conomic crisis by stepping up their collaboration with capi-
The part of their program most highlighted has been their proposal for Wage Earners Funds, which will take money from the workers to give to industry in return for giving the workers a small theoretical voice over the use of it.
This proposal has aroused a furious debate. Among other things it is being attacked, without any foundation whatsoever, by the bourgeois parties as the most ambitious socialist measure in Swedish
The proposal can lead to greater influence of a solidly Social Democratic fund bureaucracy over industrial produc tion, which the capitalists regard as a nuisance, and that is the basis of their irrita-
The Wage Earners Fund can be a symbol of the Swedish Social Democracy's policy in the 1980s, which it is trying so hard to sell in this campaign-a reformism without real reforms.
The Papandreou government and the world economic crisis The victory of Andreas Papan(PASOK) in the October 18, 1981, elections is often compared in Western Europe to the triumphs of the French workers parties in May and June of the same
Along with the Mitterrand governthe Papandreou regime represents the major new reformist experiment in Europe in a period when parliamentary politics has generally been shifting to the
PASOK's victory aroused the same sort of enthusiasm in Greece as Mitterrand's did in France. In both cases, the masses of poor people and workers expressed joy at the defeat of repressive rightist regimes and tremendous hopes for
In Greece, this was coupled with a certain atmosphere of national liberation because the right, including the dictatorship of the colonels that ruled the country from 1967 to 1974, has been backed by the U.S. and Britain.
The following selection from the July issue of the Greek Trotskyist paper Ergatike Pale describes the record of the PASOK reformist government in meeting the aspirations of the masses that gave it an overwhelming electoral victory last fall in the context of the deepening world capitalist crisis.
Standing at 5%, the official figures for unemployment in this country do not seem alarming by comparison with those in other capitalist countries-7.5% in the U.S., 10% in Britain, 7.5% in France and
In trying to raise a hue and cry about the "catastrophic" policies of the PASOK government, Averoff (a leader of the right-wing bourgeois party) has predicted the numbers of jobless will rise to 250,000 by the end of the year, that is.
The fact is that the official unemployment figures fall far short of the reality because they cover only the insured. The government has nothing to gain by presenting the facts as they really are, and the New Democracy (the rightist party) has still more reason to cover them up.
So, the spectre of unemployment is haunting the country.... But if the actual percentage is what it is said to be, what is the reason for the worry and often the panic that is expressed?
The facts are different than those We cannot make a direct estimate but it is possible by indirect means to come up with something approximat-
The total number of building workers is 250,000. The average number of days they work, according to the bureau of statistics, This figure, course, is not precise. Not all the jobs get recorded in the workbook, and so the number of workdays would be
Also, a small number of building workers are independent uninsured workers who spend 50-60 days working in the industry. But taking all these factors into account, the average number of workdays the building trades the rate of unemploy. ment is 50%.
In industry, unemployment is not so extensive, but it is certainly greater than what is claimed. Industry as a whole is working at 70% of capacity. textile industry, the rate of utilization of capacity is still lower....
If you add all this up, it means that the rate of unemployment is already 10% which Averoff says represents cata-
The catastrophe is already
And what is the government doing to deal with this problem?
1. It promises (and has begun) to give financial aid to weak companies. This measure is a failure. panies have failed hopelessly and are about to increase the numbers of unem-
2. It will give financial aid to the stronger companies so that they can expand their operations. But the industrialists who have survived the sharp competition are not foolish enough to try to ex pand their production during a crisis of
It will use the loans from the OECD to provide work for the unemploy21,000 workers for six months. It is a
The family allowances owed to the families of building workers are not being paid on time. The pretext used by the government is that the "right left us an empty treasury." cher could say the same thing respectively about Giscard and the Labour Party, as long as they do not lose their self-control altogether and start talking about the world crisis of capitalism.
The workers, now threatened with impoverishment are not responsible for the "empty treasury." They were squeezed long enough by the right, and they have no desire now to tighten their belts "for the sake of so-
[The PASOK government claims to be socialist.]
If there is too little work, reduce the workweek....
Unemployment benefits for all the unemployed
The response will be that the economy, that is the capitalists, can't afford
If they can't, let's get rid of them. Let the workers take their own fate, and society, into their own hands