"Labour is one-third cheaper in France than in England; for their poor
work hard, and fare hard, as to their food and clothing. Their chief
diet is bread, fruit, herbs, roots, and dried fish; for they very
seldom eat flesh; and when wheat is dear, they eat very little
bread." [39] "To which may be added," our essayist goes on, "that
their drink is either water or other small liquors, so that they spend
very little money.... These things are very difficult to be brought
about; but they are not impracticable, since they have been effected
both in France and in Holland." [40] (Capital I, chap. 24) And the
footnote amplifies: [40] Today, thanks to the competition on the world-
market, established since then, we have advanced much further. "If
China," says Mr. Stapleton, M.P., to his constituents, "should become
a great manufacturing country, I do not see how the manufacturing
population of Europe could sustain the contest without descending to
the level of their competitors." (Times, Sept. 3, 1873, p. 8.) The
wished-for goal of English capital is no longer Continental wages but
Chinese.
work hard, and fare hard, as to their food and clothing. Their chief
diet is bread, fruit, herbs, roots, and dried fish; for they very
seldom eat flesh; and when wheat is dear, they eat very little
bread." [39] "To which may be added," our essayist goes on, "that
their drink is either water or other small liquors, so that they spend
very little money.... These things are very difficult to be brought
about; but they are not impracticable, since they have been effected
both in France and in Holland." [40] (Capital I, chap. 24) And the
footnote amplifies: [40] Today, thanks to the competition on the world-
market, established since then, we have advanced much further. "If
China," says Mr. Stapleton, M.P., to his constituents, "should become
a great manufacturing country, I do not see how the manufacturing
population of Europe could sustain the contest without descending to
the level of their competitors." (Times, Sept. 3, 1873, p. 8.) The
wished-for goal of English capital is no longer Continental wages but
Chinese.
Karl Marx
Big words usually before a big sellout by the metro leader Stamatopoulos-SELMA union who stood on the Antarsya electoral ticket (got the amazing amount of 154votes) after the 8day metro workers strike which crippled Athens. Union leaders forced by pressure from below to call out other groups of transport workers, Buses, Trams, overground, OSE-trains reached the point of an all out indefinite transport strike.
Just before the climax the govt passed its usual military junta law of banning the strikes in courts then issuing requisition orders to each individual striker to get back to work or lose their jobs. As other workers were joining the metro workers, Skaramaga shipyard workers, farmers with their tractors the sellout started. Troika plus the internal Troika banned the strike and the union tops did the usual when they aren't playinbg divide and rule. The talk tough about 'junta' rules, dictatorship, the attacks on the right to strike on the tv and then they bring in the lawyers who announce to the strikers that they cant be defended if they dont go back to work. The usual fake left leaders Lafazanis from Syriza pop along and so does PAME-KKE give tough speeches about the future struggle and resistance and in the meantime as organisations they dont even call their members out or call for the people of Athens to rise up and fight. They dont leave the IMF occuppiers Parliament and Tsipras from his coffee drinking chats at the Brookings Institute and the IMF headquarters in New York says we shouldn't increase 'tension' and 'social conflict'.
(They have allready named Syriza as a party which is split between the Interior and the Exterior-Tsipras ie the conciliatory wing)
In other words workers should accept the new round of 25% wage cuts up until we match Chinese wages and labour standards in Greece. What they fail to understand is that you cant keep selling out group after group which is in conflict, truckers, taxi drivers, farmacists, farmers, transport workers and avoid the inevtable that you are leading society inevitably into open rebellion. The fake left lederships and the political parties of the fake left embedded to the IMF are digging their own grave. Samaras govt would have fallen if their was a real general strike of only a few days. Whether they are able to pull it off indefinitely we will have to wait and see as groups of metro workers were seen burning their individual court papers in public.
http://youtu.be/OzZFABUZ7Pc
Where were the marches by the union tops? Where were the demos outside the Greek TUC? Where were the flying pickets to call out all transport workers? Just before all other sections joined and the farmers were going to blockade the motorways with tractors the Metro Union Leadership caved in.
Stamatopoulos was for years a member of the KKE's Building Workers Union which they wound up and turned into a gangmasters union exclusively for their members, then he became a technician in the metro and then became a de facto union leader being in PASOK. Sensing his careers as a union leader was coming to an end, he joined ANTARSYA the Syriza front on the outside which pretends it aint Syriza but has identical policies. Now sensing he may lose his Trade Union pension, despite spending years chanting 'the only right is one that belongs to workers' he did exactly what all have done in the last three years, sell out the strike.
The sellout of this strike buries once and for all the notion of the extra-parliamentary left.
PS
In another era, during the busworkers strikes in 1992 which aided in bringind down the ND-Mitsotakis govt, the bus workers went on all out strike and chanted with daily demos 'Air Air Get the Cholera Out' forcing scabs to stop working, even up to the point of parading them in public with no clothes on. Only 40 tube workers according to reports were in the main garage works of the Metro, the union tops did not call for mass pickets or daily demos. This is the famous 'Anti-Capitalist' Coalition of Antarsya, Syriza in drag
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