Struggle in terms of class conflict

The largest demonstration in recent years in Thessalonica was carried out on Saturday afternoon 10/9 by PAME, The All-Greek Antimonopoly Rally of the self-employed, The All-farmers’ Militant Rally, The Students’ Struggle Front, and the Women’s Federation of Greece, against the anti-people policies of the social-democratic government, the EU and the IMF.

The demonstration took place on the occasion of the beginning of the International Fair of Thessalonica, which was opened by the Prime Minister, who is persisting in the anti-people –anti-worker political line and announced new measures which will shrink the people’s income.

In his speech at the demonstration, Sotiris Zarianopoulos, member of the ES of PAME, called on the workers and the popular strata to foster a combative atmosphere everywhere, to escalate their struggle and prepare for the next general strike.

Thousands of demonstrators marched in the city centre against the climate of fear and intimidation which the government attempted to cultivate. The attempts to create a scenario with incidents around the mobilization of the class-oriented forces failed. Even if the international TV media sought to focus once again on the provocateur activity of small groups, the reality which they wanted to conceal was that tens of thousands workers demonstrated with the slogans and militant set of demands of PAME. The slogans “The crisis and the debt do not belong to the people, they were brought about by the profits of capitalism.” “An end to the games, capitalism cannot become humane.”, “Worker without you no cog can turn, you can do without the bosses”, resounded in the streets of Thessalonica.

The forces of the class-oriented trade unions and rallies demonstrated in organized and well-protected way.

It should be noted that on Saturday morning a dynamic and massive demonstration was held in Athens, in which the GS of the CC of the KKE, Aleka Papariga, participated and made the following statement to the media: “We must set aside our fears, illusions, hesitation, otherwise we will find ourselves literally with our backs to the wall, the working people, the working class, especially the youth. From this moment the countdown must begin for the rebirth and counteroffensive of the movement.”

The same evening, in her speech at the KNE-ODIGITIS festival in Patras, Aleka Papariga noted that “It remains a serious possibility that before a substantial recovery is made a new economic crisis with international dimensions will manifest itself. It is also very possible that the competition between the capitalist states will sharpen again very suddenly, that centrifugal forces will be observed, that the tendency for withdrawal from the Euro will be strengthened. Without the aggressive intervention of the people, the peoples, the results will be unpredictable, catalytic, and with new negative consequences. For this reason the people cannot be spectators, fatalistic, afraid, and disoriented.

It is no exaggeration, we find ourselves facing a cessation of payments of salaries and pensions for example in Greece. It is no exaggeration that Greece will be even more deeply involved, be threatened even more by the competition of the imperialist powers in the region which with the weapons of NATO and the repressive, military mechanisms of the EU intervene openly in order to acquire these or other markets. The danger is great as the country’s bourgeois class seeks to take an active part in this struggle, indifferent concerning the sovereign rights of the country – loyal to their class perspective. The country is thought of differently by the people on the one hand and differently by the capitalists and their parties on the other.

It is no exaggeration that we predict -in conditions of increasing unemployment and rising poverty and while the class struggle is flaring up- that we will arrive at the fall of the government, that the processes concerning the so-called government of “national salvation” will accelerate or of another variation e.g. centre-left alliance governments etc. There could be the rapid rotation of governments, temporary impasses and/or greater impasses in the achievement of the stability of the bourgeois political system.

In conditions where the bourgeois political system is being shaken, the people must be absolutely ready, to push the situation forward, to widen the ruptures and the impasses of the system, to move into counterattack, to pose as its goal the overthrow of the power of the monopolies.”

The GS of the CC of the KKE stated that “ we struggle in terms of class conflict, rupture and overthrow., so that we can gain time, so that we can force the opponent, the government, the big employers, Brussels into a temporary retreat at least so that we can organize the major counterattack, with international support and solidarity: for the overthrow of the power of the monopolies, for working class popular power, for the people’s economy which will make the people the owners of the wealth, protagonists in the rebirth at every level from the economy and workers’ people’s control to the political system and the international relations of the country.”

11/09/2011