Please accept my encouragement in the pursuit of your noble action, and the assurance of my deepest and cordial consideration.
Norodom Sihanouk
Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk Upayuvareach Head of State of Cambodia
SOLIDARITY WITH THE GREEK WORKER AND PEASANT MASSES!
A Statement by the Fourth International
[The following statement on the situation in Greece was issued on May 5 by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the World Party of Social- 195 Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.
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The April 21 military coup d'état, put into operation by means of a NATO "plan against internal subversion," constitutes an attempt by the military circles linked to the court, the conservative traditional sectors of the bourgeoisie, particularly the big shipowners, the court and American imperialism to end the political instability that has featured the situation in Greece since the popular revolt against the intervention of the palace and rightists in July 1965. The installation of a naked military dictatorship shows that twenty years after the civil war, the capitalist system has not yet succeeded in achieving equilibriun.
l.
Greece remains, along with Spain and Portugal, one of the most backward countries in Europe. Aside from the big agglomerations like Athens-Piraeus and Salonika, the masses in the majority still make their living directly or indirectly from agriculture, which contributes to the same degree as industry in national production, although the industrial sector has registered a relatively high rate of growth in recent years largely due to bringing new units into production like the Pechiney aluminum plant, the Esso- Pappas industrial complex, etc. The traditional industries (food, liquor, tobacco, textiles...) still constitute half of all industrial production. Thus the economic basis for a policy of reformism in Greece is lacking.
The Greek bourgeoisie, linked to imperialism (first to British imperialism and then to American imperialism which picked up from the British), has remained basically incapable of bringing the country out of its stagnation, of altering its backward structure and resolving the agrarian problen.
George Papandreou, the leader of Enosis Kentrou [Center Union], represented the wing of the bourgeoisie which tried to modernize these structures in order to adapt Greece to the Common Market. He sought the support of the masses in order to utilize them for his own aims without
bringing into question either the monarchy or Greece's membership in NATO, in which it is a key piece.
But social relations in Greece are of such backwardness that the majority of the bourgeoisie cannot go beyond the court and the top circles of the army closely linked to the palace without endangering the status quo. This has been demonstrated in each of the successive crises from August 4, 1936 (establishment of the Metaxas dictatorship) up to April 21, 1967.
The Papandreous, both father and son, in face of the maneuvers of the palace, the general staff, the rightists and American imperialism, were incapable of carrying out a "Gaullist" policy, disappointing the hopes of the EDA [Union of Democratic Forces]. Greece lacks the social basis for the bourgeoisie to carry out a "Gaullist" policy. The July 1965 crisis broke out when George Papandreou -- under pressure from the masses -sought to purge the army of its fascist elements and replace Minister of Defense Garoufalias, a palace man. The "Aspida" affair, grossly blown up by the bourgeois press in order to counteract the unfavorable publicity around the trial of the killers of Lambrakis, was only a part of the efforts aiming at replacing officers of the extreme right by officers loyal to the Center Union.
This attempted purge, coupled with the economic demands of the exploited masses who sought to utilize a certain liberalism of the authorities and a scarcity of labor due to massive emigration of the workers, could not be tolerated by the coalition made up of the palace, the army, traditional capitalism and U.S. imperialism; hence the July 1965 operation and the ouster of Papandreou as prime minister. At the time, however, this coalition could not resort to a military coup d'état as a solution due to the largely spontaneous mobilization of the broad popular masses and the collateral resistance of the "European" tendency of the Greek bourgeoisie.
2.
It was the admirable resistance of the masses that drove out the first two administrations set up by the palace headed by Novas and Tsirimokos. But the ending of the street demonstrations and the progressive demobilization of the masses permitted the third palace government, headed by Stefanopoulos, to last sixteen months.
While the tendency of the mass movement was to struggle against the throne, for a referendum and for a republic, the leadership of the Center Union, due to class reasons, and the leadership of the EDA (the legal front for the Greek Communist party), due to opportunism and parliamentary cretinism, proclaimed their rejection of any solution going beyond the "democratization of the court" and the "democratization of the state." The working-class masses were, and still are, far to the left of their leadership. Only the Greek Trotskyists openly campaigned for overturning the monarchy.
The forces of reaction took advantage of the demobilization of the masses to prepare a coup d'état. This turn to the use of force could have been blocked had the upsurge of the masses been developed into a revolutionary struggle. preventing this, the leaders of the EDA and the Greek CP thereby became responsible for the situation worsening to such a degree as to make the coup d'état possible.
The overturn of Stefanopoulos by the ERE [National Radical Union], which had supported him up until then, was an attempt to give the party of the right and the palace a camouflage of "constitutionality," with the objective of pulling the rug from under the Center Union and paving the way for establishment of a Right-Center government after the elections organized by the transitional regime of the banker Paraskevopoulos and his successor Canellopoulos.
But despite the opportunism of the EDA and the failure of the Center Union to react -- the two groupings limiting themselves to merely demanding elections and the Center Union even going so far as to support Paraskevopoulos as prime minister -- the maneuver ended up in a defeat. The elections would have reinforced the EDA and registered a victory for the Center Union; and the masses would not have been content with either a Right-Center government or even a Papandreou government, which could not have withstood the inevitable surge of the masses.
3.
The April 21 military coup d'état was a preventive blow, the immediate aim of which was to block the May elections, destroy the working-class organizations and then prepare a governmental solution of the kind seen in Greece before 1963.