On Friday afternoon the lenders addressed the Greek government with a 72-hour ultimatum until the Euro-Summit on Monday. From that point on, a week is left until the extension of the loan agreement typically expires, finally ending the game of delay chosen by the government as a negotiating tactic with the Troika, ending at the same time all the related “ambiguities”.
June 30 is also the end of all the illusions. Not only of those regarding the nature of the “partners” and “Europe”, but also – and more importantly – of the reformist obsessions that this rotten capitalist decay can be reformed slowly by shifting the power relationship to a more favourable balance.
The government argues that the agreement is very close and that the difference is only half percent of the GDP, having already agreed on 90% of the requirements of the troika. Privatisations everywhere, increasing the retirement age over the next decade by ten years in the public sector and by seven years in the private sector. Primary surplus of 1% this year, 2% in 2016, 3% in 2017 and 3% by 2022, zero deficit clauses in the subsidiary and main pensions from 2017. Activation of the l. 3863/2010 imposing basic pension of 360 euros plus what is left (if there is something left) in the pension funds, the ENFIA continues as it is, the VAT, regardless of the internal distribution and of whether it will be 13% or 23% for the power utility, will according to the government impact people’s households by 1.3 billion (EUR 600 per family per year). Even so, the lenders are asking for more here and now. They want to abolish EKAS now, to apply the zero deficit clauses in the insurance system including main pensions now, to impose a new public wage system, larger surpluses, 23% VAT in power and obviously in other utilities as well, to block the restoration of collective agreements and minimum wage. They just want to flatten us. They demand the crushing not so much of the government as the crushing of the working class, the petty-bourgeosie, the retirees. They want unemployment to climb up to 50%. The measures they are demanding, which will be the third memorandum, are equivalent to physical annihilation and their only purpose is to save their financial system and confirm their shock treatments. They just want to save the parasitic capital. It is a battle for the survival of the rotten capitalist system. They fear that a rupture will cause a new Lehman Brothers effect to the finance bubble, and they want to avoid it. So they are eager to sign the agreement, continuing on the path of the previous memoranda. This must not pass.
No space for the human dust of the memoranda and the bourgeois counterrevolution
While the usurers lenders will be pressuring Tsipras and the Greek delegation in Brussels to sign the ultimatum right here right now, in front of the parliament in Athens the CNN, the BBC, the SKAI and the Mega together with dozens of other international and local bourgeois media will be showing in live coverage to the world images from a few thousand idiots under the title of «We stay in Europe» who will be demanding a new memorandum, even if that means cutting wages and pensions and having half the public sector fired. Apart from the fury against the victims of the Memorandum, this human dust will at the same time spew its anticommunist poison – as they did last Thursday. This rally is the Greek Euro-Maidan, it is the preparation for a velvet coup if the government is forced to say no to the humiliating ultimatum of the lenders.
For those who understand the criticality of the situation, it is obvious that on Monday, when at the same time the government will be being presented with ultimatums while retreating to the demands of the “partners”, the Syntagma Square can only be flooded by the people who fought in 2010-12, who participated in strikes and demonstrations, who clashed with the riot police in order to prevent the memoranda. On the Square there must be the people who ousted with their vote of January 25 the parties of the internal troika, that are now seeking revenge. On Monday not even one EU flag should be allowed in the Syntagma Square.
Those cacerolazo rallies also reveal the social stench that comes from the courtyard of the ruling class, the sewer that identifies its interests with those of the bosses. Let everyone realize once and for all that this human dust is not touched by the moving images of a “patriotic front against the foreign domination”, because what patriotism means to them is that “we belong in the West”, it means anti-communism, it means hate against the oppressed, it means gratitude towards their “national -capitalists- saviours” without whom there would be no Greece (Greece of lackeys and capitulation). This is why on June 30 the myth of the patriotic struggle of “all Greeks, masters and slaves, united with one soul” collapses for good. The images from this stinking rally with placards that blame the ENFIA and unemployment in the rehiring of the fired ERT and cleaning workers is a definitive answer that there can be no national unity with the dogs of the bosses, the bankers and all those who, together with their courtyards, have plundered public property as well as the sweat of the working class, local and foreign, during all these years.
The left-overs of this decadence want back the entire palace. They want to continue looting. Those who have destroyed everything in the last 20 years by gambling in the stock market, losing and then taking loans. While the state, governed by the neoliberal right and center-left, borrowed to satisfy the vanity of the Greek petty-bourgeoisie and the megalomania of the ruling class. What are these scums asking for now? They are asking to completely destroy the schools and hospitals so that they can get new subsidies in order to pose as “investors” and “productive classes”. Well, no. The time of the internal class confrontation is now. The opponent is trying our tolerance, preparing for the total recall. Will we allow this to happen?
No to any memoranda extension agreement. Let’s crush the bourgeois counterinsurgency
Ten days are left until the end of June. Time from now on is critical. The goal must be one. The talks must be led to a collapse. Even if this is what the troika wants in order to get an agreement at the end of the week by gambling on a Cyprus scenario, the workers’ movement should not leave any room for compromise to the government, supposedly because there is no other option. The streets of Athens and the area around the Syntagma Square should not be left to the bourgeois human dust and their cacerolazo rallies, which are preparing coup solutions. These velvet plans must be crushed in their birth. Athens will not become Kiev. The Left, the movement, the working class, the proletarian youth, the unemployed must take action here and now. The anti-memorandum slogans must sound again with full force. The government must not be allowed to even dare to think that they may sign an agreement, even if that agreement is their own proposal of 47 plus 8 pages. Let it be known that even this shall not pass, supposedly as a better solution than the worse Juncker plan. As for the lumpen parties and mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie who are preparing for a bourgeois counterinsurgency, not so much against Tsipras as against the movement of 2010-12, let them understand very clearly that the streets do not belong to them.
On Sunday the ADEDY as well as parties and organizations of the Left and the workers’ movement call for a rally against the memoranda. The government may claim that this rally is in favour of an honest compromise. Others may claim that the people who will attend support the 47 pages (the Greek government proposal). These claims cannot be taken seriously. The people who will attend the rally will be the thousands of people who found themselves on the barricades and strikes during the years 2010-12. There will be the people who are against any memorandum, old or new, there will be those who declare that “should the red lines be violated, we need to go to a rupture” (of course, these “red lines” mean different things to different people). We will be there, too. This is the class camp of the wider proletariat, the subordinate classes, the oppressed. Anyone who does not understand this fact is simply blind and offers space to the bourgeois counterinsurgency to fill the gap.
On Monday, the lackeys of the bourgeois reaction and of the European Holy Alliance aspire to stage a Maidan in the Syntagma Square. This must not be allowed under any circumstances. The Sunday concentration, besides being a power showdown, must take responsibility for its presence in the same place also on Monday. Anyone who gives up the central square of Athens to the human dust of the bourgeois reaction on Monday is playing the game of compromise and counterrevolution.
On Sunday night the people must remain on the square. Tents, stands and anything else that ensures that a sufficient number of people remain on the square should be used. On Monday, the ADEDY and trade unions of all kinds must declare a strike, in order for people to reassemble in the Syntagma Square in the morning. On Monday afternoon the square must be filled with thousands of people, demanding the end of austerity and of the memoranda.
We issue a call towards the mass organizations of the working class, towards the Left, towards those who call for the Sunday rally to call again for a mass rally on Monday afternoon in the Syntagma Square. It will be a total shame to allow the lackeys of the memoranda and the bourgeois reaction to occupy the square that has been soaked with the blood of thousands of demonstrators mixed with tear gas on that crucial day.
Complacency has never helped the workers’ movement. The lackeys of the bourgeoisie may be cowards with haystack in their heads, but, if allowed, they are able to provide the images that the international and local bourgeois media need to do their job. Let us spoil this scenery. The struggle for the dismantling of the memoranda continues.
Athens 21/6/2015
Communist Revolutionary Action
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