- by William Briggs
- The Guardian
- Issue #2136
Graphic: wftucentral.org
A magnificent expression of working-class power has seen Greece come to a standstill. A general strike was called to coincide with the second anniversary of a catastrophic train crash that killed 57 people. The criminality of capital and the Greek state has finally been proven.
The strike is important, not simply as a solidarity action, but as a reminder to the ruling class that they have much to fear from a risen people.
Hundreds of thousands rallied in Athens. Two hundred more rallies were held across the country as Greek workers across all sectors stopped work and took to the streets. In a sign of solidarity, judges and lawyers in Greek courtrooms stopped proceedings for a minute in tribute to the lost lives and in solidarity with the striking workers.
RAILS OF PROFIT
Two years ago, in Tempe in Greece, two trains collided. One was a passenger train and the other a freight train. A fireball erupted. The cause was initially covered up. The freight train had been carrying an illegal cargo of liquid chemicals.
The militant trade union organisation; the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) said that “the real causes of the conflict and the horror are the “rails of profit” that crash our lives for the interests of the exploiters of the people! These rails must be torn up!” Since the rail crash, 300 Greek workers have died on the job. Security and safety measures have been described by employers as an expensive “cost” for employers and for the state.
The Greek Communist Party (KKE) declared that “today it is the Greek people, the trade unions, the associations of the self-employed, scientists, students, women, pupils, it is the entire Greek society who are speaking up. It is the time of the relatives of the victims of Tempe for speaking up!”
PROFIT VS LIVES
The strike can be described in ideological terms as a political strike. Such a strike is especially significant. It is a sign that the working class is coming to understand that, as Marx described it, it is a class for itself rather than a class in itself. This simply means that the class and sections of the class move from responding to individual issues that directly and economically affect it; pay and conditions, to an awareness that as a class it must struggle against the entire bourgeoisie. This is class consciousness and a class-conscious working class is the direst of threats that can face capitalism.
As the KKE said, two years ago, millions of people across the country chanted “Their profits or our lives! We fight back in a more militant and organised way! We are reclaiming our lives!”
The KKE launched a massive political campaign ahead of the strike. Cadres all over Greece held hundreds of meetings, tours and speeches in workplaces in support of the strike, stressing that “the big employers, the government and the state must feel that the people who are determined to struggle are breathing down their necks! The profits of the capitalists suffocate the needs of the people. Our breath of life is the struggle for our just cause to overthrow this system!”
The World Federation of Trade Unions, just days before the strike spoke of “unprecedented participation, with factories, construction sites, shops, schools, universities, offices and services, even theatres and entertainment venues going ‘dead.’ ”
The action saw all transportation come to a halt. Rail workers, taxi drivers, air traffic controllers, all joined the strike. Its ramifications were felt across continents. The American Embassy in Athens issued a statement warning American citizens to keep away from public places due to a heightened risk of violence.
The Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, issued a warning. Violent acts would be met with force. The point that the PM was happy to ignore was that the strike was in reaction to the violence of the state and capital. Criminal actions by state and capital led to the loss of 57.
As if on cue, ‘violence’ was broadcast on the screens of the bourgeois media. Hundreds of thousands of workers had assembled at Syntagma Square. Most had left when a small group of hooded ‘anarchists’ threw their Molotov cocktails and burned rubbish bins. On cue they were met with riot police and tear gas.
A KKE statement described how the riot police sprayed chemicals across the centre of Athens: “the familiar scene, however, which is being set up to distract the people, is not capable of erasing the message sent by the people with today’s huge rallies throughout Greece.”
SOLIDARITY
While the US embassy fretted, and international travel agents and airlines worried about lost profits, solidarity actions and messages of support poured in. The World Federation of Trade Unions described what was about to happen as being of profound significance and called for global support. The call was taken up across Europe and beyond. The Turkish Transportation Workers’ Union, for instance, repeated the question that was the rallying call for the strike: “Their profits or our lives? The clear answer you give to this question is a turning point in the struggle of the international working class. We stand with you in this rightful and honourable fight against the sacrifice of our lives for the profit and greed of a handful of parasitic capitalists.”
What captured the imagination of workers was not just that a militant Greek working-class was protesting against a corrupt government or even against serious malpractice by a capitalist concern. The importance was that it has assumed a political nature and one that aims directly at the capitalist system itself. Importantly the 83 or more unions that took part were largely led by PAME.
The significance of this trade union grouping of 850,000 members is that it was formed as an initiative of the KKE. Since its founding in 1999, PAME has led workers in struggle and has sought to offer political leadership to the working class.
It would be an exaggeration to suggest that this one-day general strike represents a ‘revolutionary moment,’ or that the capitalist edifice in Greece is facing imminent collapse. The strike does, however, indicate a significant turn in working class resistance and an important rise in class consciousness. The people almost instinctively feel this and the ruling class in Greece most definitely feel the heat of a risen people.
Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of the KKE, said as the strike was about to begin that “what frightens the system and its governments is that the working people are actively targeting capitalist profit, the culprit of all the heinous crimes that are happening all around us, the daily tragedies of this system like Tempe. The solution does not lie in old formulas that bring disappointment and disillusionment and take us backwards. We have confidence in the power of the organised workers movement … in our just cause, in the struggle for a new organisation of the economy and society, where our lives will not be considered as a cost, where the satisfaction of the needs of the people and society will be the motive for the development of the economy, where capitalist profit will be abolished and power will be in the hands of the people.’
Their profits or our lives! It is a rallying call to all and in all countries.
