For more than a decade we have been experiencing the invasion of capital on our lives, through the neoliberal restructuring of the relations of production. The cycle that opened during the period of the memoranda has never closed, but instead the state and the bosses are upgrading and deepening their domination and exploitation to this day.
The present condition should not be superficially assessed by the movement as a setback in relation to a social democratic period of a different balance of forces, workers’ conquests and gains. In fact, the previous period finally prepared the ground for the current selection. Social democracy, as the last political stage of the capitalist model of production, aims at securing the necessary consensus needed by the political system to validate the continuous and intensifying capitalist restructurings. The social and political assimilation of the working class has taken place decades ago since the radical and subversive movements retreated by surrendering to the welfare states, institutional trade unionism and finally abandoning the revolutionary perspective.
The mosaic that composes the contemporary reality in Western societies places the proletarian struggle in a symbolic position of workers’ mobilizations and demands. By recognizing the workers as the only subject of its conduct, they exclude those most affected by the capitalist juggernaut, that is, those excluded from the capitalist means of survival, labour, as well as those who are even lower down. As long as this body is excluded from the class struggle the threat of privatisation and individualisation of a struggle, which inevitably takes the form of resistance and simple survival and the dissipation of our misery, takes on flesh and blood. Solidarity among all the oppressed is a necessary ingredient for overthrow and emancipation.
In a condition where the health crisis has been an opportunity for the expansion and restructuring of capital, the attack on working conditions has intensified rapidly. Occupations such as distribution took on a primary position in the maintenance of the system itself, where for months every need, whether contrived or not, was covered by distribution workers. An entire sector, at the same time as sanitary/zonal conditions were being built around others, and while for years it had been devalued and undermined, was suddenly made vital to the circulation of goods and the reproduction of capital. Thus the branch of distribution was elevated to the main artery of consumption. The sharp increase in profits of this industry was combined with intensification in existing companies, as well as the emergence of new companies that set even tougher time limits for the delivery of goods, making workers’ shifts even more unbearable and dangerous. In this context of acute labour exploitation, bosses and the state are coordinated in their attacks on trade unionism, especially when it is far from the logic of institutional and mediated compromise. Under the fear of further collectivisation, resistance and assertion, they are also faced with a repressive frenzy of anyone who resists. This is how trade union action, resistance and protest is watered down.
The above condition emerges in extreme terms in the case of the General Postal Service. A distributor with trade union activity in a grassroots union is dismissed because he participated in a general strike, and from that point onwards the employer, in fierce cooperation with the cops, systematically suppresses mobilisations and solidarity actions against the dismissal. Central to the intensity and vindictiveness of the repression is the fact that bosses and the state have an anti-hierarchical and untied collective body of workers against them, and not unions that propose class compromise. In a broader context of targeting and attempting to ban action from below, mobilisation in the public space and direct/indirect actions, grassroots trade unionism that advocates real class self-organisation and is an intrinsic part of a possible overall struggle against power is naturally at the centre of the repression.
For these reasons, and as a minimal action of self-defence and solidarity, we chose to carry out an arson attack on the two vans of the General Post Office in Galatzi, on Psychari Street, on the evening of 11 May. In the face of the state of emergency established by the ruling classes in order to deepen barbarism and the reproduction of capital, we put forward the struggle against the regime that we experience every day. Struggle against the plundering of our lives, the horror wages, poverty and the worker murders that they baptize “work accidents”. The economic and moral impoverishment of the unemployed and those excluded from the means of production. The murder of migrants at the borders and in the hellholes of prisons and concentration camps. With the project of class self-organization against the state/bosses and the diffusion of practical solidarity in all social fields, we fight by all means against the oppressors of this world.
CONTINUOUS STRUGGLE FOR A SOCIETY OF EQUALITY, SELF-ORGANIZATION AND SOLIDARITY
TERRORISM IS WAGE SLAVERY, NO PEACE WITH THE BOSSES
SOLIDARITY AND FREEDOM FOR THE PRISONERS OF STATE AND CAPITAL. IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF ANARCHIST GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS, HUNGER STRIKER SINCE 23.05.
Anarchists
Source: athens.indymedia