On the morning of the 4th of April, Dimitris Christoulas, a 77 year old pensioner shot himself outside the Greek parliament. He had been forced up against the wall by the savage austerity measures imposed by the banker’s dictatorship at the wishes of the European financial elite.

This old man had lived through Nazi occupation, Civil War and Military dictatorship. The fact that he took his life now is testament to the brutality of the austerity regime. His suicide note read that the “government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years…I see no other dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself rooting though rubbish bins for my sustenance”.

But even in such a desperate mind frame he remained hopeful that “young people with no future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country like the Italians did to Mussolini”.

Anger

Within hours of his death thousands poured into the square to pay their respects and to show their solidarity. In a shameful act of disrespect the government sent hundreds of riot police armed with batons, concussion grenades and teargas. Clashes soon broke out between rightfully angry young people and the police who had been sent to try and stop attention being brought to the embarrassing and potentially explosive situation. Youth fought the police with stones and petrol bombs and the police gassed the square and drove off the mourners with brute force.

They especially attacked journalists, hospitalising several of them, in an attempt to ensure Dimitris would not become a martyr like Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire, lighting the spark that ignited the Arab revolutions. His funeral was yesterday and was attended by thousands who promised that they would fight until those responsible were brought to justice. His daughter read out a note that was placed on his shrine “we are 11 million and our name is resistance”.

The misery this man felt and the anger that millions of Greeks feel comes from the policies forced upon them by the financial aristocracy. The results are unemployment rates of over 20% and more young people who can’t find work than those who can. 68,000 businesses went bankrupt in 2011 alone. Wages and pensions have lost up to 50% in value in many cases. In many working class districts child malnutrition is estimated to exceed 20%. And significantly Greece’s suicide rate which was the lowest in all Europe has risen by over 40% since the cuts took effect.

These cuts that drive people to suicide are being forced on the Greek people against their will by a government that wasn’t even elected. The Greek government was appointed by the banks and a banker, Lucas Papademos, heads it. The EU replaced Greece’s government when their last PM worried he might lose his head if he pushed through more cuts and suggested that it might be a good idea to hold a referendum on cuts.

The leaders of Europe, horrified by even the mention of democracy had him replaced in a fortnight! The austerity is pushed through to pay for the debts which are held by billionaires and banking groups. Every bailout from the EU goes to these billionaires and every bailout come with conditions and instructions to the Greek puppet regime: make the working classes pay through ruthless cuts and austerity!

Why should ordinary people pay back a debt built up by rich politicians who bailed out the banks because of the crisis of capitalism? The Greek ruling class has moved over 600 billion Euros to Swiss banks which equals much more than the national debt, make them pay! Why should the working classes suffer in poverty in a futile attempt to save their rotten system?

When capitalism is posed as the choice between defending people’s livelihoods or lining billionaires pockets, the government has shown which class it defends. The Greek people should renounce the debt and refuse to pay.

There is an alternative

But to do this would require workers and youth taking power. Elections are coming up in May and the far left has been polling at an amazing 40% and over but winning elections is not enough. Parliament has exposed itself for what it really is recently; a pig sty, where politicians all in unison try to legitimise their undemocratic brutal attacks and hypocritically cry crocodile tears for pensioners they have pushed to suicide.

The Greek working class needs to capture state power for themselves, the elections will be a great time to call for a socialist alternative but the real solution to the crisis cannot lie with an institution that has proven so ignorant of the will of the people. Democratic bodies must be formed across the country, in workplaces, especially those occupied, in the form of unemployed youth groups and in strike committees. These groups need to link up across the country to form a national organisation that can replace the sham of a democracy that exists in parliament. These groupings should then organise an indefinite general strike to bring down the government and arm workers and youth to defend it against police, military and fascist oppression.

This new structure is not a pipe dream and its embryonic form exists already in Greece; workplaces are occupied on a weekly basis and workers democratically debate what should be done with them, last year tens of thousands occupied squares to try and set up a popular democracy.

Socialists need to put all their efforts into concretising these organisations; making them democratic and accountable and making their leaders and delegates recallable. The parties on the far left should get organised in these structures and promise to enact decisions of these bodies rather than parliament. Revolutionary socialists need to organise into a revolutionary party as the best way of directing and encouraging this democratic framework for a new socialist society.

We need to create an organisation and structure that is capable of breaking the institutions of capitalism that are on a daily basis forcing misery upon the working masses of Europe and driving people like Dimitris Christoulas to suicide.