Peoples of Europe rise up!

THE HEADS of the G8 nations meeting in America last weekend decided that Greece must be urged to stay inside the Eurozone and renegotiate its debts yet again. The costs to the world’s bankers if Greece leaves the Eurozone would be counted in trillions and, as far as the imperialist ruling class of this planet is concerned that must not be allowed to happen. Other struggling countries like Italy, Spain and Ireland would be likely to follow and the euro would collapse as a currency.

There was another small item in a newspaper last week commenting on how small close-knit groups with a shared world outlook can lose contact with the real world and imagine everyone thinks as they do and the world is as they imagine is to be. Their combined mutual wishful thinking reinforces their delusions. This is certainly true of the heads of the G8. Separately many of them could see that Greece is very unlikely to be able to remain in the eurozone but when they all got together their greed and wishful thinking got the better of them. They decided it would be possible to inflict yet more suffering on the Greek people and their own personal fortunes and those of their high-flying capitalist close friends could be protected from the coming storm.

No, the Greek workers cannot endure anymore austerity suffering. They did not cause the problem — that was down to the greedy euro-capitalists who pushed countries with weak economies into the eurozone in order to be able to fleece them more easily. It was the bankers who threw caution to the wind and caused a global problem of phenomenal toxic debt by gambling in futures, hedge funds and other abstract concepts of wealth that were not actually wealth but just wind, water and fairy dust. It was the lazy, greedy feckless bankers who came to western governments demanding bailouts that could only be met by forcing levels of austerity on the workers that spell out the end of normal living for millions of people and leave them destitute, wondering how they will survive from one day to another.

The Greek people have refused to elect any government that will comply with the demands of the banking imperialists. They want their sovereignty back. In a second round of elections it seems they are likely to support the relatively left-wing party Syriza, which would take them out of the eurozone but not out of the European Union altogether.

The Greek communist party, the KKE, which has growing support, says this is not enough. Just staying in the EU would still leave the country on a slippery slope that would leave any Greek government being coerced into meeting EU demands.

KKE general secretary Aleka Papariga said the main reason KKE saw no scope for cooperation with Syriza or any other party in a coalition “that would be beneficial for the people” was that the proposal made by the leftist grouping did not stretch beyond the elections themselves. KKE will remain in the political opposition, she said.

Describing the day after the elections, Papariga said the political landscape would resemble “quick sand”. She also predicted that whatever government does emerge from the new polls will be short lived. The ultimate aim of the KKE is to take Greece not only out of the EU but out of the whole capitalist system that caused the mess.

And if that throws the remaining EU countries into an even worse economic crisis, it is up to the workers of those countries to follow the example of the Greeks and throw off the burden of the EU altogether.

The EU was constructed by capitalists for capitalists to supply them with never-ending wealth and power. They screwed it up by being too greedy and wanting too much too fast. We must get off our knees and throw them out. Only then can the workers of the European countries begin to build a genuine European community based on the mutual interests of the workers, on peace and on social justice.