“FREE STATE”
Movement of Resistance and Subversion a
WHO WE ARE, WHAT WE
ARE AFTER,
WHY WE ADHERE TO
SYRIZA-EKM
In a tragic moment of our trajectory in History, having full awareness
of the undeclared but full blown and ruthless War we are facing as a people, as a state, as a nation by the “International of the Finance”, the
emerging “Totalitarian Empire of
Globalization”, fully conscious of the fact that this war is not but part of a much wider, all-European and
world attack of the forces of the financial capital and of every sort of oligarchies
of the Wealth and the Power, which want to demolish the main democratic,
social, national rights humanity has won, as a result of its victory over
Fascism, in 1945, of the same forces which threaten Middle East with a military
holocaust, we are meeting, as free and independent citizens, to create the
movement of Resistance and Subversion “Free
State”.
From where we come and where
we go – Greece
as a “destroyed debt colony”
We set off from different starting points, we crossed different paths,
to meet in the common struggles for the defense of the most elementary social
rights and conquests, of the very notion of democracy and our national
independence during the last three tragic years. We contributed where we could,
as individuals, or throught the collectivities we were participating, to the
organization of the practical and theoretical resistance to the course of
social catastrophe and national enslavement, that began under the Papandreou
government with its act of treason of
May 2010 and was continued under the Papadimas and Samaras governments.
We met in the strikes and demonstrations against the measures provided
by the Memoranda signed with the Troika of EU, ECB and IMF. We were present in
the battle of ideas in order to comprehend and explain the real content and the
goals of the Greek “rescue packages”, of the Memoranda and the Loan Agreements.
We were among the first who underlined that those measures and programs are not
only reactionary economic reforms but means of destroying and enslaving our
state. We underlined that these programs are organizing in the medium-long term
a course towards an oligarchic turn in all Europe, using Greece and then the whole “periphery” of Europe as Troian horses.
We were among the first to underline the importance of putting Greek
sovereign debt under the jurisdiction of English colonial law, which was the
real reason behind the formation of the Papadimas government. We struggled for
the creation of a common antimemorandum-front, “from Kammenos to ANTARSYA”,
based on the principle “we attack together, we march separately”. We did give
the struggle for the awakening of European peoples, on the basis of the “appeal
for the saving of peoples of Europe”, launched
in October 2011. We worked for the success of SYRIZA at the elections of 2012,
exactly because we wished to provide the Greek people with a political tool to
stop and deny the memoranda. We defended without any concessions democracy, including democracy in the
internal life of the collectivities to which we have participated.
Memorandum and Loan Agreements
For us, the Memorandum
and the Loan Agreements are not a simple program of economic and social policy;
they are not only a “mistaken”, socially “senseless” or “reactionary” economic
and social policy. They are all of that, but they are also something much more
important. The Memorandum was not
devised to “succeed”, even according to its own stated aims; it was devised to
“fail”, creating exactly what its
“failure” provokes. It is a comprehensive and consequent to itself program,
creating, in its own terms, the mechanisms which provoke and consequently use
its “failures” to achieve its actual but hidden agenda. For this reason, the
recession is not abating, having smashed all records; this is why the so-called
“last” measures are never the last measures, and for that reason the debt, the
indication of the economic strength or weakness of a country, is constantly
skyrocketing; for that reason, a primary surplus is not being created, nor will
it ever be created under these circumstances and this is how every mechanism of
popular sovereignty is being curtailed. The
Memorandum and Loan Agreements are not a mistake, because if they were a
mistake, they would correct them; they are a crime, a mechanism of programmed
enslavement and self-destruction of a nation-state, a “pilot programme” of
pan-European and worldwide significance.
The system of the “Memorandum and
Loan Agreements” is an attempt to:
-
confirm, as much as possible, the fundamental, internationally
important principle of “paying debt in
its entirety”, in other words, the claims of the holders of capital against
societies and peoples, at all costs and without limits, even if the big banks
and the rating agencies themselves overwhelmingly contributed to the creation
of this “mountain of debt”. Among other things, by usurping, through the industry
of derivatives and other schemes, the fundamental state function of issuing
money. In other words, to institutionalize the subversion of the principle of
popular sovereignty and of national independence, of the foundation of the
civil organization of modern bourgeois democracy, in favour of the principle of
the sovereignty of Money. It is certainly true that Finance never felt quite
comfortable in the clothes of popular sovereignty and national independence. It
went along with it only as long as it was not able to wear its own: of the
oligarchic, plutocratic organization of society, through unrestrained markets
and uncontrolled supranational structures
-
to provoke a violent and rapid impoverishment,
unprecedented during peaceful times in Europe, of an entire people, as well as
the demolition of an underdeveloped social state which Greece possessed, and
the return to the social status of the 19th century (under even
worse conditions, because we no longer have the mechanisms of production and
survival available to an agricultural society with the large families of the
past)
-
to achieve a continual transfer of both surplus and wealth, public and private
(through larcenous taxation), to the Creditors
- to deprive
popular sovereignty and the most basic state functions of their content using
debt, imposed economic policies and a transfer of wealth and sovereignty in order to institutionally transform Greece
into a “debt colony” – and not even a stable one, but enfeebled and
unsustainable as well. The great western powers, Britain, America and now the
Financial Empire would never accept Greek independence – but this is the first
time that a type of “unsustainable protectorate” has been created, in a process
of an ongoing “death spiral”, in order to use it, among other things, as a tool
for dismantling Europe.
The Loan Agreements and
Memoranda undermine the capacity of Greek social formation to reproduce itself,
render the Greek “nation-state” itself largely unsustainable and directly
threaten the economic preconditions for a bourgeois parliamentary democracy as
well as the international position of Greece, including its
participation in the Eurozone and the European Union.
In the long run, if these processes are not controlled, they could even
endanger the territorial integrity of the country and result in a “Greece without Greeks”, intensifying
the emigration of the most dynamic, young and educated people abroad, at the
same time that the greater portion of the waves of migrants from Asia and
Africa toward Europe are being concentrated in Greece. The erosion of Greece’s
demographic, ethnic composition, from a critical point on, has major political,
not simply ethnic, implications. The masses of destitute immigrants, with
distant cultural determinants and roots, cannot easily be assimilated into the
framework of a state and of a social and urban network which, even before it
was plunged into the current process of decomposition and collapse, had no policy
for the reception and assimilation of migrants. Ethnic and religious
differences have contributed to an environment of intense social and class
conflicts and of general decomposition, making race riots ever more likely, contributing to the dissolution of
social cohesion. Most of all, however, they shatter the basis of Democracy,
which isn’t and cannot be other than the collective, conscious “Demos”, as defined by Pericles in his
Funeral Oration. The Greek people are in danger of suffering in the end, at the
hands of international Capital, what the Jews suffered under the emperor Titus
in 70 AD, in other words, being scattered to the four winds by economic means
rather than through violence and arms, leaving behind “brand Greece” and its
symbols a mere shadow of its former self, and leaving in the hands of multi-national
managers a country which has been transformed into an empty shell.
Patriotism, Internationalism, Democracy
For
these reasons, resistance to and subversion of the Memorandum is our greatest
ethical, social and patriotic duty,
the precondition for the dignified and
secure survival of the Greek people as well as the most important contribution
which our people could make to the global process of realization and development
to the thoroughly misunderstood and distorted principle of internationalism. We are internationalists supporting our homeland
and nation - not just because we belong to it, and not because we believe that
it is superior to others, even though our History has done us a great honor, Greeks
having contributed to some of the greatest and most fundamental achievements of
universal civilization. But also because the nation-state is today the only
islet of any democratic potential and social protection. We are both patriots and internationalists,
because we cannot be one without the other. We are both patriots and democrats
because we cannot be one without the other.
We are inter-nationalists because our goal is to unite
the nations, peoples and societies against the totalitarianism of the Empire,
whether it is expressed through economic or military means. And we are
struggling, first of all, to unite the peoples of our continent, Europe. Doing so, we are contributing to the creation of
international conditions which will permit the salvation and the rebirth of our
own homeland.
Only by being patriots can we be democrats, because if
we cannot protect the state, our society, our homeland against the attack which
they are suffering, we will lose every possibility of becoming citizens; we
will be turned into new slaves of global imperial power. Only as democrats can
we defend our homeland and our nation, because the state is the “demos” (the
people), as we learned from ancient Athens, from the fighters in the national
resistance of 1941-1945 as was underlined in the program of EAM (National
Liberation Front) and as was penned by Glinos, namely that: “the national is
popular, and the popular is national”.
Only the Greek people can defend its state, and in
order to defend the state they must feel that it is their own. This is a
universal truth as well as the fundamental lesson of modern Greek history, of
our rebellions and, especially, of the history of so-called Greek “nationalism”
of the right (made historically in USA),
which resulted in the treachery and tragedy of Cyprus. For Greece and the Greek people, the
special tradition of the tremendous heritage of the Ancients - a tradition
which has at its centre the notions of Man,
Citizen,
Democracy and Freedom - must be at the
centre of our identity. Without it, if we do not defend it as a priceless
treasure, if we abandon it, we will inevitable be lost as a people.
Those who have attacked us know very well what they have
done in choosing Greece to
begin their assault against Europe and Mankind.
We must, here and now, on pain of individual, social and national extinction,
succeed in defending our independence and popular sovereignty, this time facing
not military, but political-economic violence. We must do again, with other
methods and in a different environment, what we did in 1821, with the
thunderbolt of the Greek Revolution, which lit up the European night of the
Holy Alliance; as the European night of the Third Reich was lit up by the Greek
resistance to the Nazis in 1941-1945 and the victory of the Greek people, the
first against fascism in Europe, in 1940.
Of course, it’s not possible to make a simple mechanical
transfer from the past to today’s conditions and modern threats, which are
infinitely more difficult and dangerous, even if less immediately dramatic in
form, at least until now. Greece
did not become the object of a military invasion, but of a “communication”,
“political” and economic “war of debt”. The subjugation and corruption of Greece’s ruling
classes and of its political and state personnel have placed us in the first
line of fire. We don’t have any previous experiences or models to follow; we
have no ready recipes or solutions. As with every struggle, bravery and honesty
are sine qua non, but for David to
beat Goliath a better mind is needed as well. Unfortunately, today’s situation
has been prepared by decades of spiritual, ethic and political decline, which
has permeated Greek society, not only its upper classes, and without its
reversal no salvation can be possible.
The European and global
importance of the Greek struggle
By
resisting and reversing the catastrophic course on which we have entered, we
are not only defending our identity and dignity, we are not just laying the
foundations for the rebirth of our homeland; we are simultaneously joining the
first battle in the fight against the new, global totalitarianism in Europe.
This is because the Memorandum signals the
passage from neoliberalism to the capitalism of catastrophe; moving more and
more from “American” to “financial imperialism”, to a new, purely financial
capitalism, a feudalism of capital; to the institutionalization of
economic, political and, sooner or later, police and military violence, where
needed, as the dominant form of “governance”; to the dismantling of the political and ideological superstructure
which characterized post-war Europe and the world.
Perhaps, for the time being at least, this new
totalitarianism is using, in Europe,
“peaceful” and “economic” means, but it is just as deadly and even more
dangerous than the military violence used by its predecessor, the Nazism of
Adolph Hitler. While Hitler tried to subjugate peoples with raw violence, this
one uses means of deception and manipulation; it takes advantage of the most
extraordinary achievements of 20th-century science and technology,
hiding its real agenda, the program of destruction and the ideology of Death,
which characterize it, within the complexity of modern economic and financial
mechanisms, impenetrable not only to the average person but to most “experts”
as well.
Today’s attack is the fourth and most dangerous wave
in a global attempt to dismantle the
most important social, democratic and cultural achievements of the 19th
and 20th century, if not the most fundamental moral imperatives of
the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which was the effort to allow Man to be the subject of his own
History.
The course of deconstruction began three or four
decades ago, with the violent introduction of neoliberal dogmas by Thatcher and Reagan. There followed, twenty
years ago, under pressure from the same powers, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was really not what it claimed
to be, but the collapse of which turned this huge country into “mafia-style
capitalism”, demolishing in its course the insufficient but quite real social
and cultural achievements of its peoples and creating the preconditions for a
global monopolistic dictatorship. Authoritarianism, “the culture of power”,
“the strong Leviathan state controlling a weak society” - which characterized
the Soviet experiment, perhaps the
most significant social experiment in the history of mankind - easily served the interests of the
oligarchic and mafiosi post-Soviet neocapitalism, which did little to expand
the empowerment of Soviet citizens to influence the course of their own country.
A series of wars broke out in the region comprising the former USSR, and Russia itself was threatened, at
one point, with dissolution into a number of “province-statelets”. It would be
difficult for someone to find a trace of “socialism” in the USSR of 1991,
and its disappearance dissipated a great historical misunderstanding. However,
at the same time, the lowering of the Red Flag from the Kremlin in December of
that year was experienced as an historic
defeat of the idea of “socialism” – and it was - to the degree that we
refer specifically to ideas.
Ten years ago, an enormous operation of complete re-colonization of the Middle
East began, with wars supposedly against “terrorism” and the “Axis of Evil”, in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, which continue to this day in Libya and Syria,
and which tomorrow may include Lebanon and Iran, extending at the same time to
the south, toward the African continent.
With the attack against Greece in 2009 – 2010, the “Empire”
now threatens the “heart” of the western world, beginning with the “periphery” of this “heart”; it
threatens the societies which, after 1945, owing to their struggles, but thanks
to their international position as well, had gained the most important
democratic and social achievements in the modern world. The empire aims either
to turn the European Union into a
complete “dictatorship of the markets”, or to dissolve it into a series of quarreling nations, embroiled in
economic and political wars between each other without the means or size to
resist the totalitarianism of the markets.
Greece and Europe
If
this analysis is correct, then it suggests the right policy for us with regard
to Europe. The European debt crisis and its
method of dealing with have confirmed the deeply
reactionary character as well as the unsustainability of the “Europe of Maastricht”, they
confirmed the correctness of all those who criticized that way of “European
construction”, but, also, they have showed the weakness of this structure. The
practical solutions proposed today are either the transformation of the EU and
above all the Eurozone into an open dictatorship of the markets or its
dissolution under conditions of chaos and suzerainty of the markets and the USA throughout
the continent. For us, both are unacceptable and catastrophic.
We share the criticism of many friends concerning the
current structure of EU; what most concerns us, however, is to move to a better,
rather than worse, situation from where we are now. In the USSR, for
instance, there was no trace whatsoever of socialism; however, it remained a
contradictory structure because it referred ideologically to socialism. Its
dissolution in favour of mafia-capitalism
was a strategic defeat for socialist ideas and a major historical regression.
In the mechanisms of the EU there is not a trace of democracy, but the EU remains
a contradictory structure to the degree that it refers ideologically to the principles
of humanity, enlightenment and democracy. Its dissolution in favour of a
fragmentation of Europe into opposing
statelets threatens to lead, under these conditions, to a complete dismantling
of bourgeois democracy and major achievements of global and European
importance; it threatens to take us back to before 1945, en route to the Middle
Ages. If we remain on this course and if we do not reverse it, it threatens to
turn into the greatest global
catastrophe of human civilization since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment
after the English and French Revolutions.
The euro and
its architecture are fundamental contributors to the crisis which Greece is
facing - but not the only ones. The debt crisis struck not only the Eurozone,
it also reflects a new phase of financial capitalism and it is a consequence,
among others, of the total liberation of the flow of capital and goods, the
ongoing tendency to exempt capital from taxation and the abolition of all
protectionist regulations, that is of globalisation. On the other hand, additional
contributing factors to the Greek crisis included the serious weaknesses of the
Greek structure, specific geopolitical pressures and the existence of a “kleptocratic capitalism”, which has
poisoned with its contagious “exhalations” the entire Greek society, our
culture and mentality. A crisis of such
magnitude and an attack of such severity cannot be confronted satisfactorily only or largely using the tool of
monetary devaluation. It can only be confronted by gathering an alliance of European peoples and nations against the
uncontrolled actions of the Markets and Capital.
This is even more true when the subject under attack is
a deeply exhausted country, in steep decline for decades, a state which can’t
even fill a pothole in a road, let alone organize an effective return to a
national currency under conditions of national destruction, especially when it
has converted the bulk of its debt into euro through the PSI and loan
agreements.
Some consider it utopian to pursue the formation of a
European alliance against the Markets and the organization of a popular
struggle for a different Europe. They
underestimate, however, the inevitable awakening of the European peoples, given
the visible dismantling of their major social and political achievements. If we
accept their assumption, in other words, if we too assume that all of Europe
will accept without protest its destruction by the Markets, then what chances
do we have at all by ourselves to successfully resist such an attack, inside or
outside euro and/or EU?
The drama of Greece’s situation, thanks to the
great strategic brilliance of those who planned the debt wars, lies in the fact
that we are now obliged to proceed toward rupture, toward conflict, because we
are the first in line to be destroyed as a country. Greece stepped into the line of
fire and became a target thanks to the betrayal, corruption and incompetence of
the Greek elite, the acceptance of the memorandum and the Loan Agreement being
one of the biggest crimes committed by the ruling class and its politicians
against their own nation in modern Greek history. However, before we are led to
a compulsory exit from the euro, which under the current circumstances we
cannot exclude, we must exhaust all possible means, policies, institutional
capabilities and weapons - and these are not insignificant - provided through
our participation in the EU. If we must, let us “sell our hide” dearly, but let
us also create the kind of policies and international alliances that will
support our existence as an independent state, outside the euro.
We must immediately
organize an enormous, international communication and political counterattack in Europe and throughout the world. Let us charge the
upper classes of Germany and
of Europe, as well as global Capital, with the
responsibility which they certainly bear for the Greek social holocaust and the
danger of European-wide catastrophe. Let us be the first in the creation of
proposals which will gather forces around a progressive solution to the European
crisis. At the same time, we must prepare the people and country on all levels:
political, social, economic, diplomatic and technocratic, for the exigencies of
the War that must be fought for their salvation, even if it means entering and
adopting an “emergency economy”.
In order to accomplish this, we cannot succeed by spreading
illusions about the insignificance of the problems we face, nor by raising the
“flag of the drachma”, but only by defending the values, ideas, imperatives and symbols of Europe,
a Europe which belongs much more to us and to our tradition than to the grey
Chancellor of Germany and those she represents. Our Europe is the Europe of Aristotle and Plato, of Pericles and
Protagoras, Goethe and Beethoven, of Rousseau and Voltaire, of the
Enlightenment and Socialism, of the Greek Revolution of 1821 and of our
National Resistance. Even if we are led, willing or not, into open “war” and
rupture with the ruling powers of Capital and of “Euro-Germany”, we should do
so holding high these banners, because only with them can we create the
conditions for European and international political and social alliances; only
with them can we make clearly known, both globally and throughout Europe, the meaning of the struggle of the Greek people.
From the necessary “Revolution”
to the necessary “Self-Management” – Socialism of the 21st century
To
be a radical in modern Greece
it is not enough to repeat the analysis and program of Marx concerning English
industrial capitalism of the 19th century. One cannot be a radical while at the same
time participating in, or at least not exposing, the party of the small and large
privileges which comprise the economic base as well as the political and
cultural “superstructure” of Greek “kleptocratic
capitalism”. Obviously, as much as one might search “Das Kapital”, nowhere
can one find the word “rousfeti” (nepotism, piston).
The productive reconstruction of Greek society and the
economy as well as its resistance to external attack cannot be realized without
a “moral” and “cultural revolution” inside the country. Our challenge is to fight
against kleptocracy and corruption in order to re-found our state and make it
deeply democratic, to cease being slaves and to become citizens, because it is by
changing the world we change ourselves (Marx, Third Thesis on Feuerbach). We must wage a
relentless struggle against all forms of corruption both inside the Left and
among all kinds of “anti-memorandum-ists”; we must focus practical emphasis on collective
actions and institutions of every kind as the best possible means of
resisting the crisis, we must encourage the young and the unemployed
to be represented and to play their autonomous role on every level, from the base
to the top. This is an integral element and necessary condition for the
country’s salvation. No other road is possible.
“European Socialism
of the 21st century”, whose necessity was referred to by the
President of SYRIZA’s Parliamentary Group, must take into account the great
lessons from the epic struggles and tragedies of the Twentieth Century,
combining an emphasis on collectivity
with an emphasis on human character,
personality. There are no free societies without autonomous individuals.
Neither can autonomous individuals exist in unfree societies. This new European
Socialism must also recognize the need
for a long transitional period of antagonistic
co-existence between economic planning and the market. For us, Socialism in the
21st century can only be defined as a system of generalized social self-management, and self-governance on
all levels, returning to the basic, fundamental moral demand of a Left which was destroyed whenever and wherever it
has forgotten it. Self-regulation of
society or totalitarianism and destruction: this is the historical dilemma of
mankind in our age.
Why we are adhering to SYRIZA-EKM
Today,
through the agitations and actions of the past two-and-a-half years, the Coalition
of the Radical Left – United Social Front (SYRIZA-EKM) has emerged as the main
political tool of the Greek people in its attempt to change the catastrophic
course dictated by the Memorandum and in order for our homeland to be re-born.
This coalition concentrates and represents the majority of the forces which
clearly and consciously espouse this goal. By undertaking a transformation into
a united, democratic party, allowing for difeerent tendencies inside, it is
attempting to transform itself into a democratic, progressive, political
vehicle, which we so desperately need at this present juncture, in order to
claim hegemony. This coalition will also probably take a position of de facto leadership in the fast
approaching fight for the salvation of our homeland, a fight of historic,
definitive importance for Greece
and all Europe. We believe that participating
today in SYRIZA-EKM and its efforts, taking part in the fermentation of ideas,
dialogue and actions it is undertaking, we are contributing in the most
effective way possible to promoting our aims. We are contributing to the
titanic duty and challenge that confront the Greek Left, the Greek people and
all of the living, patriotic forces of our nation. This participation of ours
does not mean that it is only in SYRIZA-EKM that there are forces already
fighting or which could potentially be part of a wider social, patriotic,
European front, which must be assembled in order to join the fight of social
salvation and rebirth of our homeland. With our participation in SYRIZA-EMK we
hope to facilitate dialogue and joint actions with forces outside SYRIZA-EKM as
well; we hope to widen this party’s appeal, and contribute as much as we can to
the creation of a wider front of social and national salvation and rebirth.
Athens, 13 November 2012
THE TEMPORARY COORDINATING COMMITTEE
OF THE “FREE STATE”
MOVEMENT
