Synaspismos lost ground to PASOK. This was due both to the bad taste left by the former's policy of collaboration with the right over the past two years and the impact of the collapse of the East Europetwenty years. Never have so many reactionary and anti-social measures been taken in so short a space of time. NICOS SIMEONIDIS
N 1990 alone, workers' purchasing power has fallen by 17%, and a new fall of 10% is forecast for 1991. Inflation reached 29% in 1990. Pensions have been effectively devalued through a change in the way in which they are calculated, and social benefits have also been reduced. Some 90,000 public sector workers have been sacked and a new wave of 300,000 layoffs is being forecast for so-called "problematic" enterprises (that is, enterprises that have declared themselves bankrupt and are functioning under state control).
The largest nationalized industries are to be privatized and the ruling circles are trying to get some nationalized factories declared bankrupt so that they can be sold to their friends for half price. Agricultural income has also fallen, owing to EEC directives, and the peasant cooperatives, which are responsible for 27% of agricultural production, are on the edge of the abyss, and are ceding their role to private intermediaries. As for education, here there are plans for authoritarian obscurantist measures that will push this sector back 15 years.
The police are the state
Repression is obviously needed to enforce such a programme. The Prime Minister's message to the police has been clear: "You are the state." Such talk has been followed up by police violence against all forms of protest, including charges against demonstrations, and against strikes. A new anti-strike law is before parliament which will outlaw strikes with the threat of instant dismissal. Under cover of "anti-terrorist searches," the far left is threatened with attack.
Greece's foreign policy has also been totally reoriented. Now there is 100% 24 support for the Pentagon and agreement • has been given for the return of US miliber 1990, when hundreds of thousands of workers, above all in public and national enterprises, went on strike against the reduction in pensions and the reduction in the retirement age. But, despite its size, this movement has only involved those directly affected. The leaderships of PASOK (the Socialist Party) and of the Synaspismos (the left alliance dominated by the Communist Party) have been calling for dialogue and looking for a way to retreat without losing face. They have thus striven to avoid any politicization of these strikes or the emergence of a political alternative as a result of them.
The strikers have thus been cut off from other workers and have met with hostility from the petty bourgeoisie, even though many of these have also been hard hit by the new measures. Deprived of wide social support, the struggles have petered out in a way which amounts to a defeat. Opposition has continued - including some very tough struggles against layoffs and the closures of national factories — but there is no coordination. The government thus feels able to remain intransigent.
Left alliance formed for elections
This was the climate at the time of the October 1990 municipal elections, which gave an opportunity for the anger of thousands of workers to express itself. PASOK and the Synaspismos were compelled to form an alliance against the ruling New Democracy party.
After much negotiation and horse-trading, agreements between the two parties were reached in 200 of the country's 300 municipalities. In many cases, however, this was pushed through at the top without the involvement of local activists, and this led to sectarianism and resentment on the part of the latter. Thus the leadership of the Eurocommunist faction in the Synaspismos, EAR, called, a week before the elections, for the voters to cast their ballots "according to their consciences," rather than urging them to vote for the united lists.
While these elections showed that the credibility of the right was on the decline, an regimes. Thus on balance, the government has come out of these elections in a strong position, and is able to claim popular support for its economic policies.
The opposition parties launched a frontal charge against the government a long time ago. They could have denounced it as the government of a minority, given that its majority of two seats in parliament (152 out of 300) has been won by bribery of a deputy from another party and by a scandalous judicial decision at the end of October which awarded a PASOK seat to the right. They could have contested its right to take such measures. And yet they have shown themselves above all determined not to obstruct the government. Thus they have entered into a profound crisis.
Populists in bad faith
In PASOK the two principal currents are known as the "populists" "modernists". The first group present themselves as spokespersons primarily of the trades unionists and the layers of workers hit by the government's measures. What they demand, with a characteristic bad faith and in a confused manner, is a "combative opposition" and "no compromise with the right". strikes, they played a very important role.
The modernists represent layers of the petit-bourgeoisie and technocrats of the public and private sectors. They advocate à "responsible opposition" and collaboration with the Synaspismos in the face of the government's policy. They seek dialogue and consensus with the government. The leader of PASOK, Andreas Papandreou, plays the role of point of equilibrium between the two groups.
Yet the crisis which has broken out recently in PASOK should be seen as the reaction of numerous cadres to authoritarianism and to Papandreou's personal lead. ership rather than that of a confrontation between two positions. But behind this there is also a desire to clarify the reasons for PASOK's electoral defeat in 1989.
The crisis has lost its intensity but there is much anger and impatience in PASOK which — as the trade union and municipal elections have attested — remains the majority party of the working class. Only
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GREECE austerity
December 24, 1990 • #197 International Viewpoint the fear that a new internal crisis would serve the right holds back the explosion.
But it is in the Synaspismos that the crisis has broken out in all its intensity. In the KKE (the Greek Communist Party) the biggest component of Synaspismos, two positions exist - that of the "traditionalists", with majority support in the leadership, who wish to keep the party in the Stalinist-Brezhnevite tradition, and that of the "renovators" who have significant support among the middle cadres. The latter are Moscow-aligned and support a greater integration of the KKE into the bourgeois system. Both groups now supmobilizations.
For the moment the situation in Greece appears very sombre. The government, despite its very slender parliamentary majority, can rely on the disappointment of the masses in the bankruptcy of PASOK in government and the pitiful policy of the Synaspismos. This is all the more reinforced by the international climate and the absence of a true opposition. Thus the government continues to step up its anti-worker offensive, leading to a
GREECE / POLAND growing discontent in the working class.
The parties of the opposition, in crisis, are incapable of offering an alternative solution. The serious problems they are meeting will very likely lead to new splits and ruptures.
More than ever, there is an imperative necessity for a new left movement, which can attract all those who no longer have illusions in PASOK or Synaspismos. * port collaboration with PASOK, even if Walesa's hollow victory the leaders of the "renovators" have been more instrumental in the building of contacts with the New Democracy and the formation of the ND/Synaspismos govIn the Eurocommunist EAR (Greek Left, which came out of the split in the KKE-E, the so called "Communist PartyInterior"), second component of Synaspismos, a difference exists on the question of whether to collaborate with PASOK. One wing supports the necessity of this collaboration and a resolute opposition to the right, and the other, with majority support in the leadership, rejects all collaboration and calls for diaiogue and consensus with the government.
### Far left marginalized
The traditional organized far left is totally marginalised and its influence is almost non-existent. The most important group, despite its problems, is the NAR (New Left Current) which came out of an internal split a year ago in the KKE, principally in its youth organization the KNE (See IV 172). The split had a clear left dynamic, in reaction to the rightwards course which the KKE was following and which culminated in the ND/Synaspismos government. Several positions exist within the NAR, from revolutionary Marxism to nostalgia for the KKE of the preceding period. In certain of their public positions, and particularly in their journal, one can also detect Stalinist-Brezhnevite remnants.
At the time of the split, the NAR regrouped around 7,000 militants, but today more than half have left and those who remain are hardly active. The organization has not been able to define a clear ideological base and has not succeeded in elaborating a policy for the period. After the elections of April 30, where it had very bad results, it turned in on itself and it is only latterly that its trades unionist have begun, very timidly, to collaborate with the other militants of the far left where they have a common implantation.
Beyond the NAR there are a good number of left trades unionists, independent and radical, who work in the context of trade union regroupments - often they play an important role in trade union
WHEN he announced his intention of running for the presidency of the Polish Republic in June, Lech Walesa was conscious of the growing gulf between the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki — identified by the masses with Solidarnosc - and large sectors of society, victims of his policies. "One could not hope to obtain economic results and, as a consequence, it is necessary to guarantee a broad participation of the society in the exercise of power, and thus to assure its acceptance", he explained. CYRIL SMUGA A LL through his campaign, he repeated incessantly "my programme will be what you want", seeking to present an image as a candidate who listened to the masses.