The “lack” of democracy or the revelation of its class nature?

The closure of ERT, with the issuing of the legislative act and the suspension of its signal within a few hours, constitutes an escalation of the government’s authoritarianism. The harsher the measures which they are going to take on behalf of capital, the more authoritarianism increases on the part of the state, in order to intimidate the people, to manipulate them and to repress their protests.

This decision, which has also provoked reactions inside the governmental coalition, not regarding its content, but regarding the way the decision was made, created a current of solidarity and support for the 2,500 dismissed workers, with mass demonstrations. The KKE provided its radio and TV station (902) so that the strikers could broadcast their strike programme, demonstrating in this way that the communists “provide a helping hand to all those who rise up” in the struggle. It is a question as to how the ERT journalists might feel about this , who a year ago during last year’s election period were particularly aggressive towards the representatives of the KKE and now see their programme broadcast thanks to the KKE.

Nevertheless, this current of solidarity is not at all homogenous. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois political forces, which reacted to the government’s decision, from the beginning focused on the issue of “democracy”, overlooking the fact that the government is seeking on behalf of the capitalists to adapt the bourgeois state to their contemporary needs, together with a series of other measures, that will ensure cheaper labour power for them, so that it can create preconditions for the recovery of the capitalist economy. For this reason the legislative act is not only related to ERT, but also to strategically significant enterprises, such as EAS (Hellenic Weapons’ Systems,) or ELBO (Greek Vehicle Industry) and others, which are being treated as choice cuts by local and foreign monopoly groups. The same legislative act is also related to Public Organizations that are active in the fields of research, welfare, and other social services. Their closure, merger and under-utilization pave the way for capital to dominate and to make profits from the people’s needs.

Inside this framework, the government is attempting to “restructure” ERT as well, in order to more effectively control the news, to hand over the property and a section of its infrastructure to the private sector, to more easily rearrange the situation regarding the TV frequencies, in favour of the businessmen. This the real class content of the conflict which is underway today and not the “abolition of democracy” that SYRIZA and the others are talking about. When SYRIZA speaks of democracy, it conceals from the people that it is bourgeois democracy, that it is identified with the dictatorship of the monopolies, which run the economy.

The decision of the bourgeois judiciary (the Council of State), which was issued this week and which on the one hand demands that the government open the public radio and television, but on the other approves the dissolution of the company , the dismissal of thousands of workers, demonstrates that the real framework of this “democracy”, where the political personnel of the bourgeois handle their interests, sometimes with legislative acts- dozens in the last 4 years alone- other times with the mantle of the parliamentary correlation of forces, or with judicial decisions or intimidation and violent repression. The issue is not “democracy” in general, but which class’s interests are served and in the end which class is in power. The discussion that must begin today widely amongst the people, is what struggle responds to their interests, against whom and with what perspective. As regards the KKE, the answer is crystal clear and it poses it the people every day with its activity: It needs a people’s alliance, a class struggle, with an orientation of coming into conflict with the bourgeois power and its state, in order to impede the anti-people management and to pave the way for the overthrow of the power of capital and for the organization of the economy, based on the criteria of the people’s contemporary needs and not the profits of the plutocracy.