We asked many people in Greece about what forms of grass-roots self-organisation exist in the Greek working class or can plausibly be developed towards something comparable - though possibly very different in detail - to the soviets (workers' councils) which were the basis of the Russian workers' revolution of 1917 and which have re-emerged in many revolutionary crises since then.
Tereza from Kokkino said explicitly that given the dominance of small enterprises in the Greek economy, neighbourhood-based committees were a more likely form than factory councils; and everyone described more life and movement in neighbourhood organising than in industrial organising.
Everyone agreed, more or less, that neighbourhood-based assemblies are at a lower level now than before the election campaigns and the start of the summer, during which heat and holidays reduce political activity.
Everyone also agreed, however, that there is potential for neighbourhood-based organisation to grow again as the struggle against the new coalition government's discredited and destructive policies grows, especially from September.
Spiros from OKDE in Thessaloniki said that neighbourhood committees had been formed from the movement in the city squares in June-July 2011. Then there were neighbourhood committees formed in the campaign for non-payment of the new property tax.
Now, said Spiros, "each committee has a special thing. In west Thessaloniki there is a committee to create a self-organised food market and a community restaurant. There is another committee in Kalimaria, in east Thessaloniki, with about 40 or 50 people involved.
"There are a couple of other neighbourhood committees in Thessaloniki where we don't participate. There is one in northern Thessaloniki against plans to develop a toxic waste site there.
"The neighbourhood committees usually meet weekly or fortnightly, but less often in the summer. They aren't elected" (i.e. they are open meetings for anyone who wants to be active).
Vicky Karafoulidou and Yannis Karliampos at the Syriza office in Thessaloniki, who emphasised that they were talking informally rather than speaking officially on behalf of Syriza, told us that Syriza had run "popular assemblies" to "talk to the people and hear their ideas" during the election campaign, and now plans to continue them permanently.
The idea, they say, is to run an Assembly for each neighbourhood of say 10,000 people, meeting once a month usually and "at least once or twice in the summer".
They reckon to get 100 or 200 people to each Assembly (though, they say, an attempt to organise an Assembly at the university was not so successful).
People are and will be informed of the Assemblies by social media and posters, though (because of shortage of resources) not always by leaflets.
There "is a plan", they said, to have these Assemblies, if they develop, elect their own committees, not necessarily of Syriza members.
However, when we spoke later, and more officially, with Miltos Ikonomou, a Syriza leader in Thessaloniki, he was categorical that these assemblies will be Syriza assemblies.
"We are making open assemblies, and we want to have a Syriza place in each neighbourhood. We are starting to do these assemblies. We had a hundred people to one last week, and others are in the next few days.
"We want new members, but our target is first to involve the people".
So, these are Syriza assemblies. What about also building broader neighbourhood organisations, not just of Syriza supporters, with the aim of enabling people to take control of their own neighbourhoods?
"These are the open assemblies of Syriza. People who come, become members of Syriza and then elect committees in their neighbourhoods.
"Our target is to see how we can inspire people to become involved in the cause of Syriza. The basic idea of the left is to fight about one's rights. It's a question of how to inspire the people".
Of the non-payment committees which grew up in neighbourhoods to resist the new property tax and the threat to cut off electricity to non-payers (because the tax is levied on electricity bills rather than through the regular tax system), Vicky and Yannis said that "they come and go".
The government has now conceded that people may pay their regular electricity bill but not the tax addition (at one time, the electricity company was allocating all payments first to the tax, so that any partial payment would leave electricity charges unpaid), and people are not having their electricity cut off.
However, Vicky and Yannis said, there is a neighbourhood committee which was based in that movement still functioning in the eastern part of Thessaloniki.
On Syriza's Popular Assemblies, Spiros was cool. The KKE has run local Popular Assemblies, too, he noted, though Syriza, unlike KKE, participated in the city-squares movement.
"We can have common committees with Syriza", he said, "but Syriza has not been very successful with its local assemblies in the past. Probably it will have some success now, but probably it will fade. Syriza needs a more developed policy".
Sofia, from OKDE in Athens, gave a more downbeat picture. In autumn 2011, after the city-squares movement, OKDE had been participating in local assemblies in five municipalities (areas covering some hundreds of thousands of people), with attendances ranging from 30 to 100 at weekly meetings.
There are none functioning now, she said. OKDE will intervene in Popular Assemblies if Syriza initiates them, but doesn't see much happening now. She expects things to pick up from September.
Mihalis Skourtis, from OKDE-Spartakos, was more scathing. Popular Assemblies? Syriza is doing nothing, he said, but propagating its electoral programme.
Syriza did nothing against the fascists. The only thing in its mind was the election results. Now OKDE-Spartakos is calling on Syriza to organise open assemblies in the neighbourhoods, to resist the fascists, to organise solidarity, and to combat poverty. But we will see.
Tereza from Kokkino described a local assembly in Athens she participates in. Currently meetings draw a maximum of 20 people, where there were 50 or 100. Tereza was not sure of the population size for the area covered by the assembly, but says it contains three high schools, which suggests a population of about 30,000.
The Syriza committee for that same area, she said, would have thirty people at a general assembly of Syriza members, but fewer for regular gatherings.
Mihalis Skourtis, despite giving the most downbeat picture of the situation now, also stressed the possibilities for the near future.
The movement of neighbourhood committees against the property tax was, he said, a big affair, where in some communities you might have a thousand people meeting weekly. It won a big victory. Non-payers of the tax now do not have their electricity cut off. "The people are still there".
That movement has subsided. But it will re-emerge on other issues. "The people are still there".
