Vol. 76/No. 20      May 21, 2012

The election results in France and Greece highlight the depth of the crisis in Europe, which has only just begun, as well as the need for workers to have our own revolutionary party with a fighting course. The capitalist rulers, with their political parties from the left to the right, are united in their aim to target the living standards and rights of working people in an attempt to solve the crisis of their system. They differ only in how to approach their problem.

The electoral showing of the Golden Dawn in Greece—with 7 percent of the vote—is a reminder that fascist organizations rise in times of deep economic and social crisis by using radical anti-capitalist demagogy, speaking for the “little man” against bankers and financiers, and by inventing scapegoats from immigrants to Jews.

In the absence of a revolutionary workers movement, some who look for radical solutions are attracted to demagogic nostrums of the ultraright.

The one example of a capitalist state reconquering profitability and competitiveness after being devastated by economic crisis and foreign intervention is that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Because of the lack of a mass revolutionary working-class party after Germany’s crushing defeat in World War I and the ensuing decade of deepening economic crisis, the capitalist rulers there backed the fascist Hitler regime to crush working-class resistance and obliterate political rights. On that basis they cranked up their war machine and challenged their imperialist rivals on a world scale.

Well before fascist rule can be posed, the working class will have its chance to wrest political power from the exploiters and put an end to the crisis of capitalism once and for all.

To accomplish this, workers need a revolutionary party—like the Bolshevik Party that led the mighty 1917 Russian Revolution and the movement in Cuba led by Fidel Castro that overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 and established a government of workers and farmers.

Today there are no revolutionary workers parties in Europe. The Communist and Socialist parties urge reforms to shore up capitalist rule. They no longer even maintain the pretense of a revolutionary perspective or speak about politics from a Marxist framework. “I’m not dangerous,” the SP’s François Hollande assured London investors before winning the election.

Nor do the “far left” candidates in the recent elections have a program to strengthen the unity, organization and fighting capacity of working people, much less a perspective for fighting for political power. In fact, their nationalist, anti-banker rhetoric mirrors the radical demagoguery of the ultraright.

Out of the resistance to the spreading attacks by the bosses and their governments, from Greece to the U.S., workers need to build a fighting proletarian party, a party that is steeped in the continuity of the past battles of our class with an international outlook and a nose for power.
 
 
Related articles:
Elections in Greece and France reflect depth of crisis  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home