Written by Lukas Karliaftis.
Dedicated to his memory as a cde.

Stalinism and Trotskyism in Greece (1924-1949)

The document that follows, which is meant to serve as an outline
introduction to the rest of this collection, consists of an extract
from a much longer article published by Diethnistis (Internationalist)
publications in Greece, written during the dictatorship of the
colonels and published in 1979. Our English text is a slightly amended
version of that contained in Documents of the Workers Vanguard
(Greece) under the title of 'Fifty Years of Mistakes and Betrayals of
the KKE' (pp 124-59), omitting that part dealing with the period after
the end of the Greek Civil War.

The author, Loukas Karliaftis (Costas Kastritis) was born in 1905, and
started his revolutionary career as a member of the tendency of
Tzoulatis, the left. tendency of the Socialist Workers Party of Greece
(SEKE), at the age of 16 in 1921. He has remained a Communist and a
Trotskyist ever since. From 1927 onwards he was an organiser for the
Archeiomarxists in Athens and the Piraeus and in the neighbouring
towns. A shoemaker by profession, he played an energetic part in the
early years of the Greek trade union movement. He was sent to
Thessalonica in 1930 to organise a municipal election campaign for an
Archeiomarxist candidate, organised Workers Step, was arrested, but
escaped. He was arrested again in Kavalla (Macedonia), and was
sentenced to a month in prison. He was again arrested in Xanthi in
Macedonia, and was then exiled without trial.. Then he was brought up
before a court and sentenced to two months' imprisonment, but escaped
on his way to exile.

As a member of the Archeiomarxists he functioned as an organisational
link alongside Giotopoulos (Witte) (1901-1965), and in the early 1930s
led the Trotskyist campaign for the United Front that gained
significant support amongst the working class, even though it was
eventually undermined by the Stalinists. As a leading member of the
Central Committee-of KOMLEA (the Archeiomarxists, the Greek Section of
the International Left Opposition) in 1932 he represented about 50
trade unions led by them in discussions to form a United Front with
other trade union leaders. Although he supported Witte in his
agreement with Trotsky over the German debacle of 1933 and the need
for a new international, when Trotsky broke with Witte he took
Trotsky's side in the dispute and became a leading cadre of the split
led by Vitsoris in 1934, which united with the OKDE of Pouliopoulos in
1938 to form the EOKDE, the Greek section of the newly formed Fourth
International.

He was again exiled for one and a half months in 1935, and was again
arrested and tortured in 1938, spending the next few years in prison
camps at Acronauplia and Neokastro on Pylos along with hundreds of KKE
(Greek Communist Party) militants. He played an important part in
organising the Trotskyists during and after the Second World War, and
took an energetic part in the events of December 1944, narrowly
escaping assassination by the OPLA (the Stalinist Secret Police)
earlier in the year. By then he was bringing out the journal Workers
Fight, and secured a majority after the unification congress of the
Greek Trotskyist groups in 1946, becoming its General Secretary. In
this capacity he was the organisation's first speaker at the debate
held with the Stalinists in Athens in October 1946. He was afterwards
cut off from the rest of the international Trotskyist movement due to
the civil war and the repression that followed it. The Greek Section
led by Christos Anastasiades remained loyal to the International
Secretariat of Michel Pablo during the split of 1953, and the
Karliaftis tendency broke with them in 1958. When contacts were
renewed abroad the document of the International Committee of 1961,
World Prospects for Socialism, was translated, and links were made
with the International Committee of Gerry Healy and Pierre Lambert in
1964, the Karliaftis group becoming its Greek section.

As leader of the Ergatike Protoporeia (Workers Vanguard) along with L
Sklavos, he took an energetic part in the revolutionary disturbances
that shook Greece in the summer of 1965, and the group sent
representatives to the Third World Congress of the International
Committee in 1966. The group split just before the coming to power of
the dictatorship of the colonels in 1967, and many of its members were
either imprisoned or fled abroad. Continuing his revolutionary
activity under the colonels, Karliaftis was arrested and interrogated,
but was released due to his age. When the International Committee
recognised the group of Sklavos as its official section in 1972,
Karliaftis' tendency was expelled, and when the dictatorship came to
an end it had been overtaken in numbers by the organisations loyal to
the International Committee and the United Secretariat. It has
published a monthly journal, Diethnistis (Internationalist) since
1964, and has produced a large number of pamphlets, as well as
translations of the writings of Trotsky into Greek. Karliaftis' major
work, published under the pseudonym of Costas Kastritis, is his
'Istoria tou Mpolsebikismos sten 'Ellada (History of Bolshevism in
Greece), published by Ergatike Protoporeia, of which four volumes have
appeared to date. The journal from which our text is taken also
includes substantial pieces bearing on the history and politics of his
organisation, 'The Balkans: Ingredients of an Explosion' (1971), 'A
Criticism of Six Years of the International Committee of the Fourth
International in Relation to Its Greek Section' (1972), 'The November
Events in the Light of Marxism' (1974) on the Polytechnic Uprising,
'The Bolivian Revolution and the Deviations of the FOR' (1971) and
'The War Question and Pabloite Revisionism' (1966).

The latter text, which contains important insights into the history of
the Greek and international Trotskyist movement during the Second
World War, was also printed in Fourth International magazine
(International Committee), volume 8, no 3, Winter 1973, pp.134-6, and
was discussed by Voix Ouvriere (the modern Lutte Ouvriere group) in
'On the Degeneration of the Fourth International. Concerning a text of
the Workers Vanguard', and 'Origin of the Degeneration of the Fourth
International' in Class Struggle/Lutte de Classe, new series no 1.
February 1967, pp.18-26, and no 2, March 1967, pp.14-8. The document
on 'The Bolivian Revolution and the Deviations of the FOR' is also to
be found in Fourth International magazine (International Committee),
volume 7, no 4, Summer 1972, pp l53-62, and in Trotskyism versus
Revisionism, volume 6, New Park, 1974, pp 128-50. It brought forth a
rejoinder from Savas Michael, the leader of the Workers International
League, the group that had split from Karliaftis' Workers Vanguard and
remained loyal to the International Committee, 'Workers Vanguard and
the Bolivian Revolution', in Fourth International, volume 8, no 1,
Winter 1972-73, pp7-14, reproduced in Trotskyism versus Revisionism,
volume 6, pp151-68, which contains a number of interesting details
about the history of Greek Trotskyism and of Archeiomarxism touched
upon in the article below. These observations are expanded into an
alternative analysis of the history of this period in the 'Resolution
of the Fifth Congress of the Workers International League, Greek
Section of the Fourth International' (Fourth International magazine,
volume 8, no 2, Spring 1973, pp61-9), and a letter from Nikolaou on
behalf of the Workers Vanguard group of Karliaftis (7 February 1973,
in Fourth International, volume 8, no 3, Winter 1973, p134) elicited
the response of a full scale historical treatment that should be read
alongside this account, in the 'Reply to Workers Vanguard from the
Greek Section of the International Committee' (Fourth International,
volume 8, no 3, Winter 1973, pp.137-56), and the 'History of the Greek
Civil War' (Fourth International, volume 9, no 1, Summer 1974,
pp.22-37, and volume 9, no 2, Autumn 1974, pp.61-84)

Karliaftis has also provided a wealth of material on the history of
Stalinism and Trotskyism in Greece. His La Naissance du Bolchevisme en
Grece (two parts, of which only the first is available in English)
takes the story of the Greek Communist Party up to 1924, and
Trotskyists and Archeiomarxists in the Concentration Camps of the
Metaxas Dictatorship (1936-40) and In Devotion to P Pouliopoulos and
the Militant Trotskyists/Archeiomarxists Killed by the Fascists and
the Stalinists (in English and French) deal with the war years, from
which we excerpt a number of passages below (pp24-37). There are also
two editions of his theoretical magazine Internationalist that touch
upon this subject, including 'Andreas Papandreou, l'ex-Trotskyste, Le
"Declarationiste" et le Capituleur', and 'Cannon and the SWP: On the
Track of the Social-Betrayers in Front of the Second World War'
(January 1983), as well as another in English dealing with economic
perspectives (July/August 1984).

The same period dealt with here is covered by a personal memoir, Agis
Stinas' Memoires, published by Editions La Breche-PPC, Montreuil 1990
at a cost of 130 francs, translated from the Greek of his Anamnesis,
first published in two volumes in 1977 and again under a single cover
in 1985. It is this book that was reviewed by Alison Peat in
Revolutionary History, volume 3, no 1, pp.44-6. General accounts of
the Greek Civil War in English vary in both approach and scope. The
policy of the Greek Communist Party appears in such general surveys as
Ian Birchall's Workers Against the Monolith, London, 1974, pp22-3 and
30-2, Adam Westoby's Communism since World War II, Brighton, 1981,
pp24-8 and The Evolution of Modern Communism, Cambridge, 1989, pp
142-4, and in a series of articles in Workers Press of 29-31 January
1975. Other general accounts include D George Kousoulas, The Communist
Party of Greece Since 1918, 1956, and Revolution and Defeat: The Story
of the Greek Communist Party, Oxford UP, 1965. A right wing view
extremely hostile to the Greek Communist Party is WC Chamberlin,
Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Greek Communist Party, Washington,
1963. Stalinist accounts are to be consulted in M Sarafis and M Eve,
Background to Contemporary Greece, 1990, and Dominique Eudes, The
Kopetanios, New Left Books, 1972, a useful description written from a
Maoist/guerrillarist point of view, which can be supplemented by the
remarks of Vafiades ('General Markos') in the interview published
under the title of 'The Crimes of Greek Stalinism', in Labour Review,
volume 7, no 4, November 1983, pp26-30. The grisly story of the fate
of the refugees in the 'Peoples' Democracies' and the Soviet Union
comes out in a review of Thomas Dritsos' Why Do You Kill Me, Comrade?
which was printed in 'The Atrocities of Greek Stalinism', in Labour
Review, volume 7, no 6, January 1984, pp26-9. The Greek Trotskyists'
own overview of the Civil War appears in 'The Present Situation and
Our Tasks', printed in July 1949 in Workers Fight, the clandestine
organ of the International Communist Party of Greece, and translated
into French in 'La Trahison stalinienne en Grece', in Quatrième
Internationale, 7th year, volume 7, nos 8-11, October/November 1949,
pp33-8. There are also earlier and shorter accounts in 'Terror in
Greece' (Workers International News, volume 6, no 1, October 1945,
ppl7-9) and 'The Guerrilla Movement in Greece' (signed 'GD', in
Workers International News, volume 7, no 4, June 1948, pp.11-6), both
of them from Workers Fight, along with a first-hand report by Alice
Condos, 'Inside Greece', in Socialist Appeal (Britain), no 29,
mid-August 1946. A few other accounts exist dealing with the civil war
in its earlier phase, but with no indication that they rely upon any
first hand reporting. Among them we might mention that appearing in
Fourth International magazine in 1944, which was reprinted as 'From
Greece's Revolutionary History' in Labour Review, volume 9, no 2,
September 1985, pp.21-38, and 'Civil War in Greece' In Fourth
Internationol (SWP), volume 6, no 2, February 1945, pp36-49. A few
more details of the Stalinist murders and the repression began to
appear in the Trotskyist press abroad after contact was re-established
in 1945. 'Trotskyism in Greece', published in the Socialist Appeal of
the British RCP (mid-August 1945) speaks of the shooting of 254
Archeiomarxists and Trotskyists in Thessalonica, and a little more
information comes to light in 'Inside the Fourth International:
Greece', in Fourth International (SWP), volume 6, no 10, October 1945,
p319.

*********************

The domination of the Thermidorian regime of Stalin in the Soviet
Union, the bureaucratisation of the regime, the overthrow of the
soviet system, the revision of the Constitution of October, the
bureaucratic structure of the plan, the industrialisation (at first at
snail's pace, later at maximum) and collectivisation, and the
incorporation of the kulak into Socialism (`Kulaks enrich
yourselves'), the crisis in the relations between town and country
(the grain strike), concessions to the bourgeoisie, etc, and the
general revisionist line of Stalinism, encapsulated in the reactionary
theory of `Socialism in one country' - all of this isolated the
position of the Soviet Union, strengthened restorationist elements
(the kulaks) and along with the threat of external intervention, led
the Soviet Union to the brink of the abyss. The Bonapartist regime of
Stalin destroyed democracy, abolished workers' control, annihilated
hundreds of thousands of party members and carried out an
unprecedented orgy of crimes.

It imposed its bureaucratic, revisionist and counter-revolutionary
methods within the Comintern as a whole, and it went down in history
as the organiser of the defeats of the workers' movement, beginning
with the USSR.

In Greece, the Stalinists placed themselves at the service of the
Kremlin bureaucrats, supporting their criminal tactics and their
suppression of all the old Bolshevik and Trotskyist vanguard, as well
as subjugating the new generation, but they were also able to develop
by exploiting the authority of the USSR and the traditions of the
October Revolution.

Rise

The rise of the Stalinist leadership after 1924 over the KKE, to begin
with through Khaita, the Secretary of the local committee of Athens,
occurred in a period of a general offensive and domination by the
Kremlin triumvirate against the Comintern parties, a period of defeat
for the Bolshevik-Trotskyist tendency of the world Communist movement,
and of the predominance of Thermidor in the USSR. It occurred after
the major defeat of the proletarian revolution in Germany in 1923,
without a fight, thanks to the rightist evaluation of the situation by
the Zinovievist-Stalinist administration of the Comintern and of the
Brandlerite leadership of the German party, in a period in which the
Stresemann government thought itself to be the last government of
German capitalism.

In Greece, Stalinism rose along with the retreat and defeat of the
great general strike of 1923, which was drowned in blood by the
`democratic' dictatorship of Plastiras, and the retreat of the
movement for the transformation of the war into a revolution. The
first Social Democratic rule of Georgiades-Sideris 1 choked off the
enormous rise of the mass movement caused by long-term military
adventures, as well as by the influence of the October Revolution. But
the development was dialectical. The struggle against the war and the
fight for a workers' and peasdnts' government to solve the problems
offhe masses raised to the forefront the old fighting tendency of
Pantelis Pouliopoulos and his elite co-workers. Pouliopoulos became
secretary of the KKE, and the OKNE 2 was in the hands of the
Pouliopoulos tendency. The old fighting spirit on the basis of the
October Revolution penetrated to the tiniest villages. Similarly, from
the war rose the revolutionary movement of the war wounded, which was
dependent on the Archeiomarxist organisation and was headed by S
Verouchis3 (the Stalinists tore him to pieces during the Nazi
occupation) who led the General Confederation of Disabled and War
Veterans.

The ultra-left, adventurist line of the Comintern in 1924-25 cost the
movement new defeats with the coups in Estonia and Bulgaria, and sent
the Greek workers' movement into a temporary new retreat after its
rise in 1925. This ultra-left lurch was followed by ultra-rightism.

From the Fifth Congress of the Comintern the Stalinist bureaucracy
sought allies outside the proletariat, in the pseudo-peasant
`International', in the Macedonian-Bulgarian Federalists, in the left
democrats, in the English trade union officials, etc. In China, the
alliance with Chiang Kai-Shek, and Wang Ching Wei and his officers,
the liquidation of the Communist party into the Guomindang, and the
Menshevik-revisionist line of the bourgeois democratic revolution, led
the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 to betrayal, and brought calamity to
the Canton uprising (30,000 were victims of Stalin's friend, the
butcher Chiang).

In Greece, the right zigzag was linked with adventures by the deformed
Stalinist tendency, semi-alliances with Plastiras 4 against the
Metaxas-Gargalides 5 movement (instead of an independent KKE
intervention) and with proposals for collaboration with the
`democratic Papanastasios 6 the murderer of the workers, and against
the Pangalos dictatorship, on the proposals of Zachariades 7 in
Salonika and of Khaites from exile in Anafe,8 for the open support of
the KKE for the dictatorship.

The rightist zigzag of the Stalinists culminated in slogans of support
to `bourgeois democracy', and of the `pure democracy' of Khaites and
Zachariades (1926).

With this adaptation within the confines of capitalist `democracy'
they closed off the halting rise of the movement that occurred after
the war and helped the bourgeois system overcome the great postwar
crisis of Greek capitalism.

In contrast with the politics of self-determination up to separation
for the oppressed nationalities, according to the Fifth Congress of
the Comintern, Kolarov and Dimitrov denounced the Greek delegation of
Pouliopoulos-Maximos for opportunism, and imposed the unrealistic
slogan: `For a United and Independent Macedonia and Thrace'.

Contradicted

The slogan was completely unrealistic and contradicted the Leninist
line of selfdetermination, which presupposed support to the nationally
oppressed masses who had already begun fighting, as was the case with
the Macedonian nationality, who included those inhabiting areas in
Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, but who did not have a basis within
the solid mass of Greeks in the Macedonian-Thrace area. Thus almost
ail the KKE cadre were sent into exile on a programme of independence
for Macedonia-Thrace, and Pouliopoulos, the secretary of the KKE, was
taken to court with the threat of execution, where he gave an heroic
defence of the line of self-determination. To save the honour of the
KKE the slogan was withdrawn. But the KKE disintegrated.

They used demagogy - for pure reformism - against all those who
thought the slogans on the `national' question were wrong, and `those
who later spoke of the simple protection of the minorities in the past
elections' as New Beginning put it in 1926, had betrayed the Leninist
principles of self-determination up to separation. They called them
`rightist' - they who only recently had supported Pangalos and were
now supporting `left democracy'. These were `vulgar opportunists',
said Pouliopoulos in New Beginning.

After the fall of Pangalos, the Stalinists in the events that followed
opened up a foul and dishonest slander campaign and tirade against the
KKE secretary Pouliopoulos. The split that opened up in the ranks of
the KKE in exile from which Trotskyism emerged could have been
avoided. They recruited Smeral and Remmele, and they isolated and
expelled Pouliopoulos as a `rightist'! The expulsion of the secretary
of the KKE followed the expulsion of the Secretary of the Comintern,
Zinoviev, and the rise of the liquidationist operations of the clique
that ruled in the Kremlin among all the Communist parties in the
world. In other words, they expelled the most enlightened,
internationalist and advanced Marxist revolutionaries. They dissolved
the movement of the War Veterans. Thus they sank into the swamp of
opportunism. The victory against the internationalist left was due to
the low political-theoretical level and to the concentration of
petty-bourgeois and even lumpen elements due to the unceasing
degeneration of the KKE.

The number of major strikes declined significantly between 1920 and
1930. The trade union movement was split by the pseudo-Socialists, and
the split was formalised with the founding of the United
Confederation.

The `third and last period' of capitalism followed, which was the
`Third Period of the betrayals of Stalinism'. The noncombative
`combative demonstrations and political strikes' brought the KKE to
its knees. The trade unions fell to pieces. The strike wave was
destroyed, and the prisons and barren islands filled up, and all with
nothing to show for it.

The Stalinists thought that the relatively short economic boom would
be a longterm stabilisation. But the great crisis of 1929-30
astonished them. On their evaluation of this they framed the politics
of the `Third Period'.

Pouliopoulos, after his return from the Fifth Congress, defended
himself firmly against the dishonest and disruptive activities of the
fraudulent Stalinists and started a fight against the
bourgeoisdemocratic orientation. After his expulsion he started the
Neo Xekinema (New Beginning), a development towards Trotskyism which
closed with his legendary death in Nezero by the shots of a Fascist
officer in June 1943.

Excelled

In the meantime, in 1924 the Stalinist Khaita tendency had excelled
itself and expelled from the KKE General Council the Archeio leader,
Tzoulatis.9 Tzoulatis, together with Ligdopoulos, the first delegate
to the founding congress of the SEKE was a continuator of the
Communism group which had raised high the banner of the Third
International of Lenin and Trotsky, fought for the victory of the
October revolution, and for the 21 Conditions, the first documents of
the Third International and the basic classic work of Marxism, and had
completed the union of the Greek movement with the Third
International. From 1923 it published the Archives of Marxism, the
theoretical organ that supplied the original movement with Trotsky's
documents Whither Russia? and Where is Britain Going?, and the fight
against the Stalinisation of the KKE which was called
`Bolshevisation', showed the firm orientation of the Archeio on the
side of the International Left Opposition.

Together with Tzoulatis, dozcns of Trotskyists were expelled, betrayed
by the apostate Apostolou.10 (Among these were the secretary of the
largest trade union group of store clerks, Karliaftis, and the
majority of the Youth groups in Athens.)

The pogrom of expulsions in 1924 also included the party organisation
in the Piraeus, for its ultra-left line during the 1923 strike, with
the slogan `Seize the ships' directed towards the sailors. Along with
them was the Seitanidi group Towards the Masses which took its name
from a similar slogan of the Comintern.

The origin of all these expulsions undoubtedly lay in the Stalinist
Kremlin and they were carried out by the Stalinist faction of Khatia
and company.

During the period after Pangalos (1927-30) Trotskyism developed. The
Neo Xekinema (New Beginning) of Pouliopoulos discredited the
degenerated leadership of the Stalinist KKE. It raised questions about
the great split between Stalin and Trotsky. It noted the degeneration
of the KKE and foresaw that Archeiomarxism would contribute cadres to
the movement of the future. But it also fought against the particular
character of Archeiomarxism and its liquidatory work against the KKE.

Spartacus put into action the slogans of the New Beginning - for the
creation of a serious Communist Party upon a correct basis. They
centralised a staff of coworkers unrivalled in their theoretical and
political formation. They declared their solidarity with Trotskyism,
and publicised the Declaration of the 83. They also gave us the rich
documents of the International Left Opposition, and thus raised the
level of the movement. And the chief coworkers of Pouliopoulos such as
Nicolis, Maximos and others became distinguished at all levels of the
class struggle.

The Spartacists revealed the disastrous results of the
`Bolshevisation' of 1924 (with the introduction of 5,000 new members
and the fall in the revolutionary level of the ranks of the KKE) which
was nothing but part of the Stalinisation of the KKE.

During this period of 1927 to 1930, despite the relative
`stabilisation' which according the the Stalinists was an `organic
stabilisation', we had an intense crisis in prices and wages which
precipitated strike struggles.

The tendency of the Archeiomarxists - of Trotskyist orientation -
entered into open trade union work. Dozens of unions passed into their
hands, more than 10 unions in Athens and as many in Thessalonica. They
took over the Kokinias Local Centre in the Piraeus and the Local
Centres of Podaradon and Kaisarianis in Athens. They organised
important strikes such as the one at Lipasmate. They led the
industrial strikes at Kokkaldikou and in Keremidadon, strikes against
which the army was mobilised.

Equally heroic were the strikes of the bakers with Trotskyists in the
leadership headed by Soula-Sakko, of the shoemakers (headed by Lampi,
who went over to the Spartacists) within the context of the general
strike which the Stalinists led, and of the confectionary workers in
the industrial factories. They led strikes in Salonika, in Agrinni, in
Patras, etc.

The strangling of democracy and the shameless outbursts of insults
against the `Archeio-Trotskyists' as `traitors' and `fascists' led to
a civil war within the trade unions.

Decline

Unacceptable methods were used by both sides, both by Stalinists and
Archeiomarxists. They reflected the decline of the movement due to the
degeneration of Stalinism from the political programme of Bolshevism,
whose principles only Trotsky's Russian Opposition could supply. The
people who hissed Trotsky in his first oppositional demonstrations and
did not scruple to label Pouliopoulos with insults of `betrayal' went
to the extent of murdering Archeiomarxist trade unionists, the baker
Georgopapadato and the shoemaker Lada. Georgopapadato and Lada were
the first martyrs of the Trotskyist movement in our country.

The accumulation of defeats and the crisis of the CPSU and the
Comintern with the split of Zinoviev and Kamenev could not but
influence the KKE, where we had the split between Spartacus and the
Stalinists. The regime of KhaitaEftihiadi-Zachariades was overthrown
and replaced by the regime of Theos and Siantos, which also fell and
was succeeded by Zachariades (the GPU had the last word on these
changes).

The Archeiomarxists fell into the crisis of the `Third Situation' of
1927, which on the one hand expressed the tendencies of a political
development which began to take place and on the other hand the
influence of Stalinism within the Left Opposition.

In 1929 a `factional crisis' broke out, which was led by Soula. In
essence there were no programmatic or tactical differences, but only
organisational problems. To tell the truth, these problems were caused
by a lack of democratic centralism and by the personal and autocratic
regime which Giotopoulos, the successor of Tzoulatis, had imposed upon
the Archeiomarxists. Furthermore, there was a lack of a clear
programme, which only the platform of the ILO of Trotsky was able to
provide to rearm its Greek adherents. But these two tendencies were
the most proletarian of the few that still existed in the
international movement. On the other hand, according to Pouliopoulos,
there were in the KKE a large number of members drawn from the lowest
elements of the proletariat, from the lumpen proletariat and from the
petty-bourgeoisie with an anti-proletarian psychology.

Finally, the group led by Pindaros, which was called `Democratic
Centralism', in fact launched such a perspective itself in 1930. The
affiliation of the Archeiomarxists to the ILO was necessary in order
to make democratic centralism work.

A crisis hit Spartacus during the same period. But this crisis was
more general, and it had its roots in the deeper turmoil that was
occurring in the Soviet Union, due to the bureaucracy's betrayal of
the revolution.

In 1930 Spartacus made a statement: At no other time - it said - had
the collapse of the KKE become so catastrophic. At no other time was
the retreat of Spartrtcus so great. At no other time was the
Archeiomarxist group so strong.

In fact, as the events of 1930 showed, the Archeio-Trotskyists took
the initiative of the unemployed struggle away from the KKE. From
large meetings, drawing in over 1500 unemployed in Athens and as many
in Thessalonica,they formed their 50-member committee in Athens and
their 30-member committee in Thessalonica and mobilised wide layers of
unemployed for bread and jobs.

A meeting near the Acropolis of between 3,000 and 4,000 unemployed
people was drowned in blood. In Thessalonica, a meeting at the
Fountain was broken up in a three hour long struggle with hordes of
mounted police.

Official

In 1930 the Archeiomarxists became the official section of the ILO.
The competition that took place in 1927-28 between the Archeiomarxists
and Spartacus to become the official section of the International Left
Opposition in Greece tended to favour the Archeiomarxists. Before the
astonished eyes of the ILO representatives when they came to Greece,
hundreds of militants demonstrated, devoted adherents of Leon Trotsky,
who were Archeiomarxists who accepted Trotsky's platform, and agreed
to unite with Spartacus. But Spartacus refused to unite unless the
Archeio disavowed its past. Thus it remained outside the ILO. The
Archeiomarxists assumed the name of Bolshevik-Leninists.

The crisis of 1930 brought on a new upsurge. The dilemma of Fascism or
Communism was once more on the order of the day. Germany was now the
key to this situation, said the famous pamphlet of Trotsky.

The retreat of the KKE from proletarian revolution, the breaking of
the United Front against Hitler's rapid rise, the ultra-leftism, the
theory of `social Fascism' which obstructed the class front, the
defeatism of `first Hitler, then us', all ruined the movement and
brought Hitler to power without a fight. Centrism was transformed into
opportunism.

The campaign of the Trotskyists of Pali ton Taxeon (Class Struggle),
of Spartacus, and of the Leninist Opposition for the united
anti-Fascist front, and Trotsky's famous What Next? and The Only Road,
which the Bolshevik-Leninists published, and the general upsurge of
the workers, compelled the KKE to make a turn, at the eleventh hour.
But yet again their line split up the united anti-Fascist front. Now
they talked of the `United Front from below'.

The struggle of the Bolshevik-Leninists (Archeiomarxists) within the
trade unions for the programme of the United Workers Front won over
substantial forces at the expense of the KKE. If the Spartacists had
not refused to give them the four votes they carried, the whole
Workers' Centre in Athens would have passed over to them from Kalivas'
hands.

In 1933, the Bolshevik-Leninists, `being at the head of the Workers'
Centre is Kalamata, led the great general strike, which was smashed
although the militarists could not assert their control over all the
sections of the army. Here the KKE was led by Manolea, who was well
known as a member of parliament, but who passed over into the service
of the Metaxas dictatorship like a common agent.

With the revolutionary upsurge, in the first student strike of 1929,
which lasted 50 days and shook the university and the state, the
Archeio-Trotskyists with their organ Student headed by K Anastasiadis
and Pliako and 20 or so other militants pushed aside the Stalinists
led by the Velouchiotis-Klaras 11 brothers, to take the leadership of
this strike.

The Trotskyists fought side by side with the Stalinist OKNE (Communist
Youth Organisation of Greece), which started to decay and degenerate,
whereas previously it had great struggles and great gains to its
credit.

A discussion meeting took place, with Vitsoris as speaker for the
official organisation, Pouliopoulos for Spartacu.s, and a
representative of the Stalinists, where the opponents of the Workers'
United Front, the Stalinists, were hissed.

In the trade union movement, all the tendencies organised for the
United Workers' Front. A high level meeting took place between
Kalomiris, Stratia, Dimitratos and the Kalivas, and the
representatives of the trade unions of the Bolshevik-Leninists,
Karliaftis and Sakkos. But the Stalinists and reformists attacked the
Workers' United AntiFascist Front in Greece as well. With the historic
defeat of 1933, which led to the slaughter of thousands of
anti-Fascists, the storm of counter-revolution in Europe, and the
threat of war, Trotsky declared that any hope for the rebirth of the
Comintern and its parties was lost. The parties that were unable to
rise above this seismic catastrophe died.

Now he raised the banner for the creation of new parties and a new
International.

In Greece, the `Bolshevik' tendency of Vitsoris, Karliaftis,
Theodoratou, Sakkos, Papadopoulos and Verouchis was the first to raise
the banner of the Fourth International. It declared that the KKE had
died along with all the Communist Parties of the Third International,
and it started to build the Revolutionary Party of the New
International.

Slide

The decisions of the Sixth Plenum of the KKE in 1934 brought about a
general abandonment of an orientation towards the proletarian
revolution, and a slide into the anti-Marxist politics of class
collaboration, along with the beginning of the class collaborationist
Popular Fronts. The passing over of the KKE to the strategy of the
`democratic dictatorship' of workers and middle and poor peasants, not
as Lenin had understood it, but with the incorrect form of the
Stalinists (for a regime intermediate between the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie and that of the working class) led our workers' movement
to great catastrophe and defeats, and confirmed the death of the KKE
as a revolutionary organisation.

The Trotskyists, with an article in Class Struggle, and especially
with the famous document of Pouliopoulos, showed with firm arguments
that Greece was not semifeudal but a capitalist country, with all its
relative backwardness. They discredited the view that `there do not
exist the necessary minimum material conditions for the Socialist
revolution', with the conclusion that the unfinished
bourgeois-democratic tasks will be solved only by the dictatorship of
the proletariat, on the model of the Permanent Revolution. But the
betrayals continued without end.

`The KKE, allying with the Liberal Party in 1935 and rejecting the
United Worker-Peasant Front against reaction, helped the Venizelists
12 to deceive the antiFascist masses and to prepare easily even from
1935 their compromise with the deposed king and restore him. When he
was restored, the Popular Front (KKE) sowed dire illusions in the
masses that `a new period of liberal idylls is opening up' and
officially went and kowtowed to the palace.' (Pouliopoulos, The
Popular Front in Greece).

In the context of class collaboration, in 1935-36 the KKE renewed the
collaboration of the past decade with the `democrats' and the
`democratic' officers and dictators, launched the slogan of a
`democratic coalition', signed the Sklavena-Sofouli accord and
supported the Liberals in parliament, who went on the rampage with
their anti-working class politics at the expense of the masses, for
example the Idionym Laws. Rtzospastis 13 demanded a government of the
KKE, Papanastasios and the anti-Fascist officers!

In May 1936 a general strike of tobacco workers broke out and extended
into a general strike in Thessalonica, and Metaxas' regime murdered
strikers. Thus a revolutionary uprising of the masses was provoked.
The murderers locked themselves in the police departments. The
bourgeoisie panicked, and while Trotskyists like Pantazis called for a
government of tobacco workers, the Stalinists (Theos) betrayed the
strike with the intervention of the liberals in Parliament. Metaxas
headed towards a dictatorship without facing any opposition.

Collusion

The establishment of the Metaxas dictatorship was a result of the
collusion of the Court and the Premier to hold back the ascent of the
working class movement as it manifested itself in the general uprising
of 1936, and to prepare the `internal front' for the coming war. The
dictatorship would not have triumphed if the workers' movement had not
been castrated by the Popular Front. The KKE curbed the working class,
and instead of sharpening and broadening the struggle against
monarchic-capitalist reaction, it blunted the edge of the class with
the conciliationism of the Popular Front. In the final analysis the
KKE became the basis of victory of the Metaxas dictatorship.

Then came the Second World War. The theory that the Popular Fronts
would avert war was shown to be mistaken. The Popular Fronts stifled
the class contradictions, and the bourgeoisie, safe in the rear, felt
safe to enter the war.

In the beginning the Kremlin rejected relations with Hitler. But then
the Hitler-Stalin Pact was signed. The Stalinists could not believe
it. Then, however, they began their new tune: for the `poor' and
`anti-plutocratic' countries against the `glutted' imperialists. These
anti-Fascists passed into the service of National Socialism and of its
finance capital, and stifled the anti-Fascist sentiments of the
masses. When Hitler broke the non aggression pact, the Stalinists made
a 180 degree turn. Now they allied with the Western imperialists. They
now discovered that the war of the Western Allied imperialists was
`progressive' and `anti-Fascist', and they made a holy alliance with
the bourgeoisie of their `own' state in favour of bourgeois democracy.
They now passed over into support for the war. They exploited the
pro-Soviet and anti-Fascist mood of the masses and brought over the
oppressed onto the side of `our allies'. All the `Socialist' and
`Communist' parties betrayed disgracefully the traditions of
proletarian internationalism.

In Greece Zachariades called on the workers to submit to the `fascist'
Metaxas in order to fight Mussolini and Hitler, and to defend with
their blood the bosses' fatherland! The KKE became even more
chauvinist than the parties of the extreme right! With the `theory of
the two poles' Zachariades justified the double dependence of the
politics of the KKE upon the Soviet bureaucracy and upon British
capitalism: `In the war a realistic foreign policy for the EAM and the
PEEA 14 would have to move between two poles: the European Balkans
with the Soviet Union at its centre, and the Middle East with its
centre in Britain. A correct policy would be to tie together these two
poles.' (Zachariades, Plenum, 1945). In reality this double dependence
was leaning only to one side, because the entire organisation and
policy of the Stalinists `against Hitlerism' came under the direct
control of the General Staff of the Middle East. (With the necessary
capitulation to sterling of ELAS as well as Zervas).15

During the Metaxas dictatorship and in exile, in the prisons, on the
barren islands and in the concentration camps, the Trotskyists became
united. The two related tendencies from which Trotskyism arose - the
Spartacus-Pouliopoulos tendency, and the New Road tendency of
Vitsoris, Kastritis and Theodoratou - united.

Once more, in the Second World War as in the First, Pouliopoulos was
to be found in the anti-war, anti-capitalist, internationalist camp.
The crisis of 1930 had brought him to the forefront against the coming
storm of Fascism and war. He became the pole of attraction for all the
cadres who had originated front Archeiomarxism, and later from the
factions that had gathered around the KEO and the Leninist Opposition
of the KKE (LAKKE), whose leaders were Soula and Pablo.16

With the unification Pouliopoulos now became the unquestioned leader
of all the Trotskyists who remained loyal to the Fourth International,
and he fought ceaselessly against all the social chauvinist
opportunists who capitulated during the war.

The slogan of the Trotskyists was elaborated by Pouliopoulos in June
1937:

`Independent revolutionary struggle for the establishment of a
government of workers and peasants - that is the direction of struggle
in the period through which we are passing, and only thus will the
workers be saved from the catastrophe and horror of war.

`United Front struggle for the overthrow of the monarchist
dictatorship in Greece, for the imposition of the immediate political
and economic demands of the workers, and for the speedy preparation of
the rule of the workers and peasants.'

For Marxists the war was not progressive for the two blocs outside the
Soviet Union, as the social-traitors trumpeted. As Lenin wrote: `War
does not cease being imperialist because charlatans and
petty-bourgeois philistines throw out a sugared slogan. War is an
extension of the politics of finance capital. The fundamental point is
to know what class is carrying out the war. War is imperialist when it
is carried out by the bourgeois class for its predatory goals.'

Pouliopoulos added: `There is no greater deception than that which is
committed by Stalinism and Social Democracy with the propaganda of the
so-called "anti-Fascist war".

The participation of the Soviet Union on the side of Western
imperialism did not modify the character of the war of her imperialist
Allies.

During the occupation the most shameless social-patriotism was shown
by the so-called resistance movement of the KKE, EAM, and ELAS, with
the slogans of `struggle against the occupying forces' and for the
`victory of the Allies'. We declared the occupation to be a phase of
the continuing war. Its character had not changed. Neither was the
question of `national uprising' or `national liberation' posed. The
deception of the masses with pro-Soviet and anti-capitalist
tendencies, who had been led into support for the war of the western
imperialists and the domestic bourgeois class, was the most dishonest
deception of the masses, in contrast to the Leninist lines of
transforming the war into civil war, and for the defeat of `our own'
country.

Lenin wrote: `The national question in the imperialist epoch is
characteristic of colonial and dependent countries which are
permanently dependent on the imperialist governments.' `The temporary
occupation of Europe by Hitler's troops', wrote the Internationalist
17 of August-September 1965, `did not create a national question, just
as the now permanent occupation by the "Allied" troops does not create
a question of national liberation.'

Trotsky, as a result of the occupation of half of Norway by Hitler,
declared that this occupation did not change our slogan of
transforming the war into civil war, exactly because the temporary
character of an occupation does not create a permanent colonisation
and thus the question of national liberation.

The first guerrilla war of ELAS was an extension of the
social-patriotic defence of the bourgeois state, according to
Zachariades, of Greece under the `Fascist' Metaxas. Its goals were not
Socialist, but completely nationalist, patriotic, against merely the
Axis powers, and chauvinist.

Chariot

The pro-Soviet demonstrations of the KKE and ELAS leadership were in
the spirit of pro-Allied declarations, pro-American, pro-English and
pro-French, with which they aimed to mislead the masses who had
confused pro-Soviet tendencies, and to tie them to the chariot of the
war.

The Trotskyists were defenders of the Soviet Union, but with the only
valid means, that of revolutionary anti-capitalist class revolution
and of the transformation of the war into revolution in the capitalist
countries, not by the shameless submission of the Communist parties to
the governments of the capitalist countries.

The basis of the ELAS forces was plebeian cadres from the countryside,
because basically only those drugged by the nationalist slogans of the
social-traitors would volunteer (another way being forced
recruitment). The `ELAS Reserve' meant in practice placing in reserve
the proletariat of the cities. Naturally many proletarian fighters
went over to guerrillaism because they were misled, still believing in
the Stalinists.

`But the military aid that such groups offer to the Soviet Union is
insignificant. On the other hand, destroying the class thought of the
workers, developing chauvinism, tearing the workers away from their
struggle, sowing splits among them, and turning them against the
German soldiers, these groups disarm the working class, and tie the
German proletariat to their bourgeoisie and to Hitler. And they
prepare the destruction of the German and world revolution.' (Thesis
of the 1944 Conference of the Fourth International).

But the organised groups, militarily disciplined, despite the misled
masses of leftist combatants, were `objectively in goals and action,
militarist, nationalist, basically counter-revolutionary, and in the
service of national capitalism and of Anglo-American imperialism.'
(Thesis of the 1944 Conference of the Fourth International).

Aimed

The methods of ELAS had no relation to the Leninist tactic of
revolutionary defeatism, basically the destruction of the bourgeois
state, defeat of `one's own' country, arrest of the officers,
fraternal action at the front, and soviets in the army, but they aimed
at the destruction of all Germans, as the Kremlin said, sabotage and
the victory of the national army, etc.

The tactics of ELAS were not the relentless struggle of classes but a
compromise of all parties, of Kanellopoulos 18 and Papandreou, as far
as an agreement with the counter-revolutionary guerrilla groups of
Zervas, and the `democrats' of Psarou, with the blessing of the
English staff. The slogan was for a National Front and a national
government.

The Lebanon, Caserta and Varkiza treaties were treaties signed by the
leadership of EAM/ELAS. The Trotskyists condemned them. They were
beneath the contempt of all the militants of the movement. It was
simply the logical extension of guerrilla nationalism. It was not by
accident that de Gaulle congratulated the Stalinist national
resistance.

The feelings and the struggle of the masses against Fascism, like
those in favour of peace and against war, are progressive. They are of
a spontaneous character, an expression of the inevitable revolt not
only against the Fascists but against the domestic bourgeoisie, one of
whose sections identified itself with German and Italian Fascism.

The duty of Trotskyists was to sharpen these tendencies of the masses,
and to orient them towards class and Socialist goals. In this sense
they were found at the head of strikes (mainly those of clerical
workers at that time) as well as against round-ups, against arrests
and Nazi murders, and in solidarity with the hungry who were breaking
into the storage bins of the black marketeers, etc.

In this way they provided hundreds of victims. Below we give a list of
the Trotskyists killed by Stalinists. Most of them fell because of the
barrier of fire organised by the KKE headed by the GPU agent
Bartzotas,19 in order to prevent the independent intervention of the
revolutionary workers and of the Trotskyists from taking their place
on the first of the barricades during the December uprising.

In the period before December the secretary of the united Trotskyist
organisation, Kastritis, narrowly escaped from an assassination
attack. But hundreds of others ...

All these crimes against the Trotskyists, along with the Stalinists'
operations in the cells of the Stalinist security, make up a story
that has yet to be written.

The following Archeiomarxists were killed:

The whole organisation of Agriniou that went over to guerrilla warfare
in that area: P Anastasiou, M Kapetanakis, L Kapetanakis, M
Xanthopoulos, M Zisimopoulos, K Ladas, Themelis, Karoyeridis, Pagonis,
a student, and many others. Of the old cadre of the KKE, and later of
the Trotskyists, were the leader of the Workers' Centre of Agriniou,
etc, along with More, Touris, Pliakos, Bambakis, and dozens of others.

The following were killed from the Opposition in the KKE:

Asimidis, an old cadre of the KKE, Doubas of the party organisation in
Agriniou, and many others.

The uprising in the Middle East gave another opportunity for the
chauvinist role of EAM/ELAS to be manifested in the war.

Infuriated by the slaughter and the destruction of war, the infantry
threw down their weapons. The front broke up in all parts of the
Middle East. The capitalist chain broke in the Greek link.

The war should have entered the phase of its transformation into a
civil war, if there had existed a strong Trotskyist party, and if the
chauvinist forces of EAM/ ELAS with their pro-war propaganda in
support of the Allies had not fallen on the rebellious infantry.
Churchill's staff disarmed all the infantry with the use of backward
troops. He interned them in camps. Then the Stalinists began to work
in support of the continuation of the war and for a government of
Papandreou and EAM, while the Trotskyists inside the camps faced
assassination attempts from those who had refused to transform the war
into a Socialist revolution.

One occupation followed another, when the defeated troops of the
German-Italian imperialists withdrew, the Anglo-Saxon troops entered
Greece. This is what we said at the time, and we put out a
proclamation of ours which was circulated in thousands, saying that it
was a big lie that the Allied troops were entering Greece as
liberators.

Tricked

The December events confirmed our view. The `national liberation
struggle' against the `occupier' was a disaster for the masses, who
had been tricked into supporting the alliance of the Soviet
bureaucracy and the Western imperialists.

`Welcome to our allies, welcome to our friends' - the walls were
filled with welcome posters, and the streets rang with the shouts of
the followers of the KKE. Tens of thousands drugged by the slogans of
`national liberation' welcomed Scobie triumphantly, and later
Eisenhower and Montgomery, who drowned Greece and Cyprus in blood.
(Nowadays those who had been allies of the imperialists only yesterday
changed their tune, and shout `Americans out'. Their line was always
determined by the directives of the Moscow bureaucracy.)

The revolutionary upsurge caused by the destruction of war, despair
and hunger culminated in the December events. As with the revolt in
the Middle East the uprising sprang from below. In fact there existed
all the preconditions for the transformation of the war into a
Socialist revolution - a deep crisis, a rapid turn to the left, a
desire for revolutionary change, and a paralysis within the ruling
class.

According to the directives of the Stalinist leadership of the Soviet
Union, the KKE in Cairo made an agreement with Papandreou. It
submitted itself to the demands of the British imperialists which had
been agreed in the Stalin/Churchill/ Roosevelt accord. The Soviet
embassy in Cairo was the godfather of the legal child of the
counter-revolution, the Papandreou government of `Socialists' and
Stalinists.

The Stalinists Zevgos and Porphyrogenis entered the government. This
was ministerialism a thousand times more treacherous than that of the
`Socialists', Millerand, MacDonald, Thomas, Noske and company. They
entered a government for the reconstitution of bourgeois rule (`first
of all reconstruction and work') and for the stifling of the
revolutionary storm which the war had provoked, just as happened in
France and Italy. The KKE being relatively dominant in the Greek
peninsula carried Papandreou on its back. The December
counterrevolution was prepared with the slogans of a `Government of
National Unity'.

`For a people's state' triumphantly cried the Stalinists. `For a
people's state and law' cried Papandreou, and this law was passed with
the bombs and bullets of Scobie and Papandreou on bloody Sunday in
December.

ELAS, which had occupied the whole country, entered the December
conflict. The rank and file ELAS members fought heroically. But the
leadership did not leave the initiative to the `reserve' ELAS
proletariat. It feared their spontaneous initiative. Even in the fire
of a civil war it held out its hand to the bloody hands of Scobie and
Papandreou, and for a `Government of National Unity'. Churchill
reached Athens in haste and in a state of panic. He ordered
reinforcements. While he organised the crushing of the December
struggle, his lackeys in the KKE visited him in the Great Britain
hotel, and implored a peaceful solution.

Quixotic

They believed that the Allied governments should try Liber and Scobie.
On 17 December Rizopastis and the heroes of the slogan `Americans
out', the quixotic `anti-imperialists', put out an SOS `to the great
Anglo-Saxon country of America'. There was no mention of the
intervention of the world and Russian proletariat! Some ELASites who
were revolutionists laid a mine to blow up the `Great Britain' and
Churchill. But the capitulationist leadership of the KKE intervened,
and stopped them from dynamiting Churchill.

Only a patch of land in Zervas' territory, another small islet in
Syntagma Square, and Makryianni and Sotiria were in the hands of
Churchill, Liber, Scobie and Papandreou. And yet something
incomprehensible happened for those who could not understand, unlike
the Trotskyists, what a capitulationist bureaucracy meant.

An ELAS trumpet blew for retreat. The December struggle was betrayed.
The revolutionary Socialist desires of the masses were betrayed. And
the Greek movement experienced a major new defeat.

Churchill declared to the world that the December events were the work
of the Trotskyists. This was correct in the sense of the long term
struggle of Trotskyism for the transformation of the war into a
revolution, in the sense of the pressure of the radicalised masses
whom the adherents of Permanent Revolution objectively represented,
and in the sense of their untiring, relentless, anti-Popular Front
struggle for the independent intervention of the masses, which
exercised a great influence upon the rank and file of the KKE, EAM and
ELAS.

It was misleading, however, in the sense of Trotskyists being in the
leadership of the movement. Because within the class front there
occurred an unprecedented slaughter of the Trotskyists (according to
the message of Bartzotas to the GPU, 800), in order to stifle the
revolution.

The betrayals continued. The first act of the ruling class after every
war or defeated revolution where the masses have taken up arms, is
disarmament. This was done by the Popular Front of the KKE itself and
by Sofianopoulou, by means of the filthy agreement in Varkiza.

With this the EAM/ELAS/KKE leadership secured their own immunity in
the `horror' of the betrayal. All the officers of ELAS became enrolled
in the National Guard (correctly so). But 70,000 ELAS guerrillas were
disarmed and given up to the mercies of the reaction, of the Fascist
scum. There was one exception, Aris Velouchiotis (Klaras) and his
group took a left wing stand against the agreements that the
bureaucracy made.

The second guerrilla war developed on a progressive basis. The war
turned Greece into a powderkeg which threatened to explode and shake
capitalisiri 'to its foundations. The black market, speculation and
starvation wages sharpened social discontent. The gap between the poor
and the new rich became an abyss.

The turn to the left was rapid. The masses who had shed their blood
for `liberation' against the Fascist occupier now saw that capitalist
slavery still existed. It was only a change of the guards. The
Anglo-Saxon imperialists had replaced the Hitlerites.

The domestic `democrats' who had been threatened by a victorious
revolution in December, now became ferocious to stifle the workers'
movement. Setting side by side the executioner Papandreou with the
`pro-Soviet' Sofianopoulou, they managed to disarm 70,000 guerrillas,
and later allowed the hordes of state auxiliaries to slaughter the
betrayed combatants of both city and country.

The guerrillas were led into the dishonourable trap of war for the
victory of the Allied imperialists, believing that in this way they
were helping the Soviet Union, but Stalin, instead of demanding a
peace without annexations such as Lenin called for, had sold out
Greece to the Anglo-Saxons.

Thus, persecuted and murdered in their homes and fields, they returned
to the mountains. This time, they took up arms against `their own'
capitalist rulers, and the guerrilla war took on a class and
progressive character.

Velouchiotis, with the indomitable courage which characterised him,
came into violent opposition with the capitulationists of Caserta and
Lebanon, and the disarmers of Varkiza. He simply constituted the left
wing of the bureaucracy, the 'Reiss tendency' as we would say in the
case of Russia, or of the Mao tendency at its beginning and not in its
Bonapartist decay. The Trotskyists who were alongside him in his staff
were not murdered at a time when dozens of others were butchered
according to Zachariades' orders.

He expressed the tendency which opposed the leadership, and which had
been expelled after the betrayal and the defeat of December, and of
the awakening of the vanguard and the class in general.

Zachariades' KKE expelled him for indiscipline, slandered him for
`treason' and betrayed him. Thus in June 1945 he was surrounded and
killed. Zachariades betrayed him hand in hand with the
counter-revolution.

But the guerrilla war developed. The arch -capitulationists were
forced to support it in order to derail it. With Vafiades 20 in the
leadership, it became the fear and terror of the bourgeois class and
of the British and American imperialists. The war reached up as far as
Athens and Parnitha,21 as the government admitted. Stalin's Kremlin
sold out the second guerrilla war, as it did with the December
culmination of the first. The KKE of Zachariades, despite and against
the knowledge of the leader of the `Democratic Army of Greece'
Vafiades, who insisted on guerrillaism, wanted to fight a conventional
war and produced nothing but a disastrous defeat, within a chain of
defeats.

We were in solidarity with the second guerrilla war, and on the side
of the revolutionary peasants who supported its leadership.

We declared, however, that guerrilla war in the mountains was
equivalent to the abandonment of the class struggle in the cities and
villages. It (guerrillaism) disregards the struggle for wage demands
and reforms. (They did not make reforms even in the places they
controlled.) It isolates itself, it breaks unity with the workers, and
it leads to an impasse. It is a solution born of the weakness of the
workers' movement. The peasantry, which forms the basis of
guerrillaism, with its dispersion and its individualistic psychology,
cannot have a strength analogous to its size. It cannot attain
Socialist and internationalist goals. The peasant class cannot but
vacillate, either behind the bourgeoisie or behind the proletariat.

Majority

The proletarian revolution cannot win without the revolutionary party
winning the leadership of the majority of the proletariat. To win it
must base itself upon soviets as organs of the United Front of the
workers and peasants. Guerrilla war ignores the strategy of winning
over and mobilising the masses, ignores the soviets, and avoids the
front with the workers. Its petty-bourgeois, bourgeois or
collaborationist leadership fears workers' control and democracy, and
often silences its critics.

Revolution starts from the centre of capitalism, but guerrilla war
starts from its periphery. Concentrating the struggle in the mountain
isolates it from the huge reserves of the cities, and contributes to
the unfavourable relation of forces and the counter-revolution.
Revolution organises the supreme technique of the mass uprising, the
flood of workers. Guerrilla war cannot win in a conventional fight
against the superior military means of the enemy.

Hegemony

Only the working class can become the motor force of the Socialist
revolution. Its hegemony comes from its position in production, from
its forces and from the Socialist goals set for it by history:

`The fact that individual Communists are in the leadership of the
present armies does not at all transform the social character of these
armies...It is one thing when a Communist Party, firmly resting on the
flower of the urban proletariat, strives through the workers to lead a
peasant war. It is an altogether different thing when a few thousand
or even tens of thousands of revolutionaries, who are truly
Communists, or only take the name, assume the leadership of a peasant
war without having serious support from the proletariat.' (LD Trotsky,
Peasant War in China and the Proletariat)

From the end of 1946 we foresaw correctly: `Guerrilla activity alone
cannot defeat the capitalist attack. Left only to its own forces the
new guerrillaism, sooner or later, is obliged to succumb.'
(Karl[aft]s, speech on behalf of the KDKE in the debate with the KKE)

And the confirmation was tragic. The city movement was betrayed, the
guerrilla war was sold out by Stalin to his Anglo-Saxon Allies, and
Tito closed the borders to the guerrillas. The government of the
mountains was not recognised by Moscow, Belgrade and Sofia. It
remained without international proletarian support (world
mobilisations, volunteers, etc), and without tanks and airplanes. And
in the end, the adventurist intervention of Zachariades, transforming
the guerrilla war into conventional warfare, became disastrous. This
is what Markos Vafiadis, leader of the `Democratic Army of Greece'
(DSE) and president of the `Provisional Democratic Government', says
in his document of November 1948:

`The abstention from the elections by the KKE was incorrect. The KKE
created illusions in the people for the peaceful solution of the Greek
problem. It did not believe in the possible victory of guerrillaism.
It saw it as a means of pressure and engaged in indecisive politics,
while the capitalist reaction was gaining time and organising its
forces. During this period the mass movement retreated to the cities.
From mid-1947 the voluntary recruits to the DSE in the country did not
even reach 10 per cent.'

At the Fifth Plenum of the CC of the KKE in January 1949 Vafiadis and
Hatzivasiliou were made scapegoats, and labelled `capitulationists'
and `Trotskyists'.

The turn of Partsalides 21 came at the Seventh Plenum in May 1950,
when he was denounced as a `factionalist', and `opportunist' and a
'Trotskyist .

In a short while the disagreements of Karageorgis, the editor of
Rizopastis, and lieutenant general of the DSE, became pronounced.
`Zachariades failed in the second phase of the guerrilla war,' he
said, `just as Ionnides and Siantos did in the first phase ... He
lacks confidence in Stalin to the point of appearing in opposition to
him.' And he referred to the rottenness which existed inside the KKE.

Karageorgis, who had taunted the Trotskyists in speeches addressed `to
some birds who chirp in the ravines', now saw that the chirping of the
guerrillas' guns posed no threat to capitalism.

This was not the fault of the heroic guerrillas, but of the general
line of the KKE and of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Zachariades was later
to characterise Siantos as a provocateur, and his policy, in the cheap
agreements of Lebanon, Caserta and Varkiza, as `incorrect politics
which basically comprised a submission to the interests and pursuits
of the British imperialists'.

But this was really a condemnation of the line of national resistance,
and it is well known that the responsibility for all of it lay with
the Kremlin directives.

Loukas Karliaftis

Notes

(The footnotes are those of the author unless otherwise stated)

Georgiades-Sideris - right wing leaders of the Socialist Workers Party
of Greece.
OKNE - the youth organisation of the Greek Communist Party founded in
1922.
S Verouchis - a leader of the Trotskyist Archeiomarxists who had lost
his eyes during the war between the Greeks and the Turks in Asia
Minor, and Secretary of the Union of the War Disabled, which he led to
victory, and was repeatedly sent to prison. In 1943, taking part in
the anti-Nazi resistance movement on his own responsibility, he was
executed by the Stalinists along with 800 others. His body was thrown
to the wild dogs by the Stalinists while he was still half alive.
Plastiras - a bourgeois `liberal' politician, formerly a general.
Ioannis Metaxas (1871-1941) was a right wing general who ruled as
dictator between 1936 and 1941 [Editor's Note].
Papanastasios - a bourgeois `democrat'.
Zachariades - Stalin's foremost supporter in Greece, trained along
with Khaitas in the Stalinist school of Koutvi in Russia, and
installed as General Secretary of the Greek Communist Party by the
Stalinist Comintern. He was the chief organiser of all the executions
of Trotsky's followers in Greece. The policy of the Greek Communist
Party brought about the Metaxas dictatorship straightaway, and
Zachariades was put in prison and moved to Germany by the Nazis.
Mysteriously released, he went back to Greece to carry out new
betrayals during the civil war. After the smashing of the second
guerrilla war he was made the scapegoat by Stalin and was expelled
from the party, dying recently in Russia.
Anafe - a barren island.
Tzoulatis - along with Ligdopoulos, leader of the Socialist Youth in
Athens (1916), and the first martyr of Bolshevism in Greece. He was
elected to the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party of
Greece at its founding conference in 1918, and along with Giotopoulos
split from the SWPG in the same way that Lenin did (1919). He
published the journal Communism (1920-21) in which he fought for the
`21 Conditions' of adherence to the Communist International, and
rejoined the SWPG in 1921, where he built up a faction publishing the
journal Archives of Marxism (May 1923), and consistently orientated
towards Trotsky from 1923 onwards. He was thus the first Trotskyist in
Greece, and was finally expelled from the party at the beginning of
1924.
Apostolou - a leader of the Archeiomarxists, one of the few who went
over to Stalinism.
Aris Velouchiotis was a famous left wing Stalinist leader during the
resistance movement, who rejected the directives of the Greek
Communist Party to hand over his group's guns. Expelled from the party
as a 'Trotskyist', he was soon after trapped mysteriously and executed
by the Greek army.
Eleutherios Venizelos (1864-1936) was a well known bourgeois leader of
the Liberals, frequently in office during the early part of the
twentieth century [Editor's Note].
Rizopastis (Radical) is the daily paper of the Greek Communist Party.
14.The PEEA was the `Provisional Democratic Government', or
`Government of the Mountains'.
Zervas was a bourgeois `anti-Nazi' leader.
Michel Pablo (Michael Raptis) later became leader of the Fourth
International after the war.
Diethnistis (Internationalist) is the theoretical organ of the Workers
Vanguard (Trotskyist) of Greece.
Kanellopoulos was a right wing bourgeois politician.
Bartzotas was a notorious leader of the Stalinists who produced a
statement for his masters in the Kremlin during the second guerrilla
war stating proudly that over 800 Trotskyists had been executed by the
OPLA, the Stalinist militia, in Greece.
Vafiades - a left wing Stalinist leader who was expelled from the
Central Committee as a bourgeois agent, and now lives in Russia.
Parnitha (ancient Mount Parnes), a mountain near Athens.
Partsalides was a top leader of the Stalinists, both in the EAM and
amongst today's Eurocommunists.
 

The Popular Fronts and Proletarian Policy

by Pandelis Puliopoulos

1.  A New Phase in the Decay of Capitalism

The attack of Italian capitalism in Ethiopia in 1935, the general strike in France in June 1936, the civil war which is continuing in Spain and the gigantic armaments of all the great Forces show clearly that we have passed into a new general decline of  the world capitalist system. The world has entered a new period of wars and revolutions.

Inside this general crisis there is only one solution that can satisfy the interests of the proletariat and all the working masses: the conquest of political power from the working class and the utilisation of this power for the implementation of socialism.

2. How Can Power Be Generally Occupied

The working class can conquer political power only if it can use the method of independent class struggle. It must therefore, in whatever phase of today’s crisis, propose its irreconcilable opposition to the bourgeois class and the bourgeois state, with whichever form this manifests itself.

The extent of the non-proletarian masses of the people can and must be won on the side of the working class and socialism. But this will be achieved only when the working class can be proven to move dynamically forward, a decisive and able leader in the independent revolutionary struggle of the classes against capitalism which disorientates these masses as well as the proletariat.

3. Popular front Equal Class Collaboration

Inside the lines of the workers movement the greatest obstacle to an independent class struggle are the methods and the ideology of class collaboration. This ideology is embodied above all in the slogans of the so-called Popular Front. They were used for the first time by the Communist International and its sections. These slogans found their theoretical expression in the resolutions of the 7^th Congress of the Communist International in the summer of 1935. Very quickly this policy was espoused and propagated by the reformist (socialdemocratic) parties, as with many liberal parties in all the world.

The slogans of the Popular Front are new in form but very old in their essence. They represent simply and only the classical policies and methods of the cooperation of classes and truly in the more serious and clear form: a governing coalition of bourgeois and workers parties. The Popular Front, as with every form of class cooperation, is the negation of the independent form of class collaboration, is the negation of the independent class struggle of workers. With the Popular Front the working class abandons its own programme, in other  words the programme of the conquest of power and the programme of socialism and it adopts the programme of the ‘democratic bourgeoisie’, in other words the programme of the defence of the regime. Blum in France openly declared that the Popular Front and his government have as an aim the continuation of capitalism.

4. The Popular Front and the United Front

            The Popular Front has no relation with the United Front. The United Front is one of the main means of proletarian struggle. It is an agreement for common action on a given arena for a few common aims and it disavows absolutely every sacrifice of programme and principles, abandons every logic of the policy of the working class and the revolutionary party. The revolutionary party inside the United Front maintains maintains fully its programme for independent class struggle for workers and peasants power and for socialism.

            On the contrary the Popular Front is a political coalition for general aims which predetermines that the workers party abandons the independent aims of the working class and it subjected the general aims of the bourgeois class in the name of bourgeois democracy. In today’s practice this abandonment occurs essentially from the parties of the Communist International, not only essentially but typically. The ideological degeneration of these parties has today proceeded so much that they are openly discussing union with the classic party of socialbetrayers, inside a united party of  reformist - “socialist”, where the name communism would be lost even, after its essence was lost inside the policies of the Communist International.

            In radical opposition to the Popular Front the cooperation of classes, revolutionary marxism and the communist-internationalists propose the United Front of Struggle which can take aboard more broad masses in the progressive development of the struggles against capital and capitalist power.

5. Popular Front, Fascism and the Middle Classes

The policy of the Popular Front cannot give any decisive defense against fascism, as fascism has been proved to be the policy for which it advances unavoidably by decaying capitalism in its phase today, if the proletariat doesn’t overturn it. Every other policy, apart from the overthrow of the whole of the capitalist system, not only is weak infront of fascism, but on the contrary makes the victory of fascism sure.

Truly the Popular Front is unable to mobilise the middle classes under the leadership of the working class without which it is impossible to achieve a victory for the workers. As the Popular Front helps the working class abandon its own independent programme and its independent class leadership, it leaves the middle classes a useful prey in the unriddled social demagoguery of the fascists and thus it must allow in fascism to have a mass base which is necessary to rise to power.

6. Popular Front and Democratic Demands

In today’s daily economic and political struggle the policy of class cooperation of the Popular Front is a big block in the militant, in other words decisive, carrying out of struggles for partial, immediate demands of the exploited. It attempts to calm down the daily struggles with slogans of ‘social peace’ (this is today the slogan of the parties of the Popular Front in France, especially that of the stalinists, this is also the new programme which the new government of Soitan declared). The Popular Front is based ever more on the bureaucratic and ‘legal’ methods of the bourgeois state, sends the workers to bourgeois institutions of goverment mediation, the civil service, the bourgeois judiciary etc. so as to stop every struggle for daily demands, or to direct in such a manner so this struggle doesn’t intensify and doesn’t deepen the class consciousness of the workers.

From this policy the class struggle of the proletariat leading the other exploited layers of the population for the democratic demands for as long as they are maintained in the capitalist system. With this struggle - which is not based at all on forgetting the basic nature of bourgeois democracy as a concealed dictatorship of capital upon the working people - we help the consciousness of the backward masses and we occupy more positions for the organisation and overturn of capitalist power. These positions, freedom of speech, meeting, unions etc. can be occupied by workers with their independent class struggle, but never with the alliance and will of the parties of capital even those of the most ‘democratic’ against their will.

            The Popular Front doesn’t combine the struggle for democratic freedoms with the aim of the socialist revolution of the workers, but uses them as a means to bind the masses with bourgeois democracy which it claims is above classes. Thus it doesn’t only wipe out the basic aim of the period from the consciousness of the masses, but it deceives them even today with the relative gains and their current situation. In France the Popular Front in the name of this typical ‘popular democracy’ worsened even more the economic situation of the workers with the undervaluation of the national currency and the movement of overvaluation which was unleashed on behalf of business, after it deceived us all with the so-called ‘social reforms’. The police killed in May workers in Clisy who went to dissolve fascist meetings and the stalinists called yesterday the workers in the countryside to consider the police of the Republic their own, their only enemy being the bosses, as if the police of the bourgeois democracy wasn’t an organ of the ruling class of the bosses!

7. Popular Front equals a Bourgeois Governing Coalition

            A concrete measure of the policy of the Popular Front is the creation of bourgeois coalition governments, where worker leaders alongside the bourgeoisie are to be found, have behind them the General Councils and all the mechanism of the bourgeois state. Such goverments we understood many times after the war and the problem of ministerialism, in other words the ministerialism of the workers leaders, has inside the labour movement a long theoretical and historical tradition. Such governments cannot under any conditions aid the interests of the working class and workers in general.

            The government of the Popular Front, is like every other governing coalition, a form of bourgeois government, a particular appearance of the bourgeois state. State and government are the central executive power of the ruling social class. Entering a capitalist government, under any conditions, the workers parties become managers of political power on behalf of capitalism. As such they are obliged to act in such a manner where they block and in the critical moments strangle the revolutionary struggle of the workers for the conquest of power and for socialism. As such such a struggle cannot be understood without an irreconcilable struggle against every form of capitalist power. From this antagonistic internal logic do we have the counterrevolutionary character of the governments of the Popular Front.

8. Popular Front and War

            There is no greater political deceit from the one that apparently the declaration that the Popular Front saves Europe from the danger of a new war. From their very nature the Popular Fronts and their governments as organs and managers responsible for power of a capitalist country eg. as imperialist France, cannot but be a preparatory organs of the new imperialist war, which by mathematical necessity is unavoidable, if the capitalist regime isn’t overthrown. The government of the Popular Front in France executing faithfully the instructions of the General Council and having in the war ministry trusted organs of french imperialism (Daladie and Co), has surpassed every other bourgeois government in France for the chase of war armaments.

            The parties of the Popular Front, especially the stalinist one have unleashed a shameless nationalistic and chauvinistic propaganda, preparing thus psychologically and ideologically the masses for the new slaughter. With the excuse about the ‘defence of democracies’, the war for ‘concrete security’ and the struggle for ‘democratic’ imperialist forces against fascist imperialist Powers, don’t prepare anything apart from the generalisation of the war, the pulling of the proletariat on the side of one of the warring coalitions. In other words they are preparing nothing more than the generalisation of the war and the binding of the proletariat to one of the warring factions. In other words they are preparing openly -in common stalinists and socialdemocrats - a betrayal of socialism incomparably more frightful and terroristic in human blood from the historic betrayal of the 2^nd International in August 1914.

            In the vanguard of this policy alongside international Socialdemocracy is the nationalistic degenerated soviet bureaucracy which founded an absolutist regime above the soviet proletariat and it starts from the utopian idea that it can save the soviet state of the October Revolution from the imperialist attacks only if it allies itself militarily with French imperialism. This bureaucracy dissolved the Communist International as an international organisation of the revolutionary proletariat and it made it dependent on the nationalistic policy of Russian diplomacy.

            Only a successful organisation of the victorious revolutionary struggles for the overthrow of power of the imperialist capitalists in the West, under the direction of a truly revolutionary international organisation - 4^th International - is it in a position to save Europe from the new war chaos which we are being led to at full speed ahead, to revitalise the internationalist and revolutionary potential of the German and Italian proletariat which the disgusting nationalism of stalinism and the Popular Fronts on the contrary aid the demagoguery of Hitler and Mussolini. Only such a policy can under the concrete conditions aid the USSR, opening up on its interior a new period of re-birth of the first revolutionary and internationalist enthusiasm of the years 1917-1920 and the freedom of the country from the bureacratic absolutism.

            On the contrary the politics of the Popular Front, a barrier to the European revolution, subtracts on the contrary the most valuable and only sure ally of the USSR, a strong, internationalist solidarity and revolutionary educated international proletariat which is a guarantee for the gains of the October Revolutionary and incomparably a more powerful ally from every military alliance with capitalist Powers, an alliance with a doubtful  stability in critical times, as experience has shown.

9. The Popular Front is the Basic Issue Today

                        For every proletarian, for every communist-internationalist

and for the new revolutionary party we are creating, in all the world and especially in Greece, the issue of the Popular Front today surpasses in importance all the other issues of the workers movement, as every other problem can be solved today with the criterion of the position which we take opposite the Popular Front. Either for the struggle against the war, or for the struggle against the royalist dictatorship and against fascism or for any other important sphere of political action, our stance will be dependent from the position we take with respect to the Popular Front. It is enough to note that the vanguard of the policy of the Popular Front have today become the Socialist and Communist (stalinist) parties of Spain, a country which can be found in a civil war and France, a country which is on the verge of a decisive social and political crisis and where the issue of power becomes more immediate and demanding. In relation to the popular Front must every conscious proletariat, every communist take a clear position, an independent line without wavering.

10. Historical Experience

            The lessons of historical experience reveal with the most undoubtful way, as well as the lessons of marxist theory, how bankrupt and how counterrevolutionary is the policy of the cooperation of classes and the coalition governments called either a Popular Front or something else. All the history of the world labour movement has shown quite clearly that this policy has led to defeat and to disaster for the working class, the victory of capitalist counterrevolutionary reaction. This policy of cooperation of classes led, as we all know to compromise of the labour parties infront of the imperialist war of 1914. Coalition governments were created by the labour parties after the war (1918 and 1923). Both times this led to a defeat of both German revolutions and we saw the socialdemocratic management of capitalist power reaching to the end of their logical consequences to the murderous execution of the revolutionary leaders of the German proletariat, Liebknecht and Luxembourg. Equal to today’s popularfrontist policy was also the policy of the Communist International in China which subdued the Chinese workers and peasants to Chiang Kai-shek and the bourgeois party of the Kuomintang. This policy everyone knows led in 1927 to the defeat of the Chinese revolution and the mass executions of the revolutionary Chinese workers from the ally of stalinism Chiang Kai-shek. The policy of class cooperation of the German socialdemocrats is being shared with the pseudoleftist infantilism of the German Communist party and its political responsibility for the victory of Hitler in 1933.

11. The Russian Experience of 1917

            A classical historical example of a Popular Front was the Provisional Government of Kerensky in Russia in 1917. In this took part parties which represented workers and peasants (mensheviks-socialrevolutionaries), with the exception of the only revolutionary proletarian party, the Bolshevik Party. If the Russian October Revolution won, this is due only to the independent policy of the Bolsheviks in relation to the governing coalition, who as managers of bourgeois power could not serve the interests of the proletariat, but on the contrary strangle in blood in June and hunt their leaders. A parallel government today are the main backers of coalitionism in France and Spain in the name of …bolshevism. The Bolshevik Party came into a revolutionary conflict with this imperialist government which continued the imperialist war. The workers of Russia in November 1917 took power overthrowing the Provisional Government of Kerensky.

12. The Popular Front in France

            The cooperation of classes and the coalition government wore new clothes and took new exams - History itself placed them in a decisive test. In France the Popular Front threw the Socialist and Communist Party bound the workers with the Radical-Socialist Party through the Radical-Socialist Party they were bound to French imperialism. France today is in the middle of a developing revolutionary crisis. The policy of the Popular Front blocked the French workers in stabilising their independent class power. It allowed the fascists to mobilise unnaided for their action for the concentration of weapons for the distribution of their ideas inside the middle classes. Inside this course the electoral failure of Doro in the vicinity of Sain-denis is an event which reveals the instinctive resistance of the workers to the danger. Fascism nowhere got to power through the ballot box.

            Blum accepted the leadership of the Popular Front bourgeois coalition and thus became the main executor of the directives of French imperialism. The crazy logic which is supported by the Socialist and Communist party showed the true nature of the Popular Front government. Not only in bloody Clisy but everywhere the government sends the army and the police to attack the striking  workers. It closes workers newspapers (‘Workers Struggle’) It introduces laws for compulsory arbitration, it doesn’t allow worker volunteers to go to Spain to help their Spanish brothers. It strangles with the use of force the insurrections of the oppressed subjects of French imperialism in Syria. It tortures the revolutionaries in French Indochina. It maintains one of the most reactionary generals in French Morocco in control. It undertakes to create the biggest programme of armaments which French imperialism has ever done. In all fronts it is preparing dynamically a world war for this particular imperialism. The general weakness and hesitation of the Popular Front government in France was revealed in total contrast towards the decisiveness with which last January it threatened war with Germany over French Morocco, its most important colony.

            As it showed clearly its inability to make life better for the workers leading to a bankruptcy of economic and public policy, Bum started to be attacked by his bourgeois allies, the radical-socialists of the Assembly. The new government of the popular Front even more clearly, even in its composition shows that it is an enemy towards the working class. (The new minister Saro: ”The economic and social policy has worsened tremendously, which have been born from the instability in the world of labour. Only increased productivity of national productive activity should pay with the capability of social reforms”) The cost of the crisis which convulses French capitalism today, like Blum and Sotan will call the working masses to pay for them in a new undercutting of the French franc, new taxes and overvaluations of the profiteers. Behind Sotan the bourgeoisie has prepared either its national coalition, or it is unable to control the insurrection of the working class and if unable to control the insurrection of the working class to lead to a military or fascist dictatorship.

            But the deeper meaning of the Popular Front is that in reality it constitutes a valuable organ of preparation for a new imperialist war. The Popular Front poses - and not only in France, but in all the bourgeois democracies - the basis for a ‘National Front’, for national unity. In other words the unity of all the classes under the leadership of the bourgeois government for the support of an imperialist war. This was clearly shown when the leader of the French Communist Party Thorez asked for a replacement of the Popular Front with a National Front. Anyway the complete chauvinist declarations so much of the Socialist as well as the Communist Party in France for the ‘unity’

of all the French nation against the threats of Germany show why firstly the Communist International, used the slogan of the Popular Front. The soviet diplomacy, which has totally subdued the Communist International, is asking for allies for the coming war and that it why it gives guarantees to the bourgeois governments that revolutions will not occur in their countries. This is precisely the guarantee given by the counterrevolutionary policy of Popular Fronts, if the forces accept a military alliance with the USSR or they hold neutrality in the new war.

13. The Popular Front in Spain

                        In Spain the Popular Front and its policy was as equally destructive as also in France. With the electoral agreement of 1935 the Spanish workers were pushed far away from the revolutionary path. The government of the Popular Front, which took power in 1936, found itself in front of a tremendous social crisis, unable to take whatever measures for the interests of the workers. On the contrary despite it being supported by all the existing labour parties, was forced from the beginning to send the police against the peasants who on their own had occupied the big landowners property, against the striking workers, to attack workers newspapers, to oppose every attempt for the arming of the workers and peasants.

                        In the meantime reaction is preparing its forces and unaided from the government it is laying down its counterrevolutionary plans. When reaction raised the flag of the counterrevolution in July, the first act of the government was to attempt a compromise with it. Only the fear of the masses in the streets stopped the government compromising and forced it to call the people to weapons. The great opposition of the workers and peasants in all the stages of the struggle, was blocked even from a military viewpoint and above all from a political point of view, from the Popular Front government.

                        The Spanish crisis cannot be solved for the interests of the working masses but only when the power is taken in the hands of the independent committees and the councils of the workers and advanced towards their independent path towards socialism. The government of the Popular Front is a bourgeois coalition government. The entrance of  socialists, communists and anarchists in the government swayed aside in the most crucial period of struggle the issue of the creation of a new revolutionary force inside Spain. The same is true for Catalonia, where the revolutionary situation was more advanced, the entrance last autumn of all the workers organisations in the bourgeois government of the Popular Front became an obstacle to the revolutionary advancement of the workers and made impossible a victorious defence against the counterrevolution. Even the POUM whilst correctly opposing to the slogan of Caballero “Democracy or Fascism” the correct slogan “Capitalism or Socialism”, whilst in practice refused its slogans of last year and it also entered Cobany’s government also blocking the progress of the catalonian revolution.

                        The main fault regarding the disastrous policy of the Popular Front in Spain falls on the bureaucracy of the USSR. Firstly, as it controls and directs the vanguard of this policy the Communist Party of Spain. Secondly because in support of this policy has been the soviet government. So as to place a block to the development of the proletarian revolution it reached the point of demanding the expulsion from the Catalonian government the POUM and its strangulation in blood, giving in return material support from the USSR.

14. The Crisis Develops

            The policy of the Popular Front now enters into a crucial phase so much in Spain as in France. It starts to take into account quite seriously with the movement of the working masses which automatically rises up and threatens to pass above the heads of the counterrevolutionary leaders and their bourgeois allies. That is why it takes bloody measures against this movement, whilst internally the Popular Front is experiencing a degenerative crisis handing over decisive positions of the government to more and more right-wing and reactionary elements within the coalition.

            Under the pressure of the governments of Paris and London and soviet diplomacy, caballero who represented workers unions inside the government, it falls as it wasn’t able to contain the movement of the armed workers and to disarm them to the dictatorial power of the bourgeois coalition and that of the officers. The new popularfrontist government, without Caballero

is greeted with demonstrations of the workers. The attempt at disarming the Catalan workers collapses due to their decisive resistance. The Valencia government unleashes their military terrorism with its own officers and army in Catalonia, dissolves the POUM and arrests as ‘traitors’ its cadres. In the end, infront of the resistance of the unionized workers, who were experienced from last year and refused to enter the game of coalition government, cobany’s with the aid of the stalinists and Valencia declare essentially a dictatorship. But the fronts are guarded by the armed workers which will not accept for their revolutionary movement to be strangled easily.

            The same goes for France. A new wave of striking mobilisations and occupations we must wait for against the measures which unavoidably Sotan takes so as to throw on the backs of the workers the extent of the soicioeconomic crisis. Foreseeing precisely this threat the French bourgeoisie with its radical lackeys in the Congress prepared for the overthrow of Blum the groundwork for a ‘dynamic’ government which will crush ‘anarchy’. The workers will not be able to be satisfied with the promises of the leaders of the Popular Front which will be so clearly proved to be fake. The developing united revolutionary front amongst the Workers Internationalist Party of France and the revolutionary left of the Socialist Youth and anarchosyndicalist organisations has today all the essential ingredients to win on its side all the disillusioned masses from the Popular Front before they fall to fascist demagoguery. Inside the advancing decisive events of France and Spain we will place on the consciousness of broad working masses the first great parties of the New Revolutionary International.

15. The Popular Front in Greece.

            In Greece the policy of the Popular Front, prepared ideologically with the decisions of the Central Committee of the KKE in January 1934, had as its first result the irrevocable dissolution of the old KKE into an amorphous mass of confused friends of the USSR and proletarians under the directorship of a careerist bureaucracy and irresponsible pettybourgeois democrats, totally foreign to the historical aims of the labour movement.

            As in our country there weren’t any pettybourgeois democratic parties worthy of their name, they created them with their fantasy, placing them in charge of an essentially non-existent “Popular Front” common political chameleons like Sofianopoulos.  Thus the KKE itself appearing in a technical manner with the form of the Popular Front gave its support inside Parliament to the big reactionary party of  liberal capitalism which under its government the working class and the peasants felt the biggest oppression and exploitation. Through him they supported the general Metaxas in the government, allowing to him to prepare quite easily today’s dictatorship. Allying themselves with the Liberal Party in 1935 and disagreeing with the United Workers and Peasants  Front against the Restoration, the KKE aided the venizelites in deceiving the antimonarchist masses and in preparing thus clearly from 1935 (May) their compromise with the ousted King and to restore him. When he was restored the Popular Front (KKE) circulated to the masses destructive deceit that a new period of liberalism was opening up and they officially went and bowed at the Palace. When finally the great mobilisation of Thessaloniki and the movement of the panhellenic striking movement, which was helped wholeheartedly by the pettybourgeois and the poor peasants, showed in May 1936 that the working masses were ready on the basis of their own forces to disrupt the plans of the royalist Metaxas dictatorship, the Popular Front in alliance with the MP’s of the venizelite party disrupted the movement of the workers and thus gave to the candidate dictator a sure victory at the same moment when his position had weakened to a great extent and had been shaken by the attacks of the workers. The victory stood decisive for the establishment of today’s royalist dictatorship of capital.

            Today the KKE-Popular Front disagrees wholeheartedly the proposals of the United Organisation of Communists - Internationalists in Greece for the convocation of a United Front against the Dictatorship and orientates all his policy towards an alliance with the officers of Plastiras (‘anti-fascists’) alongside the bourgeois parties. It is quite clear that the first ones in the name of Democracy made the dictatorial coup of March 1935, whilst the second ones, layed the paths towards Restoration and the dictatorship, now they are all going towards the Palace and are asking their return to power, giving in return the promise to continue even more fiercely the crushing of the workers movement and to legalise even with a constitutional decree a large part of today’s current dictatorship of the throne.

            This policy of the Greek Popular Front (KKE) is confounded by the relentless nationalism with which the party asks the workers to swallow. This is a consequence of a general policy of soviet diplomacy: a ‘strong’ Greece on the side of the Frenchsoviet Agreement for the new war. From here onwards the extensive patriotic intensities which many times take on board a comical character and only recently led the KKE to the disgusting spectacle of participating through its student organisations in the national celebrations and university parades which were organised by Metaxas.

            A clear backtracking of the ideology and the method of the Popular Front is today presented in Greece by the Archeiomarxist party. Only that with its declarations it appears that it is for an independent class policy of the proletariat for the United Front and against class collaboration, whilst in practice it went against the united front which EOKDE proposed it and now from its paper it starts to clearly speak about an alliance with all the bourgeois parties against the Dictatorship. Thus it reveals its deep opportunist character of the party which is recognised immediately by the Unifying Congress of the EOKDE.

16. Why we Fight

In front of the world crisis, in this new period of wars and revolutions where according to every chance the fate of humanity will be decided, the communists-internationalists of the world and alongside them the communist-internationalists of Greece, under the flag of the 4^th International, declare an irreconcilable opposition against all the forms of class cooperation and a governning coalition and therefore an irreconcilable opposition to the policy and the methods of the Popular Front. They oppose the policy of the Popular Workers Front. They oppose the policy of  the United Workers Front, which is the best tactic for creating the revolutionary unity of all the workers, so as to rally the non-proletarian elements on the side of the workers struggle (Workers and Workerspeasant Alliance) They declare that the world today is confronted by only one dillemma: Capitalism or Socialism and not the dillemma which they want to present such as the one between Democracy and Fascism as is the theory of the Popular Front.

Independent revolutionary struggle for the establishment of the socialist Government of workers and peasants - this is the direction of the struggle in the period we are passing, thus only will the workers be saved from the destruction and fear of war. A United Front of Struggle for the overthrow of the royalist dictatorship in Greece, for the imposition of the immediate political and economic demands of the workers and for the swift preparation of workers and peasants power, that is why we call the Greek proletariat to struggle today.

                                                            Athens, June 1937