The class struggle in Greece (part two): 1963 – a new stage

In last week's article we outlined the development of the working class and the capitalist class in Greece since the end of the Civil War in 1949. 1963 marked a new stage in the development of the struggle between these classes. BY 1963 EMIGRATION from Greece was running at 100,000 a year (15,000 higher than the live births per year). Combined with some industrial growth this cut down unemployment and even created a shortage of unskilled workers in some sectors. Large numbers of workers retained left-wing political traditions, while many others were newly arrived from the villages and had not even joined the unions.

But the workers began to feel their strength again because of the demand for labour power, even though the unions were controlled by police agents and their right-wing supporters.

In the absence of organised mass-meetings or demonstrations by their own organisations, the workers attended the rallies called by the Liberals to further the demand for free elections.

But another development was more significant. Once it had been decided to call a General Election November 1963, as polling-day approached there was a great increase in the strike rate. 1963 showed a 16 per cent increase over 1962, and after the election victory of the Liberals in November there was a steep decline for six months.

It was after this lull that the Stalinists launched a campaign for free elections in the trade unions. The first demonstration they called brought a response from over 100,000 workers.

When the Stalinists tried to turn the rally into a • friendly parley with the Liberal Minister of Labour, they were shouted down. The workers present defended the Trotskyists against the physical attacks on them by Stalinist stewards.

STRIKE CHANGE This demonstration was followed by important changes in the nature of strikes in Greek industry. Of the strikes taking place in 1964 and 1965, one third lasted from 12 to 30 days, a great change from the short-lived disputes typical of the earlier period.

More than half the strikes were successful. Not only that: more and more strikes were in defence of union rights and not only for wages.

Again, in many strikes in the provinces, local peasants joined in the demonstrations of striking workers. In more and more cases the Stalinists clashed with strikers advising them to avoid militancy. Repeatedly strikes turned into demonstrations in the streets.

against the long period dominated by the petty bourgeoisie, it is now the workers who come on to the centre of the stage of struggle. This brings the poorer peasants closer to them.

On the other hand, Papandreou drew behind him large sections of the better-off peasants, the town bourgeoisie and the main body of students.

The Stalinists, completely subordinated to them, told the masses that reactionary measures of the Papandreou government were perpetrated only by particular right-wing individuals in the anvernment or in Papandreou's party. They argued that peaceful

The struggle against revisionism and for the continuity of the revolutionary movement, which has been fought long and hard in Greece as in the other sections of the International Committee, prepares us to take these opportunities.

Given these international perspectives, and basing ourselves on the analysis of the strength of the opposed classes, we should be in a position to make more precise the analysis of the stormy political events of the last few years and thus to arrive at a sharper understanding of the immediate tasks before Trotskyists in Greece.

In 1961 Greece became an associate member of the European Common Market. All the capitalist parties welcomed the move as providing export markets for agricultural products, and also attracting more foreign capital into Greece.

But at the same time a great uneasiness prevailed in capitalist circles. Unless they were able to change the pattern of internal investment from parasitical to industrial channels by 'modernising' industry then there was every danger of foreign capital completely swamping the native bourgeoisie.

The modernisation of certain sectors of agriculture would equip them to export to the European countries, and thus help the whole internal market. But would not the foreign investors, quicker off the mark, reap the benefits?

Further, the modernisation vine and olive cultivation threatened the disappearance of vast numbers of small peasant cultivators and the turning upsidedown of the class relations upon which capitalist "stability' depended.* These were the big problems underlying the splits within the Greek ruling class in recent years, all of them making even more difficult than ever the problem of dealing with the working class, wondering if its political revolutionary spirit would be reborn as the Civil War defeat receded into history.

As early as 1952 Winston Churchill had advised the Greek bourgeoisie to abandon the policy of 100 per cent repression, to give up their dominating fear of Communism. But the Greek bourgeois regarded this as premature.

Churchill understood better than they the international role of Stalinism.

And yet in another sense they were more right than he was, for it was the working class which had to be taken into account in the long run, and not only their Stalinist leaders, however historically important their betrayals: "The laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus' in the words of the Transitional Programme.

It was in the years following entry into the Common Market particularly that the Greek capitalists recognised the vital portance to them of the Stalinists, who, although banned under laws persisting since the Civil War, are permitted to work through the popular front EDA and other legal organisations. These Stalinists serve to separate the great militancy of the workers in the factories from the political crises and the 'struggle for democracy' This separation of economic struggles from politics is a line of the Stalinists in every country, as was seen particularly in the seamen's strike of 1966 Britain.

WEAK LINK

The international advisers of the Greek capitalists have no such illusions and they pay constant attention to the problem of economic and political stability of this very weak link in the chain of world capitalism.

For example in 1964, when the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) was consulted by the Greek government about the demands then current for democratisation of the unions, Spaak, the Belgian social-democrat, said on behalf of International Confederation of Free Trade Unions that there should be no relaxation of the police control of trade union organisations.

In 1965 the Common Market's economic advisers counselled deflationary policies to avoid the balance of payments crisis which was building up and drew attention to the measures this would require against the resistance of the working class. They understood very well that Greece had been drawn into the network of political and economic problems now facing every capitalist power.

The first hesitant steps of the Greek capitalists to 'get in on the act of the post-war expansion of capitalist production took them headlong into the plunge of this same international capitalism into the contradictions between national economies and international problems which has recently been expressed particuJarly in the 'liquidity' and 'inflation' crises.

All the accumulated class hatreds and the unresolved problems of Greek society since the Second World War were thrown into the melting pot by this development.

Having hesitate \ so long they had finally decid d-forced economic realities-to face risking the reappearance of the working class on the political scene. This came just at a time when all the elements were accumulating for the radicalisation of that class on a higher level internationally, and especially among the youth, from whom the revolutionary forces always derive their main strength.

Here then are the clues to the politics of the last six years, and to the perspectives of the Fourth International in Greece.

MILITANCY

Since 1961 growing militancy among the youth in the towns has been obvious to everyone. In 1963 the police murder of Lambrakis brought over 200,000 to his funeral—a massive political demonstration.

Against the background of this militancy of the youth and of the growing wave of strikes, the Stalinists in the EDA strove to channel everything behind the Liberals' demand for free elections. For this reason they sabotaged militant actions by the youth and the workers.

The Stalinists played another card in diverting this youth militancy: they set up the 'Lambrakis youth' as a "broad-left' movement without commitment to a single party or class. Very soon tnis organisation had 20-30,000 members, and made rapid strides in the impoverished youth of the peasant villages.

The Papandreou government elected at the end of 1963 announced better guaranteed prices to the peasants, limits to police repression and a few 'democratic concessions.

But these were sops to the peasants and the petty bourgeois behind which an attack on the working class was prepared by isolating it.

began the towns, using their tractors as weapons. They gained the

em be Healy taimen. o Michae Bandı