Greece: Ten programmatic points for a Left government – our proposal – Part Two

The deadlock of Greek capitalism has assumed nightmarish proportions for the toiling masses. The recession is getting deeper, tax revenues are collapsing, the armies of the poor and the unemployed are growing in numbers, and pension funds at some point will no longer be able to provide pensions. In these dramatic circumstances, the working class and the poor, having fought tough battles in the past two years which radicalised their political consciousness, now place their hopes in SYRIZA and a government of the Left for their survival.

[Read also Part 1]

E) A government of the Left has to be a revolutionary government!

The government of the Left is not going to have a calm and peaceful reformist road in front of them – as is imagined by reformists. From their first day in office they will be faced with the immediate prospect of a merciless war from the local and foreign capitalists.

The troika will not tolerate substantial changes in the Memoranda. Perhaps they will offer a very short deadline to the government of the Left, along with some changes in the terms of the Memoranda, but only to lure the government into backing down and betraying their campaign slogans.

There is not the slightest room for substantial "renegotiation" of the Memoranda. The reason for this is that if the troika agreed to suspend the implementation of the Memoranda, then they would be sending a message everywhere that the election of a left government can put the brakes on wild austerity being applied across Europe and the world in the name of the large state debts. This would lead directly to a tumultuous turn to the left on the part of the masses in one country after another.

From their point of view, the Greek ruling class will not accept giving back everything they have gained through the Memoranda in the last two years, namely the abolition of collective bargaining agreements, wage reductions, full immunity in industrial relations, tax exemptions, etc.

Any initial attempt on the part of the Government of the Left to be faithful to their election commitment to repeal the measures of the Memoranda would provoke an offensive on the part of the troika and the Greek capitalists, through stifling economic, political and diplomatic pressure.

This offensive would inevitably lead to the suspension of any further loan payments of the Troika to Greece and, of course, to "freeze" any flow of money from the EU to Greece (such as the National Strategic Reference Framework, NSRF, the promises of funding of "major development projects", etc.), since the European capitalists will not finance a government that legislates against their interests.

Such a reaction would give an impetus for a Left government to default on "debt" repayments and would raise the issue, sooner or later, of a new national currency. Therefore, the deepening recession and the international and European capitalist crisis will drive Greece out of the Euro and this will be accelerated by political considerations. This will be dictated by the need to attack the Left in Greece and internationally and blame it as being responsible for a return to a local currency and for the approaching economic catastrophe.

The Greek ruling class and foreign big businesses operating in Greece will engage in an escalating economic sabotage if the leadership of SYRIZA insists on its key election commitments. Large foreign and Greek companies will suspend their operations. They will attempt to smuggle large amounts of capital out of the country. Any attempt by the government of the Left – as announced – to control the banking system will be fought, probably with a big and sudden withdrawal of large deposits. The recession will deepen sharply and government revenues would collapse. A layer of corrupt senior civil servants will sabotage the attempts to apply the "public administration reform", demonstrating that the bourgeois state apparatus, such as police, army, courts, the bureaucracy cannot be converted into its opposite.

However, the Greek ruling class would not stop here. As long as the media are left by the government of the Left in the hands of the private sector, these will create a climate of hysteria and terror against the Left and SYRIZA. Meanwhile, the "hardcore" of the state, the army and police, will start to stage anti-government conspiracies and provocations of all kinds. In these conditions the role of the "Golden Dawn" and other paramilitary fascist groups in these circumstances, is particularly useful for the ruling class. These parastatal gangs will unleash a powerful wave of violence against immigrants in order to create an atmosphere of racial hatred and engage in individual acts of terror against activists of the Left and the Labour Movement.

All this in fact reveals that the coming into office of a left-wing government will be perceived by the ruling class as a high risk revolutionary development, even if the publicly stated intentions of the leadership of SYRIZA are not really revolutionary. How should a government of the Left deal with this expected furious counterattack of bourgeois reaction?

Political passivity and submissiveness, and any illusions in the ability of the capitalist predators to respect democratic legitimacy and in its armed defenders, would be disastrous for the government of the Left. It could only lead to tiring out and frustrating the masses gathered around SYRIZA and this would pave the way for a political offensive of the ruling class to crush the Labour Movement and the Left.

The Greek ruling class historically has shown that when their power is threatened they can become extremely violent. If the government of the Left fails to take power out of their hands by putting control in the hands of the organised working class, then in the following period the country would inevitably be pushed in an authoritarian direction and towards openly Bonapartist regimes. Instead of going down this dangerous and doomed-to-fail path of "gradual reform" of this rotten capitalism and the state which serves it, a government of the Left would have the duty to become a revolutionary government!

In the current circumstances, this means that the first government of the Left would have to call on the people to mobilise and organise in every neighbourhood and workplace, to fight against the inevitable, multifaceted sabotage of the ruling class. They would have to issue an appeal to call meetings in every neighbourhood and workplace, to elect committees of coordinated struggle in the cities and on a national scale, and also create groups of self-defence against the violence of the uncontrolled hardcore of the state apparatus and the fascist parastatal gangs, also connected at city level and nationwide.

At the same time, SYRIZA should immediately be organised as a mass, unified party of the most advanced and most militant sections of the working class and youth. Through a system of internal democracy and the right of different tendencies to express themselves, the new party should discuss and decide on the appropriate political programme of the government and the right course of action to take, involving the broad working masses, to encourage them to actively participate in the exercise of power and the permanent control of a democratic government.

The government of the Left, and SYRIZA, will be under tremendous pressure to capitulate to the will of the troika. The best ally against these pressures is the solidarity of the European and international working class. With concerted and persistent appeals by the Left government, SYRIZA should seek the active mobilisation of workers and youth across Europe, aiming to defeat the multifaceted war of international capital against the working people of Greece.

Above all, the government of the Left should be equipped with an appropriate political and financial plan. We do not require any secret "plan B", to be applied, supposedly, if the – already doomed – attempt at renegotiation of the loan conditions fails. This would be a disastrous strategy that would lead the movement unprepared into the arena of bourgeois reaction. We need now an open, public plan that will convince the working people that it is worth fighting actively for its application.

The old minimum programme of reforms is dead. In today's deep historical crisis of capitalism, especially in the conditions of Greek capitalism, the weakest "link" of European capital, any attempt to implement even the most modest of reforms, such as a moratorium of the Memoranda, will cause, as already explained, a relentless war on the part of local and foreign capital.

The answer to this war can clearly be only one: the implementation of a plan for the earliest possible establishment of a centralised democratically planned economy with the nationalisations of the commanding heights of the economy, to replace rotten Greek capitalism. This is the only way to win back decent living conditions for workers and for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed to find work and dignity!

F) A one-way road to a democratically planned, nationalised economy

The purpose of a democratically planned, nationalised economy is to ensure decent jobs and living conditions for all workers. The "sacred free market", i.e. the unaccountability of big business at the expense of the broad masses of the working class and poor urban petty-bourgeois layers, has to be challenged in order to defend the millions of working people who are being pushed daily by capitalism to the limits of extreme poverty.

The Greek economy would thus operate on the basis of a coherent economic plan, with the active participation and the ongoing democratic control of the working masses, both in local economic questions and at national level. The private banks would be nationalised and integrated into one single central state bank – a source of funding of economic development. The large industrial enterprises in all sectors would be expropriated and transformed into social property. The large agricultural and livestock farms would also be expropriated, in order to plan agricultural and livestock production on the basis of meeting the food requirements of Greek society.

Centralised transport, infrastructure, telecommunications, energy, water and mineral wealth, would become social property. Foreign trade would become a monopoly of the state and would be used in harmony with social needs. By introducing a state monopoly of foreign trade, imports and exports would be based on the real social needs of society and would serve to develop the productive capacity of the economy.

Large retailers would be expropriated and replaced by a socialised distribution network, democratically controlled by the workers' consumer organisations. Education, Healthcare, Social Security, and Social Welfare would be socialised and any profiteering activity in these areas would be banned. Small businesses and self-employed workers would receive incentives for them to join together in bigger economic entities, based on a plan for the gradual assimilation of their units into the constantly developing socialised sector of the economy.

A planned, nationalised economy would put into practice what it is now socially necessary and vital but which has so far not been carried out because it is entirely unprofitable for the speculating capitalists who control the economy. It would include all the unemployed workers, reducing the working week for everyone as required to generate the necessary number of new jobs. The creative, productive potential of hundreds of thousands of workers condemned to standing idle by capitalism will be used and would lead to unprecedented growth of the economy within a few years.

Only the establishment of a planned, nationalised economy can eliminate the factors that lead to capitalist crises, namely the anarchy of production and production for private gain. With centralised planning it would be possible to undertake the necessary investment in social production. For the first time it would be possible not only to set up a coordinated plan to address the serious environmental problems created by the anarchic and ruthless profit motive of capitalism, but also to establish an economic development that respects the natural environment.

With the central planning of the economy, we would be able to create conditions for a better utilisation and faster development of technology, thus massively boosting labour productivity. The rise in productivity would enable us to further reduce working hours, which would result in more time for the workers to engage actively in the planning and running of the economy, to educate themselves, and also to have more time to rest and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

A planned economy is not a utopian Marxist invention. The actual historical experience of the twentieth century has demonstrated its superiority compared with capitalism. It was a centrally planned economy that pulled the USSR, China, Eastern Europe and Cuba out of colonial and semi-colonial backwardness ensuring strong economic growth and a standard of living for their people that were not possible under capitalism. The most typical case is that of the USSR itself, where during the long period from the October Revolution until the mid 1960's, industrial production increased 52-fold, while in the same period in the US the increase was only 6 times and in Britain just two (Source: Ted Grant - Russia: from revolution to counter revolution, Well red Books).

However, at the same time we must also take into account the negative side of the historical experience of what were bureaucratically deformed workers' states. That experience demonstrated that a planned economy cannot function efficiently without the "oxygen" of workers' democracy. In order to build an economy based on the type and quantity of goods and services that society needs, and can absorb, the only way is for the working class, who have direct contact with production but also with consumption, to be in control.

A rapidly growing economy with large numbers of productive units, renders its running an increasingly complicated and complex task, and therefore this cannot be carried out by a small uncontrolled managerial elite. The inevitable result of such an attempt, as was the case in the bureaucratically deformed USSR and other Stalinist regimes of this type in the 20th century is mismanagement, corruption and low quality of the goods.

The truly unsurpassed revolutionary political tradition of the first years of the October revolution gave us a very clear view of how to operate a democratically planned economy, long before the development of the Soviet bureaucracy and Stalinism. The decision of the Conference of Russian Factory Committees in 1917, taking up the recommendation of the delegation of the Bolshevik Party, stated on this subject:

"...The economic life of the country – in agriculture and industry, trade and transport – must be subordinated to a plan that will be determined in order to meet the personal and financial needs of the masses of the people, which will be ratified by the elected representatives and will be under the guidance of these agents through their representatives through respective state and local government institutions implementing the plan.

"Part of the plan to place the agricultural economy under the control of the organisations of the peasantry and agricultural workers and the part related to businesses which use wage labour – in industry, commerce and transport – is drawn up under the workers' control, real members of which are within the company, the factory and the professional labour unions.

"The unification of factory committees of several companies should be established by sector to facilitate control of every branch of industry as a whole and for the coordination of the work with the general economic plan and the logical distribution of orders of materials, fuel, techniques and manpower as well as to facilitate joint action with the professional unions that are organised in production areas. The general councils of professional unions and factory committees, representing the proletariat in the state and local institutions in formulating and implementing the economic plan and the organisation of exchanges between the cities and the villages, have the higher leadership in the factory committees and the professional unions for workers' control in any given place and issue binding regulations of labour discipline in the process of production, approved by the General Assembly of the workers...". [From the collection of essays "Key Issues of the Labour Movement", Xekinima 1983]

A socialised planned economy is the basis for building a developed socialist society, which according to Marxism will lead to a society of overabundance, where most of the class antagonisms will have disappeared and with them the State will leave the historical stage as well. But historical experience has shown that it is unrealistic to believe that such a society can be built without the combination of the productive forces of many economically developed countries. A socialised planned economy cannot ensure sustained high growth and prosperity if confined within the borders of a single country.

Especially in a small and weak productive capitalist country like Greece, the best that a socialised, planned economy could achieve if confined within its national borders, would be to ensure a comfortable and dignified life for the toiling masses, without the exploitation and levels of inequality of capitalism. However, such social progress, particularly in the early stages of establishing the new economic model, would inevitably be combined with the emergence of shortages, not only of technological goods, machinery and accessories, but also of raw materials, fuels, and even some basics goods, such as medicines and medical material, including specific food items. This would be the case because of the large distortions the Greek economy would inherit from capitalism, and also because of the furious war local and foreign capital would unleash against the country.

Therefore, a revolutionary Greece would need the financial and technical assistance of more developed countries from day one. This means that the Greek workers must be committed to fighting with an internationalist perspective. The socialist revolution would have to expand as soon as possible to the international arena and lead to the establishment of socialised, planned economies across Europe. This is the only way in which Europe's workers would be able to offer sincere and multifaceted international assistance in order to Greece to cover the major productive failures of the economy.

This is a perfectly possible historical development rather than the utopia of "exporting" some revolutionary paradigm. The struggle for the overthrow of capitalism in an era of profound historical crisis cannot be confined to the borders of one country. Since the draconian austerity and the smashing of labour rights is the norm nowadays, international solidarity towards the revolutionary power of Greece would tend to ignite a struggle against capitalism in one country after another.

Across Europe the working class represents the vast majority of the population and has powerful organisations. Revolutionary Greece would not stay for long on its own. The United Socialist States of Europe, through the revolutionary struggle of the European working class can and should become the new reality that will replace the current barbaric, capitalist EU.

G) What will happen with the EU and the euro?

The bourgeois clique that runs the EU in accordance with the interests of the large banks and European multinational enterprises cannot afford to see a government of the Left cancelling the memoranda. Moreover, it cannot tolerate even the hint of a project of establishing a socialised, planned economy in Greece. The nature of such a programme conflicts with the structure of the EU, which is built according to the interests of European big business. It is in stark contrast with the spirit and letter of the founding acts, treaties, rules and formal agreements of the EU which defend capitalism and "free market". The expulsion of Greece from the euro and the EU should be considered as inevitable as part of the attempt of international capital to punish the Greek people and government of the Left.

To win this war with the reactionary coalition of European capital, the struggling working class of Greece must have an internationalist perspective. They should inscribe on the banner of their struggle the slogan of the United Socialist States of Europe. From the first moment in office, the government of the Left must shout this motto to the whole of Europe, mounting an active international campaign with all the means at its disposal.

Inevitably, the adoption of a new currency by the government of the Left, which would flow from the overthrow of Greek capitalism after expulsion from the Eurozone and the EU, would be accompanied by a tendency to discredit it in the international markets and place high inflationary pressures upon the country. However, a centralised and democratically planned economy – especially if we defeat the counterrevolutionary manoeuvres and at the same time the European and Balkan proletariat express practical solidarity towards revolutionary Greece, as they embark on their own revolutionary struggles – as already mentioned, is the guarantee that would provide a minimum of tolerable and humane living conditions for all workers. In adopting a new currency, however, it would be necessary to dispel any illusion of pursuing a road of "national isolationism". It would have to be accompanied by a clear call for the creation of a new and truly inclusive and equitable, socialist economic integration around a new euro, which would represent the power of a European-wide planned, socialised economy.

The road to prosperity and social justice, the socialist road, inevitably involves sacrifices. There was never in the history of humanity any progressive, revolutionary, social and political change that has taken place without sacrifices. But what is the other "choice" facing the workers? It is the path of passively accepting the growing capitalist barbarism, the endless sacrifice of millions of unemployed and poor, for the sake of the profits of a handful of capitalist parasites.

Today all the objective conditions exist such that the sacrifices for the victory of the socialist revolution can be rendered the least possible. The working class is the social majority in most countries of the world. It has powerful mass organisations and is much more educated than ever before. Modern communications are so highly developed that revolutionary currents – as seen mainly from the recent outbreak of the Arab revolution and the spread of the movement of the "indignant" – can be transferred from one corner of the globe to another, within a few hours. It would be sufficient to break one link in the international capitalist "chain" with the victory of the revolution in a country for the revolutionary spark to turn into a fire, which would spread rapidly around the globe.

Workers and youth of Greece, of every race and nationality, whether native or immigrant, let us unite in a common revolutionary struggle! Starting with the victory of SYRIZA and the election of a government of the Left, in this land where human civilization made some of its first big leaps, let us have the honour of lighting the first spark of revolution in Europe and turn it into a flame of progress which will eliminate the darkness of barbaric capitalism, the unquenchable flame of socialism!