Fifty years after the Revolution: Where are Raúl and the Cuban Communist Party leadership taking CUBA?

[In the following essay, "restorationist" refers to the restoration of capitalism. -- YM]

From www.ft-ci.org

50 years after the Revolution: Where are the politics of Raúl and the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party leading?
By Eduardo Molina
Thursday, January 22, 2009

The fiftieth anniversary of M26's [Fidel's 26th of July Movement] entering Havana was remembered in a sober manner. The Cuban government invited "family celebrations" without mass rallies or public appearances by Fidel (which caused new speculations in the press about his health). Days before, in his December 27 speech in front of the Asamblea del Poder Popular (1), Raúl Castro had sketched important guidelines about the plans of the Cuban leadership, reaffirming a direction that calls into question the very future of the Revolution.

"People should feel the necessity of working to meet their needs"

Under this slogan, Raúl Castro announced an austerity policy that will affect the workers and their conquests; he enlarged the spaces for "private initiative" (as in agriculture), and he also attempted to spur on and discipline the bureaucracy. Amidst a campaign against [!] "wage equality," his justification was that "if there is no pressure, if the necessity to work to meet my needs does not exist" ... "in order to go on gradually solving the distortions existing in the wage system, we must continue eliminating undue gratuities and excessive subsidies." In addition, he confirmed the raising of the "retirement age" and "the need to increase the number of those who engage in work, its productivity and efficiency." In short, a policy for increasing productivity with the stimulus of differentiation in wages and reducing subsidies that represent a form of "social wages" covering a large part of the basic needs of the people. He was also pleased by the advances in "continuing to put idle lands in the hands of those who are able and willing to make them be productive," whether individual campesinos, cooperatives or companies. Raúl had already announced that state-owned industry will provide materials for individuals to build with, a decision that recognizes the inability of the bureaucracy to solve the dramatic problem of housing (aggravated by the hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008) and, in fact, opens new spaces for "private initiative" and the black market.

Finally, Raúl insisted that "there will be no backing down on the intention of strengthening institutions, discipline and order in all the country's spheres," and he announced the "creation of the General Comptroller's Office of the Republic, as a hierarchically superior organ," in an attempt to bring order and introduce new administrative methods in the chaotic state-sector management. These measures are registered in the general direction of pro-market reforms, adopted by Fidel during the "special period" (2) and the years of the 1990's. (Certainly, Cuba, a small state besieged by imperialism and isolated, could find itself forced to make certain concessions, but these retreats must be limited, and they require as a counterbalance, the masses' revolutionary power and control. In the hands of the bureaucratic caste, they [these retreats] push towards decomposition of the nationalized economy, they nurture social differentiation with "newly rich people" and privileged strata, and they strengthen the restorationist tendencies that reside in the Castroist bureaucracy itself.) Now the orientation proposed by Raúl Castro aims at deepening that course.

New, stormy winds

This "desperate gamble" is a bureaucratic response to the accumulation of enormous economic, social and political contradictions. The economic slowdown, after several years of growth (with a record 12% in 2006), is making itself felt with the first effects of the world crisis. The price of Cuban nickel fell by 40% in 2008, and the prices of fish, sugar and other exports also fell. This is in addition to the high cost of imported oil and food and the serious devastation by the three big hurricanes of the year, that left losses of around $10 billion and half a million damaged dwellings.

Social tensions are growing. While the chronic underproduction of food and consumer goods, corruption, increasing inequality, affect the workers and groups of the people that depend on incomes in common pesos to live and can hardly complete their needs beyond the ration booklet, the privileged groups (high-level bureaucrats, the "newly rich", and in general, those who benefited from the reforms, the basis of the growing restorationist tendencies) are improving their situation, gaining access to the free market ruled by the convertible peso and pressing for greater consumption (recently, buying cell phones, computers and other goods was permitted as a gesture to these strata).

The political problems of the succession led by Raúl are accumulating. Absent Fidel's leadership, his brother must still achieve political authority, consensus among the different wings of the bureaucracy and legitimacy in front of the population, in order to apply his plans. Raúl has support among the old cadres of the FAR (revolutionary armed forces) that he led for half a century and that are a key economic institution (they run a collection of 700 enterprises and many of the associations with foreign capital) and as a prop of the state. But he has to contain the "moderate" influences (that prefer more speed in the pro-capitalist reforms and certainly a political "opening"), and he has replaced the "talibans" (some young leaders that accompanied Fidel in the last period). The conflicts in the heights are continuing, and at times they are expressed in a muted manner in the press and in some academic discussions about the course to follow. On the other hand, the deterioration of the institutions, "popular power," the National Assembly, and the Cuban Communist Party, is increasing, and social dissatisfaciton was expressed, for instance, in the "self-critical" campaign of 2007, where 1,200,000 complaints were presented, in the scepticism of youth, and in the criticisms and debates among intellectuals and artists. Because of all that, the call for the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party ("frozen" for a decade), could be seen as an attempt to provide an outlet for internal conflicts and achieve political support for the application of plans that will attack the social conquests more directly.

The "Cuban road" to disaster

Those who govern Cuba appear increasingly interested in the Chinese and Vietnamese "models," with their combination of pro-captialist economic measures and iron political control by the "communist" bureaucracy, as a guarantee of their own interests. Paradoxically, not only the internal contradictions drive them in that direction, but the better international scene for Cuba, that has improved relations with nearly all of Latin America and has a close alliance with Venezuela, encourages a greater economic opening. The approach to Lula opens the possibiity of Brazilian investments. Besides this, it is possible that the Obama administration will revise aspects of the traditional US policy of blockade and intransigence. But imperialism, with the concurrence of the "friendly governments" of the region and even of the Miami gusano bourgeoisie, will not fail to take advantage of Cuba's difficulties and press for speeding up the "transition" to capitalism (including the political opening for pro-bourgeois forces). The "Cuban road" of gradual pro-market reforms is increasingly eroding the bases of the nationalized economy and nurturing the restorationist counter-revolution. It can only lead to the precipice of capitalist restoration and recolonization by imperialism.

A program of defense of the revolution

The Latin American reformist left backs Castroism without further ado, although its program leads to disaster. Still worse, certain "progressives" and populists would like to hurry the reforms, in accordance with their own thesis that socialist revolution is now "surpassed," and there is now no other solution for Cuba than "more markets" and a "democratic opening," that is, capitalism with bourgeois democracy. There are those on the left who consider capitalist restoration already completed (like the LIT-CI), or that Cuba never was a workers' state (even bureaucratized), which leads to serious programatic and political errors. On the other hand, we reaffirm the validity of a program of political revolution (combining the economic-social tasks that the pro-market measures have discounted) that proceeds from the defense of the conquests of the Revolution that still remain, to bring a revolutionary workers' solution to the agonizing situation of the masses and confront the bureaucracy in all its branches, by fighting for a government of workers' and campesinos' councils and guiding Cuba on the road of international revolution, as had been outlined in 1959.

As part of this program, we propose:

End the US blockade

Review all the "pro-market reforms" in a plan that was democratically decided upon by the workers, in order that the economy can again be based on the needs of workers and campesinos

Down with the bureaucracy with its privileges

For a regime of full workers' democracy, with complete freedom of organization in work centers and legality for those anti-capitalist political tendencies that defend the Revolution

No confidence in negotiations with Obama or the EU; no confidence in the bourgeois "friendly governments" of Latin America, to which Castroism offers political support. The future of Cuba is connected to being a support for anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist mobilization for the Federation of Socialist Republics of Latin America

Notes:

(1) The speech can be read on www.cubanet and other official pages.

(2) The sharp crisis signified by the break of ties with the USSR in dissolution and the isolation promoted by imperialism. See Estrategia Internacional 20 (2003) and the supplement Claves 1 of LVO (2008).

ARGENTINA--Indugraf belongs to the workers!

La Verdad Obrera Nº 309
Thursday, January 8, 2009

In view of the maneuvers of the bosses and the Ministry, and the threats of expulsion: Indugraf belongs to the workers!

By Ernesto González (worker at the recovered printshop Chilavert)

For more than a month, workers at Indugraf, a big graphics workshop in the Parque Patricios neighborhood, have kept the plant occupied, demanding that it be reopened and that they be paid the wages they are owed. The Martínez family, bosses that had postponed paying wages, closed the plant on November 24 and sent telegrams laying off their 90 workers. The comrades camped out in the entrances of the establishment, and, in a December 10 assembly, decided to occupy the plant to safeguard the machines and jobs. With unusual speed, public prosecutor's office No. 10 heard a complaint of unlawful seizure from the bosses and is threatening to clear the plant.

No expulsion!

From the PTS [Socialist Workers Party of Argentina], as well as other leftist organizations, delegates, militant activist workers, neighbors and students, we have followed this experience, and we are helping the Indugraf wokers with publicity and building the strike fund, and, of course, by being present to defend the occupation. On the other hand, from the beginning, the leaders of the union (Federación Gráfica Bonaerense) have tried to convince the workers to desist from any measure of struggle and, since their defeatist advice finds no echo among the comrades, the union leaders have also refused to make any significant contribution to the struggle fund, much less calling rank and file graphics workers to any action in support.

For workers' management!

The Ministry of Labor, to which the workers turned to demand its intervention to guarantee jobs, revealed its real role during the last meeting they held on Monday, January 5, and attacked the workers' right to undertake a struggle to defend the source of their jobs; at the same time, the Ministry offered no solution to the workers' needs. One of the comrades told us: "It seemed like we were talking to the boss." This caused enormous indignation, and the workers' assembly resolved to intensify the struggle, and they decided to maintain the plant seizure, to block streets and go out to seek support by visiting workers' organizations, human rights organizations and prominent people. Now the comrades are proposing workers' management of the printshop and seeking the money to start the press up under their control. In this situation, the Indugraf workers are not alone: they have the experience of several factories that have been functioning under workers' control, like the comrades of Zanon, Brukman, Chilavert, the Hotel Bauen, and others.

ARGENTINA--Metalworkers blockade the Rosario-Buenos Aires highway

Thursday, January 15, 2009

From: www.ft-ci.org

Metalworkers from Paraná Metal carried out the decision of the workers' assembly: They are blockading the Rosario-Buenos Aires highway

Metalworkers from Paraná Metal are carrying out a blockade of the strategic Rosario-Buenos Aires highway, demanding that their jobs continue. This action was approved in the last assembly of the workers enrolled in the UOM [metalworkers' union] of Villa Constitución, who are confronting suspensions and layoffs threatened by the bosses, as well as the national government's line of exchanging "job stability" for wage cuts and surrendering what workers had won. The workers' action made itself felt, and the national media that had been silent about this conflict, had to give an account of this big struggle.

At the final moment, however, it was decided by the management of the Villa UOM [metalworkers' union] and the internal commission of Paraná Metal to undertake joint action with the Federación Agraria led by Eduardo Buzzi, ignoring the resolutions of the metalworkers' assembly. From the PTS, in a statement that we handed out to thousands, we opposed carrying out joint action with a group of the bosses of the countryside, that not only demand subsidies together with the Sociedad Rural, but which has also been demanding devaluation of the peso (which drives down wages even more), which is the same demand made by Techint, Paraná Metal, and the bosses' associations, that do not hesitate to suspend and lay off workers. Numerous workers, in fact, questioned that unilateral decision by the UOM [union] leadership and demanded that the road blockade, after those by the FAA had been withdrawn, be extended until 6 p.m., so that this struggle, which is an example for all workers, could have an effect. Numerous union organizations and parties of the left are accompanying the metalworkers during this long day.

With today's road blockade, the struggle at Paraná Metal begins a second stage. The bosses and the government have now shown their cards. Now the workers have started to continue the road that began with the historic march of more than 4,000 workers and Villa residents. With workers' democracy, rank and file assemblies, and struggle committees, coordinating with other workers (without bosses' groups) in a regional workers' congress, and carrying out a regional strike in support of PM, this conflict could be won. The internal commission, the management of UOM Villa, and the CTA and CGT, have this urgent responsibility. Continuing along the road of struggle, this intense contest is being won.

By our own correspondent

CUBA: 50 years since a revolution that expropriated the bourgeoisie

From www.ft-ci.org

Cuba: 50 years since a revolution that expropriated the bourgeoisie
By Facundo Aguirre, Thursday, January 8, 2009

January 1 marked 50 years since the Cuban revolution. On that date, the fall of the dictator Fulgencio Batista and the victory of the Rebel Army are commemorated.

The Cuban revolution was the first, and until now, the only victorious socialist revolution in Latin America. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the landowners was an extraordinary event that inspired a generation of fighters from workers and the people to fight against imperialism under the slogan that the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution.

Much has been written recently about the events of the revolution of 1959. We Trotskyist militants of the PTS unconditionally defend Cuba against the imperialist blockade, and we defend the conquests of the revolution, but we clearly point out our differences with Castroism. In this article, we wish to recover the historical meaning of this revolution and the lessons that it has left for the workers and campesinos of Latin America.

The social conquests of the revolution of 1959

The expropriation of the bourgeoisie explains what the even the most hostile capitalist press must recognize, the enormous social conquests on the terrain of health ahd education, that allowed Cuba to eradicate illiteracy and, practically, infant mortality.

To give an idea, in 2006, the infant mortality rate in Cuba reached 5.3 per thousand, while in Bolivarian Venezuela the rate was 22.02 for every thousand. The Cuban revolution gave a big boost to public health. Although in 1958 there was one doctor for every 1,076 inhabitants, in 2007, there was one doctor was every 159 inhabitants, who receive personalized attention, as well as one dentist for each 1,066 inhabitants. The illiteracy rate is the lowest in Latin America, with 1.7%. Argentina occupies second place on the scale of literacy in the subcontinent with 4.7% illiteracy, while Venezuela reaches 6.0%. We must take into account the fact that Cuba achieved these conquests in spite of the criminal blockade of almost 50 years by the US.

Keys of the Cuban revolution

To recover the historical importance of the Cuban revolution, we must separate it from an ideological operation carried out by the supporters of chavismo and the same Castroism that connects it with the so-called "twenty-first century socialism" of Hugo Chávez.

The differences between the Cuban revolution and Bolivarian Venezuela are substantial. The Cuban revolution put an end to imperialist domination by destroying the armed forces of the bourgeoisie, through the popular insurrection and the expropriation of private property in the means of production in the cities and the countryside. For its part, Chávez' government (which has had almost 10 years in power) has kept the armed forces intact; although they have been reformed, they continue to be the pillar of the capitalist state. In addition, private ownership is still in force, although rhetorically condemned, under the idea that socialism must be built together with businessmen. Let us recall that the nationalizations announced by Chávez in recent years were really purchases that the state made by compensating groups of capitalists, while in the Cuban revolution, expropriation had a violent character and put an end to private ownership of the means of production in fewer than two years. In May 1959, the first Agrarian Reform Law, which eliminated large estates, was announced. In January 1960, a second series of expropriations began. In February, 14 sugar companies were nationalizd. Shell and Texaco were expropriated in June. In August, it was the turn of all the US companies in the oil, sugar, telephone and electricity sectors. In October, banking (Cuban and foreign-owned) was nationalized, as well as almost 400 large firms (sugar companies, factories, railroads), and the Urban Reform Law was approved, giving thousands of tenants ownership of their dwellings.

Socialist revolution or a caricature of revolution

Unlike the rest of Latin America, Cuba ended imperialist oppression by having carried out a socialist revolution. The Cuban revolution went beyond the program of reforms originally set forth by Fidel Castro and the Movimiento 26 de Julio [M26], that aimed at overthrowing Batista and restoring he 1940 Constitution. Over the course of the struggle, they added the idea of a very moderate agrarian reform to their demands. Once the bourgeois state was defeated, Manuel Urrutia, former chairman of the Supreme Court and representative of the oppositional bourgeoisie, was set up in the presidency, at the request of M26. Why was M26 unable to carry out its program of democratic demands in the framework of an independent capitalism, as it sought to do? Because the bourgeoisie and imperialism quickly went over to the camp of counterrevolution, out of fear of the workers' and campesinos' mobilization. The absence of a repressive apparatus of the bourgeoisie, which had been destroyed by the popular insurrection, pushed the masses to fight decisively for their postponed demands and punish the killers from the former regime. The combined pressure of both forces radicalized the revolution, that ended by breaking with the bourgeoisie and liquidated private ownership. Che Guevara defined this process as revolution by counter-attack and concluded that for Latin America, socialist revolution or a caricature of revolution was posed. At that time, this reality meant a tremendous ideological blow against the Stalinism of the Latin American Communist Parties, that were preaching revolution by stages (one stage of an alliance of workers and campesinos with the bourgeoisie and another stage of fighting for socialism for the indefinite future) and the institutional road inside the bourgeois regime.

The chavistas -- and the supporters of Castroism -- are now preaching the same type of thinking defeated in its time by the Cuban revolution: collaboration with the national and progressive bourgeoisies. But the 1959 revolution taught that the only way to carry out to the end the struggle for national liberation, for the end of large estates and radical distribution of land and the resolution of the housing problem through urban reform, is not through allying with the bourgeoisie, buy by fighting against it, by destroying its military and repressive apparatus, by expelling it from power and expropriating its properties.

A bureaucratic workers' state

But in spite of its enormous conquests, the Cuban revolution did not signify the creation of a state based on the democratic government of councils of workers, campesinos and militiamen, where all the revolutionary tendencies participate, that would take the construction of socialism in their hands, and promote the class struggle on a continental and international level. On the contrary, the revolution gave rise to a deformed and bureaucratic workers' state that imposed the doctrine of socialism in one country and one-party control, stifling popular freedoms and blocking the revoluionary road in Latin America.

In order to comprehend this dynamic, one must understand the origin of the revolutionary process. As we have pointed out, Fidel and M26 were not a socialist leadership that thought about destroying the bourgeois state and the construction of a workers' state. If they accepted that dynamic of the revolution, it was by getting on the popular revolutionary wave to confront the imperialist threats, but curbing popular tendencies towards self-determination. From the beginning, the Castroist leadership was Bonapartist, and its methods, plebiscitary and paternalistic. Fidel embodied a new type of Bonapartism sui generis that changed its petty bourgeois social content to the tempo of the fall of the old semicolonialist capitalist state. For that reason, when Castroism adhered to socialism, it strengthened its alliance with Cuban Stalinism and the Kremlin, which, after the ebbing of the revolutionary tide, advanced the stifling bureaucratization of the political regime and blocking the revolution's permanent dynamic, both in the sphere of building new social relations and in extending revolution towards Latin America.

Socialism on one island

For a period, and under the central inspiration of Ernesto Che Guevara, the Cuban state promoted the development of guerrilla movements and the idea of revolution in Latin America. Those were the times of the Tricontinental, OLAS and the call to make the entire Andes mountain range a Sierra Maestra. However, with the passage of time and under the growing influence of the Kremlin, Castroism began to play a role of containing the Central American and Southern Cone revolutionary processes. In the first years of the 1970's, it openly supported Salvador Allende's peaceful road to socialism in Chile, which culminated in bloody defeat at the hands of Pinochet. In the 1979 Sandinista revolution, Fidel stated that Nicaragua should not become another Cuba and supported the FSLN policy of surendering the military victory over the CIA-financed Contras at the Contadora negotiations, which led to the defeat of the revolution. He played a similar role in El Salvador as a promoter of the peace accords. But, in addition, Cuba' strategic alliance with the Kremlin -- which Che fought against, but Fidel promoted -- involved on the economic terrain keeping the island dependent on the sugar monoculture, in exchange for Moscow's aid (a line opposed by Che Guevara, who raised the need for industrialization through a centralized plan), which brought Cuba to the verge of collapse after the fall of the USSR in 1991.

The alliance with the Kremlin ended by compromising the international legitimacy of the Cuban revolution, since it collaborated in the antisocialist role played by the Stalinist bureaucracies of Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Castroism declared itself against the workers' and campesinos' mobilizations and the political revolution that sought to end the totalitarian power of the governing bureaucracy and regenerate socialism in that part of the world. Thus, Fidel condemned the Prague Spring led by Czech workers and students in 1968 as an uprising provoked by the CIA; he suported Jaruzelski's coup in Poland in rebellion against the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1981. He backed the Chinese bureaucracy's repression against the workers and students in Tiananmen Square, and he supported the Stalinist bureaucracy of Erich Honecker and the Stasi in the former GDR, to the final moment. The result was tragic for the masses, capitalist restoration and the transformation of the former bureaucracy of those countries into a capitalist oligarchy; meanwhile, Cuba suffered international isolation and weakness in the first years of the 1990's during the so-called "special economic period."

But today still, the international policy of alliances that Castroism proposes is at odds with the defense of the revolution, since it appeals to the national bourgeoisies instead of the masses of workers and campesinos of Latin America. The so-called "battle of ideas" that Castro proposes joins this line of class collaboration and support to the long since failed bourgeois national experiments on our continent, by granting legitimacy to the rhetorical demagogy of "21th century socialism," next to the businessmen and capitalist monopolies, like that of Chávez in Venezuela or Correa in Ecuador.

Conclusion

The Cuban revolution shows the people of Latin America, much more in the current scene of world crisis, the potential of socialist revolution, that is, of the struggle to destroy the political, military and economic power of the bourgeoisie, to win national liberation and achieve improvements in the conditions of life of the masses. On the other hand, the defense of the conquests of the 1959 revolution and the strategy of the Latin American and international socialist revolution in the twenty-first century needs to be separated histoically from the politics and inheritance of Castroism, to restore the Cuban workers' state as a trench of the international revolution through struggle against the bureaucracy and its privileges and by imposing rule by workers', campesinos' and soldiers' councils.

Strikes continue in GREECE

www.ft-ci.org
La Verdad Obrera 309, Thursday, January 8, 2009
Strikes continue in Greece
By Alejandra Ríos

A month after the murder of the youth Alexis Grigoropoulos at the hands of the Greek police in an Athens neighborhood, protests continue occupying the streets and Greek politics. They did not manage to calm the spirits of the youths, even for the Christmas holidays; on that occasion, the youths went out to burn Christmas trees placed by the government as if nothing had happened.

The brutal murder of Alexis was an escalation of repression that has as its background two years of workers' and students' resistance against the privatizing and belt-tightening attacks of the conservative Karamanlis government of the New Democracy party. There have been 4 general strikes since 2006, with some factory seizures. Furthermore, there were student mobilizations with seizures of buildings, in opposition to the reductions in education. It would also be fitting to mention strikes in some factories and very important unions, like the case of the Siemens workers, the teachers' strike that lasted six weeks, and the strike of postal workers against privatization, and that of the sanitation workers that lasted four weeks.

The student movement responded forcefully. Thousands went out to demonstrate their anger by confronting the repressive forces. Teachers and other groups that were coming from previous struggles rapidly joined the demonstrations, as shown by the December 10 general strike, called beforehand.

The causes of the rebellion in Athens have much more deep and broad reasons than the government and the international press are willing to point out. We must seek the reasons in the economic crisis that the country is confronting and the social policy impldmented by the government, that affects education, the retirement system, and other social services. An expression of this is the fact that the teachers', university and high school students' unions have called a mobilization in Athens for January 9 against the government and police brutality. The union that brings public employees together, ADEY, also called for a cessation of activities and is calling on the workers to leave the workplaces beginning at noon, so they can join the students' and teachers' mobilization. This measure will affect hospitals, government agencies and the whole public adminstration.

There is also a call for a 24-hour strike by subway workers, who will bring service to a standstill on Thursday, to express their rejection of the new proposed collective work contract presented by the company.

All these groups in struggle and in a state of mobilization have scheduled a meeting on Monday, January 12, to discuss the call for a 24-hour strike and plan the continuing measures of struggle. But the Greek resistance movement does not appear to have been shut away inside its own borders: on Saturday, January 3, thousands of people went out to the streets and squares, just like in other big European cities, to repudiate Israel's attack on Gaza. Besides, next Saturday, the member organizations of the "No to the War!" coalition have called another national march that has the support of several militant unions.

A big crisis of the Greek political establishment began with the last elections, in September 2007. New Democracy, which is in the government, and the social democracy, PASOK in the parliamentary opposition, are sinking in the polls, losing all credibility, which has led to talk of the end of the Greek two-party system.

The union leaderships, including the biggest, the Greek Communist Party (KKE), quickly repositioned themselves, owing to pressure from the rank and file, going so far as to recognize publicly that the rebellion underway "is not a matter of anarchist youths that throw Molotov cocktails and break windows, but of a profound dissatisfaction of groups of workers, which has led to the rise of an anti-imperialist and anticapitalist resistance movement."

The struggle underway raises not only the possibility that the government crisis will worsen (the government is trying to emerge from the crisis through reshuffling the cabinet), but that it could go so far as to cause the fall of the Prime Minister. The Greek scene shows the governments and the bourgeoisies what they could face, in trying to apply their anti-worker plans to attempt to save their necks, given the world economic crisis.