Greece: Masses on the streets call on Left leaders to "Unite and Fight for Power" - Part 1

Hundreds of thousands of workers, unemployed, pensioners and youth tried to gather On Sunday [February 12] in Syntagma Square and in the main squares of dozens of other cities across Greece, to protest against the government and the Troika. Sunday’s massive mobilisation was unprecedented, reflecting both widespread anger at the reduction in the annual income of workers by an equivalent of three months’ wages, the reduction of the "net" minimum wage to 410 euros (and to 320 euros for youth up to the age of 24) and the new reductions in pensions.

Greek masses on the streets - Photo: odysseasgrIt also reflected the mood of optimism felt by the workers who were standing up to a government that has revealed itself to be immensely weakened after LAOS withdrew from the coalition and as all the parliamentary groups of the parties making up the coalition crumble and decay.

Despite the rainy weather, by noon trains and overcrowded buses full of protestors were moving toward the centre of Athens. The view was one of an endless stream of people flowing towards the parliament. Organized in blocs were the workers from the public and private sector, the popular assemblies and citizens’ committees, clubs and even football supporters associations, along with the great mass of people who had come out spontaneously to protest with their colleagues, neighbours or relatives, shouting anti-government slogans and conscious of their strength, the strength of the people who are determined to say "no" to the rulers in a big way.

According to dozens of experienced militants of the labour movement, the demonstration must have been the biggest ever in the country. And that was the situation twenty minutes before the official start of the rally! If this mass of people had been allowed to concentrate in Syntagma Square and they had been joined by those who were continuing to flock there until late at night, we would probably have seen well over one million protesters, whose voices and militant action would have multiplied the pressures on that majority of Members of Parliament that was willing to vote for the measures in the new Memorandum.

This was something that could not be tolerated by the government, by the Troika, by the Greek ruling class and its apparatus of organised state violence. The recipe of how to dissolve such a mass rally has been tested for many years and has always proven to be successful. So there was no reason why the police should not use it again this time. Groups of provocateurs lure hundreds of angry youth launching Molotov cocktails and other improvised materials of "warfare" in order to provide the police with the alibi to fire tear gas canister and other asphyxiating gases into the great mass of demonstrators in order to intimidate them and force them to leave the area of the rally. The difference this time was that the police operation was initially so hesitant and awkward, and then due to their panic and haste to prevent the rally of the masses they started hurling tear gas and “stun and flash” grenades at the ordinary protesters, even before the provocateurs could prepare their launching (literally) of "gifts" at the police.

However, in order to completely break up Sunday’s rally, it was not enough for the police to simply to focus on Syntagma Square. The determination of the demonstrators to protest outside the parliament building was so strong that despite the stifling atmosphere created by the rain of tear gas, they remained patiently in the surrounding side streets, while more and more protesters joined their ranks from the suburbs of the city. That explains why the police saw the need to transform the whole centre of Athens into a "hell", with the burning of shops and other buildings, to deter the demonstrators and finally to force them to return home. Around 150 shops and buildings were burned on the initiative of the provocateurs, while lumpen elements were encouraged to engage in looting and to generally discredit the massive mobilisation. At the same time, in response to the widespread police violence, thousands of young people who had been fighting the riot police for hours vented their anger blindly smashing the facades of multinational banks and shops.

The riot police fired so many tear gas canisters against the demonstrators that by 8pm they began to call for new supplies. There were so many buildings and shops ablaze that an aerial view of Athens gave the appearance of a bombed out city. The great mass of protesters, having been prevented from protesting freely and having seen dozens of people rushed urgently to nearby hospitals, as the night progressed left the centre of Athens tired and returned to their homes. At the same time, the TV channels were broadcasting images of the buildings burning as a backdrop to the parliamentary speeches in support of the Memorandum, thus sending society an indirect but clear message: you can choose either between the misery of the capitalists or the "chaos" of the demonstrations.

Huge defeat of trade union bureaucracy – PAME leadership has big responsibilities

The huge turnout on the rally was a clear answer to the piecemeal tactics of general strikes adopted by the trade union bureaucracy. This huge participation went far beyond any of the anaemic participation in last Friday and Saturday’s 48-hour general strike. As we have repeatedly underlined, the workers find it pointless to engage in strikes simply for the "honour of arms" without any long term programme, determination on the part of the leadership and without a clear goal.

Some sectarians on the left have expressed themselves ironically on this, accusing the working masses an "unwillingness to make sacrifices." This is superficial nonsense, and indicates that they refuse to look reality in the eye. How is it possible, after 18 days of general strike and hundreds of other strike days lost in many workplaces, in conditions of mass layoffs and victimisations, that the workers should continue to answer the calls for such bankrupt and ineffective action, issued simply to justify the union bureaucracy's position? Those who blame the working masses for this kind of "reluctance" are themselves unwilling to understand how the masses think, thereby providing an excuse and justification for the destructive tactics of the trade union bureaucracy.

It is now clear that the trade union leadership's reluctance to call a well-organised, all-out general strike until the final victory has meant that the broad masses of the working class are no longer willing to participate in these 24-hour and even 48-hour general strikes, that they see as mere “gifts” to the government. A snapshot of Sunday's gathering was revealing. The president of the GSSE, Mr Panagopoulos, was passing by the protesters when a 40-year old worker turned to him ironically saying, "When are you going to call an all-out general strike, Panagopoulos?" This gained the applause of all of the protesters around him. It is also indicative of the hostile attitude that has grown among the workers towards the trade union bureaucracy. The fact that the  trade union leaders of GSEE and ADEDY did not dare to address the assembled crowd – as was the case in the 24 and 48-hour general strikes last week – has created a new, and unprecedented, situation of "silent" rallies in the Greek labour movement.

The premature and easy breaking up of the rally by the police could have been avoided, not through the safeguarding measures of the trade union bureaucracy – which hardly dares to appear at rallies these days – but through the forces of PAME. This force demonstrated clearly during last October’s 48-hour general strike that they can protect the rallies, give a good lesson to the troublemakers, and also keep the police at a safe distance.

This time, however, the leadership of PAME chose to organise a separate demonstration at Omonia Square and leave the immense and inexperienced masses in Syntagma Square without a minimum of stewardship and organisational guidance. If they had undertaken the defence of the demonstration in close cooperation with the forces of SYRIZA and the trade unions, it is absolutely certain that we could have avoided the premature breaking up of the demonstration. The ease with which the police broke up such a magnificent demonstration with the use of tear gas, reminds us of the sectarian stalemate tactic of organising "separate", "pure" demonstrations, consistently adopted by the leadership of the Communist Party and of PAME in the last 15 years in the labour movement.

Elements of spontaneous uprising

The existence of organised state provocation to suppress Sunday’s mobilisation cannot hide nor remove the fact that a great mass of youth was also involved in the violent clashes with the police and in the setting fire to banks and department stores; these are elements that inevitably characterise any spontaneous uprising.

Thousands of unemployed youth and students, without organisation and political perspective – because of the inability of the Left to convince them of the existence of such an alternative – found no other suitable way of expressing their real anger until the violence against the symbols of the system and the executive organs of state repression erupted.

These spontaneous manifestations of anger, but also the elements of a spontaneous uprising, in general, were evident in 27 cities across Greece. In Thessaloniki we had an equally big demonstration, with huge clashes between protestors and police. Volos witnessed massive occupation of public buildings. In Iraklion there was one of the biggest demonstrations of recent years, accompanied by the occupation of a local TV station. Throughout Greece, the offices of MPs who have voted in favour of the measures were targeted spontaneously, with dozens of ordinary people bursting in and destroying them.

All these incidents are a clear indication that the consciousness of the masses is now reaching "boiling point" and is rapidly moving towards an all-out violent confrontation with the bourgeois regime.

The question of violence, its exploitation by the ruling class and the Left

The ruling class has attempted to systematically exploit Sunday’s explosion of violence to discredit the massive mobilisation of the people, and to unite politically the more backward elements of society and to build towards an intensification of state authoritarianism, cultivating the same climate that recently led to the abolition of university asylum [Note: a law that restricted the access of the police to university campuses]. So once again, all the talk on TV shows was about the need to suppress the right to demonstrate and the Left was on the receiving end yet again.

All this shows that the burning of buildings, shops and banks – even if these banks are deservedly hated by the masses – and the violence clashes with the forces of repression that comes as a result of individual venting of anger and not as a product of an organised and coordinated collective self-defence of the masses, are extremely damaging to the struggle of the workers and youth.

A part of the anarchist and "anti-authoritarian" movement supports and promotes these methods and this means that the labour movement and the Left must draw a clear dividing line with them. Each of these individualistic violent actions in this political movement is deeply damaging to the interests of the workers and the youth. However, the Left must make a clear distinction between the violence of the young protesters – whether they be anarchists or not – and the violence of the state apparatus. State violence serves to defend the interests of the exploiters, while the spontaneous and blind violence of the demonstrators is an immature response to this violence from the perspective of the oppressed.

The stance of condemning violence "in general", which is usually what the leadership of SYRIZA does when pressed by the apologists of the ruling class, is in these circumstances seriously flawed and simply provides an alibi for the forces of state repression which try to appear as the "neutral Punisher" of that violence. Also mistaken is the complete identification of all the youth fighting the police and burning banks with the provocateurs, which is usually what the leadership of the Communist Party does. In this manner, thousands of youth who are rebelling against the system, are being pushed with both hands into the lap of the “audacious” methods of anarchism.

Today's Left leaders have no right to point the accusing finger at the rebellious youth for their immature and ineffective methods of struggle. It is perfectly natural and healthy that the cowardly and abstract political discourse of left reformism and also the arthritic and historically doomed positions of Stalinism do not attract a large part of the proletarian youth. Only by winning back the mass Left parties to the original programme of Marxism, can thousands of rebellious youth be won to a truly revolutionary path.

[To be continued...]

Source: Marxistiki Foni (Greece)