An old worker. A pharmacist who healed by providing medicine to the sick. Desperate. 77 years old and just had his pension cut. Greece, under assault by the capitalist class. The angry man goes to the crowded square in front of Parliament, pulls out a gun, screams, “I have debts; I can’t stand this anymore”, blows his brains out, and a note saying that he refused forage in rubbish heaps for survival is found on his corpse. His death struck a chord in the hearts of the Greek working class. Hundreds gathered and set up a shrine with notes condemning the government and its actions. The crowd that formed was angrily chanting, “this wasn’t suicide, it was murder by the state.”
The crowd was right. The state is the organized force of society and wielded in the interest of the ruling class in order to preserve its rule over the servile classes. It is the concentration of power and authority massed against the class that produces all so that the parasitical class that steals can continue to gorge itself.
A young vegetable seller was the spark of the Arab spring in Tunisia last year. This man’s death, like the young man in Tunisia’s, didn’t have to happen, but capitalism needs more profit. His note pointed out that the government had “annihilated any hope for my survival and I could not get any justice. I cannot find any other form of struggle except a dignified end before I have to start scrounging for food from the rubbish.” If only there were a mass Communist struggle for this man to have joined so that he could have pointed his gun at the real enemies. When workers commit suicide because there is no work and they don’t know how they’re going to eat, it is more apparent than ever that a Communist revolution is needed.
Workers have already begun battling with the police, the dogs of the bourgeoisie. Politicians are already shedding tears about this tragic event. Their tears don’t mean anything. It would be sweet irony if Greece, the birthplace of Western society became the birthplace of the new. For that to happen, our friends in Greece need to use this upswing in class struggle and violence to build the PLP.
COMMUNISM NOW! 