Back to Stalin
The 15th Congress of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in late May adopted a series of measures and positions which represent a return to the Stalinist past. The introversion and decline of the party can only continue. Ilyas Altinoglu CONGRESS WAS UNANIMOUS (MINUS ONE VOTE) in its support for the leadership fraction. But this hardly indicates a definitive victory over critical spirits, since the leadership was too nervous to allow even its milder critics within the leading bodies to be re-elected. Parliamentary spokesman Kostopoulos and European Deputy Theonas were not re-elected to the central committee, after they dared express a few concerns about the KKE's alliances with other parties.! The same fate awaited a number of cadre, above all from the trade union caucuses of the party. Once he recognised the foregone conclusion, Building Workers' Union leader Kerassoudis refused to even take part in the election!
This show of force by the top leadership fools nobody. The crisis of Greek Stalinism, which began in 1968, is still tying the KKE down.2 This situation has been explosive since 1989, when the KKE joined a rightwing government against the socialists (PASOK), and, of course, with the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, with which the Party had held particularly close relations: the Party was illegal in Greece for 30 years, during which time the leadership lived in the Soviet bloc countries.
There is nothing terribly original about the dynamic of the Stalinist crisis in Greece. Except, perhaps, that the KKE is one of the few Communist Parties in the world which has tried to solve its problems by a return to pure Stalinism. The situation has no parallel in the capitalist countries. And, after two years intensive diplomacy, the Party has been unable to find companions in what is left of the "international Communist movement."
In other countries, some Communist Party militants, particularly the older ones, are nostalgic about "the good old days" when uncle Joe was in charge. But this was only a desperate, sentimental refusal of reality in the nont brs disgoms face of an apparently omnipotent, triumphant capitalism. Sometimes it was a call to reevaluate the causes for the upheaval in the East. But this resolute move by the leading faction of the KKE is more than that. After a long absence, the articles of Stalin himself are reprinted in the KKE theoretical journal.
This is a thought-out strategy, a re-writing (as farce) of the Party's "third period," a period of errors, combined with the imposition of total silence concerning the "second period." Seven years after the KKE brought the right into government, the Party is mute concerning the evaluation of the period. Despite the fact that this move provoked two scissions in the Party, one to the left (NAR and Young Communists) and one to the right (Synaspismos).3 Since then, the KKE's electoral base has declined from a stable 10-12% to about 5%. And the Party has almost completely disappeared from the student movement, which it dominated in the 1980s.
The silence is in part due to the fact that the author of those sad events is the "historical leader" and father of the dominant faction in the party, Florakis. Though it is interesting to note that his speech to this Congress as President of Honour was judged so "balance-ist" by the current leadership that they broke with party tradition, and refused to publish it.
In April 1995 the Central Committee produced a document analysing the "overturning" of the "Motherland of Socialism."4 Apparently, the problem is that the "socialist" system was so "successful" that it "cultivated self-satisfaction" and "over-confidence" the top. So, when imperialism was finally able "to buy the leading cadre of the party," no-one noticed, and no-one did anything.
Until this "overturn," the document insists, problems were "errors" and
Greece *
ES 283 lo guidany deviations," but the Party was, generally speaking, always right.
The problem is, of course, that "the imperialist conspiracy" on its own cannot explain the collapse of the East European regimes. But the advantage of this simple theory is that it fits the leadership's claim that the KKE itself is also the object of a conspiracy of pretty much everyone else. "Plots" were what led to the Party's scissions. And the solution is to regroup and conserve the troops through appeals to their party patriotism, or their patriotism full stop!
Conspiracy theories are also useful in developing the Party's adaptation to the explosion of nationalism in Greece in recent years. Not only is the KKE surrounded, but the Party is the most dignified representative of a nation which is also "encircled" by enemies of all kinds. This conspiracy is often referred to, in a shorthand form, as "imperialism and its machinations".
The KKE has not simply adapted to the aggressive nationalist climate which the Greek bourgeoisie has successfully generated, but has tried to become the most radical expression of that nationalism, by giving it a false "anti-imperialist" gloss. In the current climate, the KKE does not hesitate to declare itself as "profoundly patriotic" and opposed to "cosmopolitanism"
The KKE did take a different position from the bourgeoisie over the Macedonian question. But only, they said, in the best interests of the nation. And without denouncing the aggressiveness which accompanied "official" nationalist policy towards this poor, northern neighbouring country of only 2 million inhabitants.
The KKE attitude did not save it from being attacked, for "treason," by the real nat-
July 1996 #279 13
* Greece ionalists, on the right. And it forced the Party into a guilty silence over the oppression of the slavo-macedonian and Turkish minorities here in Greece.
More seriously, the KKE was an important participant in the brainwashing of Greek workers which prettified the torturers of the peoples of former Yugoslavia. Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic and company were presented by the Party as "resisting imperialism."
This miserabilist, nationalist, policeman's conception of current affairs is not confined to international questions. A few years ago, the KKE finally admitted that Greece was predominantly capitalist and not "feudo-capitalist." The Party even claims that the objective conditions" for socialism are "ripe" in Greece today. You might think that all that was needed, therefore, was a superhuman effort by the Party. Except that this Greek "monopoly capitalism," Party leaders claim, is dominated from "foreign quarters," and is only a "transmission belt for the application of the decisions of the multi-nationals."
As a result, KKE strategy is to work for the purging of the state from all imperialist pressures and linkages. In the meantime, Greek state policy is portrayed by the KKE as always and everywhere "dominated" and "dependent."
This is very clear on European questions. The axis of KKE criticism of European capitalist integration is not its bourgeois, antiworker and socially regressive character, but the "foreign" nature of the European Union decisions imposed in Greece.
Other Stalinist parties make superficially similar nationalist criticisms of the EU. And the Greek bourgeoisie is not alone in blaming "The Commission," "Maastricht" and Brussels, for unpopular measures, in an attempt to weaken opposition and avoid criticism. But what is special about the KKE strategy is its presentation of all criticisms as the appropriation of "national sovereignty" by Brussels, without the identification of a social base for these anti-worker policies in Greece itself. This is irresponsible and dangerous. Not only does it direct energy away from building Europe-wide mobilisations of the working class, but it presents a "unilateral rupture" with Brussels as a stage in the "front of democratic, anti-monopolist and anti-imperialist struggle."
This is a new form of the KKE's traditional "stagist" strategy. The Party still claims that the real problem is imperialist, 14 International Viewpoint
European and monopolist diktat, which has prevented the development of "national sources" in Greece. Rupture with the EU, they claim, would "liberate these sources." The next step would be for the nationalised sector and the Greek state to develop "in competition with monopolist capitalism and its enterprises," rather than in collusion with them, as has so far been the case.
At the international level, this "rupture with the EU" will open the way for our country's participation in international economic relations on better terms, and reverse the isolation and the economic, social and political marginalisation to which the European Community has condemned [us]."
All external constraints will apparently disappear in this new integration of Greece into the world market. "The standard of living will rise," we are told. Though the KKE programme does not specify taking control of any of the levers of capitalism (even "monopolist capital").
The modest splits in the KKE, however, are not the result of opposition to this thoroughly bureaucratic conception of socialism, and how to get there. Splits result from frustration with the party's sectarian approach to alliances. The KKE Programme states that "all collaboration with the other parties is excluded." In other words, the KKE is the only party considered worthy of membership in the "patriotic" and "anti-imperialist" front. The right wing and the socialists are equally rejected as "essential pillars of the capitalist reconstruction," while the other "small" parties, left and right, are classified as "reserve elements for eventual use as saviour of the political system." For the KKE, ditferences within and between the other parties is nothing more than "the expression of inter-imperialist rivalry." Though the KKE is particularly hard on Synaspismos, which was formed by a group which split from the KKE.
The solution, according to the new Party Programme, is the "reinforcement" of the KKE itself through a "front" with "social forces" which will gradually "free themselves of the domination exercised" by the other parties.
The mildly critical voices at this Congress, like parliamentary spokesman Kostopoulis, expressed reservations about this "five parties, two policies" line. The dissidents worried that adopting this sectarian line at a time when the political sphere is in decomposition (particularly the social democratic PASOK party) could increase the KKE's marginalisation.
The strange thing is that, so far, the patriotic and Stalinist line has stopped the free-fall in support for the Party, and has even created a new audience for the KKE among some young people, particularly in the high schools. The Party's systematic criticism of the European Union has also won it a certain audience among those workers who are feeling the immediate effects of the bourgeois offensive, particularly in the framework of the implementation of the "Maastricht" convergence criteria.
In the long term, however, the repulsive Stalinism, and the sectarianism which brought the right to power in 1989 will prevent the KKE from shifting the balance of forces towards the anti-capitalist left.
And yet, rank and file PASOK members seem ready to struggle. The preparatory discussions for the forthcoming PASOK conference (which may well result in a split) show a wide consensus among militants that the economic policy of "their" "socialist" government is bad, and against the people. There is no organised resistance in PASOK and no real alternative proposed. But the KKE will not be able to offer a solution for these militants as they break with PASOK's "Euromodernist" and "national-populist" ten-
Sooner or later, the KKE's youth work, and their support for workers" struggles against "Maastricht" policies will create an explosive situation for the party's Stalinist leadership. Not only has the growth in youth support has come at the "expense" of a relaxation of Stalinist discipline and morality in the youth organisation, but the Party leadership has done nothing to prepare the rank and file for the change in line which will surely come. After all, in the 1930s, most Stalinist-led Communist Party's switched from "third period" sectarianism to "popular front" reformism. Trade union cadre like Kostopoulos want to prepare the troops for the inevitable shift. But the leadership still Notes Unmarked quotes come from the Programme of the KKE, voted at this Congress. 1. Both are long standing Party cadre, former members of the Political Bureau, with their roots in the trade union sector. 2. The crisis was material at first, but has become increasingly a matter of programme. For the history of the KKE until 1994, see Tassos Goudelis, "Un grand parti en declin," Inprecor #379, April 1994. 3. See Inprecor #295, 301 and 305 4. Never "collapse" or "dissintegration." It seems that a number of leading members have lost their place on the CC for the sole crime of uttering one of the last two words.