Total war against the working class!

We are publishing here a letter, as received, from a young comrade in Greece. It gives an account of a renewed round of austerity measures and attacks on workers in Greece that may appear to our readers as an all too familiar reflection of similar attacks experience by workers in the west.

In the last few months the Greek capitalist government has carried out a great massive attack on the social security rights of the working class. The government party presented a bill, which effectively plans to reduce pensions, the prolongation of work to 68 years for working men and women, the reduction of the supplementary benefits and of wages. That's a terrible shock for the workers, especially the young and women. It's very important to remember that in Greece 25% of the population live below the poverty line. With this bill the capitalists and their government want to force the workers to work until they die.

The announcement of the government's plans provoked a considerable resistance from many sectors of the workers. During March many sectional strikes took place: transport workers, bank officers, teachers of the secondary education, dockers, employees in public services. The most important was the strikes of the electricity workers and the street cleaners. These sectors defended their welfare rights with lasting strikes. The government, the capitalist cadres of the direction of the "Public Electricity Enterprise" and the capitalist media accused the workers of an "antisocial and criminal attitude" and they started a campaign of calumny against them. But the management of the enterprise preferred to cut the electricity to homes and not to the factories and the industries. The bureaucrats of the union fractions of the right- wing government party, and of the center-left opposition Party (PASOK) with the union cadres of the capitalist Left, led to the strike. It was a trick to control the class struggle. Many times "right-wing unions" participate in the strikes against their own government; it's a proof of the weight of bourgeois ideology within the working class and of the bureaucratic erosion of the workers' consciousness. The strike of the street cleaners continued for a week. The streets were full of rubbish and the laborers of this sector protested against the government. The media again used the weapon of calumny against the strikers; they made propaganda about the menace of epidemics.

The "general strike" organized by the trade unions on 19th March amassed 130.000 people and it was one of the biggest demonstrations in the last twenty years. The parties of the Capitalist Left (the Coalition of the Left and the "Communist" Party) demanded a referendum for the annulment of the bill and they didn't call for a general political strike. The trade unions (General Labor Confederation) are in the hands of the center-left party and of the reformists, the "Communist" Party organized its own demonstration with the unions under its control and its fraction appealed for an "All-workers' Militant Front". This week the government voted the bill into law and that's a heavy defeat for the class.

The Left has carried on demanding a plebiscite. And the bureaucrats, members of the capitalist and reformist parties control the strikes. The working class lost its last rights after the abolition of the historical right of the eight-hour workday in 2005. The trade unions are playing a total reactionary role as part of the capitalist parties and of the state. The influence of the reactionary and reformist tendencies in the workers' movement make it all the more necessary to have an organized revolutionary communist perspective in the battles of the future.