15) GREEK COMMUNISTS SPEAK OUT ON ECONOMIC CRISIS

(The following article is from the October 16-31, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Statement from the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), October 2, 2008 (slightly abridged)

The crisis of the economies of the USA and the EU member states, which broke out in the form of bankruptcies in the financial sector, prove the anarchic nature of capitalist development. The decay and parasitism of the current economy is caused by private and stock ownership of the means of production, the daily purchasing and selling of shares (and of securities which promise future profits), conducted through banks, insurance companies, and stock markets.

     Crisis phenomena were, are and will be the inevitable fate of all capitalist economies. This proves capitalism is not almighty.

     No management policy can relieve the system of its inherent decay, no matter whether the state bails out the over-indebted banks and other companies, or leaves it to the market to decide upon their bailout or depreciation.

     Irrespective of the ultimate depth and range of the current economic crisis, the managers of the system tremble before the danger of not being in a position to control the consequences that can endanger their political stability.

     The rising exploitation of workers and the pressures against the self-employed, in order to increase and accumulate profits, surround and strangle the economy. The danger also affects well-paid employees in the financial system and middle strata, which previously boosted their income through bonds, mutual funds, shares etc. Certainly, it threatens ordinary employees with the loss of their jobs and savings.

     What the bourgeoisie considers a threat to its economic and political stability is a hope for labour and peoples' forces. It is crucial not to lose sight of the only real way out: united, they should attack the wounded beast, not give it time to heal its wounds, or room for recovery. What is absolutely needed is social ownership of the means of production, the central planning of social production, and workers' and social control, which requires an overthrow at the level of power.

     This is neither doomsaying nor an exaggeration. We do not argue that a crisis equal to the one in 1929 has already come. However, the ability of the bourgeoisie to apply state regulations, in order to save the system by misleading and trapping labour and peoples' forces, has lost the dynamic it had after the end of World War II.

     We call upon the people to turn their back on deliberately misleading views about the regulation, rationalisation and humanisation of capitalism, which demonise neo-liberalism in order to save it.

     Today, we might not have developed the conditions to overthrow capitalist power, but conditions signal the possibility of accelerated developments in favour of the peoples...

     The ND (right-wing) government is determined to proceed with so-called reforms favouring big capital, the monopolies. PASOK (social democrats), the main opposition party, does not suggest an alternative solution... It misleads and spreads illusions promoting obsolete theories, arguing about a fair wealth distribution in capitalism. The developments in the economy have shown once again that bourgeois alternatives suggesting a different management of the system are totally contradictory and against the people's interests.

     KKE once again urges the people to counterattack and fight for:

* Rental subsidy for the unemployed and the youth. Interest free housing loans to young couples for obtaining main residence.

* Stop the auction sales of workers' properties due to housing loan debts. The right of the banks to attach properties and auction the main residence of the loanees must be abolished.

* Abolish the compounding of interest for all loans.

* Freeze the loans contracted by unemployed workers.

* State action to provide modern and safe houses at low prices.

* Increase incomes to meet the  needs of the people, including 1,400 Euros basic salary, 1,150 Euros minimum pension, unemployment benefit at 80% of the basic salary for the duration of unemployment. Dismissal pay for all.

* Abolish the value added tax on fuel used for heating or vehicles, for the peasants' households and the peoples' consumption in general.

* Prevent robbery of pension fund reserves, not just protection of investment in "structured bonds".

     The KKE appeals to workers, peasants, the self-employed, the progressive movements of the youth and the women to counterattack and fight jointly for the people's urgent needs; to abandon the parties that support the EU one-way road, and to support KKE, the party that guarantees the only real economic and political alternative solution for the people.