Greek socialist highlights Comintern’s contribution to ‘left government’ project

By John Riddell. In a February 7 video address to a U.S. audience, Greek socialist Antonis Davanellos underlined the role that discussions at a nearly century-old debate in the Communist International played in the thinking of many socialists in his country on the struggle for a Left government.

Antonis Davanellos

Davanellos, a member of the Internationalist Workers’ Left (DEA), is also the editor of a Greek-language edition of the workers’ government discussion in the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).

Davanellos says that my English-language edition of this congress, available from Haymarket Books, made this record available to socialists in Greece:

“It is very important that our political current has a transitional strategy and tactics. We are starting from the real conditions of the working class movement and trying to put forward concrete steps to make gains and increase the confidence of workers.

“I want to take this opportunity to again thank Haymarket Books for its help in publishing a book in Greek on the Fourth Congress of the Communist International [Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922]. We thought that with our relationship to SYRIZA, we were opening up a new path for socialists, but with these documents, we realized that the path was begun some years ago. To introduce these ideas in a book for the Greek left was a big help for us.”

The run-up to this discussion in the Comintern’s Third Congress (1921), a 1,300-page documentary record, will be has just been published in an initial hardcover edition. Too expensive to buy, but recommend it to your library!

Related materials on this website:

• “A Way to Claim Victory,” Introduction by Antonis Davanellos to the Greek edition, The United Front: Debate and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Third International.
• “A Workers’ Government as a Step Toward Socialism,” by John Riddell.
• “The Comintern’s Unknown Decision on Workers’ Governments,” including the Fourth Congress decision for the first time in English.
• “Toward the United Front” available in paperback