GREECE ON THE EVE
Papandreou by A. UDRY_ It was last July when the Greek radio announced that "the armed forces have decided to return power to a civilian government. " Since then, the phenomenon that was expressed in such a concentrated fashion during the November 1973 struggles at the Athens polytechnical institute has come to the fore ever more clearly: the emergence onto the political scene of a new generation of workers and students who began to become politicized under the dictatorship, did not suffer the traumas of the civil war, and do not want to suffer the consequences of the civil war any more. People who were only fifteen years old when the colonels took power are now trying to put an end to the epilogue of the civil war, and broad layers of the Greek population are beginning to respond to them. The quick elections ordered by Caramanlis (scheduled for November 17) are partially aimed at slowing down the process of repoliticization that is going on in the country. In this sense, the elections will express only very slightly the underlying tendencies now developing in Greece.
Caramanlis OF THE ELECTIONS Economic and social crisis In the present situation, it is not the effects of the economic and social crisis that are directly shaping the immediate development of political life. There were two militant strikes at the Elefsina shipyards, but they appear to be isolated cases on the front of social struggles. Hence, the rebirth of political activity is not taking the form of a wave of social struggles to which the CP or the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement, led by Andreas Papandreou) could give expression on the political level. In the present phase, then, there is a certain hiatus between the repoliticization of the Greek masses and the objective social and economic crisis racking the country, a crisis that will consfitute an ever more determining element in the development of the social and political situation in coming months. The "economic miracle" so highly vaunted by the military junta wos in large part the reflection of
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GREECE the immediate effects of the impact of imperialist investments in Greece. Between 1964 and 1970, these investments totaled $360 million, 77 percent of which was American. Moreover, the real character of the "miracle" is expressed in the distortions of development in various industrial branches and the mounting regional disequilibrium. Corruption was generalized, the dishonest colonels becoming ardent defenders of the notion that the military was entitled to grab everything. This encouraged parasitic financial operations, speculafion, and sending of large sums of money to American, British, and Swiss banks. The speculative and disorderly boom in the construction industry, which absorbed a very high percentage of private investment, indicates the structural weakness of the development of Greek capitalism. While investments in sectors like the chemical industry, building materials, and metallurgy were significant, their direction was modified by the exigencies of imperialist capital most of the time. (See The Financial Times, June 3, 1974, and Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1974.) In 1971 of a total work force of 3, 400,000, 39% were involved in agriculture, a sector that produced only 20% of the gross national product. The growth rate of agricultural production went down constantly, dropping from an annual average of 5.8% for 1950-58 to 3.9% for 1959-67 and 2% for 1968-73. This crisis of the agricultural sector, combined with a certain degree of industrialization, stimulated a depopulation of the agricultural areas (the rural population dropped 15.4% between 1961 and 1971) and a rapid swelling of the urban areas of Salonika and Athens, whose populations during the same period increased by 37.1% and 46.5% respectively. To be sure, small enterprises predominated; the average number of workers per enterprise was only 5.24. Nevertheless, there has been a genuinely concentrated development of a proletariat during the past decade. The forty-nine largest industrial companies employ more than 60, 000 workers. The boom in the construction industry gave rise to e rapid swelling of a new layer of workers - more than 250, 000 — who have already demonstrated their combativity in many partial strikes. To this must be added the fact that in 1973 some 54% of industrial establishments (employing 71% of all industrial workers) were concentrated in the two urban centers of Athens and Salonika. Thus, the configuration of the proletariat has been profoundly altered during the past ten years. The entry of new layers onto the political scene - at least in a limited way - took place during the "events" of November 1973. The politicization of these layers, which will go further and further 4 given the present atmosphere, represents one of the essential elements in the restructuring of the workers movement and in the modification of the relationship of social forces in this new phase of Greek historyFor the moment, the Caramanlis government has to try to extricate itself from a disastrous economic situation resulting from the combination of the structural weaknesses of Greek capitalism and the effects of the recession the international imperialist economy is now going through. Inflation, which hit 30% during 1973, is the highest of any of the countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. The balance of payments deficit is getting larger and larger. It reached $400 million in 1972 and 51, 200 million in 1973. It can only get worse, under the impact of a number of factors: The first of these is the energy crisis. Greece depends on oil for more than 60% of its energy. It will be one or two years before the discovery of oil near the island of Thassos reduces the deficit created by oil imports. Second, the decline of tourism has a bad effect on the balance of payments deficit. Finally, the decline in emigration is limiting the inflow of currency from abroad. More than 1 million Greeks emigrated between 1955 and 1970. Nevertheless, because of industrial stagnation or recession in various imperialist countries, emigration has decreased considerably since 1973. Net emigration (that is, the total number of emigrants minus the number of people returning home) was only 4, 369 in 1973; in 1972 it had been 14,267 and in 1971 it had been 31,297. The emigrants went essentially to West Germany (270, 000), Holland (13, 000), Switzerland (10, 000), Belgium (6,500), and France (4,500). And the actual number of emigrants was even larger, for many left "clandestinely." The total amount of money sent back to Greece by the emigrants reached $50.6 million in 1955, $239.4 million in 1968, and $571.4 million in 1972. Two additional factors must be added to those three: Greece's large debt (which was further accentuated by the junta's arms purchases from the United States and France) and the chronic deficit in the balance of trade. In an attempt to reduce that deficit, the junta had adopted policies of deflation and limitation of imports. This resulted in increased unemployment, among other things. The government that emerges from the coming elections will be hard put to continue these policies without risking alienating broader and broader sectors that otherwise might support the regime or at least manifest a certain neutrality toward it. That ex-
plains the efforts made by Caramanlis and Mavros to obtain loans from the Common Market (on the order of $800 million) and the government's haste to compensate, by getting into the Common Market, for the distance it has taken from the United States. But loans from the Common Market or West Germany (180 million DM through 1976) will not enable the bourgeoisie to deal effectively with the economic and social crisis. After the three months during which calm has reigned on the social front, the effects of the crisis will come to the surface and determine the course of political life all the more strongly. Epilogue to the civil war The junta's peaceful relinquishing of power to the Caramanlis government fell within a very special context. The failure of its Cyprus operation left the junta in a total impasse. Divisions within the army were intensifying. The II! Corps of the army, stationed in northern Greece, openly demonstrated its opposition to the policy of the junta. This was an important factor in pushing it to resign. The Caramanlis solution had been considered for some time by forces within the army, at least since November 1973. Thus, Andreas Papandreou wrote in March 1974: "The second (tendency) favors a compromise with representatives of the right and the center-right that would permit the armed forces to play a less obvious role in the political life of the country. The politician who seems most adapted for playing this role is Caramanlis. " (Monthly Review, Italian edition, April 1974) In the context of the crisis of July 1974, this solution prevailed. Clearly, the junta - or at least important sectors of the army - demanded guarantees from Caramanlis and his new government that there would not be a vast purge. This Fully explains the statements Caramanlis has made since he returned to power. For example: "The present structure of the army shall undergo no modification. " (Le Figaro, October 28, 1974.) It also explains the slowness with which the main leaders of the junta were prosecuted under the "law. " It wasn't until September that loannidis was hauled before Judge Iseva. While after seven years and three months of dictatorship the mass movement hesitated to mobilize, it should not be concluded that combativity is nonexistent. It broke through during the military mobilization during the Cyprus crisis. At that time there were many movements of rebellion among student and worker youth who demonstrated their refusal to be diverted into a vast nationalist operation. This latent combativity was one of the factors that induced the Greek bourgeoisie and sectors of the army to opt for peacefully moving to a new regime in order to avert confrontations that would have given rise to mass mobilizations of a more explosive scope. Nevertheless, the reasons for the slowness of the process of repoliticization during the first months must not be sought solely in the maneuvers of Caramanlis, maneuvers like the maintenance of emergency laws, the suppression of the decree banning other parties (in force since 1967), the postponing of the measures aimed against the leaders of the junta, the maintenance of the state structures and apparatus set up by the ¡unta. An additional factor was also at work: The reemergence of political organizations was not directly linked to the social events that preceded the fall of the dictatorship or to a resistance that would have represented a continuity and attained significant scope. The development of consciousness among broad sectors of the Greek masses has to some extent been stimulated by the intervention of political apparatuses and by the political debate that has just now opened up. Nevertheless, this repoliticizafion, at least for the student and worker youth, is no longer taking place in reference to the defeat of the civil war, but rather in relation to the potential for mobilization that surged to the fore in November 1973 and during the refusal of the military draft. These two facts allow for an understanding of the rhythms of the process of repoliticization and the fact that the PASOK and the two Communist parties were able to develop a real influence over important sections of the new generations. In fact, in this new framework the Communist parties do not appear as the "betrayers of the civil war, " but instead as new organizations capable of carrying forward the demands of the students and young workers. A whole process of political fermentation will have to go on before a revolufionary wing having a real influence emerges. But the conditions favoring such a process are more prevalent now than they have been since the sec ond world war. Caramanlis's project For Caramanlis, it was a task of primary importance to organize the elections as quickly as possible and to avert a broad purge of the state apparatus erected by the junta. It is not only that he had obviously made certain promises to the military. It was also that if political trials of the officers of the deposed junta had been quickly held, the manifold ties linking many conservatives now supporting Caramanlis's "New Democracy" to the old military apparatus would have suddenly come
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GREECE to light. This would have inevitably weakened his electoral position. Nevertheless, confronted with the pressure of the mass movement and the repeated attacks of Papandreou, Caramanlis found himself obliged to make some concessions. Thus, the five "historic chiefs" of the April 21, 1967, coup - Papadopoulos, Ladas, Roufogalis, Patakos, and Makerezos — were retired to a hotel on the island of Kea. To justify this measure, Caramanlis resorted to rumors of "conspiracies. " In this way he avoided having to raise charges that would have been dangerous for the conservative ranks now lined up behind the New Democracy. With this little trick Caramanlis hopes to attract the votes of the center -people who might have been attracted to George Mavros, the "resister, "who is able to play on his status as one of those who was deported to the Isle of Yaros under the junto - and at the same time to cut the ground from under Papandreou. This was already partially accomplished by the announcement of the withdrawal of Greece from NATO - while NATO's political commission in Greece is maintained. Concurrently, Caramanlis had to prepare the elecfions as quickly as possible. Quick elections were designed to carry out a number of tasks: make sure the trials of the torturers would take place after the elections; make use of the prestige Caramanlis had acquired during the July operation; limit the time the left (that is, the two CPs and the PASOK) would have to reorganize themselves; exclude from the voter rolls a mass of youth who had never voted before. Caramanlis believes that because of these advantages he will win a big enough victory to install a sort of presidential regime allowing capital to put itself in the best position to deal with future social struggles. Moreover, Caramanlis, the ex-leader of the National Radical Conservative Union, has not concealed his intentions: "The New Democracy that I will direct will have a Gaullist form, " he told the Paris daily Le Figaro. "If the Greek people desire to accord me their confidence, I would like the coming elections to assure Greece a stable government of long duration. Did not Gaullism last for twenty-five years in France?" (Figaro, September 30.) This attempt to set up a presidential system, a strong bourgeois regime, is revealed in the measures aimed at assuring repression of sections of the workers movement, in spite of the democratizing demagogy. This is shown by the fact that all parties that wanted to contest the elections had to deliver a deposition to the prosecutor of the Supreme Court stating that they promise to "refrain from any act of violence and subversive activities against the state or any actions that could endanger constitutional institutions. " Because of this decree (article 1, paragraph 2 of law-decree 59), the militants of the Internationalist Communist party of Greece (Greek section of the Fourth International) are not running candidates in the elections. They are calling for a vote for the list of the "United Left, " i.e., the Communist parties. George Mavros, the leader of the Union of New Center Forces, has developed a political program that is scarcely distinct from that of Caramanlis. He draws support from sections of the middle classes, generally small merchants, in the big urban centers. Bathed in the halo of his status as a political prisoner, "the resister, " he is playing his opposition to the junta for all it is worth. Thus, included on Mavros's electoral list is Alexandros Panaghoulis. In 1968 Panaghoulis failed in an attack on Papadopoulos and Anastasios Minis, a military officer, and is known to have been subjected to torture for a long period. It is the reference to Mavros's "constant" opposition to the regime of the junta that represents his major trump card and his clearest differentiation from Caramanlis. Should Caramanlis fail to obtain a large enough majority, he would certainly have to seek an alliance with the former minister of foreign affairs. The far right, organized in the Democratic National Union led by Garoufalias, cannot hope to play any serious role in the elections or in the new stage of political life that opened in July. Reorganization of the workers movement The Panhellenic Socialist Movement of Andreas Papandreou, which stands apart from the operations of the right and the center-right, is perhaps the best expression, even if in a distorted way, of the end of the spirit of defeat that had enveloped the Greek masses after the civil war. On the basis of the demagogic and radical program (nationalizations, "getting rid of the capitalist hierarchy, " "liberating Greece from all foreign influence, " opposition to entry into the Common Market, etc.) with which he is spicing up his electoral campaign, Papandreou is mobilizing the energies of vast layers of student and worker youth. He had long ago understood the importance of anti-imperialist, anti-American sentiment among decisive layers of the population. Thus, at the beginning of 1974 he wrote: "Greeks have come to identify their subordination and their economic exploitation with the policy of the United States and, naturally,
with NATO. In any free election, no party can survive unless it demands national independence and a break with NATO. " (Monthly Review, Italian edition, April 1974.) The PASOK has made this one of the major themes in its electoral campaign. Similarly, it is placing immediate stress on the necessity for holding political trials of those responsible for the April 1967 coup, the bloody repression in 1973 of the students of the polytechnical institute, and the Cyprus putsch. On these themes Papandreou is meeting a stronger and stronger popular sentiment that will give this representative of a veritable dynasty in Greek politics a major role to play in the process of repoliticization. The political immaturity of the new generations and the freedom of action granted the PASOK's youth organization permit "Papandreouist" demagogy to have some influence over layers of students and even of workers who are just awakening or reawakening to politics and to partially dam up the new radicalization. Finally, the heterogeneity of this formation must be stressed; this will most certainly result in accentuated internal political differences. Compared to the PASOK, the Stalinists, who are divided, had lagged behind. But it is now clear that the "exterior" faction of the CP has acquired a preponderant position over the "interior" faction. Basing itself of the Soviet bureaucracy, the "exterior" Communist party has rebuilt a powerful apparatus capable of assuring its influence. It has headquarters in more and more of the main Greek cities; its press (Nea Ellada and Eleutheri Patrida) is distributed widely. The most important trump cards held by the Stalinists are their apparatus and their trade-union influence. There is no doubt that Stalinist influence among layers of radicalized workers will increase during the present phase. The Stalinists are no longer hiding behind the EDA (Union of the Democratic Left - the old electoral cover of the CP) but are coming out into the open without any explicit references being made to their role in the past defeats of the Greek workers movement. For newly politicized sectors of workers and youth, the Communist party is coming forward as a completely new party. For a whole period, the main course of both CPs was achieving a legal existence, and this left the field free for Papandreou. Later, it became necessary for the two CPs to arrive at an electoral agreement so as to be able to benefit from second-round votes in the elections. (A party has to get at least 17 percent in the first round to get the right to contest the remaining seats in the second round.) Thus, the "United Left" was formed, a grouping that includes the two CPs and the EDA. It is under that label that the two CPs will present themse Ives in the elections.
During the conflict with Turkey, the policy of the CPs was characterized by a chauvinist line that in fact sanctioned the nationalist demagogy of the provisional government. Pushing its policy of "national union, " the CP (exterior) attacked Caramanlis for excluding from the government "forces that for seven years have stood in the front ranks of the struggle against the dictatorship. " The CP (interior) called on "the Greek people to act together on the basis of a broad unity of the left, the center, the right, and all patriots until the commitment to the democratic road has become sufficiently irreversible. " Once again the Stalinists are fostering the most criminal illusions about the possible options of the Greek bourgeoisie, about the army, and about the real tasks facing the working class. In spite of the strength of its apparatus, the CP (exterior), led by Florakis, will have to take account of the PASOK. It will be difficult for the CP's policy of national union to deal blows against Papandreou's demagogy, at least among the sectors that are becoming politicized most rapidly. That is a not unimportant factor in the recomposition of the workers movement and the repoliticization of new layers entering into anticapitalist and anti-imperialist struggle. For the moment, the process of repoliticization is moving forward most strongly among the highschool and university students. There have been many strikes in the high schools. It is very probable that in the present phase the political movement of students will play a vanguard role and be a decisive fermenting agent for the development of anticapitalist consciousness among still limited layers. The fusion of the radicalization of the student and high-school vanguard with the emergence of workers struggles, as was heralded in the newspaper strike, will throw into relief the full potential of. the combativity that is now filtering through here and there. For revolutionary Marxists, for our comrades of the Internationalist Communist party of Greece, the ability to acquire a predominant position in this student vanguard, to take up the debate with sectors influenced by the youth organizations of the CP and more especially of the PASOK, and to develop an initial implantation in the working class will be decisive in coming months. In Greece, a new period in the history of the class struggle has only just begun. O
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