A meeting for left perspectives in Greece
Sunday 1 December 2024, by Andreas Sartzekis
The need for a left-wing political response as an extension of the social struggles is beginning to take on a unitary dimension in Greece. The disappearance of a ‘Pasokified’Syriza, which led to its implosion, is clarifying the landscape.
While the congress of Nea Aristera, a group formed on the initiative of former cadres around Syriza, is calling for a Popular Front, accepting Tsipras’ disastrous policies in power, it is on the radical and revolutionary left that forces want to put an end to the self-proclamation of the revolutionary party and are working towards a unitary framework, in the light of other experiences. To this end, five groups invited our comrade Olivier Besancenot from France’s Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (NPA) to Athens on 8 November to lead a meeting on the question of the New Popular Front, which is being discussed a bit here. These organisations included DEA, Anametrissi (where comrades from the Fourth International Programmatic Tendency, one of the two groups in the Greek FI section, are active) and Metavassi (a group from NAR, the main organisation of the revolutionary left).
A successful meeting
Olivier began by stressing the seriousness of the world situation, with the bourgeoisie choosing to allow governments of the extreme right to be formed, with all the threats of war that are piling up in the context of inter-imperialist competition, and of course a general extension of repression against mobilisations and the left. He showed how the Nouveau front populaire (NFP) in France is above all the fruit of an exceptional mobilisation that gives hope in the mass movement’s capacity for resistance. And this mobilisation is at the same time the fruit of previous mass movements, for example against retirement at 64, and of the unitary pressure that played an important role for the trade union front last year. But the current situation is that of an abandonment of the NFP in favour of a partisan withdrawal into the electoral framework of the institutions, and in the face of this, the NPA wishes to keep local NFP committees alive.
Various questions from the floor followed, showing an interest that went beyond the five organisations. Generally speaking, everyone seemed very happy with a meeting that ended with an internationalist call to struggle. The event was a great success, with 350 to 400 people in attendance. Everyone left with the energy to face the many deadlines ahead, and with the idea that we must work to create a united and revolutionary front.
Social anger is rising!
There have been major mobilisations in recent days: against the repression of teaching trade unionists, the government wanted to ban a teachers’ strike, but ended up with a public service strike! Of course, things are moving in the universities, in the face of plans to cut a third of the public university’s departments. But also among secondary school pupils, against the lack of teachers and the merging of classes. The 2,500 seasonal fire-fighters are mobilising to ensure that their contracts are not reduced to the summer months, given the catastrophic situation of fires and fire prevention. The inhabitants of islands such as Ikaria and Samothrace are rejecting the imposition of hundreds of wind turbines en masse. All against a backdrop of repression that is becoming Orwellian against fire-fighters, or as in Piraeus, where schoolchildren have been summoned by the police on suspicion of wanting to ‘occupy their school’! One result of the atmosphere may be promising: PAME, the very sectarian trade union branch of the KKE (Greek Communist Party), has invited radical unions such as the delivery workers’ union to a conference.
Not forgetting, of course, the annual mobilisation on 17 November to commemorate the massacre at the Polytechnic University by the colonels’ junta, a high point on the social and therefore political agenda will be the general strike called for 20 November, at a time when 2.5 million taxpayers are living below the poverty line.
17 November 2024
Translated by International Viewpoint from l’Anticapitaliste.
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