elections that are supposed to come soon. The Greek bourgeoisie, profoundly marked by seven years of dictatorship and arbitrariness, is seeking to endow itself with
CAPAMANLIS MOVES TOWARD FLECTIONS by G. VERGEAT a conservative bourgeois reform party whose principal leaders and spokesmen are already on the scene: Mavros, the present vice-prime minister and minister of foreign affairs; Averoff, the minister of defense. Caramanlis is a political figure who transcends the stature of a leader of a party; a certain section of the conservative press has already consecrated him in the role of a small-sized de Gaulle. For the immediate future, no other bourgeois political formation can take the risk of dividing the liberal bourgeois camp. The liberal bourgeoisie's problem is to work out the best conditions for politically confronting the rise of popular mobilizations whose channels of political and electoral expression are already clearly defined: the two Communist parties and, more recently, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement of Andreas Papandreou. The reestablishment of democracy with the return of Caramanlis was in reality limited to the reactivation of elementary democratic rights. The broader problem remained: the institutionalization of full and complete bourgeois democracy. Because of a still very fragile relationship of forces between himself and the army, Caramanlis, in contradiction with popular demands, carefully refrained from leading a popular mobilization to break the apparatus of the army, with which he freely bound himself. The total uncritical loyalty expressed by each of the Communist parties toward Caramanlis's rule, which was not yet his regime, left him free to act as though there were no political leadership of the popular masses. A leadership could have and should have led them to the conquest of their rights with the aim of creating the preconditions of a favorable political relationship of forces with the reestablished conservative bourgeois regime. In this manner, the policy of the Communist parties was to tie their own hands, to leave all the initiative in the hands of a bourgeois regime, and thus to allow it to make considerable advances on the field of the political conquest of the broad masses. The Papandreou operation It is only now that the Greek workers movement is in position to develop its own legal political organizations. The legalization of the Greek Communist parties, like the emergence of a Social Democratic political formation of very radical colora-
tion, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement led by Andreas Papandreou, represents a real change in the country. Because of its economic poverty and loose social fabric, for decades Greece could be governed by force, by dictatorial Bonapartist regimes blocking the existence of political formations representing the toiling masses or sectors of the pettybourgeoisie. Today, the emergence of such legal possibilities is a result of the broader base of the ruling class on the economic level. It is becoming necessary for the ruling class, acting in the framework of reestablishing bourgeois democracy, to utilize reformist workers formations in maintaining the balance of its own system, in order to be able to absorb political radicalization should that become necessary. Both of the Greek Communist parties as well as Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement fall into this framework. Each in its own way. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement projected itself onto the political scene by immediately placing itself to the left of the Communist parties. The Greek Communist parties left a very important political vacuum on their left by their ultra-opportunist policy. From the time their press began coming out legally, even before they themselves were legalized as organizations, they refused to make the question of purging the apparatus of the military junta a central question -- just as Caramanlis refused to do so. They carried out a chauvinist policy on the Turkish question, echoing a certain anti-Turkish chauvinist wave that had been manipulated by some sections of the bourgeoisie. They put forward no slogan on the rank-and-file reorganization of the workers movement, or especially for the reconstruction of workers trade-unions free from the intervention of the state apparatus. They attached themselves completely to the Caramanlis operation, building up its political credibility among their own ranks and thereby engendering a certain demobilization. The operation led by Andreas Papandreou derives from a different perception of the political situation. The name of the founder of the organization is bathed in a certain prestige because of his participation in the resistance to the military regime, although from abroad, "speaking" to the Greek masses. The radical content of the political platform presented by Papandreou during his September 2 press conference announcing the formation of his organization was not simply a measure of demagogy. It really corresponded to the radical character of the political consciousness of Greek worker and student youth. To demand the purge of the state apparatus without at the same time challenging its bourgeois nature is linked to the confused nature of this political consciousness. To demand that the deposed dictators be subjected to trials is already to go further than the new Caramanlis regime and to show some offensive character. To demand that Greece break all U.S. alliances--military, economic, political--is to play on nationai sentiment ultrasensitized by American manipulations. The problem is that there is no Greek road to socialism, as Papandreou suggests. Even though it still has only a very weak organizational apparatus that lacks unified political functioning and has no tradition of real struggle, Andreas Papandreou's formation is a very powerful pole of attraction for those youth who do not believe in the Communist parties and who want to find ways of expressing their will to struggle. The coming elections are already the object of serious clashes between a new left and a still incompletely defined conservative right. Caramanlis's aim is to organize the elections without delay, for his political lead, based on his position as head of the state apparatus, which allows him to place his own men in important posts, gives him a knowledge of the situation that other formations have not yet been able to master completely. In addition, the sooner the elections take place, the less likely it is that another conservative bourgeois formation will come forward. It was in this situation that the decree was issued on September 24 legalizing the two Communist parties. This was an event of great importance in the Greek situation; it ended nearly a quarter of a century of bans on the CP. The CPs, unlike the Andreas Papandreou formation, have not yet had time to get organized. The September 25 issue of the French CP daily, 'Humanité, reported a communiqué released by the pro-Moscow faction of the Greek CP protesting against holding elections too quickly. "In a declaration to the press, " wrote l'Humanité, "the Greek Communist party asserted that hastily held elections are a crime against the nation and will lead to a parliamentary dictatorship, for they would serve the interests only of Caramanlis. " It concluded: "Before proceeding to elections, the state of the system of the junta must be purged and the question of the regime must be resolved." In fact, there is much more behind the two CP's and Papandreou's rejection of holding elections too soon. Although they will present themselves before the electorate as "friendly" enemies, the two CPs will suffer from a confusion that goes against their interests. An electoral agreement with the Papandreou formation is necessary in order to avoid too strong a competition. In this situation, it definitely appears that Caramanlis can come out the winner and thus lend a legal basis to the regime that he will be able to utilize in his own way. The far-left formations are still too weak and too small to be able to intervene in the sense of politically confronting the left organizations. The recent Chile solidarity demonstrations held in Athens showed how the left formations were intent on isolating them. Members of both CPs and the Papandreou organizations did not hesitate to act as internal police on these demonstrations in order to physically isolate the far-left formations by force. But the only thing achieved in this little game was to create the conditions for greater attention being accorded the far-left formations. The Greek Stalinists in their turn will have to learn this.
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