Syntagma was the story on Friday night. Liza, a hospital worker, was ebullient: “I’ve been many demonstrations, and this is the best one ever”.

Like many, she was not a member of Syriza or any other left organisation. The sense of having suffered so long for no progress under the troika’s memorandums drew more than 150,000 people to the square in central Athens. They came to say “OXI” – no.

People were crammed into feeder streets seven blocks away. It dwarfed the NEI (yes) rally, which was held at the same time, by at least five to one.

This rally matched or was bigger than any in last five years because there is a great feeling that everything people have sacrificed and struggled against since 2010 is on the line. There is a tremendous feeling here that history is being made by pensioners, the unemployed, students and workers.

The OXI campaign gathered in squares around Greece. Courage, dignity and resistance were the watchwords. Musicians played songs from the civil war era all night in Syntagma. The crowd sang along. I did not know their history well enough to know why some songs were better known than others. But I recognised “Bella Ciao”, the anthem of Italian resistance to fascism, and joined in the crowd’s exuberant rendition. They sang to draw strength from the working class’s tradition of resistance, especially during the civil war, and because the same battle lines are drawn today.

Class war

This is a battle between two contending classes; those still waver will be won to one side or another.

The NEI campaign comprises the European ruling classes and the Greek ruling class (embodied by the Hellenic Chamber of Commerce), which are unleashing economic chaos throughout the country.

The European Central Bank has stopped Greece’s access to Target2, the mechanism that allows ease of international business transactions for goods between euro area members. The ECB has also said, by way of bribe, that it will restore the emergency lending almost immediately on Monday if Greece votes yes.

The department that supervises labour law compliance has taken hundreds of calls from workers who report that their bosses have said they will be fired on Monday if they vote no. There is a report today in the Financial Times – immediately denied by the Greek Central Banking Authority – that the government will seize one third of deposits over €8,000. Most workers’ savings ran out long ago. This is aimed at the middle classes. It comes in a climate of grossly overstated but repeated reports of shortages in supermarkets and rumours that the banks will run out of notes after the weekend.

The yes campaign is also backed by the social democratic parties of Europe, the Greek parties of austerity (PASOK, To Potami and New Democracy), the Greek liberal middle classes and fascist-inclined middle classes and the media establishment in Greece and across Europe. Can you imagine a more powerful enemy than these forces all combined?

There is no in between or middle ground: lifestyle magazines, arts organisations, the Bar Association, former prime ministers and economists come out daily for NEI, showing that organisations which seem innocuous are not neutral when the battle lines are drawn. There is a list circulating of well-known musicians, actors and other public figures who are supporting NEI. People will not forget who took which side.

In normal times, class lines are more blurred; division often appears only as a difference of viewpoints. The two demonstrations in central Athens Friday night, which were physically and metaphorically facing off against each other around the Hellenic parliament, show that when the struggle is at its peak, class once again comes to the fore.

The wisdom of lived experience

The European Confederation of Trade Unions, controlled by the social democratic parties of Europe, opposes the referendum on the grounds that the issues are “too complex” for workers to understand.

But the uncertainty of what will happen after Sunday is not a failure of comprehension. People debate eloquently the problems that exist today and are grappling with how to fix them. They don’t have a Master of Economics. But they can tell me that when they entered the euro area, farmers who’d made a good living growing tobacco or corn were told that they could no longer. Why? Because it would be done in other countries that had bargained for the contract. The workers were not given an alternative. Their livelihoods were destroyed and now they cannot understand why Greece imports the products they once grew.

The crowd roared with scorn at the mention of Sky or Mega Channel – the big capitalist TV stations. Occasionally during the week, the voices of OXI hijacked their microphones. In a vox pop of pensioners, a Sky reporter shoved out of shot a frail, old man who, when asked how he was affected by the restrictions on bank withdrawals, said: “It does not matter about me. What matters is that people are resisting”.

The biased coverage has not caught people off guard. They recall that it was the same in the lead up to the elections in January this year. People showed then that they were no fools. My taxi driver tells me: “All the drivers will vote no, all the rich will vote yes. The media say we are lazy. I work 14 hours a day. It is the rich who are lazy”. It is a view shaped from life experience, and it won’t be shifted by a news anchor or commentator with a PhD in economics.

It is remarkable how calm people are in the face of all the threats and economic sabotage. People are both full of hope that change is possible but at the same time braced for things to get worse before they get better. Maria, a physiotherapist, tells me: “Voting no is the only way our lives will be better. Not now, but in 20 years, for our children.”

If the vote was conducted in workplaces, the OXI vote would be overwhelming. However, among the middle classes, older people and in regional areas, which are traditionally conservative and where the left’s reach is weak, the right’s terrorisation has greater purchase.

The left

The numbers rallying in Athens on Friday is a powerful projection of the left’s strength that can sway those who are wavering.

The other strategy is to demonstrate that there is an alternative to the economic mayhem of the bosses. Panagiotis Lafazanis, the minister for production and reorganisation and a leader of the Left Platform in Syriza, in February prevented the shutdown of the sugar industry. Thousands of workers and farmers depend on this industry. 

This week, according to one comrade I spoke to, thousands of homes had their utilities reconnected. The bakery cafe in which I now sit is giving people who need it free bread.

In these ways, the government and its supporters can show in practice how it is possible to use Greece’s resources to counter the bosses’ offensive.

Such measures can be extended to every part of the economy, starting with the areas where shortages could develop such as in pharmaceuticals and gas. The owner of Mega Channel, for example, is also the owner of the main toll road into Athens, which takes €1 million per day in cash.

If cash reserves run low, the people will be well served by the maxim, “follow the money”. For now, the involvement of workers who have the power to take such actions is on the level of debate only. That debate will sharpen considerably within days if OXI wins.

In theory, workers always have the power to seize control of production and use it to meet their needs. We know that it takes confidence and organisation to realise that potential – but almost everywhere, our side has been lacking in both and unable to exercise that power in a long time. If OXI wins Sunday, it will give the labour movement across Greece a surge of both.

The communists

Going into battle you are never assured of victory. At such times, everyone is accountable for their positions and their actions. Whatever the arguments about the ins and outs of every group’s tactics, most of the left have campaigned like they are locked in an existential battle.

The Communist Party (KKE), however, has written its death warrant with the call to abstain from the vote. It has instructed people to download and print the party’s own ballot papers, which say OXI to both the draft Agreement of 26 June and another memorandum. It argues that the yes and no votes are the same because Tsipras will keep negotiating. It says that the referendum is “fake” and “blackmail”. These ballots will be void.

The communists were not in Syntagma on Friday with the more than 150,000 mainly working class people, some of whom were former members. One of these was the mother of the man who acted as my impromptu translator during speeches and songs. She sung the old songs with gusto. She had given her youth to the party and had watched its death agony since the rise of Syriza, which the KKE has denounced as a false messiah. In doing so it treated the workers whose hopes Syriza raised as irredeemably deluded.

The KKE held its own rally on Thursday night. About 10,000 attended. It is down from the rally of 30,000 in January, when the party refused to call for a vote for Syriza in the national election. The decline in numbers is an indication that many of its own members will defy the leadership and vote no.

However, 10,000 is not an irrelevant number of people, especially when many are militants of long standing, and organised in key industries such as the waterfront. Given that the vote hangs in the balance, there will be a reckoning if OXI loses.

There will also be a debate within Syriza about the impact of emphasising that a no vote will enable Tsipras to cut a deal. He has been saying it all week but he did not say it in his speech to the rally. It is at odds with what people believe OXI to be about – a gateway to a better future out of the rut of austerity.

For now, this is not the most important thing. In spite of the huge concessions Tsipras has offered as late as Tuesday – which will be put back onto the table even if OXI wins – the crowd in Syntagma was waiting expectantly for hours to hear Tsipras speak. Their roar when he appeared rocked the square.

This does not mean people will accept everything he does. It does not mean that everyone has forgotten the concessions. But until Sunday at least, that takes second place. That is a reality which revolutionaries have to calibrate into their strategy whether we like it or not. The KKE epitomises the dead end of denunciation from the sidelines.

We ought to remember the old builders labourers’ slogan: “If you don’t fight, you lose”. Greek workers and the Greek left have given tremendous battle. If the worst happens on Sunday, they will take stock, soberly and with heavy hearts, but not for long.

OXI

People who spend their lives fighting for a better world are inclined toward optimism, attuned as we are to seeing in every flicker of resistance a glimmer of how things could change. For the Greek working class, it is a matter of survival.

Tonight I learnt a new meaning of the term, “lost generation”, which often is used to designate those long term unemployed young people who came of age just as the crisis hit. Men in their mid-30s and older told me that one of the sacrifices they had had to make was putting off starting families. It reminded me of the lines from Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”, a song about the Vietnam War that does just as well for the class war in Greece:

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

There is a poster plastered around Athens of Wolfgang Schäuble’s face. The picture was taken when he was informed of the referendum. Schäuble had likened voting no to committing suicide. In fact, 11,000 people are estimated to have taken just that course because of the austerity. The poster’s slogan, which is in reference to this, roughly translates: “He’s been sucking our blood for five years”.

OXI means no to more blood spilled for debt. It means no to the bloodsuckers. And it is the no that will stop the blood cold in their veins.