16th Party
Congress of the CPG:
The Apotheosis of
Bureaucratic Degeneration
by Andreas Kloke
The 16th party congress of the KKE (CPG), still the by far
biggest left political force of the country, took place from 14th –
17th Dec. 2000. The CPG taking advantage of the outrage about the
bombings of Yugoslavia by NATO got 8,7% of the vote in the Euro-elections 1999
and 5,5% in the national elections 2000, roughly maintaining its position. At
the same time, DIKKI, a supposedly left, nationalist party failed to obtain the
necessary 3% to reenter paliament. SYN from which the CPG had split in 1991 and
has become a party with a mild parlamentarian and „europhile“ socialdemocratic
line, managed only with great difficulties to be represented getting 3,1%. The
CPG is not only the biggest left party but also the only parlmentarian force
that takes a clear position for the defense of workers‘ interests against the
rage of the neoliberal offensive of the Greek and other EU governments and
against austerity policy supported by both PASOK and the right opposition in
favor of the ECU to which Greece was recently admitted.
The CPG played also an important role in the anti-imperialist mobilisations against the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia, Clinton‘s visit to Athens and other opportunities, as well as in the mobilisations of the peasants against the agrarian policy of government and EU, in the school occupations in 1999/2000 and the protests against the „reform“ of education that makes it much more difficult for students to get a school-leaving qualification and in some defensive struggles of the workers against the onslaught of government and capital.
Nevertheless the influence of the CPG in the trade unions has declined
gradually in the last few years and
only the union of the construction workers is still under its control. But the
whole trade union movement, still largely led by a bureaucracy close to PASOK,
is undergoing a sharp decline that nobody would have expected to this extent in
the beginning of the 90es.
So the CPG
leadership made certain efforts to show a left profile in order to gain influence
among the youth and to correspond to the mood of the party’s rank and file. But
there’s no doubt that the main result of the party congress is the confirmation
of the basically right, partially even reactionary, Stalinist-bureaucratic line
of the party apparatus, and this, of course, “unanimously”. There was virtually
no real controversial discussion at the congress and this is even for the CPG a
novelty.
The “unanimity”
could be achieved only by hardest bureaucratic measures against deviant
opinions during the preparations for the congress. Trade union leaders
Kostopoulos (ex-parliamentarian) and Theonas (Euro-parliamentarian), who had
supported the opening of the party to the collaboration with other political
forces were ruthlessly excluded from the party without having the opportunity
to present their opinions in the party according to the rules of democracy.
Lots of articles were published in the party newspaper “Rizospastis” that
branded the “deviationists” more or less openly as “agents” of the “class
enemy”. These repulsive methods guaranteed the seemingly total triumph of the
leading clique around Papariga, Gontikas and Mailis at the congress. The
background of this conflict is the sharpening sectarian line followed by the
party leadership in the last few years. This line refers to certain elements
of “third period” policy that was the
leading orientation of the Comintern in 1928-34, though the classical right
line of the “popular front” remains in force.
One has to consider
that the party leadership was confronted for the first time after decades with
the problem of forming its own point of view on so many difficult and complex
issues of international affairs, for example on the end of the “socialist camp”
itself. The party leadership “solved” this problem by a big leap back into the
good old times of Stalinism explaining the collapse of the Soviet Union mainly
by “revisionist” developments since the 20th congress of the CPSU
when Krushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes in a halfhearted way.
The CPG has tried
to avoid a process of social-democratization that virtually all the European
CP’s underwent, some of them a long time before 1990/91 like the Italian PC or
partially the French, and after 1991 more or less all the former Stalinist
parties which had exercised power in Eastern Europe. But the CPG leadership has
found no better explanation than old Maoist “theories” and uses now certain
elements of allegedly ”left” tactics applied in the far-off days of Stalinism. In
the political practice of the last few years this meant that the CPG leadership
did not even try to build up common fronts of struggle together with other
political currents in the trade unions like PASOK or SYN or is even openly
opposed to doing so. PAME, the so-called “front of workers’ unity” supported by
the CPG, doesn’t mean anything else but unity of the party with itself and,
though not yet applied consistently, the preliminary stage of purely “red”
unions of the CPG. What by these tactics cannot be achieved, of course, is a
real workers’ front against the escalating attacks of the ruling class on their
rights and standard of living.
In the last years
and particularly since the wars in former Yugoslavia broke out, the party propaganda
focused on a specific form of “anti-imperialism”. The CPG misses no opportunity
to blame NATO and the imperialist powers for everything that happens in the
Balkans and in the world. The party congress decided to construct an
“Anti-imperialist Anti-monopolist Democratic Front” (AADF) as central core of
the party’s political orientation.
The “solidarity”
of the party leadership with the peoples of the Balkans in the 90es was,
however, very one-sidedly limited to “friendship with Serbia” which, in fact,
consisted of an unconditional support for Milosevic’s regime including all its
wars and crimes that were committed at the expense of all the other peoples of
former Yugoslavia and at the Serb people itself. Except Milosevic’s regime, all
the other governments of the area, like the Albanian, Macedonian (“FYROM”) and
all the political forces of the Kosovars, were and are “agents” and puppets of
NATO imperialism.
With this
assessment the CPG leadership manages to avoid any serious analysis of the national
and social problems of the peoples and all its wisdom is largely limited to the
position that the borders of former Yugoslavia should not have changed and at
least be conserved as they are now. In this latter point its position coincides
with the viewpoint of the NATO imperialists.
The “AADF” means
in practice a codification of the party’s “united front” policy with the most
backward circles of the right, certain petit bourgeois layers and nationalist
intellectuals who instinctively refuse some ideological consequences of
EU-integration and capitalist “globalization” and partially have adopted an
anti-Western attitude characterized even by hostility towards enlightenment.
This spectrum includes the extreme and fascist right, the recent church hierarchy
led by Athenian archbishop Christodoulos, nationalist circles in PASOK and “New
Democracy” as well as in smaller parties and even parts of the so-called
extreme left and groups of Trotskyist origin which in fact have surrendered to
a particularly aggressive version of Greek nationalism – in the name of
“anti-imperialism”, of course. The CPG leadership has recently tightened the
links with these circles and nationalist journalist Liana Kanelli was elected
as member of parliament for the CPG last year.
Criticizing the
economic policy of the government, one of the principal accusations of the CPG
leadership is the “sell-out” of the national economy to the interests of
European monopoly capital. As far as foreign politics are concerned, an
important component of the party’s criticism is the alleged policy of
abandonment to Turkish “expansionism” under the pressure of US imperialism.
This concerns mainly Cyprus and the Aegean Sea. The CPG supported the
deployment of Russian S-300 missiles in Cyprus (which were deployed in Crete
finally) and in this way more armament in the divided island. As general
secretary Papariga said in a TV interview years ago, the CPG supports defense
of the fatherland “tooth and nail” showing by this how far the party is away
from its ideological origins in the early 20es when it was strongly opposed to
the wars of the Greek establishment and the communists resisted Greek imperialism
as they said at that time.
The recent CPG
leadership argues that Turkey is particularly aggressive and is supported by
international imperialism. From this point of view, the huge armament programs
and the enormous money Greece spends every year for this purpose are simply
measures for the defense of “national independence and sovereignty”. The
“patriotic” viewpoint of the CPG leadership is rather illogical, however, since
it also blames the Greek governments for their subordination under the dictates
of the big imperialist powers in NATO and EU. But why should we support a government
and an army of such a state in the event of war? Is Greece more underdeveloped
or colonial than Turkey?
The CPG
leadership is strictly against buying weapon systems from NATO countries and
suggests instead further construction of the “national” armament industry. As
the case of the S-300 missiles shows, it has no objections to buying weapons in
Russia.
Last year
archbishop Christodoulos mobilized ten thousands of people against the
intention of the government to abolish the recording of religious denominations
on ID cards. This ID record was originally introduced by the Nazi occupation
authorities in order to find out who was Jew. It means a clear discrimination
of minorities that are not “Greek orthodox”, i.e. “reliable citizens” but
belong to potentially “dangerous” sections of the population like the Turks
(so-called Muslims) and Pomaks in Thrace but also Catholics and others. The CPG
leadership took a “neutral” stand on this conflict and contented itself with
stating that both sides were trying to distract the attention of the people
from their actual problems.
During the last 10
years, since the borders to the Eastern European countries were opened, a deep
transformation process of the Greek working class took place. Hundreds of
thousands of “illegal” immigrants, mainly Albanians but also many from other
Eastern European countries, Asia and Africa, virtually all of them without
political rights, without social security or trade union protection, are today
a constant component of the most oppressed layers of the working class,
particularly in agriculture. The more or less “illegal” immigrants are
estimated to constitute some 15-20% of the work force today. The official
police terror against these absolutely underprivileged people but also the rise
of racism combined with nationalist tendencies in broader layers of the
population have become everyday reality. The “Theses” of the party’s CC
presented to the party congress, a text of 48 pages, have literally nothing to
say about all these problems.
The “Theses” of
the CC are entitled: “Struggle has a prospect – with a strong CPG – Popular
Front”. The terms “popular power” and “popular economy” dominate in the
important chapter on the “AADF”. It is the task of the AADF to struggle for the
realization of these two goals and “to take a firm stand for the international
orientation of the country, for the development of new ways concerning
collaboration in trade and economy, to break at the same time with the
imperialist blocs (that means EU and NATO) and to oppose them, in a world that
will not only be ruled by imperialist domination but also by the strengthening
tendencies of confrontation, independence and emancipation.” (Thesis 20)
Therefore the CPG aims for stronger economic collaboration not only with
countries it considers to be still “socialist” (China, North Korea, Vietnam,
Cuba) but also with other countries that follow an “anti-imperialist” line
(whatever that means) like Milosevic’s Serbia and Russia. This perspective,
however, seems to exist only in the imagination of the CPG leadership.
How can the
suggestions of the CC and the goals of the AADF be implemented in reality?
Thesis 20 explains that “ a revolutionary government (…) as power of the
working class and its allies” could be created in “a revolutionary situation”.
But in the following section it says: “Under the conditions of class
confrontations and decline of the influence of the bourgeois parties and their
allies while the conditions for a radical overthrow and revolutionary
transition have not yet developed, a government of anti-imperialist,
anti-monopolist forces can emerge on the basis of parliament.”
So it’s quite
obvious that the CPG leadership, despite its recourses to tactical elements of
the “third period” and despite its “left” and anti-imperialist” rhetoric,
remains trapped in the logic of class collaboration and the classical version
of popular front. The goals of “anti-monopolism” and “anti-imperialism” can be
achieved without breaking with the institutions of the bourgeois state and the
capitalist profit system altogether! This world of true democracy of middle
class employers and shop owners can become reality if Greece cuts its links
with EU and NATO. This means an important theoretical achievement: 10 years
after the collapse of “real socialism”, “socialist camp” and, in the final
analysis, of Stalin’s reactionary idea of “socialism in one country”, the CPG
leadership discovers the possibility of a “non-monopolist”, petit bourgeois
democracy in one capitalist country (or some capitalist countries).
The theses
actually do not offer important elements of an analysis of the international
situation or the conditions in Greece from a Marxist viewpoint but “mediocrity,
intellectual indolence, detestation of theory, open contempt and vulgarization
of scientific and theoretical research are being promoted. (…) There is no
serious analysis of the most important contemporary contradictions but it is
simply stated that they are sharpening as, incidentally, in the last 200 years.
No social-economic relations are analyzed but simply consequences registered.”
(1) It’s sufficient to appear as the only party that seems actually to resist
and that is the real raison d’etre of the recent party leadership.
“The bureaucratic
apparatus of the cadre (…) understands that the resources of the past are not
sufficient any more while the old generation with its intensive militant
experiences from the time of the ‘petrified years’ is getting smaller and
smaller. The apparatus tries with all its might to find ways to survive and
uses by now the instinct of self preservation as guideline.” (2)
According to
Rizospastis “59,1% of the delegates at
the party congress were high level and highest level cadre (38,8% members of
district committees, 3,8% of the CC and the Central Economic Control Committee,
2,3% parliamentarians). In other words, those who should have accounted to the
congress for what they did, were the overwhelming majority at the congress.
They want to have their cake and eat it or one and the same person who treats,
drinks” (3) as a Greek expression says. 24,2% were members of other regional
committees, that means middle party cadre so that the CPG’s rank and file with
some 17% was entirely underrepresented.
The political
development of the party was characterized by a permanent tendency to the right
until the end of the 80es. This tendency reached its climax in 1989 when the
CPG formed a coalition government together with the right “New Democracy” in
order to overthrow the PASOK government of A. Papandreou and to guarantee a
so-called “cleaning” of political life with the help of bourgeois courts. Since
1991 the CPG leadership tried to adopt a left profile without actually breaking
away from its deeply reformist daily routine and its parliamentarian
orientation.
“Without any critical reassessment of the
precedent period of classical ‘front’-policy that culminated in the government
Tzanetakis (1989), without any critical approach to the policy of the party
when the workers’ movement was on the rise after the overthrow of the Junta
(1974) but the CPG battled fiercely against the movement of factory and
enterprise unions and subordinated the trade union movement to the GSEE bureaucracy,
without any reference to the deep changes concerning the working conditions
which are going on since one million workers immigrants came to Greece in the
last ten years, without, finally, any attempt to make a deeper analysis of the
reasons for the collapse of the ‘socialist’ regimes, the party bureaucracy
leads the CPG thoughtlessly and only under the dictate of its own narrow
interest to survive into a ‘leftist’ entrenchment of the party’s forces.”
(4)
There is no doubt
that the position of the party leadership largely hinders the construction of
an actual independent class front against the policy of massive cutbacks of
government, capital and EU. The recent orientation of some bigger groups of the
non-parliamentarian left like NAR (New Left Current) and SEK (allied with the
British SWP) which also tend to “united front” policy with themselves or a very
limited circle of smaller groups leads in the same direction.
The bigger parties
of the left like the CPG and SYN are undergoing a deep and continuous crisis
but also most organizations of the far left are facing similar problems. The
workers’ movement as a whole has not yet found a way out of the crisis.
Some
left groups, one of them belonging to a left current of SYN, recently presented
a project of “reconstruction” of the entire Greek left including all reformist
parties and more leftist organizations. To us it seems that this pretension
does not correspond with reality and, first of all, neglects to confront the
actual tasks concerning the workers’ movement and the forces of revolutionary
Marxism: the construction of a united workers’ front. This can only be achieved
if broader layers who follow so far reformist parties including PASOK can be
motivated to get involved in the struggle. At the same time, it will be
necessary to reinforce the efforts to construct a revolutionary workers party
rooted in the working class and based on the methodology of the Transitional
Program. This party will have to separate itself clearly from nationalism and
all the reformist parties that have led the workers’ movement into the recent
deep crisis and dangerous impasse.
1)
Dimitris
Kazakis: The “historical achievements” of the 16th Party Congress of
the CPG, in: Spartakos 58, Jan. 2001
2)
Nikos
Menegakis: The Popular Front in the version of the 16th Party
Congress, in: Spartakos 58
3)
Nikos
Sterianos: The apotheosis of bureaucratic degeneration, in: Spartakos 58
4)
N. Menegakis:
The Popular Front …, see above