Vangelis Karageorgos and supporters of the Greek organisation Kokkino look at the recent big struggles in Greece against neo-liberal education reform. In Greece university education is free for everyone. The Greek constitution does not allow anyone, apart from the state, to found a university.
The rightwing New Democracy (ND) government wants to change this article in the constitution not only to make it legal for capitalists to create private universities, to make large profits, but also to make the public ones work under strict neo-liberal rules.
ND was feeling confident that it could force through the Change because the leader of PASOK had announced that the party would vote for the constitutional change. PASOK is the second biggest party in Greece and is both socialdemocratic and neo-liberal.
This would give the government enough votes to get what it wants. It was its confidence that made the government also propose changing other articles in the constitution in favour of the capitalists, but unfortunately for ND a massive movement broke out which forced it to change its plans.
The students had already shown their anti-neoliberal intentions last summer. They occupied all the Greek universities, during their examinations, and held big demonstrations against the proposed changes to the education laws.
The student organisations EAAK (coalition of radical left organisations, including OKDESpartakos -the Greek section of Fourth International) and DARAS (Synaspismos and Kokkinoorganisations close to the Fourth International) began collaborating on a set of having radical demands. They persuaded the PKS (Communist Party) and PASP (PASOK) to join their coalition.
The university teachers' big strikes also played an important role as they connected the... student movement with struggles led by education workers..
In towns and cities across the country dozens of committees were born. Unions, teachers, students and workers were organised through them.
They gathered thousands of signatures and did hundreds of meetings and organised many different kinds of resistance against the changes to the constitution.
This mass movement was characterised by its width. It included dissident members of PASOK and anarchists. It was also the first time in twenty years, that KKE (Communist Party) joined a united front under the pressure of the movement.
The governmental response to this movement was repression. It used the behaviour of some of the anarchists to launch a campaign of lies against the movement. Stand-off: students confront cops These lies were endlessly repeated in the bourgeois press.
The president of PASOK found himself in a very difficult position. The party was forced by the mass movement to abstain in the vote on the proposed changes to the constitution. The result was a defeat for the government. But ND didn't retreat. It fought back.
On February 22,the final day of the mobilisations, a new, neoliberal law for the universities
was suggested by the government. This was timed to take advantage of the tiredness of the students, and the fact that more and more students were turning against the occupations. The government got it wrong. The resilience of the movement had been underestimated. The occupations of the universities continue. The demonstrations are getting even more massive and the results in the university teachers union vote on March 4 gave the resisting striking anti liberal forces 60% of the vote.
At this point no one can be certain of what the outcome of the battle for the new law will be.
What is clear is that the mass movement has achieved a big victory against the constitutional change and that Greek youth is getting more and more radical. This movement could be the beginning of a new unified, antiliberal, anti-capitalist and radical left.
page 20 of the scan
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