Erdogan vs Coup: The two sides of the same coin

COMMENTARY.

By Nikos Mottas.

It is certainly too early in order to draw solid conclusions about the attempted military coup in Turkey. The developments and the information we receive are rapid and continuous. Numerous questions arise: Who was really behind the attempted Coup? What were the real motives of this action? How will Tayip Erdogan and his government respond in the next few days? However, what is sure is the framework within which the developments in Turkey are taking place: It is a framework of inter-bourgeois contradictions which reflect a sharp rivalry between different parts of the Turkish Capital.

The attempted military coup- as well as the almost immediate response from Erdogan and AKP supporters- reflect a situation of internal war within Turkey's bourgeoisie. Taking into account the significant geostrategic role of Turkey in the region, we can understand that this intra-bourgeois, intra-capitalist war consists part of broader inter-imperialist contradictions in the Middle East.

The situation in Turkey cannot be explained on the basis of the- nevertheless existing- political rivalry between pro-Islamists (Erdogan) and Kemalist forces; It is a deeper and much more complicated situation. The internal political turmoil in Turkey is interdependent with the imperialist activity in the region- with the ongoing war in Syria and the relations of the Turkish government with foreign powers such as the US, NATO, Russia, the EU, ISIS etc.

One year since the Greek bailout referendum: KKE's position has been fully vindicated

One year since the Greek Bailout Referendum: KKE's position has been fully vindicated.

By Nikos Mottas.

5/7/2016.

It's been a year since the bailout referendum was held in Greece. The whole story surrounding the referendum, as well as what followed the referendum result, consists a major episode in a series of deceptions created by the Tsipras' coalition government. The referendum's question was whether the Greek people agreed or not with the bailout conditions proposed by the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank [1]. The outcome was a triumph of the “No” vote with 61.31%, while a 38.69% of the voters choosed the “Yes” choice.

However, the referendum itself was proved a political fraud. The SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government- and Prime Minister Tsipras personally- openly advocated in favor of the “No” vote. Thousands of “No” supporters gathered in mass demonstrations, while the country lived a short but intense polarised period, trapped between the “No vs Yes” dilemma. A fake and illusive dilemma, which had nothing to do with the real interests of the working masses who, once again, found themselves entrapped in bourgeois political antagonism.

Nikos Mottas- Venezuela and the Opportunist Theory of “21st Century Socialism”

Venezuela and the Opportunist Theory of “21st Century Socialism”.

By Nikos Mottas.

Translated version of an article published on atexnos.gr.

Rapid developments have taken place in Venezuela during the last months. From last December's electoral victory of the right-reactionary opposition until the recent assassination of a retired Army General, we have seen a series of events which lead to the destabilization of Nicolas Maduro government. Eighteen years since the rise of Hugo Chavez in power, in 1998, the “Bolivarian Revolution” trembles dangerously, while the conservative opposition is on the counter-attack and a number of external agents (US government, OAS etc.) are variously trying to intervene in the country's internal affairs.

The crisis in Venezuela has two sides: On the one hand, the government and its people are facing a multidimensional attack from imperialist centers which aim in exacerbating the situation to such extend so that a possible (external) military intervention would be justified. The attack on Venezuela must be examined as part of the broader framework of inter-imperialist, inter-bourgeoisie contradictions and antagonisms which- fostered by the US policy- are taking place in Latin America. That comes out also as a result of the developments in Brazil (the 7^th largest economy worldwide) where the inter-bourgeoisie confrontation and the scandal-mongering political orgy led to the expulsion of President Roussef.

The Varoufakis Illusion- An "erratic Marxist" at the service of Capitalism

By Nikos Mottas.

Last April, the former Finance Minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis was among those who addressed one of "Nuit Debout" movement's rallies in Paris. Expressing his solidarity, Varoufakis compared the french "Nuit Debout" with the 2011 Greek movement of indignant citizens: "It was an earthquake. We changed the policy in Greece, but also in Europe" he said. Of course, that was another example of bombastic nonsense by the former Minister. 

Varoufakis and his former political alter ego, Alexis Tsipras, didn't change anything, neither in Greece nor in Europe. The coalition government of SYRIZA-ANEL, which came to power on January 2015, continued on the steps of the previous governments; they served the aim of Greek capitalism's recovery and they continue doing so. Mr.Varoufakis- who since then has been an international 'celebrity' by presenting himself as a 'guru' of economics- never disagreed on the fundamental policy of the SYRIZA government. As we wrote in a previous article ("The simple truth about Varoufakis and his DiEM25 party"), Mr.Varoufakis had agreed on the 67% of the austerity reforms, according to his own words in a Berlin press conference, on February 2015. 

What the Capitalist Economic Crisis in Greece has taught us

By Nikos Mottas.

It was six years ago, on May 2010, when the then Prime Minister George Papandreou, in a televised message from the picturesque island of Kastelorizo, was announcing Greece's entry to the support mechanism of the IMF and the EU – the 'memorandum phase'. The economic crisis in Greece had manifested itself a year earlier, in 2009, when it entered in a phase of rapid recession, following the outbreak of global financial crisis in 2007-2008. Today, after four bourgeois governments (Papandreou, Papademos, Samaras, Tsipras) and three memorandums of harsh austerity packages, we can draw some significant conslusions. What did the Capitalist Economic Crisis in Greece teach us?

1. The Source of the Crisis.

Contrary to various bourgeois interpretations and theories of the economic crisis (over-consumption, casino-capitalism, etc.), there is one clear, scientifically proven, reality: Capitalism itself contains in it's DNA the inevitability of crises. Capitalist production, with it's contradictory character and anarchy, contains the seed of such crises. In Capitalist economy lies the motive to push capitalist reproduction to extremes levels, to accumulate immense profits, thus giving a monetary speculative form to the appropriation of surplus value from the working class labour. The devaluation of capital (either commercial or financial) and the devaluation of labour power (as a commodity), has occurred repeatedly in the past and will certainly occur in the future for as long as the exploitative system called 'Capitalism' exists.

'Captain-Yiotis' remembered: Charilaos Florakis, 1914-2005

Nikos Mottas writes about the legendary Greek Communist leader, partisan-fighter in WW2 and Greece's Civil War, long-time (1972-1991) General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, CHARILAOS FLORAKIS.

By Nikos Mottas.

It was the 22^nd of May 2005 when the tireless communist, the militant guerrilla captain, the popular leader, comrade Charilaos Florakis passed away. At 91 years of age, he was completing a life full of struggles; a life given to the ideals of a better world, for the perspective of Socialism and Communism. His life was given to KKE, to the Party he loved and gave everything.

The life and activity of Charilaos Florakis has been core part of KKE's history, of the most glorious- but also difficult- peoples struggles in Greece during WW2 occupation, during the Civil War as well as the country's modern history. Comrade Florakis, with his firm faith in the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, was never absent from Greek working class struggles.

Charilaos Florakis' political activity began in the pre-war decade of 1930s, as a member of the Communist Party's youth wing (OKNE) and later as a student and vigorous worker at the so-called “TTT” (Posts, Telegraphs, Telephone Offices). At an early age, as a teenager, he understood the signs of the ongoing class-struggle in the Greek countryside of '30s:

9th of May: Honoring People's Antifascist Victory!

Спасибо! (Thank you) - Veterans of the Red Army.

By Nikos Mottas.

9^th May 1945: The day when the Red flag with sickle and hammer was raised thriumphantly over the Reichstag in Berlin. The day when Nazi Germany surrended unconditionally to the Red Army, marking a great victory of humanity over fascism. The 9^th May is, without doubt, one of the brightest dates in human history, a glorious day for the first Socialist state, for the Soviet Union and it's people.

On this day, we pay tribute to all those heroes, men and women, who gave their own lives on the battlefields. We remember all those heroes who fought against the monster of Fascism. From the bottom of our heart we express our gratitude to the fighters of the Soviet Army, to the communist and anti-fascist partisans in Europe who led the liberation struggles against the Nazis. We remember and honor all those men and women, of every age, who maintained a heroic stance against the firing squads of the fascists. 

Fidel Castro: Absolved by History!

Two days ago, compañero Fidel Castro made a rare appearance at the closing of the VII Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. A great revolutionary, an incredible human being, Fidel, deserves the full respect of every communist, of everyone who believes in the ideals of Marxism-Leninism. 

Fidel Castro: Absolved by History!*

By Nikos Mottas.

"Socialism is and will continue being the hope, the only hope, the only way for the People, the oppressed ones, the exploited ones, the looted ones. Socialism is the only choice!" - Fidel Castro Ruz.

It was 26^th of July 1953 when a group of around 160 rebels, under the leadership of 26 years-old lawyer Fidel Castro, tried an armed attack on the Moncada barracks, at Santiago de Cuba. The aim was to give a first message of resistance against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was not successful. Sixty-one rebels were killed while the rest -- including Castro -- were captured and imprisoned by the regime's authorities. However, the 26^th of July 1953 remained in Cuban history as the day when the trigger of the following revolution was pulled. The revolutionary 'Movement of the 26^thof July' (Movimiento 26 de Julio) took it's name from that day and a few years later led the army of Fidel, Che, Raul and Camilo to the thriumph against the corrupted, pro-imperialist regime of Batista.

Che Guevara: “I came to communism because of Stalin”

By Nikos Mottas.

Originally published in atexnos.gr.

Translated from Greek.

Ernesto Che Guevara is undoubtedly a historical figure of the 20^th century's communist movement who attracts the interest of people from a vast range of political ideologies. The years followed his cowardly assassination in Bolivia, Che became a revolutionary symbol for a variety of marxist-oriented, leftist and progressive parties and organisations- from Trotskyists to militant leninists and from Social Democrats to anarcho-libertarians. A significant number of those who admire the argentine revolutionary identify themselves as “anti-stalinists”, hate and curse Stalin while they often refer to the so-called “crimes” of Stalin's era. What is a contradiction and an irony of history is the following: Che Guevara himself was an admirer of Joseph Stalin.

"The man with the carnation": 64 years since the execution of communist hero Nikos Beloyannis

Written by Nikos Mottas / In Defense of Communism.

Nikos Beloyannis, the man with the carnation, the Communist, the hero. It was in the dawn of Sunday 30th March 1952 when his heart stopped beating. The bullets of the firing squad gave an end to the lifes of Beloyannis and three of his comrades- Dimitris Batsis, Elias Argyriadis and Nikos Kaloumenos. 

The post-civil war bourgeois, centrist government of Plastiras, under the orders of his imperialist patrons, had done it's job. Beloyannis, a member of the Central Committee of the- then illegal- Greek Communist Party, was dead. However, his legacy and ideals were already immortal. 

"Beloyannis instructs us one more time,how to live and how to die. 

With just one carnation he unlocked all of immortality.With just one smile he brightened the world so darkness can never fall. Good morning comrades 

Good morning sun 

Good morning Beloyannis".  

- Yannis Ritsos, Poem "Man with the Carnation".

Nikos Mottas- NATO's rape of Yugoslavia

NATO's rape of Yugoslavia.

By Nikos Mottas.

Translated from the original Greek.

It was March 24^th 1999- 17 years ago- when the NATO armed forces were starting a barbaric pounding against the people of Yugoslavia. A few kilometres north of the Greek borders, the North Atlantic wolf-pack alliance was putting it's bloodstained stamp on the 20^th century's last big slaughter. It was then, when the balkan peninsula became, once more, the action field of imperialists and the federal republic of Yugoslavia (or what had remained from that) was crashing between the millstones of euro-atlantic interests.

It was the first time in NATO's history when a wide scale military operation was taking place without the- at least conventional- approval of the UN Security Council. Of course, the participating in the crime governments of the alliance's member-states (predominantly the US, UK, Germany, France) had already found the suitable pretext: It was the termination of the supposed “aggressiveness” of Slobodan Milosevic's government in the region of Kosovo. In order to justify the upcoming military intervention, the leaders of NATO's gang (Clinton, Blair, Schroeder, etc.) had been involved in an unprecedented public political staginess, pretending to be “worried” about the future of the albanian minority of Kosovo.

“We act to stand united with our allies for peace” Bill Clinton was stating in his- equal to an Oscar-level interpretation- nationwide statement just a few hours before the beginning of the bombings. Also, he was adding: “By acting now, we are upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace.”.

In the next lines we will see what “values”, what “interests” and what “causes” the NATO massacre was protecting...

On March 23^rd, the then CG of NATO Xavier Solana gives the order to US General Wesley Clark for the beginning of the first airstrikes on serbian territory. Within 78 days, governmental buildings, hospitals, schools, public transport, bridges, whole blocks of residential buildings were literally destroyed- all that despite NATO's assurances that the bombs were exclusively targeting military infrastructure. Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis, Pristina, Prahovo, smaller serbian cities and villages lived for more than two months the terror of NATO's crude barbarity.

On that point- examining the events from a historic distance of 17 years- it is significant to make some specific indications about the NATO involvement in Yugoslavia.

1. What were the real reasons that led to this NATO crime? Obviously, it wasn't the excuse(pretext) of the protection of the Kosovo minority. John Norris, a former communications director of the US deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, writes in his book “Collision Course: NATO, Russia and Kosovo):

“The gravitational pull of the community of Western democracies highlights why Milosevic's Yugoslavia had become such an anachronism. As nations throughout the region strove to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction. It is small wonder that NATO and Yugoslavia ended up on a collision course […] It was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of Kosovo Albanians – that best explains NATO's war”.

In fewer words, Milosevic's Yugoslavia became the “guinea-pig” of Imperialism in an effort to terrorize people. On the heads of serbian civilians they (the imperialists) tested the imperialist doctrine of “those who do not comply with the new international order will face barbarity”. What followed is known: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria, etc.

In order to have a clearer picture of the reasons that led to the 1999 NATO massacre, we must examine who were finally benefited from the destruction of Yugoslavia.

The desertification caused by the atrocity of NATO forces was followed by a “loot” of sell-out and privatizations of the country's state-owned infrastructure. European and US monopolies were benefited from that. It is estimated that in the post-Milosevic era, from 2000 to 2009, more than 1,800 privatizations of state-owned companies took place; the majority of the serbian metal industry was purchased by a US company, while the national automotive industry “Zastava” was bought by the italian monopoly “Fiat”.

Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank participated in the “game” of the country's “economic reconstruction”. According to economist and director of the Center for Research of Globalization, Michel Chossudovsky, the IMF and the World Bank had already, even before NATO's involvement in Yugoslavia, elaborated a relative plan of economic reconstruction (Michel Chossudovsky, Linking NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank).

This “reconstruction” was fully in line with a series of strategic choices and reforms (privatizations, sell-outs of public services, opening new markets, total destruction of working and social vested rights etc.) that would open the way towards the future affiliation of the new serbian republic with the EU.

Three-year old Milica Rakic was killed by one
of NATO's "clever bombs".

2. NATO- to which, according to Mr.Tsipras, Greece “undoubtely belongs”- is also responsible:

a) For more than 2,500 civilian deaths (apparently the belong to the so-called “collateral damage”), among them a large number of women and children.

b) For more than 12,500 injured civilians who literally felt upon their skin how Imperalism interprets “Democracy” and “Peace”..

c)For the approximately 15 tones of depleted uranium which the NATO forces scattered in serbian territory. The use of depleted uranium (Q-Metal) is responsible for the rapid increase- after 1999- in the number of illnesses related to cancer, leukemia and genetic deformity in newborns.

The crime in Yugoslavia has specific culprits with full name: the then US President Bill Clinton, the then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the US army General Wesley Clark, the NATO Secratary-General Xavier Solana. However, the abovementioned slaughterers had important accomplices; they were the heads of european social-democratic and center-of-left governments and political powers: the british PM Tony Blair, the German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the leader of the “Greens” in Germany Joschka Fisher. On them, we should include the then Greek government of PASOK which- despite it's hypocritical stance about “non-participation” in the crime- had transformed Greece into NATO's base.

We remind the debarkation of NATO forces in northern Greece and the port of Thessaloniki; we remind the military convoy that was passing through the central macedonia region towards Kosovo. We also remind that, according to official data given by the Hellenic National Defense Staff- the then government of Mr.Simitis had provided permission to: 60,000 NATO soldiers, more than 40,000 army vehicles, 420 NATO warships, 1000 war-planes and more than 500 trains containing military equipment to pass through Greek territory. In simple words, the then Greek government – which supposedly “didn't participate in the war”- was an accomplice of NATO in Yugoslavia's massacre.

Greek communists demonstrate against NATO's war in 1999.

NATO's atrocity in Yugoslavia was the last big slaughter of the 20th century. On the same time it marked something new: the beginning of a new “international law”, completely “tailored” for the imperialist interests – for the interests of monopoly capital. On the dismembered body of Yugoslavia, the imperialists tested the 21st century's law; the same “law” that was later appied in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Seventeen years later, the imperialists continue to re-divide whole regions and engrave borders with people's blood.

Nikos Mottas- The Total Vindication of Communist Party of Greece's Positions

The Total Vindication of Greek Communist Party's Positions.

By Nikos Mottas.

Republished from mltoday.com.

The Tsipras' Memorandum [set of austerity policies]  the "First time Left" [1] Memorandum, is here. Seven months after his election to  government, in the midst of summer, SYRIZA brought a third austerity memorandum – a package of barbaric antipeople measures which crushes what yet remains after five years of crisis and austerity. The "Left" of Mr.Tsipras proved in pratice that is the "Left" - as the Italian auto magnate Giovanni Agnelli used to say - "which can do all those things that the Right cannot do".

In other words, it is the kind of "Left" that can say "No" and actually mean "Yes", that can verbally "tear up the memorandums" and in practice sign new, even more barbaric anti-people austerity measures,  manipulating and trapping people's consciousnesses with fake choices , disorientating the working people for the sake of serving the interests of the bourgeoisie.

From the latest developments, the people – especially  progressive, left-wing people, the ones who trusted SYRIZA in the last elections, who enthusiastically voted "No" in the fraudulent referendum of Mr.Tsipras – must come to some conclusions. Not only regarding the character of SYRIZA as the new social-democratic pillar of a bourgeois political system in the process of  being re-shaped.  But also, regarding the character of the capitalist crisis itself, as well as for the real nature of the EU as an imperialist, pro-monopoly international union hostile toward the  interests of European peoples.