Text by Nikos Maziotis for the Publication “Friends of Durruti”

New publication:

“FRIENDS OF DURRUTI – THE HISTORY AND TEXTS OF A GROUP OF ANARCHIST REVOLUTIONARIES DURING THE SPANISH REVOLUTION (1936-1939)” TEXTS OF A GROUP OF ANARCHIST REVOLUTIONARY DURING THE SPANISH REVOLUTION (1936-1939)»

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THE ANARCHIST GROUP THE FRIENDS OF DURRUTI IN THE SPANISH REVOLUTION (1937-1938)

In the autumn of 2024, some comrades of an anarchist collective from Barcelona sent me by post at Domokos prison Agustín Guillemon’s book on the Friends of Durruti. The Friends of Durruti, named after the legendary anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, who was killed in Madrid besieged by the Francoists in November 1936, were a group of anarchist revolutionaries who operated during the Spanish Revolution and the civil war of 1936-39 in Barcelona-Catalonia, and more specifically in the period from March 1937 to February 1938. With the very basic Spanish that I knew – which I had learned without a teacher in Korydallos prison when I was a prisoner in 1998-2001 for another case, not of the Revolutionary Struggle (a bombing attempt at the Ministry of Development in 1997 and possession of weapons and explosives) – and with the help of a Spanish-Greek dictionary, I managed to translate this book that presents the history of this group, which in my opinion is one of the most important in terms of political lessons within the framework of not only the Spanish, but also the global revolutionary and anarchist movement.

Why is the history of the Friends of Durruti important? Because the Friends of Durruti were the most organized group within the Spanish anarchist-anarcho-syndicalist movement that disagreed and strongly criticized the collaboration of the CNT-FAI with the State, whether in Catalonia, with the Generalidad, or with the central Spanish government in which the CNT-FAI participated with 4 ministers. The creation of the Friends of Durruti group had its origins in the opposition of a section of the militiamen of the Durruti Column, specifically the 4th Grouping of Helsa on the Aragon front, who refused to be militarized after the Popular Front state’s decree to militarize the militias in October 1936, something that Durruti himself had opposed. Militarization meant the transformation of the militias and columns that the working class had formed to fight the Franco fascists in July 1936 into parts of a classic army controlled by the state government, the transformation of the militant militiamen and members of the phalanxes into soldiers, the acceptance of the military hierarchy and the military code that existed before July 19, all of which the militants fought and represented Franco’s fascist army. Unfortunately, militarization was also accepted by the leadership of the CNT-FAI and by all the confederal and anarchist phalanxes after a congress in Valencia in February 1937. However, many militiamen of the anarchist phalanxes refused militarization, which was also imposed with the threat that if it was not accepted, they would not be supplied with weapons and ammunition. Several members of the Durruti Column, as well as members of the Iron Column, refused militarization and abandoned the front and returned to the rear. In fact, the members of the Durruti Column of the 4th Helsa Grouping who refused to be militarized returned to Barcelona with their weapons, along with them the leader of the 4th Helsa Grouping, Pablo Ruiz, who had taken part in the two-day Battle of Barcelona on July 19-20, 1936, where the CNT-FAI forces defeated the Franco coup plotters and who had taken part in the attack on the Ataratana camp where Francisco Ascaso was also killed, while he was one of the founding members of the Friends of Durruti. The Friends of Durruti were created on the one hand by members of the Durruti Column who refused the militarization of the militias and returned to Barcelona with their weapons and on the other hand by comrades in the rear who strongly disagreed with the collaboration of the CNT-FAI with the popular front anti-fascist “democratic” state.

The Friends of Durruti argued that the anarchists, the CNT-FAI, should seize power, initially in Catalonia-Barcelona, ​​where they had overwhelming superiority and essentially had power in their hands and on the streets after July 19, 1936, that they should deepen the social revolution with the organs that the workers and peasants had created, the committees of workers and peasants, militiamen, sailors, the municipal-communal committees, and thus impose libertarian communism by abolishing the State and purging the counter-revolutionary elements, the petty-bourgeois parties, the socialists and the Stalinist communists. Their program, which was made public in April 1937, shortly before the Battle of Barcelona on May 3-7, 1937, which began with the attack of the Stalinist communist police forces to seize the Telefónica, which was collectivized and under the control of the CNT-FAI, is summarized in 3 points:

1) The overthrow of the Catalan state and the government of the Generalidad and its replacement by a Revolutionary Council or, as they called it literally, a Revolutionary Junta, which would be a democratically elected body, composed of workers, peasants and militia fighters and would have as its responsibility the conduct of the war against the Francoist fascists, revolutionary propaganda and the purge of counter-revolutionaries in the rear.

2) The management of the economy by the unions, which was the classic position of anarcho-syndicalism.

3) The Free Municipalities that will take over the management of social and political life and will be federally organized at the local, regional and peninsular-national level.

The term “junta” has its origin in the Spanish popular resistance tradition. Juntas appeared during the years of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain (1808-1814) and were created by the resistance movement to the invasion. They have the meaning of a council or committee and there were many juntas in various regions of Spain. They were temporary and informal in nature. However, beyond the formation of the Revolutionary Junta, the program of the Friends of Durruti included the socialization of the economy by the unions, the liquidation of counter-revolutionaries in the rear, the creation of a revolutionary army under the control of the working class, the dissolution of the police forces and the control of public order by the working class -with the Control Patrols in Barcelona-, the maintenance of the Defense Committees that played a key role in the suppression of the coup on 19-20 July 1936 and in the beginning of the revolutionary process and the creation of the institution of Proletarian Justice. Other parts of the anarchist-anarcho-syndicalist movement also agreed with the positions of the Friends of Durruti, such as the majority of the Libertarian Youth and several in the CNT unions and FAI groups. The Friends of Durruti participated in the Battle of Barcelona from 3 to 7 May 1937 against the counter-revolutionary coalition of the Generalidad with the Stalinist communists and the petty bourgeois parties, with a force of 400 well-armed fighters. Then, on 5 May, during the street battles, they issued the proclamation that was distributed at the barricades and gave them fame, in which they demanded the formation of a Revolutionary Junta (Council) that would replace the Generalidad, the execution of those who attacked the Telefónica workers on 3 May and the working class in general, the dissolution of the political parties that attacked the working class and the socialization of the economy.

WORKERS: A Revolutionary Junta. Execution of the guilty. Disarmament of all armed forces. Socialization of the economy. Dissolution of the political parties that attacked the working class. We do not surrender the road. The revolution above all. We salute our POUM comrades who have joined us on the road.

When the proclamation was issued, the higher committees of the CNT-FAI, that is, the collaborationist tendency of the CNT-FAI, denounced the Friends of Durruti through the columns of Labor Solidarity, denounced them as “provocateurs” and later “ordered” their expulsion from the CNT unions and FAI groups. However, beyond the slander about “provocateurs”, the higher committees of the CNT-FAI, defamed them as “Marxists”, which was repeated throughout the confederal press controlled by the collaborationist tendency. The irony of history is that these accusations were directed at the Friends of Durruti by those who collaborated with the bourgeois State and with the Marxist Stalinist communists and socialists and the petty-bourgeois parties.

During the battles of May 1937, the attitude of the leaders of the CNT-FAI, that is, those who collaborated with the State – in the name of “anti-fascist unity” – but also of the “anarchist” ministers, Federica Montseni (Minister of Health), and Juan García Oliver (Minister of Justice), was subversive, that is, they constantly called for a ceasefire and a return to work because a general strike had been spontaneously declared by the Barcelona proletariat, while they prevented strong armed forces from the Aragon front from reaching Barcelona to help the insurgent workers, such as parts of the Black and Red division commanded by Maximo Franco, a member of the Friends of Durruti, and parts of the POUM division.

Although the CNT-FAI base fighters defeated the counter-revolutionary forces and controlled most of Barcelona except for a few buildings in the city center, such as the headquarters of the Generalidad, the subversive attitude of the CNT-FAI leadership, as well as the lack of political will to overthrow the Generalidad and the Catalan state, led the fighters to abandon the barricades without gaining anything. The Battle of Barcelona on 3–7 May 1937 was the last attempt by the revolutionaries and the working class, i.e. the CNT-FAI base, to defend the revolutionary conquests won after 19 July 1936, which were gradually being annulled by the State, whether in Catalonia or in the “democratic” zone of the rest of Spain.

The subversive attitude of the CNT-FAI leadership in the events of May 1937 was characterized as betrayal by the Friends of Durruti in a manifesto-account after the end of the fighting. However, the political and organizational inadequacy of the Friends of Durruti themselves was also demonstrated because they did not have the required political influence on the CNT-FAI base, but neither did they seek to raise the issue of leadership of the CNT or a break with the CNT itself, but they sought the unity of the organization until the end. That is why it was impossible for them to go to the end during the fighting and to direct the fighters to occupy – while they could militarily – the headquarters of the Generalidad and thus overthrow the Catalan state, thus changing the course of history with regard to both the revolution and the war against the Francoists.

In fact, as Pablo Ruiz reported years later, when one of the main members of the Friends of Durruti, Jaime Ballus, proposed during the battle that a column be formed that would meet the units of the Black and Red divisions that were within striking distance of Barcelona and had been prevented from assisting the Barcelona fighters, with the aim of advancing together and completely crushing the Generalidad forces and the counter-revolutionaries, the majority of the fighters at the roadblocks rejected the proposal. The senate-style “patriotism” that existed in the minds of a large number of rank-and-file fighters, the deification of the organization, prevented the CNT leadership from going beyond it even when there were serious disagreements, such as in relation to the issue of collaboration with the State and “anti-fascist” unity with all the counter-revolutionary elements of the Popular Front.

May 1937 was in fact the decisive defeat of the revolutionary process that began on July 19, 1936 and resulted in the definitive overthrow of state power, the triumph of the counter-revolution in which the spearhead was the Stalinist communists, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC), who sought the dominance of the bourgeois-democratic state by carrying out the orders of Stalin and Soviet agents.

Many years later, Jaime Ballus described May 1937 as the “Spanish Kronstadt”, drawing parallels with the Kronstadt sailors’ uprising in March 1921 against the Bolshevik dictatorship, in an attempt to create a third revolutionary wave that would sweep away the Bolshevik dictatorship and effectively hand power to the soviets. The orgy of repression and terror that followed the events of May 1937, with the murders and prisons full of May Day activists and fighters, also affected the Friends of Durruti. Their offices were closed, their newspaper, The Friend of the People – they took its name from Marat’s newspaper during the French Revolution – was published illegally from the second issue onwards, to avoid censorship, while its main columnist, Jaime Ballus, was repeatedly imprisoned for articles he wrote, such as one against the Stalinist government of Juan Negrin, who took over as prime minister of the Popular Front government after the events of May and was a loyal servant of Stalin and the Soviet Union.

In the end, the publication of Friend of the People became impossible as the Stalinist police raided the printing house where it was being published illegally in February 1938. The last issue of Friend of the People had been published at that time and included the brochure “Towards a New Revolution” which has been translated into Greek more than any other text by the Friends of Durruti. In February 1938, the last gathering of the Friends of Durruti took place. The group’s action was now impossible. The counter-revolution was in full swing and the war against the Francoists had already been decided due to the betrayal of the very “democratic” governments whose main concern was to strangle the revolution and serve the interests of the British, French and Soviet governments, for whom the Spanish Civil War was a pawn on the geostrategic chessboard as they prepared for the upcoming war with Nazi Germany.

The lessons that the Friends of Durruti learned from the experience of the Spanish Revolution can be summarized as follows:

1) The revolution must have total characteristics, that is, it must go to the end with all the consequences, affecting every aspect of social life and not be “half” or incomplete, because otherwise it will face its own destruction.

2) It is necessary to have a revolutionary theory and a specific program, that is, that the revolutionaries know exactly what to do when the right time and the right conditions come.

3) It is necessary to have a unifying coordinating body which will be democratically elected by the working class, the peasants and the fighters and which in the first phase of the revolution will have as its exclusive competence the safeguarding of the revolution, the liquidation of counter-revolutionary elements, the conduct of the war and revolutionary propaganda. This body was the Revolutionary Junta or Revolutionary Council as the Friends of Durruti supported. This body does not interfere with the management of the economy which will be the responsibility of the labor unions, according to the position of anarcho-syndicalism, while the management of social and political life, other than the economy, will be the responsibility of the Free Municipalities which will be federally organized at the regional and national-peninsular level.

The stakes of every social revolution are the seizure of power (not the State), that is, who (social class, movement or political group) will impose themselves, direct the development of the revolution and impose a new regime. This was stated explicitly and categorically by the Friends of Durruti in the Spanish Revolution: “We are extremely unanimous and extremely cowardly in not taking power in Catalonia in such a way as to boycott its exercise by the Valencian Government over the CNT and the FAI in Catalonia and indirectly in Aragon [… ] We could and should have taken power and I am convinced that the Revolution would have followed a different course and so would the war […] (From the text of the member of the Friends of Durruti, Francisco Pellicer, “The Present Hour”, in the newspaper La Noche, April 14, 1937).

Even after the defeat, in 1939, Jaime Ballus, in two articles published in July 1936 and May 1937 in the French anarchist magazine L’Espagne Nouvelle (New Spain), spoke clearly that the CNT should have taken power in 1936 and put the working class at the helm of Spain. […] But the most important problem arose in our own zone. It arose as to who had won. Was it the workers? In that case, the leadership of the country belonged to us. […] The CNT and the FAI, which in Catalonia were the soul of the movement, could have given the July Days their true meaning. Who could stop them? Instead we allowed the communist party (PSUC) to reorganize the opportunists, the right, etc., on the ground of counter-revolution. At such times, the answer would be for one organization to take the lead. Only one could do it: ours […] If the workers had known that they were the masters of anti-fascist Spain, the war would have been won and the revolution would not have suffered from so many deviations […] In the text for May ’37 it said: “The proletariat was at a decisive crossroads. He had to choose between two paths: either he would submit to the counter-revolution, or he would impose his own power which would be the proletarian Power […]

The seizure of power does not mean the seizure of state power or the emergence of a new state power, even if this is called a “workers’ state”, as was the case in the Russian Revolution after October 1917. A social revolution is by nature an authoritarian process, a process of imposition and repression over the social and class enemy. An act where one part of the population imposes itself with arms and violence over another part of the population. An act where one social class imposes itself with arms and violence over another, e.g. the workers, the proletariat impose their will on the bourgeoisie, capital and the counter-revolutionaries. In the Spanish Revolution, the armed confrontation of the workers against the military coup leaders in July 1936 and the violent expropriation of the property of the capitalists and landlords from the workers and peasants and their collectivization were acts of power. The purge and murder of fascists, capitalists, business managers and priests were acts of power. An act of power is or could be the violent abolition of the State, which the anarchists did not do, while they could and had the opportunity to do so in July 1936. An act of power is the imposition of libertarian communism, the program supported by the CNT-FAI, that is, the assumption of the management of social affairs and functions that the State had before July 19, 1936, by the democratic bodies of the workers and peasants, the committees in every factory, business, village, neighborhood, militia battalion, ship, the municipal-communal committees throughout the “democratic” zone, that is, in half of Spain, where the Franco coup had been suppressed, and they had exercised de facto local power.

The question of power, that is, who has the power and who directs the development of things, had been raised from the very beginning of the Spanish Revolution, from July 20, 1936, when the anarchists, the CNT-FAI became dominant in Barcelona and Catalonia, and not only, when they defeated the Franco coup plotters. And in fact, apart from having de facto power, it was also offered to them on a plate by the head of the Catalan semi-autonomous state (Generalidad), Luis Cobán, when he called the leading cadres of the CNT-FAI to the presidential palace after the end of the battle, and was willing to resign if they wanted, and declared to them that they, the CNT-FAI, had the right to govern since they had defeated the fascists. However, the leading cadres of the CNT-FAI preferred to keep the president of the Catalan state in his position, not to abolish the State, thus slowing down the imposition of the revolution and libertarian communism, while in the name of anti-fascist unity they separated the war against Franco from the revolution, to collaborate with all counter-revolutionary elements (bourgeois-petit-bourgeois parties, socialists, Stalinist communists), they collaborated with the bourgeois State itself, initially participating in the government of Catalonia (Generalidad) while later with 4 ministers they participated in the central Spanish government in Madrid.

The Friends of Durruti, especially in the 1938 pamphlet, “Towards a New Revolution,” severely criticized the CNT for its “counterrevolutionary” stance: “The CNT was completely devoid of revolutionary theory. We had no specific program. We had no idea where we were going. We had plenty of lyricism, but when it came time for action, we did not know what to do with the masses of workers or how to give substance to the popular outburst that took place in our organizations. Not knowing what to do, we handed over power on a plate to the bourgeois and the Marxists […] And even worse, we gave the bourgeoisie time to breathe, to return, to transform itself and to behave like an invader. The CNT did not know how to respond to its role. It did not want to promote the revolution with all its consequences […] When the entire existence of an organization is exhausted in proclaiming the revolution, then it has the obligation to act when favorable circumstances arise, and in July, they did. The CNT was supposed to play a leading role in the country, giving the finishing blow to everything obsolete and archaic. In this way, we would have won the war and saved the revolution. In practice, however, it did the opposite. It collaborated with the bourgeoisie in state affairs, at the very moment when the state was collapsing. It supported Cobánys and his gang. It gave the kiss of life to an anemic, panicked bourgeoisie.”

The Friends of Durruti explicitly and categorically argue that the CNT-FAI should have taken power in Catalonia-Barcelona from the very beginning, initially, in order to impose the power of the workers’ committees, Defense Committees, supply, militias, etc. That is, to put the working class and the proletariat in the leadership of the country by purging the counter-revolutionary elements. Their slogans were: “All power to the Trade Unions”, “All power to the working class”. This in no way means a situation similar to that imposed by the Bolsheviks in Russia after October 1917, where in reality they did not impose the dictatorship of the proletariat, nor the power of the soviets, but imposed the dictatorship of a new state power, a bureaucratic class that they themselves manned.

There is a serious misunderstanding within anarchism, both then and now. This misunderstanding consists in identifying the concept of power with the State and that the aim of anarchism is “the destruction of all kinds of power”. This position has been proven by facts and from a historical point of view to be unrealistic and condemns anarchism to not being considered as a realistic social proposal, that is, a proposal for the management of social affairs and functions. It also condemns anarchism as a non-revolutionary current, as some opposing statists, e.g. Marxist-Leninists, claim. It condemns anarchism to be simply a protest current or at most an insurrectionary current. But rebellion is one thing and revolution is another. If anarchism, the international anarchist movement, wants to evolve today and shape a realistic social proposal to create a truly free society based on self-organization, self-management, solidarity, mutual aid, without a State and without social classes, then it must understand that a revolution naturally raises the issue of imposition and power against the opponent, the State and Capital and all counter-revolutionary elements. Whoever does not seize power leaves it to his opponent to seize and strangle him. Whoever does not understand this, does not understand what revolution is.

June 2026, Domokos Prisons

Nikos Maziotis, convicted for the action of the armed anarchist organization Revolutionary Struggle

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1641612/

France: Statement by Nikos Maziotis for Evening of Support for Anarchist Prisoners

From Domokos prison in Greece, anarchist prisoner Nikos Maziotis sent a message of solidarity on the occasion of the Let’s Make a Front evening organized by Secours Rouge Toulouse in support of anarchist prisoners around the world.

Dear comrades, thank you for inviting me to the event you are organizing and I send you a big hug. I also send a big hug to all detainees, revolutionaries, anarchists, anti-capitalists around the world. There is a direct link between the struggle and solidarity for the release of political prisoners and the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the international system of state and capital.

As we used to say here in the past, whoever forgets the prisoners of social and class war also forgets the war itself. However, unfortunately, the relationship between solidarity, imprisoned activists and the fight against the state and capital is not obvious and does not apply in many cases to at least some of those who define themselves as a movement.

Regarding solidarity, speaking of the Greek space, there are all kinds of divisions regarding the position towards imprisoned activists. Divisions linked to the differentiation between legal and illegal means of struggle, armed struggle and urban guerrilla warfare, their defense or the invocation of their innocence.

We experienced this ourselves within the Revolutionary Struggle organization, of which we were members. We were confronted not only with isolation from the mass movement and the space from which we come, the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space, but also with hostility directed against us. Some sectors have even gone so far as to support the separation and the declaration of repentance made by a former member of our organization in court.

Particularly during the period 2015-2019, when we were sentenced to life imprisonment for the attack on the Bank of Greece and the offices of the International Monetary Fund, and the State had taken away custody of our son, we were judged in empty courtrooms, facing the total indifference of a large part of the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space from which we come.

Finally, the slogan present in the Greek anarchist space, according to which solidarity is our weapon, is distorted to such an extent that, in some cases, it comes to mean that solidarity is our stratagem. I believe that such phenomena of lack of solidarity with revolutionary prisoners were also observed in the case of imprisoned members of the urban guerrillas of Western Europe in earlier eras.

Generally speaking, this unfavorable condition, combined with the intensification of state totalitarianism and the legislative deterioration of penal and carceral repression in recent years in the Greek space, consequence of the defeat of the social uprising of 2010-2012 against the programs of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission, as well as the failure of the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space to evolve towards a truly revolutionary space and movement, results in my remaining in prison, since the authorities refuse to grant me parole.

I am the only political prisoner in Greece, from the wave of arrests linked to urban guerrilla warfare since 2009, who is not serving a life sentence and who still remains in prison serving a 20-year sentence. And the reason why they have refused to release me for four years is because I do not deny or condemn the acts for which I was condemned, that is to say the Revolutionary Struggle organization.

However, comrades, in a short time, next September, I will complete my entire sentence, without parole, and I will be released.

I wish all the true revolutionaries and activists, the irreducible and coherent people throughout the world, wherever they are, strength, health and to hold on. I wish the same thing to you too, comrades, despite the difficulties and the repression, to continue and that we all continue the fight against the State and capital. For the revolution. To build a better world and a better society where solidarity will be a dominant value.

This world already exists and we carry it within us. Sending you a big hug from the prisons of Domokos in Greece. The struggle continues.

Nikos Maziotis, May 2026

Source: https://secoursrouge.org/toulouse-declaration-de-nikos-maziotis-a-loccasion-dune-soiree-de-soutien-aux-prisonnier%c2%b7es-anarchistes/

Greece: Eternal Honour to the Anarchist—Member of the Revolutionary Struggle, Lambros Fountas

HONOR FOREVER TO THE ANARCHIST –
MEMBER OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE, LAMBROS FOUNTAS

On March 10, 2010, in Dafni, preparations for a major operation by Revolutionary Struggle aimed at sabotaging the enforcement of the “memorandum” were in their final stages. The attempt to seize a vehicle that the organisation would use for this action resulted in a clash with the cops. Comrade Lambros Fountas, our beloved comrade-in-arms in the struggle, was killed. Nothing would ever be the same again.

The Revolutionary Struggle—the struggle to block the “memorandum,” the struggle to overthrow the ruling regime and bring about social revolution—suffered a severe blow. The organisation had publicly stated that it anticipated the Greek state’s bankruptcy as a consequence of the 2008 global economic crisis and had demonstrated the scale of its actions, primarily through the bombing of the stock exchange in September 2009. It had spoken of its goals and the opportunities that the economic crisis and the widespread delegitimisation of the political and economic system during that period would open up. It had publicly declared that the only way out of the crisis would be a Social Revolution.

A month later, the first crackdown against the organisation took place, along with the arrests.

The death of our comrade was a very significant event. It was significant not only for us, his comrades in Revolutionary Struggle, and not only for the anarchist movement in which he had been actively involved for many years and was particularly beloved by all his comrades. It was not only significant for Revolutionary Struggle, whose activities had been frozen for two years.

Above all, it was significant for the overwhelming majority of society, which was mercilessly battered by the devastating storm of loan agreements. Lambros was an integral part of a strategy of armed action that unfolded with the onset of the economic crisis and sought, through strikes of great political and economic significance, to prevent the political and economic system—which at that time was in a state of great instability and deep crisis—from regaining its stability.

For the loan agreements to be approved, social and political stability was a prerequisite. Armed action aimed at preventing the achievement of this goal, carried out through dynamic and effective measures, would have turned the Greek capitalist system into a dangerous arena because it would be vulnerable to armed attacks; this action would act as a brake on creditors’ decisions to transfer their capital to the country and lend to governments that would be unable to impose social and political control. Because the most decisive factor for the state and capital to overcome their systemic crises is the maintenance of faith in the system itself.

By 2010, confidence had collapsed within the global financial system. No economic or political actor trusted any credit or investment organisation or institution. No one trusted the Greek governments or the Greek banks. Because no one trusted any bank worldwide. In short, within the economic and political system, no one trusted anyone, and faith in the system of power itself had been deeply shaken.

The collapse of this trust was, for the first time in capitalist history, of such a large scale and significance. It was a structural factor in the collapse of capitalist functioning in the country and the de facto bankruptcy of the Greek state.

The loan agreements, with the onerous terms imposed, were intended to prevent an admission of bankruptcy. These were loan agreements designed to save the banks in Greece and Europe, to save the economic ruling class, to save the system—not the social base. This was the “bitter” realisation that the overwhelming majority of society eventually came to understand.

Comrade Lambros Fountas and his actions, the actions of Revolutionary Struggle during that period, sought to ensure that faith in the capitalist system and its re-stabilisation would not find fertile ground. Alongside the social reactions and uprisings of those years, Comrade Fountas’ actions could have become a significant factor in the overall struggle to prevent the “memorandum” from being passed. Comrade Lambros Fountas was destined to become the figure who embodied all the anxiety of society during that period. Because he was the armed fighter of all those who resisted the troika and the institutions, the Greek state, and the policies of social extermination for the economic “consolidation” of the capitalist system. Because he is the first and the last casualty of the struggle against the “memorandum.” Because he was and remains the voice of the necessity—then, now, and always—of the Social Revolution.

Today, sixteen years later, we are living through the aftermath of a profound political, economic, and social transformation that began with the 2008 economic crisis and the “memorandum” era. Because what was at stake in 2010 was not just the lending terms of the “memorandaum” the cuts to wages and pensions, the layoffs, or the closures of small businesses. Through these policies, a new model of power was established, and that period marked a historic turning point for the transformation of the capitalist system and modern state power. The “experiment” implemented in our country by lenders and supranational economic and political institutions did not concern only us; it concerned and continues to concern all countries.

It was an “experiment” that was imposed and cemented in the blood of an entire people, with thousands of suicides, with untreated illnesses, with children fainting in schools from hunger, with the conditions of a modern occupation and violence that became the norm for the years that followed, right up to the present day. It was an unprecedented class war. With this “experiment,” the centers of power in Europe and the world were asking “if a people like this, with its history of struggle and resistance, could endure the harsh measures we impose without revolting, then the most totalitarian control and the imposition of the most extreme measures of economic exploitation on any other people is possible.”

The fear of a social revolution in Greece in 2010 tormented all those in positions of political and economic power in Europe and beyond. They had explicitly stated, publicly and without mincing words, that a revolution in this country was a possible outcome. They themselves believed that there were subjective factors that could give impetus to such a development. Among the factors contributing to this fear, they considered the armed activities of Revolutionary Struggle, which were reaching their peak at that time, to be significant. Their fear was not limited to domestic destabilisation. A revolution, if it had taken place, would have swept up the countries of southern Europe and triggered a domino effect of capitalist collapses and social uprisings. Lambros Fountas’ actions sought to make this fear a reality.

In the end, the social backlash was not strong enough to prevent the imposition of the “memorandum,” a prevention that could not have been achieved without overthrowing the country’s political and economic power structure. This is the ultimate historical conclusion of that period.

Nothing has improved in the living conditions of the social majority, which is experiencing its own long-term and never-ending economic crisis that is reaching the brink of social collapse. On the contrary, the “resilience” shown by the social base in the face of the rapid rise in poverty during that period paved the way for the consolidation of the contemporary model of exploitation and oppression by the state and capital. The transformation that began then and was consolidated through ineffective social resistance gave rise to the cannibalistic system in a social context dominated by the illusion of the possibility of “individual detachment.” In other words, a context dominated by social defeatism, introversion, and resignation.

While official economic data paint a picture of economic prosperity for the wealthy in this country, the majority of people are sinking deeper and deeper into endless poverty. Greek debt is far higher than it was in 2010, yet faith in the Greek state’s resilience makes the country a model of subjugation for the extraction of profits and the security of capital investments. The loan agreements from the “memorandum” era will remain in force, along with their terms, for many more decades, and new debt will be added to the old, which future generations will be forced to shoulder.

As for the 2008 economic crisis, the greatest that modern capitalism has ever experienced, it never ended. The economic and political centers of power are still attempting to manage it with the same tools and formulas that created it. The concentration of economic, political, and social power in the hands of an ever-smaller few—which was the most decisive factor in the outbreak of the 2008 crisis— has now reached even more extreme levels, and class divisions across the globe have turned the gap between great wealth and poverty into an abyss.

The lack of a clear path out of the crisis is leading to the head-on transnational conflicts the world is currently experiencing. States, led by the United States, Israel, and Europe, are now revealing the true face of the state as an institution of centralized power and control over societies—manifested in brutal military and police violence, wars, and boundless repression. They are revealing in all its magnitude their hostile nature toward societies, the murderous nature of capitalism both within and beyond borders, and are bringing us ever closer to a catastrophic, all-out war.

The radical transformation of the system of power and the revelation of its true nature came about as a result of the dead ends created by the crisis, combined with the absence of radical social resistance and the unrestrained use of multifaceted methods to enforce social compliance with living conditions that are increasingly unbearable for the social majority. Housing, food, and health are no longer guaranteed for the largest segment of society, and even the minimal degree of their guarantee requires ever greater sacrifices. The social and political threat has ceased to exist following the suppression of the social resistance of 2010–12 and no longer concerns the centers of power. State control and violence are increasing more and more as this social threat from below fails to reemerge.

Since no revolutionary movement in 2010–2011 managed to halt or overturn the destructive policies that the state and capital had imposed on the country, a defeatist mindset—based on the assumption that nothing can be stopped or changed—has become ingrained in the social fabric. What the end of the struggles achieved back then was a profound psychological transformation of a society that accepted living without pride, without its dignity. Because these two factors were then, and will always be, decisive for a society that refuses to bow its head.

Comrade Lambros Fountas was, is, and will forever remain the example of the revolutionary who, with a weapon in hand, fought to prevent the defeat and subjugation of an entire society from becoming a reality. He will remain the light that enlivens the dignity, courage, and pride of anarchists, revolutionaries, and the oppressed. His struggle was the struggle of this society that did not want subjugation, did not want to bow its head.

Comrade Lambros Fountas embodies that unwavering dignity and fighting spirit that any struggle must possess to be victorious. That is why he is the champion of all the oppressed. He is and will forever remain the fighter who shows that the only way out of modern slavery, of daily social humiliation, the only way out of capitalist and state barbarism, wars, the threat of death—the only way out to a life of freedom, to a life of dignity—is the Social Revolution. We honor Lambros Fountas not only for who he was and what we knew of him, but also for everything he stood for. We honor him because he himself was the bearer of radical social change. He was the bearer of a society of equality and freedom

LAMBROS FOUNTAS WILL LIVE FOREVER IN THE STRUGGLE

FOR SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Pola Roupa

Nikos Maziotis, Domokos Prison

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1640103/

Greece: Eternal Honour to the Anarchist—Member of the Revolutionary Sruggle, Lambros Fountas

Message/Greetings from Nikos Maziotis at the International Conference on Political Prisoners

Message/greetings from Nikos Maziotis at the International Conference on Political Prisoners organized by the Prisoners’ Voice Platform (TSP) in Paris (20/12 -21/12/2025)

Comrades, thank you for your invitation to the International Congress of Political Prisoners that you are organizing. I send you my warmest greetings from Domokos Prison, Greece.

If the history of humanity is the struggle of those who aspire to freedom, equality, and solidarity against those who seek to impose slavery, inequality, exploitation, and oppression; if the history of humanity is the struggle of women against patriarchal and sexist power, the struggle of the poor, the people, and the working class against the ruling elites, the rich, the slave owners, the feudal lords, the bureaucrats, or, in today’s terms, against the State and Capital, then this struggle has been paid for with blood. Countless comrades, all over the world, have given their lives in this fight.

They fell in confrontations with the enemy, during clashes with repressive forces, died in prison or during hunger strikes, and were murdered during demonstrations and strikes. Over time, this struggle has cost millions of lives, genocides of entire populations, thousands of years of accumulated imprisonment, as well as torture and isolation. In this social war and class struggle, the current international system of domination, the State and Capital, is not content with simply eliminating us physically or imprisoning us. It demands that we renounce our political identity, our struggle, our organization, the choices of confrontation we have made, revolution, and armed struggle.

It demands that we acknowledge being criminals, terrorists, and social detractors, when these are precisely the defining characteristics of the system it embodies. Our duty, as political prisoners, is therefore to remain faithful and consistent with the choices we have made in our struggle. This is our moral and political victory against the state and capitalist criminals and their apparatus. No revision, then. No repentance for our choices.

We live in an era where the international state-capitalist system of domination is moving towards ever-greater totalitarianism, aiming for the total subjugation of human beings to power and their transformation into docile and depoliticized instruments. The undermining of all the workers’ and popular gains won through past struggles, within the framework of the neoliberal hegemony of recent decades, the anti-terrorism legislation, the hardening of repression and the penal framework, the creation of prisons and special isolation facilities, the criminalization of strikes, and the restriction of the right to demonstrate, all converge towards this objective.

At the same time, imperialist competition between the major industrial powers within the international system of domination, as illustrated, for example, The war in Ukraine and the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza expose the hypocrisy of states and their leaders who invoke “democracy,” “human rights,” or “international law,” etc.

The so-called bourgeois “democracy” has now lost all meaning. Elections are devoid of purpose, since the governments of nation-states, regardless of their ideological leanings and without any popular will, implement policies dictated by the bureaucracies and power centers of the international capitalist-state system (G7, European Union, IMF, NATO, etc.). Their bourgeois “democracy” is increasingly taking on the characteristics of a dictatorship and an authoritarian regime with totalitarian aspirations.

In Greece, following the social defeat of the 2010–2012 uprising against the loan programs imposed by the European Union, the ECB, and the IMF, we are already experiencing the concrete effects of this authoritarianism: the lasting impoverishment of the working classes, permanent austerity, and the continuous hardening of state repression.

But beyond the intensification of exploitation and totalitarianism, the international state-capitalist system, with its logic of infinite growth, its limitless accumulation, and the ecological destruction it engenders, confronts us with a fundamentally existential question: that of our survival as a human species, and indeed the very survival of the Earth and its ecosystems. This ecological catastrophe, with its already irreversible consequences, undoubtedly constitutes one of the most powerful forces driving the people to overthrow the global system of state-capitalist domination. This places us before a fundamentally existential question: that of our survival as a human species, and indeed the very survival of the Earth and its ecosystems. This ecological catastrophe, with its already irreversible consequences, undoubtedly constitutes one of the most powerful driving forces for people to overthrow the global system of state-capitalist domination.

If Rosa Luxemburg formulated the dilemma “Socialism or Barbarism” in her time, today the dilemma is posed in these terms: “Social Revolution or Annihilation.” Despite the difficult conditions in which we live and the bleak future that the State and Capital have in store for us, our struggle to overthrow them must continue at all costs.

Comrades, I wish you strength and courage in the struggle. I wish all political prisoners to hold firm, wherever they are, in prison or in solitary confinement, in Europe, Turkey, Israel, America, everywhere.

SOLIDARITY AND FREEDOM TO ALL REVOLUTIONARIES, ANTI-CAPITALIST, AND ANTI-STATIST POLITICAL PRISONERS

From Domokos Prison in Greece, Nikos Maziotis,  20/12/,2025

[Fr,En El Message/salutations de N.Maziotis à la Conférence Internationale pour les Prisonniers Politiques [(TSP) à Paris].

For Comrade Christos Spilios – Nikos Maziotis-Pola Roupa

Comrade Christos left. He left us prematurely. He has accompanied us to the A/A for many years in demonstrations, assemblies, conflicts, occupations. In 1991, at the Polytechnic of 1995, in the course and conflicts against the Clinton visit in 1999, at the 2003 anti -war demonstrations, in Thessaloniki at the EU leaders’ meeting in the conflicts against the memorandums.

He was always present in the struggles. He has always been present in rallies and solidarity marches for imprisoned comrades. As well as the latest at the Solidarity Assembly for us, at the rallies in the courts in Chalkida, Lamia and in Domokos prisons.

He was the comrade of the uprising. He was the comrade of solidarity. He was the comrade of offering and selflessness. He was, is and will be our comrade in the struggle. He was, is and will be our favorite comrade Christos.

Goodbye comrade, we don’t forget you.

Pola Roupa-Nikos Maziotis, Prisoner for the Action of the Revolutionary Struggle, Domokos Prisons.

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1637921/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21823

#anarchist #ChristosSpilios #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle #rip

(Grecia) Para el compañero Kyriakos Ximitiris por Pola Roupa y Nikos Maziotis
Extraído de Act for Free y traducido por nosotrxs

Hace un año, el compañero Kyriakos Xymitiris perdió la vida mientras fabricaba un artefacto
https://informativoanarquista.noblogs.org/post/2025/10/07/grecia-para-el-companero-kyriakos-ximitiris-por-pola-roupa-y-nikos-maziotis/
#Anticarcelario #Memoria #Anticarcelario #grecia #KyriakosXimitiris #NikosMaziotis #PolaRoupa anarquista informativoanarquista

For Comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris – Revolutionary Struggle

A year ago, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris lost his life while building an explosive device. He had decided to respond in this dynamic way to some great injustice, to defend a right, to a class and anti-social state policy… Whatever he had decided to do, whatever action he had chosen, it was certainly an armed political action against a savage and deeply unjust system of power that in our time shows more and more bluntly its antisocial and racist face. A deeply class-based system of power that now openly shows its hatred towards anything that does not bring profit and power.

Comrade Kyriakos lost his life walking on the path of armed anti-regime action. In the great world history of the armed struggle, many fighters have given their lives in the struggle against authoritarian governments, against authoritarian regimes, against anti-social policies, against interstate wars. They gave their lives in the struggle for a better society. They gave their lives fighting with a gun in their hands.

They gave their lives by placing or manufacturing explosive devices. They gave their lives for a society without divisions, without poverty, without wars, for social liberation.

In this struggle, no one is lost. Death does not erase their social and political imprints that remain deeply engraved in revolutionary history.

Today and every day that passes, we see the entanglements of the state and capital crushing millions of people. The system of power has brought to the surface every weapon at its disposal and uses it to stifle resistance, to consolidate consensus through coercion and violence, to maintain passivity in the social base, to impose any anti-social measure it wants, to increase the profits of big capital by stealing from the majority. Capital and modern states bring to the surface their most brutal, ruthless face in history. Either they will expand and strengthen their sovereignty over other states or they will let the privileges of their sovereignty shrink and wither. In a deep systemic crisis that has a past and a future and in which states and capital are sinking deeper and deeper, we experience every day generalized -indirect or direct- social cleansings, wars, genocides of entire peoples, raw racism, the extermination of the pariah, extreme economic exploitation. All of this is connected in a network of managing a crisis of survival of the system and maintaining profits for the super-rich of the planet. Along with every form of violence unleashed by the dominant system of power against the weak, the poison of hatred for the different and for the weak that infects the youth is also unleashed. Resistance and anti-state struggle are becoming increasingly demanding and at the same time increasingly necessary.

Fighters like Kyriakos who do not bend, who do not give up, who are not afraid to confront the choice of armed action in an era when excessive regime violence surpasses any modern historical precedent, the least that is due
to them is to become points of reference for the continuation of the struggle and the inspiration of all.

Comrade Kyriakos will forever remain a living example of total dedication and selflessness in a common struggle that concerns all of society.

Comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris will always be present in the struggle for social liberation from the shackles of the state and capital.

He is Immortal

Pola Roupa-Nikos Maziotis

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1637822/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21687

#anarchist #europe #greece #KyriakosXymitiris #nikosMaziotis #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle

 Nelle strade di Tolosa sono comparsi diversi manifesti nelle pensiline degli autobus della città per chiedere la liberazione di tutti i prigionieri anarchici, come #NikosMaziotis in Grecia, #MonicaCaballero in Cile, #AlfredoCospito in Italia e #AlexanderSnezhkov in Russia.

#Anarchia #anarchici #anarchy #anarchism

Greece: Revolutionary Prisoners Welcome the Liberation of George Abdallah

Following the release of Georges Abdallah and his arrival in Lebanon on July 25, several revolutionary prisoners held in Greece welcomed this announcement, which comes after more than 40 years of imprisonment in France. Anarchist prisoner Nikos Maziotis (left in the photo) wrote a statement on August 2 to celebrate the news.

[…] “Your release from prison is one of the greatest pieces of good news and has enormous meaning for all of us who are part of the international anti-capitalist, anti-state and anti-authoritarian movement. Because good news for one is good news for everyone, it is good for the movements, the peoples in struggle, the poor, the proletariat and the activists incarcerated in prisons, as is of course the opposite for bad news. And the fact that you came out of prison unshakeable, without any questioning of your struggle, is a huge political and moral victory for all of us. »

Similarly, former member of the November 17 Revolutionary Organization and Marxist prisoner Dimitris Koufontinas sent a message after the announcement of the Arab communist’s release.

[…] “Today is a day of immense joy. The beautiful news of your liberation has passed through our cells. I will not speak of liberation. You have always been free of mind, soul, heart, as are those who resist. Only now have they been forced to free your body, to join your brothers in the struggle for a standing Lebanon, and a liberated Palestine. The arch-terrorists, the murderers, the colonialists, the arch-despoilers of the peoples have not succeeded in slandering you by calling you a terrorist or a criminal. Your only crime was to be and always to be a revolutionary, not to have yielded, not to have deserted for a single moment your great responsibility. »

Source: https://secoursrouge.org/grece-des-prisonniers-revolutionnaires-saluent-la-liberation-de-georges-abdallah/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=20738

#AnarchistPrisoners #DimitrisKoufontinas #europe #georgesAbdallah #greece #nikosMaziotis #PoliticalPrisoners

Solidarity Concert for Nikos Maziotis of Revolutionary Struggle (Lyon, France)

Solidarity concert for the comrade of Revolutionary Struggle, Nikos Maziotis

Solidarity concert for the comrade of Revolutionary Struggle, Nikos Maziotis, following the rejection of his request for release and the extension of his captivity. For the sixth time, the judicial council refuses to grant him a suspended sentence, even though he has exceeded the 3/5 of his sentence since 2022, as defined by the “laws” for all prisoners. In Greece, he is the only political prisoner with a 20-year merged sentence—i.e., not a life sentence—who experiences this punitive condition, simply because he has not shown “remorse” or “moral improvement.” But revolutionaries are not “reformed” and do not “morally improve.” We stand in solidarity with the imprisoned comrade of Revolutionary Struggle, Nikos Maziotis.

During the gathering, comrade Pola Roupa will intervene via phone.

source: Act for Freedom

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=19966

#anarchism #europe #France #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle