We are publishing the final part of the programmatic proposals of the Marxists of Syriza. Written prior to the elections (together with Parts One , Two and Three), the analysis and the programme developed here provided a clear insight into the working of Greek and international capital. It also indicates a way out of the crisis, based on the fundamental premise that control over the economy must be taken out of the hands of the major monopolies and placed under workers’ control and management.
4) Workers’ and other people’s wages – Industrial relations – Living standards
At a time that bankers’ interests are provocatively being safeguarded, the working class is struggling to survive in unprecedented and insufferable conditions. According to a report prepared by the Greek Work Inspectors’ Board, during the first two months of 2012 there were salary reductions of 55%. In addition, only 1 in 10 employers were paying their workers properly, with 400,000 workers having not received any pay for up to five months. According to the same source, 1 in 3 workers are not covered by social and medical insurance, whilst many full-time contracts are rapidly being converted to part-time contracts or to reduced hours contracts. The proportion of part-time contracts rose to 30.65% in 2011, compared to 16.7% back in 2009. The proportion of reduced hours contracts rose from 4.3% in 2009 to 8.95% in 2011.
Official data from the Greek Statistics’ Service indicate that more than 2 million people live below the poverty line on fewer than 6,800 Euros annually. Other studies, such as that from 2011 by ‘Focus Bari’, indicate that 46% of the population of Greece are cutting down on food purchases, 69% have stopped buying clothing, 41% cannot afford to go on holidays, and more than 1 million forego heating their homes as they cannot afford it. In total, 3.5 million people are unable to deal with any sudden urgent spending that may arise such as medical costs and so on.
In such inhuman conditions, the mental and physical health of the population of Greece is being severely undermined. Suicides are becoming endemic. Murders have increased two-fold, and HIV infections and the use of heroin have increased by 20%. For the first time, schools have handed out photocopies rather than school books to students, whilst most hospitals have run out of essentials.
A cancelling of the measures that have been taken according to the Memorandum would surely be a significant step in the right direction. However, it wouldn’t definitively improve the situation. Although such a cancelling of the measures contained in the Memorandum would allow for an improvement in industrial relations and halt the decline in living standards, the majority of the people would still fall far short by a long way from securing a decent livelihood.
Even before the dramatic reductions brought about by the second Memorandum, the purchasing power of the lowest salaries had returned to 1984 levels (!) according to the Institute of Employment of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (INE–GSEE).
Between 1998 and 2007, the Greek State made available 3,530 Euros per capita for social security purposes whilst the Eurozone average was 6,251.78 Euros. However, during this period the profits of the capitalists skyrocketed. Based on the statistical data of ‘ICAP’ and of ‘Rizospastis’ ["The Radical", the newspaper of the Greek Communist Party] (10/10/2004 to 24/02/2010) between 1990 and 2007, profits increased 28-fold given that profits stood at 575 million Euros in 1990 and at 16 billion Euros in 2007.
On the decisive issue of rectifying the devastating fall in living standards of the working class and of the poorer layers of society, a Left government ought immediately to apply the following measures:
a. Abolition of all types of ‘flexible’ working relations. Employment with full rights and with a consistent number of hours to be set by a national committee under workers’ control;
b. The total legalisation of immigrant workers, and the provision of rights to them equal to those of nationals;
c. The criminalisation of the evasion of social security contributions on the part of employers. Expropriation without compensation of sizeable enterprises that fail to observe the proposed employment legislation, or that do not pay their social security contributions. Heavy penalties and the taking over of property for corresponding offences by small and medium-sized enterprises;
d. The setting-up of a Unitary/Common Employee Insurance Fund that would guarantee the provision of a decent pension and total medical cover for all workers. It should be bilaterally funded from the State and from employers. The fund’s management should be elected from workers’ representatives;
e. Abolition of private education, private health and private insurance. The appalling conditions of public hospitals, which threaten the lives of thousands of poor people, call for the taking of drastic measures to combat this. This means that we should expropriate all the large enterprises that offer health services whilst compensating only small share-holders and the like;
f. Public and private sector salaries, pensions, and allowances, should, initially, be increased to a level necessary so that all workers, retired people, and all other people who rely on state allowances, are guaranteed a decent standard of living, and this standard is to be established by a national committee under workers’ control;
g. Automatic adjustment of new salaries, pensions, and allowances so that their value reflects fluctuations in the prices of essential consumer goods for a working family and that prices are to be set by a national committee under workers’ control;
h. The immediate funding for urgent gaps in health, education, and social security expenditure in accordance with a specific, evidence-based and cost-assessed study on the part of workers’ representatives from those sectors elected by their peers in those sectors;
i. It is of the utmost importance to search for and secure the funds to finance the application of a programme of measures that would radically transform the increasing inequality and devastation of the standard of living of the masses. A heavy taxation of wealth and capital is necessary, but that will not be sufficient. What is necessary is a total and immediately applicable programme that sets up a socialised planned economy with measures that are to be developed in the interim whilst the programme is being rolled out. However, it will take a certain amount of time for these socialisation measures to be translated into revenue and into rises in the living standards of the masses. It is therefore necessary simultaneously to apply a whole raft of measures that will have immediate results in order to finance the programme of rectifying the devastated living standards of the working class and of the poorer layers of society. These immediate measures should be:
- The reduction of the salary of all high-level public sector officials – including those in the army, security services, and judiciary, public office holders, members of the government, the President of the Republic, members of parliament, and of mayoral office holders – to the level of that of a skilled worker. The savings that accrue from this measure should be transferred towards increases in the salaries of ordinary public sector workers. All privileges enjoyed by high-level public sector officials and public office holders should be abolished.
- Until the economy begins to grow, there should be the suspension of all military expenditure (notwithstanding the payment of personnel according to the point made above) other than expenditure that is considered absolutely necessary according to an elected committee including representatives of the government, the rank-and-file military personnel, and of the national committee under workers’ control.
- Total nationalisation of the property of those who are responsible for scandals involving corruption and the squandering of public wealth. Property held by the Church should be expropriated and put to good use. Revenues flowing from this measure should be immediately channelled into health, education and social security. The Church has within it 10,000 organisations which between them hold 1,300,000,000m2 of land, 900 buildings which it lets out and for which it receives rent. The Church also receives funds from EU programmes and from the Greek National Lottery Fund. It also has significant deposits in funds and shares in Greek banks. In a report published in the ‘Kathimerini’ newspaper on 18/10/2009, it was estimated that the value of Church property was around 15 billion Euros. This figure, however, neither includes the 2,500 churches and monasteries nor the property that belongs to these!
- There should be total separation of State and Church. The current status of clerics as part of the public sector should be abolished. They should be supported via various social programmes on condition that they provide socially-useful work up to and until they find other employment or are maintained by the private contributions of believers.
- Expropriation of all profitable enterprises in which the State has a stake, however small (NB mainly those that were formerly State-owned). Compensation to be offered only to those who may suffer from such an expropriation such as those on low earnings or with a small number of shares. The total deficit of the hospitals is around 1.58 billion Euros; this deficit could easily be wiped out when we consider that the net profit of the Greek National Lottery Fund in 2011 was 537.5 million Euros, and the net profit during the first quarter of 2012 alone of the formerly State-owned telecommunications company (OTE) was 306.6 million Euros.
5. Unemployment
Unemployment is the greatest scourge for millions of workers. Social breakdown caused by the profound crisis of Greek capitalism is reflected in the rapidly increasing rise in unemployment. According to the most recent data of the Institute of Employment of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (hereinafter IoE), the total number of unemployed people is around 1,200,000 or about 23-24% of the workforce. Based on projections, the December 2012 figure is likely to be 28%!
According to the IoE estimates, an additional 5% ought to be included in this figure, given that there are unregistered unemployed people. The situation is far worse for those between the ages of 18 to 24 where unemployment stands at 50%. This is far from ‘temporary’ given that IoE estimates refer to the existence of 1,100,000 unemployed even during the time of the projected recovery of the Greek economy which the Memoranda consider to be around 2015.
Clearly, unemployment is far from temporary. It is permanent. What this means is that hundreds of thousands of people are facing the prospect of dying through starvation, shortages and illnesses in a country with a modern economy and with formal democratic institutions that are supposed to guarantee constitutionally the right to work.
The overwhelming majority of those devastated by unemployment are turning electorally to supporting SYRIZA and have one fundamental expectation from a Left government: a job, a position in life itself! A Left government will have to meet the expectations placed in it from the support and endorsement it gets from thousands of people, people that are dismissed by the Troika and by the Greek bourgeoisie as “losers” to be sacrificed in the name of profit.
It is not acceptable therefore for a Left government programme to omit the basic guarantee of a human and decent position of employment for every unemployed person!In relation to the issue of unemployment, there can be no ‘gradual’ reform. The only truly progressive class in society is in risk of annihilation! The time has come to bring into effect the historical demand of the workers’ movement for a sliding scale of working hours; that is to say, the reduction of working hours in order that all shall be employed.
Naturally, the cheerleaders and apologists of the ruling class will be decrying this as ‘unfeasible’. Those not affected by the crisis, the Greek capitalists, will undoubtedly be complaining that they cannot afford to hire more people. A Left government, to the extent that it is truly revolutionary and an authentic defender of the interests of the working class, will have face up to the inability of capitalism to secure the existence of its very own salaried vassals. It should also take this as living proof as to why such a government – supported by the organised working class – should take measures that would crush capitalism.
A Left government, therefore, should take the following measures to eradicate the scourge of unemployment:
a. In collaboration with the unions and the national committee under workers’ control, to link those in employment with the unemployed in an unbreakable relationship of solidarity. The government, unions, and national committee should jointly map and develop an inventory of all existing jobs, of all available workers according to industry/sector, and of enterprises that have closed since the outbreak of the crisis, and all resources in order to immediately develop a programme of socially useful public works.
b. The purpose of such a national ‘census’ of the workforce, number of jobs, levels of unemployment, and available resources, is to redistribute the available workforce to all active positions of employment, to all those jobs which will be created from a programme of socially useful public works, and to all those jobs which will appear once the enterprises that had shut are re-opened. The working hours will have to be reduced across the board to the extent necessary in order for all to be in employment. Salaries will not be affected by the fluctuating amount of working hours (given that salaries are to be based on what is to be considered a sufficient amount to secure a decent and human livelihood, and given that they are to fluctuate to meet the price increases of essential goods). Large-sized private enterprises that resort to laying off staff or that seek to defy the national plan of hiring and the sliding scale of working hours will have to be expropriated without compensation;
c. The government should encourage workers, on the basis of an appropriate new legal framework, to take over large enterprises that close down, and to operate these themselves, taking over the management and administration of these enterprises aided by specialist and scientific advisers. The government would have to immediately put together a time-line according to which these enterprises are to be socialised and linked to other socialised organisations as per each sector of production/economy;
d. Workers who lose their jobs due to the closure of a small enterprise should be added to a priority list for work that becomes available in relation to the programme of socially useful public works;
e. Workers who lose their jobs due to the closure of a medium sized enterprise should receive support (such as cheap credit, placement of orders and so on) in order that they can collectively operate those businesses whilst they are also encouraged through publicly funded incentives for these to join up with other similar businesses and come under State direction and control;
f. Until the successful conclusion of the national plan of getting all the unemployed into jobs, an unemployment allowance set at around 80% of the basic salary should be made available to all unemployed people irrespective of the amount of years of active employment and for the entire duration of their term of unemployment. This benefit would be on condition that the recipients make themselves available for any socially useful work, should the need arise, on fewer hours than those for which the sliding scale of working hours would provide.
The above measures are the only ones capable of guaranteeing a decisive response to the scourge of unemployment. By their very nature they amount to practical steps in the direction of establishing a centrally planned, socialised economy. The only stable and definitive solution to the scourge of unemployment, however, lies in the total establishment of such an economy, which, in turn, would lead to the socialist transformation of society.
6. Socialisation of the banking system
Banks are at the epicentre of the crisis of capitalism globally. Firstly, this reflects the pivotal role of the banks in contemporary capitalist economies. With the development of monopolies during the imperialist era, at the dawn of the last century, the great banks did not restrict themselves to lending; they penetrated into industry and fused with industrial capital, thus forming a new financial oligarchy. In this manner, they progressively accumulated effective control over the economy.
During the previous period of development, bankers handled that power over the economy in an extremely irresponsible manner. Taking advantage of low interest rates in relation to borrowing, interest rates that had been set to artificially extend the period of development, they engaged in an orgy of issuing and trading profitable derivatives, thus gambling on fictitious values. Having embarked on vast profiteering ventures, with the outbreak of the recession banks were threatened by the domino-effect of bankruptcies. However, the cost of their decisions wasn’t passed on to the omnipotent bankers. They presented the bill to taxpaying workers, thus creating a ballooning of the national debt whilst they continued profiteering, which, as the recent example of the collapse of Spanish banks demonstrates, continues to threaten the global economy.
Greek private banks took that general, provocative, and parasitic journey, albeit in a different manner. Although they did not entangle themselves in what were generally risk-exposed profitable derivatives, they extensively profiteered from the national debt and from their domestic clients. Since 2001, when Greece entered the Eurozone, banks provocatively profited to the detriment of their clients and of the Greek state. They borrowed at rates near to the Eurozone average of close to 1%, but lent to the Greek state at exorbitant rates and to their clients at rates in excess of 3%. During that period, the average taxation levied on these banks was just about 17%. All this made their profits sky rocket, so that between 2000 and 2009 they amounted to a total of 41 billion Euros.
Their greed led to almost 30% of Greek national debt being owed to them so that they continued to take advantage of the high lending rates they charged the State. When the crisis deepened, leading to the drastic reduction in the value of state-issued bonds, minor bond-holders were forced to bear losses and accept the cost of the investment risk that materialised. Bankers, however, bore no loss. What’s more, in order for them to consent to the ‘haircut” of the nominal value of the bonds by 53%, they received as compensation 48 billion Euros, which once again the Greek State had to borrow from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), thus increasing its national debt and becoming further burdened by interest. And all that happened so that bankers did not have to dip their hands into their own coffers to support their own businesses neither from the exorbitant profits they accumulated between 2001 and 2009, nor from their enormous capital deposits of 430 billion Euros that they continue to hold during the crisis. And whilst the massively indebted Greek state has supported large banks to a level of about 1000% of their value, and has been recapitalising them, it has had no say or vote in how they are managed!
In order for a Left government to survive the relentless economic war that the Troika and the Greek bourgeoisie would inevitably declare against it, it would have to definitively sever the ‘Gordian knot’ of parasitism and fraud caused by domestic banks. Given the strategic importance of the banking sector to the economic welfare of the state, a Left government would have to prise it away from the plundering hands of capital which already handles 165 billion Euros of savings deposits. This can only become a reality by:
a. Socialisation of the banking sector. This means that all banks must entirely become State property, without compensation save for small share-holders/small depositors, and be merged into a Central State Bank. By founding this bank, what is founded is a central body from which to rationally plan investment and the availability of credit in the interests of working people. It’s an indispensible tool in the planning of the entire economy;
b. Bourgeois propaganda would attempt to equate any future socialisation of the banks to a situation in which the parties ‘continue’ to run the economy in their own selfish interests and to present any future bank governors appointed by a Left government to be the continuation of the non-transparent “crony” state that is “getting in the way of supplying credit to the public”. Clearly, this is a smokescreen on the part of the bourgeoisie which made use of the most negative aspects of the corrupt and bureaucratic management of the Greek banks during the 1980s in order to slander the notion of socialisation. However, that model had nothing to do with socialisation. True socialisation requires that it be instituted in a government system where there is proper democratic control and in which the workers participate. The composition of the management of the banking system should be: 1/3rd elected representatives of bank workers; 1/3rd representatives from trade unions and from the national committee of workers’ control; and 1/3rd representatives from the elected government;
c. Socialisation is the only way for a Left government to guarantee the deposits and savings of the working class and of the poorer layers of society, and to salvage them from being held hostage by the unscrupulous vultures of capital. That is the only solution to secure the provision of urgently needed affordable credit to workers, small entrepreneurs, small landholders, and households that are in need of credit. A Central State Bank would be able to provide more favourable terms for smaller depositors than private banks. Eliminating the scope for huge profits to accrue to capitalists and for the unreasonable bonuses to bankers would make it possible to reduce the interest rates to a level to cover the necessary overheads of running the banking system;
d. A Central national bank would have to immediately apply a “haircut” to the debt of the working class and of the poorer layers of society to a level that is equal to their losses since the outbreak of the crisis. The socialisation of the banking system, which at present governs the entire economy, is objectively the first step towards the establishment of a socialised, planned economy, and is inseparable from the socialisation of other key commanding heights of the economy.
7) The socialisation of the commanding heights of the economy, and the central and democratic planning of the economy
The formation of a Left government would be an historical event. For the first time, modern generations of the working class would be witnessing the formation of a government that would be publicly announcing that it seeks to transform society in their interests. However, in practical terms, this would only be an initial step towards the effective taking over of power.
The government would occupy the ministerial positions, but the real power would continue to lie in the hands of the bourgeoisie and of foreign imperialist patrons so long as they retain control of the economic sphere. If a government does not confront those interests head on by applying a programme of measures that overhaul the private ownership of the means of producing wealth, there can be no truly socially progressive step forward.
At present, the leadership of SYRIZA, undoubtedly, has no such programme in mind. Its publicly presented intention is to move ‘cautiously’, ‘gradually’, and ‘within the parameters of what is feasible’, in the belief that this would make it more useful to the working class, and to avoid any ‘premature aggravation’ of the ruling class were it to adopt ‘extreme’ revolutionary economic policies. We are duty-bound to point out that this is a grave error on the part of the leadership! If its economic policies are not to be revolutionary, then what it, along with the majority of society, would surely come to experience is the backlash of the counterrevolution, through a relentless economic war that would multiply the number of the poor and unemployed.
This is why every militant in the workers’ movement and supporter of a Left government must fight for the adoption and application of a programme that establishes social control over the fundamental levers of the economy. The most fitting term that captures the essence of that economic process is the term ‘socialisation’.
In light of the crisis, bourgeois governments globally have nationalised, and will continue to nationalise, large loss-making enterprises, mainly, in the banking sector. Such nationalisations have nothing in common with the socialisation called for by Marxists. The intention of bourgeois governments is to transfer the losses of capitalists to working taxpayers until such a point is reached where they can then privatise profit-making enterprises back into capitalist hands – to the hands themselves that had led these enterprises to financial ruin.
Such nationalisations, although they can serve temporarily to save jobs, in the long term they are essentially of no benefit to the working class. In the final analysis, they are nationalisations in the interests of the ruling class and of their system. In spite of all this, nationalisations undertaken by bourgeois governments are further proof of how redundant the bourgeoisie has become to the production process, given that all managerial functions in these nationalised companies are carried out by salaried public sector employees.
Socialisation, as we understand it, stands diagonally opposed to such misleading bourgeois nationalisations. Socialisation brings about a radical, not cosmetic, change to the property status and function of a large enterprise. It is part of the application of a wider programme of measures that aims at the socialist transformation of the economy, placing the working class itself at the helm of these enterprises and of the entire state, thus attempting to ensure that they function for the benefit of society as a whole. Socialised enterprises, freed from the fetters of private ownership, could contribute to rapid economic progress and to a great increase in the productivity of labour.
In times of economic boom, the reformist leaders have traditionally argued against Marxists that a general programme of socialisation is not feasible given that ‘the capitalist impasse is not of sufficient magnitude’. Now that this, however, is clearly the case, the reformists will inevitably say that the so-called ‘immaturity’ of the working class is a barrier to possible socialisation. The most militant and revolutionary workers understand that such words are not based on prudence but reveal the cowardice and the ineptitude of the leadership in assuming their political responsibility of taking on the bourgeoisie.
In order to debunk the sensationalist bourgeois propaganda that it is the intention of communists to abolish ‘all private ownership’ and to stifle all ‘private initiative’, we make very clear that when we refer to socialisation we do not propose that the totality of enterprises be socialised. We do not propose that every corner shop and workshop comes into public hands. That would essentially amount to purposeless adventurism.
We fight for the socialisation of big business – of the commanding heights of the national economy, that is to say of those who play a monopolistic or dominant role in the various sectors of the economy; of those in the field of trade, services provision and manufacturing, who, given the high levels of concentration, lend themselves more easily to the process of socialisation. In reality, such enterprises are numerically very few when compared to the totality of private enterprises.
Their socialisation would also mean the survival of hundreds of thousands of small enterprises that are at present struggling to survive on the unequal playing field that the monopolies have created. We must emphasise again that there is no need to expropriate small-holders and small enterprises. That class would progressively gravitate towards the new socialised model after witnessing the superiority of the living example of a socialised planned economy.
Socialisation means the proper democratic management of enterprises by the workers themselves. Workers are much more interested in these enterprises than are their owners. Capitalists subject the viability of an enterprise to the insatiable urge for private profit. The democratic control by workers over how an enterprise is to be managed would limit the scope for bureaucracy, wastefulness, mismanagement, and corruption that is endemic in how private and public enterprises function under capitalism.
However, the issue of socialisation cannot be addressed simply by making changes to the legal title in relation to the ownership of these enterprises; there is a more profound content to socialisation. What must be emphatically stressed is that there can be no genuine socialisation without workers’ control and management; workers’ control is the fundamental condition to prepare and realise a programme of socialisation, whilst workers’ management is the necessary foundation upon which socialised enterprises can function.
The experiences of the PASOK governments during the 1980s, and of the post-war social-democratic governments across Western Europe, indicate that the managing boards of state enterprises and organisations should not be made up of permanent, appointed, high-salaried technocrats who are unaccountable to the workers. Such management arrangements are incapable of responsibly serving social needs, given that they tend to subvert the organisations in their charge to capitalist methods of production for their own ends. This dynamic does not change even when worker representatives have been marginally included in the configuration of such management boards.
The contention that workers lack the knowledge to manage enterprises is incorrect. Capitalists possess entire teams of employees and specialists that manage these on their behalf. Equally, workers, through their own democratic channels, would collaborate with experts loyal to the socialist cause, who they could control democratically, thus ensuring a quality of life free from the stresses of unemployment, and from the inhuman industrial relations under capitalism. Within such a framework, workers would be taking decisions whilst taking into account the opinions of ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’. Those who would be running these enterprises, however, would be workers and not ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’.
The example of the bureaucratically deformed workers’ states of the 20th century has shown that it is impossible for a team of ‘specialists’ to run top-down every sector of an economy. It is only workers themselves – producers and consumers involved at every stage of economic activity and of production – that are able to plan, run, and develop the economy for the benefit of society.
Upon taking power, a Left government would have to immediately apply a comprehensive programme of socialisation that includes:
a. The creation of a national committee for socialisation and for the planning of the economy, the composition of which should be 1/3rd elected and revocable representatives from the national committee of workers’ control, 1/3rd from the trade unions and other mass organisations of the working population (small-holders, small enterprise owners, and farmers), and 1/3rd from government representatives. At the disposal of this committee there would be a team of experts and scientific advisers committed to socialism and whose role it would be to effect the democratic planning of the economy.
b. The immediate socialisation and inclusion into integrated socialised clusters according to sector, of all: existing state enterprises; large-scale enterprises that would be expropriated due to their refusal to apply the new national plan to draw the unemployed into production, the new employment legislation, and the new remuneration policies; and of all large-scale private enterprises that had shut after the outbreak of the crisis or that are about to shut due to bourgeois sabotage through an economic war against the government.
c. The development by the national committee for socialisation and planning of a specific timeframe – for instance, over a six-month or, at most, over a twelve-month period – for socialising all large-scale enterprises per sector according to their objective importance in relation to the national economy and to their sector, their share of total credit, profit, export share, their influence on price-setting, their share of employment, and, generally, in relation to their impact on the social and economic national landscape. There should be particular focus on the 500 largest enterprises across the various sectors of industry, service-provision, and of trade. All socialised enterprises would have to be integrated according to sector in order to effectively plan the economy in the interests of society.
The high degree of concentration and of consolidation of capital in Greek industry makes socialisation technically easier. During the 1980s, the industrial monopolies that controlled 70-80% of production – in other words, the industrial enterprises of ‘strategic importance’ – were made up of about 200 enterprises. These days, their number has decreased to about 100, and, according to the opinion of various statistical organisations, there is a higher degree of cross-sector permeability with links to the banking, services, and trade sectors, thus, facilitating the work of central planning.
d. Socialisation by setting up integrated national non-profit organisations of the entire goods and human transportation sector, utilities, telecommunications, natural resources, infrastructure, and of the construction sectors. Such socialisation is indispensible to securing the resources to socially focus policy-making, to reduce production costs, to deal with the problem of the lack of housing for the working population, to carry out cheaper and useful public works, and to create a solid foundation upon which to further develop the entire economy for the benefit of society.
e. Similarly, the composition of management in such socialised enterprises and organisations must include 1/3rd of workers from the relevant field; 1/3rd of workers and consumers (e.g., trade unions, agricultural associations, and local authorities), and 1/3rd of representatives from the elected government. The representatives on these management boards must be elected annually, be revocable by the general assembly of the enterprise in question, and be remunerated with a salary that is equal to that of a skilled worker.
f. Socialisation of the media and their resources being made available to every type of association of working people. The despicable propaganda of the bourgeois media against SYRIZA and the Left is proof of how vital it is to prise the provision of information and the media from the control of the bourgeoisie.
g. Socialisation of the large-holdings of land, and the setting up of national, state-owned modern agricultural projects. There should be incentives for the voluntary accession of small-holders into cooperatives, under state and government control, to take into their charge the supply of primary goods, their processing, packaging, and making available for consumption without the interference of any intermediates.
h. In relation to small to medium sized enterprises, a Left government, considering their size, should socialise these progressively. Small-scale property should not be expropriated, and owners of small enterprises that do not exploit additional labour, should not suffer any interference. Progressively, their enterprises would be attracted by the gravitational pull of the wider socialised economy through its living example that would illustrate its superiority. The government should incentivise them to join up with larger units of production, and to modernise under the control of the state and the government.
8. State monopoly of foreign trade
The crisis and the productive weakness of Greek capitalism are reflected in its large trade deficit. The gap between exports and imports is substantial and widening, given the increased reduction of exports due to the recession. Based on data of the Bank of Greece, during 2011 exports amounted to 25.7 billion Euros whilst imports amounted to 54.3 billion Euros.
The exacerbation of the situation for Greek capitalism is reflected in the fact that whilst in 1980 the trade deficit was just 5.2 billion Euros, it is now closer to 30 billion Euros. The economy nowadays imports every type of good despite their abundant availability domestically, e.g., citrus fruit and olive oil. What is more, in 1980, Greece had a 10 million Euros surplus in the agricultural sector, and in 2008, at the end of a number of years of capitalist development, it reached a deficit of 3 billion Euros in that sector.
The irrationality of the anarchy of the capitalist market and the parasitism of the Greek bourgeoisie is reflected in a number of revealing instances that highlight the urgent need for the establishment of a socialised and planned national economy.
According to a recent study by ‘PASEGES’ (Nationwide Confederation of Agricultural Cooperative Unions), the level of self-sufficiency of Greece in relation to a wide range of basic agricultural plant- and animal-derived food stuffs during 2010 was around 94%. However, due to the anarchy of the capitalist market, 40% of national nutritional demand is covered by imports. Greece has reached the point where it is importing onions from India, oranges from South Africa, beans from China, and potatoes from Egypt. At the same time production of sugar-beet has gone down, and the sugar producing sector has vanished, while 200,000 tonnes of sugar imports annually flood the Greek market.
Despite the above, Greece possesses significant levels of natural resources, including mineral resources, and has a highly educated and skilled workforce in almost every sector of the economy. Within the context of a socialised, planned economy, it would be possible to develop relatively rapidly agriculture and industry, thus accessing the sort of funds that could finance the investments in production and further development of jobs, and, at the same time, to fund the various social policies.
In order to be able to adopt the necessary measures in this direction, a Left government would have to socialise the large-scale exporting enterprises and to monopolise all exports. The state monopoly of foreign trade is a matter of vital importance in securing the planning of the economy against the threat of foreign capital penetration and domination.
The abolition of capitalist super profits and the progressive increase in productivity, as a consequence of the superiority of a planned economy, would render Greek products cheaper and also more competitive on a global scale.
9. New constitution – new power
A Left government must not consider the State as if it were a neutral social force, a ‘public sector’, a ‘public administration’. It must deal with it according to the historically proven views and principles of scientific socialism. The State is a bourgeoisie instrument for oppressing the working class and the people. The present form of government, modern-day ‘democracy’, is bourgeois democracy which has been the optimum for the bourgeoisie to control and manage society. Whoever talks about democracy generally without placing it within a class context is misleading workers.
The essence of bourgeois democracy lies in a formal recognition of personal rights and freedoms which, nonetheless, are inaccessible to the wide masses due to the lack of the material means to realise these, whilst the ruling class utilises all means at its disposal to lie to and trick the masses. With its parliamentary system, bourgeois democracy pays lip service to the notion that the people have the power. Popular movements and mass organisations are totally marginalised and kept away from accessing power and influence over the management of the economy. Bourgeois democracy and parliamentarianism, with its separation of powers, and the lack of a right to revoke MPs, end up entirely separating the State from the masses.
Today’s bourgeois democracy is incapable of reform without unsettling its class content. The working population cannot achieve a democracy that champions its interests without replacing today’s capitalist democracy with a socialist workers’ democracy.
The advent of the Left to power cannot be limited to a simple exchange of personalities in the various departments of the state, but must abolish the bourgeois state mechanism to re-establish the new power of the working class.
In order for such a government to establish workers’ power it must take the following measures:
a. Immediately to open up discussions for the earliest possible voting in of a new Constitution that entrenches:
- the socialised, democratically planned economy as the economic regime upon which the economy is based;
- a workers’ socialist democracy as the political system;
- the duty of people’s representatives to be accountable on a regular basis to their constituencies, and the right to revoke such representatives by the electorate at any moment;
- the consolidation of legislative and executive powers to an electable and revocable upper committee of the working people that would vote on laws and would work on their application;
- election of such a committee for a two-year term, on the basis of universal suffrage and a multiparty system, with an electoral regime that would provide for additional representation for regions where the working population is more numerous, and that would include electable and revocable representatives of workers from every important industrial sector; and
- meaningful local authority arrangements by delegating the power of mayoral authorities to electable and revocable local popular councils that would also operate on two-year terms on the basis of universal suffrage that would include representatives from each ward and from workers according to the local units of the production and of the local economy;
b. the total reformation of the Army by taking the following measures:
- full civic and trade union rights for all soldiers and junior officers;
- all officers to be elected with the right of recall by the soldiers. Also, living standards must be improved (including hygiene, nutrition, and sufficient annual leave), and there should be an increase of the present salary of a soldier to the level of unemployment benefit;
- sufficient arms training throughout the term of a soldier’s service;
- no professional army;
- a period of arms training for the entire working population as its own guarantee over its rights, interests, and achievements;
- the remuneration of all officers with a salary no higher than that of a skilled worker; and
- the addition to the Army of military units from workers’ organisations that are to be trained at military camps at the expense of the State;
c. The radical reform of the security services that shall involve:
- the abolition of all current forms of special units of State repression and policing of popular struggles;
- the prohibition of security forces in locations where political or trade union activity is taking place, and the extension of the current prohibition on the violation of academic asylum to all educational institutions and to all workplaces;
- the abolition of the self-governing nature of security forces and their subjugation to control by the mass organisations of the working population and of the youth, and their transformation into civil guard units that would include representatives from the mass organisations of the workers and youth. The training of such security forces to be defined by an elected committee of representatives from the mass organisations.
d. Fundamental changes to judicial power must include:
- the abolition of privileges of the judiciary and their wages to be kept at levels equal to that of a skilled worker;
- the election of members of the judiciary directly by the people;
- the application of a programme of mass education on the reformed and modernised system of laws that champions the interests of the working population.
e. Structural changes in the functioning of state/public services and organisations so that:
- in all public services and organisations, the management is made up of elected and revocable representatives of mass trade union organisations of the working class, of the elected government, and of the workers in those services/organisations;
- the salary of civil servants would reflect that of an industrial worker;
10. For ‘Internationalist’, not ‘foreign’ external relations – For the United Socialist States of Europe!
A Left government must interact on the international stage in a radically different manner from the hitherto conservative bourgeois Greek governments. The starting point of a new national ‘foreign’ policy should be based on the assumption that the most loyal ally of a revolutionary Greece would be the working classes globally, irrespective of State or national/ethnic origins. It would be necessary that such a policy reflects the active ambition that the revolutionary socialist example of Greece be spread and gain ground through the struggle of the workers across the Balkans, Europe, and the globe. A Left government must take specific initiatives that send a revolutionary message of the internationalist struggle against capitalism and of resistance to imperialism on a global level.
The immediate measures and initiatives of a Left government for such an internationalist policy must include:
a. Withdrawal from NATO and the shutting down of US bases on Greek territory. NATO is not an innocuous military mechanism; it is the military expression of capitalism at the time of the rise of monopolies, that is to say, of imperialism. It is a complex of military and government institutions inseparably tied to the domestic mechanisms of the bourgeoisie, set up to crush the workers’ movement and the Left and to defend capitalism. Withdrawal from NATO is not simply a matter of principle; it has to do with the defence of the rights, interests, and gains of the working class and its revolutionary course. Remaining in NATO would amount to a Left government giving the counter-revolution to plan its undermining;
b. An open appeal to European workers to unite their struggles with those of the Greek working class against European capitalism. The application of a programme of overthrowing capitalism logically equates with a collision with the capitalist EU and its institutions, and with an inevitable exit from it.
At every step, a Left government must shout out loudly to the peoples of Europe and the world that its aim is not to turn to reactionary national isolationism. The ‘building of socialism solely within the borders of Greece’ is a thoroughly reactionary utopia. Socialism is a system of social and economic harmony and wellbeing. Within conditions of total development and of dominance of the global market, where there is an objectively highly developed division of labour, socialism cannot be built on the productive forces of one country alone. In order to s build socialism firmly, it is necessary to bring together the productive forces of many developed countries.
What this current profound crisis in the Eurozone also proves is that capitalism, due to its inherent contradictions and antagonisms, is systemically and organically incapable of bringing to a conclusion the historically progressive process of unification of the European continent. The only force capable of doing so is the European working class under the banner of socialism.
A Left government would have to patiently and actively defend and champion the case of a Europe of its working peoples; a fraternal and friendly Europe that would institutionalise this relationship through new treaties capable of guaranteeing not simply a common market and a common currency, but a common planning of the productive forces for the mutual benefit of all European peoples. A Left government would have to work hard at the global level to campaign for and bring to fruition the United Socialist States of Europe!
Within the context of this struggle, a Left government would have to organise international conferences for the coordination of these common struggles and endeavours against capitalism in the Balkans and Europe, and to take the necessary initiatives towards the establishment by the mass movements and parties of the working class globally of a new workers’ international of the masses!
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