A First Balance Sheet of the Greek Socialist Experiment

Abstract

Michel Raptis (born 1911) is a well known Greek journalist and author, working for the prestigious liberal quality daily newspapers Ta Nea and To Vima. He was one of the founders of the Greek communist opposition in the 1930s. After his imprisonment by the Metaxas dictatorship in 1936, he went into exile in France. He was one of the founders of the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1938 and its secretary—under the pseudonym of Pablo—between 1943 and 1961. He was very active in the European Resistance during World War II and in the support for the Algerian war of liberation. This and his advocacy of self management led to his break with the Fourth International. As the economic adviser to the Algerian president Ben Bella, he was the main architect of rural self management in that country (see “he Dossier de L'Autogestion en Algerie”, Autogestion, Paris, No. 3, 1967, special issue). Invited by the Allende government in Chile in 1972–1973, he published Revolution and Counter Revolution in Chile: a dossier o...