April Dictatorship: the tasks of the Greek Trotskyists

[p016] APRIL DICTATORSHIP AND THE TASKS OF GREEK TROTSKYISTS Resolution of the 5th Congress of the Workers International League Greek Section of the ICFI) THE STRUGGLE to build the Fourth Interna- tional was taken up in 1938 to safeguard the con- tinuity of revolutionary leadership, Marxist thecry, the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin and the Bolsheviks and the continuity of the Russian Revolution. This struggle had to pass through unfavour- able conditions created by the defeats suffered by a whole generation of the international work- ing class. Responsibility for these defeats lies with the Stalinist bureaucracy who, having pro- voked them, later used them to their advantage. The petty-bourgeois sceptics considered the struggle for the Fourth International to be futile, but it was through this struggle that -revolu- tionary cadres, capable of leading the struggles of the working class during the coming revolu- tionary upsurge, could be trained. After the war, petty-bourgeois scepticism to- wards the 4th International appeared in the form of Pabloite revisionism and represented a capitulation to Stalinism and, through. it, - to. imperialism. The International Committee, having success- fully defended the continuity of the Fourth Inter- — national against Pabloism, constitutes, by its ~~ existence today, the most brilliant’ vindication of the struggle carried out by Trotsky. and his: followers in the preceding historical period: Today all the unfavourable conditions formed on the basis of the Stalinist betrayals have been turned into their opposite. From wherever all sorts of difficulties sprang, opportunities have now arisen all over the world for the Fourth Interna- tional to be turned into a mass leadership of the working class and to lead directly its fight for power. Nixon’s measures on the dollar on August 15, 1971 .marked a new epoch for the class struggle and the Trotskyist movement. These measures do not concern technical changes in the functioning of the system, but-mean a declara- tion of war against the working class. It is only in. this sense that we maintain that the Aprii dictatorship and the tasks of Greek Trotskyists crisis of the capitalist system has now entered a new stage and that contained in it are not simply the elements of the preceding period developed on a higher level, but a situation unlike any other throughout the whole history of the system. The terrible bloodshed and destruction of World War II did not solve any of the basic problems of imperialism, but on the contrary aggravated them. The imperialist dominion came out of the war crippled. In a series of European countries capitalist relations were overthrown by the advance of the Red Army. Later the revolu- tion was victorious in Yugoslavia and China, while in the same period there arose in the colonies a great revolutionary movement of national independence. Against such a_ back- ground, the imperialists found themselves face to face with the working class in. the advanced capitalist countries, a working class that had not recently suffered any serious defeats and was well organized and militant. This) was an un- _ bearable situation for the imperialists. It was ‘necessary for them to strike new sharp blows against the working class. But the European ruling class, like the Japanese, having come out of the war exhausted, was not in a posi- ’ tion to put itself at risk in civil wars. It was under these conditions that the im- perialists were driven to the Conference at Bretton Woods in 1944. There they were forced to recognize the need to follow a policy of intlationary concessions to the working class in order to blunt its militancy. However, this did not constitute an irrevocable decision. They tried continually to attack the living standards of the working class, but were continually forced to retreat before its granite resistance. In this sense, it was not Keynesian policies that were imposed on society, but the reverse. The social reality characterized by the strength of the working class forced the bour- geoisie at every step to follow Keynesian policies. But in this situation the most important. reason that enabled the imperialists to carry out such 13

[p017] - a policy of orderly retreat was the Stalinist leadership that castrated the working-class move- ment and prevented its militancy from being carried to its final consequences. In 1953 the French Stalinists betrayed the General Strike and in 1961 their fellow-thinkers in Belgium did the same for the General Strike. there, assisted by the Pabloite revisionists. In Greece the Stalinists betrayed the working class in the Civil War and in the 1950s saw to it that it was tied to the chariot of the bourgeoisie. They systematicaly avoided running independ- ently in the elections and did so through Popular Fronts such as the PAME. The Bretton Woods agreement itself, as well as its application in the following years, was determined by the strength of the working class, although the latter was trapped in the machinery of the Stalinist and reformist bureaucracies. What we call the post-war ‘boom’ was nothing but these continuing retreats of imperialism. The absolute contradiction between the produc- tive forces and the production relations which characterizes the imperialist epoch, appear for these concrete reasons in an inverted form. The Pabloite revisionists, ‘having substituted impressionism for Marxism, took this form, this temporary immediacy of the ‘boom’, to be the essence of post-war capitalism, maintaining that it had developed into ‘neo-capitalism’. Thus Lenin’s theory of imperialism was rejected: it was not the last stage of capitalism. In addition to the theory of imperialism they re- jected the programme of the Fourth International, which is founded precisely on the characteriza- tion of our epoch as one of imperialist decay, in which the historical crisis of society has been concentrated and must be solved as a crisis of leadership of the working class. . After the war the economic supremacy of American imperialism appeared overwhelming and immune to European competition. But while the Americans had a huge supremacy over Europe in all spheres, that did not mean in any way that rivalry among the capitalist states, which is a key factor in the crisis of imperialism, _had been surpassed. This rivalry had already become sharp in 1958, when sections of the European (and especialy the French) bourgeoisie, led by General De Gaulle, in desperation and historically condemned, tried to limit American penetration into Europe. Even though the logic of American policy is to reduce the European continent to the status of a big colony, this could not be realized in prac- tice. Europe represents the oldest section of metropolitan capitalism, in which each national state has its own imperialist interests. Above all it was the European working class that be- came an obstacle to this prospect for coloniza- tion. America could not have turned back the wheels of history unless it was prepared to destroy the whole system in an atomic war. t Bretton Woods it was decided that the dollar would take the place of sterling as the basis of the world monetary system. However, _ British imperialism conserved enough of its r strength of the past century and the Americans were unable to play their world role without some help from the City. Thus for the Americans the defence of ster- ling was an international question. From this point of view, the conditions for the devalua- tion of sterling in 1967 contain another import- ant lesson about the fact that the whole period of post-war ‘boom’ was not based on certain ‘structural’ or ‘technical’ or any other changes decided at Bretton Woods, but that it was im- posed at every step by the strength of the work- ing class. That is, the ‘boom’ was from the first an insupportable situation for the imperialists. In 1961 the British ruling class made its first serious attempt to liberate itself from _ this ‘boom’. This was the period of wage freeze, stop-go, and the deliberate creation of unem- ployment in the winter of 1962-1963. But the Tory government, up against the resistance of the working class, was forced to retreat and try again on the eve of the parliamentary elec- tions of 1964, but again without success. Thus devaluation became inevitable and the failure of the Americans to prevent it revealed the tremend-. ous strength of the working class which was dragging the imperialists down. In the same way the repeated attempts of the American ruling class to force down working class living standards were thrown back through- aut the 1950s. So the ‘boom’ represented nothing more than the militancy of the workers. No notable expan- sion of capitalism was realized during the post- war period. Employment was primarily based on the monstrous war expenditure, that is on the production of the means of destruction of the productive forces themselves, and did not represent a new period of real capitalist expansion. But these retreats, insupportable for the im- perialists, had to come to an end sometime— to be transformed into their opposite, that is into a furious counter-revolutionary attack on the working class to force it back into a state of slavery, destroying All its gains, along with the workers’ status of the USSR, Eastern Europe and China. This attack has now been let loose and this is the meaning of the measures announced by Nixon on August 15, 1971. The Americans, by abolishing the convertibility of the dollar and erecting tariff walls, have de- clared the most deadly trade war. Through this trade war a large part of mankind’s pro- ductive forces is liable to be destroyed and millions of workers throughout the world face unemployment and misery. But this trade war is above all a war of the bourgeoisie against the working class in each country. The working class is compelled to fight a life-and-death struggle in defence of its liv- ing standards and all its political and trade union conquests. As all the explosiveness of the crisis of capitalism comes to the surface, this is re- flected in a mortal crisis of the reformist and Stalinist bureaucracies. From every point of Fourth International Spring 1973

[p018] view we have a neu situation, in which the role of Trotskyist leadership is the decisive one. When we say we are facing a new epoch for Trotskyism, above all we are talking about the political responsibilities that must be under- taken. From now on every development and the final solution to the historical dilemma—socialism or barbarism—will be determined in the struggle of Trotskyism for the emancipation of the work- ing class from bourgeois ideology and from its . Stalinist agents in the struggle for building revolutionary parties in every country, sections of the Internaticnal Committee of the Fourth International. THE APRIL dictatorship in Greece was not an accidental national complication, but an expres- sion of the general crisis of capitalism which drives the bourgeosie in every country to intro- duce harsher types of state oppression. This phenomenon is also characteristic of the de- veloped countries today, while in a series of underdeveloped countries, Bonapartist military governments have already been established. The American imperialists, who began to replace the British as guardians of Greece from 1947 onwards, helped the Greek bourgeoisie with large sums of money under the Marshall - Pian and with other kinds of military and econo- mic aid. But this aid was consumed in building the counter-revolutionary army and the state, and in speculative enterprises. There was no im- provement in the miserable living conditions of the working class and peasants. This was deter- mined by the very logic of the imperialist epoch, in which Greece, like every backward country, was condemned within this system to remain underdeveloped. The relative social calm of the 1950s was secured only over the graves of the working class which had been crushed be- cause of the Stalinist betrayal in the Civil War. But from 1956 onwards, the counter-revolu- tionary regime of the bourgeoisie began to be undermined as new. generations entered the arena Of class struggic. In the 1958 elections the EDA became the main opposition party with 82 members of parliament. In 1960-1961 the building workers, with their militant strikes and the barricades they put up in the streets of Athens, marked the end of the black decade that. followed the defeat in the Civil War. The ERE of Karamanlis, the big party of the bcurgeoisic. having become completely bankrupt, was able to win the 1961. elections only after an orgy of violence and falsifications. This showed already that the bourgcoisic, unable to improve working-class living conditions, could no longer govern through Parliament. After the assassination of the EDA deputy, Gr. Lambrakis, Karamanlis was forced to resign. 6000,000 people followed the cortége of the assassinated politician in a political demonstra-. tion and this was the biggest mass demonstra- tion since 194-4. As the crowd flooded the streets of Athens, the police hid themselves—-the bour- geoisie was scared! April dictatorship and the tasks of Greek Trotakviate Under the pressure of the re-grouped working- class movement, political reaction was forced to sound a retreat. In 1963, with the slogan ‘Democracy’, Papandreou was elected to the government. The short-lived democratic ‘idyll’ that followed was not different in character from the post-war democracy in Western Europe. It did not at all reflect a real prosperity or blunting of social contradictions, but the opposite. Papan- dreou came to power as a result of the aggrava- tion of the class struggle and the strength of the working-class movement. In Western democracy, the Stalinists wanted. to see the road to ‘advanced’ democracy. In Greece Papandreou’s ascent appeared to open the way to ‘complete democratization’. In reality however in both cases democracy was the in- verted form of the real needs of the bourgeoisie, a shel] in which Bonapartism was maturing. In Greece, there was no second party of the ruling class. After, the completion of the bour- geois transformation of the country, in 1922- 1924, the Liberal Party went into a process of decomposition which resulted in its final disso- lution. The Popular Party, the representative until that time of the ‘aristocratic oligarchy’, evolved into the authentic expression of the bour- geoisie’s needs in the epoch of imperialist decay. There was no room for liberal experiments and political reaction governed Greece for many decades in different forms and under different names. (Greek Assembly, Radical Union.) But the 1958 election results brought the bour- geoisie face to face with the spectre of political polarization. The fear of this eventuality. became the basis for the appearance of a second bourgeois party. It is a fact that today the ‘Centre Unionists’ and the Stalinists admit that the Centre Union was created at that time with the intervention of the American CIA and the State Department. At first General Grivas, who had won false fame from the struggle of EOKA in Cyprus, was sug- gested as the head of the new bourgeois party. But the first attempt to form a ‘democratic’ bourgeois party under this former head of the organization ‘X' and_ collaborator with: the Germans failed. In 1962 Papandreou founded the Centre Union, and in 1963. with the treacherous support of the Stalinists—which even included abstention in many constituencies in the second, repeated 1964 elections+to the benefit of the Centre Union, Papandrepu took the government. with 53 per cent of the votes The Centre Union hai gathered all the rem- nants of liberalism, as well as the monarchist socialist Tsirimokos, . but; its backbone was well- known right-wing politigians whose hands were dripping blood from the Civil War period and the black decade which follgwed. The Centre Union was no different from the ERE at any point in its programme. The real’ difference was that the CU constituted a handy mixture for the short-term needs of the bourgeoisie. [t was a mask to be used in an attempt to avoid the political impasse. Papandreou, who camé to: power riding on the wave of the rising mass movement, was well aware of the meaning of his election, and the first is

[p019] measure his government took was to double the salaries of the military, police and judiciary employees. That his rise to power was the result of the sharpening of the class struggle can be clearly seen in the strike indices. In 1959, 1,600,000 working hours were lost through strikes. In 1964 this figure had risen to 22,000,000 hours. Under the Papandreou government, the masses were moving more and more towards the left. Only two months had to pass before the slogan ‘Down with Papandreou’ could be heard. But the Stalinists had. undertaken an attempt to keep the Centre Union in power. They channelled the discontent of the masses, in an attempt to dress up the government. Not ‘Down with Papandreou’ said the Stalinists, but ‘Down with the Minister of Labour, Bakatselos.’ But the most striking indication of the masses’ leftward move was the municipal elections of 1964. The EDA won them everywhere against the coalition of bourgeois candidates. The failure of the Papandreou experiment was apparent. A liberal policy would have presupposed making substantial economic concessions to the masses, something of which Greek capitalism was then, in the world crisis, less capable than ever. - According to the myth, Papandreou was over- thrown by a coup instigated. by the king in 1965. In reality, the Centre Union, under these detri-: mental conditions, had split and thus Papandreou was forced to resign. The jinability of the ruling class. to continue to govefn through parliament now appeared more indisputable. On the other hand the working class under its Stalinist leader- ship was not in a positiod to demand power and to give a socialist solution to the social impasse. Thus the classic equilibrium of the class forces was formed, from whose soi] dictatorial coups usually spring. Within /this crisis, the young Trotskyist organization, {theoretically and organ- izationally unprepared, as not in a position to intervene effectively in ofder to give a new course to political development$. Fatefully, on April 21 1967 Papadopoulos’ fa s rolled on the streets of Athens. The essence of the érisis in Greece was the crisis of the world capitalist system which placed: society in front of the’cruel dilemma; dictator- ship of the proletariat or dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. For the Stalinists the crisis was (and remains) an accidental complication: it could be surpassed; ‘democratic order’ could be restored. In this way they disarmed the masses politically in the face of the gravest danger./They tried in their own way - to prevent the dictaforship, but it was ‘precisely — their own policies that made it unavoidable. The Pabloites, although today they are tasting. the most bitter co Sequences of the crisis, still claim that the crisfs ig a sectarian myth. Even. more, they: considefed the July 1965 crisis to be an accidental ‘complication’, provoked by the ‘rash’ intervention |/by the palace, which had not correctly ‘weighed] the’ possible’ reactions of. the masses. On the ev _ of the coup they. were the first 16 wes to throw themselves into the campaign for the elections that had been announced but never took place. Even the minority of the EDE,. having agreed with the Spartacist Robertson (USA) that we are at least ten years away from a serious crisis of capitalism, protested because the organization. refused to follow the example of the Pabloites, _whom they had permitted to gain a head start. . . Naturally the Stalinists regard the return to ‘parliamentary normality’ as absolutely possible, even today. As parliamentarism collapses in coun- tries with a developed economic substructure and the whole world is shaken by the harshest class struggles history has. known, they can imagine Greece as an isle of idyllic harmony and freedom. The Pabloites say that the overthrow of the dictatorship ‘must’. mean. a more fundamental social overthrow. This ‘must’ constitutes their political shade. As though it were a question of a better choice. But the April dictatorship, the product of a deep social crisis, is not simply another form of capitalist power,: but embodies the crisis of this power. Consequently nothing can succeed it but a working-class government, erected on the shattered remains of the capitalist state. It is not a-question of the better choice, but of the only way out of the present barbarism. The struggle for this orientation is synonymous with. the struggle for the political independence of the working class, for its liberation from the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie, against all the -ideological agents of the ruling class _within the workers’ movement: the Stalinists, the Pabloites, against every preacher of class recon- ciliation who is launched in the name of the reactionary utopia of a return to parliamentarism. The Stalinists, overestimating the endurance and viability of the April dictatorship, and cor- respondingly underestimating the possibilities of struggling for its overthrow, from the first mo- ment named: it ‘fascist’. One of the features of fascism, as mankind knew it before the war in Italy and Germany, is the experiment of ‘total self-sufficiency’, on the basis of a developed industry and an immediate preparation for war, features plainly lacking in Greece. But the most important is that fascism has at its disposal a certain mass base, also acquired under conditions that never existed in Greece. One of these is that the masses have a more or less lengthy experience of parlia- mentary democracy and are relatively disillusioned - ‘by the idiocy of their parliamentary leaders. But in our country such a parliamentary democracy never existed. The junta, after five years of power and with all its propaganda against ‘unscrupulous parliamentary rule’ has not managed to acquire. the very least popuwiar’ support. But even its social: policies ‘could not bring better results. It has failed to deceive not only . the workers . but also the peasants-even for a single’ moment. - The writing off of the peasants” debts was a swindle that could. not win- sympathy for the regime among the masses of poor peasants. Not . Fourth international Spring 1973 ©

[p020] only because the ‘measure’ was crippled by the so-called ‘exceptions’, but because the real peasant problem remains in all its intensity. It is the continual deficit in the budget of the peasant family. The capitalists steal from the worker the surplus value which he produces; from the pea- sant they also steal a large part of that which corresponds to his wages. This causes debt upon debt to be accumulated and makes the peasant’s miserable life increasingly more unbearable. Under these conditions the peasant loses his faith in the land he cultivates and makes a mass migration to the cities or abroad. In the last few decades the countryside, bared of every trace of life and activity, has become deserted. The junta, having as its aim the greatest possible concentration of agricultural and indus- trial production, in preparation for the country’s entry into the European Common Market of monopolies, is taking corresponding measures. It is taxing the poor while strengthening the rich. The ‘gift’ of the peasant debts is contained in this policy. It made a gift of large amounts of loans which concerned the minority—the large farmers who use mechanical means. On the contrary, for the great majority—the poor peasants—the ‘measure’ was clearly a provocation and a swindle. The debts concerned were frozen ones which were not likely to be paid off. The current debts of that year had to be paid down to the last drachma. The peasants, the petty-bourgeois in the towns who are hit by the ‘business cycle’ tax and by every kind of curse, the state employees who are robbed by the obligatory ‘premium bond’ loans —they are all seized by a silent indignation against the junta and are waiting for the right moment for it to burst out. The Pabloite revisionists and Kastritis of our former minority, in characterizing the April re- gime, stopped short at the term ‘Bonapartism’, correct for this situation. However, they give it a content analogous to the Stalinist ‘fascism’. When the dictatorship came—Kastritis wrote— ‘the workers’ movement was in retreat,’ ‘histori- cal development left behind it the great events of the July 1965 uprising.’ The meaning of these phrases is that the working class has been smashed, that it cannot raise its head and that the junta is standing firmly on its feet. The domination of Papado- poulos is equated to nothing other than the domination of Franco in Spain. The difference . however is apparent. In Spain Franco came to ' power by defeating the working class in a civil war. In Greece the junta managed to impose itself, not because it defeated the working class, tut on the contrary because the working class was prevented by its Stalinist leadership from going as far as a decisive:encounter with the reactionary fcrces. So in our country, the ‘great events’ are not behind us, but before us. The working class and all the oppressed have the strength and the will to overthrow the rotten Papadopoulos regime. The Stalinists and Cent- April dictatorship and the tasks of Greek Trotskyists rists of every kind, after having with their policies allowed the junta to dominate, put the responsibility onto the working class and try to present it as defeated and subdued. But the facts give the lie to their slanders every day. They show that submission can be found only in their own heads. Only one year after the coup, 600,000 people flooded the streets of Athens in a political demonstration on the occasion of the funeral of G. Papandreou. Something comparable happened later with the funeral of the poet Seferis, while today the youth are demonstrating openly on the streets in defiance of the threats of the dictator- ship. Strike movements among the workers, having begun sporadically from the first year of dictatorship, multiplied and became more fear- less in 1972. The strength of the dictatorship is not to be found in itself, nor in its tanks and guns which are manned by conscripted working-class and peasant youth. The key to its five-year survival can in reality be found in the absence of a revolutionary party, matured in the struggle for the working class to hecome conscious of the irre- concilability of its opposition to the bourgeoisie and the necessity of fighting as an independent class in order to take the power and thus to propose the only possible succession to the capitalist dictatorship. There was never such a rotten dictatorship and the masses never had so many possibilities of ‘liberating themselves from its yoke. Even the unsteady Metaxas regime was more hardy than the present’ one. During that period capitalism had more generally solved its problem with fasc- ism dominating in a series of decisive centres and with the direct preparation for war. Entirely to the contrary, today the world situation is featured by the strength of the working class which paralyses imperialism. In any case, Metaxas was a political personality, an agent of the monarchy who, together with it, maintained historical ties with all the aristocratic dregs of Greek sociéty. Papadopoulos emerged out of total obscurity as a common agent of the CIA. The April regime is completely isolated and the roots of its isolation are to be found in its own history. The tardy bourgeois ‘democrats’ of the present day were preparing their own dictatorship. “We expected a coup,’ E. Vlachou said, ‘but not from them.’ ‘This dictatorship is not Greek,’ com- plains Lady Fleming, ‘it is a foreign dictatorship. It is American.’ The traditional representatives of the bour- * geoisie and the palace had given their orders to the generals of the ‘big junta’. But the ‘traitors’ (as P. Kanelopoulos called the captains who arres- ted him), lower-ranking officers of the ‘small junta’, got there first. . The king tried to get the revanche in December 1967 but failed. All the power passed to the puppets of the CIA. But in this way the colonels remained completely isolated. Papadopoulos is now forced to confess: ‘I can’t find men capable of taking over the ministries. They are all busy’!

[p021] The signs of weakness of the April regime are characteristic. The ‘democrat’ Papaspyrou, a minister in the parliamentary government of Plastiras, dared in 1951 to send N. Beloyiannis before the firing squad for his ideas. The junta confined itself to imposing a life sentence on Panagoulis for his attempt to assassinate Papadopoulos. Under this extraordinary ‘fascist’ dictatorship, where the working class is ‘on its knees’ and ‘subdued’, the Press has a field day, the publishing houses fill the market with Marxist books, and journals with socialist content are circulated freely in defiance of the junta's threats. These phenomena are for the Stalinists and Pabloite revisionists signs of the regime’s strength: ‘The junta defies its opponents’! They turn reality completely upside down to keep the only reason for the five-year survival of the regime from coming to the surface: the crisis of leadership of the working class. The fight to build a revolutionary leadership of the working class is today the only real fight against the dictatorship. The revolutionary preparation of the working class and its concentration around its revolution- ary leadership means a struggle for its emanci- pation from the influence of bourgeois ideology whose main form within the Greek working class movement is Stalinism. This is not a theoretical aphorism but has a very concrete content. Throughout recent Greek his- tory the CPG has appeared as the main prop of the capitalist regime. The Greek bourgeoisie in its struggle for power did not create a particular new philosophy. The reason is not only its economic backwardness and its parasitic nature within its world surroundings The historical conditions, the epoch in which it rose to power, were conditions of imperialist decay. Bourgeois philosophy had been transformed everywhere into its opposite: from Enlighten- ment, into reaction and obscurantism. The Greek bourgeoisie, proceeding always through compro- mizes with the oligarchy, never fought against feudal ideology and permitted the most rusty idealism to reign in neo-Greek society. Taking pieces from already rotten European bourgeois ideas, adjusting them to the most sterile scholas- ticism and painting them with the worst medieval colours, the Greek bourgeoisie created an_ in- determinate and _ bastard fabrication without identity: an abortion of bourgeois ideology. The idealist way of thought of the Greek bcurgeoisie is none other than formalism. In its historic journey, full of compromises with the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie found itself forced to use, for the ideological defence of its interests, schemata bcrrowed from other countries and other epcchs and to try to fit the content of its own interests into them. Just as in its policies it re- fused to come into direct revolutionary conflict with the ‘aristocracy’, so in its way of thought it was seized by a corresponding conservatism. Instead of living ideological struggle it counter- posed to the ‘aristocracy’ its borrowed schemata, ‘which it had raised to super-historical categories. — 18 In any case its compromise with the ‘aristocracy’ led it to a mixture of bourgeois schemata with Byzantine mysticism, the Byzantine great idea and ancestor-worship. In 1918, when the material conditions of the socialist revolution had already been formed, in- cited to save whatever it had won earlier from the destruction of imperialist war, the Greek prole- tariat through its most advanced elements made a great qualitative leap by founding its first party, the SEKE which was later renamed KKE (CPG). The SEKE came out of a fog of theoretical primitiveness. As in other backward countries, the revolutionary wing and the base of the party embraced Bolshevism ‘not through its theoretical content, which still remained unassimilated and unelaborated. but through its liberating breath of life’. For this reason, while with the fighting power given to them by the revolutionary epoch they forced the right-wingers to retreat, on the other hand with their theoretical inadequacies they were incapable of disarming ideologically the reformists and peasant socialists who had studied in Europe. Through its theoretical primitiveness Greek communism yielded easily to the formalist way of thought of the Greek ruling class. In the Bolshevik October it saw the Great Canon, a supra-historical form which only needed to be copied. Formalism was never fought within the ranks of the party. The struggle for dialectical mateiial- ism as the Marxist theory of knowledge never took place. Only much later, outside the territory of the Stalinized CPG, P. Pouliopoulos, drawing the first conclusions about the roots of the theoretical weaknesses of Greek communism, was able to begin a fight for Marxism against the ‘schematic stone blocks’ which, as he said, filled the heads of Greek communists. The revolutionary vanguard in Greece was cap- able of making a correct choice between the Second and Third Internationals. But the labour party of the Greek proletariat, in adhering to the Communist International and in changing its name to CPG, dragged along with it the old bourgeois way of thought, and so it was quickly obliged to submit to Stalinist degeneration. After the dissolution of liberalism, the CPG became a refuge for the ‘implacable’ middle-class radicals. But before the middle-class- ‘radicals’ adhered to the CPG, the CPG had: adhered to them politically. In 1934 the 6th Plenum of the CC of the party replaced even formally . the socialist strategy of the party with bourgeois democratic strategy. The task of the proletariat was moreover the completion of the supposedly half-finished democratic revolution and not the setting up of its own power. The programme of middle-class ‘radicalism’, which ignored the nature of the imperialist epoch, became the programme of the proletarian party, as D. Glinos became a theoretician of Stalinism from an _ ideologist of Venizelism. - As the bearer of bourgeois ideas and pro- gramme, the CPG. consciously led. the .working class to destruction in the period 1943-1949, The middle-class radicals, suckled on fear and Fourth International Spring 1973

[p022] hatred of the proletarian revolution, while they threw the king out the door they brought him in again through the window. (Pangalos, Kondylis.) The CPG, influenced by the formalism and anti- theoretical stand of the Greek ruling class, was inoculated with this cowardly and counterfeit radicalism. The Stalinists not only erased every suspicion of socialism from their policies, but also learned to retreat before the most elementary democratic demands. In the summer of 1965, at the moment when the masses spontaneously inundated the streets for 80 days, with the slogan ‘down with the monarchy’, the EDA removed from its programme the demand for a republic. Trotskyism in Greece, born and developed in the struggle against Stalinism, in the final analysis was fighting this counterfeit middle-class radical- ism whose agents in the workers’ movement were the Stalinists. During the fascist occupation the Trotskyist movement underwent severe trials. Its best and most implacable cadres were annihilated by the fascists and Stalinists. Pabloism, which later easily dominated because of these catastrophes, represented the negation of the whole bloody tra- dition of battles against middle-class radicalism for the political independence of the working class and the socialist orientation of its struggle. But the struggle against Stalinism must above all be a struggle for Marxism, against formalism and against its antipodes, activism and enmity towards theory. Stalinism, -having dominated on the basis of the defeats of the working-class movement which it provoked before the war and after in the civil war, is torn asunder today by the deepest crisis which reflects the crisis ‘of capitalism itself. The class struggle in the present period, being a life and death conflict and not a customary opposition of material interests, does not permit the Stalinists to play their treacherous role without coming into sharp opposition with the working class and being smashed into a thousand pieces. The split in the CPG has behind it this deep cause. For this very reason no power can re-establish its old cohesion. In defence of the capitalist system in the moments of its greatest death agony, Stalinism moves in an orbit falling completely into line with the bourgeoisie in every country. This tendency, originally expressed in the CPG by Apostolou, and leter by Partsalidis, Drakopoulos, Brillakis and Theodorakis, was manifested after the dictator- ship in an open split. This right-wing faction, proclaiming its inde- pendence from Moscow and equality among the Communist Parties, covered up its real intentions which were unlimited submission to the needs of the local bourgeoisie and of imperialism. Already Theodorakis, as the representative of the Bureau of the Interior, has stated: ‘We are determined to remain in the western camp’. Before the coup, at the Ist Congress of the Lambrakis Youth, Theodorakis asked for organizational dissolution into the Centre Union—EDIN youth movement. Now, via the Patriotic Front, they have dissolved themselves politically into the camp of the bour- geoisie. To. be certain, this dissolution has its April dictatorship and the tasks of Greek Trotskyists limits and cannot proceed beyond the point which allows them to exert their influence on the work- ing class. Originally the Partsalidis faction with the deceptive slogan of ‘renovation’ cheated a whole group of fighters. Parallel to this, in criticizing from a liberal standpoint the organizational monolithism of the CPG, they covered up the fact that this was nothing but the consequence of the Stalinist political regime. Within their ranks they unhesitatingly strangled every left-wing criticism. Their real face was not long.in revealing itself from every standpoint. Whatever healthy elements they had disappeared. What remained was mainly the middle-class intelligentsia which accumulated on the ‘left’ especially after the civil war. Thus the fact that the only possible renovation for the Greek workers’ movement is the building of a new revolutionary party was verified. The right-wing Partsalidis faction must be fought as a faction totally enslaved to the needs of the bourgeoisie and of imperialism. Naturally, the Partsalidists do not have a monopoly on this enslavement. Their. policies are none other than the policies of the Kolliyiannis faction, drawn out to their last consequence. Smashed to bits and in general ill-repute, Stalinism nevertheless remains the main opponent of Marxism within the working-class movement. The working class has learned to be suspicious of Stalinism, but has not consciously surpassed it. Not only because Stalinism has longstanding his- torical ties with the working-class movement, but mainly because as a reflection of bourgeois ideas its base is reproduced continually on a mass scale from the very conditions of bourgeois rule. Thus Stalinism cannot be surpassed except in the con- scious struggle for Marxism and the measure of the accomplishment of this task is the building of the revolutionary party. The Pabloite revisionists and Kastritis of our former minority, setting out from the fact of the crisis and degeneration of Stalinism, were in a hurry to write its obituary and thus to deny the vital significance of continuing the struggle against it for building the revolutionary party. This sophistic conception of Stalinism, the banner of all the Greek centrist groups today, comes at a time when the Stalinists are determined to advance to the biggest and most catastrophic betrayals in their history. While imperialism is preparing for its hardest blows against the working class, the Stalinists par- ticipate in this preparation, undertaking to pull the chestnuts out of the fire in every corner of the world: in Vietnam, the Middle East, in Cyprus, everywhere. Even in the American presidential election, Moscow has openly supported the can- didacy of Nixon. After the visits of the latter to Peking and Moscow, Stalinist treachery has advanced to a new level. In Greece these new treacherous policies are going to be expressed with an increasingly more open acceptance of the dictatorial regime. Econ- omic and democratic demands are put forward by the Stalinists, not as means towards a general mobilization for the overthrow of the junta, but 9

[p023] in the spirit of dressing it up. As the masses are now moving to acts of open opposition to the regime, Trotskyists must inten- sify and not weaken in any way their struggle against Stalinism. Building the revolutionary party in Greece can only mean building the section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The CIPG (Pabloite) has positively been transformed into a centrist organ for the liquidation of Trotskyism into Stalinism and the various middle-class groups. The first attempts to liquidate Trotskyism appeared via the policy of ‘entrism’. According to Pablo, the post-war working class could not take a single step without bureaucratic crutches. The Communist Parties which had a mass base at their disposal (one such party was the CPG) could, under the pressure of the masses, go towards the left and play a centrist role, leading the working class in the struggle for power. The task of the Trotskyists was, according to Pablo, the strategy of ‘entrism’, that is, liquidation into the Com- munist Parties to aid their leftward differentia- tion. In Greece ‘entrism’ was launched as a tactic for building the independent party: the short cut. But what this policy represented and what the CIPG itself represented could be assessed only from an international viewpoint. Within the frame- work of what Pabloism represented as an inter- national current. In the final analysis it had to be assessed from the standpoint of the method behind the policy of ‘entrism’. The ‘riddles’ for the CIPG were solved in 1965. The Pabloites had created strong factions in all the local branches of the Lambrakis Youth. When the July crisis broke out, this youth came into flagrant opposition with its conservative Stalinist leadership. The mass expulsions and departures began. If anyone wanted to create an independent organization, this was the most favourable moment. But the Lambrakis Youth became emaciated and the Pabloites stayed where they were, the most faithful water-carriers of the Stalinist leadership. At this point the nature of the CIPG became clear. Their ‘entrism’ was not the way to building an independent leadership but a way to dis- solving it. At this stage, every hesitation to take up in Greece the struggle of the International Com- mittee against Pabloite revisionism was equiva- lent to a rejection of the task of defending the foundations of the Fourth International and the whole revolutionary tradition of the movement. _ After ‘the coup, the. Pabloites went even fur- ther. The ‘strategy of the Popular Front (Demo- cratic Committees of Resistance—DCR) came to replace the strategy of ‘entrism’. Bombs became their tactics, their flag the blue and white. Kastritis of our former minority again became their opposition. Under conditions where the working class was united behind its Stalinist leadership, he counterposed the United Class Front to the Pabloite ‘entrism’. To their DCR again he counterposed the class front. The front also became the title of his ‘organization’ for everyday use. Such an opposition makes the party itself superfluous. In both cases, the ‘fronts’ come first, while the revolutionary party comes second and tired out. But in every case this means transferring the struggle against Stalinism for Marxism to secon- dary importance. The Pabloites’ popular front policy and their bombing tactics are a continuation and a con- sequence of a sSuper-reactionary assessment of the April dictatorship which is based on Mandel’s theory of ‘neo-capitalism’ and presupposes the total rejection of Marxism. In the April dictatorship the Pabloites discern a progressive historical character. For us—they say—‘the historical role of the dictatorship was the accomplishment of the social “progress”, the realization by force, even within the bourgeoisie itself, of industrialization and also of the unifi- cation of foreign and Greek capital, Greece’s entry into the world market of commodities and capital.’ (‘Apology of a dictatorship— Apology of a Pesistance’—published in the newspaper Breche, of the Swiss section of the United Secretariat, May 1972). . Ascribing a ‘progressive historical role to the April dictatorship—something even the worst Stalinists did not dare to do—this can be done only by a movement which has long since passed into the service of the bourgeoisie. Behind such a characterization of the dictatorship one can easily discern Mandel’s theory of ‘neo-capital- ism’. Under its prism a military dictatorship and a monopolist policy dictated by the death agony of capitalism are transformed into a new... industrial revolution, the dictators’ gang into a new Restoration movement, Constantine into a modern Othon, Pattakos into a Makroyiannis. modern Othon, Pattakos into a Makroyiannis, the black colonels into black horsemen, the coup into a revolution, reaction into progress. And . finally, the historic necessity of socialism into a question of moral order. On the basis of such a conception of the dic- tatorship and of capitalism, the proletariat, as the only revolutionary class, as well as the pro- letarian methods of struggle, are evaded. Instead of a revolutionary movement, a movement of middle-class protest is built. Instead of being defended, Marxism is fought. The working class is betrayed. Only one relationship is possible between Trotskyism and Pabloism: conflict! And _ this conflict takes on a more decisive importance for the building of the revolutionary party as Pabloism, covered by ‘left’ phrases and references to the names of Lenin and Trotsky, the moment the hereditary Stalinist leadership collapses, comes to sow a new confusion and to play the role of the left prop of Stalinism by putting barriers in the path of the working class towards Marxism. For the first time in the history of the Greek working-class movement very favourable con- ditions have been created for building the revo- lutionary party in the struggle to smash Stalin- Fourth International Spring 1973

[p024] ism and Pabloite revisionism through the strug- gles of the working class. The manifestations of the crisis of capitalism in. Greece are immediate and explosive, no less than anywhere else. The dependence of the Greek bourgeoisie on the USA and the dollar was a factor of relative political stability as long as the international role of the dollar was to give the monetary basis to an inflationary policy of imperialism. But after Nixon’s. measures, what resembled a benediction is now revealed as a curse. The drachma, tied to the dollar, is collaps- ing along with it. For a country whose exports represent only 25 per cent of imports, this is not an advantage, but sharpens even more the problems of the bourgeoisie. The prices of imported goods, of which 65 per cent come from W. Europe, are now much higher and continue on their upward path. The junta ascribes the rise in the cost of living to ‘frauds’ and ‘speculators’. But speculation is created from its very attempts to conserve the level of prices with police price control measures. Because of the geographical position of the -ccuntry and certain historical coincidences, the Greek bourgeoisie is forced to share the orienta- tions of European, and especially British, imperial- ism. But having been forced since 1947 to place itself under American domination, in order to carry out the civil war, now it has found itself between the crushing stones of the competition between America and Europe. On the other hand; the European imperialists are hesitant and sparing in their help to the Greek bourgeoisie, when the country is governed by a junta which is directly managed by the American CIA. Under these conditions, the living standards of the masses became suddenly worse during last year. This brought the idea of trade union organization to life again within the working class. Originally a movement spread to free the student organizations from the grip of the junta. The barriers of fear began to be broken down. -The student mobilizations, demonstrations and strikes must not be interpreted narrowly as some- thing that happens simply in the sphere of the student youth. The students found themselves more prepared than the workers, mainly because ‘they are concentrated en masse in the schools and universities, but their mobilizations reflect deeper changes which have already taken place in the working masses. At the present stage there is an urgent need for political and organizational preparation for intervention in the struggles of the masses for their immediate demands. This means prepara- tion for intervention in the legal trade unions. Although they are controlled by the junta, the struggle of the working class for its immediate demands against the junta, will initially go through such traditional forms. In the past five years the conditions of ille- gality inevitably strengthened the political con- servatism of the vanguard. In preparation for intervention in’ the':mass struggles of the imme- diate future, fighting this conservatism has very great importance. - - All the national and international conditions have changed. In politics, whatever seemed to be realism yesterday, now becomes conservatism. In our country the, youth were the first to show their political and physical courage. In the pre- paration of the vanguard the most crucial task is to conceive and become conscious of this change. After five years: of dictatorship, during which living standards: were forced down, and due to the latest rise -in- prices, the problems of the working class are’ so pressing that they cannot wait for the struggle to purge the hirelings of the junta from the organizations. First in some factories and later in institutions of higher learn- ing strikes began led by Strike Committees. In this phase Trotskyists must fight for such Com- mittees, professionally formed, as stable guiding organs in the workers’ struggles for their demands and for clearing out the trade union organizations. Against every attempt by the Stalinists to reduce the movement into protests for dress- ing up the dictatorship, Trotskyists must fight for leadership against Stalinist treachery through the most elementary struggles of the working class. Only in these struggles to win the leader- ship of the fight for the economic and demo- cratic demands of the working class, for the overthrow of the dictatorship and the setting up of a workers’ government with the alliance of the peasants (dictatorship of the proletariat), ‘can Trotskyists free the working class from the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie and of its Stalinist agents and draw it together in the revolutionary party. Within this framework, the challenge to the: Stalinists (Kolliyiannis faction), directed systematically, ‘break from the bour- geoisie, fight for the independent interests of the working class, demand the power with a socialist programme’, can. play a great educational role. But above all, emphasis is placed on the need to fill the gap which is a feature of the whole of recent Greek history, the lack of a really _ Marxist party” cf the working class. To the degree to which this party is built—and for this today we have all the possibilities in the world -—the struggles of the working class acquire a really revolutionary content and the conditions for workers’ power are fulfilled, the only power capable of putting an end to today’s barbarism. eel April dictatorship and the tasks of Greek Trotskyists 21

[p025] Revolution $3.95 Invaivable collection of articles, many never published before in English, records Trotsky’s struggle to construct.a Marxist leadership in Spain during the period from the fall of the monarchy to the defeat of the working class by Franco. Of critical importance to revolutionaries today are Trotsky’s ar- ticles on the tasks posed to Marxists during the growth of the "mass movement of workers in the pre-revolutionary period before 1936, the role of Soviets, syndicalism, and Stalinism. includes correspondence with the centrist Andres Nin. Available From: Labor Publications 135 West 14th St. New York, N. Y. 10011 Writings by Leon Trotsky Germany JT d2 $3.45 This collection of Trotsky’s writings—which includes ‘’The Key to the International Situation,” ‘‘What Next?” and “The Only Road’’—is imperative for an understanding of Marxism versus Stalinism. Trotsky fought at every point within the communist movement in this vital period for a united front of social democratic workers and communist workers to defeat the fascists while the bureaucracy under Stalin—with the aid of Thalmann in Germany—pursued a disastrous policy of ultra-leftism during the ‘‘Third Period’’ which isolated the communists from the masses of workers and allowed Hitler to seize power. With every turn of the Stalinists and centritst dur- ing 1931 and 1932, Trotsky sharpened his grasp of dialectical materialism, understanding that Germany was the crux of the European revolution. It was out of the struggle against Stalinism contained in these writings that Trotsky was able to base the Fourth International. REVOLUTION - 1931-39)