Fear of Workers’ Resistance Spurs EU Takeover of Greece

ATHENS, Greece, Feb. 13 — Everything seemed to be going so smoothly for the exploiting classes in Europe in recent months.

The “warm glow” emanating from Brussels, the “capital” of the European Union, over the Greek government’s efforts to drastically cut its budget deficits was offering the financial speculators in Paris and Berlin an opportunity to engorge themselves while making working people pay the dinner bill.

But the “glow” quickly began to dissipate as news of a possible general strike by Greek workers against the budget cuts began to circulate. Concern quickly turned to panic. And panic fueled demands by the “middle class” speculators for decisive action.

The result is that, for the first time since its organization, the European Union is staging a takeover of a country’s fiscal spending.

According to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, “the deputies must nod through the government’s proposals for wage cuts in the public service, savings in pension entitlements, reforms of the tax and social security systems, as well as the overall cut in public expenditure of around 10 percent. They have the controllers from Brussels sitting on their shoulders.”

For a time last week, it seemed like such an anti-democratic move might be avoided. France and Germany appeared to be ready to bail out Greece once again in order to avoid a possible confrontation with its workers.

However, by Friday, it was clear that Germany was no longer willing to play the role of “paymaster” of Europe, especially when most of the benefits of a bailout would go to capitalists in Britain, Ireland and France.

But the real issue is that a bailout would push off an inevitable showdown with Greek workers. And European capitalism needs to break this historically militant and powerful working class in order to better compete with the U.S., China and India.

The European Central Bank has targeted “labor costs” as the chief reason for its spurring the takeover of Athens’ spending. Greek workers, along with Portuguese, Spanish and Irish workers, are being targeted by the ECB and EU to pay for the instability and crisis caused by rampant speculation.

Workers in Greece have already responded with strikes last Tuesday and Wednesday. The main labor union federation is now planning for a general strike on Feb. 24.

Unfortunately, it appears that the union officials, and the leftwing parties that sponsor them, including the “official” Communist Party, are looking to do little more than attempt to pressure the social-democratic PASOK government of Giorgos Papandreou, who has already shown his willingness to grovel before Brussels, Berlin and Paris.

In our view, the only way forward for our Greek brothers and sisters is for them to take control of their movement, to remove those seeking collaboration with PASOK and Brussels from it, and to build up new political and economic organizations that can effectively fight for their interests.