Capitalism is the virus
Joint struggle of Greek and immigrant workers for the defense of our rights
Socialism is necessary and timely
A meeting point for Greeks and immigrant workers was again this year Fix Park in Athens, which gathered at the event organized by the Party Organization of Attica of the KKE, for the 19th year, with the slogan "Capitalism is the virus. Joint struggle of Greek and immigrant workers for the defense of our rights. Socialism is necessary and timely!"
"Greeks and foreign workers united", "Socialism is breath, capitalism suffocates us" and "Our future is not capitalism, is the new world socialism" were some of the slogans heard in Fix Park. The present was given by immigrant workers from factories, land workers who work under miserable conditions, and also immigrant workers from the clothing industry. Also representatives of immigrant communities such as from Afghanistan, Uganda, Sudan and elsewhere. There was also a playground where children of Greek and immigrant workers spend their time creatively.
The speaker at the event was Kostas Papadakis, member of the CC of the KKE and MEP.
In his speech, K. Papadakis stated:
“Dear comrades and friends,
Workers, self-employed, young people, immigrants, refugees,
From this podium, we would like to once again unite our voices with the dozens of trade unions and mass organizations of the labor-people’s movement that struggleand we demand here and now that the government withdraws the monstrous bill on demonstrations immediately.
19 years ago in this familiar place in Fix Park, the KKE and the Party Organization of Athens launched a new initiative, a meeting of Greek and immigrant workers. These events, set up by the communists with enthusiasm, are now an institution. They are a political-cultural meeting organized by the KKE on the basis of proletarian internationalism and class solidarity, which are two of the fundamental principles that determined the course and action of the KKE, the Party of the working class in our country. The KKE's struggle for immigrant rights, who are an integral part of the working class of our country since they live and work here, as well as the joint struggle of Greek and immigrant workers against racism and xenophobia, consist a profound class-oriented action. The unity of the workers and the united struggle against the common enemy, that is the capital, are a necessary precondition for the workers to respond effectively to its aggression, much more to overthrow the regime of exploitation, to become owners of the wealth they produce and seize power.
Overall these years, these events have been embraced by thousands of local and immigrant workers, refugees and their families, who find a chance to express their demands, discuss their problems and needs, looking ahead to a world without exploitation and exploiters. This is because we are inspired by the genuine proletarian internationalist solidarity, the joint struggle of the peoples, and the slogan "proletarians of all countries unite". All these years, music groups of Greeks and immigrants, associations and immigrant communities express themselves and create works, inform us about dangerous developments in their homelands, introduce us to their culture, language, and concerns. These events have stood the test of time because they are a continuation and culmination of a serious, persistent, daily work and effort of the KKE party organizations in Athens in the workplaces, the working-classneighborhoodsand the refugee camps to intervene in the problems and the living conditions of Greek and immigrant workers and refugees against capitalist exploitation; to curb state repression and employer terrorism; to expose andhit criminal groups, trafficking rings, and NGOs, so that the workers regardless of nationality, race, color, and religion stop being afraid;to get organized in the trade unions; to struggle overall, from the very obvious to their contemporary rights that are being taken from them and the needs they deprive them of; to obtain a destination and purpose in their life to overthrow the exploitative system, i.e. the power of capitalists. We continue uncompromisingly on this path.
These days, the allegedly ineffective and unnecessary demonstrations are ultimately the target of the monstrous bill submitted by the ND government forvoting. They are trying to freeze the right to workers' – people’s mobilization, for which the people have shed rivers of blood.
We are not convinced by the claims that they want to "put things in order" and that they are bothered by the gatherings of 30-40 people in the city center, because the city centeris never closed for such gatherings.
They use them as a pretext because they are afraid of the big ones, they tremble at the sea of people who know that will surely turn against them. Their goal is to hit all protests and slander the struggles. They know very well that decisive and organized people have never asked for permission to imposetheir rights, and thusrepeal bans and monstrosities like this bill. Even small children cannot be convinced that the rallies are responsible for the slackness in business, the traffic, and the delays in the city center because the people are also experiencing the same problems in the neighborhoods. The real suffering does not derive from the protests but from poverty, the heavy taxation, the awful and very expensive transport with stacked passengers in the midst of a pandemic, the so-called "Great Walk of Athens" of Mayor Bakoyannis, which will be exploited for the plans of the big hoteliers and big shop owners.
However, the bill is not limited to demonstrations, it goes even further ... They have elaborated a long-term plan. The ND and SYRIZA governments have long before adopted the EU's deeply reactionary strategy "against radicalization, against every radical idea and action", insidiously trying tolump the action of the communist and workers'-people's movement together with their "anti-terrorist" sermons, the fight against jihadists, far-right fascist gangs, etc, also involving existing forms of violence such as domestic or intra-school violence. Of course, this intentional action also aims at targeting immigrants and refugees as potential terrorists. According to EUstandards, the bill also sets out corresponding contemporary reactionary mechanisms for implementing these dangerous directions. Through police and Europol mechanisms, the national and international snitches organize internet monitoring, with the involvement of municipalities, "consultancy" mechanisms against radical ideas, starting from school, funded universities and the Erasmus program and eventually leading to workplaces, with the aim of keeping the new shift of the working class away from the communist, revolutionary, class-oriented movement. Just a week ago, Europol expressed "concerns" that even the home quarantine could strengthen radicalization. The criminalization of radical, and therefore communist, ideology and practice is an official EU policy. In an annual EU report, people's protests were among the "security risks" that need to be addressed. The monstrous bill of the government follows this reactionarydirection, which provokingly presents the participation in mobilizations as something potentially "criminal" and "dangerous" that disrupts the socio-economic life of the country. But the socio-economic life of the country that is being disruptedincludes the people that are unemployed, fired, or unpaid, the contract employees, the modern slave-tradeworkers, the Greek or immigrantself-employed who are constantly insecure and face the risk of closing down their business, the immigrants who are thrown out of structures without any allowance, the more than half a million workersunder work suspension, the people who get their medical appointments for examination or treatment after three or more months, and the Greeks whomigrate abroad because they are unemployed.
In this way, the government seeks to deprive the people of the right to demonstrate by handing it over to the police, which with flexible criteria will prohibit the demonstrations even precautionarily, judging their purpose and content. Anyone participating in banned demonstrations will face the charge of a crime per se. Even the possible participation in a demonstration will ve assessed in advance. The reactionary provisions for the "organizer" of the demonstration pave the way for provocative actions and the well-known set up incidents in gatherings, which are directly guided by state and "parastatal" mechanisms. Their goal is to disperse rallies either with bans and chemicals, or with persecution and financial extermination of trade unions, mass organizations, etc.
The KKE and PAME are not taken in by the fake flattery that “you are organized, the issue– supposedly – is with the others”. The assorted scattered organizations of the movement never concerned the bourgeoisie, neither was it concerned with the trade union mafia of the labor bosses of GSEE, neither with their varied active provocateur elements. The bourgeoisie have always had them ‘in their pocket’. Their eternal target, their real enemy, is the organized and disciplined, the mass and determined, the communist, the class labor movement.
That was confirmed in all ways by the amazingly powerful May First rally that with its “organized disobedience” became known to every worker in every corner of the world, while the very same bourgeoisie and government staff continue to spit up anti-communist bile and every type of idiocy. As for the pseudo-opposition ‘gems’ by SYRIZA, they insult our memory and our intelligence. Because it was their government that imposed, by order of the bankers, the prohibition on demonstrations against foreclosures as a special legal notion, along with the restriction on the right to strike that is being exploited by ND today. How can one forget that during their days of their governance, there were a series of decisions on illegal and abusive strikes; how can one forget the water cannon and beatings unleashed upon strikers, pensioners; the rural courts, the student courts, the newspaper ‘Avgi’ to be up in arms about the strikes that supposedly caused traffic chaos? Its government in any case first started the use of “pocket guides” and programs “against radicalization”, involving even sports clubs for a hefty fine of 60,000 euros, so that young athletes do not become radicalized. SYRIZA may very well claim “theft of intellectual property’ for the bill in question which is the next episode in the case of its governance.
Withdraw it now! It is a myth there is room for small improvements in this monstrous bill that contains actual copies of Junta decrees from 1971. We are stating it straight out; the people with their struggle and with their “organized disobedience” will abolish this law, just like so many other similar ones in the past. They are fooling themselves if they think they can stop the people, the more and more working people, immigrants, refugees that understand that the bill to be paid for this capitalist crisis has their name written on it, this overinflated bill is being sent to the people by their government, the bourgeois parties, the capitalists and their European Union. Let’s send it back to them!
For this reason during this period with various manipulations the staff of the system are trying to muddy the waters, spreading the idea that it’s a crisis of the coronavirus. However, this pandemic simply accelerated the crisis which was already developing. Before the pandemic, the monopolies were amassing fortunes, reaped from the labor and the wealth produced by the many, the working people. Before the pandemic, the industrialists and the shipowners allowed their over-accumulated capital to stagnate because they weren’t profiting from it as much as they had anticipated. These are the factors that are leading to the crisis; it is the capitalist system itself and its natural function which is the cause. No matter how much money the government hands over to the large monopoly groups to support them, the crisis of the system cannot be prevented.
They know very well that 3 billion they are announcing, the hundreds of billions in the so-called Recovery Fund will be grabbed up by the business groups and will be paid for again, not by the EU as they like to say, but by the workers, the self-employed, the immigrants - with memorandum and anti-labor measures. All of them, through uncontrolled tax robbery and exploitation. Without being fed with money – the stolen sweat of the worker, their factories don’t operate and they close them. Without ‘double-dot’ subsidies from 800 to 1600 euro, their Intensive Care Units (ICU) don’t function. Without being packed with passengers, shoulder to shoulder, their airlines don’t fly. Without 15,000-euro subsidies their ships don’t sail. Now that’s the parasite who needs to take a hike!
The “I can’t breathe” that was heard loudly from millions of people all over the world, following the mass popular demonstrations in the flagship of capitalism, the USA for the murder of George Floyd, expresses the sentiment of all of the workers that see exploitation intensifying, who are “being choked” by the stench that the capitalist system is emanating with the new crisis that’s being thrust on their shoulders. As much as they attempt to blur this protest, for it to become ‘water in the mill’ of disorientation, blaming the situation on the vile spew of Trump and the Republicans so the Democrats can come out looking clean and rosy, in order to sustain the two-party game in the US and shore up the system of exploitation once again.
The deep social contradictions and the class inequalities that divide society in the USA, just as in every capitalist society, are strongly evident.
Inequalities that the so-called “American Dream” cannot bridge or cover up, but objectively can only sharpen. They want to present this as an exception but they cannot because similar events, like the recent murder of the Greek American and so many other cases of police repression, in France, in Belgium, as well as in Greece are screaming out.
Here in Greece, in fact, the employers themselves along with their supervisory staff take on action, paying immigrants with bullets when they dare to ask to be paid for their work in Manolada; these are events that cannot be erased from memory. And, if someone says that it’s an old example, let him go to Manolada and to a series of other areas all over Greece during harvest time with the thousands of harvest workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries who work under the same wretched conditions as then, and even worse, for nothing, while 10-20 workers sleep all together in miserable shacks they’ve had to rent for 50 euros, exposed to the heat and the rain, to diseases - now a case for pandemics.
Just this week the police exhibiting their well-known selective diligence, went to a greenhouse in Marathon and arrested an immigrant student who worked as they say...illegally and lived without papers because an NGO, despite having responsibility for him….and always unpaid, of course… had not renewed his papers since 2016. The student himself was punished; he was taken to the Amygdaleza Prisonfor deportation, the employers were let completely off the hook. The condemnations heard from the student’s teachers show that the student had waged a great battle to get education, despite the great difficulties.
All of the above are not exaggerated exceptions, they are simple examples, of how thousands of immigrants and refugees live, work, study, are blackmailed, are terrorized by their employers, in every branch of the economy, from the fast food outlets, delivery, super market, light industry, construction sites, agricultural labor, to food and hospitality and tourism. In fact, if in previous years, if record profits in tourism and elsewhere were achieved on the backs of Greek and immigrant workers, providing crumbs for the workers themselves along with back-breaking labor, this year once again the costs of the crisis will be thrust on their shoulders. The government’s celebratory declarations on the “growth and jobs that the Hellinikon project will bring” cannot hide the slave labor terms under which workers will be forced to work, however many they are in the end. Greeks and immigrant workers. Especially for the latter. Their lives, their rights, their needs are under the radar of the measurements and their measures. They are ‘outside the census count’ even if they die in the workplace, in a workplace “accident” or of coronavirus. Really, what quarantine, what Lockdown, what SMS – could exist for the thousands of immigrant workers who sleep inside or next to the factory, in the workplaces that capitalist profit kept completely open with workers working the one on top of the other? We are still waiting for an answer to the question posed to the government by Rizospastis, by the KKE. “What should the people do first, e.g. in the hellholes of Moria, with more than 20.000 people who get water 4 times a day, who have to make do with 1.5 liters a day to quench their thirst, wash their hands, and wash their clothes”…
Really, what measures of social distancing can be taken by immigrant workers who return from work, completely worn out, and sleep in miniature apartment - ‘holes’ with 5-10 others in order to survive…
Dear friends and comrades,
The eviction by the government of thousands of refugees, who were granted asylum status, the termination of the minimum benefit given to them to survive, while holding them hostages and entrapped in Greece, is inconceivable brutality. We demand from the government and the municipality an immediate solution so that no refugee granted asylum is thrown onto the streets; to find them accommodation utilizing apartments, closed hotels and public buildings, ensuring the necessary health and sanitary conditions. We demand the immediate provision of travel documents to all those wishing to travel to the country of their chosen destination, and not to maintain the unacceptable state of entrapment.
However, the eviction of refugees shows something more: the refugees will either be deported back to the hell of war, en masse and with fast-track procedures or, those granted asylum, will remain here and become fodder for the employers, the trafficking rings and other networks.
A crucial issue of this struggle is to isolate the racist and reactionary calls that, under the cover of the “citizen” from various so-called “associations” blame the victim, namely, the refugees so they can let the attacker get away with murder, namely, the governments, the EU, the system itself that creates poverty, crises, wars and refugees. And provocatively, those, who drowned our people in poverty, unemployment and misery with their policies, having the Nazis and the rest of the Golden Dawn orphans as henchmen are now targeting the refugees for having a pittance benefit of €150-200. So they are trying to make our people envy our uprooted class brothers and sisters for crumbs and, on the other hand, they are letting the industrialists and ship-owners swimming in profits scot-free…
As for the social integration of immigrants and refugees, it cannot be assigned to the municipalities that, in turn, will entrust it, along with a ton of money, to the NGOs and the so-called private initiative. Social integration is a duty of the state, and it must be implemented in a planned and universal way.
Just the citizenship and the residence permits alone – for which the immigrant goes through a lot of trouble and must dip into their own pocket – cannot solve the problems faced by the immigrants and refugees, and caused by capitalist exploitation and the class oppression of many by the few.
Especially for all those remaining in the miserable hotspots. Months after the lockdown and, despite the relative decline in the influx of refugees and immigrants, the situation in the hotspots of the Aegean islands, as well as in the refugee camps in the mainland, continues to be extremely explosive and dangerous for the thousands of the trapped refugees and immigrants, but also for the residents of the islands, where the shortages in health infrastructure are still acute. The conditions there are so miserable and inhumane that the protection and prevention measures taken for the pandemic are a joke.
First of all, there is an urgent need for an immediate decongestion, an organized extrication of all refugees and immigrants from the islands while ensuring the appropriate sanitary conditions and starting from the vulnerable groups. This issue is directly linked with the urgent need to strengthen the public health system, just like the pandemic experience demonstrated. However, the government, through its policies, is intentionally undermining it in favor of the profits of private healthcare groups.
At the same time, the forming of equipped and fully staffed medical facilities with the necessary medical and nursing staff remains a crucial issue in the hotspots and accommodation centers. Also, the need to take all necessary sanitary and prevention measures, such as frequent disinfection of facilities, ensuring clean and warm water, free provision of all personal hygiene products, avoidance of overcrowding conditions, etc.
Dear friends and comrades
The bourgeois parties and their staffs are giving the impression that the EU has hit a wall regarding the refugee issue, that they do almost nothing. This is a convenient myth fostering false expectations that the situation is dramatic for this exact reason, and it will improve with its intervention. But, above all, the situation is as it is, precisely because the EU decisions are being implemented. Because the unacceptable EU-Turkey agreement, with the massive entrapment in the islands, is in force along with the Dublin Regulation, based on which the front-line countries, like Greece, are instantly responsible for the asylum seekers, thus banning the so-called secondary movements to other EU countries. However, the EU has started the engines for some time now, despite any contradictions with the Visegrád countries. An essential move that everyone agrees on and promotes is the drastic narrowing of the very concept of the refugee itself, which is fundamentally protected by the International Law, and was established in the past, under conditions comparatively more favorable to the peoples, due to the strong intervention of the socialist countries. On the contrary, the economic migrant is immediately and exclusively subjected to the laws of capitalist supply and demand for labor force and is treated like a cheap, submissive worker without rights. The KKE is defending the rights of the asylum seekers and denounces the targeted attempt to curtail their rights, and, at the same time, is also defending the rights of the economic migrants. They are all victims and creations of capitalist barbarity and imperialist wars.
The new EU Pact on Migration, now under preparation, is already considering to allow the member-states, instead of accepting refugees and immigrants in their territory, to reinforce repression at the borders against the refugees and the immigrants by providing forces to the enhanced Frontex, which is already operating as a foreign military police force along the borderlines from Evros to the islands, with all the risks this entails regarding the country’s sovereign rights, at a time when the imperialist competitions intensify. The refugee-immigrant issue is inextricably linked with the imperialist competitions and the battlefields that create it. The crises of the capitalists increase the danger of generalized war when the competitors can’t agree on the division or re-division of the markets and spheres of influence. Not only can’t the Refugee issue be resolved from the imperialist powers and their bourgeois government-crutches, which entangle our country in dangerous plans, but it’s also utilized as a bargaining chip. This is also shown by the EU strategy that has turned the bargaining with the origin countries of the refugees and immigrants into a business. The EU is reaching agreements with third countries utilizing the refugee issue so that the European capitals can penetrate the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and “contribute” to the reconstruction of what it previously had bombarded, butchered and destroyed with its allies. The bourgeoisie of Turkey is also exploiting the refugees – among others – in a similar way and with the responsibility of the ND and SYRIZA governments so they can question borders and sovereign rights, and through the co-management to take a share proportional to Turkey’s political, economic and military weight.
The chess of antagonisms between the US, China, the EU and Russia for the control of markets considers the peoples, the refugees, as victims, as the exchanges and above all as the fuel for their profits. Syria and Libya have been for many years areas of major conflicts between capitalist interests in controlling energy routes and energy resources. The Greek bourgeois class is also involved in these businesses, participating in military missions such as the provocatively called mission Irini, which is "holding the lantern" in the imperialist war in Libya, sending military forces to Saudi Arabia, promoting the installation of new US and NATO bases on Greek soil. So for these groups and their huge profits YES Greece is a passage and energy hub, but for the people not at all. Even though our people lives in a rich country with so many energy resources and possibilities and will continue to pay dearly for electricity, digital networks.
The EU and NATO are tools to intensify antagonisms that also affect Greek-Turkish relations. The French-Turkish antagonisms in NATO are certainly not about Greece's sovereign rights. Nor can they be protected by a Turkish-French interest conflict. Instead, they will be in the bed of Procrustes, of the co-management in any other compromise of our so-called ally France with Turkey, the United States, Germany. This climate of co-management is methodically created by the government of ND and SYRIZA with cadres who served the governments of both who, after the isolated Erdogan, they also discovered the... isolated Kastelorizo. The government is celebrating the Greek-Italian agreement, which stipulates reduced impact on the Ionian Islands, and its parrots are already considering it as maximalism to have Crete, or the Kastelorizo EEZ, and a continental shelf based on what the International Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates.
The dilemma of compromise or war is false in terms of capitalism because those who are thrown out of the compromises are rushing to the next war and any military involvement or hot episode leads to new arrangements.
All of the above substantiate the term "wolf - alliances" that when the KKE used it, some people spoke of a wooden, outdated language, but today the people find in front of them. That's why there is no elaborate diplomatic move to get the people out of the impasse that fuels the fact that our country is engaged in imperialist plans, in the fragile alliances of the big groups and their unions. That's why there is no wolf ally to clean up for us.
That is why today it is necessary to fight for no change in borders and international conventions and agreements that define them, against imperialist plans, nationalism and cosmopolitanism of capital, to return all Greek military missions from abroad and close all the US and NATO Bases.
The fact that ND and SYRIZA, along with KINAL and others, fanatically support all these reactionary imperialist plans, promoting the constant upgrading of relations with the state of Israel that is murdering Palestinians, scorning the struggle of the Palestinian people. It reveals the hypocritical amount of their occasional interest in refugees and immigrants. No matter how many crocodile tears they shed, they are their opponents.
Refugee, Immigrant,
No matter how many borders you cross, the same capitalist exploitative regime awaits you, you will remain the weakest link as an immigrant and a refugee. You compare your homeland with Greece, you imagine and hope that it will be the final destination country. However, your own experience can advise you that there is no ready "land of promise". The EU itself knows something more and insists on the wide promotion of continuous mobility from country to country and is even concerned that it has not been generalized enough, especially for skilled workers, as they mention. The tendency of deterioration was also present before the pandemic everywhere and in the powerful capitalist countries where millions of workers in giant groups who thought they were secured in such "corner shops" are taking now the paper of dismissal. 7500 in Reno, 12000 in Boeing, 7500 in Air France, Air bus 15000, 35000 in HSBC, and the list does not end…
That is why we need to be Greek and immigrant workers and self-employed, prepared and ready to fight against the crisis of the capitalists. So, regardless of any differences from country to country, the main thing is wherever you are and wherever you stand, to join with the Greek workers in the organization of the fight so that we do not accept to pay the capitalist crisis, not reconcile both Greeks and immigrants with poverty, unemployment, life without rights, exploitation. To be organized in the unions and to fight like a fist for the abolition of all anti-labor memorandum laws, for Collective Agreements, for increases in salaries and wages, for free Health, Education, Sports and Culture. To join with the KKE, for a life at the height of our real, modern needs.
To facilitate all refugees and migrants trapped in Greece for transition to their destination countries, with immediate and urgent priority for the unaccompanied underaged and the beneficiaries of family reunification.
The KKE, since the 1990s, has stood by immigrants and refugees, fights for their trade union organization, to organize their struggle.
But above all, the KKE has a political proposal to get out of this nightmare. It is socialism. We say it clearly, the correlation of forces is neither eternal nor static both in our country and in the wider region. It will change significantly here in Greece and in total as well. The road to the abolition of human-to-human exploitation will open:
With the socialization of the concentrated means of production, with a centralized plan of the economy that connects all producers in the solid ground ensured by labor and social property in factories, domestic energy sources, mineral wealth, land, infrastructure. Real owners are the only ones who can pull society out of the crisis and set the whole production machine in motion. They are the ones who really produce. They are the invisible heroes who shone in the days of the pandemic, the workers and employees, the real protagonists. It is the modern working class. It is enough for the parasites, the robbers, the predators, the capitalists to leave. Their system is not being corrected, no matter what bourgeois government will be elected. Socialism in the USSR solved great unresolved popular problems such as full employment with rights, the people's home, universal and free health care, education, security for the future. And all these had been solved not by expelling 30 and 40% of its population in exile as they do today in order for the rest to live on the brink of survival. Proof of its superiority is that socialism united peoples, united the isolated for decades different ethnicities, languages, religions that became a thousand pieces after the counter-revolution. Learning from this experience the enormous possibilities, and any weaknesses, we continue more decisively, more militarily in order to win out the right of the peoples.
Our future is not capitalism, it is the new world, socialism!
In the front line of struggles, with momentum, we will succeed!”