Greece - NO, Greece - YES

On Monday evening 6 July there will be a joint public meeting in London called by the Greek Solidarity Committee and the British Trades Union Congress. Just as in another 10,000 halls and squares across Europe and the wider world, people will gather and respond to the democratic decision taken by a small country's voters about whether to accept the iron rule of the rich and powerful from their continent or whether to start down another path. Once again Greece has given us a glimpse of true democracy.

Greece's government and people have fought a bitter fight against Europe's rulers and have won some real battles. First they have completely smashed the credibility of the 'permanent loan-repayment economy' policy. The IMF leadership is now under political siege. The EU leaders in general appear unable to manage any progress for their euro-based economy. Second, the Greeks have become a centre for a network of political and social alliances across large swathes of Europe, alliances that are completely alienated from Europe's current direction. Third, Greece has won Europe's youth. Fourth, Greece has developed a momentous system of social solidarity, based entirely on human empathy and mutual aid, embracing everything from food, to empty factories, to pharmacies. None of this movement believes that 'self help' substitutes for state services, but all of it is dedicated to the prevention of human degradation and despair. To fight you must be fed - and educated and healthy and with enough pride and self respect to carry on.

If the 'no' vote wins, all these successes will be needed - and more. Much more. Capital, fleeing from true democracy, is desperately short. Syriza's first, immense priority is to recapitalise the country; from resources held by the rich in and outside Greece to whatever can be forced from the European Central Bank and / or loans from China and Russia. (Remember, it is the IMF that predicts the country needs £50 billion Euros to survive.) There needs to be a major international solidarity effort to defend Greece's essential services and standard of life. Next, the door to a new Europe has to be opened. Alongside a European debt conference Athens might host a European Future conference, with all those organisations, parties, campaigns, unions, charities, churches, movements and centres that want a different road for the European Continent than the miserable and myopic vision of the financiers and  and the hopelessly corrupt political class that rules it today.

If the 'yes' vote wins Syriza will need to go into opposition (or it will destroy itself and the gains that has already made.) Syriza will no doubt face a tsunami of abuse from the current EU standard bearers who will be seeking to prove to Europe's millions that there is no point in entering the fight for a better life. But Syriza and its supporters will need to concentrate on something quite different. They will need to build (and in some cases rebuild) a leadership for the whole country - a task not yet achieved. But in a much more desperate context, scarred again by a rise of Golden Dawn, by continued corruption in the state and its armed forces, by the initial despair of its previous supporters. A momentous task from a toxic starting point.

But we, and the rest of the European continent, and millions across the world, are no longer blind and we are not neutral.

Greece's horror story.

When the TV pictures from Greece bounce round the world we see ordinary people grappling with their futures. They are rational and intense as they try to work through the meaning of the choice they will have to make on July 5. Often we see parents with children referring to their lives and their children's prospects. They talk about the fear they have that, as parents, they may be placed in a situation where they will have to build their children's lives starting from a great leap backwards, without help, outside of Europe's 'advanced civilisation' and on their own. None of the world's or of Europe's great and powerful institutions seem to be lined up with them. These massive machines of wealth and power are not there for them. On the contrary, the European institutions appear to be trying to ruin Greek democracy and to maintain, for the foreseeable future, Greek poverty. Imagine, for a second, how brave you will have to be on July 5 to defend your own, your family's and your country's integrity.

And what of the other side of this 'argument?' Most of the main EU lead actors simply repeat their lines, shaking sad heads or remonstrating with the absent Greeks as though they did not understand the real world. (The point of course is that they want to change it.) Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, has a particular shtick. She 'demands' that the Syriza leadership
'Act as adults.'
Leave it to us grown ups eh? In fact Christine Lagarde has only one merit. She replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the sleazy would-be French President, just found 'innocent' in a second court action involving the legality of his sexual predilections.

Christine Lagarde has consistently headed up neo-liberal cause in Europe. No talk of debt relief (the heart of the matter with Greece) yes to permanent austerity and an infinitely 'flexible' Greek labour force. This is, presumably, being 'grown up.'  Lagarde's economics and her Greek policy have never been credible, even at a personal level. This is what she said about taxes and austerity.
'Asked if she is essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe that they have had a nice time and it is now payback time, she responds: "That's right." ' (Guardian 25 May 2012.)

As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes. This is of course already a higher salary than that of the French President, the German chancellor or the British PM - all of whom do pay taxes. Lagarde is also under renewed police interrogation for her role in the award of 420 million euros 'compensation' to Bernard Taple, a well known French crook with a prison record, from the time she was Sarkozy's Finance Minister. And finally ...
'The International Monetary Fund has electrified the referendum debate in Greece after it conceded that the crisis-ridden country needs up to €60bn (£42bn) of extra funds over the next three years and large-scale debt relief to create “a breathing space” and stabilise the economy.... The IMF revealed a deep split with Europe as it warned that Greece’s debts were “unsustainable”. According to the IMF, Greece should have a 20-year grace period before making any debt repayments and final payments should not take place until 2055. It would need €10bn to get through the next few months and a further €50bn after that.' (Guardian on-line 2July.)


It is likely that whatever trials yet face the Greek population, the Greeks have managed to split the debt question in Europe wide open - and Madame Lagarde's future now looks pretty bleak.

Podemos on Greece - plus the polls.

July 1

"In view of the situation in Greece, and following the breakdown in the negotiations by the Eurogroup, Podemos wishes to communicate the following:

1.- Last Monday, the Greek government presented a proposal to the Eurogroup which included important concessions and was unanimously welcomed by the lenders as being reasonable and viable. In the following days, however, the international creditors led by the IMF did not accept the Greek government’s proposal to tax the wealthiest sectors of society, restructure the debt and launch an investment plan to revive the economy. Instead, they demanded to raise VAT on basic services and food and required further cuts on pensions and wages. In their effort to demonstrate that there is no alternative to austerity, the creditors only seem to accept the money of the poor, and insist on imposing the same logic and measures that led the country into a humanitarian disaster. The Greek economy is asphyxiated. To keep strangling it is the precise opposite of what must be done.

2.- Facing such blackmail and extortion, the Greek government has reacted to the ultimatum in an exemplary manner: by calling on the people to decide their own future in a democratic and sovereign way. Unlike the Spanish governments of 2011 and 2012, the Greek government has refused to violate the popular mandate derived from the January election. All the attempts at coercing, intimidating and influencing this vote by unelected powers, especially by the European Central Bank -which is willing to suffocate the Greek financial system to influence the outcome of the referendum-, constitute a flagrant and unacceptable violation of the democratic principle. We say that Europe without democracy is not Europe: all democrats should join their voices in denouncing these intolerable interferences and pressures. Democracy is incompatible with letting unelected powers govern and decide for us. It is democracy what is at stake.

3- With their intransigence, the creditors have demonstrated that they have no interest at all in solving the Greek debt crisis; their aim is rather to subject and overthrow a democratically elected government so as to prove that there is no alternative to the politics of austerity. Their blindness is such that they are willing to put at risk the integrity and the stability of the financial system and the European project itself, exposing them to speculative attacks whose price will ultimately be paid also by the citizens of other countries. We will say it once and again: they will be the ones to blame, they will be responsible for the consequences of this disaster.

4- Syriza did not create the tremendous economic crisis that affects Greece. It was the governments of New Democracy and PASOK, the friends of our PP and PSOE, who falsified data and accounts, surrendered the sovereignty of the country to the Troika, and handed Syriza an economic and social catastrophe that is necessary and urgent to reverse.

5.- Many international actors have already distanced themselves from the dogmatism of the creditors. Hundreds of thousands of people across the world have expressed their solidarity with the Greek people in their defence of the democratic principle. We demand that the Spanish Government and the European institutions respect the sovereignty and dignity of the Greek people, and that they consequently guarantee that the referendum takes place in conditions of freedom and complete normality. The democratic will and the fundamental rights of the Greek people, which have been systematically attacked during the long years of austerity, must be respected.

There are two contradictory fields in Europe: austerity and democracy, the government of the people or the government of the market and its unelected powers. We stand firm on the side of democracy. We stand firm with the Greek people."

Opinion polls in Greece; A poll taken between 28 and 30 June by a Greek Daily newspaper gave 54% as no and 33% yes. After the banks had closed, the same newspaper stated that the proportions had shifted to 46% no and 37% yes. On 30 June a 1000 person telephone poll, done for BNP Paribas Bank, gave 47% for yes and 43% as no. The most comprehensive and representative poll so far was the ProRata poll on 1 July which stated that 86% of Greek voters will vote; 50% will vote no and 38% yes. This poll also broke down support for the 'no' voters showing that 'no' was ahead for entrepreneurs, self employed, public and private sector workers and pensioners, 'housewives' and unemployed (62%.)

Greece; hope versus fear

Rumours of rumours. The British Financial times has just dug up a letter from Tsipras (30 June) to the Troika offering concessions. Of course we already knew that the Greek government had made a last offer on June 30. They told us. Who has decided to make their letter today's news? Angela Merkel and the Troika. Why? because they think it will undermine confidence in Tsipras among voters in the referendum on Sunday to show he was making concessions.

The European Central Bank has already turned on the screws to shake the Greek public. Barely an hour goes by without another European political pipsqueak adding their (feather) weight to the endorsement of the rectitude of Europe's worthy bankers and their assorted political apologists. The Italian Finance Minister trooped on to BBC radio (Today, BBC 4) to repeat the agreed mantra, completely dodging the frustrated interveiwer's point -
'But surely everybody knows there has to be Greek debt relief.'
These people no longer engage even in the elementary economic realities, accepted now by the rest of the world, Greece will never pay the debts. Money that they never had. Greek people will permanently labour in decades of austerity, to meet the impossible goal of repayment. That is the EU offer. And Greeks are to suffer - so the rest of us learn who sets the rules.

Rich, privileged people, mainly from rich privileged families, whose greatest day to day fear is whether they will get the seat thay want in a restaurant, have an existential fear. How long are the rest of us going to put up with it? The Syriza speaker at a quickly arranged rally in London's Trafalger Square, June 30, told the hundreds there that she had spoken to her mother in Greece about which we she would vote in the referendum. Her mother had said
'I'm going to vote fuck off!'

That is the essence of Sunday's vote. A 'no' vote may mean much bigger concessions from the Troika, including on the debt question; it may mean that the EU leaders, with a scared look over their shoulders at the bond markets, decide Greece is out of the Euro - perhaps out of the EU - or a range of possibilities in between. In the latter case it will certainly be a tough couple of years to recreate a country and a currency that can build the sort of society that Greek people want. But what is the alernative? A 'yes' vote will mean the endless prospect of austerity, chained to an unbreakable weight of debt and a country ruled by Euro-bankers.

The real question is now a question of will; of hope over fear; of whether somebody in Europe can at last tell them to fuck off; of whether we can all join in.

The screws are tightening, but the last poll shows 57% say they are voting no.

Greece fights for its life

The European Central Bank - as expected, and following political consultation with its masters - decided that it would not back Greek banks against a run this week. Yet that was the major reason why it was set up! The ECB was designed to create a tsunami of Euros for the Euro countries, backing Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and other weak banks, in order to get growth going across the Euro zone - at virtually any cost. (The 1.1 trillion euro scheme, announced this January, involves the ECB printing over a thousand billion euros and buying 60 billion euros a month of EU governments' bonds.) The costs of backing Greece's banks are minimal financially. But Greece is grand politics.

The aim of Europe's political masters in the last stage of the negotiations was to split Syriza and regroup the Greek parliament. Now it has become to split the Greek people. Not the arrangement they sought. These latest 'masters of the universe' are highly adverse to decisive political and economic choices made democratically by the people. They are used to a slimy political class of self seeking bootlickers that would normally do anything to get in with the money in the room and whose main skill is obfuscating key questions in front of their own populations. However, the EU is now on the spot. The supposed firewalls erected to cordon off the impact of a Greek exit from the Eurozone have not so far stopped the interest rates for Spanish and Italian government loans having to rise rapidly. It looks like the Greek population is about to mess with the Eurozone's future after all.

But that does not mean that pressure cannot be applied. Thus the ECB's 'decision' not to back Greek banks. Think how clear headed, principled and brave you now have to be, with the Brussel's manufactured fear of no income, following five years of dwindling resources and services, to vote 'no' next Sunday. (In fact Cyprus managed bank capital controls for three years, but stayed in the Eurozone.) The vote remains a major risk for the EU, which therefore suggests that some backdoor concessions could still be offered as a further pressure on the result. There might be more than the current hint of future overall debt relief for example. We shall see.

Syriza leaders are correctly stressing the political limits of the referendum. They say it is designed to bring the direct and democratic opinion of the Greek people to the negotiating table in the argument over the Greek debt and the EU support that is required. But that has not stopped them underlining the significance of the vote for the leadership of Greece. A Syriza minister ('Today,' BBC Radio 4, 29 June) said that should the referendum accept the Troika's proposals despite Syriza's strong opposition, there would need to be a new government. In other words Syriza's project would be defeated; a new government set up, and the next stage of the Troika's austerity programme for Greece would begin.

And the alternative? If Greece votes 'no' but the EU leaders still do not make major concessions, then the Syriza has brought itself to the point where it has the mandate to end austerity, to start growth and to end poverty and the humanitarian crisis - but it will have to do that initially within the country's own resources. Out of such bold steps, it would begin a different journey to new sort of European union.

Greece; back to the wall; back to basics

The Syriza leadership have characterised the action of the financial institutions used by the EU (the European Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and the direction they took from the European Council, as an attack on the dignity, the democratic will and the future prospects of the Greek people. They have come to this conclusion out of their prolonged struggle with these bodies; in other words directly from their own experience. The Greek proposition, that the permanent debt / austerity model of Western European capitalism is a failure, had been decisively rejected by Europe's main leaders. Syriza has now deployed the only counterforce which it is able to engineer - that is to say the democratic view of the Greek people themselves. Greece will decide who rules Greece, Europe's current leadership, or the Greek people. And this is a turning point for Europe, perhaps for the whole world. 

Opponents of the Greek government in Greece, like the remnants of Pasok, denounce Syriza for not taking the decision themselves whether to accept the Troika's 'offer'. But every democrat in the world is thrilled by Syriza's 'choice'; to denounce the deal but to ask the people for their agreement. This is a huge decision in people's lives. It is magnificent and historic to see democracy used to determine key issues of power and wealth that have for so long in the West been unavailable for public scrutiny let alone public choice. Opponents of the Greek government outside Greece are now scared. They were working for regime change in Greece but they were not prepared for a decisive rebuttal now from the whole of Syriza. Will Angela Merkel be the first European leader to reduce the 'ever closer union'? Will the first major act of the new European Central Bank be to allow the Greek Euro-based economy to slide into chaos? Will the non payment of the IMF loan lead to a repudiation of all Greek debt? 

The next period in Greece will obviously be determined by the course of and by the outcome of the referendum. (Although it is not altogether impossible that the Troika might be induced by Merkel and the US to make concessions - if only to muddy the vote.) It will also set the frame for the entire anti-austerity fight - certainly in the rest of Europe - and should the reputation of the IMF be restored - across large parts of the globe as well. In Europe the prospects for Podemos in Spain, Sinn Fein in Ireland, anti-austerity forces in Portugal will hinge in large part on the Greek outcome. Should Greece slide into social collapse and political chaos, which some in Merkel's party openly and cheerfully predict, then the Front National in France, the Danish and British far right will be significantly strengthened. Their cry will be that the left cannot deliver true independence from German hegemony, from mass immigration and from failed internationalism - because the left exists, pthe right claims, to invariably promote the subordination of national identity!  

But the defence of the Greek nation now and its political and economic integrity, is a most decisive national and international task. The Greek government has to rise to the leadership of the whole nation, one of the least economically developed in Europe, to insist on the right of Greeks to a modern, mutually supportive, socially advanced country. Greek wealth and power is held in large part by an oligarchy; more similar to Latin American models of ruling elites than traditional European dominant classes. The Greek oligarchs have adapted to globalisation and taken their companies' names to Hungary or to international waters etc., to avoid tax. Underneath them are more than 720,000 small businesses. There are 73 small businesses for every 1000 Greeks. In Greece 60 % of employees, including those in the public sector, work in businesses employing under 10 workers. (In the US it is 11%. In the UK it is 21%. In Germany it is 19%.) This structure of capitalist enterprise is highly vulnerable to low capitalisation, family employment, loan poverty and requires a high use of services by a economically secure population. Erratic and uneven income is the norm and this is also associated with difficulty in planning of government tax revenues. 

If a new Greek nation is to be created, whether remaining inside or outside the EU, albeit definitively outside the Euro, which is aimed at securing the most advanced conditions already available to the populations in the northern European countries, it follows that a most radical reorganisation of the Greek economy will be required. Following on from an inevitable deep currency devaluation for the new currency, accompanied by swingeing measures to hold the line against any further impoverishment for the mass of Greek's working class population, a decisive new economic policy will need to be created and should rest on three pillars. 

First, the oligarchy needs to be immediately expropriated. All its assets, its fixed capital in Greece and whatever can be rescued from foreign banks etc requires seizure. Like the 1974 abolition of the Greek monarchy, the oligarchy (but not the managers who will unfortunately have to be bribed) must be abolished and sent packing. This is essential because the government must control the main economic levers available, stabilise them before they are ransacked or stolen by their owners, and keep trade and production turning.  Second, presented as an emergency measure only, the government must take a monopoly over all movement of big capital and therefore incorporate the main banks, pension funds, large private fortunes and insurance and finance companies in a rigid legal framework, with inspection, to prevent the nation's wealth disappearing. Resourses from this source are needed to shore up state services and decisively win the small business owners. Third, key national assets, ports, pipelines, airlines etc must be immediately nationalised or renationalised with assurances to previous partners offered, and new partnership arrangements sought for their use, involving strict requirements for long term investment and the use of Greek labour with their established conditions guaranteed. 

These measures need direct attention, before counter measures on the streets and in the barracks can get beyond idle chat and into the planning stage. The economic programme of the government as a fait accomplis is the best argument to stall those who want to act illegally. They will still be there and they will have secret money and international friends. The best defence is speed and clear definition of the actions required and the mobilisation of the people who have a new country to build. 

These suggestions may seem dramatic but they are, simply and coldly, a measure of the depth of the crisis that Greece now faces. Previous defaults were mainly carried through by rightist governments (e.g. Argentina which, although successful after 5 or 6 years, went forward by making the poor bear the terrible costs.) The Greek government must make other richer classes take the weight of the changes it needs to make to rebuild its nation - where hope really has turned into practice.