GREECE: NEWS FROM THE OAE:

The Federation of Anarchists of Greece, the OAE, has recently released a press statement on the upcoming Greek elections being held in the pall of the disastrous recent fires in that country, fires likely deliberately started by land development interests (see 'Who Fiddled While Greece Burned' on this blog last August). Molly reproduces their statement below:

NO TO PSEUDO SOLUTIONS:

Honour to those peasants and citizens who fought against the State fires. The proud and unsubdued peasantry needs neither alms nor genetically modified seeds. The State and the government planned and materialized the fire attacks against forests, archaeological places, farms, poultry and veterinary establishments, houses and people. This government-owned planning vindicates the interests of building contractors, energy production companies, big householders/owners of hotel units, all those who oppose the rural, poultry and veterinary surgeon autonomy of the countryside. During the realization of this crime against nature and the people, the parliament is legitimizing the governmental and private arbitrariness by the declassification of huge forest areas as non-forest and also by the redefinition of land usage.

At the same time the audacity of those in power is astonishing:while they have sensationally failed they talk about successes (!), and while they have complete responsibility for the disaster, they try to charge it to others (!).

This challenge must not remain unanswered. The only solution is the expulsion of the very governmental and state institutions that are looting our lives. The participation of every exploited person is essential in such movements which will take social affairs/issue into their own hands

Do not wait for electoral results ! Let's begin the action one hour earlier !

NO TO PSEUDO SOLUTIONS

ELECTORAL STRIKE

POLITICAL DISOBEDIENCE

SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THOSE AFFECTED

AUTONOMY OF PRODUCTION

COLLECTIVE FARMING OF THE LAND

THE SOCIAL GOODS BELONG TO THOSE WHO WORK FOR THEM

also...

BLACK LETTERS # 11- PAPER OF THE OAE, SEPTEMBER 2007:

The eleventh issue of Mavra Grammata (Black Letters) is out. The main article deals with the current situation in Greece after the fires and in the face of the upcoming elections. There is also comment about the ill advised destruction of a national monument outside the Greek Parliament a few months ago by insurrectionist so-called anarchists, two anti-electoral articles about the Greek Communist Party and a new ecological party, an article about the proposed construction of harmful factories in the town of Livadeia, a critique of the conspiratorial actions of the followers of Nechaev and a joint statement with other anarcho-communist organizations across the world on the 70th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Plus reviews of course.

Contacts for the OAE are P.O. Box 1333, Central Post Office, Patras 26011, Greece. Also email at nafpaktosanarchists@hotmail.com or ngnm55@gmail.com . Queries in English should be sent to the latter email address.

A Little Molly Note:

The OAE are neo-platformists. This is a trend in modern anarchism that Molly sympathizes with, but she is not 100% convinced of its postulates. In particular the demand for an appearance of complete theoretical unity in its public face. This demand can let some rather egregious fallacies slip by. Most of what the OAE says above is non-controversial to Molly, though I am sure it is much more so to other people. What is glaring, however, to me is the slogan of "Collective Farming of the Land". This snuck in because it accords with the anarchist communist views of the OAE, but any sensible person in a country such as Greece would call an immediate time out when this was proposed- unless, of course, they were under the illusion that they had to maintain a fiction of public unanimity. This sort of proposal makes sense in areas of the world where agriculture is carried out basically by hired labour on large plantation like latifundia. It is true that this is becoming once more more prevalent even in countries such as Canada where the small farm is being more and more displaced. Still...most agriculture in most countries is carried out by small independent producers. This is also true of Greece. Calls for "collectivization" are simply non starters. Collective marketing YES. This sort of thing is actually becoming more and more the way that small producers in Greece actually struggle against the corporations- by cooperatives. By the way, I've been to Greece, and I didn't see anything that reminded me of latifundia. Very small, very struggling, farms on what looks like postage stamp properties to somebody from Canada. Very obviously less prosperous than what I saw in Catalonia, north east Italy or Austria all of which were small in Canadian terms.

I think that the demand for ideological conformity actually blinds the comrades of the OAE to the obvious and that they would be far better served by a less structured plan of organization that would let them look closer at what exactly the small farmers of Greece are doing NOW, and how they could advance THAT rather than an obviously unpopular plan.