SOLIDARITY WITH THE GREEK WORKER AND PEASANT MASSES!
A Statement by the Fourth International
[The following statement on the situation in Greece was issued on May 5 by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the World Party of Social- 195 Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.
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The April 21 military coup d'état, put into operation by means of a NATO "plan against internal subversion," constitutes an attempt by the military circles linked to the court, the conservative traditional sectors of the bourgeoisie, particularly the big shipowners, the court and American imperialism to end the political instability that has featured the situation in Greece since the popular revolt against the intervention of the palace and rightists in July 1965. The installation of a naked military dictatorship shows that twenty years after the civil war, the capitalist system has not yet succeeded in achieving equilibriun.
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Greece remains, along with Spain and Portugal, one of the most backward countries in Europe. Aside from the big agglomerations like Athens-Piraeus and Salonika, the masses in the majority still make their living directly or indirectly from agriculture, which contributes to the same degree as industry in national production, although the industrial sector has registered a relatively high rate of growth in recent years largely due to bringing new units into production like the Pechiney aluminum plant, the Esso- Pappas industrial complex, etc. The traditional industries (food, liquor, tobacco, textiles...) still constitute half of all industrial production. Thus the economic basis for a policy of reformism in Greece is lacking.
The Greek bourgeoisie, linked to imperialism (first to British imperialism and then to American imperialism which picked up from the British), has remained basically incapable of bringing the country out of its stagnation, of altering its backward structure and resolving the agrarian problen.
George Papandreou, the leader of Enosis Kentrou [Center Union], represented the wing of the bourgeoisie which tried to modernize these structures in order to adapt Greece to the Common Market. He sought the support of the masses in order to utilize them for his own aims without
bringing into question either the monarchy or Greece's membership in NATO, in which it is a key piece.
But social relations in Greece are of such backwardness that the majority of the bourgeoisie cannot go beyond the court and the top circles of the army closely linked to the palace without endangering the status quo. This has been demonstrated in each of the successive crises from August 4, 1936 (establishment of the Metaxas dictatorship) up to April 21, 1967.
The Papandreous, both father and son, in face of the maneuvers of the palace, the general staff, the rightists and American imperialism, were incapable of carrying out a "Gaullist" policy, disappointing the hopes of the EDA [Union of Democratic Forces]. Greece lacks the social basis for the bourgeoisie to carry out a "Gaullist" policy. The July 1965 crisis broke out when George Papandreou -- under pressure from the masses -sought to purge the army of its fascist elements and replace Minister of Defense Garoufalias, a palace man. The "Aspida" affair, grossly blown up by the bourgeois press in order to counteract the unfavorable publicity around the trial of the killers of Lambrakis, was only a part of the efforts aiming at replacing officers of the extreme right by officers loyal to the Center Union.
This attempted purge, coupled with the economic demands of the exploited masses who sought to utilize a certain liberalism of the authorities and a scarcity of labor due to massive emigration of the workers, could not be tolerated by the coalition made up of the palace, the army, traditional capitalism and U.S. imperialism; hence the July 1965 operation and the ouster of Papandreou as prime minister. At the time, however, this coalition could not resort to a military coup d'état as a solution due to the largely spontaneous mobilization of the broad popular masses and the collateral resistance of the "European" tendency of the Greek bourgeoisie.
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It was the admirable resistance of the masses that drove out the first two administrations set up by the palace headed by Novas and Tsirimokos. But the ending of the street demonstrations and the progressive demobilization of the masses permitted the third palace government, headed by Stefanopoulos, to last sixteen months.
While the tendency of the mass movement was to struggle against the throne, for a referendum and for a republic, the leadership of the Center Union, due to class reasons, and the leadership of the EDA (the legal front for the Greek Communist party), due to opportunism and parliamentary cretinism, proclaimed their rejection of any solution going beyond the "democratization of the court" and the "democratization of the state." The working-class masses were, and still are, far to the left of their leadership. Only the Greek Trotskyists openly campaigned for overturning the monarchy.
The forces of reaction took advantage of the demobilization of the masses to prepare a coup d'état. This turn to the use of force could have been blocked had the upsurge of the masses been developed into a revolutionary struggle. preventing this, the leaders of the EDA and the Greek CP thereby became responsible for the situation worsening to such a degree as to make the coup d'état possible.
The overturn of Stefanopoulos by the ERE [National Radical Union], which had supported him up until then, was an attempt to give the party of the right and the palace a camouflage of "constitutionality," with the objective of pulling the rug from under the Center Union and paving the way for establishment of a Right-Center government after the elections organized by the transitional regime of the banker Paraskevopoulos and his successor Canellopoulos.
But despite the opportunism of the EDA and the failure of the Center Union to react -- the two groupings limiting themselves to merely demanding elections and the Center Union even going so far as to support Paraskevopoulos as prime minister -- the maneuver ended up in a defeat. The elections would have reinforced the EDA and registered a victory for the Center Union; and the masses would not have been content with either a Right-Center government or even a Papandreou government, which could not have withstood the inevitable surge of the masses.
3.
The April 21 military coup d'état was a preventive blow, the immediate aim of which was to block the May elections, destroy the working-class organizations and then prepare a governmental solution of the kind seen in Greece before 1963.
The coup d'état, which was expected in all political spheres but which because of their own basic nature could do nothing but hope that it would not take place, demonstrated that any situation featured by mobilization of the masses, but in which clear and precise leadership is not provided, threatens inevitably to end as in the Dominican Republic or even Indonesia. It demonstrates the need to forge in the
underground a new leadership for the Greek working class. It proves that in face of the means at the disposal of the reactionary forces, both legal as well as extraparliamentary, such as the bribery utilized to destroy the former parliamentary majority held by Papandreou as well as open counterrevolutionary violence, parliamentarism is chimerical. If the problem of power is not posed when it should be posed, it is resolved by a counterrevolutionary dictatorship and repression.
4.
The struggle against the monarchy and for a republic remains the correct transitional slogan in Greece at present. This does not mean that ending the monarchy is sufficient in and of itself; it means that the slogan is the key to changing the relationship of forces.
Today even the EDA is compelled, belatedly, to modify its line and appeal for replacing the monarchy with a "genuine democracy." Due to the illusions it has sown and to the confused pettybourgeois character of the slogan of "genuine democracy," it has not contributed to reorienting the left. What is required is not the replacement of the "dictatorship" by an abstract and completely bourgeois "democracy," under the leadership of the Center Union and Papandreous, as "democratic" representatives of exploitive capitalism. What is required is to open the road, by overturning the monarchy, to a Socialist Republic of Greek Workers and Peasants.
Before the coup d'état, the EDA slogans, designed for the elections, such as "Democratization of the State," "Economic and Social Development," "National Independence," "Peace," resembled those of the right-wing Social Democratic parties in Western Europe. To understand the reasons for the defeat of the Greek masses, basic self-criticism is required of the EDA.
The Fourth International appeals to the Greek workers to support and join the only organization that did not sow these tragic illusions, the Internationalist Communist party of Greece (Greek section of the Fourth International).
It appeals to the workers of Europe to utilize all the means at their disposal to show their solidarity with the victims of the repression in Greece and with the masses in their struggle.
It appeals to the workers of Cyprus to mobilize in order to block General Grivas from imposing a similar military dictatorship there.
Workers of Greece!
Organize underground People's Committees throughout the country to go into action against the dictatorship, to free the political prisoners, to reestablish civil liberties!
Cover the country with a network of resistance to the dictatorship!
Organize underground unions to prepare an insurrectional general strike!
Organize a struggle for a Constituent Assembly to sweep out the monarchy, free Greece from the imperialist yoke and NATO, establish a Workers and Peasants Government and open up the road for a Socialist Republic of Workers and Peasants Councils!
CORRECTION
In Pierre Frank's review of Isaac Deutscher's Ironies of History [Lin our May 12 issue], a sentence on page 496 reads: "It is all the more necessary to remember this inasmuch as working-class militants in their great majority have long been aware of this, although the capitalist leaders often act as if they were unaware of it."
The translation is in error. The sentence should read, "It is all the more necessary to remember this inasmuch as, if the capitalist leaders feign ignorance of it, working-class militants in their great majority have long been unaware of it."
OCTOBER ANTIWAR PROTEST SET FOR WASHINGTON, D.C.
(Continued from page 542.] setting up a "Political Action Committee" which would work for a "Peace-Freedom Ticket" in the 1968 presidential elections.
The sponsors of this move suggested that such a slate might well be headed by King and Spock.
Opponents of the proposal argued that it represented a preliminary move for another experiment with c