REPORT FROM THE GREEK UNDERGROUND
Athens
The military coup d'état of April 21, 1967, constituted one more reactionary intervention in the political life of the country by the palace and the military camarilla in the long series instigated and backed by big capital and American imperialism. The plan successfully carried out by the foreign and domestic reactionaries over the past three or four years called for:
(a) Driving the Center Union from power and dismembering it by forming court-dominated governments made up of renegades from its top staff.
(b) Inflicting hard blows on the working-class and mass movement and breaking up the left organizations; creating a "strong state" through an absolutist concentration of power and abrogation of the people's remaining democratic liberties and constitutional rights.
(c) Supplanting these governments of Center origin with more repressive rightist caretaker governments so as to set the stage for fraudulent, strong-arm elections which would return the rightists to power via a "constitutional" road.
(4) Resorting to military dictatorship as the "unavoidable solution" if, despite these measures, a Center Union electoral victory appeared likely, the pretense being that "the country is in danger" and must be "saved from Communisn. (e) Creating an analogous political climate in Cyprus with the support of Grivas and the Greek officers sent there, the aim being to overthrow the Makarios government and pave the way for "solution" of the Cyprus question within the NATO framework.
Only permanent mobilization of the masses and deepening of the mass movement could have countered the reactionaries' strategy. Had this been done, the royal offensive against the people's constitutional rights could have been halted in its tracks by a popular counteroffensive. New organs of struggle (committees) directly and democratically representing the masses could have been formed which, in addition to expressing the will of the masses, would have also expressed the historically progressive solutions to the acute political and structural crisis that was precipitated in the summer of 1965.
This was demonstrated in practice. During the period when the masses were aroused and held sway in the streets of Athens and the other large cities, raising radical and antimonarchical slogans ("referendum," "down with the monarchy") and going beyond the bourgeois-democratic leaderships and the bureaucratic apparatuses both in slogans and initiation of militant actions, the court-—sponsored governments toppled one after the other.
But from the time the masses were drawn from the streets into auditoriums for formal demonstrations or were mobilized in passive flocks to hail and aplaud barnstorming "democratic leaders" who called for elections as a panacea), the schemes of the reactionaries began to show progress: stabilization of the third court government presided over by Stephanopoulos; establishment of the transitional Paraskeropoulos government and the ERE [Ethnike Rizopastike Enosis -- National Radical Union, the party of the traditional right] government headed by Canellopoulos; and finally the advent of the military dictatorship in April, on the eve of the "electoral campaign."
The major lesson of the class struggle was again underlined in these events -- when the oppressed retreat on the social front and abandon the battlements, the oppressors gain ground and press forward.
The Center Union and the EDA [Enosis tes Demokratikes Aristeras -- Union of the Democratic Left] --leaderships, for their part, functioned as a barrier against the upsurge of the masses thus facilitating the evolution toward dictatorship. They used their press to take the steam out of
the mass mobilization instead of increasing the pressure; and they lowered the consciousness of the masses instead of raising it. (George Papandreou declared on several occasions that any questioning of the system of government would be a "national calamity.")
4nd Andreas Papandreou, despite his left demagogy and antimonarchical thrusts never went to the point of proposing that the fate of the institution of monarchy be decided by the vote of the people.
The EDA several times called the antimonarchical slogans "extremist," "adventurist," “Trotskyite provocations"; and its goon squads attacked all supporters of such slogans among the masses. After he "advised the king on the solution he must seek," the EDA chairman Passalidis told a press conference April 1: "I believe the king favors preparing direct elections for the month of May." (Avehi, April 2, 1967.)
The EDA's political objectives (and those of the Greek Communist party) went no further than such empty nostrums as "a democratic solution and return to normal democratic life," "support a really democratic government," and "longrange pursuit of basic democratic conquests on the road to National Democratic Change." (Avghi, April 16.)
Avghi's headline for April 21, the day of the coup, eloquently expressed the EDA leadership's parliamentary cretinism: "The Volas Rally, a Magnificent Send-Off on the Road to Victory."
At a time when the palace was stepping up its assaults against the people's formal "constitutional" rights -attacks that were thinly veiled beginning in 1963 but which became blatant after 1965 -- the EDA's leading parliamentary representative, Ilios Helios, called in parliament for "democratization of the court"!
The position of the Center Union ("democratic"™ lieutenant of the capitalist class) is clearly in line with the historic role of bourgeois liberalism in our time: oppression of the people when in power, demagogy when in opposition.
The history of Greek liberalism shows it to be a central prop of the monarchy. We should remember that Eleutherios Venizelos [the leading Greek liberal politician from prewar days until the mid-1940's] was not only the parliamentary reporter for personal responsibility* in 1922 but also made a key contri-
* Of King Constantine in the "Great Catastrophe" of the Greek-Turkish war and
-794-
bution to the 1935 restoration.** Sopho-
cles Venizelos and Themistocles Sofoulis
paved the way for the royal dictatorship
of August 4, 1936.***
George Papandreou, who was head of
the "National Union" government in 1944,
launched the assault on the EAM [Ethniko
Apeleueriko Metepo -- National Liberation
Front] and restored the bourgeoisie to
power in Greece after the war; he also
devoted himself to rehabilitating the
monarchy.
The EDA's policy was the expression
of the party's petty-bourgeois radical
character. Despite the support it enjoyed
from a large worker and peasant rank and
file as well as from the urban petty-
bourgeois masses, it followed in the
train of the bourgeois-democratic party
and propagated noticns of petty—bourgeois
reform based on collaboration with the
"national bourgeoisie" and peaceful demo-
cratic progress among the masses.
As for the Greek Communist party,
which was a revolutionary working-class
party long ago, its policies were the
same as those of the EDA, thus demonstra-
ting the profound nature of its petty-
bourgeois bureaucratic degeneration.
The Greek Internationalist Commu-
nist party [the Greek section of the
Fourth International] correctly noted in
time the court's absolutist orientation
in recent years. It warned of the threat
of dictatorship and denounced the reac-
tionary utopia of peaceful democratic
progress. In setting the overthrow of
the monarchy as the immediate strategic
objective, it sought to popularize the
"referendum" slogan, and envisaged a
general strike and a popular uprising.
the population exchanges. [Close to two
million Greeks living in Asia Minor were
forced to flee after the Greek defeat.
Turks living in Greece were also expelled
— W. e
** [Following the Greek debacle in the
war with Turkey, the king was expelled
and no monarch was permitted to reign
until 1935. At that time the king was
welcomed back by a rightist government
and the institution of monarchy was re-
affirmed by a referendum boycotted b
the liberals and republicans -- W.O.
*** [The 1936 Greek elections produced
a stalemate between the republicans
and liberals led by Sophocles Venizelos
and a coalition of right-wing parties
led by Kondylis, Tsaldaris and Metaxas.
The king chose Metaxas to form a govern-
ment. Once in power he established a
military dictatorship on August 4 of that
year which lasted until the German occu-
pation -- W.0O.
It called for building a worker-peasantstudent front as the tactical means for accomplishing these objectives.
It must be noted, however, that its prediction in February 1967 that "all signs indicate that the elections will take place in May" was a grave error. This view was based on circumstantial and superficial evidence (the royal pronouncement setting the date of the elections, behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Center Union and the ERE, George Papandreou's enthusiastic praise of the royal declaration).
The warning given by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International in its declaration of September 6, 1965, on the Greek crisis proved particularly apt: "The present situation in Greece is unstable. It can give way to a military crackdown and a new dictatorship if the upsurge of the masses does not turn into a revolutionary struggle." [See World Outlook, September 17, 1965.]
The coup d'état of April 21, 1967, which came as an abrupt surprise even for the ERE then in power, is a step in the reactionaries' long march toward creating an anti-Communist "strong state" in Greece. It was organized in accordance with a plan and carried off with lightning success by a small group of high officers who did not belong to the supreme military command but held key positions in the military apparatus: tank units, mountain counterinsurgency groups [Lokhos Oreinon Katadromon -- LOK], and artillery. They shouldered aside their superiors, the royalist generals, and sent them into retirement a few days later.
King Constantine (who had also cultivated the idea of a military dictatorship in concert with the top levels of the military hierarchy if the Center Union won the elections by a large majority) issued a declaration to avoid personal responsibility such as fell to his Uncle George on August 4, 1936. But he accepted the guidance of the putschist colonels, designated chief magistrate Kollias -- their creature -- as prime minister, and cooperated in the swearingin ceremony. He quickly adapted himself to the new situation and gave it the sanction of his royal "authority," subsequently declaring that the "army will always be the guarantor of stability." Therefore, the crown and the military caste stand allied and are jointly responsible for the April military dictatorship. :
The new regime rests solely on the state repressive apparatus. It has no base among the masses of the people. It is confronted with the opposition of every political party in the country.
The leaders feel the hostility of the people and the clamor of worldwide democratic opinion rings in their ears. Their concern over their isolation and their minority position is testified to by their actions: the extent of the terror, the banning of parties, the dissolution of hundreds of trade-union organizations, the proscribing of 800 leftist books, the anti-Communist fever, the press censorship and military justice, the determined obscurantism, the "Communist plot" stories and "dangers to national security," the frauds and falsifications (e.g., Papandreou's purported letter to Paterpos and the falsifications of some EDA ledgers), the arrogant pretense of "national salvation," the spasmodic reactionary measures, the protagonists' speeches, their comical claims that their regime of "authentic democracy" realized the profound aspirations of the entire people, etc.
But what of the masses of the people? Paralyzed by the narcotic of "peaceful democratic progress" and the poison of "rule by the people" and by claims that democracy is either "prevailing" or "will prevail"; ideologically disarmed, tired of the parties and disappointed in them and their leaders, fed up with old slogans, unorganized, they were in such a state of weakness that they did not respond to the coup d'état.
But they despise and curse the new tyranny. The dictatorship has banned their traditional organs of struggle (which had proved ineffective in the hands of bureaucratic leaders anyway); but the popular unrest, mounting as time goes by, is seeking new outlets and ways of expressing itself. Unemployment is rising. The oppression is becoming more and more unbearable. The pall of obscurantism thickens. The country is sinking deeper into an economic quagmire. The measures enacted by the dictatorship have created chaos. All of this is slowly but surely setting the stage for a new awakening of mass activity.
For the time being, the manifestations of opposition to the dictatorship are of small-scale and conspiratorial nature. They emanate from vanguard elements. But these manifestations are occurring more frequently as time goes on and are becoming more systematic and spreading from city to city. The difficult, onerous conditions of struggle serve to promote understanding among the militants and layers of the masses concerning the role of the palace, the military camarilla, the bourgeois press, the parliament, the mass parties and their leaders, the trade unions and the tradeunion bureaucracy, imperialism and the bureaucratic governments of the workers states. There is growing consciousness of the need for new orientations, new leader-
ships, new forms and instruments of struggle.
The April 21 dictatorship is not fascist. Its similarities to fascism are formal and superficial (its methods and demagogy). It lacks the support of the petty-bourgeois masses enjoyed by fascism. It is a court-military dictatorship of Bonapartist character.
This kind of regime has a short life. If the masses do not succeed in overthrowing it by revolutionary means, it will collapse on its own due to the impasses created by its mere existence. For this reason it is preparing the way for its successor, which will obviously be a reactionary one but more "respectable," if more hypocritical -- rule by the royalist nationalist parties, with the military junta still in control behind the scenes, based on a constitution remodeled along absolutist lines with a pseudoparliamentary facade and a ban on left parties.
The dictatorship's primary goal is to annihilate the left movement, to terrorize the masses, and to honeycomb the state apparatus with police agents.
Even the American imperialists are showing slight enthusiasm for a government which has become a laughingstock abroad and which has drawn upon itself the dissatisfaction of certain layers of the bourgeoisie who feel that their interests have been hurt by the measures introduced. Washington, faced with pressing needs not only in connection with Vietnam but with Latin America and at home (the black revolt), seems in no great hurry to come to its aid economically.
If, in addition to this, we take into consideration the thinly veiled rivalry among the apprentice dictators (Pattakos, Papadopoulos, Makarezos, Spantidakis), the latent inflation (the state has issued 700 million drachmas [30 drachmas = US$1] since April), the fact that
the regime is too weak to win even a
limited base of support within the coun-
try, the growing popular unrest, which
though silent today will make itself felt
in the near future, we can reasonably
predict that it is questionable whether
or not the government will survive until
April 1968. The course of international
developments will certainly have an ef-
fect on this one way or the other.
The revival of the mass struggle
will bring down the dictatorship. It is
the supreme duty of the revolutionary
Marxist vanguard to bring this about. By
making every effort to increase the nun-
ber of clandestine centers, by spurring
the masses on to demand that their ele-
mentary needs be met (equal wages for
men and women, work for the unemployed,
wage parity with the Common Market level
-- issues around which the government
demagogy revolves), to compel acceptance
of the right to strike and other trade-
union and democratic rights which have
been abolished as well as a general an-
nesty for the militants, we will continue,
together with the masses, to build a
worker-peasant-student front against the
dictatorship and the palace, against
capitalism and imperialisn.
And as this front goes forward, it
will lay the groundwork for a socialist
solution to the crisis. Fighting against
fatalism and discouragement, striving to
forge antidictatorial movements and demon-
strations with a militant spirit (refusing
to si any government-—dictated state-—
ments), understanding the factors which
promoted the evolution toward dictator-
ship, profiting from the lessons of the
experience, renewing confidence in the
strength and potential of the working
class and the oppressed people, grasping
the profound democratic interconnection
between the new militant vanguard and the
exploited masses: these are the prere-
quisites for success.
August 1967
CUBAN ART SHOW IN LONDON
The "first exhibition of