On the EU Summit

STATEMENT OF THE POLITICAL BUREAU OF THE CC OF THE KKE

The Agreement of the Eurogroup (EU of 17) for a stricter framework-control of fiscal discipline does not constitute a strengthening either of the Euro or of the Eurogroup or even more so of the EU.

A fragile compromise was achieved with the will and interests of Germany prevailing, which is not going to blunt the contradictions, nor will the unevenness be surpassed and nor will the economic crisis be dealt with. In any case, the adherence to the strict fiscal management is being disputed within Germany also.

The unification of the European market in the framework of the EU from 1991 to 2000 belongs to the past. Even now, the communist and workers parties or forces within them, which surrendered to the “inevitability” of the EU, should now fight its imperialist character as a whole, they should call on the workers-people’s movement to break fully with the EU, regardless of whether they operate in a state in its leading core or in one of the countries which is in a closer or further orbit from it.

The people’s movement in Greece and in every member-state of the EU must not be trapped waiting for the development of the contradictions between the bourgeois governments and the various sections of big capital, but it must leave its mark on the developments. It must march forwards for disengagement from the EU with people’s workers power.

Now it is becoming even more apparent that the EU is the guardian of the power and profits of the monopolies, now when centrifugal forces are strengthening, which are weakening the imperialist predatory alliance, it is of particular importance that the opportunist line is defeated which calls for a utopian search for a new “pro-people architecture” for the EU. This line leads to the disarming of the people’s movement. The EU and capitalism cannot be humanized.

The workers, the popular strata, must think deeply regarding which political force told the truth and which forces tried to deceive them over the entire previous period.

The KKE, already from the first memorandum, highlighted the antiworker-antipeople character of the Memoranda-Treaties of each Greek government with the EU, IMF, and the unions of international finance capital for the restructuring or the renegotiation of the Greek public debt.

All the memoranda and their revisions are a planned escalation of the economic bankruptcy of the people, with the aim of a limited depreciation for the capital of older creditors of the Greek state and the avoidance of activation of the “Credit Default Swaps” which will bring profits for the companies which had wagered on a Greek bankruptcy.

The checking and the discussions of the government with the Troika concerning the adjustment of the Greek economy to the new stricter demands of fiscal discipline within the framework of the Eurozone, based on the recent results from the Eurogroup, go together with new unbearable burdens for the people. It is going to be a new tsunami of anti-worker measures which will be combined with the tax-plundering of the people. The new anti-people package includes: reductions in the minimum wage, in wages in the former state industries, in the seasonal bonuses in private companies, in supplementary pensions and lump sums received on retirement, in employer contributions to the social security funds, the permanency of the property tax and other tax burdens. The tax controls for the stamping out of tax evasion of high incomes is only window dressing, while the intention to further reduce the taxation of corporate profits is extremely clear.

The adjustment of the Greek economy to the new fiscal framework of the Eurozone is deeply anti-people, while it will not lead to a way out from the reduction of industrial production or economic activity as a whole, that is to say a way out of the crisis and to recovery or a reduction in the public debt.

It is the same recipe of the IMF and the World Bank which had been adopted for the crisis in Argentina, where the obligatory declaration of bankruptcy to the lenders came about after destitution and unemployment had almost reached a level of a dangerous political crisis for capitalist power.

Both domestic capital and its political power as well as its international imperialist allies were never interested in even the most basic needs of the workers and people, but are always interested in the manipulation of working class and popular forces. The differences between sections of capital, domestic or foreign, are related to the goal to safeguard the greatest possible profit and the manipulation of the consciousness of the working class.

The section of capital, domestic and foreign, which today supports the return of Greece to a national currency linked to the dollar, or with the British sterling, is in no instance interested in abolishing the antiworker-antipeople measures which were included in the Memoranda of the Greek governments with the EU and IMF or which were implemented by the Greek governments with the memorandum as the pretext, with the threat of the non-payment of instalments as a bogey.

They conceal from the Greek people that the currency of Argentina is not linked to the euro, but to the dollar, while later on its relative disengagement did not put a brake on poverty and unemployment.

For this reason the working class-popular demands and struggles in Greece must not be restricted to the overthrow of today’s government, but to be directed in the struggle which will create the social and political conditions for the overthrow of the power of capital, the monopolies, for the acquisition of working class-people’s power. For this reason it is important that the people’s counterattack unfolds so that big capital pays for the crisis and so that the balance of forces changes at the expense of the political servants of the EU and the ruling class.

It is not true that this struggle will be waged in a region, in an internationalized world, where only the strong capitalist interests will prevail, the threat of the violence of its power.

It is not true that for the abovementioned reason that the struggle for working class-people’s power in Greece is doomed and a dead-end.

The truth is that the contradictions themselves, the impasses themselves in the exercising of bourgeois power, the sad prospects for the work, the income, and the living standards that exist for the working class, the employees, the other popular strata and in many other countries of Europe and other continents, from neighbouring Italy to distant Australia, from Ireland to the Middle East.

Even more so when capitalist competition in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean-Middle East is increasingly taking on the form of war for the control of the market of raw materials, and transport routes.

The future of the European peoples, the working class and the popular sections of the middle strata, is to be found in the line of rupture with the imperialist unions, in a line of solidarity with every working class-popular alliance for the overthrow of bourgeois power in a country with a stronger or weaker capitalist economy, in a capitalist state with a higher or lower position in the imperialist pyramid.

This line of struggle is a necessity even for the survival of extensive sections of salaried workers and self-employed, pensioners and young people from popular families.

The KKE gives and will give all its forces to this tough class struggle, but the only one which has a prospect for the people.

Athens 14/12/2011

The PB of the CC of the KKE