ANTARSYA’s open call for the upcoming European elections

ANTARSYA addresses an open call for a wide rally of anticapitalist/antiimperialist/antiEU forces in the wake of the May European elections. The full text of the call is the following:

• Against the Europe of capital, racism and war, for an internationalist breach with and disengagement from the EU
• In favor of the workers’ and peoples’ rights, against the government of the euro-memoranda and the right-wing opposition, for the debt deletion and the workers’ control
• Struggle for peace and internationalist solidarity of the peoples, against NATO, imperialism and nationalism
• For a wide rally of anticapitalist/antiimperialist/antiEU forces

 

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1. The 2019 european elections are held in a period where both Europe and Greece are facing a turning point. The crisis that broke out in the global capitalist system in 2008 cannot be surpassed, while new clouds are gathering in the horizon. The contradictions between the imperialist centers and the bourgeois classes are getting stronger, war and military preparations are a part of the daily agenda. The political systems are becoming more reactionary. On the ground of the financial and political crisis of the EU grows the current of racism, nationalism and the far-right that even takes up governmental positions.

Domestically, it is fully revealed in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of workers that the policy of the SYRIZA administration is failing, as they promised to “wipe out the memoranda” within the Eurozone and the EU, only to lead to a further escalation of the capitalist assault, a permanent supervision, and a joining of hands with the most aggressive choices of the USA-NATO imperialism, in order to serve the interests of the Greek capital in the region.

But the situation is far from one-sided. Because on the same time, movements and resistances are growing. Each time that the dominant classes proclaim their “final” victory, the people and the movements prove them wrong. From the “yellow vests” movement to the antifascist and antiracist struggles and strikes, the workers and the lower class are not giving up. They find ways to remove the veil of consent and defeatism, to trace the “other way” that the working people need.

2. The course of things demonstrates that two paths lie ahead of the workers and the people in our country and in Europe as well: either the bourgeois political forces will impose their own “exit” from the capitalist crisis over the shoulders of the workers and the people, or the labor movement and the people will impose their own anticapitalist alternative forcing the ruling class to pay the price, against the barbaric exploitation, the competitions and wars, the repression and anti-democratic enforcements, the ecological catastrophe.

The struggling forces of the Left need to fight the political and electoral battles so that the popular discontent will be oriented towards a “left, overturning, anti-EU” direction, and not in a right or far-right one.  This includes a struggle for the rights and liberties of the workers and the people against the government, aiming towards the shaking and the overthrowing of the policy of the capital, the EU, the IMF and the bourgeois political system, as well as an unwavering front against nationalism, racism and the threat of fascism.

3. The dominant forces in the Union seek to trap the peoples of Europe into the dilemma “European way”, “democracy” on the one hand and nationalism, “racism”, “far right” on the other.

Correspondingly, in our county, SYRIZA propagates the dilemma “SYRIZA or the Right”, “progressive pole or extreme neoliberalism and far-right”.

But the political base of the government and the bourgeois opposition is the same. It is the interests of the bourgeoisie, the euro-memoranda, the support of atlanticism and the policy of the capital. This is the policy that targets the rights of the people and lowers their morale, strengthening the forces of the far-right.

The confrontation with the far-right mob that tries to legitimize itself as a “fighter for Macedonia” does not give SYRIZA the right to determine the names of Balkan countries through the Prespes Agreement. [πολύ ελεύθερη απόδοση γιατί το «οι νονοί των βαλκανίων» δεν ξέρω πόσο θα γινόταν κατανοητό»

When the government prides itself for sealing the borders of Evros and the Aegean Sea while people freeze to death in hellholes like Moria, when it has abandoned even its declarations regarding the right of immigrant to vote while citizenship is still awarded through racist filters, then it boosts racism rather than confront it.

We reject the “lesser evil” line of thought and the dilemmas that the government imposes. The “lesser evil” logic always leads to the greater evil, as the historic examples have shown.

4. In contrast to what the dominant views are propagating, the EU is trembling due to a deep political crisis, due to its amplifying interior contradictions. The detestation of millions of workers towards this reactionary corporate mechanism, the “Greek issue”, the amplification of the imperialistic competitions and contradictions as depicted in the Brexit negotiations, the EU-Italy clash, the amplification of the contradictions between the EU and the USA and the strong rise of the far-right in a series of European countries are signs of the deep crisis that the EU is going through.

But their crisis is also fueled by the struggles of the workers and the youth. The year of 2018 ended with the “yellow vests” symbolizing and condensing the fears of the ruling classes regarding the future of the European capitalisms and the EU itself. Just a few years back, Macron was presented as the holder of the magic formula against “populism”, which was the “reinvention of capitalism”, the “restart” and the speeding up of the European unification. Now he is the hated “president of the rich” and the grand designs for the EU are crumbling. The other pillar of the EU, German capitalism, is preparing for a halt in growth, with a fall of the industrial production and a deceleration of the GDP. More importantly, the political crisis there is also in the daily agenda.

5. As a response to their crisis, the ruling classes seek to escalate their anti-labor offensive at all levels - economic and political. Their response combines the intensity of the reactionary shielding of the economic and political functioning of the EU, the institutional consolidation and the imposition of capitalist reforms, forms of permanent guardianship, intensification of inequality, a shift towards militarization and war. At the same time they are intensifying racist campaigns and the construction of Fortress Europe against refugees and immigrants, to disorientate the rage of the working class and of all social strata which are heavily affected by the crisis, in harmless directing it to paths that are harmless for the system. In this way they are opening the way to the extreme right and the fascists. The SYRIZA government is leading the way in the promotion of these policies.

 

6. All developments confirm that the E.U. is not a safe haven of stability and prosperity. It is a deeply class, reactionary and imperialist structure which has been screeching not only under the pressure of the crisis and the antagonisms but also due to the rage fed by the sharpening gigantic class polarization.

The only way out in defense of the workers’ and people’s rights, for salary and pension increases, in defense of public goods, for the liberation from the permanent guardianship regime, racism and antagonisms is the struggle against the EU, the break and disengagement from it from an anticapitalist, class and internationalist perspective.

The total experience from the recent years proves in a cruel way that the EU cannot be reformed or “see reason”. On the contrary it is becoming the headquarters and the alibi of all the antilabor offensives.

 

7. The break and disengagement from the EU, the insubordination to the financial slaughterhouse and the imposition of the barbaric capitalist reforms is an indivisible part of the total struggle to impose the interests and the needs of the workers and the people.

A broader program for struggle is needed, one that aims to make the capital lose wealth and power in order for the working class and the people to gain back their life. We need a movement for the overthrow of the capitalist offensive, one that will clash with the EU and will be based on the power of the working class’ struggle in Europe and around the world.

 

The struggle for the exit from the EU is indivisibly tied with:

 

- The social struggle of the workers, the youth and the poor social strata for salary and pension rises against the perpetuation of the austerity, for stable work with rights against the flexible and illegal work. For the defense of the public goods against the privatization and the liberalization of the markets. To combat unemployment and reduce the work hours. To fight against the sexist discrimination in the work places.

- The struggle to erase the usurious debt, which despite their rhetoric will never become manageable. The nationalisation of the banks and the big enterprises under workers’ control.

- The struggle for the contemporary democratic rights of the workers and the youth and the sovereignty of the people. The disobedience against the brutal trusteeship, for full independence and disengagement from the imperialist mechanisms, against the transfer of the decisions far from every social control in the hands of the technocrats of the EU and the multinational corporations.

- The struggle for peace, against the imperialist imposition of the EU, the European Army, the shift to militarization.

- The fight for open borders, cities and neighborhoods for the refugees and the immigrants who are a part of our class and our struggle. For closed cities for fascists and the extreme-right scum.

- The struggle for the ecological survival of the planet, against the profit, the GMO’s, the imprudent development.

- The fight against the suppression of the women, the discrimination against the LGBTQ people, the sexist attacks of the ruling class which are even supported by the decisions of the European Court.

 

8. The struggle for a left, internationalist exit from the Eurozone and the EU is an integral part of the struggle that seeks to weaken the multinationals and the forces of the capital, to create breaches in the reactionary edifice, for broader changes that will benefit the popular majority, for the struggle against imperialism, for the anti-capitalist overthrow. It cannot be postponed to a vague future of “another society”, nor can it be a means to develop “competitiveness” and  “liquidity” of the capitalist economy.

9. The exit from the EU cannot happen on the grounds of “national entrenchment”. We confront capitalist internationalization because we are for the unobstructed internalization of resistance, the voluntary collaboration among peoples, paving the way to the abolition of the capitalist relations of production, inequality and exploitation. Capitalist internationalization, which takes place on the grounds of the unobstructed ruling of the “market forces”, the multinationals and their institutions (EU,OECD and various agreements of international trade) is what leads to the unobstructed expansion of the exploitation and ruling by a handful of stock-market and industrial giants. Our slogan “Exit from the EU” is inspired by the great internationalist movements against capitalist globalization since Genova up to nowadays.

Its compass is the historic perspective of the total liberation of the workers and of the peoples, the overthrow of capitalism, the revolutionary change of society, a different internalization to the benefit of the working majority.

10. In this framework of the reactionary policies of the EU and the capitalist crisis, the reactionary “eurosceptic” currents, nationalistic and racist ideas and the far-right are developed in Europe during the last years.

The reactionary bourgeois political forces of the so-called “Euroscepticism” (Salvini, Lepen, Orban etc) do nothing more than negotiate a better position for their own bourgeois class within the framework of the European capitalist integration.

They are the governments and the political forces of the “liberal” and “democratic” EU, that adopt step by step the agenda of the far-right, supposedly in an effort to tame it but the only thing they manage is to legalize it and enforce it, and at the same time their own crisis deepens even more.

The far-right seeks to use the all-round political, economic and ethical crisis of capitalism and the EU and to build a reactionary, nationalistic and fascist current. It brings a civil war among the workers and the poor, talking about “our workers”, in order to wage more effectively the war against all workers, like in Austria and Hungary where they voted for an 80-hour working week! They are talking of “Our nation”, preparing with their warmongering rhetoric the slaughter of all peoples.

This is just one side of reality, though. The other one is the development of a massive, anti-racist and anti-fascist movement all around Europe. This is what the 200,000 demonstrators in Berlin show, the tens of thousands in Chemnitz. The far-right and the fascists in Britain believed that they would have political gains from the political crisis of Brexit, but in December they discovered that the streets of London belong to a broad and colourful mobilization of the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement. Paris experienced the most massive anti-racist demonstrations amid the Yellow Vests uprising. Italy is not only Salvini, but a massive movement that welcomes refugees from Palermo to Torino…

We confront both the cosmopolitan “Europeanism” as well as the far-right and nationalistic “Euroscepticism”. Only the workers’ movement, the left and the consistent anti-fascist action can come up against fascism.

ANTARSYA CALLS

To a large gathering of social and political forces for our intervention in the European elections. With this proposal we address to the organized forces and collectives of the labor, youth, anti-racist and ecological movement. This will give hope and perspective to those who insist, to those who fight.