Greece: Who should speak now? The people or the leaders?

Tuesday's 24-hour general strike in Greece – the 16th day of general strike in the last two years – highlighted on the one hand the willingness to fight which exists within the working class and on the other, once again, the ineffectiveness of such strikes that are not part of a more general and coordinated and long-term struggle.

Photo: George Lautaris The idea of organising a coordinated and long-term struggle with the aim of bringing down the government of the troika and the Greek bosses, is today is not something limited to the "advanced" layers or something which is seen as having a limited scope amongst the ranks of the workers. On the contrary, it is the most obvious truth that one encounters in everyday conversations among ordinary workers. But who has the responsibility to transform this struggle into a reality?

The workers are not an amorphous mass that mobilises all of a sudden at the same time and all together, and spontaneously achieves victory. Historically they have created powerful weapons to accomplish this purpose. These weapons are the mass trade unions and political organisations. These organisations function on the basis of the authority granted to the leaders, whose task it is to lead, coordinate and promote the best and most effective methods of struggle, and raise the appropriate demands.

But what is the attitude of the labour leaders today? The union bureaucracy so far, has merely limited itself to opening the “safety valve" to defuse the anger of the workers and then closing that same valve shortly afterwards, all the time acting in accordance with their bureaucratic ambition, which is that of maintaining a position of power. But what about the leaders of the Left? [Note: in Greece this refers to the KKE and Synaspismos, mainly] Are they raising the necessary demands for the workers , are they developing a perspective for the future of the struggle and the key of issue of power? The truth unfortunately is very bitter: they do not present any such proposals!

Of course no one can expects these proposals to come from the leadership of Dimokratiki Aristera [the Democratic Left], a party which was created as a result of a bourgeois manoeuvre in order to weaken the Left and provide a left-wing "fig leaf" for the bourgeois coalition governments. But what about the KKE and SYRIZA leaderships who are calling on the workers continually to "revolt" and "rebel"? [Note: SYRIZA is the left alliance of which is Synaspismos is the main component]. In yesterday's rallies Aleka Papariga [leader of the KKE] and Alexis Tsipras [leader of Synaspismos] called once again on the workers to be “responsible”. But we have to disagree with these two comrades on this key question of exactly who should take responsibility. Those who must now assume their responsibilities are these leaders and not the people!

The workers have shown in practice during the last two years that they are willing to fight. Not only have they responded massively to all the calls to strike action, but many times they have gone beyond the leaders, with recurrent spontaneous demonstrations in the squares around the country, with workplace occupations and hard and long militant strikes (OTA, Greek Steel, etc.). What we need to hear now from the leaders after two years of ineffective struggle are answers to two key questions: 1) How can we overthrow the government? 2) What will replace the power of the bankers and other capitalists? Instead of concrete and clear answers, the workers hear the leftist leaders going on abstractly about "revolution" and "rebellion."

What the movement requires are not empty words but organisation, a plan and political objectives. The workers have had enough of all the emotional talk of "uprisings." The anarchists and all sorts of sectarian groups are daily talking of this. For example, what little is left of the nuclei of the "indignant" movement have broken all records of issuing such calls, since last summer. Not a Sunday goes by without a call for the masses to revolt, and they manage to gather a few dozen honest passers-by every time. The role of the leaders of the mass organisations is not to scream, imitating the desperate sects, but to organise mass struggles and offer a political perspective to the masses. Therefore, every worker and every youth is perfectly justified in issuing a sever reprimand to leaders of the KKE and SYRIZA: comrades, drop the abstract calls and talk specifically about what needs to be done!

The Marxists fully understand this desperate and spontaneous call of the ordinary workers to the Left leaders, and this call needs to be filled out and given specific content. In addressing ourselves to the leaders of the KKE and SYRIZA we have put the following essential demands to them, namely;

· Start campaigning now for an all-out general strike until the government is brought down and go for early elections, calling for self-organisation in each workplace as a counterweight to the trade union bureaucracy's reluctance to organise such a strike!

· Offer a specific political solution to the workers in the upcoming elections! You must form an alliance – a united front – on the basis of a programme to save the working class and poor people! You owe it to the working class to sit at the table of dialogue, including the active ranks of your party in this debate, to develop such a programme. You do not have the right to use your political differences as an excuse to leave the bourgeoisie to rule undisturbed! Every hour that the bourgeois leaders remain in power means more pain and blood for the workers! Now that the enemy is striking out savagely against us, the first thing that is required is to work together to disarm them. This means that we must fight to take the power from the ruling class, without delay, before millions of people are plunged into the darkness of misery, calling on the workers to mobilise for this in each workplace and neighbourhood.

Of course the political differences between the Left parties are real. The leadership of our party, Synaspismos, believes that there is a need now for a government that will implement a Keynesian programme of income redistribution in the direction of building a "social Europe". Another part of the leadership of Synaspismos (the leadership of the Left Stream) believes that the key condition for any progress in the country, with the prospect of socialism, is to exit the euro. The leadership of the Communist Party believes in the programme of "popular power" with the future aim of building socialism in Greece along the lines of the bureaucratically deformed USSR.

The Marxists of Synaspismos believe that the programme of the political alliance of the Left must give a voice to the workers; it must include a series of interrelated political objectives, such as the expulsion of the troika and the cancellation of any debt to the loan sharks, the placing of the commanding heights of the economy – banks, large industrial and commercial enterprises – under workers’ control, with the democratic planning of the economy by the workers themselves, replacing the current corrupt and authoritarian rule with the civil institutions of workers' democracy, and all this as part of an internationalist struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe. A whole range of intermediate views and programmes, from left reformism to centrism, are to be found within both SYRIZA and the Communist Party.

The political programmes, however, must be perceived as weapons aspiring to give vent to the struggle of the masses and not as vetoes in order to paralyse the movement. Nothings should be allowed to stand in the way of a political alliance of the Communist Party and SYRIZA, which in these circumstances would be a big step forward for the workers. Let us bring together the activists of both parties in a struggle to remove the bourgeois and the troika from power in order to implement polices on which agreement can be found after a broad democratic debate, both among the ranks and their leadership, while at the same time inviting the masses to mobilize actively in support of the implementation of these measures.

At the same time we must agree on establishing institutions of power that reflect as closely as possible the direct will of the masses themselves, so that the programmes of all political currents within the labour movement can be given the opportunity to win a majority in these institutions and the workers themselves can intervene decisively to change or supplement in accordance with their wishes and interests the political tactics, but also the composition of the government.

This is the only road to salvation for the working class and poor people and the Left leaders have a moral responsibility to take this road. Turning yesterday's statement by Aleka Papariga, the leader of the KKE, ("Now the people must speak") we say that the leaderships must speak!

(Athens, February 8, 2012)