Glezos

Saturday 26 January 2013

ANTARSYA-Metro Workers Leader Stamatopoulos leaves Metro Workers Exposed!

 
 
 
 
 
"Labour is one-third cheaper in France than in England; for their poor
work hard, and fare hard, as to their food and clothing. Their chief
diet is bread, fruit, herbs, roots, and dried fish; for they very
seldom eat flesh; and when wheat is dear, they eat very little
bread." [39] "To which may be added," our essayist goes on, "that
their drink is either water or other small liquors, so that they spend
very little money.... These things are very difficult to be brought
about; but they are not impracticable, since they have been effected
both in France and in Holland." [40] (Capital I, chap. 24) And the
footnote amplifies: [40] Today, thanks to the competition on the world-
market, established since then, we have advanced much further. "If
China," says Mr. Stapleton, M.P., to his constituents, "should become
a great manufacturing country, I do not see how the manufacturing
population of Europe could sustain the contest without descending to
the level of their competitors." (Times, Sept. 3, 1873, p. 8.) The
wished-for goal of English capital is no longer Continental wages but
Chinese.
Karl Marx
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Metro Union Leader standing on an Antarsya Electoral Ticket- Stamatopoulos


Big words usually before a big sellout by the metro leader Stamatopoulos-SELMA union who stood on the Antarsya electoral ticket (got the amazing amount of 154votes) after the 8day metro workers strike which crippled Athens. Union leaders forced by pressure from below to call out other groups of transport workers, Buses, Trams, overground, OSE-trains reached the point of an all out  indefinite transport strike.

Just before the climax the govt passed its usual military junta law of banning the strikes in courts then issuing requisition orders to each individual striker to get back to work or lose their jobs. As other workers were joining the metro workers, Skaramaga shipyard workers, farmers with their tractors the sellout started. Troika plus the internal Troika banned the strike and the union tops did the usual when they aren't playinbg divide and rule. The talk tough about 'junta' rules, dictatorship, the attacks on the right to strike on the tv and then they bring in the lawyers who announce to the strikers that they cant be defended if they dont go back to work. The usual fake left leaders Lafazanis from Syriza pop along and so does PAME-KKE give tough speeches about the future struggle and resistance and in the meantime as organisations they dont even call their members out or call for the people of Athens to rise up and fight. They dont leave the IMF occuppiers Parliament and Tsipras from his coffee drinking chats at the Brookings Institute and the IMF headquarters in New York says we shouldn't increase 'tension' and 'social conflict'.
(They have allready named Syriza as a party which is split between the Interior and the Exterior-Tsipras ie the conciliatory wing)

Riot police storm occupation  by metro workers of train carriage works 4 am.

In other words workers should accept the new round of 25% wage cuts up until we match Chinese wages and labour standards in Greece. What they fail to understand is that you cant keep selling out group after group which is in conflict, truckers, taxi drivers, farmacists, farmers, transport workers and avoid the inevtable that you are leading society inevitably into open rebellion. The fake left lederships and the political parties of the fake left embedded to the IMF are digging their own grave. Samaras govt would have fallen if their was a real general strike of only a few days. Whether they are able to pull it off indefinitely we will have to wait and see as groups of metro workers were seen burning their individual court papers in public.


http://youtu.be/OzZFABUZ7Pc



Where were the marches by the union tops? Where were the demos outside the Greek TUC? Where were the flying pickets to call out all transport workers? Just before all other sections joined and the farmers were going to blockade the motorways with tractors the Metro Union Leadership caved in.

Metro workers burning return to work papers-union tops brought out lawuers to tell them they have to go back!

Stamatopoulos was for years a member of the KKE's Building Workers Union which they wound up and turned into a gangmasters union exclusively for their members, then he became a technician in the metro and then became a de facto union leader being in PASOK. Sensing his careers as a union leader was coming to an end, he joined ANTARSYA the Syriza front on the outside which pretends it aint Syriza but has identical policies. Now sensing he may lose his Trade Union pension, despite spending years chanting 'the only right is one that belongs to workers' he did exactly what all have done in the last three years, sell out the strike.

The sellout of this strike buries once and for all the notion of the extra-parliamentary left.


PS
In another era, during the busworkers strikes in 1992 which aided in bringind down the ND-Mitsotakis govt, the bus workers went on all out strike and chanted with daily demos 'Air Air Get the Cholera Out' forcing scabs to stop working, even up to the point of parading them in public with no clothes on. Only 40 tube workers according to reports were in the main garage works of the Metro, the union tops did not call for mass pickets or daily demos. This is the famous 'Anti-Capitalist' Coalition of Antarsya, Syriza in drag

Saturday 19 January 2013

Fake Left Marching with Troika. Fascist 'anti-fascism'? ...


POE-OTA union mobilisation against the representative of the EU-4th Reich Project Chancellor Merkel in Greece


Leon Trotsky bitterly denounced “the empty abstraction of anti-fascism” and the Popular Front in his writings on Spain as follows: “The very concepts of ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-fascist’ are fictions and lies. Marxism approaches all phenomena from a class standpoint. [Republican prime minister] Azaña is ‘anti-fascist’ only to the extent that fascism hinders bourgeois intellectuals from carving out parliamentary or other careers. Confronted with the necessity of choosing between fascism and the proletarian revolution, Azaña will always prove to be on the side of the fascists. His entire policy during the seven years of revolution proves this.”

What are the real reasons behind the hue and cry against Golden Dawn?

There is an international effort by the British media (e.g. Paul Mason on Newsnight), the Greek corporate media (Lambrakis media), Reuters, the US media (New York Times) and a whole host of organisations the world over who are embedded to the agenda of the corporate New World Order. This is the same corporate media that sold the lies of Al Quaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction to launch the ‘War on Terror’ i.e. the neo-colonialist brutal occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq on behalf of the oil and drug cartels that are part of the clique that rules the world.

In the piece below:

http://greecesolidarity.org/?p=410

“Love or nothing: The real Greek parallel with Weimar

Paul Mason, who originates from the ‘Far’ Left, asserts the following:

“Of all the operas written during Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-33), probably the most haunting is the last.

Kurt Weill’s The Silver Lake, written with playwright Georg Kaiser, tells the story of two losers – a good-hearted provincial cop and the thief he has shot and wounded – as they make their way through a society ruined by unemployment, corruption and vice. After spending a week again in Greece – amid riots, hunger and far right violence – I finally understood it.”

When in reality if one is to use culture to be appropriate for Greece one would have to use Brecht or more appropriately his last play written in 1929 ‘St Joan of the Slaugherhouse’ which depicts the collapse of capitalism. History does not repeat itself in a linear fashion. Stalinism and fascism aren’t coming back in the same form. They are dead.

Searching for historical parallels and from them issuing statements about Greece, which not so long ago was characterised as having ‘humane capitalism’ but now it resembles Weimar Germany. This serves certain New World Order agendas, which is what Paul Mason’s role is.

After all he is on a lecture circuit for personal gain and promotion selling the story in his latest book, that global capitalism is suffering a new 1848!

No to the 4th Reich

 

The rise and rise of Golden Dawn…

Golden Dawn, whose precursor was EPEN which received 7% in 1977, are supporters of foreign backed military juntas and have constantly revealed this. They are embedded rightists who have supported the foreign backed juntas. In that sense they differ not one iota from the internal troika running Greece now. There never was a neo-nazi movement in Greece for it cannot have mass social support as Greece never was a developed imperialist state. This myth of the developed imperialist nature of Greece is peddled by those who are supporters and promoters of the cornerstones of EU free trade policies (in labour, capital and goods). The organisations that make up Syriza were either embedded PASOKites all their life or were supporters of Maastricht, ex-KKE who had no moral issue governing with New Democracy and PASOK in 1989 and 1990.

On Saturday 6th December 2012 a demonstration organised by the Town Halls allegedly against ‘fascism’ occurred. Official participants in this demo was Kaminis (Athens Mayor), Vallianatos (head of the Homosexual Association of Greece), Manos (ex-New Democracy extreme free marketer who called the arrival of immigrants a blessing for capitalism), Tzimeros (extreme free marketer), PASOK MP’s, Dimar, Syriza and Antarsya alongside Amnesty International and other US based NGO’s. We have had a Troika government for more than 2 ½ years; now an internal Troika (ND, PASOK, Dimar) are presiding over around 30% unemployment which shows no sign of abating and over 3,500 suicides without including those who have had heart attacks or diagnosed with a severe disease due to the economic crash (lack of medicines and hospital care  now being a permanent phenomenon).

Instead of the Left leaving Parliament campaigning on the streets to overthrow this Quisling formation, they are embedded in a parliamentary perspective which no longer holds water as the Government runs on Administrative Decrees which don’t follow due parliamentary process and German gauleiters introduced into every ministry until the end, i.e. till their final dissolution. No one has called for Genocide charges to be laid against the Troika and no one will; instead they now march with them on the streets as there is allegedly a greater danger lurking round the corner.

Despite countless localised rebellions against the wave upon wave of illegal immigration, the violent deaths of countless Greeks young and old, nothing is heard or seen in the corrupt Mass Media: only reports of when an illegal immigrant has their forehead scratched or they allege they were sworn at or chased by people professing to be Golden Dawn do come alive. Golden Dawn hasn’t held a single national demonstration in Central Athens and neither has Syriza despite the fact that the situation is getting worse daily. What characterises this period, as opposed to the 1930’s, is that today no one wants to govern, neither the fake far Left nor the fake far Right.

Town Halls vs Dustmens Union

Last summer there was a dustmen’s strike against wage reductions and increases in work loads and the government, then under PASOK-Venizelos, employed illegal immigrants to break the strike. This is the agenda they want to impose right across the public sector, using the Bolkeinstein directive to permit companies to be set up so they pay e.g. Bulgarian minimum wages in Greece after they have subcontracted everything. Indicative of this is what occurred in Thessaloniki University where cleaning contractors employing Greeks struck for non-payment of contract payments. It lasted over a month. To ensure the viability of the strike, rubbish was allowed to pile up internally and eventually the Mayor Boutaris in Thessaloniki (from the well known winemaking corporation) called in the riot police to break the strike and arrest striking cleaners. Where was the fake Left?

But more importantly, the ‘silent demo’ held in Athens on 6th December was organised by the Town Halls, the same town halls who are in conflict with their own workers in a long drawn out conflict where they want to sub-contract all council services to foreign multinationals, and here one understands why they funded an ‘anti-racist’ protest in Central Athens and invited all their political supporters the fake far left with representatives from the government.

The class basis of fake ‘anti-fascism’ is exposed fully here...

How can one claim to be on the far Left and support the imperialist EU project? How can one claim to be on the far Right and support the Euro stand for EU elections etc?

Political analysis has degenerated from one which defines what one is from deeds, not words, to one which defines what one is from words, not deeds. So as Syriza calls itself the party of the ‘radical left’ it must thus be, so Golden Dawn must be neo-nazi as they printed an edition of their magazine praising Hitler. The so-called communists for decades defended Stalin’s gulags and the Greek KKE still does, so moral lectures from those quarters regarding their political positions are far and infrequent. They believe there is an upturn round the corner, that the collapse of capitalism can be arrested if only it changes course; that neo-Keynesianism is the solution to the crisis and that the stale parameters of the past, viewing things in terms of Right and Left, when what we are really confronted with is much worse: the erasure of nations from the map by the twin threat of economic immiseration and the flooding of labour markets by anyone and everyone from anywhere, a mini-USA, not in times of economic boom, but economic collapse.

Imperialism has been in a state in collapse since the dawn of the 20th century. We had two imperialist world wars, countless of localised wars and, with the advent of the ex-USSR on the scene, the collapse of capitalism was arrested. But the system managed to go global with the fall of the ex-USSR. The world market exists for the production of goods. America became centre of the de facto world capitalist Empire. All other imperialisms were subsumed under it. The contradictions of the global system are now measured within the context of the collapse of US imperialism.

The rise of the EU occurred as a first step towards a world government with a world currency. But, due to the crisis of overproduction, all the old antagonisms covered for a large historical period came to the surface with the collapse of Lehman Bros. No other area could be antagonistic or in competition with the USA. Hence the Euro had to be curtailed. Greece was chosen for that specific role. Socialism or barbarism has resurfaced not in the distant future but immediately. The economic hitmen of the Troika would make Hitler look like a democrat in peacetime (he provided jobs, albeit many for war production), our lot are the SS in suits. You won’t hear that from the fake left.

The hue and cry over Golden Dawn has class roots. Those remaining on the left are middle class protest groups. Sensing their imminent immiserisation, want the working class to succumb to globalism as the only alternative to social struggles, to accepting internal colonies and open slave labour. If anyone questions the process they are to be labelled a ‘racist’ by these self-styled… ‘anti-racists’, who have no moral objection to marching with the representatives of the Troika in Athens...

Who wanted a parliamentary career and who blocked their rise into Parliament? ANTARSYA, EEK, KKE(ML), Den Plirono, EPAM, of they aggregated their votes and one would have got at least another 2% for Syriza hence...so their venom is on the rise of the ‘far right’... is about them not passing the grade ie being elected as MP’s or ensuring the Left wins. Their policies are about ‘divide and rule’ pure and simple.



GD wouldn’t have been known if it wasn’t for its position on illegal immigration, or, more importantly for taking part in residents’ protests in central Athens against the squatter camps which developed in the centre. In 2009 they received 0.29% votes or around 20,000 votes, in the local council elections; in November 2010 they received 5.29% and Mihaloliakos (leader of GD) was elected on the Athens City Council. A year later they got 6.97% in the May elections of 2012, surpassing the KKE, and a month later 6.92%, forcing the KKE into 7th place! Now they state it might become the 3rd party after Syriza and New Democracy. The irony of Greek rightist ‘nationalism’ is that GD supported the Euro in its inaugural speech in Parliament as the Greek ‘people paid dearly for it’, they unfurled a ‘junta banner’ in a meeting in Crete during the celebrations over the fall of the Junta (i.e. the American backed Papadopoulos one) and, like Syriza, they haven’t held a single national demonstration and in their internal party briefings they have said members must play it cool waiting for the 7th Memorandum of Understanding-Bailout packages which have led to 50% cuts in wages and about 25% cuts in pensions (we are now on the 3rd) and power will fall on their lap, in other words when 99% of Greeks are destitute they will...take over!

Golden Dawn wanted the arrest and called for those who protested against Merkel to be locked up. So much for their ‘anti-MoU’ political stance: as clear and militant as that of Syriza, which remains in Parliament to this day, even when, in neighbouring FYROM, the opposition has left after they openly stated there is no point in remaining in Parliament as it runs on Presidential/Executive Decrees i.e. does not allow voting for the passing of laws, exactly like the fake Greek Parliament.

How could the Fake Left justify its politics of Abstention without GD?

Where can we now find Marshall Skobie or the Varkiza sellout to justify the sellout policies of the fake Left? We can’t. But we have GD instead, Mihaloliakos and Kasidiaris. Thank God they emerged as it provides a holy cover for the rotten leaderships of the fake left. It restores their fake credibility. Combined votes would have meant they would have had a majority but they remain disunited so as to not govern. The current crisis cannot be resolved in a peaceful manner as the effects of the crisis are no longer peaceful. This is what the fake left peddles, reformist nonsense in an era where reforms have long gone. 50% cuts in wages and pensions 70% plus inflation, busting tax rises, mass homelessness and unemployment are the new terrorism, the neo-fascism of the corporate World Order which they defend and support by asking us to remain embedded to the neo-colonial EU project.

They make noises regarding attacks on Syriza MP’s, yet, apart from allegations, we haven’t seen any. They allege GD has brutalised and killed illegal immigrants, yet many Greeks have died at the hands of illegal immigrants. To name just a few which led to riots: a father on his way to hospital with his pregnant wife was killed by illegal immigrants for a video camera in central Athens; in Patras a young lad was stabbed to death for complaining about noise on the street. Syriza have never demonstrated against the killing of Greeks by illegal immigrants. Why? They support a one sided policy: anyone but Greeks. Who said the Greek nation has to accept wave after wave of illegal immigration? The Troika ‘anti-racists’! The fake Left used to have the slogan ‘National Independence and Popular Rule’. Now they have forgotten the first part as they are interested in the abolition of the nation states, hence they support ‘minority’ rights on the principle that Greeks have none. Golden Dawn offices were blown up with the aid of lots of ammunition placed there. This could only come from the security services. Who said anything about that explosion? No one apart from GD of course?

Why? Those who seek to use paramilitary methods against GD (demand its ban), taking into account that Greece has had a history of paramilitary activities centred primarily on the Left (under the guise of attacking ‘fascism’) are opening the door to attacks on the Left in general. Why? Only the Left has fought for social change in Greece. No one else. When I say the Left, I mean the thousands imprisoned, chased, hunted, killed, maimed or butchered by local quislings operating for foreign controllers. Greece was the only country never de-nazified, which the foreign powers used and abused in their Cold War pursuits: let’s not forget the despicable role of the British Labour Party in the Greek civil war, working in tandem with the Greek quislings of Hitler.

Imperialist Lectures

For a long period of time the quisling fake leftist grouplets in Athens adopted all the lectures from the imperialists of the north, labelling Golden Dawn a neo-nazi outfit, when previously they had assigned this role to LAOS, to Fini, to Lepen, etc. Fini governed in Italy; so did LAOS in Greece. So what happened? Nothing. All the parties of the fake far right who allege they are ‘nationalist’ are there just to assume some political steam from the far right for internal reasons.

Did mass immigration decrease under Fini’s participation in government? Did it under LAOS in Greece? Will it under GD? Of course not! Those embedded in capitalism are also embedded in its current transnational pro-globalist nature. So to listen to frequent lectures from those who have a colonial and racist past like the BBC and its correspondents is like listening to Dracula about blood blanks. It’s a total joke.

That is why there is no far right or far left anymore. They are just two sides of the same coin. Embedded to the EU nation destroying project of creating internal colonies. We have been here before. It was known as the 3rd Reich. N o wonder they keep silent when Greeks march in Nazi uniforms and in fake tanks (bought by the Town Hall workers POE-OTA union) against Merkels 4th Reich, the real fascism of our times, the one that governs and is destroying the Greek nation.

The fake far lefts’ covers are being blown. The fake far rights will soon be blown as well.



From the Archives
Pouliopoulos on the Nature of Greek ‘Fascism’

Translated by VN Gelis

 

The Dictatorship of the August Fourth Written in July 1939 in Akronafplia

 

1. The Metaxas dictatorship of 4th August has now completed 3 years of rule. In this period the bourgeois parliamentary parties were erased from the political scene. The organisations of the working class were dissolved and most of its militants were either in exile or imprisoned. The proletariat didn’t express any resistance. Metaxas organised national labour unions and agricultural cooperatives on the basis of the ‘leadership principle’ and a hierarchy like Mussolini and Hitler. He every now and again organises popular demonstrations where he is declared to be the first worker, the first farmer etc. of the country. In the Administration, in Education, even in the Church, he implements the same bureaucratic totalitarian policy of autarchy in the economic field, just like fascism and he hasn’t been slow to show his energetic support towards the fascist countries – including in trading with the Nazis. In the controlled press, in schools, in universities - everywhere - Metaxas has established the dominant ideology of the ‘absolutist’ state, of anti-communism, anti-liberalism and anti-capitalist demagoguery. Finally he created paramilitary units, just like those of National Socialism and Fascism. The whole political life of the country permanently revolves around what Metaxas says and does. Thus Greece became a Fascist country, with a Duce, a Fuhrer, Ioannis Metaxas. Such observations like the above were made by Stalinism. Such were also made by various Fourth Internationalists.

2. Stalinism didn’t require as many signs as above to see Fascism appearing from the royalist proclamations of the 4th August 1936 when Parliament was dissolved. From the era of the “twin brothers” (Fascism and Social Democracy) and the ‘Fascist’ Bruning and before, they had characterised as Fascist, according to the period: Venizelos, Kondilis and Tsaldaris and every government which passed anti-labour legislation or overturned the so-called democratic freedoms of Bourgeois Democracy or Parliament. And the leading members of the KDEE (State-Capitalist, Stinas) needed a few months to pass after these events so they could raise a whole series of ‘new political tasks’. This they incorporated into a new programme so as to justify the creation of the ‘Workers Internationalist Party of Greece’, as they declared in their official illegal bulletin. I summarise these tasks because that is imposed on us by the political reality (of imprisonment): due to the defeats of the workers by the fascist regime, they say, we must limit ourselves to communist propaganda, to cadres operating with all the restraints imposed by illegality and to wait in particular foreign victories of the European proletariat before we can re-propose active political slogans against the Dictatorship. As this was followed by the defeats in Spain and France, mass direct action against the Dictatorship became a political impossibility for an indeterminate future period. Stalinism produced different conclusions from the same characterisation of the government of the 4th August. The KKE sold out the rebellious workers in Thessaloniki on 9th May 1936 to the supporters of Metaxas and the Liberals. And it supported Sofoulis in the Parliament. This gave power to General Metaxas. They then called on the bourgeois parties to form an alliance with them against the Dictatorship. The raise the ‘antifascist democrats’ reactionary officers and overemphasises the chauvinism of Metaxas with indescribable socialpatriotic cynicism.

3. The practical result of this ‘antifascist’ policy has been the total erasure of the Fourth Internationalist KDEE within the first six months of the Dictatorship. It isn’t the case that this total disappearance - from the beginning of 1937 - was due to numerical and organisational weakness. In fact, its leaders and some of its members were free and it even had the technical capability to publish illegal documents. These comrades had been instilled with a spirit of defeatism, political indifference and reductionism: ‘nothing can be done’. The practical result of Stalinist ‘antifascism’ was that most of its leaders and members were untouched by the regime: 90% of the CC and of the central and local cadres, their parliamentary leader, their second in command, MP’s and prospective MP’s and their regional committees, and theoretical leaders such as Glinos were free in Athens, in his case guaranteeing he wouldn’t bother the government. The KKE officially declared for the ‘patriotic policy’ of the Dictatorship, “for the defence of the borders from external and internal enemies” and became followers of Metaxas’ Okhrana. The Sklavenas-Sofulis agreement found its logical consequence in Sklavenas-Metaxas and this a long time before the KKE, first of all the democratic parties shook hands with the Palace and the British backed liberal George II.

4. If the proletariat were to choose either one of these two policies, the Workers United Front pessimism and the Stalinist Social Betrayal, it would be incapable of overthrowing the Dictatorship and to proceed to its historic liberation from the capitalist yoke. We believe that such a dilemma isn’t currently in front of it. So the political considerations are to a great extent unclear and pessimistic and the Stalinist conclusions mistaken. If they told us only that a regime which abolishes parliament and dissolves workers organisations must be called fascist, as most liberal bourgeois have done in all the totalitarian countries, it would then be just a question of choosing the most suitable propagandistic label. But the question isn’t the name, despite the social bases and political support of the current dictatorial government in Greece, as well as our tasks in confronting it. It is also known to us that confusion and the double edges in conditions which we always use, we end up with a mistaken confused opinion for the determined situations.

5. We all agree that there are differences within the dictatorship of 4th August and in the regimes that dominate today in Germany and Italy. But the truth is that what basically characterises both these regimes doesn’t exist in Greece. Even were we able to talk about the ‘Fascism of 4th August’, our political conclusions would be very different. In those countries the dictatorship is an agency of finance capital and the ‘still hungry’ imperialists, which is based on a big social base: pettybourgeois (post war dust) and workers masses disappointed by their experience of democracy (workers who are in provisional despair from the revolution which was sold out by the Social Democrats and the Stalinists). From here came the mass and paramilitary organisations (the basis on which these dictatorships to a large extent rely on) and from there we had vicious bureaucrats who comprise fascist and national-socialist unions and ‘professional associations’: and an alleged new state. This mass base fascism can to a greater or lesser extent be occupied either before or after its coup. It presupposes a long experience of the petty bourgeois masses from bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliamentarism and a partial despair from the conditions of post-war bankruptcy of this parliamentarism. It is also sure that the enraged petty bourgeois masses are used against the proletariat. Fascism deceives them and contains them by means of a very effective organised social and chauvinist demagoguery. In these countries, due to their economic and technical coordination, the objective possibilities allow them, for a period of time, to carry out economic experiments known as ‘totalitarian autarchy’. Despite the protestations of various circles, rotten capitalism in these countries provides sufficient to allow expansionist war preparations. They accept and support even this policy of economic isolation as a situation of extreme emergency. On the basis of such economic, social and historical conditions lies the relative stability of the regime. They explain the relative domination of the bourgeois and pettybourgeois intelligentsia (in Germany and many Junkers (the big landowners in Germany translators note) inside the political, administrative, military and educational hierarachies of fascism. Thus fascism in those countries became the only party of the national bourgeoisie, but it permanently despairs about the excessive cost which the overbloated parasitic administration of fascism spends. Despite this it is known that the accumulations of internal contradictions which is expressed and highlighted by the fascist pyramid, is being undermined, more and more threatening contradictions are being accumulated from their own policies which will blow the pyramid apart with either revolution or war.

Outside of the above essential features this particular from of class absolutism of monopoly capitalism called fascism can’t be understood. This particular character of fascism in its birth and its historical development has been analysed scientifically by the Communist International’s 3rd and 4th Congresses and by Trotsky from 1931-38 – including comparing fascism and the current Soviet regime in his work Revolution Betrayed. Never did the Left Opposition and the 4th International tire of emphasising that we don’t have fascism when every dictatorship dissolves the labour organisation and attacks democratic freedoms. If we do, we confuse every form of absolutis, we don’t aid in a more clear understanding of the many varied and contradictory political developments which fill our era or the more precise determination of the corresponding tasks of the revolutionary proletariat.

Which of the above characteristics exist in Greece and Romania eg in which other country of the Balkans where we have to a smaller or lesser extent destroyed or abolished parliaments, where the Courts rule with military-political cliques? None. That is why the sister party of our French organisation, last year, when writing about the Rumanian dictatorship of Karl, had called it not fascist, but Bonapartist. And of course the attacks against the workers’ movement elsewhere is done by fascism, but here it is done by dictatorships of Kings and their cliques, even if we can call many of their measures ‘fascist’. Despite all of their fascist trappings, the Bonapartist regimes aren’t governed by the same historical laws nor do they follow the same path.

Here the masses never had the time, as in Western bourgeois democracies, to be so disillusioned by Parliaments so as to pass over into ‘counterrevolutionary despair’. They maintain their relative illusions untouched to a large extent. With all the disillusion in their old parties and with all their distrust to the old leaders, the literature of Metaxas leaves the masses untouched and they are still waiting for their parties, despite the fact that now they have fallen prey to political apathy. The fact that Metaxas lasted three years and wasn’t able to manage an administration of his own nor even a ruling party coalition – his political friends left his and the composition of the government appears to be a ship in stormy seas which every now and again throws the passengers into the sea – this shows how wrong is the estimation of the power of the dictatorship, characterising it as fascism.