On October 19th and 20th 2011 in Athens, the working class was massively mobilized in

Syntagma square against the austerity measures taken by the Greek Socialist government and

state. It took the brutal intervention of the militia of the Greek Stalinist party KKE to

prevent the demonstrators from invading the Parliament and blocking the Deputies' vote. On

July 5th 2015 after the referendum, the “people” came to demonstrate in Syntagma square to

support Tsipras' government bearing even more severe austerity measures than the ones

adopted in 2011 and which have still been worsened at the Eurozone summit of July 12th.

In 2011, the Greek proletariat was showing the path to follow for the whole world proletariat

after the bursting of the open crisis in 2008. In 2015, the national unity realized against the

European diktats and thanks to the democratic virtues of the referendum, the so-called

sovereign expression of the people, shows the path that the international bourgeoisie wants to

take to impose a major defeat on the revolutionary class at the international level.

The utilization of the democratic mystification – which led to the end of the former Egyptian,

Tunisian, Libyan, etc., dictators – had already succeeded to extinguish the movement of

working class revolt during the “Arab Spring”. It has been likewise with the movement of the

“indignados” – with the slogan ¡ Democracía ya ! (Democracy Now !) – in Spain which has

formed today a “radical leftist” bourgeois political party with Podemos, ally of Syriza. The

dead-end of the unions' Days of Action in the other main European countries has come to

complete the smothering of these first struggles against the capitalist crisis opened in 2008.

The Greek proletariat ended up isolated very quickly, without enough support from the other

parts of the international proletariat, without immediate perspective, to be able to keep the

energy it had manifested from 2008 to 2011. Even so, it was still important for the Greek and

European bourgeoisies to force and derail as much as possible the workers from the defence of

their living conditions, that is their class interests, and to push this advantage by imposing a

political defeat and by erasing the experience of the previous years. This is the particular task

of Syriza in objective link and coordination with the rest of the European ruling class, which

allocates roles between the bad cops – the Troika and the European governments – and the

good cops... the Syriza government and its austerity measures as severe and dramatic as the

ones promoted by Europe, supported by the so-called radical European Left whose first ranks

are occupied by Podemos of course, but also Die Linke (Germany), le Front de Gauche

(France), etc.

The political offensive is not only directed against the workers in Greece. Far from it. It is

also directed against the proletarians of the whole world and above all of the central countries

of capitalism. The great January 11th 2015 demonstration in Paris after the assassinations at

the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, the racist PEGIDA demonstrations in Germany and above all

their counter-demonstrations, were the signal that the capitalist class had decided to drag and

mobilize in the streets around the defence of the state, the nation and democracy. The

organization of demonstrations of support to Syriza in the main European cities as well as in

other continents, particularly in North America (around the International Socialist

Organisation in United Statesand Québec Solidaire in Canada for instance) confirms this

willingness through the adaptation of this general policy to the immediate situation with a

false play of opposition between the left and right, anti-austerity, indeed anti-capitalist,

against the right so-called neo-liberalism.

The Syntagma square demonstration of last July 5th is the bourgeois response to the working

class demonstration against the state and its Parliament of October 20th 2011. It goes the same

with the street demonstrations in the United States after the successive racist and murderous

police provocations of the last year. They constitute a bourgeois reaction, under the cover of

supporting Obama's federal government behind the slogan of a “non-racist and democratic

police”, which responds to the distrust and the anger which are increasing against the

governments and states as was, for instance, expressed in México after the massacre of

students in Guerrero, through the popular and workers demonstrations and revolts, massive

and persistent, against the police, the justice, the government, the left as well as right parties;

in brief against the state. Or still as response to the massive mobilizations and strikes in

Brazil before and during the soccer world cup.

The economic crisis of capitalism and imperialist wars can't but increase even more. We are

only at the beginning of this political and ideological confrontation in which the capitalist

class, by adapting its offensive and its mystifications to the national situations, aims to derail

the growing anger against misery, repression and wars, that is against capitalism, on to the

terrain of defence of democracy and the nation. The stakes are huge :

- either the international working class will increasingly assert the defence of its class

interests, the defence of its living conditions, and will oppose the political forces of capital,

right and extreme-right, left, so-called radical left and the unions;

- or it'll let itself be led on to the terrain of capitalist democracy and the defence of the state

and nation under one form or another.

In the first case, it will not only succeed to defend itself at the immediate level and to limit

the worsening of its living conditions but above all it'll open another perspective for itself and

the whole of humanity: the perspective of a society without misery and without war. In the

second case, that of the Syntagma demonstration post-referendum, of the demonstrations in

Baltimore and other American cities, of January 11th in Paris, it will let itself be led on to its

class enemy's terrain and will end up suffering political and bloody physical defeats in false

dichotomies which don't concern it at all and are traps. Is this not what the 1936 Spanish

war teaches us? Behind the defence of bourgeois democracy hides the international working

class's defeat and the outbreak of a 3rd imperialist world war.

The first thing to do is to strongly reject bourgeois democracy in all its aspects. For the

proletarians, not doing so implies defending the enemy class's interests, thus those of

capitalism.

To the defence of bourgeois interests, that is of capitalism, we must oppose the defence of the

proletarians' living conditions. To national unity, that is the submission to the capitalist class,

we must oppose the international unity of the revolutionary proletariat. To the defence of

democracy, that is the dictatorship of capitalist class, we must oppose the massive

organisation of the proletariat in general assemblies, strike committees and workers councils.

To the defence of the capitalist state, that is its laws, its police and its political forces, we

must oppose the geographical spreading and unification of the working class struggles so that

we end up destroying this system which does not offer anything but misery and death.

IGCL, July 13th 2015

www.igcl.org

intleftcom@gmail.com

PS. We invite our readers to read also the statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency Greece -

Solidarity with the Workers not the Capitalist Government ! whose position and political orientations we

essentially share : http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-07-10/greece-solidarity-with-the...

government.