(Militant No. 240, 24 January 1975, p. 4-5)
By Peter Taaffe
The biggest demonstrations in the history of Greece, the referendum which gave the thumbs down to the monarchy by a margin of more than two to one, the clamour for the former dictators and their accomplices to be punished; this is the situation in Greece following the collapse of the junta in July of last year.
The grandiose events in Portugal quite rightly captured the imagination of the politically aware workers in Britain. But no less spectacular has been the entry onto the scene of the Greek working class as it threw off the chains of the seven year old dictatorship.
The mass movement in Greece undoubtedly lacks the ‘carnival’ atmosphere of the Portuguese Revolution. But the Greek workers and peasants have had too many ‘carnivals’ – too many false dawns – followed by terrible defeats in the last thirty years. They therefore approach the situation following the overthrow of the dictatorship perhaps in a more restrained fashion than their Portuguese brothers, but no less determined to see that the dictatorship will never return.
This tenacious mood of the Greek workers was revealed in the magnificent demonstration in Athens on 24th November to commemorate the victims of the Polytechnic massacre one year before.
Even older workers could not remember a bigger demonstration. Out of a population of just less than 3 million in the Athens area, 1 million people participated in the demonstration! This alone is an indication of the stormy period which has opened up in Greece.
In fact, an era of revolution was ushered in by the overthrow of the junta in much the same way as the overthrow of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain and the abdication of King Alfonso marked the beginning of the Spanish Revolution of 1931-37.
And as in Spain, where the Young Socialists with correct leadership could have been a decisive force, a key role in assuring victory to the working class in the coming struggles in Greece could be played by the youth who have been wakened into political activity by the struggle against the junta and the last turbulent six months since it was overthrown. In particular the youth of the newly formed Socialist Party (PASOK) can be decisive in re-arming the Greek working class for the big battles to come. A large youth movement adhering to PASOK has already taken shape: the PASOK student movement received the biggest share of the votes in the university elections. The students are always a barometer of the mood in society as a whole. If this youth can absorb the lessons of the past defeats and work out a clear Marxist programme they can play a crucial role in guaranteeing victory for the Greek Revolution which has now begun.
Pauses
The Revolution will not develop in a straight line. There will be periods when the masses will drive forward and there will be pauses when the working class will take stock of the situation. But the present phase of the Greek Revolution is one where the masses are on the offensive, determined to root out the last vestiges of the dictatorship and at the same time re-coup what they lost during the 7 years of tyranny and persecution. But if the masses are moving forward how then is it possible for Karamanlis – the darling of the ‘democratic right’ – to be returned with 54% of the vote in the November parliamentary elections?
His last period of power, between 1955-63 was marked by violence and persecution of the Greek Labour Movement – the assassination of the left wing deputy Lambrakis in 1963 – and the use of electoral fraud to keep himself in power. George Papadopoulos – the future dictator – was one of his lieutenants who participated at this time in the election fiddle.
Karamanlis had stored up so much opposition and hatred that in 1963 he was forced to flee the country with a forged passport!
But one of the effects of fascism, or a military dictatorship which attempts to use the methods of fascism – as existed in Greece following the coup of 1967 – is the fostering of enormous illusions amongst the workers in the former ‘democratic’ regime and ‘democratic’ capitalist politicians. This was particularly the case with the new generation who did not have the direct experience of Karamanlis and his like, but it was also true of the older generation as well who contrasted the iron heel of dictatorship to the period immediately before which seemed like paradise by comparison. Only a campaign by the leaders of the workers’ organisations against the dictatorship which linked the struggle for democratic rights – rights to strike, free assembly etc. – with the idea of the socialist transformation of Greece would have dispensed these illusions which existed.
No real attempt was made to show that it was these worthies who had laid the basis for the dictatorship. Nor was it pointed out that only the working class of all the classes in society, is prepared to defend democratic rights. And when they are won the only lasting guarantee that these rights will be maintained, lies in establishing a workers democracy.
On the contrary by organising ‘National Liberation Fronts’ and ‘Broad Alliances of Democratic Forces’ etc., the leaders of the workers organisations re-enforced these illusions. This was particularly the case with the tops of the two wings of the ‘Communist Party’. The ground was thus prepared for the capitalists to dust off Karamanlis and refurbish his image as a ‘democrat’ for use once the dictatorship had run out of steam.
If the leaders of the workers’ organisations had prepared their followers for the overthrow of the Junta it would have been entirely possible to pass from dictatorship to a socialist Greece.
The army tops understood the danger which was posed to them and their system at the time of the Junta’s collapse. As soon as it was announced that the Junta had resigned the officer caste almost to a man locked themselves in their quarters fearing immediate arrest by the rank and file soldiers!
Athens also witnessed some of the biggest demonstrations since 1944. It was then that Giscard d’Estaing, obviously in collusion with imperialism as a whole, used his own private aircraft to rush Karamanlis to Greece. The Greek capitalists who had supported and tolerated the Junta for 7 years were thus able to use Karamanlis to deflect the anger of the masses away from themselves to a handful of dictators.
“Me or Chaos”
Karamanlis then used the elections to ratify his own position. Borrowing the techniques of his mentor De Gaulle – whose favourite theme was “Me or Chaos” – he threatened the Greek people with the return of the tanks unless he was given power.
And just to make sure that he got a majority he refused to give the vote to the 18 year olds, the very section which spilled its blood in the fight against the dictatorship while Karamanlis languished in his comfortable Paris exile! He also disenfranchised the foreign workers who naturally lean towards the workers organisations.
But none of this trickery would have worked if the leaders of the workers’ organisations would have countered this with a class programme and propaganda. This would have shown to the working class and peasantry that in the long run it is only the socialist transformation of Greece which can prevent the return of the tanks.
The ground for this could and should be prepared now by fraternisation with the troops at the same time advancing the demand for trade union and other democratic rights for the soldiers, the elections of officers from the ranks etc. This approach would undoubtedly evoke tremendous support from the rank and file soldiers.
Soldiers
By tearing the ranks of the army away from the clutches of the officer caste and bringing them under the influence of the Labour movement the reserves of reaction can be completely undermined. But in the long run the only real guarantee of preventing another coup is the arming of the working class and their mobilisation on a Marxist programme.
The Greek working class – while the experiences of the dictatorship are still fresh – must be shown this in the clearest fashion. The notion that Karamanlis is a safeguard against a coup is a pernicious fairy tale. At the moment the reserves of reaction are too weak to aim a blow against the Labour movement.
The election itself showed this. The open supporters of the former dictatorship the National Democratic Union, obtained less than 1% of the vote! Any attempt at a coup at this stage would be crushed by the masses. If the reaction was foolish enough to try another coup it would meet with the same fate as Spinola’s ill-fated coup in Portugal or the attempted uprising of General Sanjurjo in Spain in 1932. The latter event was put down by the workers under revolutionary slogans and acted as a spur to the revolution. The relationship of forces is decisively in favour of the working class at this stage.
This has been shown by the strikes and demonstrations which have begin following the election. Rather than being cowed by Karamanlis’ victory the masses have moved forward to improve their conditions and begun to set up Trade Unions independent from the state.
Strikes
Even a prominent capitalist journal said in December…
“The mood of the working class is to ask for increases in wages and salaries. This mood will provoke a wave of strikes. The cost of living is the most serious thing.”
The strike of workers at Olympic Airways is a sign of things to come. This strike was provoked by the millionaire Onassis under whose ownership the company has been brought to the brink of ruin. Now he wants the working class to pay. He attempted to sack the workforce of 7,500 who have fought back.
The Irish Times of Friday, 17 January, reported that the Karamanlis Government had been forced to step in, and that the company was to be taken over. At the same time Onassis is demanding and – according to the report – going to get, compensation of something like £25 million! And that compensation will come out of the pockets of the Greek working class.
The Greek workers will not tolerate the conditions which existed under the junta – a six day, forty eight hour working week and average wages for skilled workers of little more than £20 a week. Inflation is also officially expected to be 25% this year but is more likely to be over 30%. But the enfeebled Greek capitalism is incapable of meeting the demands of the workers. Its problems will be compounded this year by the slowing down of the German, French and other European economies which will stop emigration and probably mean the return to Greece of many of the ‘guest workers’ already in those countries.
This has been expressed in action by Karamanlis. During the election he promised to “protect the working class and restrain the excesses of the wealthy.” Those bold words have given way to the announcement that 1975 will be a “year of austerity” which will naturally fall on the shoulders of the workers and peasants. This has already within months of the election provoked a mood of discontent amongst the workers and the middle class.
One middle class woman grumbled when Karamanlis announced his measures in December … “We were waiting to loosen our belts now he wants to tighten it!”
And the anger of the masses has been re-enforced by the kindly treatment meted out to the dictators and the attempt of Karamanlis to impose a semi dictatorial constitution on the Greek people. The exile of Papadopoulos and Pattakos, the imprisonment of Ioannidis, the butcher responsible for the Polytechnic massacre, and the announcement that they will be brought to trial is merely an attempt to appease the workers and peasants.
Numerous torturers have gone scot free; thousands of officers who collaborated with the colonels have immunity from arrest and punishment under Karamanlis. On the contrary officers arrested for complicity in acts of torture have been freed! Thus, the Observer on 22nd December reported that 30 officers known to have been implicated in tortures were recently reinstated. And a student was recently pulled into a police station, beaten up and tortured by the police – this 8 months after the dictatorship and its methods are supposed to have been suppressed! Karamanlis pleads that the attitude of the Greek people to the torturers should not be one of revenge. This only means that the workers should allow the torturers and their accomplices to go free in order that these scum can take their revenge on the workers when conditions are more favourable to them!
The refusal of Karamanlis to take action on this issue is not accidental. With his new ‘Republican’ credentials he is acting no differently than the Spanish Republicans did during the Revolution. Leon Trotsky explained that the refusal of these ‘democrats’ to take action against the fascist officers who were planning their coup was rooted in their class position.
They defended private property against the demands of the workers. But the ultimate defence of private property is the capitalist state which in the final analysis can be reduced to ‘armed bodies of men’ – the army, police, prisons etc. And the officer caste are the decisive factor in controlling the army. They are the ‘guards of capital’ without which capitalism would be incapable of maintaining itself for a single day. The Spanish Revolution dared not touch the officer corps because this would have undermined capitalism itself upon which they rested.
So too with Karamanlis. To make scapegoats of one or two dictators, to sack a few hundred or so of the most reactionary officers is to leave things basically as they were before. Even to eliminate all those directly involved with torture would not ensure the Greek working class against a repetition of 1967.
After all, it is now common knowledge in Greece that the King and the Generals were preparing to forcibly seize power – with the collaboration of 99% the officer corps – when the colonels pre-empted them with their coup!
As more and more details of the tortures have been revealed and Karamanlis is shown to want to avoid punishing all those responsible for the murders and tortures so the anger and suspicions of the Greek working class has grown.
Karamanlis has reinforced this feeling with the announcement of his proposed new Constitution. This document, incorporating some of the features of De Gaulle’s constitution, gives semi-Bonapartist powers to a President (and Karamanlis sees himself in this role) who will have the right to appoint and to dismiss the Prime Minister and veto Government legislation. It also originally prohibited ‘political strikes’, proposed the use of ‘administrative exile’, denied the vote to the 18-21 years old and suggested draconian ‘emergency powers’ which can be used by the President and his Government.
Having thrown overboard one dictatorship the Greek working class are asked to approve dictatorial powers which will be used to stymie all serious attempts to advance their position and provide the capitalists with powers to install a new Junta when it proves necessary.
Andreas Papandreou the leader of PASOK has quite correctly denounced this constitution… “We refuse to take part in procedures leading to a new-style of totalitarian rule under a parliamentary cloak” [Times 19.11.74]
Constitution
But it is not sufficient just to make parliamentary speeches. The mass of the workers will still be looking for a way forward to prevent Karamanlis proceeding to introduce his constitution. One worker commenting to a Guardian reporter probably summed up the feelings of those taken in by Karamanlis in the November elections… “This is the first and the last time that I vote for Karamanlis” [23rd November].
Without a clear lead from the workers’ parties they were seduced into voting for Karamanlis by the argument that his coming to power was a guarantee against another dictatorship. They will now begin to question Karamanlis’ intentions. And if the workers organisations conduct a campaign of mass meetings and demonstrations around the demand for new elections this would find an enormous echo amongst the workers and the middle class.
The anger of the masses is already reflected in the Government’s partial retreat on some aspects of the Constitution. Karamanlis has been forced to drop the outlawing of ‘political strikes’ and other restrictions on democratic rights. He has also left open the decision on whether or not the 18 year olds should have the right to vote.
But this Parliament is a fraud, brought about by trickery under the electoral procedure laid down by the colonels when they were in power! It has no right to decide on any of the burning problems facing Greece. For new elections! For a workers’ government – a PASOK/CP Government – to deal with the issues of the trade unions, wages, the working week, the extension of the right to vote to the 18-21 year olds, full democratic rights for servicemen.
If this demand is energetically advanced by PASOK and linked to a clear socialist programme there is no doubt that it could rally behind itself the overwhelming majority of the workers and peasants.
Socialism
In response to the radicalisation of Greek society and the mood of their own rank and file, the leadership of PASOK has already been forced to adopt a programme which calls for the ‘socialisation’ of monetary wealth, banks, basic industries and commerce. It has also called for ‘farm co-operatives’ as well as ‘self management’ in productive units. It is a programme to the left of the two ‘Communist’ parties. In fact, the CP denounced PASOK during the election for supposedly calling for ‘instant socialism.’
In reality PASOK’s demands while in one way representing a step forward compared to the CP are insufficiently ‘socialist’, clear and concrete. The PASOK ranks – particularly the youth – should fight for the elimination of all the ambiguities in the programme and their replacement with the demands for a workers government, a PASOK/CP Government on a programme which includes the call for the nationalisation of the monopolies – domestic and foreign – with minimum compensation to the like of Onassis and then only if he can prove that he is in dire straits! – a state monopoly of foreign trade and the implementation of a socialist plan of production under workers’ control and management, linked to the slogan of new elections and explained through a mass campaign this demand would find a big response from the Greek working class.
At the present time the situation is more favourable to the working class than it is to the capitalists. But there should be no illusions that reaction is incapable of making a comeback if the Greek workers should squander the opportunities that are presented by the new situation which has opened up. By utilising the present weakness of the capitalists a new and worse slavery than that which followed 1967 can be avoided.
Reaction next time in Greece would be more like Chile, worse than even 1967, with the murder of tens of thousands of Greek workers. And half-measures tinkering with the system is a sure way to guarantee that the capitalists will be given the time to prepare the forces to strike a new blow at the working class. Andreas Papandreou in his book ‘Democracy at Gunpoint’ was honest enough to confess his mistakes as a member of the Centre Union between 1964-67. The decision to slow down and postpone necessary reforms in order to appease the capitalists was wrong he says…
“What happened in fact is that our much milder, less demanding, less radical development programme – which had been intended to prevent the alienation of the Establishment created no less hostility… since any reform was poison to them, we might just as well have gone further and formulated a plan of action that would have made a difference for Greece.”
But it is necessary for the PASOK members and the working class as a whole to draw all the necessary conclusions from these remarks and apply the lesson in the struggles which loom ahead. Half-hearted measures, ambiguities in programme will be paid for in the future with more defeats of the working class. As Andreas Papandreou has indicated paltry reforms will irritate the capitalists without satisfying the workers. Similarly to attempt to compromise with the Centre Union middle class leaders in a new version of the ‘Popular Front’ is to court disaster.
Mavros – the leader of this party and ex-governor of the Bank of Greece – has made some ‘socialist’ noises recently. This is an indication that at a certain stage the Centre Union leaders will be prepared to establish a Popular Front with PASOK and the two CP’s. The need to ‘win the middle class’ will be the main argument which is used to justify the workers’ parties forming a block with middle class parties. But it was precisely the Popular Front idea which resulted in the bloody collapse of the Republic established in 1924 and the drowning in blood of the workers movement in the Greek civil war.
We will carry articles dealing with these events in future issues of Militant.
The peasantry and urban middle class can only be won to the side of the workers on a programme which links their day to day problems to the idea of a planned economy i.e. land to the peasants, cancellation of all debts of peasants and small businessmen to the banks and the promise of cheap credit and aid which can only be implemented by a workers’ government.
Such a programme explained in actions would win the middle class away from their ‘political exploiters’ – the Centre Union bosses who are in the employ of Big Capital – and to the programme of socialist revolution.
Greece has entered into a period of turbulence, of sharp and abrupt changes in the situation. But a clear Marxist programme and perspective is the indispensable weapon to ensure victory for the Greek working class in the mighty struggles which loom. And it is the youth of the PASOK as with the Young Socialists in Britain who can play the most important part in winning the working class to Marxism.
The history of the workers movement in Greece for thirty years is a story of unparalleled heroism which then resulted in terrible and bloody defeats because of faulty leadership. The PASOK youth can be instrumental in opening up a new chapter for the working class of Greece – one that will culminate in the victory of the Greek socialist revolution.
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