers  between 15%-30% and 5-10% for the income of the private sector workers, if one calculates the effect of all the measures together)  the main trade union of the public sector sector workers (ADEDY) declared strikes for the 5th of  March (part time strike) and for the 16th of March (all day strike). Also the PAME trade union which represents mostly workers of the private sector controlled by  KKE (communist party of Greece) declared a 24 hours strike on the 5th of March. The night between 3 and 4 March the fired workers of the until recently state owened Olympic Airways occupied the building of the General Accounting Office of the State (centre of circulation of all state money). The morning of the 4th of March KKEs’ trade union occupied the ministry of economics, under the  tolerance of the police, media and government. The “legalisation” of public buildings’ occupations as a way of struggle is one of the historical remainings of December 2008. Now it is used also as an advertisement – mainly for its own members– by a parliamentary party (KKE). A demonstration (without a strike) was called by the extra parliamentary small parties of the left and ADEDY on Thursday 4th of March in the afternoon in Athens and about 60 separate demos called by KKE all over Greece. This first demo started on a hurry, just a few minutes after the announced time, a tactical movement of the leftist parties which showed clearly that they had no intention to take part in a clash with the police (usually the demos start 1 hour late in order to wait for the maximum number of people to get gathered). About 15000 people took part but there was something in the air that “smelled decadence”. People were walking and shouting without passion expressing the general understanding of the situation as a dead end. The most important characteristic was the absence of the fraction of the proletariat  (precarious young workers, students and pupils) which played a major role in the December 2008 riots. They did not feel the situation as urgent as back in the night of 6 December 2008 when “one like them” was murdered and they started a 4 days chaos in the city. Their absence could be explained by the fact that the specific measures are not changing so much their situation which is already very difficult. Even the majority of the anarchist milieu militants were not there. After a ritual parade in the central avenues of Athens (a route walked thousands times before) the demo ended in front of the Parliament. People stayed there for about half an hour discussing and then dispersed. Some anarchists smashed windows when they were dispersing towards their “home district” of Exarchia. Moving from the Parliament towards Exarchia one has to pass in front of the General Accounting Office occupied building. The occupiers had blocked the avenue with garbage bins. When people tried to set them on fire the occupiers stopped them and started discussing with them. Some occupiers were saying that “it is not right to put fire” because the police would come and one of the would-be fire starters told them that he is one of “the people who were paying you all these years to do nothing” repeating the bullshit of the television and expressing the chaos of conflicting micro-interests that is deepening inside the economic crisis situation.  Another 10000 took part in the KKE demo earlier the same afternoon.

The next demo was called by the two main trade unions (Public and private sector workers) next day at 13:00 in front of the parliament, where the measures would be voted as a law of the Greek State (socialist government voted for the measures together with the deputies of the neo-fascist party). The most important event occurred directly: The president of GSEE (the private workers trade union whose building was occupied in December of 2008) had the time to say only two phrases before hundreds of people from all the directions started to move against him. People threw a cake on his face, then water and they hunted him until he had to hide himself first behind the cops and then inside the Parliament building.. This situation underlies the fact that GSEE is actively denounced and it has  become very difficult  for it to play the role of the reformist trade union anymore. When these events were happening,  the deputies of the “Coalition of the Radical Left” party were putting a banner in front of the parliament saying: “The answer must be: Human, whatever is the question”. This declared explicitly that the time has come for the concept of humanism (one of the most important bourgeois ideals) to come out and help the left wing of capital in its effort to form an ideology of ethical humanism (not so much away from the philanthropy ideology) “against” the ideology of neoliberalism (while in fact they are just complementary). This comes to fill the blank political space between the main parties of the parliament and the small leftist parties since no social-democratic alternative can be articulated nowadays from officially acceptable sources. At the same time a very old guy (88 years old) member of this party and well known as a “hero of the struggle against the Nazis during the second world war” was pepper-sprayed  in the face by the police when he tried to persuade the cops to leave a participant of the demo that they had just arrested. This fact expresses the level of police brutality but also helped media to blur the presentation of the demo and sing their favourite song, that of “condemning violence wherever it comes from” and compensating the assault against the bastard of GSEE with the assault of the police against the old guy as two “bad events”. This helped also to hide absolutely the fact that exactly after the hunt of the president of GSEE and for almost one hour, about 100 to 150 people threw thousands of stones to the police, stones they made adhoc smashing the pavement. The mass majority of the demo backed up this “stone war” expressing anger and frustration: there is no other way to struggle in this situation. Only a very limited conflict between leftists and stone throwers took part and ended in seconds. Leftists ordered people to march towards the Ministry of Labor as they feared that this kind of events might spread (even if it did not seem possible, but you never know). In front of the Ministry building some people clashed with the police for some minutes trying to break the entrance, something impossible and with only symbolic meaning. After that the pressure of the police became harder. They circled the demo and were walking very near the demonstrators  as it took the road back to the parliament. Cops were watching for the safety of the windows of the fancy and expensive stores. When people arrived back at the point where they started (outside the parliament) it was apparent that they did not know what to do next so the demo ended. What seemed to be most important was the fact that the number of the participants was relatively small. About 10000 had attended this second day demo (another 15000 in the KKEs’ one) and if one considers the impact of these measures on the lives of millions of people the number seems to be really small. One has to take into account the fact that all the public transport (buses, metro, trains) were on strike for 24 hours that day and for most of the people there was not easy way to go downtown (seemed strange to everybody that these unions only declared 24h strike, while ADEDY and GSEE declared half day). On the other hand a lot found the way to go to work for the half of the day and then they left the centre without attending the demo or did not strike at all. The absence of the “December milieu” was not total on this second day but their practices were almost totally absent. No fire at all, not even attempts to set on fire anything. The composition of the demo (a lot of older, more or less stable  workers were participating) and its size had this specific result.

Leaving the scene of the clashes one could see the fired people of ex-Olympic airways remaining stoically outside the building of the General Accounting Office. It seems that they do not expect nothing more than some money as a compensation for being fired while the initial agreement was  they would be moved in other state companies before the selling of Olympics to private funds. Apart from what they believe, they do block a serious state function with their occupation. Another group of workers, those working in the State Printing Office, occupied the building and the printing machines in order to block the printing of the official paper of the new law! What is striking is that they say that they went on with the occupation because they read the new law and they found out that the cut in their own wages is bigger than the officially announced one. So by “defending their own interests” they block the printing of the law and they objectively defend the interests of all those implicated in this specific situation. This tendency of different fragmented struggles which converge indirectly because of objectively common interests will maybe become stronger and  even accelerated in the near future. After the massive and violent student movement of 2006-07 which had specific demands and the December riots which had nothing to demand, this movement seems to not know what to ask for since the dead end for the capitalist reproduction is evident everywhere and the option offered is  between the European Central bank measures and the draconian IMF measures.

Now everybody is waiting for the 24h strike of 11 March (ADEDY under the pressure of the workers had to move the date of the strike and GSEE in order to avoid a possible lynching of its president had to announce that it will also take part to it). And last but not least, the leading newspapers informed us today (7 March) that the restructuring is going to deepen in the private sector too with the abolishment of every kind of job security and more wage cuts. This is going to happen because “our European partners” demand it.  In the same papers neoliberal politicians write articles about the inefficiency of the new measures asking for the lay off of thousands of public sector workers.

Comradely,
M.

http://dndf.org/?p=6553