International Socialism Project

The far right is making serious gains across Europe. This is a threat that should not be taken lightly.

That the right-wing won the recent Dutch elections was no surprise. What was surprising was how decisive the share of the far-right was in the overall right-wing victory. For Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), years of patience paid off while the incumbent right-wing party gambled and lost.

In the party elections for the succession of Alexis Tsipras as party leader, Stefanos Kaselakis prevailed, winning 56 percent. He is a new “star” who hasn’t even been a party member and who neither has nor claims any connection to the organized political Left whatsoever, either with its history or with its prospects.

The June 25 elections in Greece confirmed, but also reinforced, the harsh negative features of the results of the “first round” of the May 21 election. In the new parliament, the sum of the right and the far-right parties reached 200 seats (out of a total of 300), thus creating a correlation of parliamentary forces that is unprecedented in the years following the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1974.

The actual class balance of forces, the political balance of forces and the electoral balance of forces are different quantities and qualities to measure. They are interrelated and they influence each other, but they are not identical.

The social pillar that supported this political achievement of the Right was the mobilization of the ruling class and the affluent upper-middle classes, with their potential to pull along with them a certain broader audience.

The article is the first of a three-part series, first published in French at Tendance CLAIRE of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) in France. The text is supported by the Clear Tendency of the NPA and the International Workers’ League.

Not only are the strike days consecutive, but all doctors have been called out, including those who work in emergency care. This puts the BMA at the forefront of the present trade union upsurge, and it is a significant step forward from the union’s last wave of strikes in 2016, which ended with the government unilaterally imposing an unpopular contract on junior doctors.

The emergence of mass mobilizations, during the “delicate” time of a pre-election period, is a rare phenomenon in Greek political history. And it seems like this will continue to be the case: Left-wing unionists are already pressuring for a new 24-hour general strike before the Easter holiday.

More work, less leisure, for lower real pay, in an increasingly insecure workforce, with growing pressure to work harder on the job, is the pattern as the capitalist class seeks to squeeze ever-greater levels of surplus value from its workforce.

This collision is inconceivable, given the technology at our disposal in the 21stCentury. Yet all systems of tele-command, and even the signal lights, were out of function. This is not a question of some general technological backwardness of the Greek State.

On the roots of this situation lies the social question, the explosive growth of social inequalities as a result of Mitsotakis’ ultra-neoliberal economic and social policies. Austerity in Greece is devastating, pushing the actual income of working-class households below 50% of the corresponding average for member-states of the Eurozone.

Faced with the invasion of Ukraine by the regime of Vladimir Putin, the antiwar movement has seen the development of very contrasting positions. They all have in common that they all claim peace, a word behind which very diverse, even opposing attitudes can be placed.

It is obvious that the November 9th strike could probably constitute the beginning of a progression in the coming period of workers’ struggle. The crucial question is therefore where do we go from here?