by TASSOS ANASTASSIADIS and ANDREAS SARTZEKIS
As we write this article, every effort is being made in the Greek media to turn people’s attention not to the urgency of a massive and ongoing mobilization, but to the tense atmosphere of the discussions within the European Union about whether Greece “deserves” or not to be helped, and to what extent recourse to the IMF can be acceptable.
This discussion is certainly not without interest, for at least two reasons: it makes it possible to see how the great speeches on European unity and its famous constitution become scraps of paper when inter-capitalist contradictions develop; furthermore, the placing under supervision of the Greek state by unelected European institutions and the German and French governments makes it clear that a really effective response by workers in Greece requires a working-class fightback at the European level, and many gestures in this direction are encouraging, even though limited: the presence at the head of the big demonstration in Athens on February 24 of John Monks, general secretary of the European Confederation of Trade unions, the numerous declarations of solidarity with the struggles of workers in Greece.
Solidarity for more