No, because all the left in Israel is against oppressing Palestinians, children. And that group is perhaps the one that most directly opposes it. It has no political solution. It just says no more oppression of Palestinians. And they are people who are not going to serve, some are going to prison. And then there are some who say that they will serve in the occupied lerritories but not shoot. We walk with them because they don't propose a political solution, and everyone is OK with them. But on some demonstrations we went as the Mole, as to the funeral of Omar el-Kassem. In other small demonstrations, we went as ourscives. But in big ones, we don't like to go as ourselves, because you have Hala ha-Kibush [Down with the Occupation, a broad militant formation] and umpteen number of parties, so we go with the only group everyone agrees with, which is the Shministim.
• Presumably, members can also have different ideas about what solidarity with the Intifada means?
Yes. We are also in solidarity with Palestinian women, who are oppressed by the Israeli occupation but also by a male chauvinist culture.
• Doesn't that complicate relations with Palestinians?
No. Because the Palestinians we have met with have normally been left wing.; they weren't from the Hamas [Islamic fundamentalists] or the Muslim Brothers. In the Intifada, women are more open; now even they are throwing stones. Before, they were house bound; now they seem to have more power than before. We are in solidarity with the workers, with the unemployed.
• Do you have Palestinian members?
Yeah. We do have Palestinian members. Not a lot, because we are mainly in Tel-Aviv. But we have half a dozen or so. They are not Palestinians from the territories. Mostly they are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, because they are allowed to stay in Tel-Aviv.
• You don't have anyone in the occupied territories?
We have contacts. It's hard for them to come to Tel-Aviv. Normally we go to them. We have very good contacts. We know what is happening.
• Have you done anything on the labor front?
We tried a couple of times, but as far as l know we were not very successful. We tried to go to demonstrations with workers. We did not have much luck. It was very badly organized.
• Under the best of circumstances, achieving a linkup between radical young people and trade-unionists is not easy.
In Israel, the trade unions are a disaster. Histadrut is not really a union. It is an employer. So, the workers don't like Histadrut. Normally, they go to the right, to the Likud. But if we go to them, I think they will like that, to know that somebody cares, that somebody has a beller solution than the Histadrut.
• Do you discuss socialism much in the group?
The group has an open meeting where we bring people to talk about things. We have had discussions about pacifism, about feminism, and sometimes socialism. Every member decides if he or she wants to listen. We are socialists; we do not say that we are communists, because then the group might break up.
• Do you have an actual educational program, or are these discussions organized on an ad-hoc basis?
We organize a program for a month or a month and half.And every week we bring some one to talk. Sometimes, we have seminars. The group is going on a trip to sec some Palestinians. They are going to have a seminar about the second world war. This is not like school, where we are forced to learn. Here we come to listen. And we can go whenever we want. Normally, we meet every Monday. The open meeting is 6:00 to 8:30. Then there is the members meeting, which can go on late. Some come to the open meeting, some just to the membership meeting, some to both.
• What's the ratio between male and female?
In the beginning, there weren't too many girls, only three or four. Now there are a lot a more. We are very happy about thal. We are against chauvinism in all its forms. Now the proportion is around 5050. Maybe there are a few more boys, three or four more. There is always something in our paper about women's oppression.
We don't demonstrate a lot on it, because our main purpose right now is the occupied territories and I think we should also give priority to working on forming a student union. There are other groups in Israel who deal with women's issues, the Women in Black, there is another group that writes letters to women prisoners and e tries to help them. *
GREECE
Crisis explodes in Greek
Communist Party
NE AFTER the other about a dozen members of the Central
Committee of the KKE have come out in support of the youth and have been forced to resign. At the time of writing, it is not yet possible
1o make a count of the dissidents in the
C.C. and the other KKE leadership bod-
THE CRISIS which has smouldered for long months within the Greek Communist Party (KKE) has exploded in a spectacular fashion in recent weeks. After a marathon session the Central
Committee of the KKE decided to dismiss all 70 members of the Central Council of the Communist youth organization, the
KNE. Following this decision, the Central Council met and reaffirmed its determination to remain as the leadership of the ics, inasmuch as public statements of opposition to the party leadership by eminent members continue to be an everyday occurrence. Fifty three of the 70 members of the Central Council of the KNE have come out in support of the secretary of the organization, G. Grapsas, and have denounced the brutal and unconstitutional interference of the KKE leadership in the internal affairs of its youth organization. The remaining 17 members have either declared themselves neutral or as supporters of "normalization". The overwhelming majority of the KNE's base organizations (amongst others, the organizations in Athens, Piraeus, Patras, Salonika and other university towns) have declared their support for the new opposilional current in the organization.
### Leadership takes direct control of youth organization
Meanwhile, the party leadership has decided to take direct control of the KNE, and has imposed a Bureau composed mainly of party cadres who were formerly members of the youth organization. The Central Council imposed from outside by this Bureau on the KNE have declared their intention to convoke a special congress as soon as possible. But whilst the Bureau considers as already expelled those who have failed to obey the dictates of the Central Committee, the new Central Council has already declared that it will institute the right of tendency, and give the minority the right to circulate its platform and be represented at the congress.
The editorials of the Greek press one and all gave the impression that the KNE was no more than an organization of unreconstructed Stalinists who could not understand any of the realities of modern society. State television, the private radio 12 stations and journals of the right, centre and left, including the KKE dailies unceasingly proclaimed that the dissidents were a product of the past, nothing but small-minded dogmatists. All the main political forces have participated in an unprecedented quasi-Stalinist campaign of defamation: on the very day when the members of the KNE demonstrated in the street against the massacre at Tiananmen Square, the Greek liberal press was accusing them of being supporters of Deng Xiaoping's butchers! In reality, the dissident current within the KNE runs deep, and its disagreements with the party leadership centre as much on the key questions of domestic politics as on the situation in the countries of "actually existing socialism".
KKE in coalition with New
Democracy
For example, it is the sharp turn to the right taken by the KKE with the formation of its coalition with the Hellenic Left (EAR), and above all its participation in the coalition government with New Democracy, a bourgeois party par excellence, that has accelerated the process of differentiation within its ranks. Needless to say, the KNE and the oppositionists in the KKE have declared themselves absolutely opposed to this right turn.
At the same time, the events accompanying perestroika since 1985 have provoked at first questioning and later the maturation of clear anti-Stalinist tendencies, very often culminating in an overall critique of "actually existing socialism"
and of the bureaucracy in the Soviet
Union as well as in the other Eastern bloc countries. It is thus wholly wrong to portray the KNE as made up of people nostalyouth organization. N. CHAMPI gic for the Stalinist past. In reality, the positions it has taken both in theory and in practice are bringing it closer and closer to the stance of the far left, and somefimes even its revolutionary Marxist current. Obviously, there are political differences between the positions of the majority of the KNE youth and the oppositionists inside the party. As one might expect, the harsh treatment of eminent members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and other leadership bodies of the KKE has created an opposition whose ideas are not very clear and whose antiStalinism is of very recent vintage. This has a positive aspect, in that the administrative measures of the leadership have swelled the ranks of the opposition, but also a negative aspect in that the newcomers (especially the older cadres) are not quite on the same wavelength as the majority tendency inside the youth organization. However, there are differentiations within the Party opposition.
In fact, there are a number of eminent leaders who enjoy great prestige amongst the rank and file (for example, party ideologue N. Kotzias? ', a well-known intellectual; professor E. Bitsakis; and the director of the Centre of Marxist Studies, G. Maniatis), who are already very close to the positions of the KNE in terms of having a radical critique of Stalinism and reformism in all its forms.
### Opposition to class collaboration
To summarize, one can identify two key elements that unite all the oppositionists. Firstly there is their common opposition to the capitulations made by the party
International Viewpoint #172 • October 30, 1989
to pelly bourgcois class collaborationist pressures within the Left Coalition, which have led to participation in a government dominated by the right.
This is accompanied by a vehement criticism of the party's lack of internal democracy and the administrative methods of its leadership. The second central clement consists of a rejection of blind obedience to Moscow and a critique of
Stalinism and the Eastern bloc countries in both their past and present forms. In the context of these rather general points of agreement, there are obviously a number of tendencies with different sensibilities.
To understand the bitterness and the breadth of the conflict within the KKE and the KNE, it is necessary to put these historic events in context. For example, the unprecedented press campaign against the oppositionists is manifestly attributable to the fact that the Greek Communist
Party is participating in government for the first time in its history.
Thus, the questioning of the policies of the Party leadership by tens of thousands of its members has direct implications for the bourgeoisie's management of its evcryday affairs, as well as for its project (now very clear) for incorporating the reformist leaderships into the system, with a view lo applying a very severe austerity policy. In short, the crisis that has broken out complicates the grand manocuvres of the bourgeoisie and could even put in question their long term plans.
KKE's servile attitude towards PASOK
Al the same timo, it seems unlikely that ex-prime minister Andreas Papandreou's
PASOK party will gain much from the crisis in the KKE, as today's oppositionists are precisely those who previously criticized (against the advice of the party leadership) the servile attitude of the KKE
Icaders towards the PASOK governments of 1981-89.
On the contrary, although this is not for the moment evident, the opposition in the
KKE could represent an alternative for at least a fraction of the PASOK base who have felt frustrated by the scandals and the
- aberrations of their party, but who at the same time have felt no attraction for the collaborationist politics of the Left Coalition.
However it is clear that, even if indirectly, PASOK is exploiting the crisis within the KKE, demagogically attributing it to the refusal of the parliamentary parties of the left to cover up for its scandals and get into the mud along with it. Indeed it is
GREECE exactly this aspect of the politics of the KKE and the Left Coalition which the oppositionists have criticized, arguing that the blind desire for vengeance against PASOK on the part of the KKE/Coalition leaders has momentarily cemented the unity of PASOK instead of contributing to the hoped for break-up.....
The crisis inside the KKE has broken out at at a delicate moment and its broader ramifications even threaten the very props of the established political game. As well as possibly putting into question the medium to long term projects of the Greek bourgeoisie, it could also complicate the classic game of alternation of power between the political forces that is central to the management of the crisis of the system.
The small Greck far left, as well as the Communist Party of the Interior (KKEes), have already begun to direct their political work towards the events inside the KKE.
Thus within a few weeks the possibility of building an anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic pole of attraction has acquired an unprecedented credibility. In the present circumstances, the fact that the various organizations of the far left, as well as a number of independent revolutionary militants, have for the past year been able to overcome their traditional sectarianism and unite in a common front 1. The Hellenic Left originated from a split in the
Communist Party of the interior which had itself originated from a split in the Communist Party in 1968.
After having followed a broadly Eurocommunist Line of march, the Hellenic Left and its Icader, Leonidas
Kirkas, are today the foremost advocates of class collaboration and the govemmental coalition with the major party of the right, New Democracy. Its forces are very limited and amount essentially to a few hundred "modernizing" intellectuals who have already carved out careers for themselves in the administration with stable structures, the Anti-Capitalist
Alternative Regroupment (the EAS, in which the Greck section of the Fourth
International, the OKDE, participates) is not unimportant.
This unitary dynamic amongst the lar left is evident also in the decision of the great majority of the leading members of the small Communist Party of the Interior to work towards the presentation of a single anti-capitalist list for the November 5 elections.
Obviously, a great deal depends on whal happens over the coming weeks and above all on the results of the clections.
A debacle for the KKE and the
Left Coalition could accelerate the crisis and draw thousands more party members into the ranks of the opposition. It is quite possible in this case that the party leadership, headed by the chair,
Harilaos Florakis, and the secrelary-general, Grigoris Farakos, would decide to strike hard and quickly without having prepared the ground in advance and at the price of taking grave tactical risks.
But whatever happens, it is already clear that today's crisis has opened a new chapter in the history of the Greck left. This time it does not involve a few hundred dissidents with merely tactical differences, nor the appcarance of an opposition attracted by the mirages of Eurocommunism or the rightist "moderniz.ation" of the workers' movement.
Opposition has high morale
It adds up to the biggest split in the KKE since its foundation (with the possible exception of the 1927 split led by the then secretary of the party and eminent revolutionary Marxist Pantelis Pouliopoulos.
But at that time the KKE numbered no more than some thousands of members).
It adds up also to the appearance - if still embryonic - of an anti-capitalist and anti- bureaucratic communist opposition that seems to have a very high morale and which sees itself as participating in a movement for the reconstruction of the revolutionary left not only nationally but also internationally. From this viewpoint, what is happening today inside the Greek
Communist Party has an importance extending beyond Greece and should interest the whole European left. * and management of the state.
2. It is indicative of the breadth of opposition that the recent attempt by the KKE leadership to expel Nikos
Korzias, the C.C. member responsible for idenlogy, was rejected by an overwhelming majority. The base organizations which have disobeyed are above all those of the naval shipyards at Elsefina and the surrounding industrial region which bears the same name:
this area is by far the biggest industrial area of the country and is a traditional bassion of the Communist 1 3