The people have no benefit from the decision of the EU Summit on the debt

Statement of the Press Office of the CC of KKE

22/07/11
The new programme for the management of the public debt will not bring any "respite" or benefits for the workers' and people's income. This process will not come to a halt since we are talking about an extension of the debt repayment which means the mortgaging of the present and the future of the people. This estimation is confirmed by the praise of the governments' anti-people measures and the commitments for a new escalation.

In fact, the decisions constitute a small controlled default under the aegis of the Eurozone, a compromise that the powerful EU member-states, the ECB, the IMF and the banks agreed on. It is a compromise achieved in the nick of time following the over-lending of Greece in the period 2010-2011 at high interest rates not only from the markets but also from the mechanism of the EU-IMF. The extension of the lending "recycles" the problem of the Greek public debt and Greek economy’s low level of competitiveness within the Eurozone; it sharpens the problems of unevenness that also directly concern Portugal and Ireland even Spain and Italy.

The political decisions of the leaders of the Eurozone will not solve these contradictions. They announced certain measures of Keynesian character at the level of the Eurozone, with the consent of the ECB, which support the banks against the depreciation of a part of their capital.

The guarantee of the Greek banks does not mean the improvement of the workers' income, the protection of the farmers and the self employed from the liberalisation of the markets, the dominance of the monopolies, and the privatisations.

The Greek people as well as the people of the member-states of the Eurozone should not be mislead by the "triumphs" of its leaders concerning the progress in the direction of the European economic governance that might include the formation of a mechanism for the issuance of Euro-bond, the creation of a European credit rating agency etc. All these are linked to the realignments among the imperialist centres, the contradictions between the Eurozone and the interests of the Anglo-Saxon imperialist centre where the well known credit rating agenciesare based.

The Greek people should not be trapped into the slogan of the government and the EU concerning "national unity" which seeks to halt the class and people's struggle, the struggles, the political damage to the bourgeois parties, the bourgeois political system and the very power of capital and the monopolies.

The statements of the leaders confirm the assessment of the KKE that the public debt, the trade deficits, and the generally the problems in the balance of payments among the capitalist states are merely manifestations of the capitalist crisis, of the competition and the unevenness that intensified through the EMU and the Eurozone, the liberalisation of markets, the strengthening of capitalist economies (e.g. China and India) with a workforce of millions whose wages are at 19th century levels.

No capitalist programme of development such as the so called "European Marshall Plan" will reverse the poverty of the working people, the pensioners and the popular strata in Greece and other countries like Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and even the hard core of the EU, Germany and France.

In any case , the Greek working class and the people have a negative experience from the course of the Marshall plan in Greece which was soon cut back and above all did not boost development, in other words it did not support industrialisation in Greece but the militarization of the country in order to confront the people's movement.

The only way out for the working class and the majority of the people is to struggle to overthrow the power of the capital which along with its international allies creates and manages the debt at the expense of the working people’s and the self employed’s labour.