United Europe?

Syriza, the leading the anti-austerity party in Greece, takes the position that Greece can defeat EU imposed austerity in Greece and at the same time, remain within the Euro. They claim that the EU in general and Germany in particular cannot afford to allow the Euro to break. If Greece were 'allowed' to drop out of the Euro they argue, then there would then be massive pressure on Portuguese, Irish and then Spanish and Italian banks as a result of the collapse in confidence in austerity and the Euro, in those countries.

This position is coming under immense pressure. Every western leader and every major capitalist figure with access to the media, including the leaders of the New Democracy party in Greece, claim that the coming general election will actually be a referendum on the Euro. Their intention is to picture the Greeks in complete isolation. Destroyed by their decision; their economy driven off the cliff; life for Europe's 'lab rats' would become a poisoned example of the results of voting against the stern advice of the capitalist high command.

Can the Greek people take the risk of flouting the warnings given by the world's rulers?

It is entirely possible that Syriza have a point; that the potential contagion of even one, small, peripheral economy falling out of the Euro is too great for the German bankers, not to say the world's bankers, to face with any confidence. On the other hand, what of the 'contagion' potentially represented by the successful action of the Greek people in stopping the austerity programme and remaining in the Euro? How much better to present a terrifying example of what happens if the people do not follow the lead of their masters?

This bet, based on academic speculation, is a hopeless (and paralysing) representation of the real options in front of the Greek and wider anti-austerity movement in Europe.

Starting from the interests of the Greek and the European 99%; the drive to destroy the gains that have been created and won through generations of efforts and sacrifices by millions of working class people must be stopped. For the sake of the whole world. The Greek people are in the van of the battle we all face. Their resistance is an inspiration and their leaders have the responsibility to take that fight-back as far as it can possible go. That includes the opportunity that would be created by the formation of a government committed to abandon austerity. A government would make the movement in Greece, and across Europe, immeasurably stronger.

The principle here is not to second guess the intentions of the opponents. They probably do not know yet what (if anything) that they will do. In the end they will do what they think is best to defend themselves. The principle here is to create a new fact, a new bastion, a new advance that respects the active will of the majority about the sort of life that they need: to create something around which those with nothing to gain and much to lose from austerity can regroup and which breaks the relentless momentum of those that would destroy our security, standard of life and our children's futures.

Such a step will undoubtedly create a contagion - both for them and also for us. We do not know exactly what will happen. We know that the majority are against austerity and only in Greece - so far -  do they have the opportunity of being represented politically. So. We engage in the fight (for anything else is worse. In Greece the expatriated Capital will not now flow back of its own accord.) And then we see.

Events are speeding up. Perhaps we are at the dawn of a new sort of unity in Europe - a new sort of continent. After WW1 many socialists thought a Federated Europe was on the cards - as an alternative to the destruction created by the war, to the debts owed to the USA and to conquerer's Treaty of Versailles. It was associated in their minds with the great wave of liberation that swept the globe in those days.

Capital's attempt in the last decades to 'unify' Europe has catastrophically failed as we approach the teens of the new century. Like many other unfinished tasks of that era, perhaps it is time once again to pick up the baton of a completely different sort of Europe. A new anti-austerity Greek government, based on the support of the majority of the Greek people, would be a fine place to start.