(The following letter was sent by Nikos Maziotis to be read in a manifestation-open discussion that took place in Thessaloniki in 31/10 and 1/11/98)
Contribution of N. Maziotis in the manifestation for solidarity in Thessaloniki |
From prison, I send my wholehearted regards to the comrades from Thessaloniki who organize this conversation, my regards to all comrades but especially to the resisting people of the five villages of Strymonikos, that dynamically struggle against the construction of a gold industry by the multinational company TVX Gold in their place.
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Apart from the specific issues of this discussion I would like to refer to two important matters: the investing and development plans concerning the “major works”, which are already in progress in this country, and second, the connection of anarchist revolutionists with the social struggles.
In this period, within the neoliberal capitalistic restructuring course that has started since 1989-90, with main characteristics the gradual abolition of the providence state, the reduction of social grants, companies’ privitizations, workers’ redudancies, the end of industrialization and the shrinkage of agricultural population, various giant investing and “development” works are already in progress; works such as the new airport of Athens being constructed in Spata, the highway Elefsina-Stavros-Spata (Attiki Road), the METRO of Athens and the one studied for Thessaloniki, the bridging of Rio-Atirio, Egnatia Road, the widening of the existant national and provincional highways, the beautification of ports and airports all over the country.
Part of these works is the construction of a gold unit by TVX in the area of northeast Halkidiki villages, which is the bigest investment above all private works under construction or yet studied; an investment valued at 60 billion drachmas (about 212 million $).
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Society is bombarded in an everyday basis by the propagandistic media controlled by the state and private capital, that all these works and investments are made to serve social needs. But, behind the terms that state’s officials use, terms like “modernization”, “development” and progress, there is not the purpose of serving any social interest, but of maximizing the profits for the capital, for the owners of technical copmanies that undertake the construction of major works; for state officials and beaurocrats who collect the stakes in order to entrust the works to specific corporations; for multinationals whose merchandise will be transported through the new highways, reducing this way the costs of trading.
The major development works belong to the generalized restructuring which is attempted by the capital internationally as much as here in order to achieve a copmlete prevalence, a dictatorship of the market.
Besides, the accession of the greek state in the Economical and Monetary Unification, apart from reducing inflation, state expenses and the shortage of state budget, also demands the completion of this works that will assist to the rapid transportation of multinational companies’ merchandise within the borders of european hyper-state.
It is certain though that all these investments and major works have an expiry date and that they leave behind desolated land and environmental degradation. For example, it is certain that TVX, in case that it constructs the factory in Halkidiki, after exhausting the little deposits of gold it will stop functioning, firing all workers and leaving the land devastated. All the promises given to the residents of the villages for permanent and secure job will prove to be lies.
But this is the way the capital works: facing people and the land as objects to make use of, as expendable tools to exploit. After extorting from them whatever can be transformed to profit, it then throws them away; the workers as worthless and the land sacked.
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The struggle of the residents in Strymonikos has a great importance that surpasses its local characteristics, because it sabotages not only the investment of TVX but the whole idea of the major works, the perception of “development” and modernization, that is nothing else than a perception of how to maximize exploitation and the profits for the capital. Towards all these, this struggle opposes the right of every human, a right of all humans wherever they are, either in the neighberhood or in the city, in villages or at working places, to decide together and collectively about their lives and about their land; the right not to tolerate others (the state) to decide on behalf of them.
The struggle of the people in Strymonikos sabotages and exposes the greek state to its assosiates of the european capitalist coalition (European Union), as it is visible that it cannot impose, whether with violence or fraud, the orders of this international league, when confronting simple revolted people. After all, this is how this struggle is perceived by its social and class enemies, by the political, enterprising and police circles.
The value of these social struggles though as a total lies in the connection between the goals and the means used to achieve them, especially in the case when these struggles go beyond the established institutions and take insurrectional characteristics.
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For anarchists, for the people who aim at the total subversion of the existing social order in an international level, at the subversion of the State, of all states, of the structure of ierarchy and dominion of the capital, for these people who want to keep always alive in society the spirit of revolt (even in times of decrease), it is obvious that their place and their field of action is within all social struggles, despite the different characteristics of each of these struggles.
Because all of them, even if carried out by different social parts (workers, students, farmers, local societies) are directly connected, they have the same enemy, the state and the capital, and they all reclaim the freedom for people to decide for themselves and the self-control of their lives.
Many times during the last years, comrades of ours, whether forming nucleus or in small groups, acted within struggles and tried out their strength in the social field. For example, comrades from Thessaloniki went in Aravisos in 1989, in a struggle of local environmental character, participating in the clashes between the residents and the police, where some of the anarchists were arrested. Other anarchist comrades took part in the occupation of the mines in Mantoudi, Evia in 1990. The intervention of anarchists was also acute in the high-school students’ movement and in school occupations during the years 1990-91.
In August of 1992, many comrades from Athens participated in the clashes against the police, on the side of the drivers in Public Transportations who have been fired, in Votanikos. There were also comrades that went to Pouri, Pelion, and to Volos in the spring of ‘94, in a struggle of environmental, local character again. It was the first time there was a demonstration in Volos, after the fall of the junta (1974).
Since the end of ‘96, comrades from Athens were connented with the case of TVX factories in Halkidi, and got in touch with the people from the villages. Since December of ‘97, after the severe clashes that took place there, a wide assembly of anarchists was formed in Athens with the purpose to express and realize solidarity with this struggle.
Recently, in June of ‘98, anarchist comrades acted in solidarity with the struggle of jobless teachers, participating in their meetings, in the blockades of the streets and in the conflicts with the police outside the exam centers.
The anarchist milieu is the only political milieu that has really been in solidarity whith the struggles and the demands of prisoners for better living conditions in prisons. It was the only milieu which realized demonstrations of solidarity, like in October of ‘90 when almost all prisons of the country had revolted, or like in November of ‘95 when from inside the occupied Polytechnic School anarchists declared solidarity with the prisoners of Koridallos in rebellion, creating also a diversion to the police forces.
The influence of anarchists and of their practices on youth is a certain fact for many years, since the beginning of the ‘80s.
During the first years of that decade, in a period of social decrease, of social “peace” and submission imposed by the socialdemocrat status, anarchists and wild youth, the youth that doesn’t fit in the various political parties’ and proper conventional patterns, clashed many times with the riot police in the center of Athens and occupied Schools and universities (Chemistry School in May of ‘85, Chemistry and Polytechnic School in November of ‘85), resisting against the repression of the years ‘84-’85.
Occupation, as a form of fight, resistance and self-organization, maintained its timeliness through the action of anarchists, who occupied Schools and universities in the center of Athens (because Schools were the only free ground for social demonstrations and resistance, as the repressive forces of the state were not allowed to come in). This way, later, during the 90s, the practice of occupying public buildings was familiarized by other social groups resisting against the neoliberal attack. That is proved by the example of factories’ occupations by workers in 1989-90 in Mantoudi, Lavrio, Patra, Piraeus; by the example of high-school occupations in 1990-91, the blockading of national highways by farmers in ‘95-’97 or the example of Strymonikos’ residents who occupied the highway Thessaloniki-Kavala in February of ‘96 as a first reaction against the plans of TVX constructing the factory and later clashed with the police twice.
It’s not an exageration to say that School’s occupations by anarchists and wild youth, espesially of Polytechnic that was and still is a symbol and a place of social resistance since ‘73 and till today (Polytechnic of ’85, ’88, ’90, ‘91, ’95), are directly connected with Mantoudi, Lavrio, high-school occupations, the clashes by Public Transportation workers, the blockades by farmers and the case of TVX.
It’s not an exageration to say that despite the slander we receive as anarchists by the media, despite the attacks by all established political milieus -the Right and the Left-, by milieus of the opposition or alternative ones that all have the same pattern for social administration, the State, and that have as a purpose to marginalize us, the anarchist movement, with its small forces, became a source of inspiration and influence to other social parts that consiously or instictively familiarize with dynamical and aggressive forms of fight.
This is exactly the reason why anarchists are considered dangerous for the state, and this is why they consist the first target for repression. Their influence is real, although big social parts seem to accept the lies and the slander the state launches against us, even if they seem displeased with our ideas, methods and practices.
Apart from slandering anarchists, the state, helped by the media, the political parties’ and cultural institutions and mechanisms, also uses on the oppressed the tactics of “Reign by Division”, cultivating discord and confusion between the social parts that occasionaly resist against the plans of neoliberalism, in order to turn the one against the other. This way it succeds in keeping these social struggles separated.
The existing neoliberal government has already presented this tactic as a natural social phenomenon, calling it “social automatism”, aiming to turn society against strikers, farmers etc, accusing them of being reactonary, “privilaged corporations” that live at the expense of the rest (recent examples are the street blockades, the strikers of Ioniki bank and jobless teachers).
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But which is the role of anarchists within the social struggles? Why anarchists have been, and still are, in solidarity with these struggles?
Because we believe that solidarity, mutuality and helping each other are essential for a free society. On the contrary, the State is a creation of class divisions and of social antagonism, which leads society to dissolution, impassivity and violence, to wars and destruction.
In fact, the State is the most anti-social mechanism.
We, as anarchists, do nothing than uncovering the oppresive, terroristic and dissoluting role of the state and of all ierarchical and beaurocratic mechanisms, promoting solidarity as the highest political-social action with any means expressed, not by exploiting or trying to lead like political parties do, but understanding the contradictions and the particular conditions of these struggles, trying to influence in the way to surpass the institutional limits, which consist an obstruction to self-expression and action of the fighting people.
Real solidarity has nothing to do with the “solidarity” coming from proffesional political expressors -mainly of cousrse from left and leftists- and which has as main characteristics political exploitation, manipulation and distrortion of the real essence of social struggle.
Real solidarity is not when someone is talking on account of others. It is not to have a utilizing relation with a struggle, seeking to be politicaly self-comfirmed and forcing out a political supervalue, translated in votes and authority posts, but to participate actively in the struggle from your own bulmark also, to promote direct-democratic procceedings in the way decisions are made.
Solidarity, for whoever it may be expressed, strikers, squatters, farmers or students, for political prisoners or just for prisoners of the “penal code”, is one and indivisible and acts equaly upon the one who expresses it as to the one who receives it.
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Individual freedom depends on social freedom. Any social struggle, carried out by any social group, no matter how small this group is or where this struggle takes place, concerns everyone and has a great importance for the whole of society, not only in a local or national level but internationally, becouse human society especially in our times experiences the imposition of global unification in every level: political, social and economical.
Struggles and social insurrections that take place in other places on earth, like the Zapatistas’ guerilla in Chiapas, Mexico that goes on since 1994, the movement of landless brazilian farmers, Movimento Sem Terra, who occupy the land and work collectively, are directly connected with the social struggles and conflicts that happen under completely different conditions in the industrial developed part of the world, Europe and N. America, where there are wild workers’ strikes, occupations of labour offices by jobless people, like recently in France, pupils’ movements, riots by wild youth in the neighbourhoods and the centers of big cities, where young people, as neo-Luddites and vandals, destroy and loot shoping centers, banks, the bastions of capitalism and of artificial false prosperity, like the first industrial workers in England and France did. in late 18th century and in the beginning of the 19th, when they destroyed factories and the first machines.
All these struggles are a part of the international movement of the oppressed people everywhere.
In front of the international organization of the bosses and the dominators of the world, that form coalitions and agreements like the EU, GATT, NAFTA etc, the only thing that can be opposed is solidarity of all social struggles and movements, wherever they are.
Nikos Maziotis, 27 October ‘98
Koridallos Prison
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