GREEK TRAGEDY
Lens, Sidney
Greek Tragedy By Sidney Lens Athens ONE of the fundamental questions of our time is getting a laboratory answer along the rugged mountainsides and in the crowded cities of modern Greece. Twice...
...But there is a. Communist front called EDA which has been the legal face of Communism since 1951...
...This third report follows one on France and a second on Germany...
...They still live in the huts they came to 30 years ago, still are land-hungry, still unbelievably poor...
...They packed to overflow the biggest theater in the city—a showing many times more impressive than union leadership could have produced...
...American pressure has forced the government to decentralize and grant some power to villages and towns which had been without rights since the 1937 Metaxas dictatorship took over...
...Communism is not the menace it was in 1944, but it is also far from dead...
...In big cities like Salonika and Piraeus its strength was many SIDNEY LENS is writing a series of special articles for The Progressive as he circles the globe on the hunt for factual data on world tensions...
...Meanwhile, unemployment and reduced working schedules have hit more than a million families...
...All were coalitions or minority movements...
...More than 70 per cent of a worker's family budget goes for food, yet the diet is heavily weighted with beans and other starches...
...Within the labor movement the situation is even more bleak...
...There exists no effective force to correct any governmental abuses or to insure justice for the under-privileged...
...Prior to the war there were 55,000 state employees...
...And much of the rest is dismissed as carry-over from past policy...
...Communism gets its impetus from a combination of democratic apathy in renovating the social structure and long-standing poverty that will not mend without genuine state effort...
...The Socialists, who have always been much less numerous than the Communists, have voted to dissolve their party and try to form a broader one...
...The lowering of the interest rate is classed as a sham because there is not enough credit to go around...
...The number of merchants is even more staggering —360,000 as against only 260,000 before the war...
...II What we Americans have received for our investment is not all bad, by any means...
...One American here who has many relatives in Athens says that almost all are pro-Soviet...
...American unionists and Mission advisers have pressed steadily for elimination of this compulsory checkoff...
...at least the pre-capitalist approach of the past will be altered...
...The phenomena of "parasitism" becomes a fixed charge which boosts prices sky-high—a trend that was accelerated by selfish corruption of Marshall Plan objectives by Greeks who used counterpart funds of the Plan to push prices ever higher, instead of for productive purposes...
...At the same time, more and more people are speaking of the need for a "strong man...
...Despite a poll of 36 per cent, the centrist EPEK and its liberal party ally have only a small minority in parliament, because of the change to a majority system...
...It is significant that 75 per cent of all taxes are of an indirect—sales—variety, while the comparable U.S...
...times greater...
...Twenty-six successive Greek governments fell because they couldn't cope with such problems...
...And again from 1946 to 1949 American military help (plus Tito's defection from the Comin-form which ended Yugoslav aid to guerrillas) torpedoed Soviet ambitions in this small but strategic country...
...Or, conversely, will a society fearful of so-called leftist extremism veer sharply toward extremism of the far Right...
...The only dynamic political opposition now is the Red front, EDA...
...Their chances seem slim at best...
...What they need is some assurance that their democratic rights will be protected...
...A Rightist government can hardly be expected to pursue social reform avidly, but if it cleans up the social obstacles that inhibit better production at lower prices it will have achieved something worthwhile...
...But if the new government moves ahead with its efficiency program without any compensating program of public works, higher unemployment compensation, and housing, it can only serve to strengthen the aim of Communism...
...More than a. million Greeks who were exchanged after the war with Turkey in 1922 are still called "refugees" after a generation and a half...
...It is led by a former Tsaldaris deputy, Makris, whose main ambition seems to be to perpetuate himself in office...
...The government pledges to impose "discipline" in society, eliminate thousands of unnecessary jobs, make credit available for production, keep the budget balanced, and build light industries with the help of the new electrification program...
...today there are 80,000 to 100,000...
...Other articles in the series will deal with Egypt, Israel, and India...
...Twice during the past eight years Communism has been dealt a decisive military defeat here...
...In a nation with only 145,000 industrial workers there is an' equal number of white-collar workers employed by the government, the banks, insurance companies, and the like...
...Embassy officials felt the tide would turn...
...Certainly this is fertile soil for extremism—despite the $2 billions of aid the United States has pumped into the economy...
...The problems of Greece, unfortunately, run deeper than simple relief...
...There just are too few people in Greece who produce anything...
...The Salonika by-election indicates all too poignantly that the electorate is drifting toward extremism at an alarming pace...
...There is, of course, no legal Communist Party in Greece today...
...Perhaps symptomatic is the vote it received during a January by-election in Salonika, when its candidate came within two per cent of winning...
...But Greek trade unionism is not independent, to say the least...
...Within the unions, too...
...Industrial workers earn $8 to $14 a week, but except for rents, prices are as high as or higher than in the United States...
...So far it has unified the two main banks and has made many glowing promises: to cut the interest rate for peasants, to eliminate private taxes, cut out tax exemptions, and the like...
...there are many anti-Communist militants who want to organize themselves and wean away workers from both Communism and the Right...
...These check-offs were not won as a result of union struggle but are, in fact, just the reverse: a largesse established under the Metaxas dictatorship and continued to this day for the same reason—government control of the unions...
...Competent observers place secret Communist strength in the industrial working class at a minimum of 35 per cent...
...This, plus the illness of the EPEK leader, Plastiras, has created a crisis of the Center...
...It is still too early to judge...
...The question now is: Have the two military victories really destroyed Communism...
...Even if these laments were all soundly based and the program is poorly carried out, it will be a move forward...
...But critics of the regime claim the bank merger only means a credit monopoly run by the big industrialists...
...12,000 Party members are in jail or exile...
...Is there a danger it will burst the bonds...
...Electrification projects, land reclamation, stabilization of the drachma, and other achievements stem directly from the Marshall Plan...
...Makris constantly promises to revoke it, but instead has recently doubled the amount, from 1,000 to 2,000 drachma...
...Ill The trade unions might have filled this gap in the center and served as a check to social abuse...
...Many place it higher...
...figure is only 29 per cent...
...The union leadership thus is beholden to the government and in effect controlled by it...
...There is unfortunately in Greece today a disintegrating Center...
...Within the American colony here, there are men who understand this danger and are deeply concerned...
...Have they just contained it...
...members of the Mutual Security Administration mission were less enthusiastic...
...The tragedy of Greece is simply enough stated: despite the military defeat of Communism, the failure of our policy to build up an effective Center or non-Communist Left has led to a situation where the only choice open to an oppositionist is increasingly becoming the Red-fronted EDA...
...Society must also pay the price of a top-heavy civilian administration and tradesman class...
...Finally, in November, 1952, under American prodding, the nation had a majority government led by Gen...
...In December, 1944, British Tommies turned the tide after the Communist EAM had secured control of the whole country except Constitution Square in mid-Athens...
...Agriculture is so primitive that in many places wooden tools are still in use...
...Some of these undoubtedly will be put through soon...
...Papagos and his Rally Party...
...In the city itself, EDA had a majority...
...Perhaps a straw in the wind is a recent meeting of Communist tobacco leaders who were expelled from their central labor body in Salonika...
...His regime subsists on a compulsory check-off, established by government fiat, which requires every worker to pay 2,000 drachma a month into the the union treasury whether he likes to or not...
...The American labor movement can, if it will, tip the balance towards a better Greece by giving these people all-out support...
...An outspoken labor leader, he is the author of two books, "Left, Right, and Center" and "The Counterfeit Revolution," and many magazine articles...
...only an adverse vote in the countryside caused its slim defeat...
...But assuming that American faith has not been misplaced, there is the other side of the problem: how can the program be accomplished with social justice...
...What has been thrown out the front door is obviously sneaking back, in part at least, through the rear window...
...How can it be effected without a growth of Communist influence...
...During the 1952 elections EDA received 11 per cent of the votes, although it ran in only two-thirds of the districts...
...American aid has resettled more than 650,000 refugees of the 194649 civil war (out of a total population of eight million), and given relief to almost two million others equally hard hit...
...Whether it will do this or not remains to be seen...
...For a long time underemployment and low living standards will be a problem, even under the best possible circumstances...
...Unlike normal capitalist governments which theoretically, at least, stand on the principle of equality before the law, there are in Greece a host of special privileges, rigid protectionism, and state discrimination which, with tax evasion of merchants and some of the rich, transfer the tax load onto the backs of the poor rather than those who can afford it...
Vol. 17 • April 1953 • No. 4
