Greek workers were struggling for power¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter argues that the Greek uprising of December 1944 was not a mere rebellion but a revolutionary seizure of power by the working class, betrayed from within by its own reformist and Stalinist leadership. Within days, the workers and peasants of ELAS-EAM controlled the whole of Greece, including most of Athens; in Salonika and other cities, they had established workers’ control over housing, factories and rationing. The author insists that power reduces to “armed bodies of men” — a Leninist axiom — and that Churchill understood this perfectly, hence his insistence on disarming the workers and creating “national” armies with capitalist-selected officers. The situation is compared directly to the Paris Commune and Spain in 1936, but with a leadership described as more cowardly, ignorant and treacherous.
The chapter draws on a report from the Daily Telegraph of 31 January 1945, which records slogans such as “Vengeance!”, “Death to the traitors!” and “Death to the bourgeois” painted across Athens, as evidence that the workers wanted to finish with capitalism. Yet the leadership’s main preoccupation was capitulation: they fawned on Churchill, accepted Damaskinos as regent (who then denounced EAM), and sought elections that would be delayed until the workers were broken. The result is that liberals and reformists have gone over to reaction, and a face-saving sell-out is likely.
The polemic is directed against the Stalinist and reformist leaderships, but also against the British Communist MP William Gallacher, who reminded Churchill of his record of intervention but failed to draw the correct revolutionary conclusion. The author counterposes the Bolshevik policy of revolutionary internationalism under Lenin and Trotsky: during the intervention against the Soviet Union, capitalist armies mutinied — the American, French, German and British — because the Bolsheviks made a class appeal to workers and soldiers. The same appeal from the Greek workers, ceaselessly propagated, would have had the same effect.
The chapter concludes with a warning that Greece is only the beginning: Churchill is preparing to crush revolution in northern Italy, against German workers after Hitler’s fall, and eventually against British workers. The only path to victory is revolutionary communism and the Fourth International. Class collaboration, reformism and Stalinism lead only to defeat.