Declaration of Solidarity with Struggling and Prosecuted Proletarians in Greece
Declaration of Solidarity with Struggling and Prosecuted Proletarians in Greece
“In one night “reality” and “normality” died...”
On 6th of December 2008 in Greece pigs shot dead in cold blood 15 years old Alexis Grigoropoulos. That was the last straw which broke camel’s back and proletarian anger, which had been expressing itself through strikes and riots against attacks of Capital on living standards of our class, erupted. Suddenly, an uprising broke out and after several decades the specter of proletarian insurgency and open class struggle against capitalism returned to Europe. University and high school students as well as many pupils spontaneously surged into the streets of Greek cities and towns in order to assault police stations and all cops with stones and Molotov cocktails. Students and pupils were quickly joined by immigrant proletarians of every age, young “Greeks” with badly paid precarious jobs, but also by quite a lot of workers of an older generation. Even many unemployed and people from the margins of the class society took part: Romas, illegal refugees, drug addicts… Football hooligans forgot their dim-witted fights among each other and joined the struggle against the real enemy – repressive forces of the state. Immediately, it became clear to everybody that cops are nothing else but mercenaries of state terrorism. It became evident that they “serve” only smooth working of the system of private property of some and wage exploitation of others; and also that they “protect” merely law and order of this bourgeois system. “Dutiful citizens” and the belief in Democracy disappeared in clouds of smoke and tear gas and among blows of police batons.
“We destroy the present, because we come from the future!”
It was not only about street fights with cops and burning police stations. Rebels smashed and burned the smiling face of the capital’s world – the consumer paradise of shops, supermarkets, car showrooms and banks, which lend you money for some of the splendid commodities. The world of passive consumers of goods and spectators of Spectacle was burning in flames. And there were looting proletarians emerging from this fire and practically imposing dictatorship of human needs over capital and its exchange relations. Our class brothers and sisters were re-appropriating everything that we are, as the class, forced to produce at work in order to be obliged to buy it back for money we earn. They were also re-appropriating space and time, which are otherwise strictly divided and corseted according to needs of capital – columns of cars and stressed crowds of alienated zombies rushing to work, to school, to shop... disappeared from the streets recreated by proletarian violence and they were replaced by a community of the militant class. Combat self-organisation of rebels was developing spontaneously. Dozens of universities and high schools occupied not only by students, but proletarians of all categories, which we are divided into by capital, were transformed in centres of resistance and places of encounters, discussions, love and class hate. The same thing happened to a town hall in the Athens working class district of Aghios Dimitrios, which was also occupied by local inhabitants. After a long time our class was again beginning to speak and formulate its programme on its own. When rebelling workers occupied trade union buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, they put forward a critique of these mediators of sale of our labour power to the bosses. They showed that trade unions are part of the state and it is their aim to disorganise and suppress class struggle and that the way forward goes through self-organisation of struggle in workplaces. In all those aspects of the class movement and its struggle autonomy of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie – its ideologies, organisations and way of life – began to be born.
“Stop watching TV! Everybody come to the streets!”
Although the proletarian uprising was going across many sectors, which we are separated into by capital, only a minority of our class was actively taking part in it. While there were burning barricades in the streets, shops were looted and cops were fought against, a majority sat at home in front of their TV sets and listened to the baloney of politicians and journalists. Despite their enduring effort rebels have not succeeded in breaking passivity of their class brothers and sisters – neither in Greece nor in the rest of Europe and most countries of the world. Therefore, there was not a general paralysation of capitalist economy, which means that there was neither an attack against wage labour and production for profit. The movement stopped at partial attacks against the state and incomplete subversion of capitalist relations. In December, total destruction of all state structures aiming at liquidation of bourgeois power and imposition of social dictatorship of proletariat, which would strengthen and allow communisation of social relations, was not on the order of the day yet. Revolutionary insurrection is postponed for the moment...
“Merry crisis and a happy new fear!”
It was exactly this message that the Greek uprising left on Athens walls for law-abiding citizens (who continue to submit themselves to demands of capital; whom it does not even occur to that they could resist bosses and the state and they only wait as sheep what will happen to them). This message applies for proletarians over here, in the Czech Republic, too. The crisis is coming and the bourgeois lay off hundreds and thousands of people from work and lower real wages. For instance, 4.000 laid-off glass workers are right now left without any means of subsistence. And what has happened? Nothing! Domination of social peace and Democracy lays on our class like a boulder: we will rather die from hunger or live under a bridge than we would start really struggling for satisfaction of our human needs. Democracy is like opium – it prevents us from understanding ourselves as a class with distinct interests, which are opposed to the interests of capital. We can see only our individual and family lives and their misery appears to be the best what we can have. However, the world crisis will smash our citizen-consumer illusion of happiness and even the slightest enthusiasm about capitalism. There will be more and more unemployed and homeless people, prices of basic goods will grow and those, who will have jobs, will be able to buy less and less with their wages... and at the end the ruling class may drive us into a war in order to get rid of surplus people and production capacities and to achieve a possibility of another economical growth through reconstruction.
Is economy in crisis? Let’s finish it off! Down with social peace! One Greece is not enough!
Sooner or later, capital will leave us with no reserves. We will suffer and maybe we will die, if we will continue to slavishly accept wage labour and money as a necessary means to satisfy our needs. But surely there will be proletarians, who will refuse the logic of exchange value and surge into supermarkets and take without paying, what they will need. The class movement in Greece will explode anew with even greater subversive power and this time it will not be alone. And it will not be only proletarians in China, Bangladesh, Egypt or Bolivia, who will rise up. Even over here, shop windows will be trashed. We will loot shops and luxurious bourgeois haciendas. Mass strikes without and against trade unions will subvert all the capitalist economy. The state with its police and army will, as always, defend bourgeois order and properties and make terror against the proletariat, who will never solve anything, unless it makes its own revolution. In the meantime, all our support, sympathies, thoughts belong to proletarians in Greece, who struggle or are imprisoned. We long for helping them through spreading the struggle in the Czech Republic and the whole world. We want to share and develop their experience with them, in order to put a global revolutionary insurrection back on the order of history...
World revolution against capital, wage labour and money!
Revolutionary proletarian violence against state terror of the police till the complete destruction of all states!
Dictatorship of proletariat for communisation of social relations and worldwide classless community!
Třídní válka (Class War)
This article seems mostly positive to me, with the emphasis on the proletarian character of the events in Greece (also on the necessity of proletarian dictatorship) as well as the call for world revolution and the need for such things to expand.
On the other hand, some aspects of the article seems to be missing the main positive dynamics of the events, which was not the looting and the violence which the bourgeoisie condemned as "rioting" but the proletarian character of the events that were based on mass assemblies of students and workers in lots of different places and doing things based on collective discussion and decisions of students and workers. Yes, proletariat has to apply violence against it's class enemy, yet this isn't really done in the form of looting and burning stuff but in the form of actions done based on the collective discussions and decisions of the working class.
On a different point, from what I understand from your groups positions, you seem to have close position to what is generally defined as left/council communism. There is a group influenced by it in Czech Republic as far as I am aware of called Kolektivně Proti Kapitálu (website: http://protikapitalu.org/ ). Do you know them, are you in touch with this group?
Maybe I was reading that more carefully than you.
On the other hand, some aspects of the article seems to be missing the main positive dynamics of the events, which was not the looting and the violence which the bourgeoisie condemned as "rioting" but the proletarian character of the events that were based on mass assemblies of students and workers in lots of different places and doing things based on collective discussion and decisions of students and workers. Yes, proletariat has to apply violence against it's class enemy, yet this isn't really done in the form of looting and burning stuff but in the form of actions done based on the collective discussions and decisions of the working class.
Combat self-organisation of rebels was developing spontaneously. Dozens of universities and high schools occupied not only by students, but proletarians of all categories, which we are divided into by capital, were transformed in centres of resistance and places of encounters, discussions, love and class hate. The same thing happened to a town hall in the Athens working class district of Aghios Dimitrios, which was also occupied by local inhabitants. After a long time our class was again beginning to speak and formulate its programme on its own. When rebelling workers occupied trade union buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, they put forward a critique of these mediators of sale of our labour power to the bosses. They showed that trade unions are part of the state and it is their aim to disorganise and suppress class struggle and that the way forward goes through self-organisation of struggle in workplaces. In all those aspects of the class movement and its struggle autonomy of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie.
On a different point, from what I understand from your groups positions, you seem to have close position to what is generally defined as left/council communism. There is a group influenced by it in Czech Republic as far as I am aware of called Kolektivně Proti Kapitálu (website: http://protikapitalu.org/ ). Do you know them, are you in touch with this group?
Edited: not to confuse and to correct it (sorry for missunderstanding)
On Tuesday February 3rd 2009 there was a radio show organized by Priama Akcia/IWA with one member of KPK as a guest. And I was really in shock when the guest was saying that from his point of view class organization is possible mostly developing only in periods of economic boom and in periods of crisis the class is almost incapable of any struggle and development. Uff, this sound like stupid Lenin's idea that proletariat is revolutionary power because his role in massproduction.
On the contrary this group focuses on crucial antagonism between the proletariat and bourgeoisie.
First of all Amores Perros was a really good film wasn't it?
Combat self-organisation of rebels was developing spontaneously. Dozens of universities and high schools occupied not only by students, but proletarians of all categories, which we are divided into by capital, were transformed in centres of resistance and places of encounters, discussions, love and class hate. The same thing happened to a town hall in the Athens working class district of Aghios Dimitrios, which was also occupied by local inhabitants. After a long time our class was again beginning to speak and formulate its programme on its own. When rebelling workers occupied trade union buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, they put forward a critique of these mediators of sale of our labour power to the bosses. They showed that trade unions are part of the state and it is their aim to disorganise and suppress class struggle and that the way forward goes through self-organisation of struggle in workplaces. In all those aspects of the class movement and its struggle autonomy of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie.
Oh yes, I noticed these bits, all very, very good. I was more referring to things like these sentences:
And there were looting proletarians emerging from this fire and practically imposing dictatorship of human needs over capital and its exchange relations....
Even over here, shop windows will be trashed. We will loot shops and luxurious bourgeois haciendas.
There sort of quotes were what I was referring to.
As for the KPK things:
On Tuesday February 3rd 2009 there was a radio show organized by Priama Akcia/IWA with one member of KPK as a guest. And I was really in shock when the guest was saying that from his point of view class organization is possible only in periods of economic boom and in periods of crisis the class is almost incapable of any struggle and development.
Are you sure that's exactly what they said because it doesn't make any sense. Maybe when it says "boom" it should say "crisis" and vica-versa?
Quote:
And there were looting proletarians emerging from this fire and practically imposing dictatorship of human needs over capital and its exchange relations....
Even over here, shop windows will be trashed. We will loot shops and luxurious bourgeois haciendas.
There sort of quotes were what I was referring to.
Hmm, from my point of view it is an effort to break up with all both democratic Marxist & anarchists families, but I'm not member of this group so I can't tell you more. Looting "luxurious bourgeois haciendas" should be pleasure for every proletarian - intrude, invite other class bothers and sisters, eat all delicious food, loot it and burn it 
As for the KPK things:Quote:
On Tuesday February 3rd 2009 there was a radio show organized by Priama Akcia/IWA with one member of KPK as a guest. And I was really in shock when the guest was saying that from his point of view class organization is possible only in periods of economic boom and in periods of crisis the class is almost incapable of any struggle and development.Are you sure that's exactly what they said because it doesn't make any sense. Maybe when it says "boom" it should say "crisis" and vica-versa?
OK, even he said it is not absolutely valid, later he adds all investigation confirm this. He is also developing thesis that during economic boom workers can use their power to obtain some benefits because capital is hungry for labour force. He was also mentioning Italy in the 60ies where was economic boom but also development of workers struggles all referring to Beverly J. Silver's book Forces of Labor. Even if specialized (working class) scientists would be true, does it mean the proletarian moved up in qualitative formulation of its historical communist program? Also there's one dangerous in this way of thinking -- to claim that development of capital is improvement of proletariat's living conditions, this thesis was one of the biggest weaknesses of Marx from my point of view (we can see that stupid thesis like this one where elements all historical social-democratic party has developed from, inner or outer of proletariat class). Maybe I was confused, still KPK should be more clear in this. EKG has contact with them, so you should know better than me.
Source: http://priamaakcia.sk/Zaznam-z-vysielania-Radia-PA-o-krize.html (in Slovak only)
Hmm, from my point of view it is an effort to break up with all both democratic Marxist & anarchists families
Which certainly is a valid concern, but I am not sure if it offers the right way out of the democratic illusions.
Looting "luxurious bourgeois haciendas" should be pleasure for every proletarian - intrude, invite other class bothers and sisters, eat all delicious food, loot it and burn it smile
As appealing as it sounds, I'd be in favor of collectively deciding to confiscate what our class enemies have rather than looting. Because the former can and has in the past had negative effects - not being an expression of workers collective discussions, decisions and class actions but only their anger, the target could be missed and other proletarians could suffer because it, people doing it could be isolated from the rest of the class and things that workers could use can be burnt as well. We saw all this in the French suburban riots, when children of immigrants remained in the ghettos and burned their neighbors cars, as well as hospitals and schools. It did not offer any perspective. Yeah I wanna eat all delicious food too (actually I am quite a good cook and make quite delicious dishes on a very low budget but anyway) but class violence has to be based on the collective discussions, decisions and actions of the class I think.
OK, even he said it is not absolutely valid, later he adds all investigation confirm this. He is also developing these that during economic boom workers can use their power to obtain some benefits because capital is hungry for labour force.
I see. If so it is not something I'd agree with, it is basically saying reforms are possible under capitalism if I understand it correctly.
Also there's one dangerous in this way of thinking -- to claim that development of capital is improvement of proletariat's living conditions, this these was one of the biggest weaknesses of Marx from my point of view
Well, about that... In the old chaps' time capital was improving the living conditions of the workers to an extent, I mean reforms were possible and all and Marx himself was saying that a succesful proletarian revolution wasn't really on the agenda yet and that capitalism was still basically on the rise as a world system, expanding and all. I think the point is that those conditions changed, and what Marx predicted about production relations becoming a fetter on productive forces took place, putting world revolution on the agenda.
still KPK should be more clear in this.
Yes, I agree.
EKG has contact with them, so you should know better than me.
EKG? You mean the Internationalist Communist Group, GCI? We have no contact with them, they don't exist in Turkey, they just have a Turkish speaker outside Turkey as far as I am aware of.
We too as EKS/ICC had contact directly with the KPK though, an EKS militant lived in Czech Republic for a while for example and we had joint public meetings and all there. I personally don't know much about them though, I haven't talked with the comrade who lived there for a while about the KPK's economic analysis.
On Tuesday February 3rd 2009 there was a radio show organized by Priama Akcia/IWA with one member of KPK as a guest. And I was really in shock when the guest was saying that from his point of view class organization is possible only in periods of economic boom and in periods of crisis the class is almost incapable of any struggle and development. Uff, this sound like stupid Lenin's idea that proletariat is revolutionary power because his role in massproduction.
This is unbelievable. How can you spread shit like this?!?!?! He NEVER said ANYTHING like that. The point was – in crisis the situation for organising is WORSE than in boom. That is the whole point. Stop spreading lies on server where people cannot correct them because they don’t speak Slovak.
... well, interesting. i have to admit that I won't have time to participate in this thread so I will limit myself *just to the clarification* of the “core” contribution (concerning the radio interview with the KPK comrade) which happened to be posted in this thread about solidarity with the movement in Greece (and which was changed afterwards but still not sufficiently).
And I was really in shock when the guest was saying that from his point of view class organization ispossiblemostly developing only in periods of economic boom and in periods of crisis the class is almost incapable of any struggle and development.
it's hard to find anything like that in the interview. in addition to an explanation of the immediate causes of the current crisis, its relation to the dot-com crash and a sketch of the general context of the development of capital from the 70's (and the balance of power between capital and proletariat) there were some other notes concerning the crisis in that almost two hours long interview:
A) the rejection of the notion of crisis as something “unnatural” to capitalism:
„crisis is not the final stroke against capitalism, it is no trigger of its destruction… I am closer to the view which sees the crises as natural consequences of tendencies which are present within capitalism and as necessary stages of capitalist development.”
“it is possible to expect that after this crisis a new period of accumulation will follow; in this sense we can see the crisis as a healing process in which capital gets rid of fictitious capital: and when the field is cleared up, the soil is ready for a next round of accumulation.”
B) the emphasis on the point that it is only proletariat who can invoke the final crisis of capitalism:
“capitalism isn't an objectively developing system which is independent from our activity and which will automatically arrive to its' collapse.” “capitalism is day by day reproduced by our activity – and the practical action of the class is necessary for its destruction. in this sense, the only crisis of capitalism is when the proletariat enters the stage en mass, in a conscious intervention.”
“this crisis could be the final one only if it would lead to a mass movement which would liquidate capitalism.”
“the crises themselves do not lead to the collapse of capitalism – and certainly not to the building of a new type of society.”
C) the notion that “the worse the better” is very suspicious, at least, when confronted with historical research (while obviously, nothing holds absolutely):
“the militant activity of proletariat was greater in the periods of growth, and crises were accompanied by its decline. of course, this is not universally valid. but neither is the other thesis, that the worse the economic conditions are, the more the people organize themselves. no. historical research says unambiguously that this does not hold.”
“none of what I said means that 'crisis equals impossibility of the struggle'. of course, mass action can be born also as a reaction to the worsening economic situation, i don't want to deny that! but if we look at the militant actions of workers since the 19th century, we see that a majority of them happened in periods of growth, in the periods “favourable” for capitalism. in this regard, B. Silver's book Forces of Labor is interesting.”
D) the comrade stressed that there is no certainty that a boom leads to the development of the class activity, though. (neither crisis nor boom are magic formulas.) he even clearly illustrated this on the balance of power between the working class and capital in the czech republic since the beginning of this decade:
„in Czech and Slovak Republic, we had a rather favourable balance of power: car industry, for instance, was facing a shortage of workforce. this means the bosses could not threaten workers that there are dozens of others in front of factory gates. the problem is that the working class did not use this period. now, this balance of power is a part of the past. the current crisis has changed it, the worse for the workers. bosses (even bosses who were not directly or severely harmed by the crisis) are using the current situation against the workers.”
… which is something one has to bear in mind in attempts to look at the possible impacts of the crisis:
“what I said does not mean that the crisis won't be accompanied by activity of the proletariat – I wish it was! but I'd be cautious when speaking of any kind of optimist prospects for the future.”
...and this point closely relates…
D) … to the emphasis that we have to see the crisis in *concrete existing coordinates* (in what condition the proletariat is entering the crisis period, if did it explore and exercise its forms of struggle before, if did it experience – even in a limited way – its power etc.)
one has to be very cautious concerning the “meta-historical” point of view which tends to be even “over-historical” and leads to abstract constructions (slogans?) which lack... any real basis:
“yes, we need the accumulation of historical experiences, yes, we need to look at capital in its totality - but we can not cut ourselves from the concrete material situation which working class people live in, which we are active in… the “negation of capital” and the “destructive force of the proletariat” are nice categories but they won't tell us much if we strip them of their material basis.”
E) and while we shouldn't naively expect that the crisis will bring about an “apocalyptic eruption” of “the proletariat as a total negation of the dictatorship of capital" – it would be nonsense to claim that there is no space for the activity now and here.
“i wish to add again – I don't want to say that there is no sense in doing anything now: quite the contrary. just for the understanding of the logic of capital, we live now in very telling times, because the contradictions of capital are plainly visible. today we can see very clearly the individual factions of international capital, and all its internal contradictions...”
“the hope is that maybe, in slovakia, we will see struggles which can bring about at least some embryonic forms of organizing and solidarity - for the first time after 1989. plus a kind of awakening – if the crisis will take away something, it will be the illusions about eternal growth, about certainty thanks to the foreign investors…”
“so the crisis is a time when we can do something. i just think that we should not enter this period with excessive expectations, thinking that this crisis will be the final one. because it wasn't showed just once that many of those who called themselves revolutionaries and thought that about this or that particular crisis, were eventually wrong.”
that is. it is a sketchy translation and sometimes the fragments do not follow in this exact order, but i hope it helps to clarify what was said.
and i won't speculate why it was heard in the way how it was presented here.
First of all Amores Perros was a really good film wasn't it?
He misspelt it though.
Dear comrades,
we would like to reply to several points which appeared in this thread. However, first of all we must say that we do not normally engage in this kind of web discussions about everything and nothing. The reason is simple: our access to the web is limited and for us there are better ways of discussing. Thus probably, we are not going to contribute to this debate anymore and if you really want to continue discussing with us, you can contact us through this e-mail address:
Well, we want to ensure Laureakai that we are really a very recently formed group, though a tiny one, which means that you couldn’t have heard about us. By the way, your ability to understand Czech seems to be very good as you got the sentence perfectly:-)
.
Now, let’s get to the most important question of yours: what we mean by “dictatorship of the proletariat”. We don’t understand DOP in the bourgeois (including Leninism) way as a political dictatorship, i.e. as a reform of the bourgeois state under the leadership of formal “vanguard” party. For us, DOP has a social meaning: it is an organic stage of any revolutionary proletarian movement. At this stage the most radical proletarians start, in myriads of diverse ways and under various self-organizational shapes, destroy and suppress everything that upholds capitalist social relations (including all forms of state and for example Leninist parties). At first, revolutionary class does this partially, separately, but the stronger its movement gets, the more co-ordinated/centralized this activity is. Taking example of the Russian revolution, according to us DOP was to a very limited extent practiced and organized for instance by Makhnovist insurgents or some “Black Guards” (Aaron Baron or Marusya Nikiforova), but definitely not by the Bolshevik state.
And when we consider revolutionary class militants according to what they actually do or did and not according to ideological frameworks in which they spoke, than we can even see some Anarchists who aren’t or weren’t in contradiction to DOP:-).
While mentioning ideological frameworks, we get to Leo’s letters. Although it may seem that we are close to council communism or left communism, these are for us only another ideological families and thus we do not claim them as we do not claim anarcho-this or that. We claim only Communism as a real movement arising from capitalist material conditions, as revolutionary practice and as historical programme. Therefore, for us there is only Communism and all these labels “council” or “left” are dangerous, because they can lead to uncritical acceptance of every essentially social democratic crap which was peddled or done by those who claimed these labels in the past.
Whoever Amores Perros is, this comrade did a considerable part of a reply to Leo on his own and in a very sympathetic way:-). Thank you, comrade!!! Now, we will finish it.
Indeed, as we already tried to show in the Declaration, proletarian self-organization is an indispensable and very important part of the class movement in Greece (and in general). But what is crucial, is their practice – it’s their actions what gives them “proletarian character”. From Leo’s rather undeveloped “criticism” it seems that he stands for a kind of mass assemblies fetishism, which is a position we strongly disagree with. Organizational forms produced by our class turn against it when they have lost their subversive proletarian content.
Leo also seems to be quite uneasy with class violence when it’s not somehow democratically sanctioned and organized by those mass assemblies. Of course, that development of organization and centralization of class violence is necessary, but it will not come from blue sky. Class anger bursts first, it’s not meaningless, it’s not useless – it’s an important expression of struggling proletarians, because in most of violent acts practical critique of capitalist social relations is present. Lots of important targets can be missed in such eruptions of class anger and they don’t have to evolve onto any higher level at all – but that’s the way how the movement of our class goes … even may be “without perspective” (as perhaps in the case of suburban riots in France), but its lack is not only produced by weaknesses of those who struggle, but also by those who don’t struggle and reinforce all the weaknesses by their passivity.
And the last point is KPK. Yes, we know the group, but our perspectives are divergent to a considerable extent. We don’t agree with their “scientific-like” methods, which according to us introduce a kind of sociologist and economic look at the proletariat and lead to many false theoretical conclusions. This is just to answer Leo very briefly. We are not going to join the discussion about the radio interview.
That’s all for the moment, comrades. It’s definitely interesting to speculate, whether it’s boom or crisis what provides better conditions for class struggle, but perhaps it would be much more fruitful and proper to focus on real and important struggles in Greece and elsewhere…
Communist Greetings



Aha, Czech class war....I looked at your blog and am trying to figure you out. For the dictatorship of the proletariat, but against stalinism, maoism trotskyism, many varieties of anarchism, etc. .... I'm not good at Czech, am I reading it correctly?
Can you please explain your use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" if it is anything different than the typical Marxist - Leninist meaning, what is your position of statism and which varieties of anarchism do you believe not to be in contradiction to DOP?
Also, are you a formal group, informal group or one person with a blog.
Not that I'm opposed to bloggers, just curious because I don't think I've heard of such a group, but I haven't been following.