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

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-workers-not-the-capitalist-government.