Announcement issued by the Politburo of the Workers Revolutionary Party (EEK – Trotskyists)

Lackeys of the EU, of the IMF, of Capital, take your memorandum and get out! All power to the workers! 

 

On the 12th of February, 199 members of parliament, a handful of bourgeois politicians belonging to PASOK, to the Right, along with two fascist members of parliament, voted once again “yes to all” of the mass homicidal decrees and hikes imposed by international lenders, by the IMF and the EU, and by international and domestic big business that are all represented by Papademo's government. 

 

At the same time, in opposition to these 199 lackeys, one million people flooded Syntagma Square and the surrounding streets in the centre of Athens, as well as other squares and streets throughout Greece, marching against the socially cannibalistic Memorandum. With the workers and youth at the forefront, people gathered side-by-side from all popular social strata, of all ages, united by a common struggle. 

 

The  government of Papademos, trembling from the potential of such a mass mobilisation, launched a planned assault on the masses through the use of police violence and chemical warfare from the start of the mass gathering in Syntagma, at 5:15pm. Not even beatings from the brutal riot police and the DIAS motorcycle squad, nor the injuries of hundreds and arrests of dozens, deterred the rebellious masses, who regrouped and returned to the battlefield, over and over again. A people who have been converted to a nation of the deprived have noting left to fear. State terrorism can no longer terrorise them. 

 

Social desperation is becoming uncontrollable. The fire burning within society is much larger than all the fires that burnt banks and stores. As always, the socially backward “prim and proper ”, and the leaders of KKE and SYRIZA, repeat, by habit, their harsh words against the “provocateurs” and “hooligans”. This is not to say that the police  (under orders from Papoutsis and Papademos) do not send informants and police aids to create an intimidating atmosphere in an effort to scare the masses, of course this is something the masses must keep in mind in order to defend themselves.  Those, however, who literally burn the lives of millions are the true provocateurs, those of the EU, the IMF and the hooligans in parliament and in government who give the finger to the people and ravage salaries, pensions, jobs, hospitals, schools, the youth and the elderly.   

 

The 12th of February revived the uprising and riots of December 2008 and panicked the capitalists both locally and abroad, providing before their very eyes the spectre of Social Revolution. The same heavily wounded and bankrupted bourgeois political system was dealt an even heavier blow this time from the pressure of such an unprecedented mass mobilisation, causing the three party leaders, Papandreou, Samaras and Karatzaferis, to face massive party resignations and expulsions, even from some of their closest supporters. They are weaker now than they've ever been. 

 

But we must not remain here, focusing on what has happened, what we do the following day is now crucial. Let us not allow the bureaucrats and those who patronise the workers to continue delaying or boycotting future mobilisations. Elections will not provide the solution, the solution lies in the immediate organisation and victorious conduct of an indefinite General Political Strike that will last until the fall of  the Papademos' government and its potential successors, so that the path can be cleared for the workers to seize power and take control of their lives  into their own hands. 

 

The workers and the unemployed will not sit around waiting to get slaughtered by the new Memorandum. They've sucked our blood for long enough! The capitalists must pay for the bankruptcy of their own system. No cutbacks to wages, pensions and jobs, the restoration of purchasing power only through generous increases. Immediate and unilateral debt cancellation! Nationalisation of the banks and all public services, and bringing under direct workers control all industries and business that strategically close or fire workers, without any compensation handed to the capitalists! 

 

Together we must throw the troika, the EU and the IMF out of the country, and call on the support of all people who are already agonising over these same policies: the Portuguese workers, 300 000 of whom demonstrated in Lisbon on the 11th of February, the Spanish workers who have called for a General Strike on the 17th of February and will be taking to the streets, the Italian workers, the workers across Europe. In order to be spared from the financial Memoranda demanded by Brussels and the decrees proposed by Berlin and Schäuble, we have to fight for the demise and dissolution of the imperialist EU, we have to fight for a United Socialist States of Europe!