Click on the headline to link to an Socialist Alternative (CWI)website analysis of the pre-revolutionary situation in Greece.
Markin comment:
The situation in Greece today cries out to high heaven for a revolution and a revolutionary party to intervene and lead the damn thing. Enough of one day general strikes. General strikes only pose the question of power, of dual power. Who shall rule. We say labor must rule. Strike the final blow. Back to the communist road. The Greek workers are just this minute the vanguard, yes, terrible word to some, vanguard of the international working class struggle. Forward to victory.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010-Repost from American Left History blog
*Be Still My Heart- On Calling For The Greek Communist Parties And Trade Unions To Take Power
Markin comment:
On May 10, 2010 I posted an entry on the situation in Greece in response to a post from the International Marxist Tendency’s Greek section’s analysis of the tasks that confront revolutionaries today. I agreed with the comment in the post that general strikes were of limited value if they did not, at some point, pose the question of who shall rule- working people or the capitalists. I went further and proposed two propaganda points that revolutionaries in Greece, and their supporters internationally, should be fighting for. Right now.
The first point revolved around the fight to create workers councils, committees of action or factory committees in order to fight for a revolutionary perspective. That program, the specifics which are better to left to those on the ground, needs to include refusal to pay the capitalists debts, under whatever guise, defense of the hard fought social welfare gains of the past, the struggle against the current government’s austerity program, the fight against any taint of popular frontism (opposition to alliances, at this critical juncture, with non-working class forces where the working class is the donkey and the small capitalist parties are the riders), and prepare to pose the question of who shall rule. Thus there is plenty of work that needs to be started now while the working masses are mobilized and in a furor over the current situation.
The second point, which flows out of the first, is the call for the Communist parties and trade unions to take power in their own right and in the interest of the working class. Now, clearly, and this is where some confusion has entered the picture, this is TODAY a propaganda call but is a concrete way to pose the question of who shall rule. Of course, we revolutionaries should have no illusions in the Stalinists and ex-Stalinists who run those parties and who, in previous times, have lived very comfortably with their various popular front, anti-monopolist strategies that preserve capitalism. However, today those organizations call for anti-governmental action and are listened to by the masses in the streets.
The point is to call their political bluff, carefully, but insistently. In that sense we are talking over the heads of the leaders to their social bases. Now that tactic is always proper for revolutionaries to gain authority but today we have to have a more concrete way to do so. In short, call on the Greek labor militants to call on their parties and unions to take power. And if not, then follow us. This is not some exotic formula from nowhere but reflects the sometimes painful experience, at least since the European revolutions of 1848.
Note: I headed today’s headline with the expression “be still my heart” for a reason. It has been a very long time since we have been able to, even propagandistically, call for workers parties on the European continent to take power. Especially, after the demise of the Soviet Union, for Stalinist (reformed or otherwise) parties to do so. Frankly, I did not think, as a practical matter, that I would be making such a call in Europe again in my lifetime. All proportions guarded, this may be the first wave of a new revolutionary upsurge on that continent. But, hell, its nice just to be able to, rationally, make that political call. In any case, the old utopian dream of a serious capitalist United States of Europe is getting ready to go into the dustbin of history. Let’s replace it with a Socialist Federation of Europe- and Greece today is the “epicenter”. SYRIZA-KKE to power!
Showing posts with label Greek Civil War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greek Civil War. Show all posts
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Victory To The Greek Workers- Build Workers Councils Now-Fight For A Workers Government!
Click on the headline to link to an Socialist Alternative (CWI)website analysis of the pre-revolutionary situation in Greece.
Markin comment:
The situation in Greece today cries out to high heaven for a revolution and a revolutionary party to intervene and lead the damn thing. Enough of one day general strikes. General strikes only pose the question of power, of dual power. Who shall rule. We say labor must rule. Strike the final blow. Back to the communist road. The Greek workers are just this minute the vanguard, yes, terrible word to some, vanguard of the international working class struggle. Forward to victory.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010-Repost from American Left History blog
*Be Still My Heart- On Calling For The Greek Communist Parties And Trade Unions To Take Power
Markin comment:
On May 10, 2010 I posted an entry on the situation in Greece in response to a post from the International Marxist Tendency’s Greek section’s analysis of the tasks that confront revolutionaries today. I agreed with the comment in the post that general strikes were of limited value if they did not, at some point, pose the question of who shall rule- working people or the capitalists. I went further and proposed two propaganda points that revolutionaries in Greece, and their supporters internationally, should be fighting for. Right now.
The first point revolved around the fight to create workers councils, committees of action or factory committees in order to fight for a revolutionary perspective. That program, the specifics which are better to left to those on the ground, needs to include refusal to pay the capitalists debts, under whatever guise, defense of the hard fought social welfare gains of the past, the struggle against the current government’s austerity program, the fight against any taint of popular frontism (opposition to alliances, at this critical juncture, with non-working class forces where the working class is the donkey and the small capitalist parties are the riders), and prepare to pose the question of who shall rule. Thus there is plenty of work that needs to be started now while the working masses are mobilized and in a furor over the current situation.
The second point, which flows out of the first, is the call for the Communist parties and trade unions to take power in their own right and in the interest of the working class. Now, clearly, and this is where some confusion has entered the picture, this is TODAY a propaganda call but is a concrete way to pose the question of who shall rule. Of course, we revolutionaries should have no illusions in the Stalinists and ex-Stalinists who run those parties and who, in previous times, have lived very comfortably with their various popular front, anti-monopolist strategies that preserve capitalism. However, today those organizations call for anti-governmental action and are listened to by the masses in the streets.
The point is to call their political bluff, carefully, but insistently. In that sense we are talking over the heads of the leaders to their social bases. Now that tactic is always proper for revolutionaries to gain authority but today we have to have a more concrete way to do so. In short, call on the Greek labor militants to call on their parties and unions to take power. And if not, then follow us. This is not some exotic formula from nowhere but reflects the sometimes painful experience, at least since the European revolutions of 1848.
Note: I headed today’s headline with the expression “be still my heart” for a reason. It has been a very long time since we have been able to, even propagandistically, call for workers parties on the European continent to take power. Especially, after the demise of the Soviet Union, for Stalinist (reformed or otherwise) parties to do so. Frankly, I did not think, as a practical matter, that I would be making such a call in Europe again in my lifetime. All proportions guarded, this may be the first wave of a new revolutionary upsurge on that continent. But, hell, its nice just to be able to, rationally, make that political call. In any case, the old utopian dream of a serious capitalist United States of Europe is getting ready to go into the dustbin of history. Let’s replace it with a Socialist Federation of Europe- and Greece today is the “epicenter”. SYRIZA-KKE to power!
Markin comment:
The situation in Greece today cries out to high heaven for a revolution and a revolutionary party to intervene and lead the damn thing. Enough of one day general strikes. General strikes only pose the question of power, of dual power. Who shall rule. We say labor must rule. Strike the final blow. Back to the communist road. The Greek workers are just this minute the vanguard, yes, terrible word to some, vanguard of the international working class struggle. Forward to victory.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010-Repost from American Left History blog
*Be Still My Heart- On Calling For The Greek Communist Parties And Trade Unions To Take Power
Markin comment:
On May 10, 2010 I posted an entry on the situation in Greece in response to a post from the International Marxist Tendency’s Greek section’s analysis of the tasks that confront revolutionaries today. I agreed with the comment in the post that general strikes were of limited value if they did not, at some point, pose the question of who shall rule- working people or the capitalists. I went further and proposed two propaganda points that revolutionaries in Greece, and their supporters internationally, should be fighting for. Right now.
The first point revolved around the fight to create workers councils, committees of action or factory committees in order to fight for a revolutionary perspective. That program, the specifics which are better to left to those on the ground, needs to include refusal to pay the capitalists debts, under whatever guise, defense of the hard fought social welfare gains of the past, the struggle against the current government’s austerity program, the fight against any taint of popular frontism (opposition to alliances, at this critical juncture, with non-working class forces where the working class is the donkey and the small capitalist parties are the riders), and prepare to pose the question of who shall rule. Thus there is plenty of work that needs to be started now while the working masses are mobilized and in a furor over the current situation.
The second point, which flows out of the first, is the call for the Communist parties and trade unions to take power in their own right and in the interest of the working class. Now, clearly, and this is where some confusion has entered the picture, this is TODAY a propaganda call but is a concrete way to pose the question of who shall rule. Of course, we revolutionaries should have no illusions in the Stalinists and ex-Stalinists who run those parties and who, in previous times, have lived very comfortably with their various popular front, anti-monopolist strategies that preserve capitalism. However, today those organizations call for anti-governmental action and are listened to by the masses in the streets.
The point is to call their political bluff, carefully, but insistently. In that sense we are talking over the heads of the leaders to their social bases. Now that tactic is always proper for revolutionaries to gain authority but today we have to have a more concrete way to do so. In short, call on the Greek labor militants to call on their parties and unions to take power. And if not, then follow us. This is not some exotic formula from nowhere but reflects the sometimes painful experience, at least since the European revolutions of 1848.
Note: I headed today’s headline with the expression “be still my heart” for a reason. It has been a very long time since we have been able to, even propagandistically, call for workers parties on the European continent to take power. Especially, after the demise of the Soviet Union, for Stalinist (reformed or otherwise) parties to do so. Frankly, I did not think, as a practical matter, that I would be making such a call in Europe again in my lifetime. All proportions guarded, this may be the first wave of a new revolutionary upsurge on that continent. But, hell, its nice just to be able to, rationally, make that political call. In any case, the old utopian dream of a serious capitalist United States of Europe is getting ready to go into the dustbin of history. Let’s replace it with a Socialist Federation of Europe- and Greece today is the “epicenter”. SYRIZA-KKE to power!
Victory To The Greek Workers- Build Workers Councils Now-Fight For A Workers Government!
Click on the headline to link to an International Marxist Tendency website analysis of the pre-revolutionary situation in Greece.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
*Avenge The Communist Defeat In The Greek Civil War Of 1946-49- The Lessons Of History
Markin comment:
Politics is sometimes a strange business. We all recognize that history does not exactly repeat itself. And it is also true that humankind makes its own history- although not always to its liking. Some things though, like the communist defeat in the Greek Civil War, despite our disagreements with its Stalinist leadership, were definitely not to our liking, but may be capable of reversal. Or at least of a modicum of historical justice. That is the backdrop of today's fight by the working class in the streets of Greece. May they win, and win big.
Avenge the lost in the 1946-49 civil war!
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
*Avenge The Communist Defeat In The Greek Civil War Of 1946-49- The Lessons Of History
Markin comment:
Politics is sometimes a strange business. We all recognize that history does not exactly repeat itself. And it is also true that humankind makes its own history- although not always to its liking. Some things though, like the communist defeat in the Greek Civil War, despite our disagreements with its Stalinist leadership, were definitely not to our liking, but may be capable of reversal. Or at least of a modicum of historical justice. That is the backdrop of today's fight by the working class in the streets of Greece. May they win, and win big.
Avenge the lost in the 1946-49 civil war!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Unpublished Articles Of Interest-The Birth of Bolshevism in Greece-by Loukas Karliaftis
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
********
The following article was prepared for inclusion in the Revolutionary History special issue on Greece, Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991. Because of pressure on space we were not able to include all the documents that we would have liked in that issue. Several other interesting documents by Karliaftis were published, and interested readers are recommended to look there for biographical notes about him and other heroic figures in the Greek movement.
The articles in that issue, which is now out of print, is available on the web. In the longer term, we hope it will be possible to scan and web-publish other material which was given a very limited circulation in English by the Greek ‘Workers Vanguard’ group, of which Karliaftis was the long time leader.
It would be surprising if we were able to prepare this document without making errors in the spellings of proper names. We will be grateful if you point any out to us.
The Birth of Bolshevism in Greece-by Loukas Karliaftis
THE ROLE OF THE LEADERSHIP OF THE BALKAN FEDERATION IN GREECE
To understand the influence which the Balkan federation had on the Greek movement, we must learn about the different tendencies inside the Balkan federation.
The Bulgarian ‘Narrow’ marxists played a very important role in the Balkan Federation. They were the first to join the Bolsheviks. Without any doubt Dimitrov was a heroic militant as his struggle against Nazism and his testimony at the Leipzig trial proves. But it was Stalin’s politics that he put forward at Leipzig, policies which contributed to Hitler’s rise to power.
A lack of initiative did not help Dimitrov. The date of the split between the ‘Broads’ and the ‘Narrows’ was in 1903. Dimitrov was the leader of the Trade Union side of the Bulgarian Communist Party. He pushed the struggle between the ‘Narrows’ and the ‘Broads’ to the point of a Trade Union split. Already, outside the Second International and before its decline, Trotsky was sent in 1909 and Rakovsky in 1908 to resolve the Bulgarian question and to repair the strategy which the Dimitrov’s split had caused in the Trade Unions. What is more this strategy helped the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, Savazov and others, to divide the masses. At last in 1914 Dimitrov accepted Trade Union unity.
During the war of 1914, the Bulgarian leadership of the Balkan Federation, Dimitrov and Kolarov, cordially stood together with the other representatives. It seems that Dimitrov and Kolarov were not aware that Sideris was a representative of the Federation, that is to say a supporter of gradualist Socialism, in other words a ‘Broad’ like Rakazov.
During this period of unity there was an Anti-Militarist Manifesto of the Balkan Federation which had a rather superficial view of the situation and even a certain pacifism.
In 1918 the uprising at Klantomir and Kintala broke out and Dimitrov said later that both the Party and he himself made grave errors during the uprising, which was drowned in blood. This revolt was a spontaneous movement of soldiers, Dimitrov even said that they were not close enough to the Bolsheviks. This declaration necessitated his self-criticism.
At their conference in February 1922 the PSO continued its policy of betraying the masses. What is more this policy was not just because of Dimitrov and Kolarov but was also that of the Balkan Federation.
The Stalinists have said nothing about this betrayal. Benaroyas has revealed an extraordinary and important thing in telling us what the political prisoners in prison stressed on the subject of this betrayal. Benaroyas tells us that the Conference had thought that the social patriotic and opportunist policy was alright in the Greek situation, while the Bulgarian representatives declared that they wished to set an example to the other Balkan parties.
That was an inevitable proof of their incapacity, unlike Lenin and Trotsky with the Comintern, to perceive the revolutionary nature of the epoch.
After the Conference of October 1922 the representative of the Balkan Federation who had come to Greece with leanings towards the supporters of the 1922 February Conference of a common agreement between the extremist Papanastassis and the reformist Sideris, said that a Central Committee must be created including Sargologos and the partisans of the February 1922 Conference. During this period the Federation representative, with the complicity of Georgiadis and Sideris, had created another Central Committee but the Central Committee of Sargologos sabotaged this Committee.
The Bulgarian representative had dared to support Georgiadis, Sideris and Petsopoulas. Sargologos made friendly contacts with him of a kind that gave a false impression of his plans to the Bulgarian representative. The Bulgarian representative had also met Tzoulatis of whose role and prestige he was well aware. There was no possibility of doing anything without Tzoulatis. He tried to convince the latter to join them. But from the end of 1921 onwards Tzoulatis did not believe in a regroupment of the PSO. So he formed a new movement. Without doubt he counted on the support of Balkan Federation but even more he counted on that of the Communist International. The Balkan Federation representative ignored article 7 of the 21 Principles which demanded a break in relations with reformists and centre politicians. He made an agreement with Tzoulatis on the basis of Article 2 of the 21 Principles which demanded that two-thirds of the Central Committee could only consist of Socialists who had pronounced in favour of the Third International before the Congress.
Thus he aligned with the right wing of the February Conference.
Dimitrov had made other errors and had accused the tendency opposed to the Fascist coup d’‚tat of Tsagov of reformism. From that moment Dimitrov, on his own responsibility, adopted a policy by the Bulgarian Communist Party of neutrality between the governments of Stabolinsky and Tsagov. He did not take sufficient notice of the position taken by the Bolsheviks towards Kornilov. Tsagov started by murdering Stabolinsky. He then killed thousands of Communists, workers and intellectuals. He ruled for twenty years as a dictator.
The hatred of Fascism and the spontaneous rising of the masses against Tsagov brought about a change of heart in the Bulgarian Communist Party. They then formed a joint front with Agrarian Union of Stabolinsky, the Social-Democratic Party (the so-called Social Fascists of 1931) and even radical bourgeois.
These opportunist deviations of Kolarov and Dimitrov were unknown to Trotsky and Lenin. But they showed the reason for the conflicts going on between Trotsky and Rakovsky on the one hand and on the other Dimitrov and Kolarov. It was never possible to open a debate within the Third International on the problems of Greek and Bulgarian Communism.
GREEK CAPITALISM ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS
When Greek capitalism reeled in Asia Minor and rotted in Greece, the militarist adventure paralysed activity. A state of emergency was declared. Then in the summer of 1922 the Gounaris government imprisoned members of the Communist union of the P.S.O., the editor of Rizopastis and Rizos, with the accusation of high treason and sedition. At the same time Metaxas, for demagogic reasons, declared that the direct intervention in Asia Minor was done by mercenaries and that Kabanis, Kraniakis and Kotsies openly sabotaged it without anyone bothering them.
The prisons filled with members of the P.S.O until the organisation collapsed.
At this point the retreat started. The defeat was almost total. There was panic among Constantine’s supporters. Kordatos made public a decision of the military government of Athens that wanted to execute all the Communist prisoners believing that there would be a mass outcry to punish the Communist treason.
The blow failed. In fact Balidis, the prison governor, demanded a written order as a telephoned command was not enough.
The bourgeois class looked with favour on the defeat at the front and saw a Greek version of the Commune.
Then Metaxas was summoned to take power. It was he who was given the responsibility of involving the communists in the government.
Metaxas sent his aide Evelpidis to visit the prisons and then went there himself with two vacant ministerial posts to offer. One of these was the Ministry of the Interior for he said “The more you can pin the responsibility on Plastiras the more they will have to suffer the reprisals of the Venezelists.” It was certainly an odd proposition from someone who had previously hanged Communists for treason.
“General you do me too much honour” replied Kordatos. “I know that the present time is critical for our country but I believe that the role for us in the P.S.O.P. is not save the throne of the bourgeois state. We cannot take part in your government for our principles forbid it.” After that Metaxas formed a government on his own.
THE DEFEAT ON THE FRONT IN ASIA MINOR
The collapse of the front in Asia Minor in August 1922 marked the end of the Greco-Turkish war which the Venezelists had started and the royalists had continued. This defeat was the result of the profound weakness of Greek capitalism and the feelings of the soldiers against the massacre lasted for eight months.
In that year discipline in the army was destroyed. A whole unit mutinied rather than go to the front. The soldiers would no longer sacrifice themselves for Greek capitalism. The articles in Rizos, For Communism and Workers’ Fight were inspired by Lenin’s Socialists and the War which set the tinder alight. The exiles had difficulty in recovering from this defeat. But there were other disturbances in the very heart of society. At Radesto there were numerous disturbances. There were mass meetings of thousands of soldiers. In these mass meetings they spoke of peace and socialism. The state seemed to breaking up. At Adrianople a group of Communists, which included Vlachos, had organised an action committee. There were other such centres of organised nuclei in other places but their impact was not very great. In reality, since the PSO had been dissolved at Athens, the little groups could not co-ordinate their activities. Papadatos and Kianoulotos maintained that they had reunited the Committee but the Soviets did not get the same effects as in Russia.
Certain units of the army succeeded in both keeping their arms and escaping from the control of Plastiras. The Trotskyist Giannis with some other socialists says that they were able to get almost to Pireaeus before they were disarmed. The worker Kokkinogiannis almost got to Salonika. The defeat at the front could have transformed itself into a revolution but there was no party to give things direction and to focus the revolutionary tendencies of peasants, workers and soldiers.
THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM BETRAYED
When the decisions of the February Conference were known the word treason sprang to the lips of the rank and file. Everyone attacked the opportunist tendencies.
The rank and file were encouraged in their struggle by the German crisis of 1923. The British, Bulgarian, Estonian, Hungarian and Chinese revolutionary events encouraged them too. But they were also influenced by the (dis)association of the Comintern of Lenin and Trotsky.
The upheaval started with the Tzoulatis-Sarandidis group but the Papanastassakis tendency followed. In time the movement spread as far as Pireaus and Salonika reaching into the prisons and the soldiers at the front.
Benaroyas was sincere in his recognition of this movement of militants in spite of which he declared “Some agitated with ulterior motives, other through weakness, thought that the February Conference had betrayed the principles of the Party.” Saragogolos and Stavridis did agitate with ulterior motives and voted for the decisions of the February meeting.
Then Benaroyas tells us “Around Papanastassios a group of militants was built against the Conference decision. The prisoners were also against such Social-Democratic decisions. Petsopoulas and Kordatos also declared themselves opposed to these decisions. And the leadership of the Party became engaged in a great movement against these opportunist tendencies.” Then the Petsopoulas tendency cancelled the February conference decisions even though it was in favour of them. At the time the revisionism of the February conference had only partially marked certain events of the twenties, Petsopoulas and Kordatos were definitely influenced.
THE SPECIAL CONGRESS OF SEPTEMBER 1922
The October 1922 Conference was called to resolve the crisis of the P.S.O. but in fact it made it worse.
Athens was represented by Ikonmou, Papanikolaou, Maggo and Strago, and Pireaus by Agelis, Kourtidis and Aligizakis, while Saragogolos, Chatzistavros and Ventura came from Salonika. The Federation of Tobacco workers and Electrical workers union were present. Sideris and Georgiadis decided to break if they were not in the majority. But the right wing did not have the majority.
That, said the secretary Kordatos, is united on the only small possibility of organising. What is more that underlined the crisis among the parties and unions.
Then Sideris and Georgiades proposed the expulsion of Petsopoulos. After the treachery of the leading workers here and internationally, the Special Congress was torn to pieces by endless personal rivalries.
Members with ossified ideas were attacked as intellectuals. That only made the crisis worse. Thus the bourgeoisie could rule over a divided working class. Petsiopoulos was expelled by a committee made up of Saragogolos and Stavridis who by the end had shown themselves to be traitors to the working class.
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
********
The following article was prepared for inclusion in the Revolutionary History special issue on Greece, Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991. Because of pressure on space we were not able to include all the documents that we would have liked in that issue. Several other interesting documents by Karliaftis were published, and interested readers are recommended to look there for biographical notes about him and other heroic figures in the Greek movement.
The articles in that issue, which is now out of print, is available on the web. In the longer term, we hope it will be possible to scan and web-publish other material which was given a very limited circulation in English by the Greek ‘Workers Vanguard’ group, of which Karliaftis was the long time leader.
It would be surprising if we were able to prepare this document without making errors in the spellings of proper names. We will be grateful if you point any out to us.
The Birth of Bolshevism in Greece-by Loukas Karliaftis
THE ROLE OF THE LEADERSHIP OF THE BALKAN FEDERATION IN GREECE
To understand the influence which the Balkan federation had on the Greek movement, we must learn about the different tendencies inside the Balkan federation.
The Bulgarian ‘Narrow’ marxists played a very important role in the Balkan Federation. They were the first to join the Bolsheviks. Without any doubt Dimitrov was a heroic militant as his struggle against Nazism and his testimony at the Leipzig trial proves. But it was Stalin’s politics that he put forward at Leipzig, policies which contributed to Hitler’s rise to power.
A lack of initiative did not help Dimitrov. The date of the split between the ‘Broads’ and the ‘Narrows’ was in 1903. Dimitrov was the leader of the Trade Union side of the Bulgarian Communist Party. He pushed the struggle between the ‘Narrows’ and the ‘Broads’ to the point of a Trade Union split. Already, outside the Second International and before its decline, Trotsky was sent in 1909 and Rakovsky in 1908 to resolve the Bulgarian question and to repair the strategy which the Dimitrov’s split had caused in the Trade Unions. What is more this strategy helped the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, Savazov and others, to divide the masses. At last in 1914 Dimitrov accepted Trade Union unity.
During the war of 1914, the Bulgarian leadership of the Balkan Federation, Dimitrov and Kolarov, cordially stood together with the other representatives. It seems that Dimitrov and Kolarov were not aware that Sideris was a representative of the Federation, that is to say a supporter of gradualist Socialism, in other words a ‘Broad’ like Rakazov.
During this period of unity there was an Anti-Militarist Manifesto of the Balkan Federation which had a rather superficial view of the situation and even a certain pacifism.
In 1918 the uprising at Klantomir and Kintala broke out and Dimitrov said later that both the Party and he himself made grave errors during the uprising, which was drowned in blood. This revolt was a spontaneous movement of soldiers, Dimitrov even said that they were not close enough to the Bolsheviks. This declaration necessitated his self-criticism.
At their conference in February 1922 the PSO continued its policy of betraying the masses. What is more this policy was not just because of Dimitrov and Kolarov but was also that of the Balkan Federation.
The Stalinists have said nothing about this betrayal. Benaroyas has revealed an extraordinary and important thing in telling us what the political prisoners in prison stressed on the subject of this betrayal. Benaroyas tells us that the Conference had thought that the social patriotic and opportunist policy was alright in the Greek situation, while the Bulgarian representatives declared that they wished to set an example to the other Balkan parties.
That was an inevitable proof of their incapacity, unlike Lenin and Trotsky with the Comintern, to perceive the revolutionary nature of the epoch.
After the Conference of October 1922 the representative of the Balkan Federation who had come to Greece with leanings towards the supporters of the 1922 February Conference of a common agreement between the extremist Papanastassis and the reformist Sideris, said that a Central Committee must be created including Sargologos and the partisans of the February 1922 Conference. During this period the Federation representative, with the complicity of Georgiadis and Sideris, had created another Central Committee but the Central Committee of Sargologos sabotaged this Committee.
The Bulgarian representative had dared to support Georgiadis, Sideris and Petsopoulas. Sargologos made friendly contacts with him of a kind that gave a false impression of his plans to the Bulgarian representative. The Bulgarian representative had also met Tzoulatis of whose role and prestige he was well aware. There was no possibility of doing anything without Tzoulatis. He tried to convince the latter to join them. But from the end of 1921 onwards Tzoulatis did not believe in a regroupment of the PSO. So he formed a new movement. Without doubt he counted on the support of Balkan Federation but even more he counted on that of the Communist International. The Balkan Federation representative ignored article 7 of the 21 Principles which demanded a break in relations with reformists and centre politicians. He made an agreement with Tzoulatis on the basis of Article 2 of the 21 Principles which demanded that two-thirds of the Central Committee could only consist of Socialists who had pronounced in favour of the Third International before the Congress.
Thus he aligned with the right wing of the February Conference.
Dimitrov had made other errors and had accused the tendency opposed to the Fascist coup d’‚tat of Tsagov of reformism. From that moment Dimitrov, on his own responsibility, adopted a policy by the Bulgarian Communist Party of neutrality between the governments of Stabolinsky and Tsagov. He did not take sufficient notice of the position taken by the Bolsheviks towards Kornilov. Tsagov started by murdering Stabolinsky. He then killed thousands of Communists, workers and intellectuals. He ruled for twenty years as a dictator.
The hatred of Fascism and the spontaneous rising of the masses against Tsagov brought about a change of heart in the Bulgarian Communist Party. They then formed a joint front with Agrarian Union of Stabolinsky, the Social-Democratic Party (the so-called Social Fascists of 1931) and even radical bourgeois.
These opportunist deviations of Kolarov and Dimitrov were unknown to Trotsky and Lenin. But they showed the reason for the conflicts going on between Trotsky and Rakovsky on the one hand and on the other Dimitrov and Kolarov. It was never possible to open a debate within the Third International on the problems of Greek and Bulgarian Communism.
GREEK CAPITALISM ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS
When Greek capitalism reeled in Asia Minor and rotted in Greece, the militarist adventure paralysed activity. A state of emergency was declared. Then in the summer of 1922 the Gounaris government imprisoned members of the Communist union of the P.S.O., the editor of Rizopastis and Rizos, with the accusation of high treason and sedition. At the same time Metaxas, for demagogic reasons, declared that the direct intervention in Asia Minor was done by mercenaries and that Kabanis, Kraniakis and Kotsies openly sabotaged it without anyone bothering them.
The prisons filled with members of the P.S.O until the organisation collapsed.
At this point the retreat started. The defeat was almost total. There was panic among Constantine’s supporters. Kordatos made public a decision of the military government of Athens that wanted to execute all the Communist prisoners believing that there would be a mass outcry to punish the Communist treason.
The blow failed. In fact Balidis, the prison governor, demanded a written order as a telephoned command was not enough.
The bourgeois class looked with favour on the defeat at the front and saw a Greek version of the Commune.
Then Metaxas was summoned to take power. It was he who was given the responsibility of involving the communists in the government.
Metaxas sent his aide Evelpidis to visit the prisons and then went there himself with two vacant ministerial posts to offer. One of these was the Ministry of the Interior for he said “The more you can pin the responsibility on Plastiras the more they will have to suffer the reprisals of the Venezelists.” It was certainly an odd proposition from someone who had previously hanged Communists for treason.
“General you do me too much honour” replied Kordatos. “I know that the present time is critical for our country but I believe that the role for us in the P.S.O.P. is not save the throne of the bourgeois state. We cannot take part in your government for our principles forbid it.” After that Metaxas formed a government on his own.
THE DEFEAT ON THE FRONT IN ASIA MINOR
The collapse of the front in Asia Minor in August 1922 marked the end of the Greco-Turkish war which the Venezelists had started and the royalists had continued. This defeat was the result of the profound weakness of Greek capitalism and the feelings of the soldiers against the massacre lasted for eight months.
In that year discipline in the army was destroyed. A whole unit mutinied rather than go to the front. The soldiers would no longer sacrifice themselves for Greek capitalism. The articles in Rizos, For Communism and Workers’ Fight were inspired by Lenin’s Socialists and the War which set the tinder alight. The exiles had difficulty in recovering from this defeat. But there were other disturbances in the very heart of society. At Radesto there were numerous disturbances. There were mass meetings of thousands of soldiers. In these mass meetings they spoke of peace and socialism. The state seemed to breaking up. At Adrianople a group of Communists, which included Vlachos, had organised an action committee. There were other such centres of organised nuclei in other places but their impact was not very great. In reality, since the PSO had been dissolved at Athens, the little groups could not co-ordinate their activities. Papadatos and Kianoulotos maintained that they had reunited the Committee but the Soviets did not get the same effects as in Russia.
Certain units of the army succeeded in both keeping their arms and escaping from the control of Plastiras. The Trotskyist Giannis with some other socialists says that they were able to get almost to Pireaeus before they were disarmed. The worker Kokkinogiannis almost got to Salonika. The defeat at the front could have transformed itself into a revolution but there was no party to give things direction and to focus the revolutionary tendencies of peasants, workers and soldiers.
THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM BETRAYED
When the decisions of the February Conference were known the word treason sprang to the lips of the rank and file. Everyone attacked the opportunist tendencies.
The rank and file were encouraged in their struggle by the German crisis of 1923. The British, Bulgarian, Estonian, Hungarian and Chinese revolutionary events encouraged them too. But they were also influenced by the (dis)association of the Comintern of Lenin and Trotsky.
The upheaval started with the Tzoulatis-Sarandidis group but the Papanastassakis tendency followed. In time the movement spread as far as Pireaus and Salonika reaching into the prisons and the soldiers at the front.
Benaroyas was sincere in his recognition of this movement of militants in spite of which he declared “Some agitated with ulterior motives, other through weakness, thought that the February Conference had betrayed the principles of the Party.” Saragogolos and Stavridis did agitate with ulterior motives and voted for the decisions of the February meeting.
Then Benaroyas tells us “Around Papanastassios a group of militants was built against the Conference decision. The prisoners were also against such Social-Democratic decisions. Petsopoulas and Kordatos also declared themselves opposed to these decisions. And the leadership of the Party became engaged in a great movement against these opportunist tendencies.” Then the Petsopoulas tendency cancelled the February conference decisions even though it was in favour of them. At the time the revisionism of the February conference had only partially marked certain events of the twenties, Petsopoulas and Kordatos were definitely influenced.
THE SPECIAL CONGRESS OF SEPTEMBER 1922
The October 1922 Conference was called to resolve the crisis of the P.S.O. but in fact it made it worse.
Athens was represented by Ikonmou, Papanikolaou, Maggo and Strago, and Pireaus by Agelis, Kourtidis and Aligizakis, while Saragogolos, Chatzistavros and Ventura came from Salonika. The Federation of Tobacco workers and Electrical workers union were present. Sideris and Georgiadis decided to break if they were not in the majority. But the right wing did not have the majority.
That, said the secretary Kordatos, is united on the only small possibility of organising. What is more that underlined the crisis among the parties and unions.
Then Sideris and Georgiades proposed the expulsion of Petsopoulos. After the treachery of the leading workers here and internationally, the Special Congress was torn to pieces by endless personal rivalries.
Members with ossified ideas were attacked as intellectuals. That only made the crisis worse. Thus the bourgeoisie could rule over a divided working class. Petsiopoulos was expelled by a committee made up of Saragogolos and Stavridis who by the end had shown themselves to be traitors to the working class.
Friday, September 24, 2010
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-On War and Revolution
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Stalinism and Trotskyism in Greece (1924-1949)
Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- On The Struggle For Our Communist Future In Greece
Click on the headline to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article on the recent situation in Greece and the program necessary to get to that communist future the Greeks (and we) so desperately need.
Monday, May 17, 2010
From "Revolutionary History" -Vol.4 Nos.1 & 2-The Spanish Civil War- José Rebull -On the Slogan of ‘A UGT-CNT Government’
Click on the headline to link to "Revolutionary History" -Vol.4 Nos.1 & 2, 1992-The Spanish Civil War. The View from the Left-On the Slogan of ‘A UGT-CNT Government’
Markin comment:
Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution from a POUM leftist in the Spanish Civil War period. The UGT was the Socialist-aligned trade union federation in Spain. The CNT the Anarchist (FAI)-aligned federation. The POUM and its militants had many faults, too many to be a revolutionary organization during that war but the commentator is dead on about the slogan of a purely trade union government- and why we oppose such a slogan. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!
Markin comment:
Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution from a POUM leftist in the Spanish Civil War period. The UGT was the Socialist-aligned trade union federation in Spain. The CNT the Anarchist (FAI)-aligned federation. The POUM and its militants had many faults, too many to be a revolutionary organization during that war but the commentator is dead on about the slogan of a purely trade union government- and why we oppose such a slogan. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!
*From "Revolutionary History", Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-Stalinism and Trotskyism in Greece (1924-1949)- A Guest Commentary
Click on the headline to link to "Revolutionary History, Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-"Stalinism and Trotskyism in Greece (1924-1949)".
Markin comment:
Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!
Markin comment:
Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
*Be Still My Heart- On Calling For The Greek Communist Parties And Trade Unions To Take Power
Click on the headline to link ot a "Wikipedia" thumbnail sketch entry for the Greek Communist Party (KKE). Use this entry solely as a start to learn about the KKE. Then push on from there.
Markin comment:
On May 10, 2010 I posted an entry on the situation in Greece in response to a post from the International Marxist Tendency’s Greek section’s analysis of the tasks that confront revolutionaries today. I agreed with the comment in the post that general strikes were of limited value if they did not, at some point, pose the question of who shall rule- working people or the capitalists. I went further and proposed two propaganda points that revolutionaries in Greece, and their supporters internationally, should be fighting for. Right now.
The first point revolved around the fight to create workers councils, committees of action or factory committees in order to fight for a revolutionary perspective. That program, the specifics which are better to left to those on the ground, needs to include refusal to pay the capitalists debts, under whatever guise, defense of the hard fought social welfare gains of the past, the struggle against the current government’s austerity program, the fight against any taint of popular frontism (opposition to alliances, at this critical juncture, with non-working class forces where the working class is the donkey and the small capitalist parties are the riders), and prepare to pose the question of who shall rule. Thus there is plenty of work that needs to be started now while the working masses are mobilized and in a furor over the current situation.
The second point, which flows out of the first, is the call for the Communist parties and trade unions to take power in their own right and in the interest of the working class. Now, clearly, and this is where some confusion has entered the picture, this is TODAY a propaganda call but is a concrete way to pose the question of who shall rule. Of course, we revolutionaries should have no illusions in the Stalinists and ex-Stalinists who run those parties and who, in previous times, have lived very comfortably with their various popular front, anti-monopolist strategies that preserve capitalism. However, today those organizations call for anti-governmental action and are listened to by the masses in the streets.
The point is to call their political bluff, carefully, but insistently. In that sense we are talking over the heads of the leaders to their social bases. Now that tactic is always proper for revolutionaries to gain authority but today we have to have a more concrete way to do so. In short, call on the Greek labor militants to call on their parties and unions to take power. And if not, then follow us. This is not some exotic formula from nowhere but reflects the sometimes painful experience, at least since the European revolutions of 1848.
Note: I headed today’s headline with the expression “be still my heart” for a reason. It has been a very long time since we have been able to, even propagandistically, call for workers parties on the European continent to take power. Especially, after the demise of the Soviet Union, for Stalinist (reformed or otherwise) parties to do so. Frankly, I did not think, as a practical matter, that I would be making such a call in Europe again in my lifetime. All proportions guarded, this may be the first wave of a new revolutionary upsurge on that continent. But, hell, its nice just to be able to, rationally, make that political call. In any case, the old utopian dream of a serious capitalist United States of Europe is getting ready to go into the dustbin of history. Let’s replace it with a Socialist Federation of Europe- and Greece today is the “epicenter”. SYRIZA-KKE to power!
Markin comment:
On May 10, 2010 I posted an entry on the situation in Greece in response to a post from the International Marxist Tendency’s Greek section’s analysis of the tasks that confront revolutionaries today. I agreed with the comment in the post that general strikes were of limited value if they did not, at some point, pose the question of who shall rule- working people or the capitalists. I went further and proposed two propaganda points that revolutionaries in Greece, and their supporters internationally, should be fighting for. Right now.
The first point revolved around the fight to create workers councils, committees of action or factory committees in order to fight for a revolutionary perspective. That program, the specifics which are better to left to those on the ground, needs to include refusal to pay the capitalists debts, under whatever guise, defense of the hard fought social welfare gains of the past, the struggle against the current government’s austerity program, the fight against any taint of popular frontism (opposition to alliances, at this critical juncture, with non-working class forces where the working class is the donkey and the small capitalist parties are the riders), and prepare to pose the question of who shall rule. Thus there is plenty of work that needs to be started now while the working masses are mobilized and in a furor over the current situation.
The second point, which flows out of the first, is the call for the Communist parties and trade unions to take power in their own right and in the interest of the working class. Now, clearly, and this is where some confusion has entered the picture, this is TODAY a propaganda call but is a concrete way to pose the question of who shall rule. Of course, we revolutionaries should have no illusions in the Stalinists and ex-Stalinists who run those parties and who, in previous times, have lived very comfortably with their various popular front, anti-monopolist strategies that preserve capitalism. However, today those organizations call for anti-governmental action and are listened to by the masses in the streets.
The point is to call their political bluff, carefully, but insistently. In that sense we are talking over the heads of the leaders to their social bases. Now that tactic is always proper for revolutionaries to gain authority but today we have to have a more concrete way to do so. In short, call on the Greek labor militants to call on their parties and unions to take power. And if not, then follow us. This is not some exotic formula from nowhere but reflects the sometimes painful experience, at least since the European revolutions of 1848.
Note: I headed today’s headline with the expression “be still my heart” for a reason. It has been a very long time since we have been able to, even propagandistically, call for workers parties on the European continent to take power. Especially, after the demise of the Soviet Union, for Stalinist (reformed or otherwise) parties to do so. Frankly, I did not think, as a practical matter, that I would be making such a call in Europe again in my lifetime. All proportions guarded, this may be the first wave of a new revolutionary upsurge on that continent. But, hell, its nice just to be able to, rationally, make that political call. In any case, the old utopian dream of a serious capitalist United States of Europe is getting ready to go into the dustbin of history. Let’s replace it with a Socialist Federation of Europe- and Greece today is the “epicenter”. SYRIZA-KKE to power!
*Avenge The Communist Defeat In The Greek Civil War Of 1946-49- The Lessons Of History
Click on the headline to link to a "Marxist Internet Archives" entry for the Greek Civil War Of 1946-49.
Markin comment:
Politics is sometimes a strange business. We all recognize that history does not exactly repeat itself. And it is also true that humankind makes its own history- although not always to its liking. Some things though, like the communist defeat in the Greek Civil War, despite our disagreements with its Stalinist leadership, were definitely not to our liking, but may be capable of reversal. Or at least of a modicum of historical justice. That is the backdrop of today's fight by the working class in the streets of Greece. May they win, and win big.
Avenge the lost in the 1946-49 civil war!
Markin comment:
Politics is sometimes a strange business. We all recognize that history does not exactly repeat itself. And it is also true that humankind makes its own history- although not always to its liking. Some things though, like the communist defeat in the Greek Civil War, despite our disagreements with its Stalinist leadership, were definitely not to our liking, but may be capable of reversal. Or at least of a modicum of historical justice. That is the backdrop of today's fight by the working class in the streets of Greece. May they win, and win big.
Avenge the lost in the 1946-49 civil war!
*From The "An Unrepentant Communist" Blog- The Struggle In Greece- Yes, The Peoples Of Europe Rise Up
Click on the headline to link to "An Unrepentant Communist" blog enrty on the struggle in Greece and the lessons for those elsewhere in Europe (and the Americas).
Sunday, May 09, 2010
From The Archives Of "Workers Vanguard"-Greece Rocked by Protests (2008)
Markin comment:
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 927
2 January 2009
Greece Rocked by Protests
Down With Police Terror!
In response to mass protests in Greece against police violence and state repression, the Trotskyist Group of Greece on 9 December 2008 issued the leaflet published below. The translation and accompanying introduction, which we have adapted here, were first published by Workers Hammer, paper of the Spartacist League/Britain. The TGG and SL/B are sections of the International Communist League, as is the Spartacist League/U.S.
The protests erupted over the cop murder of a student in Athens on December 6. The leaflet was distributed during the massive one-day general strike on December 10, which had been called by the main union federations before the killing, in opposition to the government’s anti-working-class austerity program. The Greek government asked the trade-union leadership to call off the strike but the bureaucracy feared a backlash at the base if they cancelled the strike. The unions rallied at the parliament building instead of marching through the city. The main Greek trade-union federations—the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) and the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY)—are led by PASOK, which, while often painted as a reformist workers party by the Greek left, is a thoroughly bourgeois-populist formation.
Greek organizations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SEK), cothinkers of the British Socialist Workers Party (formerly allied with the International Socialist Organization in the U.S.), and the Xekinima (Start) group, allied with the Socialist Party in Britain and represented in the U.S. by Socialist Alternative, tail PASOK. Their central slogan is: “Down with the government of murderers!” These reformists, as the TGG leaflet explains, aim to replace the rightist “neoliberal” regime of Karamanlis’s New Democracy (ND) with a “left” bourgeois government. This would mean either the return of PASOK or a new popular front made up of some combination of PASOK and Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left, which is dominated by Synaspismos, formed out of the old “Eurocommunist” wing of the Communist Party). Such an outcome would simply create a new roadblock to the working class in its struggle against the capitalist exploiters, while nourishing the growth of fascists like Golden Dawn who have been mobilizing to attack the youth protests.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which leads a significant section of the proletariat, today strikes a posture of opposition to PASOK, saying in its newspaper Rizospastis (11 December 2008): “ND/PASOK, same story—austerity, unemployment, terrorism,” declaring “No more illusions” and posing the choice as: “Either with capital, or with the workers.” However the KKE certainly does not stand for the class independence of the proletariat or for principled opposition to entering into coalitions with bourgeois parties. Quite the contrary—throughout its history the KKE has upheld the treacherous Stalinist policy of popular-front betrayal of the working class. Most recently, in the late 1980s, the KKE participated in popular-front coalitions with both New Democracy and PASOK and will have no compunction against doing so again if the opportunity presents itself.
Grotesquely, the KKE participated in violence-baiting the anarchists and initiated a witchhunt of the tame social democrats of Syriza, falsely claiming that the latter condones the burning of shops. Refusing to defend the anarchists against the right-wing government’s witchhunt, both the KKE and Syriza are attempting to prove to the bourgeoisie that they are reliable candidates to defend the capitalist order.
The protests against the brutal police killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos intersected planned strikes and protests by the trade unions against the impact of the global economic crisis on workers. Greece has a current account deficit of about $53 billion, or 15 percent of its gross domestic product, the highest in the euro zone. Youth unemployment is around 19 percent, while the overall jobless rate is over 7 percent. There is massive public anger against the Karamanlis government that has attacked the living standards of the working class through privatizations, tax increases and “reform” of pensions, in a country where it is estimated that 20 percent of the population lives in poverty. Contrary to PASOK leader Papandreou’s promises of “change,” a PASOK government would be just as committed to making the working class pay for the capitalist crisis.
* * *
ATHENS, DECEMBER 9—On December 6 in the district of Exarchia in Athens a 15-year-old student, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was murdered in cold blood
—shot by a police officer. Spontaneous protest demonstrations broke out in Athens and Salonika, spreading rapidly to the rest of Greece, where they are ongoing today. In what the press describes as the biggest crisis in Greece since the end of the bloody colonels’ rule in 1974, demonstrators have come face-to-face with the brutal reality of the “democratic” capitalist state. At least 150 people have been brought before the police department, 70 have been detained and the repression continues. We defend the anarchist and other youth protesters against state repression! We demand the immediate dropping of all charges against the protesters! For the immediate release of all those arrested!
The Trotskyist Group of Greece, sympathizing section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), solidarizes with the rage that has exploded in the streets against the police terror of the capitalist state. Fury over the murder of Grigoropoulos is only the “tip of the iceberg” of popular hatred toward the right-wing New Democracy government of Karamanlis which presides over mass unemployment, financial scandals, a huge and growing gap between rich and poor, and the brutal exploitation and repression of immigrants.
The protests against the cop terror need an organized expression—one that welds the anger of the youth protesters with the social power of the proletariat. The working class must be mobilized not only to defend youth protesters against the violence of the cops, but as part of a struggle against the capitalist system itself.
The reformist left is offering its own schemes for sanitizing the capitalist state and its forces of repression. The Communist Party of Greece, in a statement of 7 December 2008, declared: “The responsibilities of the government of ND are large and obvious, both in general and in particular for the climate which has been cultivated and for the education of the security forces.” The president of Syriza, Alavanos, in a question in parliament to the Minister of Internal Affairs on December 8 asked: “What measures do you propose to take in order to instill in the police concepts of tolerance, democratic behavior and cooperation toward citizens?” The KKE and Syriza once again spread illusions that the capitalist state can be reformed and that the capitalist rulers can educate and enlighten the security forces or even be compelled to cede control of the police to the exploited and oppressed masses—the very masses the cops are paid to repress.
The perspective of the KKE and Syriza is to replace the ND government with a new popular front. With crass opportunism these reformist parties hope to join with bourgeois parties in administering the bourgeois state, which will necessarily mean attacks on the working class. Support to such a popular front is also what lies behind the calls by reformists like the Cliffite SEK and DEA to get rid of the Karamanlis government.
As Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution (1917), “A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power…. The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.” The “order” to which Lenin refers cannot be changed by throwing Molotov cocktails. Although anarchists may seem “militant” to some youth, they are opposed to building the one instrument that is indispensable for getting rid of the capitalist exploiters and their state—a Leninist vanguard party.
The world economic crisis has demonstrated the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, but there are no impossible situations for the bourgeoisie. We, as genuine Trotskyists, seek to mobilize the forces of the multiracial proletariat in class struggle, not only in protests against the capitalist system but in the fight to uproot it. We fight to forge Leninist vanguard parties as sections of the revolutionary international that is required to lead the working class to sweep away the capitalist exploiters and their states and to build workers states and a global socialist society based on equality.
An injury to one is an injury to all! Drop the charges!
For a revolutionary workers vanguard party in Greece, section of a reforged Fourth International!
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 927
2 January 2009
Greece Rocked by Protests
Down With Police Terror!
In response to mass protests in Greece against police violence and state repression, the Trotskyist Group of Greece on 9 December 2008 issued the leaflet published below. The translation and accompanying introduction, which we have adapted here, were first published by Workers Hammer, paper of the Spartacist League/Britain. The TGG and SL/B are sections of the International Communist League, as is the Spartacist League/U.S.
The protests erupted over the cop murder of a student in Athens on December 6. The leaflet was distributed during the massive one-day general strike on December 10, which had been called by the main union federations before the killing, in opposition to the government’s anti-working-class austerity program. The Greek government asked the trade-union leadership to call off the strike but the bureaucracy feared a backlash at the base if they cancelled the strike. The unions rallied at the parliament building instead of marching through the city. The main Greek trade-union federations—the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) and the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY)—are led by PASOK, which, while often painted as a reformist workers party by the Greek left, is a thoroughly bourgeois-populist formation.
Greek organizations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SEK), cothinkers of the British Socialist Workers Party (formerly allied with the International Socialist Organization in the U.S.), and the Xekinima (Start) group, allied with the Socialist Party in Britain and represented in the U.S. by Socialist Alternative, tail PASOK. Their central slogan is: “Down with the government of murderers!” These reformists, as the TGG leaflet explains, aim to replace the rightist “neoliberal” regime of Karamanlis’s New Democracy (ND) with a “left” bourgeois government. This would mean either the return of PASOK or a new popular front made up of some combination of PASOK and Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left, which is dominated by Synaspismos, formed out of the old “Eurocommunist” wing of the Communist Party). Such an outcome would simply create a new roadblock to the working class in its struggle against the capitalist exploiters, while nourishing the growth of fascists like Golden Dawn who have been mobilizing to attack the youth protests.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which leads a significant section of the proletariat, today strikes a posture of opposition to PASOK, saying in its newspaper Rizospastis (11 December 2008): “ND/PASOK, same story—austerity, unemployment, terrorism,” declaring “No more illusions” and posing the choice as: “Either with capital, or with the workers.” However the KKE certainly does not stand for the class independence of the proletariat or for principled opposition to entering into coalitions with bourgeois parties. Quite the contrary—throughout its history the KKE has upheld the treacherous Stalinist policy of popular-front betrayal of the working class. Most recently, in the late 1980s, the KKE participated in popular-front coalitions with both New Democracy and PASOK and will have no compunction against doing so again if the opportunity presents itself.
Grotesquely, the KKE participated in violence-baiting the anarchists and initiated a witchhunt of the tame social democrats of Syriza, falsely claiming that the latter condones the burning of shops. Refusing to defend the anarchists against the right-wing government’s witchhunt, both the KKE and Syriza are attempting to prove to the bourgeoisie that they are reliable candidates to defend the capitalist order.
The protests against the brutal police killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos intersected planned strikes and protests by the trade unions against the impact of the global economic crisis on workers. Greece has a current account deficit of about $53 billion, or 15 percent of its gross domestic product, the highest in the euro zone. Youth unemployment is around 19 percent, while the overall jobless rate is over 7 percent. There is massive public anger against the Karamanlis government that has attacked the living standards of the working class through privatizations, tax increases and “reform” of pensions, in a country where it is estimated that 20 percent of the population lives in poverty. Contrary to PASOK leader Papandreou’s promises of “change,” a PASOK government would be just as committed to making the working class pay for the capitalist crisis.
* * *
ATHENS, DECEMBER 9—On December 6 in the district of Exarchia in Athens a 15-year-old student, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was murdered in cold blood
—shot by a police officer. Spontaneous protest demonstrations broke out in Athens and Salonika, spreading rapidly to the rest of Greece, where they are ongoing today. In what the press describes as the biggest crisis in Greece since the end of the bloody colonels’ rule in 1974, demonstrators have come face-to-face with the brutal reality of the “democratic” capitalist state. At least 150 people have been brought before the police department, 70 have been detained and the repression continues. We defend the anarchist and other youth protesters against state repression! We demand the immediate dropping of all charges against the protesters! For the immediate release of all those arrested!
The Trotskyist Group of Greece, sympathizing section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), solidarizes with the rage that has exploded in the streets against the police terror of the capitalist state. Fury over the murder of Grigoropoulos is only the “tip of the iceberg” of popular hatred toward the right-wing New Democracy government of Karamanlis which presides over mass unemployment, financial scandals, a huge and growing gap between rich and poor, and the brutal exploitation and repression of immigrants.
The protests against the cop terror need an organized expression—one that welds the anger of the youth protesters with the social power of the proletariat. The working class must be mobilized not only to defend youth protesters against the violence of the cops, but as part of a struggle against the capitalist system itself.
The reformist left is offering its own schemes for sanitizing the capitalist state and its forces of repression. The Communist Party of Greece, in a statement of 7 December 2008, declared: “The responsibilities of the government of ND are large and obvious, both in general and in particular for the climate which has been cultivated and for the education of the security forces.” The president of Syriza, Alavanos, in a question in parliament to the Minister of Internal Affairs on December 8 asked: “What measures do you propose to take in order to instill in the police concepts of tolerance, democratic behavior and cooperation toward citizens?” The KKE and Syriza once again spread illusions that the capitalist state can be reformed and that the capitalist rulers can educate and enlighten the security forces or even be compelled to cede control of the police to the exploited and oppressed masses—the very masses the cops are paid to repress.
The perspective of the KKE and Syriza is to replace the ND government with a new popular front. With crass opportunism these reformist parties hope to join with bourgeois parties in administering the bourgeois state, which will necessarily mean attacks on the working class. Support to such a popular front is also what lies behind the calls by reformists like the Cliffite SEK and DEA to get rid of the Karamanlis government.
As Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution (1917), “A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power…. The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.” The “order” to which Lenin refers cannot be changed by throwing Molotov cocktails. Although anarchists may seem “militant” to some youth, they are opposed to building the one instrument that is indispensable for getting rid of the capitalist exploiters and their state—a Leninist vanguard party.
The world economic crisis has demonstrated the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, but there are no impossible situations for the bourgeoisie. We, as genuine Trotskyists, seek to mobilize the forces of the multiracial proletariat in class struggle, not only in protests against the capitalist system but in the fight to uproot it. We fight to forge Leninist vanguard parties as sections of the revolutionary international that is required to lead the working class to sweep away the capitalist exploiters and their states and to build workers states and a global socialist society based on equality.
An injury to one is an injury to all! Drop the charges!
For a revolutionary workers vanguard party in Greece, section of a reforged Fourth International!
Friday, January 02, 2009
*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-Greece Rocked by Protests
Markin comment:
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 927
2 January 2009
Greece Rocked by Protests
Down With Police Terror!
In response to mass protests in Greece against police violence and state repression, the Trotskyist Group of Greece on 9 December 2008 issued the leaflet published below. The translation and accompanying introduction, which we have adapted here, were first published by Workers Hammer, paper of the Spartacist League/Britain. The TGG and SL/B are sections of the International Communist League, as is the Spartacist League/U.S.
The protests erupted over the cop murder of a student in Athens on December 6. The leaflet was distributed during the massive one-day general strike on December 10, which had been called by the main union federations before the killing, in opposition to the government’s anti-working-class austerity program. The Greek government asked the trade-union leadership to call off the strike but the bureaucracy feared a backlash at the base if they cancelled the strike. The unions rallied at the parliament building instead of marching through the city. The main Greek trade-union federations—the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) and the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY)—are led by PASOK, which, while often painted as a reformist workers party by the Greek left, is a thoroughly bourgeois-populist formation.
Greek organizations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SEK), cothinkers of the British Socialist Workers Party (formerly allied with the International Socialist Organization in the U.S.), and the Xekinima (Start) group, allied with the Socialist Party in Britain and represented in the U.S. by Socialist Alternative, tail PASOK. Their central slogan is: “Down with the government of murderers!” These reformists, as the TGG leaflet explains, aim to replace the rightist “neoliberal” regime of Karamanlis’s New Democracy (ND) with a “left” bourgeois government. This would mean either the return of PASOK or a new popular front made up of some combination of PASOK and Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left, which is dominated by Synaspismos, formed out of the old “Eurocommunist” wing of the Communist Party). Such an outcome would simply create a new roadblock to the working class in its struggle against the capitalist exploiters, while nourishing the growth of fascists like Golden Dawn who have been mobilizing to attack the youth protests.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which leads a significant section of the proletariat, today strikes a posture of opposition to PASOK, saying in its newspaper Rizospastis (11 December 2008): “ND/PASOK, same story—austerity, unemployment, terrorism,” declaring “No more illusions” and posing the choice as: “Either with capital, or with the workers.” However the KKE certainly does not stand for the class independence of the proletariat or for principled opposition to entering into coalitions with bourgeois parties. Quite the contrary—throughout its history the KKE has upheld the treacherous Stalinist policy of popular-front betrayal of the working class. Most recently, in the late 1980s, the KKE participated in popular-front coalitions with both New Democracy and PASOK and will have no compunction against doing so again if the opportunity presents itself.
Grotesquely, the KKE participated in violence-baiting the anarchists and initiated a witchhunt of the tame social democrats of Syriza, falsely claiming that the latter condones the burning of shops. Refusing to defend the anarchists against the right-wing government’s witchhunt, both the KKE and Syriza are attempting to prove to the bourgeoisie that they are reliable candidates to defend the capitalist order.
The protests against the brutal police killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos intersected planned strikes and protests by the trade unions against the impact of the global economic crisis on workers. Greece has a current account deficit of about $53 billion, or 15 percent of its gross domestic product, the highest in the euro zone. Youth unemployment is around 19 percent, while the overall jobless rate is over 7 percent. There is massive public anger against the Karamanlis government that has attacked the living standards of the working class through privatizations, tax increases and “reform” of pensions, in a country where it is estimated that 20 percent of the population lives in poverty. Contrary to PASOK leader Papandreou’s promises of “change,” a PASOK government would be just as committed to making the working class pay for the capitalist crisis.
* * *
ATHENS, DECEMBER 9—On December 6 in the district of Exarchia in Athens a 15-year-old student, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was murdered in cold blood
—shot by a police officer. Spontaneous protest demonstrations broke out in Athens and Salonika, spreading rapidly to the rest of Greece, where they are ongoing today. In what the press describes as the biggest crisis in Greece since the end of the bloody colonels’ rule in 1974, demonstrators have come face-to-face with the brutal reality of the “democratic” capitalist state. At least 150 people have been brought before the police department, 70 have been detained and the repression continues. We defend the anarchist and other youth protesters against state repression! We demand the immediate dropping of all charges against the protesters! For the immediate release of all those arrested!
The Trotskyist Group of Greece, sympathizing section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), solidarizes with the rage that has exploded in the streets against the police terror of the capitalist state. Fury over the murder of Grigoropoulos is only the “tip of the iceberg” of popular hatred toward the right-wing New Democracy government of Karamanlis which presides over mass unemployment, financial scandals, a huge and growing gap between rich and poor, and the brutal exploitation and repression of immigrants.
The protests against the cop terror need an organized expression—one that welds the anger of the youth protesters with the social power of the proletariat. The working class must be mobilized not only to defend youth protesters against the violence of the cops, but as part of a struggle against the capitalist system itself.
The reformist left is offering its own schemes for sanitizing the capitalist state and its forces of repression. The Communist Party of Greece, in a statement of 7 December 2008, declared: “The responsibilities of the government of ND are large and obvious, both in general and in particular for the climate which has been cultivated and for the education of the security forces.” The president of Syriza, Alavanos, in a question in parliament to the Minister of Internal Affairs on December 8 asked: “What measures do you propose to take in order to instill in the police concepts of tolerance, democratic behavior and cooperation toward citizens?” The KKE and Syriza once again spread illusions that the capitalist state can be reformed and that the capitalist rulers can educate and enlighten the security forces or even be compelled to cede control of the police to the exploited and oppressed masses—the very masses the cops are paid to repress.
The perspective of the KKE and Syriza is to replace the ND government with a new popular front. With crass opportunism these reformist parties hope to join with bourgeois parties in administering the bourgeois state, which will necessarily mean attacks on the working class. Support to such a popular front is also what lies behind the calls by reformists like the Cliffite SEK and DEA to get rid of the Karamanlis government.
As Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution (1917), “A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power…. The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.” The “order” to which Lenin refers cannot be changed by throwing Molotov cocktails. Although anarchists may seem “militant” to some youth, they are opposed to building the one instrument that is indispensable for getting rid of the capitalist exploiters and their state—a Leninist vanguard party.
The world economic crisis has demonstrated the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, but there are no impossible situations for the bourgeoisie. We, as genuine Trotskyists, seek to mobilize the forces of the multiracial proletariat in class struggle, not only in protests against the capitalist system but in the fight to uproot it. We fight to forge Leninist vanguard parties as sections of the revolutionary international that is required to lead the working class to sweep away the capitalist exploiters and their states and to build workers states and a global socialist society based on equality.
An injury to one is an injury to all! Drop the charges!
For a revolutionary workers vanguard party in Greece, section of a reforged Fourth International!
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 927
2 January 2009
Greece Rocked by Protests
Down With Police Terror!
In response to mass protests in Greece against police violence and state repression, the Trotskyist Group of Greece on 9 December 2008 issued the leaflet published below. The translation and accompanying introduction, which we have adapted here, were first published by Workers Hammer, paper of the Spartacist League/Britain. The TGG and SL/B are sections of the International Communist League, as is the Spartacist League/U.S.
The protests erupted over the cop murder of a student in Athens on December 6. The leaflet was distributed during the massive one-day general strike on December 10, which had been called by the main union federations before the killing, in opposition to the government’s anti-working-class austerity program. The Greek government asked the trade-union leadership to call off the strike but the bureaucracy feared a backlash at the base if they cancelled the strike. The unions rallied at the parliament building instead of marching through the city. The main Greek trade-union federations—the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) and the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY)—are led by PASOK, which, while often painted as a reformist workers party by the Greek left, is a thoroughly bourgeois-populist formation.
Greek organizations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SEK), cothinkers of the British Socialist Workers Party (formerly allied with the International Socialist Organization in the U.S.), and the Xekinima (Start) group, allied with the Socialist Party in Britain and represented in the U.S. by Socialist Alternative, tail PASOK. Their central slogan is: “Down with the government of murderers!” These reformists, as the TGG leaflet explains, aim to replace the rightist “neoliberal” regime of Karamanlis’s New Democracy (ND) with a “left” bourgeois government. This would mean either the return of PASOK or a new popular front made up of some combination of PASOK and Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left, which is dominated by Synaspismos, formed out of the old “Eurocommunist” wing of the Communist Party). Such an outcome would simply create a new roadblock to the working class in its struggle against the capitalist exploiters, while nourishing the growth of fascists like Golden Dawn who have been mobilizing to attack the youth protests.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which leads a significant section of the proletariat, today strikes a posture of opposition to PASOK, saying in its newspaper Rizospastis (11 December 2008): “ND/PASOK, same story—austerity, unemployment, terrorism,” declaring “No more illusions” and posing the choice as: “Either with capital, or with the workers.” However the KKE certainly does not stand for the class independence of the proletariat or for principled opposition to entering into coalitions with bourgeois parties. Quite the contrary—throughout its history the KKE has upheld the treacherous Stalinist policy of popular-front betrayal of the working class. Most recently, in the late 1980s, the KKE participated in popular-front coalitions with both New Democracy and PASOK and will have no compunction against doing so again if the opportunity presents itself.
Grotesquely, the KKE participated in violence-baiting the anarchists and initiated a witchhunt of the tame social democrats of Syriza, falsely claiming that the latter condones the burning of shops. Refusing to defend the anarchists against the right-wing government’s witchhunt, both the KKE and Syriza are attempting to prove to the bourgeoisie that they are reliable candidates to defend the capitalist order.
The protests against the brutal police killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos intersected planned strikes and protests by the trade unions against the impact of the global economic crisis on workers. Greece has a current account deficit of about $53 billion, or 15 percent of its gross domestic product, the highest in the euro zone. Youth unemployment is around 19 percent, while the overall jobless rate is over 7 percent. There is massive public anger against the Karamanlis government that has attacked the living standards of the working class through privatizations, tax increases and “reform” of pensions, in a country where it is estimated that 20 percent of the population lives in poverty. Contrary to PASOK leader Papandreou’s promises of “change,” a PASOK government would be just as committed to making the working class pay for the capitalist crisis.
* * *
ATHENS, DECEMBER 9—On December 6 in the district of Exarchia in Athens a 15-year-old student, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was murdered in cold blood
—shot by a police officer. Spontaneous protest demonstrations broke out in Athens and Salonika, spreading rapidly to the rest of Greece, where they are ongoing today. In what the press describes as the biggest crisis in Greece since the end of the bloody colonels’ rule in 1974, demonstrators have come face-to-face with the brutal reality of the “democratic” capitalist state. At least 150 people have been brought before the police department, 70 have been detained and the repression continues. We defend the anarchist and other youth protesters against state repression! We demand the immediate dropping of all charges against the protesters! For the immediate release of all those arrested!
The Trotskyist Group of Greece, sympathizing section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), solidarizes with the rage that has exploded in the streets against the police terror of the capitalist state. Fury over the murder of Grigoropoulos is only the “tip of the iceberg” of popular hatred toward the right-wing New Democracy government of Karamanlis which presides over mass unemployment, financial scandals, a huge and growing gap between rich and poor, and the brutal exploitation and repression of immigrants.
The protests against the cop terror need an organized expression—one that welds the anger of the youth protesters with the social power of the proletariat. The working class must be mobilized not only to defend youth protesters against the violence of the cops, but as part of a struggle against the capitalist system itself.
The reformist left is offering its own schemes for sanitizing the capitalist state and its forces of repression. The Communist Party of Greece, in a statement of 7 December 2008, declared: “The responsibilities of the government of ND are large and obvious, both in general and in particular for the climate which has been cultivated and for the education of the security forces.” The president of Syriza, Alavanos, in a question in parliament to the Minister of Internal Affairs on December 8 asked: “What measures do you propose to take in order to instill in the police concepts of tolerance, democratic behavior and cooperation toward citizens?” The KKE and Syriza once again spread illusions that the capitalist state can be reformed and that the capitalist rulers can educate and enlighten the security forces or even be compelled to cede control of the police to the exploited and oppressed masses—the very masses the cops are paid to repress.
The perspective of the KKE and Syriza is to replace the ND government with a new popular front. With crass opportunism these reformist parties hope to join with bourgeois parties in administering the bourgeois state, which will necessarily mean attacks on the working class. Support to such a popular front is also what lies behind the calls by reformists like the Cliffite SEK and DEA to get rid of the Karamanlis government.
As Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution (1917), “A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power…. The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.” The “order” to which Lenin refers cannot be changed by throwing Molotov cocktails. Although anarchists may seem “militant” to some youth, they are opposed to building the one instrument that is indispensable for getting rid of the capitalist exploiters and their state—a Leninist vanguard party.
The world economic crisis has demonstrated the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, but there are no impossible situations for the bourgeoisie. We, as genuine Trotskyists, seek to mobilize the forces of the multiracial proletariat in class struggle, not only in protests against the capitalist system but in the fight to uproot it. We fight to forge Leninist vanguard parties as sections of the revolutionary international that is required to lead the working class to sweep away the capitalist exploiters and their states and to build workers states and a global socialist society based on equality.
An injury to one is an injury to all! Drop the charges!
For a revolutionary workers vanguard party in Greece, section of a reforged Fourth International!
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