Greece was brought to a halt on April 9, by a massive one-day general strike over wages and the cost of living. The Greek labour movement has undertaken many heroic struggles recently and is a source of inspiration for working people across the globe. At the heart of this resurgence is PAME, the All-Workers Militant Front.
Formed in 1999, PAME is an open, democratic organization which unites the most active, fighting forces of the labour movement. It is rooted in class struggle and anti-imperialism, and is committed to ending the exploitation of one human by another. Currently, PAME-affiliated unions represent 850,000 workers.
But how was this militant labour front organized? The following article is based on excerpts from a PAME document published in 2013, fourteen years after the front’s founding. It details the efforts to reconstruct the Greek labour movement on a class struggle basis, with “the aim of overthrowing anti-people policies.”
The main conditions for rehabilitating the trade union movement are its release from the influence of the employers, governments and the mechanisms of the European Union, and its release from the ideas of class collaboration.
The form for reconstructing the labour movement is organizing and uniting the working class in massive trade unions, both sectoral and industrial, based on its unified class-oriented interests and its contemporary needs, against corporatism and division.
The working class’s needs stem from its position in production – that it is the producer of all wealth – and from the level of development of the productive forces, which can ensure today a higher level of prosperity. But these needs are not satisfied today. On the contrary, they are limited; they are constantly compressed downwards while the dominant tendency is of absolute and relative impoverishment.
This means that, while productive wealth, the level of development, and science and technology are at incomparably high levels compared to previous decades, the lives and working conditions and living standards of the working class follow a reverse path.
This contradiction is not an exception, and nor is it a temporary phenomenon. The tendency to absolute and relative impoverishment and permanent mass unemployment is a permanent and long-lasting tendency both in conditions of development and in conditions of crisis. This tendency becomes even more sharp in time of crisis.
This contradiction has to do with the capitalist path of development. More precisely, it has to do with the development of corporate monopolies and their dominance in all the spheres of economic and social life in all countries. Development takes place unequally, which produces many contradictions and conflicts and makes the monopolies even more aggressive while expanding.
For the monopoly capital to be profitable today, it must sharply increase the exploitation of the working class by abolishing basic labour rights and profiteering off people’s basic needs (health, housing, education etc.) Everything we experience today emerges from this strategy.
This explains why capital internationally has launched a full-scale attack with a unified strategy to overthrow all the achievements and rights of the working class, under the general direction of labour market liberalization.
PAME, in assessing these current developments, set as a central priority the urgent need to reconstruct the trade union movement so that it is capable of answering this full-scale and generalized attack, so that it is a movement capable of struggling not only in the immediate conditions but also for satisfying the needs of the whole working class. This requires breaking with and overthrowing the monopolies, and the parties and mechanisms which serve them; this requires struggle that will end the exploitation of one human by another.
With this in mind, PAME set 14 years ago the main priority for the labour movement: freeing it from the collaborationist (government- and employer-oriented) trade unionism. This is a very powerful mechanism that traps the labour movement and converts it into a mechanism for reconciliation with employers and the mechanisms of the capitalist state.
This is the main reason why the labour movement found itself disarmed in the face of attacks from capital, particularly during capitalist economic crisis.
The struggle to reconstruct the labour movement is of great importance and must engage every honest worker and unionist, especially in the face of new obstacles erected by the employers and modern social democracy. We call upon every unionist, every trade union, and every worker to think hard: the movement cannot have the same goals as the employers and the multinationals. Our goals are defined exclusively by the needs of working people. This means full-time and stable jobs for all, decent wages and pensions, free health benefits, education and welfare.
Sector by sector, union by union, factory by factory, the alarm bells must be rung for coalition and struggle, so that the honest labour forces are not encircled in the trap of new government and bosses’ mechanisms. Unions which operate democratically will gain in strength through the participation of workers in planning actions.
The basic and main focus for a reconstructed labour movement is to change the correlation of forces, between those that struggle for a workers’ solution to the crisis and those that act in favour of capital. To be in favour of both capital and workers is impossible. We need to struggle for the abolition and overthrow of anti-people policies and anti-labour laws, not for the continuation of the same policies under another government. We need to struggle to break with and overthrow the monopolies and the EU, not for the perpetuation of their power and exploitation. We need to struggle for the satisfaction of working people’s contemporary needs, not for the management of poverty. And we need to struggle to strengthen international solidarity.
The real question is, do we want a movement that is organized and class-oriented or a movement that simply directs traffic? A movement that is distanced from the unions, with the workers in unorganized workplaces alone against their employer; or a movement with workers organized into unions in the workplace and in the streets and the squares?
Will we strike and demonstrate just to change the managers of parliament while leaving capitalist property and privileges untouched, to eternally exploit the wealth produced by workers? Or will we struggle for another path of development with the people in control of the wealth they produce?
The power of monopolies may seem stronger today, but it is not more powerful than determined people and it is not eternal. We can shake their system, create bigger cracks, obstruct their decisions, delay their attack, and gain time and ground through our struggles.
For this to happen, we need to strengthen the class-oriented struggles, the organization of workers in every sector, workplace and factory. We need to free working people from the influence and positions of the employers.
There is only one road for workers. That is to proceed fearlessly to a systematic organization and to organized resistance that questions not only governments, but the power of monopolies. This is the only source of hope, and it requires working people to play the leading role in economics and politics so that they will control the wealth they produce and their lives.
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