Statement of the communist organization ANASYNTAXI to the International European Conference “Europe in crisis – for an internationalist revolutionary alternative”

Dear comrades,

The crisis of capitalism, whose effects on the working class are devastating, consists in the overaccumulation of capital, which stagnates and remains inactive because it does not yield to its owners the prior to the crisis profits. Overaccumulation economic crises are a structural characteristic of the capitalist mode of production. They are a manifestation of the contradiction between the social character of production and the private appropriation of the product of production by capitalists.

Capitalism’s crises are not the result of misguided political choices or of poor regulatory structure of the global markets. They are a phenomenon inherent in the capitalist mode of production and they exhibit regularity in their outbreaks.

A symptom of crisis is the exacerbation of conflicts among particular capitalists, as well as among capitalist states. The fierce conflicts between the European Union and IMF on handling the Greek problem are one manifestation of this. The confrontation resulted from the fact that the EU aimed at profits by imposing high interests on credit and the sharing of losses by all owners of Greek bonds in the event of restructuring of the debt (controlled bankruptcy). On the contrary, IMF’s aim was the delay of bankruptcy and wanted to use public debt as an opportunity for profitable investments. On this basis, IMF wanted the extension of the loan treaty with Greece, which, in effect, amounted to the extension of the state of custody and supervision of the Greek economy.

Now, we are in the phase where the stronger imperialist, the IMF, and the Americans, imposed their interest. Moreover, in the event of a new “haircut” of debt, the burden will fall mainly on the shoulders and budgets of the Eurozone states, especially Germany’s, which will thus lose a part of the profits it earned the previous years.

The intensification of competition among capitalists and states is present in every crucial summit of the Eurogroup, in which real battles are carried out affecting crucially the relations among states and which are of importance, in effect, for the shaky future of the European Union and the Eurozone.

In order to overcome its crisis, capitalism has to pass like a steamroller over all the rights and interests of the workers; it has to destroy a big part of the forces of production, labour power being the most important among them.

Capitalism’s crisis results in shutdowns of factories, in mass layoffs and, in consequence, in poverty, misery, and hunger for the masses of workers and for the poorer peasants and self-employed petty bourgeois who get violently degraded to proletarians.

Capitalism can no longer guarantee the workers and the poor even the minimum and the elementary: work, decent wages, a paid retirement, free, public health care system and education, decent living for the unemployed, the basic civil, trade union, and democratic rights.

The fight for the immediate and revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the building of a society without poverty, unemployment, and misery, without wars, without exploitation of man by man is a matter of life and death for the working class!

A proletarian revolution is not a one-act play. It is a whole period of revolutionary turmoil and transformations. In its first act, it initially attains victory in one country or group of countries. The final victory, however, is a universal matter and can be realized only on a universal level. Its final victory, the achievement of socialism-first phase of the communist society, that is, the first stages of the classless and stateless society, of the communist society, of the society of the freely associated cooperative producers, cannot exist in one country or group of countries to the extent that imperialist capitalism plays dominant, or co-dominant, role in world affairs. Socialism can exist only universally.

We would like to make clear that we adhere to the Leninist slogan, which we think is currently crucial, for the necessity of the fight for the United Socialist States of the world, to the extent that this slogan will not confuse any revolutionary on the necessity and the possibility of the outbreak of the revolution and victory in its first act in a separate country or a group of countries.

This country will be the weak link in the imperialist chain and such a link, we believe, is Greece. Perhaps not the only one, but certainly one of them. This is because the crisis in Greece is deeper and more longstanding than anywhere else and it is accompanied by a public debt which is not viable. This fact makes the clash between capital and labour all the more visible to the working class and the poor. Greek bourgeoisie is incapable of coming out of the crisis on its own and its rule is in danger. This is what the weakness of the particular link consist in.

The world capitalist crisis worsens every day. Recession in the Eurozone concerns now its core. In Greece, recession will continue for a sixth year in a row shrinking its GDP to -5% this year to a cumulative -25% from the start of the crisis.

Although the three-party government led by Samaras does everything it can and the propaganda of the corrupted journalists of the mass media attempts to persuade us that we are just a step away from the exit from recession and crisis, the real situation is very different. The prolonged recession shapes the conditions in the country to look all the more like the conditions created by a war. Troika’s plans for Greece is to transform the country into a Special Economic Zone, paying only starvation wages to workers, cancelling all their rights, and selling out all public property and resources to international monopolies under privileged terms for the.

Political instability, successive government changes, the questioning and dissolution of the two-party system, which was the main method of bourgeoisie governance for over 35 years in Greece, the defiance of Samaras’ government by the people and the government’s tottering, summarize a period of inability by the bourgeois forces to stabilize the governance system.

The state of political instability will continue and become more intense in the immediate future, in which the crisis will worsen and will engulf countries which were previously out of it.

Even the smallest demand by the workers becomes a matter of revolutionary struggle: it can only be satisfied with a struggle that challenges private ownership of the means of production as a whole and which overcomes the completely degenerate bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The struggle for the nationalization of the means of production in the name of the working class and the democracy of the workers’ councils are the response of the working class to the inability of capitalism to satisfy all the modern needs of the working class and the poor and to the degeneration of bourgeois parliament.

The very inability of capitalism to secure the basics for the survival of the working class brought to the foreground the question of power.

Revolution in Greece appears, on the one hand, as a necessity: confronted with the full scale attack by capitalists, which leads the working class and the poor to their ruin, the working class will not concede to commit suicide. At the same time, revolution in Greece is possible: there is a large and historically experienced working class, the development of the forces of production is adequate, and, most of all, the prospect of socialism can be understood and embraced by the working class in massive terms.

We believe that the conditions in our country, as they were some time ago, exhibited, to a large degree, the characteristics of a revolutionary condition. Today this revolutionary condition is in recession but it can very rapidly reappear in the foreground in the form of a tidal wave. The task of the communists is to turn the revolutionary condition into a revolution.

The working class in Greece was not able to counter the attack waged against it. The fight against the capitalists’ offensive by the workers is not on a par with the attack. Workers’ struggles are not dangerous for the bourgeoisie and the government. The longstanding influence of reformism in the workers’ trade unions and the lack of a revolutionary party of the working class are to be blamed for that.

The working class comes to the gradual yet increasingly stark realization from its own experience that even the most minimal demand cannot be satisfied in the old way of fighting, the reformist way, since now their demands run straight against the wall of public debt, the memoranda, the Troika, and the government. The demands of the working class have to clash with the state, the riot police, the judge and the drafting. Hence, the struggle objectively takes on political characteristics, while the question of government was raised to prominence by the class struggle itself.

The communist organization ANASYNTAXI has been putting forward for many years now the tactic of the United Worker’s Front in economic and political struggles. From the beginning of the crisis, we formulated a coherent program of struggle, which represents the worker’s response to the crisis. This program has as its main link the unilateral cancellation of all public debt, except the part of it possessed by the workers’ security funds. This demand is strongly connected to the struggle for the nationalization of banks, large capitalist enterprises, and privatized public enterprises, without any compensation to the owners and under workers’ control; the exit from the European Union, Eurozone and NATO; the satisfaction of the demands of the labour movement for jobs, decent living, social care, etc.

At the same time, we provided an answer to the question of who is going to realize this program, which in its entirety cannot become reality within the bounds of capitalist social order (for this reason we called this program transitional). Our response, which takes advantage of the best traditions of the communist movement, is that this program can start its realization by a Workers’ Government, at it is described at the 4th Congress of the 3rd International.

The Workers’ Government can be the start of the revolution, the road to the proletarian power. The slogan of Workers’ Government we put forward and still insist on refers to the government of the workers, of the poorer peasantry, of the working and exploited people. Its ascent to power can be the spark for the outbreak of revolutionary struggles in Greece and in Europe. Its ascent to power can only be the result of fierce class struggle. The Workers’ Government is no replacement or substitute of the revolution itself.

The Workers’ Government we aim at, in the current conditions of relatively normal functioning of the constitutional democracy, will not be one step towards revolution but the first step of revolution, of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It will either be the institutional beginning of the revolution or the institutional defeat of revolution and of revolutionary political forces by reformist forces and the allied bourgeoisie, and then it must be overthrown. However, the slogans of the united political workers’ front and of the workers’ government can elicit the formation of a revolutionary workers’ government, to the degree that they rally the working class and the working petty-bourgeoisie around them, and to the degree that, with the work of the revolutionary proletarian forces, they dispel the reformist illusions of the working class. The formation of a revolutionary workers’ government will be the starting point of the proletarian revolution, “an important starting-point for the winning of this dictatorship”, as the resolution on Comintern Tactics of the 4th Congress of the 3rd International points out.

Foreseeing the deterioration of the bourgeois parties, as a result of their policy in conditions of capitalist crisis, and the strengthening of the Left, we were, and we are still of the opinion, that the slogan of the Workers’ Government can be very rapidly turned from a propaganda slogan to the action slogan of the day.

We might not have been able to form a front on the basis of this action slogan, we might not have sufficiently developed the argumentation on the workers’ government, its possibility and its risks, but all these do not cancel the fact that we took a stand on time, that we responded with a concrete proposal to the situation developing, a proposal which is the result of the experience and thought of the international revolutionary communist movement.

This proposal contributed to the ripening of the conditions for its realization. This becomes now apparent in the fact that many sections of the organized Left and of non-organized leftists concede that it is necessary to build a political front for the realization of the transitional program from a power position. In recent days we have witnessed a mass of political articles and interventions but also of practical initiatives along the lines of the political front the organization ANASYNTAXI has been talking about all along. A practical step along this line is the forming of “Symporeusi” (=marching together) of political forces and activists and the initiatives that are going to follow.

The slogan of “Left Government” which SYRIZA, a reformist coalition of parties, put forward, and with which it won a considerable share of voters, represents a form of “illusory workers’ government” according to the 3rd International’s classification. The fact that on the basis of this slogan SYRIZA’s percentage went soaring highlights, in its own way, the dynamic hidden in the tactic expressed succinctly by the slogan of “Workers’Government”. If communists had moved on time and taken the appropriate measures for building a united political workers’ front under the action slogan of “Workers’ Government”, something we had proposed, things would have been very different today for the communist left and the labour movement.

Under the influence of the slogan of “Left government” a considerable part of the working class gave its support to SYRIZA, and this makes necessary the formulation by the communists of a united front tactic towards SYRIZA. This means, on the one hand, intensifying the ideological and political critique to the illusions SYRIZA spreads to the working class about a parliamentary road within Eurozone and EU towards socialism, and, on the other hand, a policy of unity towards SYRIZA on the basis of the transitional program so as to win over the working class from bourgeois influence.

The reemergence and expansion of nationalism and fascism-nazism is a product of the crisis of capitalism in its imperialistic stage, the stage of decay. Communists must confront the phenomenon with a united front as well, taking the necessary practical steps for its building. In an ideological, political and organized way, the work of the communists in factories and workshops for the interests and rights of the workers, regardless of race, nationality, and gender, as well as their vanguard struggle in the working-class neighbourhoods against the poll-taxes, the cut offs of electricity, the evictions from homes, etc., can confront effectively fascism and its representatives. The effectiveness of this struggle is not independent from the power proposal for the exit of the present crisis on behalf of the interests of the working class. Only a united workers’ front can confront and defeat the fascist groups and put a brake on the prospect that fascists will be used by the bourgeoisie as the last card to stop and put down a proletarian revolution.

The initiative for the International Conference and the Conference itself, to the extent that its workings will be connected with the prospect of the proletarian revolution and the elaboration of a tactic for its outbreak, will prove to be a great contribution to it and can exert real pressure to many directions: against reformism, by dissolving the illusions for the possibility of social policy within the Eurozone and for the prospects of renegotiating international loan treaties in favour of the workers’ interests within EU and without a decisive clash with capitalism; against sectarianism, which puts the revolution off till doomsday whereas it is, long time now, in the foreground. It will certainly play a role in the ideological rearmament of communists, who will recognize in the participants to this initiative the best traditions of the international revolutionary, the Bolshevik, movement.

Communists, wherever they are, taking divorce from reformism and opportunism, should move towards their unity in order to build a revolutionary communist party of the new type. They have to march to the masses today, fighting unwaveringly to bring down Samaras’ government and any capitalist government, with the tactic of the united front, on the basis of the transitional programme, and with the slogan of the workers’ government. This tactic, with this programme and with this slogan, is, in our opinion, the most appropriate revolutionary tactic for Greece today.

Of course, this basis is not sufficient to build a revolutionary communist party of the new type; this requires ideological and political unity on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

But the unity of the communists will not be achieved in a vacuum and cannot be independent of circumstances. If the unity of the communists is to be a concern of the working class and the poor, it should be achieved in the struggle for the workers’ response to the current capitalist crisis.

The restructure of revolutionary forces can only take place on the basis of fighting materialism, on the basis of Marxism and Leninism, and will be made real in the daily struggle of the labour movement against capitalist exploitation and oppression that becomes more intense everywhere, and in the struggle against imperialism and war that expands in all corners of the globe. To this purpose the coordination of action and the unity of all revolutionaries, all Marxists, is a fundamental precondition.

The achievement of a new Communist International is a task of immediate priority, and contemporary Marxists must concentrate on this. For a Communist International of the 21st century, for an International of the final victory. For a new Communist International, based on the principles of Bolshevism, the theoretical, ideological and political heritage of the Third International of the first Leninist years, for an International that will integrate in its action the revolutionary tradition and achievements of all the hitherto existing internationals and of the whole world revolutionary proletarian movement.

Finally, we greet the International Conference and declare that we are available to comrades for any further elaboration of the line we propose. For our part, we are ready to learn the particular lines of all other comrades about the movement in their country.

Long live the world proletarian revolution!

Communist organization ANASYNTAXI