This is a May 13, 2010 interview by Wikinews reporter Iain Macdonald with Dr Isabella Margara, a London-based member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).
Iain Macdonald: Has slavish pursuit of free-market capitalism been the cause of Europe, and particularly Greece's, economic woes?
Dr Isabella Margara: What we are experiencing today – not only in Greece, but in all capitalist countries – is a crisis of overproduction. The exploitation of the working class and the other popular strata is intensified due to the fact that the bourgeoisie has been keeping for itself larger and larger parts of the produced wealth. Behind overproduction lies the over-accumulation of capital. The average profit rate is decreased in the main sectors of the economy. This leads to destruction of part of productive forces, closing factories, inflation, mass redundancies of superfluous workers as waste – in order to permit a new process of accumulation to begin, when new sectors of the economy will secure the increase of the average profit rate. This has nothing to do with the ‘management’ of the system by social democrats or liberals; it is an inevitable outcome of capitalism.
The national deficits do exist. In fact, behind the debt are the huge tax reliefs for large monopolies, the massive bank bailouts, the inconceivable NATO military expenses, the subsidies in the name of capitalist development. In Greece at the moment, there is a clear expression of the imperialist rivalries between the US and EU, between EU countries and especially between Germany and France. However, it is now becoming clearer every day that the ruling class is using the existing deficits, in Greece and in Europe, in order to promote new anti-labour policies which will secure the profits of the capital. These measures have been pre-decided a long time ago in the Maastricht Treaty and are here to stay. Their aim is not just to exit the crisis, but to ensure stability and high profits for the capital in the next phases of the economic cycle.
Iain: How, given the Soviet collapse, and China being communist in name only, would your vision of a communist system have been better for the majority of citizens?
Isabella: Despite the various problems of socialist countries, the socialist system of the 20th century proved the superiority of socialism over capitalism and the huge advantages that it provides for peoples’ lives and working conditions. The Soviet Union and the world socialist system constituted the only real counterweight to imperialist aggression – we recently celebrated the 65th anniversary of the Anti-fascist victory. The achievements of workers in the socialist states were a point of reference for many decades and contributed to the gains won by the working class in capitalist societies as well. In this way, everyone had guaranteed work, public free health care and education, housing, and access to intellectual and cultural creativity. The complete eradication of the terrible legacy of illiteracy, in combination with the increase in the general level of education and specialization and the abolition of unemployment, constitute unique achievements of socialism. In the Soviet Union in 1975 it was guaranteed by law that the hours of work could not surpass 41 per week, among the lowest in the world. All workers were guaranteed days for rest and relaxation and annual paid holidays. Non-working time was extended and its content was changed. It was transformed into time for the development of the cultural and educational level of the workers, for the enhancement of their participation in workers’ power and in the control of the administration of productive units. Social Security for working people was of utmost priority for the socialist state. A comprehensive system of retirement benefits, with the important achievement of low age limits for retirement (55 years for women, 60 for men), was created. Socialist power laid the foundation for the abolition of inequality of women, overcoming the great difficulties that objectively existed. Socialism ensured in practice the social character of motherhood and socialized childcare. It instituted equal rights for women and men in the economic, political and cultural realm, although not all forms of unequal relations between the two genders, which had become entrenched over a long period of time, had been successfully eradicated.
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