Greece: We are not sacrificing our lives to pay interest to the lenders!
We provide here the text of a leaflet published for the build up to yesterday’s 24-hour general strike in Greece and distributed on the rallies.
We provide here the text of a leaflet published for the build up to yesterday’s 24-hour general strike in Greece and distributed on the rallies.
What should a genuine socialist government do in the face of the severe economic and financial crisis that has hit Greece? The only real answer is a socialist programme based on the nationalisation of the banks and the commanding heights of the economy. There is no other way out. [This article was published in the latest issue of the Greek Marxist paper Marxistiki Foni, Marxist Voice, of the Marxists inside the Synaspismos party.]
The Dutch coalition has fallen under the growing pressure of the economic crisis. What sparked it off was pressure from NATO to extend the stay of Dutch troops in Afghanistan, but it clearly highlights the growing class divide in Dutch society.
From the very beginning of the crisis in the Balkans back in 1992 In Defence of Marxism has maintained a firm internationalist approach.
The different imperialist powers and the local former Stalinist bureacrats used the poison of nationalism to gain power and spheres of influence. Their manouevres had nothing to do with the rights of the people's of the Balkans but with naked self interest.
We have insisted that the poison of nationalism (be it Albanian, Serbian, Bosnia, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek, Turkish, or whatever) offers nothing to the peoples of the Balkans but a future of fratricidal war, ethnic cleansing, economic ruin, poverty and despair.
The entirely artificial frontiers that divide the living body of the Balkans have long since ceased to play any progressive role, if they ever did. Reactionary nationalism divides brother from brother, and sister from sister, creating ethnic hatreds and never-ending strife.
We think that only a policy of internationalism and class solidarity between the workers in the different countries in the Balkans would provide a lasting solution to this conflict. Only a Socialist Federation of the Balkans could actually guarantee full democratic rights for all national groups.
Many will say that this is an utopian policy and demand a more "practical" solution. But since the start of the conflict back in 1992 the "practical" policies have solved nothing and in fact have increased the amount of combustible material in the area. Maybe it is time that a genuine socialist internationalist approach is adopted.
Here we offer a collection of our material relating to this question. We think that these texts should be studied by all labour movement activists in the region and worldwide and we hope they will help open a fruitful discussion.