We are the workers who with our sweat
We water the earth to give birth to
fruits, flowers, the goods of the world around us;
Poor, flowerless, fruitless, only the workers.
We are the workers who with our sweat
We make the bread of the world.
stronger than swords are our own hands,
and though chained, they dig, and the earth grows rich.
To the treasurers of the world your life, worker, laws.
the unjust shall eat it without shame.
Embrace, brothers, stand! With one heart, one mind,
Justice, thunder, and shine, Prosperity!
(Kostis Palamas)
ALL to the STRIKE RALLIES on MONDAY MAY 1st
The working class, all the workers, the youth of our country have been moving forward with optimism on the path blazed by the heroic workers of Chicago, the 200 martyrs of Kaisariani, the thousands of anonymous militants who fell for the rights of the workers, for liberation from capitalist exploitation. Workers all over the world are waving the banners of struggle and militantly honouring their great class celebration.
May 1st, the day when workers all over the world, those who hold the moving belts of the universe, raise our fists high. It is a day of struggle, a day of the militant projection of our demands, a day of glorious remembrance of the fighters who fell for the rights of the working class. In our country we are strengthening and uniting our voice with our brother-workers of other countries who are on strikes, on militant mobilizations.
The struggles of the workers all over the world will win!
In recent times the system that gives birth to oppression, the system of capitalist barbarity has been repeatedly struck by the workers’ struggles in France, Britain, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Sri Lanka and other countries where millions of workers with lasting struggles, with unprecedented massiveness and endurance, take to the streets and strike, demand and demonstrate against the anti-peoples policies that are being escalated by all governments, serving the interests and needs of the business groups.
Workers’ struggles in a number of countries send promising messages of militant uplift against the same voices that we face in our country, which call the workers to stay on the “path of realism” with our heads bowed down, locked into governmental alternatives of choosing the “lesser evil” and the one-way path in the service of the bosses.
It is a response to all those forces, of every pollical colourthat supports the system of exploitation, and anticipated with false tears the end of the working class. A response to all those who said that struggles do not bring results and described strikes as outdated forms of struggle.
It is precisely for these reasons that the lessons of the bloody sacrifice of the Chicago workers remain relevant, alive, a flame for every worker around the world.
We will not sacrifice our lives for their profits!
In the wake of the recent crime, the deadly train crash in Tempe, it has become apparent to more workers and young people that the cause of treating human life as fuel for the profitability of business conglomerates is not some personal oversight or a simple human error.
Behind the cuts on safety measures in workplaces, transport, health and the protection of human life lies the law of profit. But even more profoundly, it is the law of profit that is bloodying the planet, activating the imperialists’ competitions, creating thousands of dead and refugees through conflicts and imperialist wars.
It is the law of profit that opens and closes businesses, sending thousands of workers into unemployment, condemning them to live in poverty, cutting back on basic necessities to make ends meet, looking to support their income with various coupons.
They count profits and losses, we count human lives
It annoys the government and free market supporters that the protests in Greece country have targeted the profits of business groups. Because for the Messiahs who promise redemption and dignity on the eve of elections, the ‘law of profit’, which has the characteristics of a divine mandate, is non-negotiable as it is a sacred law that must not be violated.
Capitalist “development” is based on this law. That is why the most radical proposals of the ‘saviours’ who are seeking the vote in the elections that follow, refer to a fairer exploitative system where profit is not above life.
How much bigger a lie than that? As long as profit is the criterion that affects the lives of the many, there will be wars, misery, poverty, unemployment, intensification of work, and endless hours of work brought back by laws and amendments, i.e., the restoration of the conditions that the workers had in Chicago.
Under this law there is absence of safety measures in the workplaces, inadequate measures in transportation, hospital closures and understaffed health care, thousands of substitutes in education, crumbling schools with falling ceilings, heating systems that burst and kill students, home foreclosures, unaffordable rents, power and water cuts to working-class families.
The law of profit has been shielded with anti-worker measures and with the “necessary” repression by all governments to date, those who claim the vote of the workers to take over the governance of the country either independently or in cooperation. Behind the law of profit is the state of the few, of governments of all colours and denominations.
Only the people can save the people!
The workers’ struggles that are developing in every sector, in workplaces in the private and public sector, the mobilizations of the workers, are the guide and hope. The mobilizations for the right to work, the right to a living wage, the struggles to not work till death need to be strengthened and spread, because they are a response and optimism to the attack we face.
No government, no wannabe“saviour” is going to provide a solution to the daily and acute problems we face! We have accumulated experience to avoid lies, grandstanding and traps. On all the key issues that define our lives, they erase any differences. In common they legislate and agree, because the God of profit they worship is one.
The solidarity that has developed over the years with workers on strike and encountering employer violence and repression, the solidarity expressed in a moving way around the great natural disasters that have struck the country, the effective support for migrant workers against the racist views the murderous hand of the fascists, the international solidarity with the peoples of other countries, the genuine and real unity of the workers expressed in the neighbourhoods against the auctions of homes, power cuts, prove that the slogan “only the people can save the people” is not an exaggeration, but the way to go in today’s conditions.
We will not accept protection of life to be a burden, where our dignity is measured in breadcrumb increases and unmet basic needs. We should not accept the future of unemployment, food coupons and death with a one-way ticket.
MAY 1st, a day of struggle, honor and disobedience!
Against the political staff of the business groups, their sirens and their scribes who look for failures of the system in human errors and mistakes, it is necessary to strengthen now the struggle against the exploitative system, its state and its governments.
It is not the fault of man, of his work and knowledge, his scientific and technological achievements, but the subordination of all these to the iron law of profit, to the rotten values of the “competitiveness” of the economy, but also to the “class cooperation” defended by the leadership of the GSEE (ETUC Members in Greece), the Unions in the service of the employers and governments, which present workers and bosses as one family.
The power that protects the great private property in the concentrated means of production, in the factories, in the land, in the resources of wealth, is the basis for privatisations, for the agreements and laws that guarantee the exploiters profits, cheap labour and class peace.
MAY DAY as a day of remembrance, action and militant continuity calls us to look into the face of the source of the suffering faced by the vast majority of working people, the basic opposition of capital-labour. That is, the accumulation of wealth created by the many and its seizure by a parasitic handful of a few who appropriate all this wealth, handing over poverty and misery to its producers.
It is necessary to defeat those who today defend a system of injustice, a rotten system that cannot be corrected, cannot be humanised. The capitalist path of development, the subjugation of our lives to their profits, will only bring suffering and misery to the working class, to the peoples of the whole world.
Today there is a way out! With our struggles, we can overthrow them! This is the way to change the present negative correlation of power. This is the way to break the chains of exploitation. To draw our own path of development, which will have as its sole motive the satisfaction of the modern needs of the people, which will be centred on man, the producers of wealth! This is what they fear, this is what they dread! Let us make their fears reality!
Long live WORKERS MAY DAY
We march in the path of the workers of Chicago!
Long live May Day and class struggle!