Friday, January 11, 2013

The “class” over the “national” argument today in Greece

The current occupation of Greece is much worse than the old Nazi occupation. And this is simply because it is not about a territorial possession of the country by an invader, but a complete abolition of the Greek State and a fluidization not only of its own territory, but also of its people. That is the fundamental difference between 1941 and today in terms of class and nation. Today the ruling class does not need a national state. Their powers have already moved to a supranational level and the accumulation of capitals is mainly apparent in bodiless documents of titles and fictional money in the globalized markets. Therefore, today the national state is redundant for the financial oligarchy, while the “nation” is a convenient contrivance without physical substance just like the virtual funds it accumulates. That is the reason why the ruling class in Greece along with the parties of “European perspective” has adhered to the viewpoint that the Greek state is incapable of being independent or self-contained, not even viable under the current circumstances. So the initial theory of “the poor and the hopeless Greece” has been replaced by the conviction that Greece is to be absorbed in a broad “European federation” where every shred of democracy – even in the traditional sense of civic parliamentary democracy – has been extinct. Greece will not survive from this new occupation as an independent state and its territorial composition will be dismembered according to the most urgent interests of those having power on both the eurozone and the markets. Under these circumstances, anyone who gives priority to the “class” instead of the “nation” is on the other side, just because the only “class thing” existing today without any national characteristics is the class interests of the ruling class. Only the economic and political oligarchy today, unable to match their own narrow class interests with the national interest, renounces even the formal sovereignty and has fully accepted the demolition of a Greek state as a historical expression of the independence of the Greek people and nation. Consequently, today whoever uses only “class” terminology, does nothing else but refer to class interests of the ruling class and their strategic choices – regardless whether they hide behind a feigned “left” or a supposedly “revolutionary” phraseology. Without the struggle for the national independence and sovereignty of the people there cannot even be a Greek state, public interest, labour, social or political rights for the classes under exploitation. So today, as never before in history, the struggle for the national liberation and restoration is absolutely identical to the social liberation and constitutes the supreme class demands of our era for the Greek people and primarily for the workforce. Without the struggle for national liberation from the EU and the eurozone, the workers and the workforce, in general, cannot preserve even the current standards of living, or even the current level of their demolished rights. They are doomed to result in a lumpen situation as outsiders bare of any class consciousness or composition. Today, whoever – among the downtrodden, the working class and other classes under exploitation – is aware of their class duty is to take a leading role in the national liberation struggle of the Greek people. Otherwise, they have joined the class opponent, waving the red flags, without even having realized it.

Dimitris Kazakis 11/11/2012

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