the commune

In a number of interviews, speeches and discussions in the USA and Britain, Alexis Tsipras has put forward his views of how Greece can exit the crisis. Barry Biddulph provides a critical appraisal.

What is the view of Tsipras on the rise and the growing threat  of Golden Dawn?

Recently, Newsnight’s Economic  Editor Paul Mason (13/02/13) and left-wing author,Seumas Milne(19/03/13) ,asked Tsipras what he thought about the threat of an authoritarian solution to the crisis in Greece.

In response to Paul Mason’s question about what he would do about the racist actions of Golden Dawn, Tsipras answered: we will implement the law! He would use the State against not only the counter-revolutionary violence of the fascists, but all groups which use violence. In other words, he stands for a bourgeois constitutionalism against  any violence from the revolutionary left, including the anarchists, who are defending  working class communities from fascist attacks.

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By Nikos Libero

Greece is living through its biggest crisis since the downfall of the military junta in the summer of 1974 – a consequence of the world economic crisis and the historical decadence of the Greek bourgeois elite.

The same internal tendencies – with more or less the same characteristics as in the USA in 2008, at the beginning of the world economic crisis – are manifested in Greece today in an explosive form.

All the social conquests of the working class since 1974 have been lost in the last three years. Since the end of the second world war, there has never been, in a period of peace, such a dramatic decline in the standard of living of the majority of the population of any country in Europe, or such a violent redistribution of wealth in such a limited time.

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During a recent visit to Greece, Eric Chester was able to get some sense of the enormous problems confronting that country.

Greeks are very proud of their past, not only the legendary era 2500 years ago, the time of the Parthenon, but more recently when Greeks fought the Nazi invaders. Nevertheless, along with the national pride is a bitter sense of despair, a feeling that there is no way out of the current catastrophe. The number of suicides has been increasing rapidly, as young Greeks try to cope with massive unemployment and the disintegration of the educational system, along with clear indications that the crisis will only grow worse.

Walking along the streets of Athens I saw people living on the street everywhere, children begging, sidewalks crumbling, and riot cops ready to come down on the next demonstration. Greece is a poor country, perhaps comparable to Mexico in economic development. Furthermore, global warming has hit Greece with a vengeance. Temperatures climbed to over 40 degrees every day, and the stagnant, humid, polluted air was oppressive.  Heat wave of this sort can last for weeks. Read the rest of this entry »