Let’s go one step further
On the present situation in Greece
At the time of the writing of this article the ruling class is continuing to search for the “right” person who as “transitional” prime minister can guarantee implementation of the unpopular measures to be taken against the people of Greece, squeezing them once again and ensuring continuation of the most savage exploitation in recent history.
We are in a situation where new austerity – and other – measures are continually being announced, wages cut, redundancies constantly growing, bargaining agreements hacked to pieces, the number of unemployed and poor people is increasing, social rights and civil liberties are being up, where repressive mechanisms and their assistants act more and more like a Mafia than ever before, and where society is being crushed further every day.
As a result there is massive social unrest, as thousands of demonstrators take to the streets and squares either as strikers or simply as frustrated people. There are numerous new attempts at social organising such as the local people’s open assemblies and new movements (such as the No Pay Movement), while at the same time the whole social movement contines in its conflict and clashes with the forces of repression and their parliamentary assistants.
The 48-hour strike called by the central union confederation GSEE (General Confederation of Greek Workers) and ADEDY (Civil Servants’ Confederation) on 19-20 October produced a massive, unprecedented mobilisation across the country, as thousands of workers, unemployed, pensioners, students, schoolchildren, etc. went on strike and took to the streets to show their opposition to the measures being taken by the rotten political system and the plethora of laws that are now destroying our entire society. In Athens, a vast sea of people turned out – one of the largest strikes in recent decades – clearly showing the huge social and political rupture between the great majority of the people and the entire class of political and economic power. As a result, the social plundering has been fully de-legitimised and the only weapons left in the hands of the State and its institution is complete suppression and the salvation generously offered by the world of parliamentary representation.
In particular, the contribution to this process by the PAME (All Workers’ Militant Front, a syndicalist part of the Communist Party-KKE), copying the counter-revolutionary practices of social democracy and Stalinism since the 1920s, has tried to block every movement with different characteristics to their own, suppressing all forms of labour and popular radicalisation and preserving and saving the bourgeois parliament building from angry demonstrators. This attitude by the PAME/KKE exceeded all bounds when, on the same evening of 20 October, a militant worker and member of this party died because of the murderous chemicals that the police used and the party attempted to link his death to the clashes between the KKE and other protesters. Some other left formations have been moving on the same wavelength (perhaps with more audacity), organizations like ANTARSYA (a non-parliamentary coalition on the anti-capitalist left, outside the KKE) and some of their components, together with some Maoist groups, imploring the Communist Party to give them some attention.
But apart from the clearly repressive – at the expense of the autonomous and non-party-aligned social movement – tactics by the Stalinists, the miserable attitude by some parts of the protesters must also be condemned, some sectors of which are self-characterised as anarchists and anti-authoritarians, who attacked not the KKE guards, but the simple PAME protesters with marbles and petrol bombs that fell into the crowd. We must condemn these practices in the most categorical manner, as we do the attacks of the KKE guards who used helmets and sticks against any other demonstrators.
However, we can now see that there is a broader “systemic arch” that includes both the State, its institutions and the parties involved in those institutions, but also some leftist extra-parliamentary forces which have been already deployed in the name of “safeguarding” the constitutional system (from the “uncontrolled” people) and the “organised” movement (that is, institutionalised syndicalist and political representation) and is attempting to control and define the limits of bourgeois normality within which the social anger and indignation can move.
As the crisis deepens and the social war is exacerbated, the challenge now is to bring up the issue of how to finally overthrow social barbarism, by collectively building a new life on the wreck of the entire old world which is adrift together with its components. Another goal must be to go beyond the limits of the spectacle of mass demonstrations, limits which are imposed by the system and the mass media, and turn the mobilization into something more real, with more concrete action and not just a regular spot on the TV news.
While we are at a historic crossroads, in a situation where the possibilities for social counter-attack and subversion have now occurred and one can no longer hide behind the alleged passivity of society, we have seen, however, the weaknesses and failures of those forces who act in the name of social change but who are substantially hiding behind the mistakes and systemic choices of the institutionalised Left.
However, the forces of class-struggle anarchists are still small and fragmented and cannot manage the burden of responsibility by themselves. Yet the dominant characteristics of a significant part of the anarchists are still violence for the sake of violence, hostility to any anarchist organisation and aformalistic tendencies that lead nowhere, despite some flashes.
But it is time that this multi-tendency current for unmediated, horizontal, direct-democratic social disobedience and change in society, should develop its own independent, autonomous path of struggle for social counter-power. Through its own instruments, which have no connection with military-style debates, parliamentary and press aformalistic illusions. It needs this social movement to establish its own counter-institutions for the organisation of life on the basis of individual and collective empowerment, solidarity, cooperative economics and direct democracy everywhere. Grassroots unions in workplaces have appeared over the past 3-4 years, there are scattered, local, public and open assemblies, self-managed projects that have timidly begun to appear as a result of the generalised crisis… these all point the way. And there are also the class-struggle anarchists, and also various other militants who share the same views, despite their small and scattered forces and the lack of a relevant tradition… they too must play a multifaceted role.
Let’s go one step further. If we are to bring about the social revolution we must begin from a change in our lives towards an organised, creative way! For anarchy and communism!
