Guest editorial by Panos Garganos in Athens. Panos is a leading member of the Greek Socialist Workers Party. Panos Garganas is also the editor of 'Workers Solidarity', Socialist Worker’s sister paper in Greece
The new bailout agreement with Greece amounts to looting.
It has been made conditional on a new “haircut” on government bonds that will mean further cuts to people’s pensions.
These were already cut back with the last agreement in March. One estimate says they could have dropped in value from £19 billion to just £5 billion in ten months.
This article appeared in the International Discussion Bulletin of the British SWP 30 years ago. At that time some of the biggest far left organisations in Italy to emerge from the great wave of struggle from 1968 to 1975 changed their strategy to one of focussing on the formation of a ‘left’ government within the existing parliamentary set up. Such a government never materialised—instead the then-powerful Italian Communist Party accepted a subordinate role to a Christian Democrat government through the ‘historic compromise’, and the revolutionary left entered a terminal crisis.
1. Austerity now dominates the economic policies of the advanced capitalist world. In response to a global crisis precipitated by the speculative drive of the big banks, the Western ruling classes have chosen to shift the cost onto the backs of working people and the poor. Slashing public expenditure has trapped the world in slow growth. But it has also provided an opportunity to drive through more of the neoliberal ‘reforms’ that allowed the financial markets to escape control in the first place.
