The following text is a transcript of comrade Nikos Maziotis’ telephone intervention at the book presentation event of “State against Commune” by comrade Pola Roupa, organised by the Solidarity Assembly for the convicted members of the Revolutionary Struggle P. Roupa and N. Maziotis on 31/5/2024 at Panteion University): “[…] … None of them are recognised as political prisoners, but their discriminatory treatment is obvious. We have similar deteriorating conditions in Greece, towards keeping political prisoners longer in prison. E.g. the multi-lifers convicted for Revolutionary organization 17 November who have completed more than 22 years as is my case as I am not a lifer, yet I have far exceeded the parole limit but they do not release me because I refuse to make any statement of disavowal, “correction” and repentance … [Nikos Maziotis, convicted member of the organization Revolutionary Struggle, captive in Domokos prison (Greece)]”
“Comrades, I greet you. I wish you all strength.
The truth is that the book presentation of “State against Commune” by comrade Pola Roupa should have taken place two years ago and more, when the comrade was still in prison.
I assume that comrade (Pola) will speak in more detail. I will only dwell on the issue of the concept of political opponent, political “crime” and therefore political prisoners, and its historical evolution. First of all, let me say that “State against Commune” is the fruit of the political defence of the Revolutionary Struggle in the trials of the organization throughout the years. It is the fruit of a political defence, which, as we have declared in all the trials of the Revolutionary Struggle, is a natural right of resistance against every
state power and its arbitrary actions. That is why we have never felt guilty for the actions of the Revolutionary Struggle and have never apologized as “criminals” in the courts.
The right of resistance against the State and every authoritarian power has a timeless historical legitimacy, based on the natural law on which the stateless or self-organised societies based on communalism, solidarity and mutual aid of their members were based.
And in these self-organised societies, as for example in the free cities, the communes of Europe that existed from the Middle Ages until the emergence of the centralised nation-state, the right of resistance and reaction -especially armed resistance- against authoritarian leaders and states, monarchs, feudal lords or the upper ecclesiastical clergy, existed as a natural right.
This right of resistance was reflected, for example, in constitutional charters in the communes of Europe as well as in the Constitution of the French Revolution of 1793 -the most democratic of the French Revolution-
which provided that people had the right to revolt against their government when it violated their rights.
Something that happened here with the 2010-2012 revolt against the memoranda, which are illegal and unconstitutional contracts even under current law.
Regarding the concept of recognition of political opponent or political “crime”, there is a historical evolution.
When communitarianism was the dominant social organization worldwide since antiquity, and the State and authoritarian power were the exception to this rule, societies treated the action of states and authoritarian leaders as a “political crime”, monarchs, emperors, aristocrats, slave owners, church rulers, who by force, war and massacres, tried to subjugate and impose their power on peasants, on free cities, on the people in general.
This was also the case in the ancient Athenian democracy, where the citizens treated as “political crime” the attacks against the citizens (Demos), against the Republic by the followers of oligarchy and tyranny. That is why the killing of those who preyed on the Republic, the murder of tyrants, tyrannicide, was honoured by the citizens, was a non-punishable act and was recorded in the so-called resolution of Demophantos, at the “Ecclesia of Demos” (Citizen Assembly) in 411 BC.
Later, at the historical turning point, the transition from feudalism to bourgeois society and the emergence of the centralised nation-state which aimed at a monopoly of the management of all social affairs by forcibly seizing this competence from the communities -which it finally succeeded in doing-, the concept of “political crime” and the concept of political opponent changed and now concerned the action of popular movements against the centralised State.
Up to some point, even the rising bourgeoisie up to the middle of the 19th century, because it had not yet consolidated its power and pursued the elimination of feudal remnants, recognised the concept of the political opponent and glorified the political “criminal”.
It was a time when there were revolutionaries honoured by popular movements, such as the members of the Conspiracy of the Equals, Gracchus Babeuf and Filippo Buonarroti who lived through the French Revolution, and the well-known revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, all advocates of conspiratorial armed action by dedicated revolutionaries to overthrow the regime.
The imprisoned Blanqui had been proclaimed in 1871 honorary president of the Paris Commune. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, whose positions were supported by the majority of the sections of the First International,
was an equal advocate of conspiratorial armed action by committed revolutionaries. When, after the armed uprising of the working class against the bourgeoisie in Paris in June 1848 and, above all, after the massacre of the Paris Commune (1871), when the bourgeoisie was now established in power in France -in England it was already in power-, in Germany and in the USA, the bourgeoisie no longer recognised that there were political
opponents, only criminals and terrorists.
And the first to be so described were the anarchists, at a time when, from the 1890s to the interwar period, anarchist “propagandists by the deed” carried out the execution-tyrannicide of kings, presidents of states, prime ministers, military and police officials or attacks on capital targets.
Unfortunately, both Engels and the Marxist social democracy of the time condemned such actions, describing them as acts of “individual terrorism”, favouring the participation of socialist parties in elections for the State.
Later, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the designation of criminals and criminal elements in an attempt to depoliticise and criminalise them, included communists and communist parties.
This was something that we saw in Greece, starting with Venizelos’ “Idionymon” law of 1929 and especially after Metaxas’ dictatorship, culminating in the civil war years of the 1940s and the 1946-1949 period, when communists and the guerrillas of the Democratic Army (of Greece) were labelled “bandits” in an attempt to depoliticise their identity or even dehumanise them in order to eliminate them. There was the so-called “headhunting”, as in the old days when the heads of bounty hunters were cut off.
In occupied Europe in World War II, the guerrillas of the National Resistance movements, many of whom were communists in Greece, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, were characterized by the Axis powers and the collaborating Axis governments and states as “terrorists” and bandits.
Anarchists in Spain during Franco dictatorship were also still described as “terrorists” and bandits, those who made an armed struggle against the regime.
Until the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991, the collapse of the regimes of “actually existing socialism” and the emergence of the US as the sole superpower and the strengthening of neoliberalism, there was a contradiction in Western Europe and the Western world -“Western” in the political sense of the term-, where, in part and on occasion, the concept of political opponent or political “criminal” was recognised, mainly in terms of militants acting against dictatorial regimes, liberation movements and groups fighting for national liberation against
imperialism-capitalism.
For example, François Mitterrand’s socialist government (when Mitterrand was elected in 1981) had granted amnesty to imprisoned members of the guerrilla organization Action Directe, recognising their political status, just as Mitterand had also refused to extradite Italian comrades -as requested by the Italian state accusing them of “terrorism”-, and gave them political asylum. But this was reversed shortly afterwards, when Action Directe reactivated and concluded the anti-imperialist pact with the RAF.
Another example is that until 1976 British prisons recognised IRA prisoners as political prisoners. This reversal after 1976 caused a backlash on the part of IRA prisoners, culminating in the great hunger strike of 1981 -under Thatcher government-, during which 10 strikers, including Bobby Sands, died. In Greece, this contradiction was reflected in the original decision of the Athens Court of Appeal in 1976 rejecting West Germany’s request for the extradition of Rolf Pohle -a member of RAF-, who had been arrested in Greece after his release in 1975 -along with other prisoners-, as a result of the kidnapping of Christian Democratic Union member Peter Lorenz by the guerrilla group 2 June Movement, demanding the release of guerrilla organization prisoners.
The reasoning of the Athens Court of Appeal for Pole recognized his action as political, i.e. his organization as political against imperialism and monopoly capitalism -this was exactly the wording of the Athens Court of Appeal.
This decision of the Athens Court of Appeal was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court and Pohle was finally extradited to West Germany.
This point was very aptly made by comrade Pola Roupa in the 1st trial of the organization Revolutionary Struggle in 2011, when we had objected to the lack of jurisdiction of the court for political “crimes”, asking to be tried by a mixed jury of 4 lay judges, i.e., citizens and 3 professionals (judges) as the Constitution defines for political “crimes”.
It is no coincidence that this reversal of the recognition of the concept of political opponent, political “criminal” and political prisoner in the international legal system coincides with the rise of neoliberalism and its ascendancy in the Western world in the mid- and late 1980s, which became a global state after 1989-1991, with the fall of its rival, “actually existing socialism”.
So it is no longer considered that there are political prisoners in the Western world, the concept of political opponent is not even recognised, nor is the concept of political “criminal”. Now, in the attempt to depoliticise the political opponent, the current system of globalised capitalism and statism uses the vague and ambiguous term “terrorism”, which was consolidated after 9/11 and “the war on terrorism”. These changes were highlighted in the trials of the organization Revolutionary Struggle. These changes are the result of the fact that over the last 30 years, the totalitarianism of State and capitalism, i.e. the dictatorship of the markets, has been advanced and strengthened.
Special “anti-terrorist laws” have been enacted everywhere, it has become a crime to merely form and join a guerrilla organization, and these cases are no longer heard by mixed jury courts where the majority of the judges are lay judges, i.e. citizens who may accept the political status of the guerrilla organizations, but exclusively by professional judges for a sure conviction and more severe sentences. Not only that, but the criteria for parole have also become stricter, i.e. conditional release, where the main requirement is now a declaration of renunciation and repentance.
Even at this level, there is a deterioration of the situation compared to the past.
To make a comparison with the past, in Greece, the ELAS guerrillas who were convicted after the Varkiza Agreement and the DSE guerrillas -at least all those who escaped execution- did not spend more than 15 years
in prison, give or take. In the early or mid-1960s they were released from prison. In contrast, Western European urban guerrilla political prisoners were in prison for more than 20 years or more, 25, or 27 in many cases.
Recall that G. I. Abdallah of the FARL has already been in prison in France for 40 years, because he remains unrepentant, and Carlos has already been in prison for 30 years, as has Maurizio Ferrari of the Red Brigades. They have also surpassed Blanqui. Öcalan is also already 25 years in prison and there is no prospect of him getting out.
None of them are recognised as political prisoners, but their discriminatory treatment is evident. We have similar deterioration in Greece, towards keeping political prisoners in prison longer. E.g. the multi-jurisdictional convicts for Revolutionary organization 17 November who have completed more than 22 years, as is my case as I am not a lifer, yet I have far exceeded the parole limit but they do not release me, because I refuse to make any statement of disavowal, “correction” and repentance. And as you know, there has (had) been an appeal in the case of comrade Pola Roupa.
Nowadays, through the legislative framework, the repression and the mass propaganda by the system-controlled media but also due to the regression of the movement, the following thesis has been established, that nothing
political exists outside the State, nothing political exists outside the system of representative parliamentarianism, just as nothing exists outside supranational institutions such as the European Parliament and the European Commission, i.e. the Brussels bureaucrats and the meetings of the leaders of the EU member states.
The fact that nothing political exists outside the State was also reflected in the Greek legal system by the 2010 decision of the Supreme Court, which stipulated that “terrorism”, meaning the action of guerrilla revolutionary organizations, is not appropriate, i.e. capable of bringing about political or constitutional changes, except for military coups, which are of course carried out by hard-core members of the state apparatus itself. That is, by military fascists, Nazis, all kinds of right-wing extremists of state totalitarianism. That is why the action of urban guerrilla organizations is not considered political. That is, nothing political outside the State.
For the dominant international state-capitalist system of power, political opponents are now considered only rival states – terrorists, such as North Korea in the 1990s, Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq until his overthrow in 2003 and the occupation of Iraq in the context of “the war against terrorism”, Milošević’s Yugoslavia bombed by NATO in 1999.
Today the political rivals for the international state-capitalist power complex are still Iran and North Korea, but mainly China and Putin’s Russia after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, because both China and Russia are seeking a more multipolar system of power in contrast to the monopoly of power of the USA which insists on being the leading power of world capitalism.
On the contrary, the Federation of Northern and Eastern Syria that emerged from the Revolution in Rojava after 2012 is not considered a political entity, precisely because it is not a state but a Confederation of Communities (Communes), and so its representatives are not recognised to participate in the consultations for the resolution of the Syrian civil war.
However, the current totalitarianism of the State and the global dictatorship of the markets has not only been followed by the non-acceptance of the political motives of the armed struggle which is labelled as “terrorism”, along with the consolidation of the concept of “terrorism” for the armed struggle, but has also proceeded to the
repression and depoliticisation of other forms of struggle, non-armed ones such as. e.g. occupations of public spaces, the reduction of the right to public assemblies and demonstrations, the reduction of trade unionism freedom and the right to strike.
This is what we have seen in recent years in Greece, too, with the successive legislative reforms. Movements, citizens’ struggles, trade unions and strikes, according to the prevailing logic, do not practice politics, because only professional politicians within the exclusive framework of the State do politics, governments, members of parliament, parties subsidised by the State and supranational organisations, the EU, the European Commission, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, which are not elected and are not controlled, but dictate the policies of elected governments and parliaments of nation-states worldwide.
That is all I had to say in general terms, comrades. In conclusion, I would like to stress that, despite the fact that we live in bleak times where the totalitarianism of the state is being reinforced along with the dictatorship of the markets, we must defend our political identity, our political action and seek the re-appropriation of politics, i.e. the management of the commons by the citizens themselves, the ordinary people, as it was in the years of the Commune and communitarianism, against the centralisation and totalitarianism of the state and capital. The conflict, the struggle of the State against the Commune represents history itself from long ago, it is history itself, and in this is included the class struggle.
Comrades, thank you for listening to me.”
Received by email