THE daily demonstrations of youth and workers are continuing in Greece, over a week after the assassination of the 15-year-old school boy Alexis Grigoropoulos by the forces of the capitalist state.
The struggle has now reached the point where the state forces are reported to be running out of gas and stun bombs and missiles, while the right wing government is running out of time.
What is taking place is a revolutionary uprising that is being driven forward by the worldwide economic crisis, with masses of school and student youth in the vanguard of the movement.
It is not just a Greek struggle, it is part of a world revolution that is emerging all over the capitalist world.
The movement in Greece is still developing with a whole range of demonstrations and blockades planned for this week, once again with the revolutionary youth in the lead.
At the same time, the reactionary supporters of the government are calling for curfews, bans on demonstrations and for the declaration of a state of emergency.
The only positive for the Karamanlis regime is the fact that the Communist Party, the Greek TUC and the Social Democratic Pasok party have refused to call for it to be brought down.
They are helping to keep the right wing regime in place, to the point where their counter-revolutionary role is being exposed.
They have mounted demonstrations, not to unite the working class with the student and working class youth, but on trade union issues, focussing solely on these, to try to keep the revolutionary youth and the workers apart.
The fact that the Communist Party and the social democratic Pasok party have not called for the resignation of the Karamanlis government, despite the fact that it has a majority of just one, is being discussed all over Greece.
The working class however is taking up the demands of the youth, and many trade unionists are now pressing for an indefinite general strike to remove the government.
The response of the Stalinists to this development has been to produce even more poisonous propaganda.
As our correspondent in Greece has reported, ‘The leadership of the Stalinist KKE (Greek Communist Party) have branded the school students and youth who have been attacking banks, police stations and government buildings as “hooded hooligans”.
‘The KKE’s General Secretary Aleka Paparigha said that these youths are directed “by secret service centres inside and outside Greece”.’
A socialist revolution that is being directed by secret service centres inside and outside of Greece is straight out of the Stalin school of falsification.
The Stalinists want the Karamanlis government to survive. Their slander campaign against the youth is a slander campaign against the socialist revolution. Its immediate aim is to isolate the youth, to try and turn the mass of workers against them.
If this were to be successful, the effect would be to allow the state forces to launch a bloody and violent offensive against the youth, led by a potential regime of colonels, without the fear that the entire working class would rise up, a fear that is restraining them at the moment.
However, the class struggle continues to sharpen in Greece. The Greek TUC has been forced to call another 24 hour general strike for December 22, that will bring hundreds of thousands of workers onto the streets.
The essence of the entire situation in Greece is that a section of the Fourth International must be built to firmly unite the working class and the youth with its revolutionary policies in order to carry out a successful socialist revolution.
This is the qualitative development that is required by the revolutionary situation, and it will provide a lead to workers and youth throughout Europe.
