The 3rd Memorandum debt refinancing pact signed between the Troika (European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank) and the Syriza-led government in Greece will have disastrous effects on the Greek working class and working people. It constitutes a monumental betrayal by the Syriza (social democratic) party of its previous promises to stand up to the European bankers and to end and reverse austerity imposed by previous bourgeois governments. The various attempts by Syriza (or its supporters abroad) to justify or excuse this sell-out agreement \u2013 or to deflect responsibility away from the Tsipras government in Athens \u2013 fail to alter that basic reality.<\/p>\n
As the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) correctly noted in its recent statement, the government is essence is burdening the people with a new loan worth 86 billion \u20ac and savage measures that accompany it, such as the further reduction of the people\u2019s income, the new heavy taxes, the maintenance of the new property tax, the significant increase of VAT on items of mass popular consumption, the reduction of pensions, the implementation of a new and worse social-security regime, the gradual abolition of supplementary assistance for poor pensioners, and the wholesale privatization of public assets.<\/p>\n
\nThe current crisis is rooted in Greece\u2019s membership in the EU, and especially its entry into the Eurozone. Governmental debt was high even before its entry, but after 2002 the European and Wall St. bankers flooded Greece with \u2018easy money\u2019 and extremely generous debt-refinancing arrangements. That, combined with tax evasion by Greek corporations and the super-wealthy, resulted in a huge and unsustainable \u2018debt bubble\u2019 (now estimated at almost $400 Billion US). When the global economic crisis hit in 2008, Greece couldn\u2019t meet interest payments to foreign bankers without massive new \u2018bridging\u2019 loans \u2013 this time with onerous conditions requiring vicious austerity measures imposed on the people. Wages and pensions were cut, public sector workers laid of, and social services slashed, resulting in mass unemployment, poverty and misery on an unprecedented scale.<\/p>\n
Although not quite as acute, a number of other European states face similar fiscal debt crises \u2013 Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, France, and some of the Eastern European states swept up into the EU vortex. Everywhere, vicious austerity measures \u2013 imposed by the Troika and private bankers \u2013 have exacted a heavy toll on working people who have been made to pay for the capitalist crisis.<\/p>\n
All of this stems from the class nature of the European Union itself, which is dominated by the European Capital \u2013 the giant monopolies and banks \u2013 and which serves its interests. The illusions of social democrats and other \u201cleft-wing\u201d reformists that it was possible to transform this imperialist centre into a progressive, democratic and \u2018social\u2019 Europe have been dashed on the rocks of this capitalist reality.<\/p>\n
It is appropriate to recall Lenin\u2019s sage observation in his famous article penned one hundred years ago, \u201cOn the Slogan for a United States of Europe\u201d (1915) that:<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the standpoint of the economic conditions of imperialism \u2013 i.e., the export of capital arid the division of the world by the \u2018advanced\u2019 and \u2018civilised\u2019 colonial powers \u2013 a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Illusions sometimes die hard, however. After years of suffering through austerity-imposed measures, the Greek people had hoped that with the election of Syriza, austerity would end and the crisis would ease. This was not a na\u00efve, erroneous judgment of the masses \u2013 it was what Syriza itself promised if elected. But that early enthusiasm quickly dissipated when immediately following the election, Syriza struck a deal with the Party of Independent Greeks (ANEL), as its junior partner in a ruling coalition. ANEL includes extreme right-wingers, with some members having made explicitly anti-Semitic statements and expressed the wish for immigrants in Greece to \u201cgo back to their own countries\u201d. Then the new Syriza government sent its finance minister off to Brussels to renegotiate the terms of Greece\u2019s debt enslavement to the European bankers; then it reneged on its promise to rehire sacked government workers; then it offered NATO a new naval base on its soil; etc.<\/p>\n
In mid-June \u2013 more than a month before this fateful agreement was approved \u2013 our Party predicted that Syriza\u2019s \u201cstructural and programmatic limitations, aimed at seeking accommodation and an \u2018historic compromise\u2019 with EU Capital will invariably lead to defeat, absorption and betrayal of their radical-sounding promises. In our view, genuine working class advance must be based on a complete \u2018rupture\u2019 with the logic of capitalist state rule, and a determined revolutionary struggle to supplant its power with working class power, with socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the crunch came, and the Troika refused to moderate its demands for conditionalities on a new set of bail-out loans, Syriza called a referendum to gather mass support behind its bargaining position. The 61% \u201cNo\u201d vote was a significant popular rejection of austerity policies and the heavy-handed rule of the Troika. The government however was dishonest about the nature and purpose of the referendum. The \u201cNo\u201d was in fact a \u201cYes\u201d to Syriza\u2019s counter offer, which was essentially the same as the EU offer. Only the KKE exposed this truth during the campaign.<\/p>\n
By declaring in advance its fidelity to the EU system and to the Euro \u2013 and as well to the aggressive NATO alliance \u2013 the Syriza government had no negotiating position or alternative, and was destined to fail and be forced to accept the EU-imposed conditions.<\/p>\n
By falsely raising the expectations of the Greek people to end austerity, and then to sign and approve the Memorandum, including further pension and social cuts, higher taxes, and forced privatizations, can only be characterized as an abject surrender to the dictates of EU capital, and as a betrayal of the people\u2019s trust and their class interests. There is no question that Germany and other like-minded \u2018hard-liners\u2019 prevailed in imposing this savage agreement, but Syriza must also be held accountable for this monumental debacle. For this reason, reference to a \u2018coup\u2019 by the Troika is dead-wrong, and is intended to absolve the treachery of the Syriza government, and to place all of the blame on Brussels.<\/p>\n
The new situation is one of crisis \u2013 a social-economic crisis as the recession and the people\u2019s hardships will intensify, and a political crisis within Syriza itself is it shed \u2018critics\u2019 of the agreement within its own ranks, and prepares to find new, willing \u2018partners\u2019 among the bourgeois parties in order to cling to power.<\/p>\n
It is clear that this drama has played out exactly as the Greek Communists predicted; that the maturation of the crisis in Greece, while obviously greater and deeper than elsewhere in the EU, is by no means unique, and that a \u201crupture\u201d with the EU, and a cancellation of the entire debt, along with winning mass working class support for a fundamental, revolutionary alternative, now seems to be the only viable alternative to avoid complete collapse and the further resurgence of fascism.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the Greek workers, farmers and \u2018middle strata\u2019 (small business, professionals, etc.) \u2013 in other words the vast majority of the Greek people who are now burdened with even harsher austerity \u2013 have no choice but to unite and fight against the Memorandum and the economic and political forces responsible for thrusting it upon them. In this continuing fight, they deserve our wholehearted solidarity.<\/p>\n
Central Executive,
\nParti communiste du Canada
\nJuly 21, 2015<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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