PAME: Everyone onto the streets

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/syntagma-50.jpg_1302204135.jpg

A new demonstration will be organized by PAME on Tuesday 23rd of June in Omonia at 6pm.

PAME is calling for a “people’s mobilization to block the savage new anti-people agreement, the new anti-people package they are going to burden us with.”

On the same day, the pensioners will hold a national demonstration in Athens.



PAME notes in its statement for the demonstration that:

“The solution is to be found in the struggles under the banners of the workers’-people’s interests, on the basis of our rights and needs and not those of the bosses. The solution is to be found in the confrontation in the workplaces, in the complete counterattack against our exploiters, who are the only ones to have profited from the new barbaric measures.



We set our own red lines!

We turn our backs on those who want us to applaud the government and its partners, the cheerleaders of a negotiation that is leading us to poverty for the profits of the few.

We turn our backs on the defenders of the EU, the unions of capital and their servants who are protesting for their right to continue to live off the sweat of others, to continue to exploit the vast majority of the people even more savagely.



We have nothing to do with them! We are not the same!

We do not place our slogans and banners under false flags. We do not have the same interests, the same needs, the same anxieties and difficulties as our exploiters.

You are either with the monopolies or with the people’s needs! There is no other way! Our path is that of struggle, of rupture with the EU and the path of the monopolies.



No support for the new memorandum whatever name they give it!



No acceptance of the barbaric and anti-people EU!

On the 11th of June over 700 workers’ and people’s organizations gave a strong response in 60 Greek cities.

On Tuesday, the voice of the workers, the pensioners, the youth, the women will be heard again.

Our struggles are not a game in the competition of the monopolies, the proposals and political line of the EU, IMF, ECB, Russia and China. The people have no interests in choosing the rope these forces will use to hang them, their interests lie in calling these forces’ power into question.

The EU “one-way street” has been demonstrated to be disastrous and damaging for the workers’-people’s interests.



Everyone must join the struggles!



Workers, unemployed, young people.

Do not accept:

•The new and old anti-social security laws.
•The continuing attacks on the people’s income, salaries. Pensions.
•The new taxes and levies.


Our lives can not endure other measures. Our needs can not wait. We demand, here and now, in opposition to the intimidation and blackmail:

•Increases in salaries, pensions and benefits.
•Recovery of all the losses.
•Restoration of the Collective labour agreements.
•Abolition of the anti-worker laws.
•Real protection of al the unemployed.


We organize our response!



We gather our strength!



We strengthen our trade unions in every sector. We respond militantly! We smash the climate of fear, the blackmail and threats of the bosses, the government, the EU-IMF-ECB.



Only our strength and stance can abolish the anti-people laws, memoranda and bosses!”

22.06.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/PAME-Everyone-onto-the-streets/

KKE has been keeping their powder dry, now, as it appears that Syriza's silliness has run it's course, they light a match...

Let's hope it starts the blaze that will blow the whole rotten edifice to pieces. This is where all true leftist parties, organizations and people worldwide should be lining up behind. This is a huge point of conflict, and P.A.M.E. rightly lists Russia and China on the other side. We should send them barrels of gasoline.

Speech of Dimitris Koutsouba concentration of KKE in the Constitution


http://youtu.be/yX_GsnTpByw

The speech of the GS of the CC of KKE, Dimitris Koutsouba concentrating the CR Attica KKE in the Constitution against a new unpopular government measures deal - Inspection: http://www.komep.gr/ Topics Education: HTTP: //www.thematapaideias.org/site9 / ... Publications Modern Era: http://www.sep.gr/cms/site/main. php? c ...

Varoufakis: Greece owes agreement to whole eurozone, not only to itself
Published time: June 26, 2015 15:31 Get short URL

http://cdn.rt.com/files/news/41/e7/20/00/varoufakis-greece-eurozone-agreement.si.jpg

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis says the issue of agreeing a new strategy to avoid a default by June 30 is a moral obligation – not a question of chance, as Greece’s commitment to the eurozone is “absolute.”

Varoufakis was speaking on RTE’s Morning Ireland program in the middle of the trepidation over the future of debt-stricken Greece, and its €240 billion in loans, and just four days to pay off €1.6 billion to the IMF.

The summit in Brussels is in its second day, and the Eurogroup has just four days to conjure up a solution, or risk a ‘Grexit’. Some officials say it would be “unavoidable” should Greece fail to repay the IMF.

While the Europeans say the onus is on Greece to prove it is “prepared to reform,” the embattled Varoufakis says it’s time for the rest of the EU "to come to the party.” The implication is that the negotiations are not being carried out amongst the member-states, but between them and international creditors.

In the meantime, Greece’s creditors say they’re prepared to unlock about €15.3 billion over the next five months in four installments, according to those familiar with the documents.

The ECB left its emergency lifeline for Greek banks unchanged Friday for a second day, as deposit withdrawals stabilized, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Continued talks
Greece and its creditors have been stuck in talks over the country’s massive debt since the end of January, when the leftist Syriza party headed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras came to power. The new government promised to end the era of drastic budget cuts that dragged the country deep into recession.


During the last week the troika of lenders and Greece has been exchanging reform plans but so far a consensus hasn’t been found. The creditors are asking the Greeks to ramp up taxes and implement pension cuts – something Varoufakis sees as“putting me and my government in an impossible position, having to make a bad choice among really hard, difficult bad choices.”

"I am against increasing corporate tax, but then again I am against raising the tax on hotels and against cutting the pensions of people who live below the poverty line," he told RTE.

Varoufakis said Greece has done everything humanly possible to cave in to the “strange demands of creditors.” And while its commitment to the EU is “absolute,” the country would not accept an unrealistic deal. And, by his account, the current proposals are “absolutely, absolutely” unworkable.

A protester carries a placard that reads "Stop to new and old bailouts" during an anti-bailout demonstration in Athens, Greece June 25, 2015. (Reuters / Alkis Konstantinidis)A protester carries a placard that reads "Stop to new and old bailouts" during an anti-bailout demonstration in Athens, Greece June 25, 2015. (Reuters / Alkis Konstantinidis)

The finance minister explained that the debt repayment schedule was uneven, and that his own proposal is, basically, to take money from the ECB and put it into the ESM, so as to “even out a very spiky debt repayment schedule, so as to make it easier for us to make the repayments for the benefit of the creditors.”

Some EU members are ringing alarm bells – chief among them Germany and France, whose leaders say Saturday’s meeting of finance ministers is of the utmost importance to the Greek rescue effort.

"We have to keep working because time is pressing and the Eurogroup on Saturday will have a decisive importance," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a news conference early on Friday, following a failure by the 19 nations of the eurozone to reach a consensus the day before.

French President Francois Hollande echoed the sentiment: "I consider that the meeting on Saturday is crucial because time is up on June 30, when the Greeks must meet their payment obligations, there are national parliaments that have to meet."

"We have to do everything we can and France will set itself to work so that we can have a universal and durable deal," the French leader added.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble stressed at a conference in Frankfurt that Greece, along with other eurozone members, should adhere to the zone’s rules, because "No country in the monetary union should be infinitely spending money at the expense of others,” he added.

http://rt.com/business/269938-varoufakis-greece-eurozone-agreement/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Trapped like a rat, these efforts to bullshit everybody, Greek public, Troika & EU public are failing utterly. Troika can count on these opportunists fold, if not the Greek booj will fire them & hire some colonels or Nazis.

Trapped like a rat, these efforts to bullshit everybody, Greek public, Troika & EU public are failing utterly. Troika can count on these opportunists fold, if not the Greek booj will fire them & hire some colonels or Nazis.

You are correct and it will be at that point that the real shit hits the fan.

KKE: NO to the continuing bankruptcy of the people

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/sygkentrosh-2.jpg_1560999459.jpg

The KKE held mass demonstrations on the 26th of June 2015 in the major cities of Greece against the new anti-people measures and agreements with the lenders, which are being prepared by the SYRIZA-ANEL government.

D. Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE, said, amongst other things, during his speech in Athens’ central square:

“The Greek people must say a big NO to the agreement, NO to their own continuing bankruptcy, NO to the parties of the EU one-way street and capitalist power. They must chart a course so that they can really take the reins of power.

The people must struggle alongside the KKE, they must impede the anti-people measures, on the streets, in the workplaces.

SYRIZA became the government by hijacking the workers’-people’s demands. It is now trying to deceive the people once again, distorting and interpreting the people’s votes in line with its interests.

Five months after the elections, the government is preparing to send the people the bill with the measures of the new agreement that are truly a noose around the necks of the families from the popular strata who have bled and will continue to bleed for the debt, for the EU, for the profitability of the monopolies, if they do not start a counterattack along the path of rupture and conflict with the EU and the monopolies.

The Greek people must reject both the proposals of the lenders-“three institutions” and also the proposals of the Tsipras government of 47+8 pages, they are both barbaric, a guillotine for the people.

The SYRIZA-ANEL government and also its European partners and the IMF, with the intervention of the USA, have not given up on the efforts to save capitalist Greece inside the framework of the capitalist EU.”

In early hours of the morning of the 27th of June, the Prime Minister A. Tsipras announced a referendum, whose question will be whether the people accept the proposal of the lenders or not.

In an intervention during the program of the Mega TV station, shortly after the Prime Minister’s address, Yiannis Gkiokas, member of the CC of the KKE and responsible for its Press Office, stressed that:

“The position of the KKE is clear. The NO of the Greek people must be directed towards both proposals-the proposal of the lenders and also the proposal of the government of 47 pages that has had details added to it during this whole period.

Both proposals contain savage measures at the expense of the people.

The referendum has the features of blackmail against the people and aims to make them complicit in the anti-people plans, by calling on them to choose between two evils.

The government must cease telling fairytales about allegedly respecting the people’s will. The people struggled in the previous years and bled against the memoranda and application laws. And during these 5 months, the government has not abolished any law, has maintained the previous framework untouched and is also proposing new measures to the lenders.

The government says that the proposal of the lenders is outside the people’s mandate. Is its own proposal inside the boundaries of the people’s mandate?

The government told lies to the Greek people. It promised them that they could be freed from the memoranda and austerity inside the EU and the capitalist development path and now it is trying to manage the collapse of this pre-election narrative.

The people must say no to both of them in every way and using every means available. They must reject the plan of the creditors and also the plan of the government. They must rise up and fight for the only realistic solution for their own interests, which is rupture with the EU and with the current path of development.”

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/KKE-NO-to-the-continuing-bankruptcy-of-the-people/

The referendum on the 5th of July and the stance of the KKE

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/sygkentrosh-12.jpg_1302204135.jpg

As is well-known, the government of the “left” and in essence social-democratic SYRIZA party and of the “rightwing” nationalist party ANEL, in an attempt to manage the complete bankruptcy of its pre-election commitments, announced a referendum for the 5th July 2015, with the only question being whether the citizens agree or not with the proposed agreement, which had been tabled by the EU, IMF and ECB and concerns the continuation of the anti-people measures for a way out from the capitalist crisis, with Greece remaining in the euro.



The coalition government’s officials call on the people to say “no” and make it clear that this “no” in the referendum will be interpreted by the Greek government as approval for its own proposed agreement with the EU, IMF, ECB, which in its 47+8 pages also contains harsh antiworker-antipeople measures, with the aim of increasing the profitability of capital, capitalist “growth” and the country’s remaining in the euro. As the SYRIZA-ANEL government admits, which continues to extol the EU, “our common European home”, the “European achievement”, this proposal of theirs is 90% identical to the proposal of the EU, IMF, ECB and has very little relationship with what SYRIZA had promised before the elections.



Fascist Golden Dawn, together with the parties of the coalition government (SYRIZA-ANEL), took a position in favour of a “no” and it also openly supported the return to a national currency.



On the other side, the rightwing opposition ND, social-democratic PASOK that governed until January 2015, together with POTAMI (in form a party of the centre, in essence a reactionary party) took a position in favour of a “yes” to the barbaric measures of the Troika, which they state will be interpreted as being consent to “staying in the EU at all costs”.



In reality, both answers lead to a yes to the “EU” and capitalist barbarity.



During the session of the parliament on the 27/6, the governmental majority of SYRIZA-ANEL rejected the proposal of the KKE that the following issues be placed before to the judgment of the Greek people in the referendum:



•NO TO THE PROPOSALS FOR AGREEMENT OF THE EU-ECB-IMF AND THE GREEK GOVERNMENT
•DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE EU-ABOLITION OF THE MEMORANDA AND ALL THE APPLICATION LAWS


With this stance, the government demonstrated that it wants to blackmail the people into approving its proposal to the troika, which is the other side of the same coin. That is to say, it is asking the Greek people to consent to its anti-people plans and to burden them with its new anti-people choices, either via a new allegedly “improved” agreement with the imperialist organizations, or via an exit from the euro and a return to a national currency, something which the people will be called on to pay for again.



In these conditions, the KKE calls on the people to utilize the referendum as an opportunity to strengthen the opposition to the EU, to strengthen the struggle for the only realistic way out from today’s capitalist barbarity. The content of this way out is: RUPTURE-DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE EU, UNILATERAL CANCELLATION OF THE DEBT, SOCIALIZATION OF THE MONOPOLIES, WORKERS’-PEOPLE’S POWER.



The people, through their activity and their choice in the referendum, must respond to the deception of the false question posed by the government and reject the proposal of the EU-IMF-ECB and also the proposal of the SYRIZA-ANEL government. Both contain barbaric anti-people measures, which will be added to the memoranda and application laws of the previous ND-PASOK governments. Both serve the interests of capital and capitalist profits.



The KKE stresses that the people must not choose between Scylla and Charybdis, but must express, with all means available and in every way, their opposition to the EU and its permanent memoranda in the referendum. They must “cancel out” this dilemma by casting the proposal of the KKE as their vote into the ballot box.



•NO TO THE PROPOSAL OF THE EU-IMF-ECB
•NO TO THE PROPOSAL OF THE GOVERNMENT
•DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE EU, WITH THE PEOPLE IN POWER

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-referendum-on-the-5th-of-July-and-the-stance-of-the-KKE/

The SYRIZA infomercial

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An infomercial is a shamefaced commercial, whose shamefacedness compels it to appear as presentation of "information" in order to sell a product more effectively. It is therefore a fusion of two genres of discourse that is at the same time a pseudo-fusion: the discourse of "information" is merely a carapace, whose purpose is to protect and reinforce the discourse of advertising.

Writing on politics, traditionally another genre of discourse than informercials, generally falls under two categories: journalistic writing, whose characteristic is the production of the illusion of a reporting "objectivity", and explicitly political writing, characterized by a more explicit foregrounding of the writer's own political principles and ideas.

Marxist political writing is by its nature the most explicit of the subgenres of political writing: since Marxism is, among other things, a critique of the dominant ideology, ideological presuppositions, both on the side of the writer and on the side of that which the writer discusses and argues for or against, must be visible and consciously expressed.

My argument here is that a great deal of the writing that postures as political writing, and even --implicitly or explicitly-- affiliates itself with Marxist political writing these days is in fact an instance of the extension of the discourse of the infomercial in the arena of political expression. It is, additionally, that, at least when it comes to international writing on Greek politics, this is nowhere more frequent than in writing on SYRIZA, whether as a rising political force, or, since 25 January, as a government partner.

I will here refer to an article that appeared a couple of days ago as a textbook illustration of this argument. The article in question is "Syriza - two months on: where is the hope?" by Kevin Ovenden, as published in Counterfire.

The author begins by posing a rhetorical question that draws upon SYRIZA's electoral slogal ("Hope is on its way") and asks "Is hope even alive?", only to answer immediately with "an unequivocal 'yes'."[1] In the process he repeats a very basic infomercial strategy in SYRIZA's own political discourse: the prominent use of abstract notions, with a positive semantic charge, as substitutes for rational and concretely grounded argumentation. Throughout the period of its rise, SYRIZA turned words like "rupture" [rixi], "hope" [elpida], "red lines" [kokkines grammes] or "solidarity" [allilegyi] into totems, words that were invested with a well-nigh magical power and efficacy in somehow creating a political reality just by being uttered. They could be so invested because they always appeared in isolation from context, just as they do in advertising slogans. SYRIZA's ideologues have deployed "rupture", for instance, in thousands of different instances; but they never bothered to explain either what "rupture" consists in nor from what it is a rupture, nor through what means they expected such a specific "rupture" to become possible. Using phrases like "SYRIZA represents a politics of rupture", they converted the word into an empty signifier on which anyone could project whatever they liked, into a solicitor of individual fantasies and desires, just as a slogan functions in advertising (e.g: "Impossible is nothing" or "Keep walking"). Additionally, this mantra-type deployment of language allowed SYRIZA the ability to change the meaning of all their slogans as they saw fit or to modulate them for different audiences. Recently, for instance, SYRIZA MEP Dimitris Papadimoulis glossed the slogan of "rupture" thus: "Rupture with corruption, solution with Europe" -- a goal no neoliberal would find in principle objectionable, given neoliberalism's own heavy reliance on what Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has lauded (in the context of the 20 February agreement with the EU) as "creative obscurity"-- the generative power of ideological obfuscation, in Marxist parlance, to produce political effects.

Repeating this very characteristic strategy in his own piece, Ovenden then proclaims "hope" to be "alive" without bothering to explain what he means by "hope". "Hope" in what and for what? Instead, he immediately slides into a disclaimer: his is not "facile optimism or self-delusion", he reassures us, though, given the fact that there is absolutely no indication of the content of "hope", judgment on whether it is delusional or falsely optimistic is, in Hegelian terms, "infinite", like judgment on whether the color yellow is "bitter" would be. The grounds of "hope" nominated --"the initiative, courage, struggles and mutual solidarity of the popular masses"-- don't quite resolve the problem: the "popular masses" are not some organic produce of the Greek land; they are politically organized in different and antagonistic camps, with different goals; they are no more characterized by "mutual solidarity" than any human being in the world (Greeks don't have a special "solidarity gene"); their "initiatives" are never simply theirs, whether it is because they respond to NGO funded social media calls or because they respond to a call by their trade union -- they reflect, horror of horrors, successful or less successful initiatives "from above", from organized and planning-conscious decision-making centers. In Ovenden's imagination, on the other hand, politics has reverted to mythical nature: the "popular masses" are a "wellspring" of spontaneous social movements, ex nihilo providers of mobilizational bounty that are magically inexhaustible, because, presumably, Greeks don't have pedantic problems or worries like everyone else, but are somehow committed to ... well, "hope" and "change" as pure emblems of "the good."

It doesn't take long for the infomercial unconscious of this type of writing to erupt on the surface of Ovenden's text explicitly. Here's his political appraisal of the wellspring of political infomercials itself, SYRIZA: "It is worth recalling just how refreshing Syriza's slogan [hope is on its way] was in today's Europe of ironclad consensus between the parties of the centre-right and centre-left over the policies of austerity and neo-liberal capitalism."

Political analysis is here fully equivalent to the appraisal of a slogan; but more impressively, that appraisal comes in the form of another slogan: Syriza's slogan was "refreshing", just as Cool Aid or Gatorade might be (later on, the Greek left is similarly described as "vibrant", with the magical economy of analysis one would expect from the presentation of the effect of Tide detergent on textile colors). What made the slogan "refreshing"? The "ironclad consensus" that dominates "today's Europe". Being out of tune with that consensus, the slogan "refreshes." Who does it "refresh"? What does this "refreshment" amount to in a society with 26% official (approximately 40% real) unemployment, a society where one sees --and I have seen-- people searching in the trash for food? Does the "refreshing" quality of the slogan pay school fees? Pay the electricity bill? Put food on the table? Provide elementary health services for those who can't afford private clinics? It does not, but it remains "refreshing" to Ovenden's ears because these are not Ovenden's problems. His problem is that he wants a "refreshing" word because the "ironclad" consensus is boring and unexciting, and these are qualities fundamentally inimical to, well, advertising.

Throughout the piece, a sensibility trained on commodity language has substituted political thought: what Ovenden notes as objectionable about Schaeuble is that he is "a dull, provincial, tax lawyer." If he were an urbane, exciting hipster, it appears, his policies would look a whole lot more appealing -- a hypothesis that is not at all arbitrary, given the fact that image is the basic reason why Yanis Varoufakis is hailed as a "radical", despite the intensely neoliberal character of his proposals -- see his ingenious idea for a "fat tax" on people who have no money to adopt the 60 euros a meal diet he showcases in his Paris-Match photographs.

Those who have had the courage to continue reading Ovenden's piece may well have had the opportunity to observe that all traditional markers of political analysis --analysis of the distribution of wealth and poverty, of social inequalities, of the causes of this or that conflict or problem-- have been substituted with a language of deracinated, free-floating affect. "Hope", Ovenden tells us, is "interwoven" with "indignation", so that "despair" can be fought against with "righteous anger". Later on, Ovendon heads one of his sections "Manifestation of desire" (as always, affect is hypostatized as autonomous, so it would be banal to ask "desire for what"?), and speaks learnedly on "betrayal" (of what, by who, according to who?) and of "confidence" (in what?) I am aware of the image of Greeks as "passionate" and "emotional" people, but this is going a bit far: society has been converted into a therapy group whose daily routine is organized in terms of some claptrap scheme of moving from one band of an emotional rainbow to another; reason has been eclipsed by affect in ways that are eerily reminiscent of fascist irrationalism; class relations have evaporated into thin air, supplanted by some kind of neo-Aristotelian theory of humors in the body politic. Unsurprisingly, there is not a single reference to "capitalism" in the whole piece; in Ovenden's postmodern universe, the critique of political economy has not yet been invented, so the crisis Greece is not alone in experiencing is described, pace Syriza, as "humanitarian", as if it were the result of an earthquake, a draught, or to stay true to the genuinely retrogressive and irrationalist drive of the "postmodern left", of "locusts", of the sort that God sent against Pharaonic Egypt. Equally unsurprisingly, in this arid landscape of abstraction where the only possible salvation lies in shamans and their trade in magical words, "hope" of the Syriza-Ovendon variety proudly exhibits its vapid inanity as a badge of honor:
As I wrote in January, the election campaign did not bring jubilant crowds or joyously hopeful eruptions at rallies or in spontaneous gatherings. There was a considered optimism. People hoped to hope.
The content of hope is hope; or, to put it otherwise, the hope of which Ovendon speaks has no content. It is pure form, just as it is in advertising. This is not a mark of its degeneration and destitution, but of its "considered" nature, though what exactly a denuded form of affect can have possibly "considered" through rational means remains a mystery. But mystery, which shrouds everything in this piece, is of course an old acquaintance, the calling-card of the commodity form itself as it appears in the bourgeois mind:
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.
The transformation of political analysis into an infomercial is nothing but a sign of the penetration of commodity fetishism into the language of political analysis; in itself, this is no scandal. Political thought never grows in isolation from the relations of production, so it is quite logical that the commodity relation surfaces within writing that pretends to "explain" or analyze political choices. What is a scandal is the self-designation of politics-as-commodity fetishism as "left" or "radical"; and even more so, its reception in the terms of its bombastic self-presentation. Everything that is critical and reflexive in the Marxist tradition has been eradicated without a trace in what pretends to represent it in spirit in such interventions as Ovendon's. Indeed, reading Adam Smith would be vastly more productive and progressive as a gesture: regressing to what was progressive thought in the late 18th century at least allows one the hope --if I can be allowed a single use of the term-- that one may eventually stumble on to Marx. No such hope exists for those succumbing to the infinite retrogression offered in spades by the pundits of the "postmodern Left."

Note
[1] Compare with the virtually identical --and identically inane-- strategy in another Anglophone piece entitled "The SYRIZA Moment: A Skeptical Argument". There, the author poses the issue of SYRIZA's self-designation as a radical left party and then concurs that it is radical ("and radical it is"), on the basis of what SYRIZA cadre member Stathis Kouvelakis says in his Jacobin interview. In other words, the proof that the self-description of a party corresponds to reality...is the self-description of the party in question. Adding insult to injury, this fundamental failure to follow basic procedures of empirical logic presents itself as "a skeptical argument."
Αντωνης at 12:11 AM

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-syriza-infomercial.html?m=1

Speech of Dimitris Koutsouba the Constitution referendum



http://youtu.be/un6QYeFVefY

Yeah, it's all Greek to me too, but look at all those red flags!

We do not choose the anti-people measures of the EU, IMF and government

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/other/kentrikh-2-1.jpg_274333201.jpg

The KKE held on the 2nd of July its central rally before the referendum on the 5th of July.

Dimitris Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE, spoke at the mass rally and stressed amongst other things:

"Our people are being called on to take part in a referendum with a YES or a NO, which are only different in terms of appearance.

Both the YES and the NO mean the acceptance of a new memorandum of anti-people measures, perhaps the worst that we have seen up to now.

Both the YES and NO will lead the people to new torments and tragedies.

Both the YES and the NO mean anti-worker, anti-people measures.

The referendum is an alibi for a new memorandum-agreement at the expense of the Greek people.

The KKE calls on the Greek people to reject all the blackmail, to cast its proposal into the ballot box and say:

WE DO NOT CHOOSE ANTI-PEOPLE MEASURES-WE DO NOT CHOOSE A NEW MEMORANDUM-WE CANCEL OUT THE FALSE DILEMMAS.

WE SAY NO TO THE PROPOSAL OF THE EU-IMF-ECB AND TO ANY COMPROMISE PROPOSAL OF THE GOVERNMENT, BECAUSE THEY WILL ALL BANKRUPT THE PEOPLE.

WE DEMAND DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE PREDATORY ALLIANCE OF THE EU WITH THE PEOPLE TRULY HOLDING THE REINS OF POWER.

The people must cast a ballot paper into the ballot box which can not be misinterpreted. The following ballot must be cast which says : "NO to the proposal of the EU-ECB-IMF. NO to the proposal of the government. Disengagement from the EU, with the people holding the reins of power." Even if they say that it is a spoiled ballot."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N0KnHSWEFE&feature=player_embedded

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/We-do-not-choose-the-anti-people-measures-of-the-EU-IMF-and-government/

Slide show at link.

Greece: Clashes erupt as trade unionists try to storm Federation of Greek Industries
Ruptly TV

Published on Jul 3, 2015
Members of the left-wing trade union group the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) clashed with police outside the Federation of Greek Industries as they tried to storm the building in Athens, Friday. Protesters spray-painted "PAME" on the front of the building and chanted slogans against austerity and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras.


http://youtu.be/QGMJkrkGnPs

What Stinks about Varoufakis and the Whole Greek Mess?

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Something stinks very bad about Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and the entire Greek mess that has been playing out since the election victory of the nominally pro-Greek Syriza Party in January. I am coming to the reluctant conclusion that far from being the champion of the hapless Greek people, Varoufakis is part of a far larger and very dirty game.

The brilliant psychologist Eric Berne, author of the seminal book Games People Play, would likely call the game of Varoufakis and the Troika, “Rapo,” as in the rape of the Greek people and, ultimately of all the EU, Germany included. How do I come to this surprising conclusion?

When the left-right coalition was elected by a Greek population desperate for change from the several years of austerity, pension cuts, health and education cuts demanded by the IMF in order to insure that Greek creditors be repaid their pound of flesh in terms of state debt, I was among many who held out hope that finally a government that stood for the interests of her people was in office in Athens.

What we have witnessed since is what can only be called a clown show, one in which the laugh is on the Greek people and EU citizens as a whole. The ones laughing, as often is so, are the mega banks and Troika–ECB, IMF and EU. Behind the Troika, almost invisible, are the Greek oligarchs who have robbed the state coffers of hundreds of billions over the years, tucking it away in numbered Swiss and Lichtenstein secret bank accounts, avoiding paying a single penny tax to support their nation. And it is looking more and more as though the “leftist” economist, Varoufakis’s role is that of a Trojan Horse for the destruction of the entire Eurozone by the bankers and those Greek oligarchs. Next after Greece Italy looks poised to become victim, and that will put the entire Euro in a crisis that is today unimaginable.

Suspicious friends

A man is known by the company he keeps, so goes the adage. By this measure Yanis Varoufakis keeps very bad company for a finance minister who claims to be defending the living standards of his people. Before becoming Greek Finance Minister in the January coalition government of Alexis Tsipras, Varoufakis spent time in the United States working for the Bellevue Washington video game company, Valve Corporation, whose founders came from Bill Gates’ Microsoft. In the late 1980’s he studied economics and game theory in the UK at University of Essex and East Anglia and taught at Cambridge. Then he spent the next eleven years in Australia teaching and even taking Australian citizenship.

As an Australian citizen Varoufakis returned in 2000 to teach at the University of Athens. Then from January 2013 until his appointment as Finance Minister of Greece, Varoufakis taught at the University of Texas where he became close with James K. Galbraith, son of deceased Harvard economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, also with the Washington establishment think-tank, Brookings Institution. In short Varoufakis is an Australian citizen who has spent most of the past three decades in Britain, USA and Australia and little of that in his native Greece.

That of course per se does not disqualify him at all from being an honest and effective finance minister of his native Greece. But to date he has done more to increase the misery of the Greek people in six short months than almost anyone else, even Wolfgang Schäuble or the IMF’s Christine Lagarde.

He pretends to be against austerity but his record shows the opposite. Varoufakis was the adviser to Prime Minister George Papandreou and PASOK when Papandreou made the disastrous draconian austerity deal with the EU on behalf of Greece so that French and German banks could be bailed out. Varoufakis also has at various times heaped praise on Mario Draghi and the ECB, suggesting solutions for how to keep Greece in the EU, a track that pre-programs Greece for self-destruction under the current Troika regime of austerity.

In Varoufakis’ book on the EU financial crisis titled “A Modest Proposal,” he invited former French Prime Minister Michael Rocard to write the forward. Rocard has called for the EU to appoint a European “strongman”–read dictator–and Rocard’s choice is European Parliament president Martin Schulz, the very same man who warned the new SYRIZA government to abide by the austerity agreements concluded by the past PASOK and conservative governments. Varoufakis has repeatedly argued that Greece must “grin and bear” the measures imposed on it by the bankers and the German government as a member of the Eurozone. He has insisted that a Greek Euro exit is not going to take place.

With official Greek unemployment over 30% of the workforce and economic losses because of Troika-imposed budget austerity the government’s tax-revenue shortfall in January alone was 23% below its €4.5bn target for the month. The government in Athens has levied crippling taxes on the middle class and made sharp cuts to government salaries, pensions, and health-care coverage. While ordinary citizens suffer under the weight of austerity, now Banks are closed at least until the July 5 referendum on more austerity. Greece is a human catastrophe.

Strange acts

Were Varoufakis the man he pretends to be before his Greek countrymen, he would have set forth a strategy of Greek exit from the Euro and a strategy akin to that of Iceland to declare a debt moratorium, freeze all debt repayments to the Troika–IMF, ECB and EU. Then he would put Greece on a national currency, impose capital controls and seek strong economic ties with Russia, China and the BRICS countries.

Indeed, when Greek Prime Minister Tsipras was in St. Petersburg in mid-June to meet with Russian President Putin, Putin extended a very generous offer of prepayment of $5 billion towards the Greek participation in the Turkish Stream Gazprom pipeline.

That would have given Greece breathing room to service debt repayments to the IMF. Brussels and Washington of course were not at all happy with that. Putin then offered Greece membership in the new BRICS development bank which would allow Greece to borrow to get out of the worst of the crisis without more savage austerity. That of course would bring Greece closer to Russia and also to China, something Washington and Brussels oppose with all their might. But rather than accept, Greece and Varoufakis walked away from a solution that would have avoided catastrophe as it is now unfolding.

At this point it indeed looks as if Varoufakis’ role has been to act as the Western bankers’ Trojan Horse inside the Greek government, to prepare Greece and the Greek people for the slaughter, all the while posing as the tire-less fighter for Greek interests, all without a neck tie, of course.

As the former US Assistant Treasury and critic of the US foreign economic policies of recent years, Paul Craig Roberts recently described it, “Greece’s creditors, the EU and the European Central Bank…are determined to establish the principle that they can over-lend to a country and force the country to pay by selling public assets and cutting pensions and social services of citizens. The creditor banks then profit by financing the privatization of public assets to favored customers.The agenda of the EU and the central bank is to terminate the fiscal independence of EU member states by turning tax and budget policy over to the EU itself.”

Roberts goes on to state that the Greek “sovereign debt crisis” is being used to create a precedent that will apply to every EU member government. The member states will cease to exist as sovereign states. Sovereignty will rest in the EU. The measures that Germany and France are supporting will in the end terminate their own sovereignty. “

How did Greece and the European Union’s Eurozone countries get in such a crisis? The energy that vibrates through all of Europe right now is not of love for fellow human beings, but of hate. There is hate from the Germans against what they are convinced are lazy and tax-cheating ordinary Greeks. They have been fed that image by controlled mainstream media itself in turn controlled by the American oligarchs and their think-tanks. There is hate from the EU Commission and the EU leadership against Greece for creating what they see as the existential crisis of the EU. There is hate from German Chancellor Merkel for ruining her legacy, perhaps.

Above all, there is hate towards the Greek people from their own Greek oligarchs. The Greek oligarchy—shipping magnates, oil refinery owners, telecoms owners, media magnates, billionaires many times over—since the early 1990s, has dominated Greek politics. Greeks call them “diaplekomenoi”–the entangled ones. These elites have preserved their positions through control of the media and through old-fashioned favoritism, buying politicians like Yanis Varoufakis.

The Greek oligarchs, with their untaxed billions hidden in foreign bank accounts, are willing to see their own nation destroyed to hold on to their billions. That’s real hate. Those oligarchs are deeply ashamed of being Greek. That shame likely goes way way back, perhaps some 700 years, to the defeat and subjugation of Greece by the Ottoman Empire beginning in the 1360s. Maybe it’s time to move on from such childish feelings of hate.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/07/03/what-stinks-about-varoufakis-and-the-whole-greek-mess/

http://journal-neo.org/2015/07/03/what-stinks-about-varoufakis-and-the-whole-greek-mess/

Norman Markowitz weighs in... from his column:


The usual "super-patriotic" suspects among the rich, and their hangers on among the doctoring and lawyering classes are desperately trying to leave their country with their money. Faux critics of austerity, like the ones that threw the big party that got the country into its current mess say "yes". The outright fascists -- called Golden Dawn -- say "no". Unlike Syriza, and most Greeks, they do want to leave the EU, and the Euro, return to a near worthless drachma, and abolish democracy and unions under the pretext of terrorizing immigrants. The Greek Communist Party, a declining but still significant force in Greek politics says neither yes nor no! Maybe that means "don't vote". Even from afar, that seems like a feet-planted-in-mid-air position, or maybe head-up-your-behind position.

Bolding added.

So then, pro Euro, EU, NATO. Atta boy Norm, perhaps for your next trick you'll justify US using Nazis 'against Russian aggression'.

On the result of the referendum: Hundreds of thousands of people supported the proposal of the KKE

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On the 5th of July 2015, a referendum was held in Greece. The question posed was whether the citizens agreed or not with the proposed agreement, tabled by the EU-IMF-ECB, that will continue the anti-people measures worth 8 billion euros.

The governmental majority of SYRIZA-ANEL rejected the proposal of the KKE for the government’s draft agreement to also be placed before the judgment of the Greek people in the referendum together with the issue of abolishing all the anti-people laws that have been passed in recent years and the issue of disengaging from the EU. At the same time, the coalition government explained that the NO in the referendum is interpreted by the government as approval for its own proposed agreement with the EU-IMF-ECB, which inside 47+8 pages also includes harsh antiworker-antipeople measures, worth about 8 billion euros.

In these conditions, the KKE called on the workers to turn their backs on the false dilemma which was being posed in the referendum, using all appropriate means. The forces of the KKE outside the election centres handed out its own ballot paper to the voters which said:

•NO TO THE PROPOSAL OF THE EU-IMF-ECB
•NO TO THE PROPOSAL OF THE GOVERNMENT
•DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE EU, WITH THE PEOPLE IN POWER
Of course, it was understood that this ballot paper would be counted as a spoiled ballot, but together with the blank ballot papers and the abstention it constitutes a political current that disputes the choices of the SYRIZA-ANEL government and also of the imperialist organizations, with whom the government is negotiating for the needs of capital in Greece.

It should be noted that together with the parties of the coalition government (SYRIZA-ANEL) fascist Golden Dawn also took a position in favour of the NO,, as well as other small nationalist and ultra-left groups, like ANTARSYA.

On the other side, the rightwing opposition ND, social-democratic PASOK that governed until January 2015, together with POTAMI, KIDHSO (the party of the former Prime Minister G. Papandreou) and other smaller bourgeois political forces took a position in favour of a YES which they stated would be interpreted as being consent to “staying in the EU at all costs”.


The final results were the following:

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In his first statements after the announcement of the result, D. Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE saluted the thousands of people who responded to the call of the KKE and did not submit to the blackmailing dilemmas i.e. those that cast the ballot proposed by the KKE into the ballot box, a proposal which the government refused to put to the vote in the Parliament, depriving the people of the right to cast it in a mass way into the ballot box.

He noted that in relation to the dubious question of the snap referendum, a section of the people was able to overcome the entrapment and deception and gave a first response, with the spoiled ballot, and also with the blank ballot, while some chose abstention from this process.

The GS addressed himself in particular to those who chose NO, believing that in this way they could stop austerity, that they can answer the anti-people measures and memoranda in this way. He called on them not to be complacent and not to consent to the government’s effort to transform this NO into a YES to new anti-people agreements. He stressed that the KKE extends its hand to them for the struggles against the deterioration of their lives that will begin the day after the referendum.

The KKE issued a similar militant call to those who chose YES under pressure from the big employers, due to fear about closed banks and fear of the consequences for their salaries, pensions and small savings.

The KKE notes that the negotiations promised by Mr Tsipras, based on his proposal, will inevitably lead to a new worse memorandum.

The situation highlights the necessity of the movement and our people adopting the proposal of the KKE for a pro-people way out of the crisis in a mass and determined way. The KKE will be in the frontline of all the struggles of our people in the following period, strengthening, from tomorrow, the anti-monopoly anti-capitalist line of struggle, the rallying around the KKE.

06.07.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/On-the-result-of-the-referendum-Hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-supported-the-proposal-of-the-KKE/

Στενή Αυτοάμυνα ‏@Obscureobjet 1h1 hour ago
This is a political love letter. Please read if you have the kindness now Greek situation is getting clearer.
http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/02/not-understanding-kke.html …


(Not) Understanding the KKE

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Inescapably, the political developments in Greece have led to an increasing amount of debate on the stance of the Communist Party of Greece, its positions on a number of the key issues, and, probably, to an amount of curiosity as to its nature.

There is of course the formal response to well-intentioned queries, the detailed analysis of the main issues through the party press or through glosses. From my perspective, however, something is lost in translation. You may convey how KKE sees this or that issue, but not what it is to see through its eyes, what silent premises its vision contains.

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
1924 ΚΚΕ 1974 ΠΑΣΟΚ 1993 2004 2010 2012
(1918 ΣΕΚΕ) 1974 ΝΔ Χ.Α. ΣΥΡΙΖΑ ΔΗΜΑΡ/Α.Ε

This graph shows the evolution of the composition of the Greek parliament in 2012. KKE was founded as Socialist Workers Party of Greece in 1918 and changed its name to KKE in 1924, when it adopted the principles of the Leninist Third International. Between 1924 and the foundation of the next oldest parties, ND and PASOK, 50 years elapse. The fascist party, Golden Dawn, was founded in the early years after the counter-revolution in the former Soviet block, SYRIZA in 2004, the Independent Greeks in 2012. DIMAR is no longer in the Parliament, but its replacement, "Potami", was founded in 2014. It's clear we are really speaking about two worlds here, two versions of what the "twentieth century" is really all about.

"The party", I wrote once, "comes from the other side of the century, the side from which the wind of history blows. ... As it is the harbinger of the century's other side, it is impossible to understand in a world that has lost all comprehension of the indivisible division of the One that persists within pure multiplicity." I was referring to Democritian Physics, for which the foundation of being is atomic, which is to say both multiple (there are many atoms) and indivisible (the atom is that which cannot be divided, literally, but it is simultaneously the product of division, that which you are left with after all division has been exhausted). From our side of the century (the counter-revolutionary side), I added, the political world is either Heraclitian, that is, hostile to the One of indivisible division (the atom) or Aristotelian, that is, falsely accommodating to the scandalous paradox that such a One is.

So no, it's not easy to translate how the world, the contemporary political world of so called "pluralist democracy", looks from the standpoint of such a One.

So I will tell a story, instead.

On September 16 2013, KKE news portal 902.gr published the video of a man I did not know and had never heard of, by the name of Minas Sfyridakis, who visited the Communist Youth Festival in my hometown, in order to deliver to the hands of the current General Secretary the little stamp in the picture of this post: it is a stamp that simply says: "KKE" and "NO." In the video, Mr. Sfyridakis, who looks quite ill and appears to be sitting on a wheelchair, explains that this is a stamp with which he created hundreds of mini-posters against the pseudo-referendum of the Greek military dictatorship, back in 1973. So this stamp was in his ward for 40 years, before he handed it back to the party.

In this brief video, Mr. Sfyridakis also explains that after creating and using the stamp for the purposes of the party's resistance task he buried it until the day of the video, when he unburied it to return it to the party. The journalist then asks him "so where had you buried it all these years?" Mr. Sfyridakis answers: "It's an adventure. We'll talk about it some other time. Many were looking for it."


http://youtu.be/Rx2WVo4PNrM

At the end of the video, he is asked how he feels seeing all the young people around him; he responds with one single word, and with a look on his face that haunts me: "Indescribably." The party press added no further explanations or details to what is said in the video, or concerning the man himself.

Mr. Sfyridakis, then, the party video revealed, was the silent guardian of a "No" for 40 years; he kept, so to speak, a "No" with which the party had responded to a specific historical dilemma, and kept it buried in a place which he refused to reveal to anyone, including the party, to which he returned this "No" on the specific occasion.

Two months later, on November 17 2013, the day of the Polytechnic uprising against the military dictatorship, the same party portal published this item of news via the Popular Committee of Polychni, Salonica:
Minas Sfyridakis passed on
Late last night, on November 16, Minas Sfyridakis, former Chair of the Photographers Union, member of the Popular Committee of Polychni and KKE supporter [note: not member] till the end, lost his battle of many months against cancer.

He was a restless spirit, and did not cease, until the last days of his life, to study the classics and to show interest in political developments and party activity. The Communist Base Organization of Polychni would like to thank those who stood by his side in this last stage of his tribulations, particularly the women comrades who took care of him till the end, not sparing time and labor.
It must be noted that though he was 67 years old, and worked as a self-employed worker for 20 years (he had 3500 National Social Security stamps), Minas Sfyridakis did not get any pension.
One of the last memories of Minas was in the last Communist Youth Festival, when he delivered a party stamp from the era of the anti-dictatorship struggle to the General Secretary of KKE.
Inevitably, I realized a number of things not quite said: that Mr. Sfyridakis unburied his "No" from his secret hiding place because he knew he was going to die. And the party's laconic announcement implies that he must have lost party membership for whatever reason at some point in the past, since it's unlikely the stamp would have been entrusted to a non-member in the first place; but it remains silent, imitating Mr. Sfyridakis own silence, on the particulars of this question.

This is a story about a relationship, and about time, political commitment, life, death and comradeship. And memory. And it's a story with many gaps and things unspoken and unexplained. To me no less than to you. I have heard many other such stories in the course of my life: elliptical, conspiratorial stories that all revolve around silence and mutual protection in one way or another; they speak of a fidelity that has nothing theological about it, one that is fragile under the pressure of history, undergoes trials and tribulations, crises; and yet persists, in speech and silence, in commission and omission.

Truth withdraws, philosophers used to say. Working-class truth, especially. And no matter how much I or others try to explain "why we said no" --this is what journalists want to find out today, what they care about-- part of it will continue to manifest itself as a withdrawal, a "No" zealously cared for and looked after, like a cherished child. Is it a secret that a very determinate "yes" (to struggle, to revolution, to a different society) is its fundamental precondition?
Posted by Αντωνης at 9:14 AM

Greece Referendum: Syriza Didn’t Get The Message

By Michael Nevradakis, 99GetSmart
Reporting from Athens

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It was November 2011 when I had the opportunity to meet Yanis Varoufakis in person, for the first and so far only time. Upon the invitation of his close friend and promoter James Galbraith, Varoufakis was visiting the University of Texas, where I was studying, to give a talk about the future of the Eurozone and to present his new book. As the host of what was then a locally-produced Greek radio program (Austin Hellenic Radio), I attended Varoufakis’ talk in order to try to get an interview with him on site. And indeed, I did. “Be quick though, eight other media outlets are waiting to speak with me,” Varoufakis told me.

This quote made an impression on me, but is quite indicative of Varoufakis’ personality. His “rock star” status in the world of “anti-austerity” economics was already beginning to be solidified. That same period, Varoufakis made appearances on CBS’ 60 Minutes, on NPR, and on a number of other media outlets across the world. One year later, Varoufakis would be back at the University of Texas, apparently on Galbraith’s invitation, as a visiting scholar. His annual salary of $100,000 (which can be seen through publicly-available records, as the University of Texas is a state university), was more than what many tenured professors earn at the same university. But despite his burgeoning celebrity status, little did I imagine that just a few years later, he would become the finance minister of a Greece which was even deeper in crisis.

Flash forward to Sunday night: the resounding “no” vote in Greece’s dubious referendum on whether or not to accept the already-rescinded proposals of the institutions formerly known as the troika was now official. For many in Greece and also in the global left, which continues to amaze with just how unaware of reality it really is, this “no” vote was the beginning of a new chapter for Greece, a victory for anti-austerity forces led by the darlings of the global left, SYRIZA, with prime minister Alexis Tsipras and finance minister Varoufakis at the helm. Yet, it did not take long for that bubble to burst—for those who were paying attention. Soon after the “no” result became official, Varoufakis tweeted that Greece’s place is firmly within the Eurozone, adding that he would not permit the alternative, a “parallel currency,” to be instituted. No word, of course, about the true alternative which has always been on the table: a return to a national currency. Varoufakis then described the “no” vote as a “majestic, big YES to a democratic, rational Europe,” Tsipras then followed this up with a similar tweet of his own, stating that the voters of Greece responded to the true question at hand in the referendum by stating that they want a Europe “of solidarity and democracy.” Surely that was the exact thing grandma, grandpa, and the unemployed were thinking while filling out their ballot.

The “no” vote led to celebrations in Syntagma Square and throughout Greece despite the deep divisions which exist within Greek society and which remained apparent in the lead-up to the referendum and in the results. Just one day later though, Varoufakis did what he does best: grabbed the headlines, announcing (via Twitter) that he was resigning as finance minister. The timing, while seemingly peculiar to some, couldn’t be better: Varoufakis is exiting the government as a hero, a “leftist” and “anti-austerity” darling who surely has a bright future to look forward to on the lecture circuit, as an author and analyst, and perhaps even with a corner office waiting for him somewhere in Washington or Brussels.

Varoufakis is escaping at just the right time, as a few hours later on Monday, Tsipras was given the “green light” by the leaders of all of the political parties represented in the Greek parliament, sans the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), to come to an agreement with the “institutions.” Tsipras and other SYRIZA officials have, again, stated their repeated intention to keep Greece within the Eurozone. Tsipras and others, including Varoufakis, have never acknowledged the findings of their own government’s “debt truth commission,” which found that most of Greece’s public debt is illegal and odious and the repayment of which would be a violation of the Greek people’s human rights. Tsipras, instead, has stated his intention to follow the recommendations of the “good cop” (the IMF) in merely requesting a “debt haircut” of 30% and a 20-year “grace period.” Following Varoufakis’ resignation, Tsipras was said to be considering a broader cabinet shake-up which would include more “centrist” elements that would then continue negotiations with the creditors.

In case it is still unclear, the writing on the wall is as follows: Tsipras and his government are going hard for a new agreement that will not be popular, and which will not be much different from the proposals which Greek voters said “no” to. A new agreement perhaps not markedly different from the 47-page proposal submitted by SYRIZA prior to the referendum being called, which included the implementation of a primary budget surplus of almost 1% beginning this year (even though Greece is currently in deficit and would therefore need to cut its way back to a surplus), dozens of privatizations in a program that would continue well past 2020, making permanent many previously “temporary” taxes which SYRIZA had declared unconstitutional prior to the elections, and pledges to honor Greece’s debt commitments. And this time around, whatever the proposal is, either on the part of the government or the “institutions,” the Greek people won’t be given the option to say “yay” or “nay.” Notably, with the “vote of support” Tsipras received today, he has the backing of the same pro-austerity political forces—New Democracy, PASOK, To Potami, and the far-right Golden Dawn—which, until yesterday, were urging the Greek public to vote “yes.”

Varoufakis, in other words, is escaping the oncoming train wreck, and with good reason. But does that make him a hero? Anything but. Varoufakis is a master of rhetoric and doublespeak, a man who knows exactly how to tailor his message for the audience he is addressing, saying one thing to his “partners” in the IMF and in Brussels, and something different to the Greek people shaking his hand and patting him on the back on the street in Athens. Despite his carefully-crafted public image, however, there is much evidence which belies Varoufakis’ true intentions:

Soon after assuming the post of finance minister, Varoufakis proposed towards his partners in the Eurogroup the continuation of 70 percent of the previously-existing (and illegal) austerity measures, enacted by the unelected government of technocrat Loukas Papademos in February 2012 amidst tremendous popular protest and police violence.

When even the continuation of almost three-fourths of the austerity measures proved to be insufficient for the troika, Varoufakis capitulated, agreeing to continue all of the existing agreements “temporarily” (for an additional four months). He then returned to Greece and told the Greek people that this agreement consisted of “creative ambiguity.”

In an interview with the Associated Press in early March, Varoufakis flatly stated that he would “squeeze blood from a stone” to repay the IMF, which holds views that he “personally agrees with.”

Varoufakis ended up being true to his word: in late April, the Greek government issued a presidential decree (a practice which it had pledged prior to the elections that it would not continue) to essentially confiscate all remaining funds in the Greek Treasury, including pension, health, and education funds. These funds were then used to make the IMF May loan repayment.

In May, Varoufakis, along with economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis and then-lead negotiator Euclid Tsakalotos (who is now Varoufakis’ replacement as Finance Minister) hand-picked former World Bank employee Elena Panaritis as Greece’s new representative to the IMF. Panaritis’ impressive CV boasts of her accomplishments in pushing forth hundreds of privatizations in Peru and other Latin American countries, while she is perhaps best known for her role in promoting policies which became known as “Fujishock,” named after the now-jailed (on charges of murder and human rights violations) ex-president of Peru Alberto Fujimori. Panaritis is a former MP with PASOK, who has stated that she is “American, not Greek, and who voted in favor of the memorandum (austerity) agreements. Due to popular outcry, including from voices within SYRIZA, Panaritis eventually withdrew from her new post as IMF representative.

Prior to the July 5 referendum, Varoufakis kept stating his intention to “restructure” Greece’s debt, even though his government’s own “debt truth commission” found that the debt is illegal and odious. Varoufakis has not acknowledged this finding, talking only of a “restructuring.”

Varoufakis flat-out lied, in a radio interview on ABC Australia, claiming that Greece could not print drachmas even if it wanted to, that they were destroyed in the year 2000, the year before Greece joined the Eurozone. In actually, Greece joined in 2002, and to this day maintains an ultra-modern banknote printing facility in the Athens suburb of Holargos, one of six such facilities in the Eurozone, which is used to print 10 euro notes, and occasionally other denominations. Even if Greece did not have such a facility though, it could follow the example of dozens of other countries and simply outsource its banknote printing to outside firms, based in Switzerland and elsewhere.

Varoufakis, prior to the January elections, had his new book presented at the Athens Music Hall by television talking head Mbambis Papadimitriou of Sky TV. Papadimitriou is perhaps best known for stating his views that the previous New Democracy government should not discount a future governing coalition with a “serious” Golden Dawn, while Sky TV, in a sea of pro-austerity media outlets, waved the “yes” flag higher than most, providing exactly zero minutes and zero seconds of televised coverage of the demonstrations in favor of voting “no.”

Varoufakis, early in his tenure as Finance Minister, spoke of the need for the Greek people to lead an “austere existence.” He and his wife Danae Stratou then posed for a remarkably obnoxious photo shoot at their Athens penthouse, with a view of the Acropolis, for gossip magazine Paris Match.

Varoufakis has repeatedly repeated mythology about the crisis and the Greek people which is untrue: that “hard-working” European taxpayers are supporting Greece (when in fact, their money is being loaned, profitably, to Greece), while referencing the myth that Greece has the highest percentage of Porsche Cayenne ownership in the world, a claim which has been debunked but which remains remarkably persistent to this day.

Varoufakis has stated that his homeland is Europe, not Greece, and that he would like to see the formation of a “United States of Europe.”

Varoufakis has repeatedly claimed, falsely, that no country has ever not repaid the IMF. He has also stated that he prefers a “European solution” to Greece’s crisis, instead of following the example of countries such as Argentina.

As pointed out by analyst Wayne Madsen, Varoufakis has also been employed as an “economist-in-residence” for the Valve Corporation, closely linked to Microsoft and Bill Gates. He served for six years as an economic adviser to former Greek prime minister George Papandreou, who later dragged Greece under troika supervision after first ensuring that Greece’s debt and deficit figures were falsified (worsened) in order to provide the economic and political impetus for Greece to be dragged under troika oversight. The foreword to one of Varoufakis’ books, “A Modest Proposal,” was written by former French prime minister Michae Rocard, who has called for current European Parliament president Martin Schulz to be apppinted as European “strongman” and who has repeatedly warned SYRIZA to abide by the current austerity agreements.

It is clear that Varoufakis is not a hero or a man of integrity. If anyone is heroic, it is the majority of Greek voters, who in the face of an unprecedented media and political terror campaign, voted “no” to the European creditors’ proposals, even if the referendum itself is dubious in nature. Despite this though, Varoufakis and SYRIZA are receiving heroic treatment, proving once again how easily people are swayed and how easily they are satisfied by words, instead of by concrete actions. Greek voters may have courageously voted “no” to the proposals of the troika, but the ball remains in their court: will they keep up their resistance, or will they accept a SYRIZA capitulation and continue giving a hero’s welcome to a government which has sold them out?

http://99getsmart.com/greece-referendum-syriza-didnt-get-the-message/

The KKE is opposed to the anti-people consensus of the bourgeois parties

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/sygkentrosi_tou_kke_sto_syntagma_1.jpg_205347674.jpg

The council of the political leaders was held in the presidential palace a day after the referendum of the 5th of July, chaired by the President of the Republic P. Pavlopoulos. The Prime Minister and President of SYRIZA A. Tsipras, the acting President of ND E. Meimarakis, the President of POTAMI S. Theodorakis, the GS of the CC of the KKE D. Koutsoumpas, the President of ANEL P. Kammenos and the President of PASOK F. Gennimata attended the 7-hour meting.

During the meeting the parties of SYRIZA, ANEL, ND, POTAMI, PASOK came to an agreement and indeed signed a joint statement, interpreting the result of the referendum as acceptance of the euro and the EU and paving the way for an anti-people agreement.

The GS of the CC of the KKE, D. Koutsoumpas, expressed his complete disagreement with the joint statement.

The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, made the following statement after yesterday’s meeting of the political leaders chaired by the President of the Republic:

“We listened to the briefing of the Prime Minister in the meeting chaired by the President of the Republic concerning the course of the continuing negotiations and discussions, after the referendum of the Greek people.

We clearly expressed on our part, once again, the views of the KKE regarding the assessment of the referendum result and chiefly as regards the enormous problems being experienced by the Greek people inside the predatory alliance of the EU, which has a political line that continually increases the impasses for the people, the people’s income, the course of the country and the course of our people as a whole. It has been demonstrated, once again, that there can be no pro-people pro-worker negotiations inside the walls of the EU, inside the capitalist development path.


The KKE disagreed as a whole with the joint statement, which the rest of the political leaders and political parties agreed to. Our disagreement is related to how we understand the verdict of the Greek people yesterday and chiefly to our assessment of the course and tactics for the negotiations that the government is proposing and that the other parties accept, at least as regards its general framework and direction.

No one has authorized anybody to go and sign new memoranda, new painful measures for our people. And these measures will be harsh.”

In response to the question of a journalist as to whether he is talking about a “solution outside the euro”, D. Koutsoumpas stressed the following:

“No. We made the following issue clear, that this political line can go in two directions: either they will sign, as it seems and is being scheduled – we will see in the days to follow- a painful agreement, with harsh anti-people measures, a new memorandum, or we will have a state bankruptcy, with a grexit, with a departure from the euro or a double currency or something else. We hear about this mainly from the “partners”, the political parties did not say this at the council of the political leaders. The “partners” talk about this. So our people must be prepared. The position of the KKE is that both these possible outcomes, i.e. an agreement with a memorandum and harsh measures or a grexit or something else will be at the expense of the Greek people.

The rupture with the EU, capital and their power has as its precondition a totally different strategy, workers’-people’s power, that the people are truly in power and socialize the means of production, disengage from the EU and unilaterally cancel the debt. This is the comprehensive and totally different proposal of the KKE and has no relation to the various views that will lead to the new pauperization of our people. And I mean views that exist in other parties, as a minority at the moment, as they are in the governing party, that talk about exit only from the currency.”

07.07.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-KKE-is-opposed-to-the-anti-people-consensus-of-the-bourgeois-parties/

Thanasis Pafilis (KKE), Intervention in Parliament discussion on "fast track" proposal approval

History repeats itself, not as farce, but as tragedy. You are bringing a new Memorandum, like the ones before you. You are using the same, no, a worse procedure than the ones before you. Do you expect the Communist Party to agree with this? We don't agree with the fast track procedure. And we are not going to take the trouble to call it a coup, as you had done habitually all the previous years, and, from what I gather, ND and PASOK will start doing now. We don't simply denounce the new Memorandum; we call on the people to resist now, immediately, by organizing its struggle. As for the rest, for the procedural issues, you can have your way. We know, anyway, that all your parties support each other. Spare us your political games. The license for what Tsipras did has been given by all parliamentary political parties except KKE; so the rest is just smoke and mirrors. Both regarding SYRIZA and the other parties' demeanor. Thank you.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sn0qdv?new_post=true

Thanasis Pafilis (KKE), Intervention in Parliament discussion on "fast track" proposal approval

History repeats itself, not as farce, but as tragedy. You are bringing a new Memorandum, like the ones before you. You are using the same, no, a worse procedure than the ones before you. Do you expect the Communist Party to agree with this? We don't agree with the fast track procedure. And we are not going to take the trouble to call it a coup, as you had done habitually all the previous years, and, from what I gather, ND and PASOK will start doing now. We don't simply denounce the new Memorandum; we call on the people to resist now, immediately, by organizing its struggle. As for the rest, for the procedural issues, you can have your way. We know, anyway, that all your parties support each other. Spare us your political games. The license for what Tsipras did has been given by all parliamentary political parties except KKE; so the rest is just smoke and mirrors. Both regarding SYRIZA and the other parties' demeanor. Thank you.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sn0qdv?new_post=true

God, I love the KKE.

Live: 'No" rally in Athens

Started on Jul 10, 2015
The Communist party has called their first anti-austerity rally on Syntagma Square in Athens since Greek voters rejected a deal with international creditors in a referendum on July 5.


http://youtu.be/YEVLsm7GUQ0

No to the new “leftwing” memorandum


http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/pame-kinhtopoihsh-enantia-sto-neo-mnhmonio-46-1.jpg_1302204135.jpg


The government of “leftwing” SYRIZA and nationalist ANEL, with the support of the rightwing ND, the social-democratic PASOK (who governed together until January 2015), the centre party POTAMI, is thrusting new unbearable anti-people burdens onto the working class and other popular strata.



On the night of the 10th of July, it placed before the full plenum of the parliament the question of “authorizing” the government to negotiate a new, 3rd memorandum of anti-people measures, posing the following dilemma: the continuation of the anti-people political line or the country’s bankruptcy and an exit from the eurozone.



The Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras defended his memorandum, the Tsipras-memorandum, arguing in essence that the anti-people measures are being taken n order to regain the confidence of the investors and markets.



At 5 in the morning 251 MPs votes for the government’s proposal, while the entire Parliamentary Group of the KKE voted against it. As a whole there were 32 against, 8 who voted “present” and 9 who were absent.



These developments, which reveal once again the true face of the “left-patriotic” government of SYRIZA-ANEL, also expose the unacceptable stance of various forces abroad in recent months, which supported the government, including some communist and workers’ parties, allegedly in the name of “solidarity with Greece”.



Speaking in the full plenum of the Parliament, during the discussion regarding the provision of “authorization” for the government to agree to the new, 3rd memorandum, the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, addressing the government stressed: “You were always supporters of political amorality, opportunism, which literally and without its deeper theoretical dimension simply means being opportunistic and adventurist.



Just 10 days ago, in this very hall, during the discussion of the proposal for the referendum, the KKE clearly pointed out to you that you were calling on the people to take part in a referendum with a “yes” or “no” that only had superficial differences, as both the “yes” and the “no” meant the acceptance of a new memorandum, perhaps worse than those we have already seen.



.You adjusted the “no” of the people to a “yes” for the new memorandum.



Something that was confirmed the very day after the referendum, when the rest of the political parties, those that supported a “yes” and those that supported a “no” agreed to a new memorandum which will be even harsher.



We were certain from the beginning that this would happen.



Not because we are soothsayers, but because your strategy, but because your programme, your position towards the EU, eurozone and the capitalist unions in general, your position regarding the development path and system that you want to serve, inevitably lead to you to struggle at the side of the EU, ECB, IMF, big capital, the monopoly groups, over how the division of the spoils will be conducted, how you will serve their profitability, how in the end you will reduce the people’s income, how you will economically reduce the price of labour power, how you will suck the people dry, so that the parasites of the system will prosper.”



The GS of the CC of the KKE, in reference of the government’s dilemma “anti-people agreement, i.e. memorandum, or Grexit” stressed that: “The 3rd memorandum will also mean the real bankruptcy of the people. Of course in a somewhat more organized way. We will have barbaric anti-people measures. With the Grexit we will see a rapid pauperization, the people’s bankruptcy together with state bankruptcy, without a way out, still trapped inside the walls of the EU, inside the same old capitalist development path.



This is why all the other parties bear historic responsibilities, especially SYRIZA which is in government today and was trusted by the people.



A real way out from the crisis and development in favour of the workers’-people’s interests require the organization of the people, their full preparation, honest talk, clear programmes and positions so that the people themselves decide to take power and to organize the economy and new society, outside and far away from the imperialist unions, with central planning, with social ownership of the wealth produced by the working class and our people.



All the other options are the failed experiments in social-democratic management, allegedly leftwing governments that manage the system, inside the framework of capitalism, and which after spreading fleeting hopes and false expectations lead the people to great disillusionment, the labour movement to retreat and strengthen conservative and even extremely reactionary trends among the popular forces.”





In reference to the entanglement of the “Greek issue” in the inter-imperialist contradictions, D. Koutsoumpas noted that: “You often present the “cruel” Schauble as the only opponent, Schauble who represents an important section of German capital, and that the friends of Greece from time to time are the USA and the IMF, and now France, focusing on the issue of the restructuring of the state debt.



Neither US or French or German capital are the friends of the people. They all demand the slaughter of the people’s rights and income. The competition between them is being conducted on the terrain of the capitalist crisis and the deep unevenness that permeates the hard core of the Eurozone. The USA and Germany are competing for hegemony in Europe. The IMF, France and Germany over the future of the eurozone. Sections of domestic capital, industrialists, banking and shipping groups are involved in this confrontation.



As long as we are involved in this dangerous web of contradictions all the alternatives will be a nightmare for the people: either the anti-people agreement/memorandum or a state default or a Grexit or even a possible war in the wider region.”

The GS underlined the following as regards the future developments:

“Despite the temporary compromise the tendency for the expulsion of countries remains strong. This does not concern merely Greece but all indebted countries and even those which are candidates to join the euro.

The people must not choose between their bankruptcy under the Euro or a bankruptcy under the Drachma.

A decisive solution in favour of the people requires a true rupture that has nothing to do with the fake rupture that certain forces within SYRIZA invoke when they defend the exit of Greece solely from the Eurozone.

Those who claim –including forces of SYRIZA, as well as other nationalist, reactionary forces from another standpoint– that the exit of Greece from the Eurozone, with a depreciated currency, will give impetus to competitiveness and growth and will have positive consequences for the people, are deliberately deceiving the people.

The prospect of Greece as a capitalist country with a national currency does not constitute any rupture in favour of the people. Those political forces that promote this goal as a solution or an intermediate goal for radical changes (such as the “Left Platform of SYRIZA, ANTARSYA as well as other ultra right, fascist forces in Europe) are actually playing the game of certain sections of capital.

So we will not choose whether we will go bankrupt under the Euro or the drachma, under an internal or external devaluation.

For this reason we do not choose between a memorandum and a Grexit.

Because there is an alternative solution if the people struggle for a rupture with the EU, capital and their power.

For example, we can abolish the EU commitments which have caused stagnation in domestic production, from sugar and meat to shipbuilding and many other sectors.

We can utilize the contradictions between the imperialist centres and achieve international agreements of mutual benefit for Greece under people’s power, which will be disengaged from the EU and NATO.

We can pave the way for the satisfaction of the people’s needs if we proceed to the socialization of monopolies, the means of production with scientific nationwide planning of economy”.

Finally, D. Koutsoumpas noted that the KKE called on the working people to organize their counterattack in the streets and the workplaces against the new destructive measures.

In the afternoon of the same day (Friday 10th July) PAME organized mass rallies in Athens and other major cities throughout the country against the 3rd (“leftwing”) memorandum of anti-people measures. The demonstrations were joined by trade unions, People’s Committees, Women’s Associations and Groups, mass organizations and Struggle Committees of self-employed and craftsmen as well as students i.e. by those who are being attacked by the measures of the coalition government. All of them declared: “enough! There is another path in favour of the people”.

D. Koutsoumpas who participated in the mass rally of PAME in Athens stated: “we cannot waste any more time. The working people must organize their struggle, promote their demands and organize the people’s alliance”.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/No-to-the-new-leftwing-memorandum/

Slide show at link.

http://www.telesurtv.net/__export/1436792460554/sites/telesur/img/multimedia/2015/07/13/greekflagprotest.jpg_1718483346.jpg
The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie By: John Pilger Previous Next Published 13 July 2015 (6 hours 12 minutes ago) 0+ We Recommend A radical government would have stopped every euro leaving the country, repudiated the “illegal and odious” debt and expedited a plan to leave the crippling Eurozone. ​An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a “bailout” that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut at least 13 billion euros from the public purse – 4 billion euros more than the “austerity” figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July. These reportedly include a 50 per cent increase in the cost of healthcare for pensioners, almost 40 per cent of whom live in poverty; deep cuts in public sector wages; the complete privatization of public facilities such as airports and ports; a rise in value added tax to 23 per cent, now applied to the Greek islands where people struggle to eke out a living. There is more to come. “Anti-austerity party sweeps to stunning victory”, declared a Guardian headline on January 25. “Radical leftists” the paper called Tsipras and his impressively-educated comrades. They wore open neck shirts, and the finance minister rode a motorbike and was described as a “rock star of economics”. It was a façade. They were not radical in any sense of that cliched label, neither were they “anti austerity”. For six months Tsipras and the recently discarded finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, shuttled between Athens and Brussels, Berlin and the other centres of European money power. Instead of social justice for Greece, they achieved a new indebtedness, a deeper impoverishment that would merely replace a systemic rottenness based on the theft of tax revenue by the Greek super-wealthy – in accordance with European “neo-liberal” values -- and cheap, highly profitable loans from those now seeking Greece’s scalp. Greece’s debt, reports an audit by the Greek parliament, “is illegal, illegitimate and odious”. Proportionally, it is less than 30 per cent that of the debit of Germany, its major creditor. It is less than the debt of European banks whose “bailout” in 2007-8 was barely controversial and unpunished. For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it “intolerable” and “the dung of the devil”. The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency. In their travels to the court of the mighty in Brussels and Berlin, Tsipras and Varoufakis presented themselves neither as radicals nor “leftists” nor even honest social democrats, but as two slightly upstart supplicants in their pleas and demands. Without underestimating the hostility they faced, it is fair to say they displayed no political courage. More than once, the Greek people found out about their “secret austerity plans” in leaks to the media: such as a 30 June letter published in the Financial Times, in which Tsipras promised the heads of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF to accept their basic, most vicious demands – which he has now accepted. When the Greek electorate voted “no” on 5 July to this very kind of rotten deal, Tsipras said, “Come Monday and the Greek government will be at the negotiating table after the referendum with better terms for the Greek people”. Greeks had not voted for “better terms”. They had voted for justice and for sovereignty, as they had done on January 25. The day after the January election a truly democratic and, yes, radical government would have stopped every euro leaving the country, repudiated the “illegal and odious” debt – as Argentina did successfully -- and expedited a plan to leave the crippling Eurozone. But there was no plan. There was only a willingness to be “at the table” seeking “better terms”. The true nature of Syriza has been seldom examined and explained. To the foreign media it is no more than “leftist” or “far left” or “hardline” – the usual misleading spray. Some of Syriza’s international supporters have reached, at times, levels of cheer leading reminiscent of the rise of Barack Obama. Few have asked: Who are these “radicals”? What do they believe in? In 2013, Yanis Varoufakis wrote: “Should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising capitalism? To me, the answer is clear. Europe’s crisis is far less likely to give birth to a better alternative to capitalism … “I bow to the criticism that I have campaigned on an agenda founded on the assumption that the left was, and remains, squarely defeated …. Yes, I would love to put forward [a] radical agenda. But, no, I am not prepared to commit the [error of the British Labour Party following Thatcher’s victory]. “What good did we achieve in Britain in the early 1980s by promoting an agenda of socialist change that British society scorned while falling headlong into Thatcher’s neoliberal trip? Precisely none. What good will it do today to call for a dismantling of the Eurozone, of the European Union itself …?” Varoufakis omits all mention of the Social Democratic Party that split the Labour vote and led to Blairism. In suggesting people in Britain “scorned socialist change” – when they were given no real opportunity to bring about that change – he echoes Blair. The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind – but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among those former social democratic parties still describing themselves as “liberal” or even “left”, Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, “schooled in postmodernism”, as Alex Lantier wrote. For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza’s luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but “better terms” of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with “identity politics” and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. “Mainstream” political life in Britain exemplifies this. This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-problem-of-Greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy.-It-is-a-lie-20150713-0008.html. If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-problem-of-Greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy.-It-is-a-lie-20150713-0008.html

Not too bad for a 'mainstream radical'.

STATEMENT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE KKE ON THE NEW AGREEMENT-MEMORANDUM



1.The KKE calls on the workers, employees, poor popular strata, pensioners, unemployed and youth, to say a real, unyielding, big NO to the agreement-memorandum, which was signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government with the EU-ECB-IMF and to fight against the savage measures included in it on the streets and in the workplaces. These measures will be added to the barbaric measures of the previous memoranda. They must organize their counterattack so that the people are not driven to complete bankruptcy. They must strengthen the labour movement, the people’s alliance, so that they can pave the way for the people to be liberated once and for all from the power of capital and the imperialist unions that are leading them to even more barbaric conditions.



Not a day, not an hour must be wasted. Now, with no delay, the people’s activity must be intensified inside the workplaces, factories, hospitals, services, neighbourhoods, through the trade unions, people’ committees and social solidarity and assistance committees. The agreement will lead to a new significant reduction of the people’s income and the crushing of workers’-people’s rights. It legitimizes and gives the green light to dismissals, the expansion of unpaid labour, compulsory leave and other anti-worker measures, which have been taken by the big employers in the recent period, utilizing the restrictions on banking transactions.



The people must not allow the prevalence of complacency, intimidation, fatalism, the fraudulent atmosphere of “national unity” and the false hopes being fostered by the government, the other bourgeois parties, the mass media, various other centres of the establishment, as well as the EU bodies. They are calling on the people to accept the Tsipras memorandum and to feel relieved, because allegedly the worst case scenario has been avoided.



2.The new Tsipras memorandum is comprised of a raft of harsh anti-people measures, which come to intensify the already unbearable burdens of the previous memoranda and application laws that were passed by the ND-PASOK governments. It already bears the stamp of ND, POTAMI and PASOK, because the joint statement they signed and their votes in parliament gave a mandate and carte blanche to the government to form the new barbaric measures that accompany the agreement. The stance of a large section of the privately owned mass media is also revealing, which had accused SYRIZA of allegedly wanting to take Greece out of the Eurozone via the referendum, but now is applauding its choices, praising it, because it “returned” to realism.

Today, the parties of the NO (SYRIZA-ANEL) with the parties of the YES (ND-POTAMI-PASOK) are calling on the people to say YES to a new memorandum, which thrusts new burdens onto the working class and poor popular strata and indeed with anti-people measures, like those that had been rejected by the large section of the Greek people in the referendum.



The government is essence is burdening the people with a new loan worth 86 billion euros and savage measures that accompany it, such as the further reduction of the people’s income, the new heavy taxes, the maintenance of ENFIA (the new property tax), the significant increase of VAT on items of mass popular consumption and the solidarity levy, the reduction of pensions, the implementation of a new and worse social-security regime, the gradual abolition of EKAS (supplementary pensions for poor pensioners), privatizations, measures from the OECD’s “toolkit” etc.



The same blackmail and dilemmas are being used against the people that have been deployed repeatedly for 5 years now in order to make them accept these measures: a new even harsher memorandum or state bankruptcy, via a grexit? The same dilemma that was posed for memorandum 1 and 2 and on every occasion before an installment was to be disbursed has been repeated. Every time the people must choose the “lesser” evil, which in the end leads to the greater evil. The SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government today is using the same tactics and rhetoric.



3.The government provided valuable services to the system, as it from the very first moment “dressed” its compromise with leftwing slogans and the mask of dignity. It directed false dilemmas against the people, in a period when opposition to the EU should have acquired a radical content and led to the rejection of the capitalist development path itself which goes hand in hand with the our country’s participation in inter-state imperialist alliances, which are always formed on the basis of the unequal relations between states. It organized a referendum with a false question and then later transformed the “no” into a “yes” for an even more barbaric memorandum.



SYRIZA consciously exploited the people’s desire for the consequences of the 2 memoranda to be abolished, which would mean at least a recovery of the losses of the popular strata. It exploited the vision and dreams of leftwing people and radicals who longed for a “leftwing”, “pro-people” government. It utilized the inevitable political devaluation of ND and PASOK so that it could become the government. Today, through the new memorandum, it is providing an “absolution of the sins” for the memoranda of ND-PASOK.



It used popular demagoguery, as well as its public commitment to big capital that it will support the recovery of its profitability and that it will be able to restrict the regrouping and recovery of the labour-people’s movement. It won the toleration and even support of the basic core of the bourgeois class in Greece, as well as of foreign imperialist centres, like the USA. The alliances with the USA, France, Italy, which the government is proud of, are in no way a “shield” for the people’s interests. In reality, these are “dead weights” that drag the working class and the popular strata into the dangerous and sharpening confrontations amongst the imperialists.



The KKE from the beginning argued and demonstrated that SYRIZA did not want and was not able to prepare the people for the confrontation against the memoranda and the monopolies, both Greek and European, precisely because it has no orientation for resistance and conflict. On the contrary, it did what it could to keep the people passive, so that they would sit and wait to cast their “protest vote” in the elections. It deceived the people that it could pave the way for pro-people changes, inside the predatory alliance of the EU.



The Left Platform of SYRIZA and all those who are trying to hide their enormous responsibilities behind their “abstention” or “present” in parliament played a particular role in the manipulation of the movement, in the entrapment of radical people. These forces are trying to save themselves politically and play a new role in the containment of radicalism and in the assimilation of the people into the system, preparing a new political “shock absorber”, the role that was played by the old “Synaspismos” party in the past.



4. Especially today, certain conclusions that are valuable for the people must not be forgotten:


•The “tough” negotiation was from the beginning a minefield for the people’s interests, as it served the aim of capital for the recovery of its profitability. Greece’s participation in the EU and the Eurozone remains the strategic choice of the Greek capital and it is characterized by unequal conditions, which objectively exist in such imperialist alliances. In the framework of these alliances, the Greek state is obliged to compromise with the stronger centres, like Germany, thrusting the consequences of these unequal relations onto the workers.
•These developments constitute the clearest expression of the failure of the so-called “renewed” or “governmental left”, of the theory that the EU can change its monopolistic and anti-people character. They highlighted the collapse of the so-called “anti-memorandum” line that promoted the bourgeois social-democratic aim of the reconstruction of production, without radical changes at the level of the economy and power.
•The line of struggle of the KKE and its robust and consistent stance, which rejected participation in such “leftwing governments” that are really governments of bourgeois management, have been borne out.
•As a whole, the processes for the recomposition of the bourgeois political system are accelerating after the recent developments. Either through a reshuffle and possible broadening of the government’s base or through elections and the creation of new parties and “shock absorbers”. In any case, the offensive against the KKE is the consistent choice of the system, so that the people’s indignation does not join with the anticapitalist antimonopoly line of struggle. A new anti-people alliance of the “willing” is being raised against the people in order to impede any spirit of resistance and emancipation. Today, the intensification of state and employer repression is rearing its head threateningly, as well as the increase of authoritarianism, in order to prevent the organization of the labour movement and its allies and the development of the class struggle.



5. The fact that the departure of a country from the Eurozone for the first time was posed so intensely and directly is due to the sharpening of the internal contradictions and unevenness of the economies of the Eurozone, to the competition between older and new imperialist centres, which emerged after the counterrevolutions in the countries of socialism. These problems sharpened in the conditions of the prolonged economic crisis in Greece and elsewhere. Splitting trends have been strengthened, which are supported by bourgeois political forces that want a Eurozone of the countries with stronger economies. There is a strong trend in Germany, which is fomented by leading forces in the IMF, for their own reasons and interests, and this leads to the sharpening of the contradictions inside the Eurozone. Inter-imperialist contradictions have been expressed inside the Eurozone, chiefly between Germany and France, and also contradictions amongst the USA and Germany and other imperialist centres as regards the issue of Greece remaining in the Eurozone. The USA intervened, wishing to restrict Germany’s hegemony in Europe, without for the present desiring the dissolution of the Eurozone.

The contradictions and developments in the Eurozone, in the EU as a whole, have not been checked by today’s temporary compromise and the ratification of the agreement between Greece and the Eurozone-IMF. The trend remains strong, leaving the possibility of a grexit open, for the restructuring of the Eurozone, with the deepening of the mechanisms for a unified economic policy, and also with stricter rules and monitoring mechanisms regarding the positive balance between state spending and income. In any case, it is no accident that France and Italy, which resisted the choice of Greece’s exit from the Eurozone, are countries with high deficits and debts and seek a relaxation of the strict rules.



The confrontation over the issue of the debt is a result of these contradictions. The government, in line with the IMF and the USA, elevated the adjustment of the debt as the ultimate goal for the people, at all costs and at the expense of the people’s interests. At the same time, it is asking for a new loan of 86 billion euros which will increase the debt. It wants the people to accept the anti-people measures in the name of a new management of the debt, which whenever it happened in the past was accompanied by attacks on the worker’s –people’s rights. Capital will be the only beneficiary from the financing in the form of a new loan-debt or via its extension.



6. For a real solution in favour of the people there needs to be a real rupture, which has no relation to the caricature of a rupture being invoked by forces inside and outside SYRIZA that promote the capitalist Greece of the Drachma as the way out. The option to exit the euro and adopt a national currency, inside the capitalist development path, is an anti-people one supported by important sections of the bourgeois class in Germany, on the basis of the “Schauble plan”, as well as in other member-states of the Eurozone, and indeed by other reactionary forces. Today, sections of capital in our country are flirting with this choice, hoping for immediately greater profits.



Those that claim that Greece’s exit from the Eurozone, with a depreciated currency, will lend impetus to competitiveness and growth with positive consequences for the people are engaged in conscious deception. Whatever capitalist growth is achieved in the future will not be accompanied by the recovery of the salaries, pensions, rights and for this reason it will not benefit the people. It will lead to new sacrifices of the people on the altar of the competitiveness of the monopolies.



Capitalist Greece with a national currency does not constitute a rupture in favour of the people. The political forces that promote such a goal as a solution or as an intermediate goal for radical changes (Left Platform of SYRIZA ANTARSYA etc) are objectively playing the game of sections of capital.



This choice will not lead to the relatively better standards of living of the 1980s and 1990s, as certain people claim. The laws of capitalist exploitation, the unrelenting monopoly competition will “reign”. The EU and NATO commitments will tighten the “vice”. The barbaric laws of lending hold true in all the money markets, investment banks and the funds of the current or other imperialist alliances (like BRICS). In any case the anti-people policies are being implemented in countries in the euro and also in capitalist countries with national currencies, in stronger countries like China, Britain, Russia and in weaker ones, like Bulgaria and Romania.



The slogans about alleged dignity for the “poor but proud Greece which resists the strong” are aimed at concealing the truth from the people and subjugating them to barbarity. The people can not feel proud, when the wealth they produce is stolen from them and they become bankrupt in order to save the capitalist system from the crisis, inside or outside the euro.



It is one thing for the people themselves to choose to leave the EU, consciously and actively, taking the keys of the economy and power into their hands at the same time and another completely different thing for a country to find itself outside the Eurozone, as a result of the contradictions and competition of the capitalists. The former constitutes an alternative solution in favour of the people and is worth every sacrifice, the latter leads to the people’s bankruptcy by another path.



7. The political proposal of the KKE-social ownership, disengagement from the EU and NATO, unilateral cancellation of the debt, with workers’-people’s power-is directed to the salaried workers and popular strata, the youth and women from the families of the working class and popular strata, the pensioners, because these forces were and are the real motor forces of society. Social prosperity can be ensured on the basis of their work, without unemployment, hunger, destitution, without exploitation. What is needed is for them to become the protagonists of the social and political developments, to act for their own interests, for their own lives, with the KKE against the power of their exploiters.



Nothing was ever granted by the exploiters and their state. Workers’-people’s power will not be granted by the bourgeois political system or by any “leftwing” party, it must be conquered. The course for a real change in the correlation of forces in favour of the workers’-people’s majority requires that the people rally around the KKE and that the KKE is strengthened everywhere, above all in the workplaces and people’s neighbourhoods.



The comprehensive strengthening of the KKE and joining forces with it are prerequisites for the regroupment of the labour movement and the formation of a strong people’s alliance, which will conduct struggles regarding all the people’s problems, demand immediate relief measures, the recovery of losses, with a stable orientation of fighting against the monopolies and capitalism.



Its formation and strengthening can from today assist the change of the negative correlation of forces, the reinforcement of the organization, combativeness, militant spirit of the working class and the other popular strata against fatalism and the submission of the people, against the old and new managers of the capitalist barbarity.



The CC of the KKE



13 of July 2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/STATEMENT-OF-THE-CENTRAL-COMMITTEE-OF-THE-KKE-ON-THE-NEW-AGREEMENT-MEMORANDUM/

Rallies of PAME, July 15 in 50 Cities All Over Greece
on 14 July 2015. Posted in Press Releases
Down with the New Brutal and Shameful Agreement

Rallies of PAME, July 15 in 50 Cities All Over Greece

Until now demonstrations for tomorrow have been scheduled in:

Athens
Agrinio
Aigio
Alexandroupoli
Amfissa
Argostoli
Arta
Veroia
Volos
Giannena
Drama
Zakinthos
Igoumenitsa
Herakleion
Thessaloniki
Thiva
Kavala
Kalamata
Karditsa
Katerini
Corfu
Kilkis
Komotini
Korinthos
Kos
Lamia
Larisa
Lefkada
Naousa
Nafplio
Xanthi
Orestiada
Patras
Ptolemaida
Pyrgos
Rhodes
Samos
Serres
Sparti
Trikala
Tripoli
Halkida
Chania
Giannitsa
Edessa
Moudania
Poligiro

We take the situation into our own hands

We can overthrow the anti workers laws and the bosses

http://pamehellas.gr/index.php/en/homepage/92-press-releases/5254-rallies-of-pame,-july-15-in-50-cities-all-over-greece

PAME Occupied the Ministry of Macedonia – Thrace at Thessaloniki (15.07.2015)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-plqNRiEcqhs/VaYorehF2KI/AAAAAAAAG_E/C6M6ps1DTZs/s800-Ic42/katalhpsh-ypoyrgeioy-makedonias-thrakhs.jpg

The forces of PAME in Thessaloniki moved on a symbolic occupation of the Ministry of Macedonia – Thrace. At the front of the building PAME has raised a huge banner with the slogan:



“Enough blood we shed-Enough we paid!

People take the situation into your own hands!

Block the New Measures and the Long Lasting Memoranda!”


http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/PAME-Occupied-the-Ministry-of-Macedonia-Thrace-at-Thessaloniki-15.07.2015/

Slide show at link.

No Surrender! The workers’-people’s struggle is the way out

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/pame-kinhtopoihsh-30.jpg_205347674.jpg

Yesterday on the 15th of July, SYRIZA which had promised to bring “a law with one article” that would abolish the memoranda and anti-people measures, brought and passed through parliament with fast track procedures “a law with one article” with the first anti-people prerequisite measures for the third memorandum and the agreement with the imperialist organizations EU-ECB-IMF. At the same time, the Vice President of the government, Y. Dragasakis, speaking on SYRIZA’s radio station, publicly thanked the US government and President Obama for their contribution to the finalization of the agreement.

In the roll call vote that the KKE had requested, 229 MPs voted “yes”, 64 “no” and 6 “present” out of the total of 299 MPs that were in attendance.

The MPs of SYRIZA (111 out of 149), ANEL, ND, POTAMI and PASOK voted for this agreement and the draft bill. 32 MPs of SYRIZA voted no and 6 present. These differentiations do not have a substantial character. It is revealing about the extent of the deception that cadres of the so-called “Left Platform” stated very clearly that they would vote against the draft bill but that they support the government fully and the Prime Minister who tabled this bill!

At the same time, thousands of workers demonstrated outside the parliament and in dozens of cities all over the country, in the large militant demonstrations of PAME. These demonstrations sent a resounding message against the government and bourgeois opposition parties that are “serving” another memorandum to the people in order to continue to bleed them for the profits of capital. The mass character, militancy and protection of PAME negated the planned provocation that unfolded with the aim of attacking the magnificent rally of PAME in Athens.



The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, noted in his speech that the conscious attempt to deceive the people had reached its limits and underlined that the people will be made to pay for the wretched Tsipras memorandum, which the SYRIZA-ANEL government is presenting as the only choice, utilizing the same arguments which the previous governments had deployed. He also stressed that this agreement is extremely fragile as the struggle between France and Germany over the future of the Eurozone is sharpening, as well as the one between the USA and Germany for hegemony in Europe. The victims of these confrontations are the Greek people. For this reason and despite the temporary agreement, a Grexit can not be ruled out in the next period, and he noted that a capitalist Greece with a Drachma is not an alternative solution for the people.



He stressed that the real way out means rupture with the EU, capital and its power. In order to pave the way for this, the people must unite and organize themselves immediately, the labour movement must regroup and acquire a clear anti-capitalist orientation. On the basis of these demands, the labour movement must develop its social people’s alliance with the other popular movements that have an orientation against the monopolies. The people must strengthen their cooperation with the KKE, regardless of various reservations and differences they may have.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK61Lzq9BGo&feature=player_embedded

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/No-Surrender-The-workers-peoples-struggle-is-the-way-out/

Slide show at link.

The attack on PAME was planned

The Police attacks the PAME rally at the "Fix" juncture

http://www.rizospastis.gr/getImage.do?size=medium&id=494057
The attack on PAME was planned
Rizospastis, Friday, 17 July 2015

The Tsipras government has been exposed following the police attack, on July 15, against the PAME rally. The attack took place as the Parliament was discussing the third Memorandum. Besides immediate experience, the collection of data regarding the attack leads to the conclusion that the attack was well planned. The police acted on a command plan and with the clear goal not only of emptying the area outside the Parliament, but of beating protesters far away from the Parliament. A characteristic example is the attack by police "Delta" teams, which took place at the "Fix" juncture, kilometers away from the Parliament, and at a time when the protesters were folding up their banners.

All the data leads to the same conclusion: well before the attack, groups of 6-7 members were spotted spread around the Syntagma plaza. At about 9 pm, i.e, at the time in which Parliament discussion was scheduled to start, a group placed near the Grand Britania hotel began throwing stones at police forces that were placed near the flower stores. As streets were empty of protesters, both toward Panepistimiou street, which was empty, and toward Georgiou street, which was empty as well, the police opted to turn the initial small group of supposed anarchists toward the main body of the protest, using tear gas for that purpose.

What followed was a mass hurling of molotov cocktails, which had evidently been stored in nearby spots. This time, the Police responded by throwing any chemical it had, while, at the same time, flash bombs began to be thrown at the main body of the protest.

PAME forces on Amalias street, heading toward Syntagma plaza, began to move toward Zappeion and the Olympian Zeus columns in orderly fashion. From that point on, police and "anarchists" functioned as a single team. They attacked the body of the protest in order to disperse it. They did not achieve that, and the protest got to the "Fix" juncture in discliplined formation. At that point, the "Delta" force of the police abandoned any pretext (i.e, that they were supposedly chasing "anarchists") and brutally attacked PAME protesters. The cool attitude of the demo safeguarding team prevented the worst from happening, leaving the government exposed for the fact that one of the prerequisites of Memorandum implementation, the repression of the worker movement, was pursued under its own command.

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-attack-on-pame-was-planned.html

Joint Statement in Solidarity with KKE [En]




Dear comrades,



We, Communist and Workers Parties are following the developments in Greece, the offensive of the European Union, capital and its political representatives against the workers’-people’s rights.

We, Communist and Workers’ Parties have supported the struggles of the Greek workers and we have expressed our internationalist solidarity with and support for the struggle of the KKE.

For many years, the governments of ND and PASOK in cooperation with the EU-ECB-IMF have implemented memoranda and harsh anti-people laws with painful consequences for the working class and popular strata.

Today, the anti-people agreement-third memorandum which was signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, supported by ND and PASOK, with the Troika maintains the anti-people measures of the previous governments and thrusts new burdens onto the workers of Greece, unbearable taxation, the abolition of social-security and labour rights, the reductions in wages and pensions, privatizations etc., worsening the situation of the families from the popular strata even further.

These developments allow us to draw certain useful conclusions in order to strengthen the people’s struggle, such as:

Capitalism can not be humanized. It gives rise to crises, unemployment and poverty. In reality, it has been demonstrated that every kind of management of the system sharpens the people’s problems and increases the profits of big capital.
The EU is a reactionary imperialist organization. “Democracy”, “Solidarity” and social justice can not exist inside its framework.
We, the Communist and Workers Parties which sign this message, appreciate the decisive-consistent stance of the KKE at the side of the working class, the Greek people for the abolition of the memoranda, against the anti-people agreement signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government (and the other bourgeois political parties) with the Troika (EU-ECB-IMF).



Our parties salute the struggle of the communists in Greece for the workers’-people’s rights, the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, for socialism.



17/07/2015



Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS),

Brazilian CP,

Workers’ Party of Hungary,

CP of the Peoples of Spain,

CP (Turkey)



The declaration is open for further signratures by other parties

http://solidnet.org/2015-joint-statements/joint-statement-in-solidarity-with-kke-en

The poisonous politics of SYRIZA's Left Platform

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T7UhQxvzAjY/UkGzYhfVamI/AAAAAAAAC74/bPIkC-987WI/s320/1932-spd.jpg

"It is both them who are at fault!" SPD Poster, 1932.
The KKE has long argued that the role of the Left Platform is not at all, as it has pretended, to "radicalize" SYRIZA, or, in another of its formulations, to "pressure it to the Left", but rather to: a) bolster illusions that this is possible and even desirable for SYRIZA and the Left Platform itself; b) hence, prevent those who buy into the illusion from making a real left turn toward KKE; c) assist in the overall effort to create a fracture within the KKE -- hence regularly hosting and promoting those who have been expelled from the KKE in more recent years, including venomously anti-KKE initiatives like "Ergatikos Agwnas" (Labor Struggle), as well as other, increasingly anti-KKE formations like ANTARSYA, in a broad "more left than SYRIZA, but still anti-KKE" alliance.

Yesterday, "Iskra" --the name is true to the pompous self-styling characteristic of Left Platform cadre, which is the definition of "labor aristocracy", i.e intellectuals and trade unionists who have seized the opportunity to transform their often communist past into an asset and a key to state appointment-- published an article by SYRIZA CC and Left Platform member Christina Soultanidou which, for the first time in my count, openly admits to the fundaments of the Left Platform's real role. Following is the relevant passage:

"If the government does not change its policy, even at the last moment, SYRIZA will have unwittingly contributed to the greatest success of the system. It will have converted the vast majority of the Parliament into a mechanism for the imposition of Memoranda, and the only non Memorandum parties, according to the political map that derives from the electoral process of January 2015, will be the KKE and Golden Dawn."

Note the poisonous admixture of cynical deception and unwitting candor here:

a) The false binary between "pro- and -anti Memorandum" parties is fully sustained. This despite the fact that ND was itself "anti-Memorandum" under the George Papandreou government only to become fanatically pro-Memorandum when it won entry into government cabinets, or that SYRIZA has followed exactly in the same footsteps, as the KKE has long warned would happen.

b) This deception is transferred now onto Golden Dawn, which the Left Platform has to admit, as everyone admits, is a fascist party. How can a fascist party be "anti-Memorandum"? What is being asserted here, if one accepts the idiotic binary that catapulted SYRIZA to power, is that Golden Dawn is currently to the "left" of SYRIZA! For Golden Dawn, this is effectively promotion and endorsement from the "left"!

Of course, "pro- and anti- Memorandum" means nothing if it does not mean "for or against the ruling class of Greek capitalists who have endorsed and abetted the systematic attack against labor rights and the economic sovereignty of the country". Given that history has never seen a fascist party that is against its own ruling class, it is absolutely self-evident that Golden Dawn's current rhetorical posture is patently false, as it was in Hitler's NSDAP, a party that posed as "anti-capitalist" even while it was being funded by the major capitalist monopolies of Germany against the communists. Which is precisely what Golden Dawn has been doing, at least in the Perama dockyards, where it was expressly set to destroy communist influence on trade unions on behalf of Greek shipowners. Incidentally, though the KKE has submitted a full proposal for the abolition of all Memoranda and Implementation Agreements since 2012 (and again, after the January 2015 elections), Golden Dawn has never done anything but give grand speeches about "traitors"...

These fundamental aspects of history and of current Greek experience are intentionally hidden so that

d) The poisonous and expressly anti-communist "coupling" of fascists and communists that Social Democracy has always undertaken is put in place. But

e) This can't be done without also openly admitting that the Left Platform's concern is to stop SYRIZA voters from turning to the KKE, "one of the two extremes" that SYRIZA's capitulation lets emerge as allegedly commonly "anti-Memorandum" parties, though Golden Dawn is not at all really "anti-Memorandum" and though KKE is only "anti-Memorandum" to the extent that it is an anti-capitalist, because it is a communist, party.

I invite anyone to argue against the incontrovertible fact that this ostensibly "equal distance" gesture toward fascism and communism openly endorses fascism as preferable, by falsely ascribing an anti-capitalist character to it and by simultaneously slandering communists through false implicit association with fascism.

The treacherous privileging of fascism in what poses as an "equal distance" policy in the Left Platform member's argument becomes even more apparent a few lines later:

"With such a situation in the Parliamentary system, and while the lives of citizens will be inevitably mortgaged by the third Memorandum, it is not at all impossible for Golden Dawn to emerge as a powerful voice for anti-Memorandum policy, with everything this implies as a consequence for the movement, the situation in Greek society, the possibility of disengagement from Memoranda, and more than anything, for democracy."

"Equal distance" is thus patently not equal distance. One of the poles of fascism and communism is always privileged from the standpoint of the craven Social Democrat, and that is fascism. And it is fascism, most basically, because it is the Social Democrat herself who refuses to reveal what fascism really is, it is the Social Democrat herself who confers on it a false "anti-systemic" image she then bewails will "dupe" others!!! The rotten, despicable role of Social Democracy in circumstances of acute capitalist crisis and the crisis of political legitimation that follows it could not be more apparent.

But even this is not enough for the Left Platform. Soultanidou goes on to explain why this morbidly ludicrous group does not quit its Parliament seats despite its ostensible disagreement with SYRIZA's "leadership" (they are in fact an organic aspect of that very leadership, as several of them are founding high cadre members of the party):

"Thus, in my view, it is NECESSARY for the 39 MPs of SYRIZA who did not vote for the first Memorandum legislation, and who will not vote for Memorandum laws to stay in the Parliament: so that there is a left anti-Memorandum expression of the people in the Parliament. For unfortunately, it has been proven that the KKE cannot express this people beyond its existing electoral percentage."

In simple English:

a) A false binary is used to conflate fascists and communists

b) This conflation creates an imaginary role for "Left Platform" Social Democrats

c) This imaginary role consists in supposedly preventing left voters from turning to fascism

d) While this is precisely what is endorsed by "Left Platform" Social Democrats through refusal to expose fascist collusion with the ruling class and its interests (but then, who would expose a collaborator? SYRIZA and Golden Dawn compete as all bourgeois parties compete, in terms of who will get the endorsement of "servant of the bosses")

e) Fascism's prospects are actively endorsed, albeit as a "threat"

f) Communism's prospects as an alternative to another Greek fascist dictatorship are actively pronounced nil.

This is the politics of the "left of SYRIZA" that US media like Jacobin embellish, falsify and promote. Unsurprisingly, it is exactly the same politics the "right of SYRIZA" (infamously anti-communist journalist and SYRIZA MEP Kouloglou) promotes:


http://youtu.be/OMod9KKR0UI


It is incumbent for friends of the Greek people rather than accomplices of poisonous and internationally dangerous Social Democrats to expose and denounce the Left Platform's dishonest and politically reactionary stance before it can do more damage than it already has done; before the Social Democratic conspiracy against a communist and for a fascist alternative to its own rule has borne its fatal fruits.

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-poisonous-politics-of-syrizas-left.html?spref=tw

Joint Statement in Solidarity with KKE [En]




Dear comrades,



We, Communist and Workers Parties are following the developments in Greece, the offensive of the European Union, capital and its political representatives against the workers’-people’s rights.

We, Communist and Workers’ Parties have supported the struggles of the Greek workers and we have expressed our internationalist solidarity with and support for the struggle of the KKE.

For many years, the governments of ND and PASOK in cooperation with the EU-ECB-IMF have implemented memoranda and harsh anti-people laws with painful consequences for the working class and popular strata.

Today, the anti-people agreement-third memorandum which was signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, supported by ND and PASOK, with the Troika maintains the anti-people measures of the previous governments and thrusts new burdens onto the workers of Greece, unbearable taxation, the abolition of social-security and labour rights, the reductions in wages and pensions, privatizations etc., worsening the situation of the families from the popular strata even further.

These developments allow us to draw certain useful conclusions in order to strengthen the people’s struggle, such as:

Capitalism can not be humanized. It gives rise to crises, unemployment and poverty. In reality, it has been demonstrated that every kind of management of the system sharpens the people’s problems and increases the profits of big capital.
The EU is a reactionary imperialist organization. “Democracy”, “Solidarity” and social justice can not exist inside its framework.
We, the Communist and Workers Parties which sign this message, appreciate the decisive-consistent stance of the KKE at the side of the working class, the Greek people for the abolition of the memoranda, against the anti-people agreement signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government (and the other bourgeois political parties) with the Troika (EU-ECB-IMF).



Our parties salute the struggle of the communists in Greece for the workers’-people’s rights, the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, for socialism.



17/07/2015



Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS),

Brazilian CP,

Workers’ Party of Hungary,

CP of the Peoples of Spain,

CP (Turkey)



The declaration is open for further signratures by other parties

http://solidnet.org/2015-joint-statements/joint-statement-in-solidarity-with-kke-en

Here's an updated list of the signatories:

1.CP of Albania
2.CP of Australia
3.Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS),
4.CP of Bangladesh
5.Brazilian CP,
6.CP of Britain
7.Workers' Party of Hungary
8.Workers' Party of Ireland
9.NCP of the Netherlands
10.CP of Pakistan
11.NCP of Yugoslavia
12.CP of the Peoples of Spain,
13.Syrian CP
14.CP (Turkey)
15.Party of Communists USA


The declaration is open for further signratures by other parties




20.07.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Joint-Statement-in-Solidarity-with-KKE/

The Greek Tragedy


They were young, attractive, well-educated, and the darlings of the non-Communist left (and even some Communists!). The leaders of the Greek party, SYRIZA, promised the Greek people an escape from the jaws of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission. Instead, they delivered the humiliating surrender of a people who only a week earlier had demonstrated a clear rejection of accommodation to the EU ruling classes.
The Financial Times headlined: “Greek PM likely to rely on opposition to pass most intrusive programme ever mounted by EU.” (My emphasis)
Regarding the SYRIZA surrender, The Real News commentator, Dmitri Lascaris, declared that “this is one of the worst political debacles in modern European history.”
Journalist and award-winning documentarian, John Pilger acidly commented: “An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed [to] a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a ‘bailout’ that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.”
Predictably, the non-revolutionary left scrambled to put an apologetic spin on the embarrassing collapse of the SYRIZA program. Before the draconian deal, the entire spectrum of the US left—from “progressive” Democrats to neo-Marxists and other hyphenated pseudo-Marxists---were swept into a love fest for SYRIZA unlike any since the orgy of Obama-mania. Typical of the post-referendum SYRIZA craze was the statement by the loquacious “Marxist” economist Richard Wolff on Democracy Now!
...And if Syriza can pull that off, the message sent to the comparable groups in every other European country is a staggering reconception of what the future of Europe may look like, where the words "anti-capitalism" become a unifying slogan for people across that continent...
You cannot impose economic structural reforms on a population that has voted 60 percent against them, with the television blaring out propaganda for them, every TV station and every newspaper, virtually, doing that. You just can’t do it. It’s not a question of argument; it’s a question of fact. (7-7-15)
Well, Professor Wolff, the Troika did it, thanks to the capitulation of SYRIZA.
Rather than heap deserved blame on the SYRIZA leadership, it is surely more useful to draw lessons from a fiasco that will have disastrous consequences for the Greek people. Of the many possible lessons, I offer the following three:
1. Social democracy offers no answer to the crisis of capitalism in its many manifestations. Whether it is the untenable strategy of overturning the neo-liberal model of capitalism and returning to the “golden age” of welfare statist policies, the once popular doctrine that “a rising tide raises all boats,” or the contradictory notion of democratizing capitalism, reformist programs that accommodate the bourgeois state and capitalist relations of production will fail to deliver the people from increasing immiseration and degradation. The European experience teaches nothing if not that.
Europeans have understandably lost patience with the evolution of their parliamentary systems toward two poles: tyranny of markets and tyranny of markets with a human face. They are turning instead to “radical” parties of the right and left. SYRIZA is an example of a “radical” party of the left that occupies the untenable space of defying the logic of capitalism while accepting its legitimacy. This is akin to diagnosing cancer while refusing treatment.
Clearly, the newly minted Euro-left parties that hide social democratic accommodation of capitalism behind the mask of “anti-capitalism” promise no more success than SYRIZA.
2. The Greek Communists (KKE) won a moral and ideological victory with their steadfast position that the SYRIZA program would end in disaster. They argued consistently that SYRIZA's attempt to “manage” capitalism would end badly. Speaking before a July 2 rally in Athens, General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumpas stated emphatically:
•Both the YES and the NO mean the acceptance of a new memorandum of anti-people measures, perhaps the worst that we have seen up to now.
•Both the YES and NO will lead the people to new torments and tragedies. •Both the YES and the No mean anti-worker, anti-people measures. •The referendum is an alibi for a new memorandum-agreement at the expense of the Greek people.
•The KKE calls on the Greek people to reject all the blackmail, to cast its proposal into the ballot box and say:
WE DO NOT CHOOSE ANTI-PEOPLE MEASURES-WE DO NOT CHOOSE A NEW MEMORANDUM-WE CANCEL OUT THE FALSE DILEMMAS.
Nearly 6% of the voters-- a remarkable write-in result-- complied with Koutsoumpas' call.
Not surprisingly, the bourgeois media ignored KKE's campaign against the maneuvers and manipulations of the SYRIZA-ANEL government; one would expect no less from the mouthpieces of the capitalist ruling classes. However, the nearly total disregard of the KKE critique and counter-program by the broad left is indefensible. Apart from a few Leninist organizations, KKE's position was either ignored or subjected to derision. Particularly in the US, intense anti-Communism and ideological conformity led to an almost complete misreading of the Greek tragedy, a development that could have been avoided with a measure of non-sectarian tolerance toward the KKE analysis.
With the collapse of SYRIZA as a left oppositional party, only KKE holds the banner of left resistance. Let's see if our “left” friends will support its struggle.
3. For those of us living in the US, those of us destined to suffer through a tortuous, sensationalized, but ultimately disappointingly predictable Federal electoral campaign, the SYRIZA debacle holds some interesting parallels. As a friend and comrade so astutely points out, the Bernie Sanders campaign is a similar Trojan horse channeling dissatisfaction with capitalist institutions away from truly radical, effective solutions.
Instead of mounting a truly independent campaign outside of the two-party black hole, Sanders chose to run in the Democratic primary while promising neither to bolt the Party nor to withhold support from the primary victor regardless of the outcome. Thus, when he falls in the primaries to Hilary Clinton's corporate coffers-- as every serious commentator acknowledges he will, Sanders will dutifully urge the Party's progressive wing to accept defeat and climb aboard Clinton's juggernaut.
Apologists for this quixotic campaign will argue that Sanders will at least move the campaign conversation leftward. Of course this flies in the face of every primary campaign in any voter’s memory. Every Democratic Party primary season swings leftward in deference to the hard-core base, only to swing even further rightward to accommodate the “centrists” that strategists hope to cultivate. More often than not this strategy backfires; yet it remains an irreproachable axiom in the age of television and the Internet.
Sanders says in his campaign literature: “...the billionaire class is spending huge amounts of money to buy candidates and elections. We are now witnessing the undermining of American democracy and the rapid movement towards oligarchy where a handful of very wealthy families and their Super PACs will control our government.”
Does he think this process will be suspended for the 2016 primary season? Does he not count the Clinton family, its foundation, and its massive fund-raising machine as part of that “oligarchy”?
If Senator Sanders believes his words, he would support a movement away from this trap and not lend his name to legitimizing a corrupted, bankrupt process.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

It runs a little deeper than that ZZ. SYRIZA didn't simply fail or blink first or capitulate. They said from the beginning what they were going to do and they proceeded to do what they said. They imposed "capital controls" at 11:59 once the billion had long since taken flight. They made no exit plans and contributed to the fear-mongering surrounding such an option.

If Social Democracy would defy capitalism while accepting its legitimacy, SYRIZA-ANEL doesn't fill even that meager bill. They didn't defy anything except the overwhelming όχι mandate of the Greek people.

It runs a little deeper than that ZZ. SYRIZA didn't simply fail or blink first or capitulate. They said from the beginning what they were going to do and they proceeded to do what they said. They imposed "capital controls" at 11:59 once the billion had long since taken flight. They made no exit plans and contributed to the fear-mongering surrounding such an option.

If Social Democracy would defy capitalism while accepting its legitimacy, SYRIZA-ANEL doesn't fill even that meager bill. They didn't defy anything except the overwhelming όχι mandate of the Greek people.

Yep, and I can only speculate that ZZ is taking some of the sting out of it so as not to further humiliate some who probably do deserve that.

Well, the choices narrow as one after the other comprador, opportunists and cheap jack hustler disgraces their party and program. The stark reality looms, KKE or Golden Dawn, which side are you on?

No to the new barbaric memorandum. You are either with the monopolies or the people

Demonstrations of PAME all over Greece

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/syllalhthrio-pame-24_1.jpg_1302204135.jpg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsXNdADs3Xc&feature=player_embedded

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/No-to-the-new-barbaric-memorandum-You-are-either-with-the-monopolies-or-the-people/

Other video and slide show at link.

Zizek, not content to be an opportunist and sleazy huckster shows that he's retarded too:



The courage of hopelessness is crucial at this point. The “no” of the Greek referendum can survive only if the Greeks enact their enforced surrender in the right way, only if they continue to lead a patient guerilla warfare against financial occupation.



http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=136707&p=481221#post481221

The courage of hopelessness is crucial at this point. The "no" of the Greek referendum can survive only if the Greeks enact their enforced surrender in the right way, only if they continue to lead a patient guerilla warfare against financial occupation.

What in hell is he talking about? As far as I can see, this whole piece is gibberish.

Greece and the European Union: First as Tragedy, Second as Farce, Thirdly as Vassal State
07.26.2015 :: Analysis
Introduction: The Greek people’s efforts to end the economic depression, recover their sovereignty and reverse the regressive socio-economic policies, which have drastically reduced living standards, have been thrice denied.



First, the denial came as tragedy: When the Greek majority elected Syriza to government and their debts increased, the economy plunged further into depression and unemployment and poverty soared. The Greek people voted for Syriza believing its promises of ‘a new course’. Immediately following their victory, Syriza reneged on their promise to restore sovereignty – and end the subjugation of the Greek people to the economic dictates of overseas bankers, bureaucrats and political oligarchs. Instead Syriza kept Greece in the oligarchical imperialist bloc, portraying the European Union as an association of independent sovereign countries. What began as a great victory of the Greek people turned into a tragic strategic retreat. >From their first day in office, Syriza led the Greek people down the blind alley of total submission to the German empire.

Then the tragedy turned into farce when the Greek people refused to acknowledge the impending betrayal by their elected leaders. They were stunned, but mute, as Syriza emptied the Greek treasury and offered even greater concessions, including acceptance of the illegal and odious debts incurred by private bankers, speculators and political kleptocrats in previous regimes.

True to their own vocation as imperial overlords, the EU bosses saw the gross servility of Syriza as an invitation to demand more concessions – total surrender to perpetual debt peonage and mass impoverishment. Syriza’s demagogic leaders, Yanis Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras, shifting from fits of hysteria to infantile egotism, denounced ‘the Germans and their blackmail’ and then performed a coy belly-crawl at the feet of the ‘Troika’, peddling their capitulation to the bankers as ‘negotiations’ and referring to their overlords as . . . ‘partners’.

Syriza, in office for only 5 months brought Greece to the edge of total bankruptcy and surrender, then launched the ‘mother of all deceptions’ on the Greek people: Tsipras convoked a ‘referendum’ on whether Greece should reject or accept further dictates and cuts to bare bones destitution. Over 60% of the Greek people voted a resounding NO to further plunder and poverty.

In Orwellian fashion, the megalomaniac Tsipras immediately re-interpreted the ‘NO’vote as a mandate to capitulation to the imperial powers, accepting the EU bankers’ direct supervision of the regime’s implementation of Troika’s policies – including drastic reductions of Greek pensions, doubling the regressive ‘VAT’ consumption tax on vital necessities and a speed-up of evictions of storeowners and householders behind in their mortgage payments. Thus Greece became a vassal state: Nineteenth century colonialism was re-imposed in the 21st century.

Colonialism by Invitation

Greek politicians, whether Conservative or Socialist, have openly sought to join the German-led imperial bloc known as the European Union, even when it was obvious that the Greek economy and financial system was vulnerable to domination by the powerful German ruling class.

From the beginning, the Greek Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) and their Conservative counterparts refused to recognize the class basis of the European Union. Both political factions and the Greek economic elites, that is, the kleptocrats who governed and the oligarchs who ruled, viewed entry into the EU as an opportunity for taking and faking loans, borrowing, defaulting and passing their enormous debts on to the public treasury!

Widely circulating notions among the Left that ‘Germany is responsible’ for the Greek crisis are only half true, while the accusations among rightwing financial scribes that the ‘Greek people are spendthrifts’ who brought on their own crisis is equally one-sided. The reality is more complex:

The crash and collapse of the Greek economy was a product of an entrenched parasitic rentier ruling class –both Socialist and Conservative – which thrived on borrowing at high interest rates and speculating in non-productive economic activities while imposing an astronomical military budget. They engaged in fraudulent overseas financial transactions while grossly manipulating and fabricating financial data to cover-up Greece’s unsustainable trade and budget deficits.

German and other EU exporters had penetrated and dominated the Greek markets. The bankers charged exorbitant interest rates while investors exploited cheap Greek labor. The creditors ignored the obvious risks because Greek rulers were their willing accomplices in the ongoing pillage.

Clearly entry into and continued membership in the EU has largely benefited two groups of elites: the German rulers and the Greek rentiers: The latter received short-term financial grants and transfers while the former gained powerful levers over the banks, markets and, most important, established cultural-ideological hegemony over the Greek political class. The Greek elite and middle class believed ‘they were Europeans’ – that the EU was a beneficent arrangement and a source of prosperity and upward mobility. In reality, Greek leaders were merely accomplices to the German conquest of Greece. And the major part of the middle class aped the views of the Greek elite.

The financial crash of 2008-2009 ended the illusions for some but not most Greeks. After 6 years of pain and suffering a new version of the old political class came to power: Syriza! Syriza brought in new faces and rhetoric but operated with the same blind commitment to the EU. The Syriza leadership believed they were “partners”.

The road to vassalage is rooted deep in the psyche of the political class. Instead of recognizing their subordinate membership in the EU as the root cause of their crisis, they blamed ‘the Germans, the bankers, Angela Merkel, Wolfgang Schnauble , the IMF, the Troika… The Greek rulers and middle class were in fact both victims and accomplices.

The German imperial regime loaned money from the tax revenues of German workers to enable their complicit Greek vassals to pay back the German bankers… German workers complained. The German media deflected criticism by blaming the ‘lazy Greek cheats’. Meanwhile, the Greek oligarch-controlled media deflected criticism of the role of the parasitical political class back to the ‘Germans’. This all served to obscure the class dynamics of empire building — colonialism by invitation. The ideology of blaming peoples, instead of classes, is pitting German workers against Greek employees and pensioners. The German masses support their bankers, while the Greek masses have elected and followed Syriza – their traitors.

From Andreas Papandreou to Alexis Tsipras: Misconceptions about the European Union

After Syriza was elected a small army of instant experts, mostly leftist academics from Canada, the US and Europe, sprang up to write and speak, usually with more heat than light, on current Greek political and economic developments. Most have little knowledge or experience of Greek politics, particularly its history and relations with the EU over the past thirty five years.

The most important policy decisions shaping the current Syriza government’s betrayal of Greek sovereignty go back to the early 1980’s when I was working as an adviser to PASOK Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. At that time, I was party to an internal debate of whether to continue within the EU or leave. Papandreou was elected on an anti EU, anti NATO platform, which, like Tsipras, he promptly reneged on– arguing that ‘there were no alternatives’. Even then, there were international and Greek academic sycophants, as there are today, who argued that membership in the EU was the only realistic alternative- it was the ‘only possibility’. The ‘possibilistas” at that time, operating either from ignorance or deceit, were full of bluster and presumption. They denied the underlying power realities in the structure of the EU and dismissed the class capacity of the working and popular masses to forge an alternative. Then, as now, it was possible to develop independent alternative relations with Europe, Russia, China, the Middle East and North Africa. The advantages of maintaining a protected market, a robust tourist sector and an independent monetary system were evident and did not require EU membership (or vassalage).

Above all, what stood out in both leaders, Andreas Papandreou and Alexis Tsipras, was their profound misconception of the class nature of the dominant forces in the EU. In the 1980’s Germany was just beginning to recover its imperial reach. By the time Syriza-Tsipras rose to power (January 2015), Germany’s imperial power was undeniable. Tsipras’ misunderstanding of this reality can be attributed to his and his ‘comrades’ rejection of class and imperial analyses. Even academic Marxists, who spouted Marxist theory, never applied their abstract critiques of capitalism and imperialism to the concrete realities of German empire building and Greece’s quasi-colonial position within the EU. They viewed their role as that of ‘colonial reformers’ –imagining that they were clever enough to ‘negotiate’ better terms in the German-centered EU. They inevitably failed because Berlin had a built-in majority among its fervently neo-liberal ex-communist satellites plus the IMF, French and English imperial partners. Syriza was no match for this power configuration. Then there was the bizarre delusion among the Syriza intellectuals that European capitalism was more benign than the US version.

EU membership has created scaffolding for German empire-building. The take off point was West Germany’s annexation of East Germany. This was soon followed by the incorporation of the rightwing regimes in the Baltic and Balkans as subordinate members of the EU – their public assets were snapped up by Germany corporations at bargain prices. The third step was the systematic break-up of Yugoslavia and the incorporation of Slovenia into the German orbit. The fourth step was the takeover of key sectors of the Polish and Czech economies and the exploitation of cheap skilled labor from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and other satellite states.

Without firing a shot, German empire-building has revolved around making loans and financial transfers to the new subordinate member states in the EU. These financial transactions were predicated upon the following conditions: 1) Privatization and sale of the new member states’ prized public assets to mainly German as well as other EU investors and 2) Forcing member states to dismantle their social programs, approve massive lay-offs and meet impossible fiscal targets. In other words, expansion of the contemporary German empire required austerity measures, which transformed the ex-communist countries into satellites, vassals and sources of mercenaries – a pattern which is now playing out in Greece.

The reason these new German ‘colonies’ (especially Poland and the Baltic States) insist on the EU imposing harsh austerity measures on Greece, is that they went through the same brutal process convincing their own beleaguered citizens that there was no alternative – resistance was futile. Any successful demonstration by Greek workers, farmers and employees that resistance to empire was possible would expose the corrupt relationship between these client leaders and the German imperial order. In order to preserve the foundations of the new imperial order, Germany has had to take a hardline on Greece. Otherwise the recently incorporated colonial subjects in the Baltic, Balkan and Central Europe states might “re-think” the brutal terms of their own incorporation to the European Union. This explains the openly punitive approach to Greece – turning it into the ‘Haiti of Europe’ analogous to the US’ long standing brutalization of the rebellious Haitians – as an object lesson to its own Caribbean and Latin American clients.

The root cause of German intransigence has nothing to do with the political personalities or quirks of Angela Merkle and Wolfgang Schnauble: Such imperial leaders do not operate out of neurotic vindictiveness. Their demand for total Greek submission is an imperative of German empire-building, a continuation of the step-by-step conquest of Europe.

German empire-building emphasizes economic conquests, which go hand-in-hand with US empire-building based on military conquests. The same economic satellites of Germany also serve as sites for US military bases and exercises encircling Russia; these vassal states provide mercenary soldiers for US imperial wars in South Asia, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

Syriza’s economic surrender is matched by its spineless sell-out to NATO, its support of sanctions against Russia and its embrace of US policies toward Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Germany and its imperial partners have launched a savage attack on the working people of Greece, usurping Greek sovereignty and planning to seize 50 billion Euros of vital Greek public enterprises, land and resources. This alone should dispels the myth, promoted especially by the French social democratic demagogue Jacques Delores, that European capitalism is a benign form of ‘social welfarism’ and an ‘alternative’ to the savage Anglo-American version capitalism.

What has been crucial to previous and current versions of empire-building is the role of a political collaborator class facilitating the transition to colonialism. Here is where social democrats, like Alexis Tsipras, who excel in the art of talking left while embracing the right, flatter and deceive the masses into deepening austerity and pillage.

Instead of identifying the class enemies within the EU and organizing an alternative working class program, Tsipras and his fellow collaborators pose as EU ‘partners’ , fostering class collaboration – better to serve imperial Europe: When the German capitalists demanded their interest payments, Tsipras bled the Greek economy. When German capitalists sought to dominate Greek markets, Tsipras and Syriza opened the door by keeping Greece in the EU. When German capital wanted to supervise the take-over of Greek properties, Tsipras and Syriza embraced the sell-off.

There is clear class collaboration within the Greek elite in the destruction of nation’s sovereignty: Greek banker oligarchs and sectors of the commercial and tourist elite have acted as intermediaries of the German empire builders and they personally benefit from the German and EU takeover despite the destitution of the Greek public. Such economic intermediaries, representing 25% of the electorate, have become the main political supporters of the Syriza-Tsipras betrayal. They join with the EU elite applauding Tsipras’ purge of left critics and his authoritarian seizure of legislative and executive power! This collaborator class will never suffer from pension cuts, layoffs and unemployment. They will never have to line up at crippled banks for a humiliating dole of 65 Euros of pension money. These collaborators have hundreds of thousands and millions stashed in overseas bank accounts and invested in overseas real estate. Unlike the Greek masses, they are ‘European’ first and foremost – willing accomplices of German empire builders!

Tragic Beginnings: The Greek People Elect a Trojan Horse

Syriza is deeply rooted in Greek political culture .A leadership of educated mascots serving overseas European empire-builders. Syriza is supported by academic leftists who are remote from the struggles, sacrifices and suffering of the Greek masses. Syriza’s leadership emerged on the scene as ideological mentors and saviors with heady ideas and shaky hands. They joined forces with downwardly mobile middle class radicals who aspired to rise again via the traditional method: radical rhetoric, election to office, negotiations and transactions with the local and foreign elite and betrayal of their voters. Theirs is a familiar political road to power, privilege and prestige. In this regard, Tsipras personifies an entire generation of upwardly mobile opportunists, willing and able to sellout Greece and its people. He perpetuates the worst political traditions: In campaigns he promoted consumerism over class consciousness (discarding any mobilization of the masses upon election!). He is a useful fool, embedded in a culture of clientelism, kleptocracy, tax evasion, predatory lenders and spenders – the very reason his German overlords tolerated him and Syriza, although on a short leash!

Tsipras’ Syriza has absolute contempt for democracy. He embraces the ‘Caudillo Principle’: one man, one leader, one policy! Any dissenters invite dismissal!

Syriza has utterly submitted to imperial institutions, the Troika and their dictates, NATO and above all the EU, the Eurozone. Tsipras/ Syriza reject outright independence and freedom from imperial dictates. In his ‘capitulation to the Germans’ Tsipra engaged in histrionic theatrics, but by his own personal dictate, the massive ‘NO to EU’ vote was transformed into a YES.

The cruelest political crime of all has been Tsipras running down the Greek economy, bleeding the banks, emptying the pension funds and freezing everyday salaries while ‘blaming the bankers’, in order to force the mass of Greeks to accept the savage dictates of his imperial overlords or face utter destitution!

The Ultimate Surrender

Tsipras and his sycophants in Syriza, while constantly decrying Greece’s subordination to the EU empire-builders and claiming victimhood, managed to undermine the Greek people’s national consciousness in less than 6 months. What had been a victorious referendum and expression of rejection by three-fifths of the Greek voters turned into a prelude to a farcical surrender by empire collaborators. The people’s victory in the referendum was twisted to represent popular support for a Caudillo. While pretending to consult the Greek electorate, Tsipras manipulated the popular will into a mandate for his regime to push Greece beyond debt peonage and into colonial vassalage.

Tsipras is a supreme representation of Adorno’s authoritarian personality: On his knees to those above him, while at the throat of those below.

Once he has completed his task of dividing, demoralizing and impoverishing the Greek majority, the local and overseas ruling elites will discard him like a used condom, and he will pass into history as a virtuoso in deceiving and betraying the Greek people.

Epilogue:

Syriza’s embrace of hard-right foreign policies should not be seen as the ‘result of outside pressure’, as its phony left supporters have argued, but rather a deliberate choice. So far, the best example of the Syriza regime’s reactionary policies is its signing of a military agreement with Israel.

According to the Jerusalem Post (July 19, 2015), the Greek Defense Minister signed a mutual defense and training agreement with Israel, which included joint military exercises. Syriza has even backed Israel’s belligerent position against the Islamic Republic of Iran, endorsing Tel Aviv’s ridiculous claim that Teheran represents a terrorist threat in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Syriza and Israel have inked a mutual military support pact that exceeds any other EU member agreement with Israel and is only matched in belligerence by Washington’s special arrangements with the Zionist regime.

Israel’s ultra-militarist ‘Defense’ Minister Moshe Yaalon, (the Butcher of Gaza), hailed the agreement and thanked the Syriza regime for ‘its support’. It is more than likely that Syriza’s support for the Jewish state explains its popularity with Anglo-American and Canadian ‘left’ Zionists…

Syriza’s strategic ties with Israel are not the result of EU ‘pressure’ or the dictates of the ‘Troika’. The agreement is a radical reversal of over a half-century of Greek support for the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people against the Israeli terrorist state. This military pact, like the Syriza regime’s economic capitulation to the German ruling class, is deeply rooted in the ‘colonial ideology’, which permeates Tsipras’ policies. He has taken Greece a significant step ‘forward’ from economic vassal to a mercenary client of the most retrograde regime in the Mediterranean.

http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=2044

ON THE SITUATION IN GREECE AND THE ANTI-PEOPLE ROLE OF SYRIZA




The responsibilities of its applauders


Article of Giorgos Marinos

Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the KKE



Introduction



On Monday the 13th of July, the SYRIZA-ANEL government with the support of all the bourgeois parties agreed at the Eurozone Summit to a very harsh package of anti-people measures, the third memorandum, which will destroy whatever workers’-people’s rights have remained.



On Wednesday the 15th of July, the “first time leftwing” government passed the agreement of the Summit and the first raft of measures to be implemented for the 3rd memorandum with the votes of the bourgeois parties ND-PASOK-POTAMI, including new savage taxation measures and the abolition of pension rights. The KKE voted against it and called for a roll call vote, during which 32 cadres of SYRIZA voted NO, 6 “present” and 1 abstention. These members of SYRIZA said that “we vote against the new memorandum, but … we wholeheartedly support the government that is tabling it.”



The experience of the 5 months of SYRIZA’s governance demonstrates that it did not want to nor was it able to prepare the people for a confrontation against the memoranda and the monopolies, both Greek and European, precisely because it had no orientation for resistance and conflict. On the contrary, it deceived the people that it could pave the way for pro-people changes inside the predatory alliance of the EU.



The developments are a very clear expression of the failure of the so-called “renewed” or “governmental left”, of the theory that the EU can change its monopolist and anti-people character.



The line of struggle of the KKE and its robust and consistent stance, which rejected participation in such “leftwing governments” that are really governments of bourgeois management, have been borne out.



On the basis of this specific experience and overcoming the bourgeois mass media offensive, the workers in the Europe and all over the world must try to find the truth and utilize the developments in Greece so that they can draw useful conclusions.



They should examine and study the KKE’s line of struggle, penetrating the wall of misinformation of the bourgeois and opportunist forces that concern themselves with the management of capitalist barbarity and work systematically in order to manipulate the workers.



WHAT IS THE REAL SITUATION IN GREECE? WHAT IS THE REAL ROLE OF SYRIZA? WHAT ARE THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF ITS APPLAUDERS?



Firstly, during the capitalist crisis and the painful consequences that the anti-people political line of the liberal ND party and the social-democratic PASOK brought for the working class and popular strata, an extended reformation of the bourgeois political system began.



The traditional bourgeois parties were weakened and worn down, and SYRIZA and the criminal-Nazi organization “Golden Dawn” were strengthened.



SYRIZA, which was a small opportunist party, rapidly increased its votes in the elections of June 2012 and won the elections of January 2015, forming a government with the rightwing nationalist party ANEL.



Over this entire period, this party trapped the workers in the false schema “memorandum-antimemorandum”, concealing the fact that the memoranda are a part of the more general strategy of capital. It exploited the sharpening problems of the people and made false promises that it would relieve and satisfy the demands of the workers.



In this framework, it promised that it would immediately increase the minimum wage, restore collective bargaining agreements, abolish the property tax, increase the tax-free threshold, put an end to privatizations etc.



Despite the slogans it used, in practice SYRIZA formed a social-democratic strategy and made it clear from the beginning that it would manage capitalism and serve the competitiveness and profitability of the monopoly groups, implement the EU’s strategy, which it called “our common European home”.



Second, after the elections of 2015, the SYRIZA-ANEL government continued the anti-people political line of the previous governments. On the 20th of February, it signed an agreement with the EU-ECB-IMF (Troika) and undertook commitments regarding the recognition and repayment of the debt that was not created by the people, the “avoidance of unilateral actions”, the non-implementation of its election promises and the promotion of “capitalist restructurings”.



The SYRIZA-ANEL government, during the negotiations that followed in Brussels, tabled a series of proposals with harsh anti-people measures, including:



The maintenance of the memoranda and all the application laws of ND and PASOK, the imposition of additional taxation, the demolition of pension rights, privatizations and other measures worth 8 billion euros at the expense of the people. This proposal was similar to that of the Troika, which contained anti-people measures worth 8.5 billion euros.



The confrontations in the negotiations and the withdrawal of the SYRIZA-ANEL government in one phase are not related to resistance to defend the people’s interests, as certain parties abroad are baselessly claiming.



It was the interests of the monopolies that were on the table of negotiations and on this basis more general contradictions were expressed that are related to the formula for the management of capitalism, the course of the Eurozone and Greece’s position in it, (including the possibility of a Grexit), the contradictions over hegemony in Europe between Germany and France, between the USA and the Eurozone and in particular Germany.



Third, in these conditions, the government brought to the Parliament on Saturday 27th of June a proposal for a referendum, attempting to trap the people with a YES or NO to the Troika’s raft of anti-people measures, refusing to table its own anti-people proposal in order to be judged by the people.



The KKE (in parliament) demanded the following be posed in the referendum:

A) The proposal of the Troika. B) the proposal of the government. C) The proposal of the KKE for ‘DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE EU, ABOLITION OF THE MEMORANDA AND ALL THE ANTI-PEOPLE APPLICATION LAWS.”



The government arbitrarily refused to put the proposal of the KKE to a vote. Its goal was to blackmail the people and exploit the people’s vote as approval for its own proposal that constituted a new memorandum.

The KKE resisted, denounced the blackmail and posed its own ballot paper to the judgment of the people:



‘NO TO THE PROPOSAL OF THE EU-ECB-IMF.

NO TO THE PROPOSAL OF THE GOVERNMENT.

DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE EU WITH THE PEOPLE IN POWER.’



This ballot paper was distributed in the workplaces, in the popular neighbourhoods, outside the voting centres on the day of the referendum, while at the same time, the KKE called on the people to resist in every way and to express their opposition to the new memoranda.



In conditions of false dilemmas and blackmail, the KKE explained to the people that both the YES and the NO would be used to impose new anti-people measures.



This decision is a great legacy for our people, so that they can continue their struggle on the basis of their own interests.



A significant section of our people resisted. It cast the ballot of the KKE, it cast blank or spoiled ballots – (over 350,000, 6%)- a section of working people followed the path of abstention.



The KKE did not set a numerical goal for this referendum, its stance was a principled political one, it sent a political message to the people not to submit to all the blackmail, the dilemmas, whether they originate from the troika or from the government and the other bourgeois political parties.



Fourth, one day after the referendum, on the 6th of July, the developments confirmed in the most characteristic way the positions and line of struggle of the KKE and exposed the parties abroad that celebrated together with SYRIZA or sent messages of support to the Greek Prime Minister.



On the day after the referendum There a meeting of the political leaders took place at the initiative of Prime Minister, Tsipras, with the participation of the President of the Republic. This meeting made the situation even clearer.



SYRIZA, ANEL, ND, PASOK, POTAMI, i.e. all the bourgeois parties, signed a joint statement that mentioned amongst other things : “The recent verdict of the Greek people does not comprise a mandate of rupture, but a mandate for continuing and strengthening the effort of achieving a socially just and economically sustainable agreement..”, confirming that the bourgeois parties as a whole were ready to sign an agreement/new memorandum with the Troika against the people.



The GS of the CC of the KKE, cde Dimitris Koutsoumpas disagreed, made his different stance clear and after the meeting of the political leaders stated amongst other things: “We clearly expressed on our part, once again, the views of the KKE regarding the assessment of the referendum result and chiefly as regards the enormous problems being experienced by the Greek people inside the predatory alliance of the EU, which has a political line that continually increases the impasses for the people, the people’s income, the course of the country and the course of our people as a whole.



It has been demonstrated, once again, that there can be no pro-people pro-worker negotiations inside the walls of the EU, inside the capitalist development path… No one has authorized anybody to go and sign new memoranda, new painful measures for our people.”



Fifth, after the referendum the SYRIZA-ANEL government sent an application to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) for a three-year loan programme worth about 50 billion euros, with a new loan agreement and a new memorandum.



On Friday the 10th of July, the government proposed to the Troika (EU, ECB, IMF) a provocative raft of harsh anti-people measures-3rd memorandum worth over 12 billion euros!! That is to say 4-5 billion euros more than the proposal that was being discussed before the referendum.



On the same day, in the related discussion in Parliament, the government asked for and received the support and authorization of the bourgeois parties, ND-PASOK-POTAMI, in order to sign the anti-people agreement-3rd memorandum.



While, at daybreak, Monday the 13th of July, Prime Minister Tsipras agreed at the Eurozone Summit to a new loan worth 85 billion euros and a very dangerous anti-people memorandum, which will truly smash whatever workers’-people’s rights have remained.



Here are some characteristic examples:



Maintenance of the ENFIA, the tax on property and the other harsh tax measures of ND and PASOK that have driven millions of families from the popular strata to desperation and an additional increase of the VAT rates, transferring packaged food and other items of mass popular consumption to the highest rate of 23%, the abolition of tax exemptions for farmers, a significant increase in VAT for the islands etc.



The government’s propaganda that it is increasing taxes on the big businesses and ship-owners is unfounded. It is a drop in the ocean. The tax exemptions for the ship-owners and big capital as a whole are being kept in place.



Maintenance of the anti-social-security measures in their entirety which reduce pensions, increase the retirement age, exempt employers from social-security contributions and also the introduction of new measures that abolish the remaining early retirements establishing a single retirement age of 67, abolish the benefits for pensioners with very low pensions, increase the workers’ social-security contributions, merge the social-security funds with a race to the bottom in terms of rights. It is examining additional tough measures in the name of the social-security system’s sustainability.



Maintenance of the “medieval” labour relations that are prevalent in the workplaces, the freezing of collective agreements, the maintenance of reduced wages and also additional new anti-worker measures in the name of adaptation to the EU directives for the expansion of individual contracts between workers and employers, the reinforcement of part-time and temporary work, flexible labour relations.



Implementation of the Toolkit of the imperialist organization OECD (which the government considers to be a strategic partner) that provides for the liberalization of professions, the abolition of the Sunday holiday etc.



Maintenance of the privatizations that have taken place and the promotion of new ones, in the ports, 14 regional airports, the railways, the company that manages natural gas etc.



The creation of a mechanism for mortgaging and selling public property in order to raise 50 billion Euros to repay the loans etc.



The creation of primary surpluses of 1% for 2015, 2% for 2016, 3% for 2017, 3.5% for 2018, and the implementation of a mechanism to automatically cut salaries, pensions, social spending if there is divergence from the fiscal goals.



The SYRIZA-ANEL government used the same blackmail and dilemma that ND and PASOK had used in order to convince the people to accept the measures: a new harsher memorandum or state bankruptcy via a grexit?



It repeated the same dilemma that was posed for memorandum 1 and memorandum 2 and on each occasion an installment was to be disbursed. Every time the people must choose the “lesser” evil, which in the end leads to the greater evil.



Even now, when the anti-people political line of SYRIZA is out in the open, Tsipras is attempting to foster false expectations, by claiming that the agreement includes an adjustment of the debt ( which has increased due to the new loan) and the so-called “development packages”. Despite the fact that it is well-known that the people in any case will pay for the debt and that the packages will once again be directed to the large monopoly groups, which will reap many benefits.



Sixth, the anti-people political line of SYRIZA is not just restricted to these issues but is also expressed in its foreign policy.



The Greek government within 5 months has provided significant support to NATO, the USA, the Euro-Atlantic axis.



It has not only maintained but also made commitments to strengthen the US-NATO bases at Suda, the command centre for imperialist interventions and wars, Aktio (Radar centre) and has also made commitments to strengthening it, the headquarters in Thessaloniki, Larissa etc.



It announced that in consultation with the USA it will install a new NATO base in the Aegean Sea, on the island of Karpathos.



The government officially made a commitment to make its armed forces and military bases available for new imperialist wars in the region, in the name of dealing with the Jihadists and “protecting the Christian populations”.



It participates in military exercises together with the USA and Israel and enhances its military, political and economic relations with the Israeli state which continues the occupation and torments the Palestinian people.



The so-called “multi-dimensional policy” with Russia and China, with BRICS, is being carried out from the standpoint of advancing the interests of the monopoly groups in order to enhance their position in the field of energy, in the framework of the general imperialist competition, entangling our people in new hazards.



CERTAIN CONCLUSIONS



The workers in Europe and all over the world can draw important conclusions from this course of events about the developments in Greece in order to denounce the political forces that defend the capitalist development path and the European Union, the inter-state imperialist union.



The communist men and women, the workers must examine the developments on the basis of the actual data.



They should appreciate the stance of dozens of Communist Parties that tried to analyze the developments in Greece on the basis of class criteria and keeping to the principle of proletarian internationalism contributed to supporting the struggle of the KKE and published its information bulletins and related interviews, wrote their own articles and fought against the confusion sown by SYRIZA and the ELP.



The KKE thanks the dozens of communist parties and communist youth organizations all over the world that expressed their solidarity in many different ways and stood at the side of the struggle of our party and KNE.



We thank the working men and women, trade unions and other organizations of the people’s movement from abroad that support the struggle of the class oriented movement in Greece.



Our party will continue to wage tough struggles and honour their confidence in us.



In the conditions of the strong pressure exerted by the bourgeois ideological apparatus and the intervention of the opportunist forces, the mass expression of internationalist solidarity is a very important element. It contributes to our common struggle. It is a valuable experience which will bear fruit in the next period.



At the same time, the communists and workers must carefully examine and denounce the opportunist forces and other forces that during this entire period concealed the positions of the KKE and aligned with SYRIZA, prettifying the anti-people-class essence of its political line, its social-democratic character.



The ELP is playing a particularly dangerous role in manipulating the workers. The European Left Party recognized its own mutated strategy for bourgeois management in the social-democratic positions of SYRIZA, its own positions for assimilation into the EU.



It was to be expected.



The serious problem concerns certain CPs that reproduced the positions of SYRIZA, presented it as force of resistance against the EU, concealing the fact that this party is a defender of the EU predatory alliance and NATO, a manager of the barbaric capitalist system.



These forces saluted the “NO” of the referendum but concealed the fact that behind this was SYRIZA’s YES to a new memorandum, new measures, which will continue to bleed our people.



They misinformed -intentionally or unintentionally- the workers in their countries. They connected the Greek government’s stance to the defense of “popular sovereignty”, but reality demonstrates that the people cannot be sovereign when they are encircled by the blackmail of capital’s forces, when they are hungry, unemployed, victims of capitalism and the capitalists who hold power and possess the means of production and steal the wealth produced by the workers.



The stance of these parties objectively operated against the struggle of the KKE and at the expense of the interest of the working class, the popular strata in Greece, in every country, because supporting the new social-democracy means strengthening the opponent of the workers, fostering illusions and confusion.



There is no excuse. They bear serious responsibilities. The parties that concealed the positions of the KKE, organized events to support SYRIZA and saluted social-democracy have been exposed.



In reality, the demonstrations e.g. in Paris, Rome, Brussels, Nicosia, Lisbon and other cities, irrespective of who organized them and the slogans used, were utilized by SYRIZA as a “leftwing” alibi to strengthen its position, to present itself as a “saviour” and impose new harsh anti-people measures on the Greek workers.



This is not the first time we have spoken about these issues. The consequences of the opportunist influence in the ranks of the communist movement, the consequences of the counterrevolution continue to be painful.



Our party, as is well-known, has consistently expressed (for many years) its internationalist solidarity even with CPs that today are aligning with its political opponents. The KKE follows a principled position and we will continue to do so.



However, a discussion must begin in the European and International Communist Movement about the choices of CPs that took the side of social-democracy and conclusions must be drawn.



Whoever loses the class, revolutionary compass will be led into managing capitalism, even if the communist name is maintained, even if there are formal references to socialism.



Historical experience bears this out and this is the problem for certain parties that use the slander about “sectarianism” in order to incriminate the revolutionary struggle, to hide their own retreat from the principles of Marxism-Leninism and their choice to manage the bourgeois system.



The recent developments have brought serious issues to the fore that must be discussed even further.



The social-democratic parties of the SYRIZA and Podemos variety work to manipulate the working class, to safeguard capitalist management with fake left slogans.



In practice, the example of SYRIZA demonstrated once again that the so-called “left governments” are a form of management and reproduction of capitalist exploitation, that they cultivate illusions, disarm the popular forces and lead to the strengthening of conservative forces, to the return of rightwing governments. The examples of “leftwing governments” in France, Italy, Cyprus, Denmark and in Latin American countries confirm this assessment.



The position that presents the replacement of the Euro by a national currency e.g. the drachma in Greece as a development in favour of the people, a position supported by various ultra-left groups and cadres of SYRIZA who voted against the 3rd memorandum in parliament obscures the real situation for the workers. The currency on its own cannot solve in a beneficial way any of the people’s problems. Capitalist exploitation will continue to hold sway, as well as the factor that determines the course of developments i.e. which social class has the power and means of production in its hands.



The attempt to interpret the developments with positions that present Greece as being a “colony”, does not have an objective basis; it omits the aims and interests of the bourgeoisie, it does not take uneven capitalist development and the unequal relations between capitalist states into account.



Greece’s continued participation in NATO and the EU is the position that is dominant in the bourgeois class and the concession of sovereign rights is a conscious choice that aims to buttress capitalism and serve the interests of the monopolies inside the imperialist alliances.



Focusing all the attention on the stance of Germany, the attempt to interpret the developments through the prism of the “Schauble coup” conceals the essence of the inter-imperialist competition, of the interests that are coming into conflict.



The SYRIZA-ANEL’ government’s choice of allies e.g. the USA and France has nothing to do with the people’s interests but with the interests of the monopoly groups, entangling our people further into the web of imperialist competition.



The recent statements of a cadre of SYRIZA and Vice President of the government are characteristic. He made the following reference: “I have to publicly thank the US government and Mr. (President Barack) Obama as without their help and persistence that the deal has to include the debt issue and development horizon we might have not succeeded.”



THE STRUGGLE OF THE KKE



The KKE advanced forwards, having enriched its strategy on the basis of the contemporary demands of the class struggle, overcoming the theory regarding “intermediate stages” in the management of the exploitative system and the different forms for the maintenance of bourgeois democracy, defending the laws of socialist revolution and construction.



Our party utilized the anticapitalist-antimonopoly line of struggle, the line for the concentration and preparation of working class and popular forces for the overthrow of capitalism, for workers’-people’s power, socialism, rejecting cooperation with the social-democratic party SYRIZA and any participation in governments of bourgeois management.



It gave a decisive answer in the elections of 2012, continuing in difficult conditions its independent political-ideological and mass struggle with the needs of the families from the working class and popular strata as its criteria.



It waged the battle of the elections in 2015, it increased its forces and utilizes its 15-member parliamentary group to highlight the people’s problems, tabling important draft laws and proposals, like the draft law for the abolition of the memoranda and the application laws which the government has been refusing to discuss in Parliament for 5 months.



It utilizes its EU parliamentary group at the side of the workers, achieving a new level in its significant political interventions after its withdrawal from GUE/NGL which has been transformed into an appendage of the ELP.



The proud stance of the KKE in the recent referendum is a continuation of this political struggle. It exposed the anti-people political line of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, the Troika and the bourgeois parties that support remaining in the “EU at all costs”, tabling its own proposal to the people.



Our party intervenes decisively in the political developments, it fights against difficulties and deficiencies and works tirelessly in the workplaces, inside the labour-people’s movement, it plays the leading role in the struggles of the working class, the farmers, the intermediate strata, the youth. It continues its internationalist activity, strengthens its relations with dozens of CPs all over the world and tries to discuss its experience with the communists and leading working class forces abroad.



These are very serious duties. The KKE focuses on organizing the resistance of the workers against the anti-people agreement of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, so that the level of the people’s demands is raised and so that a militant movement will develop that will demand in a mass way the recovery of the losses and the satisfaction of the contemporary needs.



The class oriented movement, PAME and the other militant rallies are escalating the mass mobilizations, are making efforts to organize a solidarity movement to support those who are suffering from unemployment and poverty, to support the pensioners, the workers who are standing in the queues at the banks to take a small portion of their pension or salary due to the restrictions on banking transactions.



Through struggle committees in the workplaces, factories, hospitals, supermarkets, services, through the mobilization of the “people’s committees” in the neighbourhoods.



These are valuable tools in order to strengthen the people’s struggle.





We will continue on this path and we call on the working class, the popular strata to adopt in a mass and decisive way the political proposal of the KKE for the best possible organization of the workers, the regroupment of the labour movement, to strengthen the people’s alliance of the working class with the farmers, the other popular strata in order to intensify the struggle for deep-radical changes. For the socialization of the monopolies, with central scientific planning of the economy, disengagement from the EU-NATO and the development of mutually beneficial relations with other states and peoples, the unilateral cancellation of the debt, with the working class and people holding the reins of power.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/ON-THE-SITUATION-IN-GREECE-AND-THE-ANTI-PEOPLE-ROLE-OF-SYRIZA/

What Would the KKE Do If It Were in SYRIZA's Place?

July 20, 2015
In Defense of Greek Workers

<<indefenseofgreekworkers@blogspot.co.uk>>

Rizospastis, 19 July 2015

We often hear the following, well-intentioned question: "What would you have done if you were in the place of the SYRIZA government"?

The question is not illogical. But we must place it in the right perspective.

If we, the KKE, were in the "place" of SYRIZA, meaning the place of bourgeois management, the place of defending capitalist interests, in search of winning back profits, seeking to use the advantages conferred on capital by membership in the EU, the EZ and Euroatlantic alliances and NATO; if we were in the "place" of taking up a government that is a tool of the power of monopolies; if we were in the "place" of negotiating on behalf of Greek capitalism by sitting in the roundtables of the EU, the EZ and other imperialist organizations;

if we were in that "place", we would not do anything more or less than what SYRIZA is already doing. We could not help but have the same dilemmas: should we continue inside the euro or opt for bankruptcy, whether controlled or uncontrolled, and a drachma-based Greek capitalism? We would weigh what is more to our capitalism's interest and choose accordingly. And that's what SYRIZA did.

But if we were in that "place", we would no longer be a Communist Party, the party of the working class and the popular strata; we would have become a different party, unable to struggle on their behalf.

That is what we have explained since 2012, when workers were inviting us, with good intentions, to "enter" a coalition government with SYRIZA, to support it, or at least to tolerate it on 5 or 10 issues.

We explained, back then as well, that every government of bourgeois management, for all its intentions, declarations and self-stylings, for all its pursuits, is objectively forced into a specific anti-popular path. Because that kind of government is not the product of rupture with capital, its power, the imperialist organizations, the EU, etc.

Today, the illusion and delusion that things could have been otherwise collapses before our very eyes, no matter how much various and sundry try to cover up the truth with the tatters of a caricature of rupture, of the "national currency", the capitalist "reconstruction of production", the "honest compromise"; no matter how much they try to put back the make-up and resell it, trying to entrap those who are angry, those who are disappointed with SYRIZA's policy, back into the sheep pen of the shipowners, the medicine industrialists, the US and German capitalist centers supporting Grexit.

But let us turn the question around:

What would have happened if there was a radical change in the correlation of forces, to the advantage of the working class and poor popular strata, if in place of a government of bourgeois management, a government that is a mere tool of capitalist power, one had a real worker-popular government, a tool of worker-popular power, in which communists would of course play a determining role?

Such a governmental power would not be trapped in the dead-ends of an antipopular negotiation with the imperialist organizations of the EU, the ECB and the IMF. It would not even start the kind of process we have lived through in the past five months.

First of all, because it would not acknowledge the entire existing institutional and legal antipopular and antiworker framework, nor the memorandum-related and non-memorandum related laws; it would not acknowledge the measures supporting capital, protecting its profits, the outrageous privileges of corporate groups. It would abolish all of that; it would topple it. It would also not recognize commitments to the EU, the ECB, the IMF and NATO, nor the "obligations" deriving thereof. It would abolish the participation of the country in these imperialist groups. It would disengage it from them.

It would not leave the keys to the economy, the production units, the services, energy, infrastructure and banks in the hands of business groups, capital and monopolies. It would undertake a series of immediate steps, launching the process of socialization and the organization of the economy on the basis of scientific central planning. It would thus open the path for the utilization of the productive capacity of the country, using as a criterion not the profit of corporate groups and capital, nor capitalist exploitation, but the satisfaction of worker and popular, of broader social needs.

This path will allow us to exit the crisis in the interests of workers and the people. It will furnish the possibility to develop, equally and commensurably, sectors that are currently restricted because of commitments to the EU (e.g shipbuilding, sugar, meat production).

Such a power would not acknowledge public debt, nor the obligation to pay it back. It would declare its unilateral abolition.

Such a power and government would be a product of a broad worker and popular mobilization and the participation of the workers and popular strata in the exercise of power, through new institutions that will derive from their subversive struggle, replacing the rotten institutions of the bourgeois political system and the "democracy" of monopolies.

Such a power and government would immediately sign mutually beneficial agreements with other states, to import medicine, food, energy. Because it would not have the commitment to participate in imperialist organizations like the EU, NATO, etc.

This is the place for which we are struggling today.

The whole struggle of communists is oriented in that direction. It aims to change the correlation of forces to the benefit of the working class and the poor popular strata, in order to change the path the country is following; in order to abandon the capitalist path to development, whether that presupposes the euro or the drachma, along with its crises, its immiseration, its exploitation, its right-less life, the adaptation of popular and worker needs to the limits imposed by the profit of corporate groups, its commitment to participate in capitalist unions and imperialist alliances.

This is the reason why today, the KKE calls the people not simply to resist the new antipopular and antilabor attack of capital, the SYRIZA-ANEL government, the EU; but to use its struggle as a launching pad, to turn it into a step for the bolstering of the worker movement, the reinforcement of the Popular Alliance; for the strengthening of the anticapitalist and anti-monopoly orientation of the movement, the targetting of the real enemy--the monopolies, capital, employers and their governments, their parties, their international allies: the EU, the USA, NATO.

This is the only way path to the change of the correlation in the interest of the people. It is the only path that allows the people to form a strong, determined force, capable of blocking the antipopular offensive today, and to topple it tomorrow, imposing its own exit plan. In this process, workers will be able to attain success and victory--smaller and larger.

And that is the criterion with which they must stand in front of the ballot box, if and when this happens again: how will their vote help, bolster the effort to change the correlation of forces in order to help the people rise up, organized and determined to put their future in their own hands.

http://mltoday.com/what-would-the-kke-do-if-it-were-in-syriza-s-place?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ml2day-recent+%28Welcome+to+MLToday.com+%7C+Recently+Added+Content+%7C+Please+Subscribe+to+Our+Feed%29

SYRIZA and Imperialism: On Syria

http://www.thetoc.gr/images/articles/1/article_44874/dourou-den-epidiwkw-na-eimai-delfinos.w_l.jpg

The following statement was published by the Press Office of Synaspismos on August 1, 2011. The statement was written by Rena Dourou (pictured with Alexis Tsipras), then European Policy Coordinator for Synaspimos, and currently Attica Prefect with SYRIZA. Synaspismos [Coalition] of the Left, Social Movements and Ecology was founded as a party in 1991, after the split between KKE and the Coalition of the Left and of Progress, itself accompanied by a split within KKE, as several of the members of its cadres switched to the new party (including many currently in SYRIZA's so-called "Left Platform"). In 2004, Synaspismos became the largest constituent part of SYRIZA.

The statement is translated in the interests of allowing non-Greeks to better understand SYRIZA's actual political and ideological character and, inevitably, the causes of the split in 1991, after the counter-revolution in the USSR, and the causes of political conflict --and real enmity-- between SYRIZA and KKE today. I also hope it will shed some light on the broader character of the Euroleft coalition of the European Left Party, which SYRIZA helped found in 2004.
----
Statement by Rena Dourou, European Policy Coordinator of Synaspismos, on the recent bloody repression of the Opposition by the Syrian regime, in the city of Hama

"Syria is bleeding. From their webpages on the internet, Syrian oppositionists are once again protesting the bloody repression the Assad government conducts in order to save itself, and at the same time, are criticizing the international community for its passive stance toward a regime that has for some time crossed "the red line", as it is unabashedly turning against its own citizens.

On the eve of the Ramazan, the Assad regime chose --not accidentally-- the city of Hama in order to spread mass death -- hundreds of dead and an unknown number of injured, according to an NGO, while intermittent images on the internet testify to the violence and brutality of the military intervention. The city of Hama, which is in the front line, since mid March, of the rebellion of the Syrian people against the regime of Bassar Al Assad, was the theater of the most murderous repression campaign of the current president's father, Hafez Al Assad. The dead (Sunnis, almost exclusively) were tens of thousands...

Today, five months after the launching of "Syrian Spring", the fighters of the insurrection persist, despite the bloodbath, in standing tall and in resisting, demanding what the Egyptians, the Tunisians, the Libyans demanded: Freedom, democracy, respect for their dignity.

Today, at a time when the people of Syria are delivering a remarkable lesson in courage and resistance to a barbaric regime, the international community is effectively silent, absorbed by the negative economic conditions in the US and Europe. But this stance effectively works as a "green light" to the Assad regime, to continue drowning in blood even the most peaceful demonstrations. The time for the international community, headed by the United Nations and the EU, to isolate the bloodthirsty regime is NOW [sic]; they must simultaneously support, politically and economically, the forces of the opposition. NOW is really the time of concrete solidarity with the people of Syria".

The Press Office.

Translated by Lenin Reloaded

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/syriza-and-imperialism-on-syria.html

Today, at a time when the people of Syria are delivering a remarkable lesson in courage and resistance to a barbaric regime, the international community is effectively silent, absorbed by the negative economic conditions in the US and Europe.

Jesus F Christ, it don't get much plainer than that, does it? Why doesn't SYRITZA just change its name to "The Greek version of the American Democratic Party" - that's what they are swiftly becoming. Maybe Hillary can help explain to the Greek people how austerity is actually really good for them. I mean US Democrats understand that your average citizen really only needs enough food to work and a dry place to sleep until time to start work again. I mean, what do these uppity poor folks bellyache about all the time? Just be grateful that you got some kinda job that feeds you - plenty don't, and it's their own fault.

Man, that SYRITZA sure is leftishy

Interview with Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the KKE, 8/8/2015

Interview of Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the KKE, with Tassos Pappas of "Newspaper of the Editors" (Efimerida ton Syntakton):

Q: - You say that whether on the drachma or on the euro and with Memoranda, the people will suffer under present conditions. Is it possible that this line demobilizes citizens since the prospect you offer does not seem to have contemporary relevance?

A:- You are grossly mistaken. The political proposal of the KKE is and remains contemporary. The other proposals, those of the current and the former governments, are the ones pointing to a "Neverland" of exit from the crisis in the interests of the people. Those are proposals that satisfy only big capital and its sectors. The proposals of the other parties refer either to new agreements of the Memorandum type or simply to a change of currency through Grexit. Both proposals, adopted for different reasons by the present government and other parties on the one hand, and by Golden Dawn and various extraparliamentary formations on the other, are mathematically calibrated to lead the people to total bankruptcy. The KKE proposal, conversely, is the only realistic and authentically pro-people proposal, since it links disengagement from the Eurozone and the EU to a comprehensive plan and program for the economy and society, including the socialization of the concentrated means of production, national central planning, abolition of the debt, with the people organized and determined, in the framework of an authentic worker-popular power. The people can move in this direction actively, utilizing the experience of what the KKE has been saying yesterday and says today, in plain language.

Q: - Obviously, you are watching developments within SYRIZA. Could the KKE, under certain preconditions, begin discussion with a sector of SYRIZA, meaning that sector that argues for a return to the national currency and a different organization of Greek society?

A: - If you are referring to leading SYRIZA cadre, who bear very heavy responsibility for why we got here; cadre that supported SYRIZA's political strategy, that sold and continue to sell false hopes and delusions, arresting the radicalization of the movement; cadre and groups that are selling the capitalist path to the drachma and the integration into a different imperialist alliance as an allegedly pro-people solution, and indeed as a path that leads to the overturning of social relations and to popular prosperity through "ruptures" like those we saw in the last six months, I answer unequivocally that no such prospect of a common path exists. Of course the worker-popular forces that supported SYRIZA, as well as other parties, are a different issue. To them, the KKE is addressing a call for discussion and the adoption of a common path.

Q: - Are you perhaps afraid that a party to the left of SYRIZA, coming from within SYRIZA, will create problems for the KKE?

A:- The Lafazanis-style parties you have in mind always play the role of bulwarks against worker-popular awakening, radicalization, against the anti-monopoly and anticapitalist orientation of the popular movement and its social alliance. In previous decades, they became known as "KKE of the interior", as EAR, as Synaspismos and as SYRIZA. They are political adventurists, with contradictory and impossible policies, whose only contribution is to make the people and the country, as well as the movement, waste valuable time.

Q: - Voices against German hegemony are getting thicker in Europe. Do you believe this will go on? Is it possible for the strategy of austerity, as expressed by Germany and its satellite countries, to get defeated?

A: - The strategy of austerity is advocated by Germany and its satellites, as you say, but it is also advocated by France, by Italy, by the "friends" of Mr. Tsipras. Hollande advanced a maelstrom of anti-people measures in France and continues to do so, while Lagarde of the IMF, where the USA is dominant, is taking a leading role in the demolition of whatever insurance rights have been left standing. We can't simply speak about Schauble in Greece while forgetting Hollande, Renci, Cameron, Le Pen, Lew, all of whom are asking for the advancement of economic slaughter against our people, and against other peoples.

All these years, it has been proven that competition between imperialist centers, the struggle of Germany against the USA, of Germany against France, etc., have nothing to do with the protection of popular rights, but with who will guarantee more profits for their own corporate groups, who will hegemonize Europe and the world. The debate about "austerity" is embedded in this context.

Q: - Why is it that in a Europe in crisis, where workers are cruelly attacked by dominant policies, we don't have strong forces of questioning the capitalist model? Why is socialism, as you conceive it, unpopular? People's consciousness is still burdened by 1989 and the failure of "actually existing socialism".

A: -There is no doubt that the socialist-communist ideal suffered a world-historical defeat in 1989-1991, through the subversion of the USSR and of other socialist countries. It was a defeat and a setback still paid for by the peoples, by the international labour and communist movement. And that continues to be a burden on mass awakening and the social emancipation of the people and their movements.

But we believe that historical setbacks, errors, weaknesses, ought to teach all of us. The movement, the working class, the people, ought to be able to extract valuable conclusions for the present and future. This is the only way in which they will be able to build a new society, without the mistakes of the past. And to reinforce the tendency toward radicalization, toward the comprehensive questioning of the capitalist path, that is now rotten and that can only give birth to crises, wars, poverty and exploitation.

The KKE works consistently in this direction. And we are optimistic, despite the great difficulties we have to deal with.

Q: - Some polls show that the stance of the KKE "sent" some of your voters to support "No" in the Referendum. Did you make the wrong choice?

A: - Given the fact that the SYRIZA-ANEL government refused to even submit the KKE proposal for a real Referendum question to the vote in Parliament, it was clear to us that our goal was not to collect votes but to launch a five-day campaign for a No to the ECB-EU-IMF proposal and a No to the government proposal, that was leading to a new Memorandum. This was very quickly proven, since the 62% that voted No was seized by Mr. Tsipras and the other parties, except for KKE, and converted into a big Yes to the new Memorandum.

The call of the CC of the KKE is already resounding with the people: with those who voted for No thinking it meant a rupture with Memoranda, the EU, the monopolies and their power; with those who cast an invalid ballot, a blank ballot, or abstained from the vote, authentically challenging the path followed in a radical fashion, rejecting the government's deceptions; and even with those who voted Yes, caving under the big blackmail-type dilemmas. To all of them, the KKE extends its hand for a common struggle.

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/08/interview-with-dimitris-koutsoumbas-gs.html

Announcement of the KKE on the Third Memorandum the Government signed with the Institutions

The third Memorandum, agreed upon with the Institutions by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, and coming to the Parliament for approval, must face the greatest possible reaction on the part of workers and the entire people. It contains measures of such harshness and cruelty that no government in the past dared implement, fearing popular reaction. This is the great contribution of the SYRIZA government to the system. Using the fairytale of the "left government" and of the "Prime Minister who tried but was prevented", the government is moving ahead with the implementation of barbaric measures, that were permanent demands of big capital and of EU directives, and τthat demolish whatever was left standing in worker and people's rights.

The third Memorandum and its accompanying implementation laws includes the continuation of all previous Memoranda and the commitment that anti-popular measures will be implemented to the letter. It contains new, painful measures on labor rights, insurance, the self-employed, small and middle farmers, making their survival even more difficult. At the same tie, it contains the implementation of measures aiming at the improvement of competitiveness and profitability of capital, the concentration of wealth into even fewer hands, through privatizations, OECD directives, the recapitalization of banks, the further liberalization of the energy market, the fund to which 50 billion euros worth of state property will be deposited.


In fact, the third Memorandum constitutes a permanent threat against the people, who will be constantly blackmailed to new sacrifices to achieve the goals of primary surpluses, fiscal austerity and, above all, capitalist recovery. After al, the Council on Fiscal Policy, which has already been voted for as a prerequisite, can introduce new cuts in popular income at any time if the goals of the government and the institutions are not attained.

The people now has concrete and indisputable evidence showing that no government cannot even bring some basic relief to the people, far less adopt a pro-people policy within the framework of the EU and the capitalist economy. Given that the SYRIZA-ANEL government, like the previous ND-PASOK governments, considers the capitalist path to development as the only path, the agreement for a new Memorandum was only a matter of time. With its policy, the government effectively legitimates the previous governments, constituting, along with ND, PASOK, and Potami, a parliamentary front for the ratification and implementation of the new, barbaric measures.

The responsibility of the cadre of the so-called "Left Platform" of SYRIZA is vast. After it disseminated a spate of delusions to left-wing and radical people concerning the SYRIZA government, after supporting all the steps toward the new Memorandum (the agreement of 20 February, the 47 page Tsipras proposal, etc.), it now differentiates itself, continuing to support the government. Its proposal is the --equally futile for the people-- policy of a capitalist Greece with a national currency, advocated by reactionary forces, albeit with a different starting point: Schauble, other fascist and extreme right forces of euroscepticism in Greece and Europe. They are hiding the fact that exit from the euro alone, without disengagement fro the EU, without radical changes in economy and power, will lead to the same result from a different path: to the bankruptcy of the people, at the time when certain sectors of capital are multiply benefitted.

The time has come for the people to resist, take its fate in its own hands, use its own power, which until now it has left unused, hoping in a future government management, that would supposedly solve its problems for it. But all the governmental alternatives within the walls of capitalism proved a nightmare for the people. If the people consents today, if it does not resist, then the worst is ahead and it simultaneously runs the risk of losing valuable time.

The KKE says to the people that there is hope. The Memoranda, poverty, unemployment, the exploitation of the people for the benefit of a few are not the only path, nor can it be a future for the people and for the future generations. What is now necessary is the organization and reinforcement of struggle against the third Memorandum and its measures. It is the reinforcement of class and radical forces in the worker-popular movement, for the abolition of anti-worker and anti-people laws, the satisfaction of contemporary needs, in a rupture with the EU, capital and their power.

What is needed is a common path, support and strengthening of the KKE, that never lied to the people, has always stood by their side and today proffers the only realistic pro-people path: the total disengagement from the EU, the unilateral cancellation of debt, the socialization of monopolies, of the wealth of the country, with the people itself in power.

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/08/announcement-of-kke-on-third-memorandum.html

What is needed is a common path, support and strengthening of the KKE, that never lied to the people, has always stood by their side and today proffers the only realistic pro-people path: the total disengagement from the EU, the unilateral cancellation of debt, the socialization of monopolies, of the wealth of the country, with the people itself in power.

This is so clear and so self-evident that it is screamingly frustrating that KKE is not getting more support. The Greeks have already arrived at the "nothing to lose" stage.

Alexis Tsipras hit by Syriza rebellion as Greece approves bailout deal
Prime minister could face a confidence vote next week as he falls short of 120 votes he needs to survive a censure motion

(Video at link)
Heated debate as the Greek parliament prepares to vote on approving a new multibillion-euro bailout deal
Jon Henley in Athens
@jonhenley
Friday 14 August 2015 04.22 EDT


After a tumultuous, often ill-tempered and at times surreal all-night debate, Greek MPs voted early on Friday to approve a new multibillion euro bailout deal aimed at keeping their debt-stricken country afloat.

But a fierce rebellion in the ranks of his leftist Syriza party saw prime minister Alexis Tsipras fall short of the 120 votes he would need to survive a censure motion, leading to speculation he would call a confidence vote next week and snap elections as early as next month.

More than 40 Syriza hardliners, including controversial former finance minister Yannis Varoufakis, failed to toe the party line, angry at the punishing terms of the €85bn (£60bn) package and what they said was a sell-out of the party’s principles and a betrayal of its promises.

Tsipras needed the support of opposition parties after the marathon session to win parliament’s backing for the bill in a 9.45am vote, which the government eventually won by a comfortable margin of 222 votes to 64, with 11 abstentions.

The prime minister told MPs before the vote that the rescue package was a “necessary choice” for the nation, saying it faced a battle to avert the threat of a bridge loan - which he called a return to a “crisis without end” - that Greece may be offered instead of a full-blown bailout.

The draft bailout must now be approved by other eurozone member states at a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels on Friday afternoon, and ratified by national parliaments in a number of countries – including Germany, which remains sceptical – before a first tranche can be disbursed allowing Greece to make a crucial €3.2bn payment to the European Central Bank due on 20 August.

The Athens parliament did not start debating the 400-page text of the draft bailout plan until nearly 4am after parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou, a Syriza hardliner, ignored Tsipras’s request to speed up proceedings and instead raised a lengthy series of procedural questions and objections.

In angry exchanges, the conservative opposition rounded on the government, warning it not to take its support for granted. “If you want to provoke us - and for us to vote for it - you can’t have it both ways,” New Democracy leader Vangelis Meimarakis told finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos.


On the left, former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who leads a rebel bloc of around a quarter of Syriza’s 149 MPs, pledged to “smash the eurozone dictatorship”, while in her concluding pre-vote remarks, Konstantopoulou announced: “I am not going to support the prime minister any more.”

Earlier, the government spokeswoman, Olga Gerovasili, had conceded that divisions within the leftist party, which swept to victory in January’s elections on a staunch anti-austerity platform, were now so deep that a formal split was probably inevitable.

Germany, the biggest single contributor to Greece’s two previous bailouts, cautioned on Wednesday that eurozone support for the package – which includes more tough spending cuts and tax hikes and surrenders unprecedented powers over large areas of Greek economic and social policymaking to the country’s international creditors – was not yet guaranteed.

“Germany isn’t the only country that is still asking questions at the moment,” deputy finance minister Jens Spahn said, pointing in particular to the issues of International Monetary Fund support for the deal and concerns about a planned privatisation fund to sell off Greek state-owned property.

Germany has repeatedly signalled it might prefer to back a bridging loan to help Greece meet its ECB payment rather than agree to an imperfect longer-term deal that might not work – a solution Athens is unwilling to accept.

It emerged overnight, however, that senior EU finance officials had asked the European Commission to draw up a “contingency plan” for a new interim loan as a safety net to buy more time for eurozone members to finalise the plan.

The debate followed better-than-expected Greek economic growth figures, with official estimates on Thursday showing the economy had expanded by 0.8% in the second quarter of 2015 despite the imposition of capital controls to prevent a bank run. The national statistics agency, ELSTAT, also revised upwards its first-quarter growth estimate, from a 0.2% contraction to zero growth.

But Greece’s European creditors on Thursday also underlined the temporary nature of the country’s surprise return to growth, warning they have “serious concerns” about the spiralling debts of the eurozone’s weakest member.

According to an analysis completed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the eurozone bailout fund, Greece’s debts will peak at 201% of its national output (GDP) in 2016.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/14/greek-parliament-still-thrashing-out-rescue-deal-vote?CMP=share_btn_tw

On the left, former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who leads a rebel bloc of around a quarter of Syriza’s 149 MPs, pledged to “smash the eurozone dictatorship”, while in her concluding pre-vote remarks, Konstantopoulou announced: “I am not going to support the prime minister any more.”

We are shocked! Shocked, I tell you!" No one every told us that SYRIZA would turn out to be a sycophantic, bootlicking, booge party! Oh, wait, you mean KKE told us all along that this very outcome would occur? But, they are Stalinists! They cannot be trusted because they are merely workers! It must be the apocalypse!

Every member of parliament from SYRIZA should be tarred and feathered and ran out on a rail. Put them to work in the mines - on second thought, why damage the mines that way...

We are shocked! Shocked, I tell you!" No one every told us that SYRIZA would turn out to be a sycophantic, bootlicking, booge party! Oh, wait, you mean KKE told us all along that this very outcome would occur? But, they are Stalinists! They cannot be trusted because they are merely workers! It must be the apocalypse!

Every member of parliament from SYRIZA should be tarred and feathered and ran out on a rail. Put them to work in the mines - on second thought, why damage the mines that way...

A lot of the 'left' Syriza are former KKE, no doubt they wanted to 'do something'. Well, there ya go...
Timing is everything.

What is "the Left"? Ten remarks


https://sxoliastesxwrissynora.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/71.jpg?w=650&h=347
SYRIZA MPs sleeping in Parliament during "fast-track" imposition of the third Memorandum by their Party
What is "the Left"? Ten Remarks
Originally published in Greek, in Lenin Reloaded, 21 June 2014

1. In Greece, "the Left" exists since 1951, and the foundation, during that year, of the United Democratic Left (EDA). As a category of political thinking, it had no significance in the country in the period before the 1950s. "Anarchism" was far more important as a designator of ideology at the beginnings of the Greek worker movement than "the Left" -- not to mention the significance, for an anti-bourgeois politics, of terms like "Bolshevism" and "Third International". Structurally, the precondition for the birth of "the Left" was the imposition of the self-censorship of the self-designation of a sector of the population as "communist" through state terror. "The Left" is born under conditions of state repression as a defensive misnomer and as a pseudo-apellation for purposes of self-protection.

2. The defeat of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), in combination with state terror and repression, however, also created the preconditions for the pseudo-category of "the Left" (as a nominalist abstraction, rather than as a concrete designator of a tendency within a worker-socialist party -- a use with an entirely different genealogy) to acquire its own substantive meaning. It created, to put it more simply, the possibility for a section of the communists to really (and not just superficially) make the transition to "democratic ideology", which in conditions of unshakeable capitalist domination necessarily means the transition to the side of bourgeois democracy. "The Left" is the product of the effective surrender of a section of the communists to the victorious bourgeois state.


3. Economically speaking, "the Left" signifies the demand for "a more just distribution of wealth", or of the "social product". It never means the struggle to change the mode of production, never the change of relations of production, never the the socialization of the means of production. Already in 1875, Karl Marx showed, in his Critique of the Gotha Program, how contradictory the very concept of a "fair distribution" of wealth within capitalism is. The cultivation of the delusion that the stakes of "the Left" were ever anything more than this vague demand for a "fairer distribution" was something enabled by the compulsory co-existence, under the regime of state terror of the 1950s, of social democrats and communists. This coexistence was used to foster confusion and generate pleasant placebos for a disarmed and defeated movement.

4. Because "the Left's" ultimate demand is "fairer distribution" of capitalist accumulated wealth, the Left is by definition on the side of Reform against Revolution.

5. Because the financial crises of capitalism render the margins for satisfying the demand of "fairer distribution" extremely narrow, "the Left" can have no economic content that is different from that of bourgeois parties in such periods. It can acquire such a content only in periods of economic development of the rates of capitalist accumulation, always under the precondition that it has in its grasp means of exerting pressure such that it is allowed to appear as a "provider" for the working class and a "negotiator" on its behalf. But the subversion of actually existing socialism means that no such means exist, either during financial crises, or during periods of capitalist development. Consequently, "the Left" cannot be expected to obtain an economic content that differentiates it from any bourgeois political formation in the near future either.

6. Given the absence of a distinct economic content in the category of "the Left", both in Greece and abroad, the term evolved, beginning in the 1960s and in the 1970s, into a category of the superstructure.

7. The first fundamental sphere within which "the Left" obtained a content was aesthetics, in all its forms. For this reason, it remains far more easy today to locate a "Left" cinema, poetry, painting, imagery, rhetoric, than a "Left" economic program that would be distinct from bourgeois economic programs at large. After the 1960s, "the Left" became predominantly an aesthetic category; a proposition for an aesthetic.

8. The second fundamental sphere in which "the Left" obtained a comment, during the same period, and as it was being disseminated in the terrain of aesthetics, was "social rights", conceived as individuated rights based on "difference". These, inevitably, are rights that presuppose a norm they simultaneously question. All the social movements "the Left" created since the 1950s are determined by this contradiction between the non-questioning of the existence of a norm --the acceptance of the stability and the sustainability, effectively, of the capitalist mode of production-- and its questioning on the ideological and rhetorical level; as well as by the derivative contradiction between the rejection of normativity as such and the effort to make it more "inclusive" than it has been in the past.

9. In periods of recession, the victories of "new social movements" do not so much disappear as reveal themselves as mirages; for no deviation from the necessities of capitalist accumulation is possible, so "social rights" are either revealed to be devoid of substance or utterly "safe" for the social system, even during periods of social repression. This is the era in which gay marriage can be perceived as a far less radical demand than the right to a home or to medical care, because the latter have a cost for capital, whereas the former only demands "ideological adjustment" in the bourgeois state.

10. "The Left" is the essential and organic aspect of the "Great Illusion" of an important sector of middle and lower strata; these strata derived erroneous conclusions concerning the nature of the capitalist system by limiting their observations to the period in which the rhythms of development and the pressure made possible by actually existing socialism allowed the demand for a "fairer distribution of the social product" to have some limited practical consequences for everyday life and its quality. Today, the only utility of "the Left" is to advance confusion concerning the real nature of a category that is far more historically important and substantive --Social Democracy-- and to assist the reproduction of the intellectual and technocratic elites who use it to win popular legitimacy, thus leading to its ever higher delegitimation in the eyes of popular strata, with all the serious political consequences this may have for the conversion of the latter to Reaction. It goes without saying that the entire debate, in Greece and abroad, concerning what "the real Left" is and what political party "really" expresses something devoid of any real economic content is definitionally disorienting; the only purpose of such debate is the perpetuation of the political paralysis and impotence of the lower social strata.

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/08/what-is-left-ten-remarks.html?spref=tw

The House, by an overwhelming majority, grounded in SYRIZA - ANEL - SW - River - PASOK, voted the third memorandum with the toughest ever anti-labor, anti-popular measures in order to strengthen only those business groups, approved by the Eurogroup. Despite the loss of a vote by MPs of SYRIZA, certainly not by contrast perspective in the capital and the EU, the government has the confidence of the majority of the House.
"The issue is the people to lift the whole" trust "of the parties of the memoranda, the EU and the capitalist road that brought us to the current barbarism and to trust the Communist Party, the only force that struggles with consistency and stability for the exit the crisis in favor of the people ", said in a comment the Press Office of the CC of KKE .

*******************

It's up to the people
"The reversal of course for the country is still possible if the government of the Left consistently proceed with projects. Our task is all heavy, and despite the painful agreement, do not "shoot" the hope of the world ... ".
These writes prochtesini "Dawn" in the main article, confirming that it has the audacity levels of government and Syriza to the people.
Even now, together with ND, PASOK and the River, loaded on another memorandum of the people back, selling hope that it is possible to reverse the situation towards a fairer burden sharing of the Memorandum, as they say, towards populist direction , provided of course the people to continue to support them, not react the barbaric measures and put back in their implementation.
In other words, according to the "Dawn", a condition of his people salvation is to subscribe bankruptcy, through implementing the third memorandum, which, moreover, is launching what he did or could not be implemented by other both.
Election, SYRIZA was based on lies and deceit to steal the vote of the people. So does now to divert the tolerance to easily implement the measures need capital.
What does actually? That can be passed to the Memorandum, but should stay delusion live cultivating the people that the agreement is not government policy and that he would do everything in its power to soothe the unpopular consequences.
The manipulation of the people, after five years of wild foroepidromi and Multilayer reversals in labor and social security are among the main tasks undertaken by the government SYRIZA, with specific commitments to capital.
They know well that it is not enough to pass the Memorandum. The key is to pass without reaction measures thereunder. And in order to integrate the fair folk indignation sell hope that the government has its way to implement the Memorandum while working to reverse the course for the people.
It adistachtoi. First they called people to protest in favor of the government, supposedly to strengthen its negotiating power towards the "institutions". After calling on the people to show understanding to 'necessary compromises, "baptism" tactical maneuver "the unpopular agreements preceding the Eurogroup.
When it launched the third memorandum, part of SYRIZA, this role in the division, called on the people to demonstrate to correct allegedly SYRIZA policy.
Now, having dripped poison tolerance and waiting, say the people continue to believe that there is a way out for their benefit through this unpopular road bordering old and new understandings, the country's participation in the EU and the Eurozone, the pursuit of capital to a recovery.
The standby climate maintain and designs for card shuffling through elections.
Hope that 'sold' election Syriza, was blade for the remaining labor - popular rights.
This will continue as long as the people are not experiencing the power, as it does not take the matter into his own hands. And that requires organization for antipalema understandings and actions, struggle to recover losses, elimination of unpopular laws, preparation for hard class struggles, aimed at creating conditions for the satisfaction of modern grassroots needs.
It means keeping up with the KKE and strengthening of the people's alliance, fighting broke with the principal, the EU and authority.

http://www.rizospastis.gr/

Google Translator

Being Panayiotis Lafazanis: Honest, Reliable, Consistent Leader of the New New Left

http://left.gr/sites/left.gr/files/styles/large/public/lafazanis_58.jpg?itok=enO-sXdb
Panayiotis Lafazanis, Interview with "Eleftheros Typos" [Free Press], 14 March 2015:

Q: You had stated last October that a SYRIZA government will "abolish the Memorandum and its implementation laws in one night, with one legal act, just as they were dictatorially imposed." What has changed, Mr. Minister, and you forgot about this statement? Was the raw reality stronger than the pre-election wishes of your party or do you think the government has backtracked in many of its commitments when faced with the lenders?

A: There is no statement of mine that we will abolish the Memorandum in one night; it only exists as a total distortion of what I have said at different times. Personally, I always underlined, indeed, that Memoranda and their implementation laws must be abolished by a government in which SYRIZA will participate not "dictatorially", but with normal parliamentary procedures, with respect to the Parliament and with a full observance of the Parliamentary Regulations and Constitution. The first act of our new government was to immediately stop the implementation of the Memorandum that was in process. The austerity measures and the taxes that the ND-PASOK government was about to implement were thrown in the garbage. Our commitment for full abolition of the Memoranda and their implementation laws is still wholly valid; and this commitment, despite the great post-election difficulties and the blatant blackmail from abroad, will be fully honored in the next few months. The full abolition of memoranda is a position equivalent to SYRIZA's identity and the precondition for a new, consistent, progressive, developmental course and prospect for the country.

Panayotis Lafazanis, Parliament speech, approximately 1 month before interview, 10 February 2015, 0:23-2:14 of video:

http://youtu.be/2PrkPWcjk5E

"A question haunted the atmosphere before the elections [of January 2015]. And to be honest, I saw it even in those who were decided to vote for SYRIZA. They would say: "If SYRIZA wins, will it implement its radical pre-electoral program? Or will it follow the beaten path of all previous governments, that said one thing before elections and did another after elections?" I think that for a lot of the skeptics, whether they are well-meaning or not, this question has been reliably answered by the Prime Minister's programmatic statement. But if there are still skeptics concerning the government's consistency, and I can see a number here [smirk] --in fact supporters of the Memoranda-- who are worried that we will implement even a part of the Memorandum --70, 60, 50%-- so, since I see a number here, let me assure you: Don't worry, gentlemen. The Memoranda and the Troika are over. Cause you are really worried [smirk]. The Memoranda and the Troika are over."

Panayiotis Lafazanis, 17 April 2013, SKAI News:


- "The Memorandum and its implementation laws, Memoranda in general and their implementation laws, will be abolished, terminated, thrown in the garbage."

- "So you will do this by law?"

- "There is no other way, is there? These are laws. [...] The Memoranda were imposed by laws, dictatorially, in one night."

Panayiotis Lafazanis, Mega Channel, 29 December 2014, 0:40 into video:


"The pro-Memorandum governments are now over. Just as the Memoranda and their implementation laws are over. This stuff is all over for Greece [...] We will terminate the presence of the Troika in this country."

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/08/being-panayiotis-lafazanis-honest.html

Other video at link.

We will terminate the presence of the Troika in this country.

Oops! Will he be eating his crow from a plate, or right out of the pot? I guess he will just deny he ever said anything - may be he is a mute?

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FacebookTwitterDiggRedditDeliciousStumbleUponBloggerE-Mail.Varoufakis documents Syriza's political treachery
By Robert Stevens
24 August 2015
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis is continuing his effort to distance himself from the austerity memorandum Syriza Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has agreed to impose. In doing so, he is succeeding only in confirming the bankruptcy of the entire Syriza project, which has been embraced by pseudo-left groups internationally.

Varoufakis became finance minister following Syriza’s election in January. He was removed by Tsipras on July 6, immediately following the landslide vote against austerity in the referendum that had been called by the Syriza-led government.

In an interview last week in the Observer, Varoufakis said Tsipras had decided to “surrender” to the European Union and Greece's other creditors, and was seeking to become a “new De Gaulle".

He provided further details of how Tsipras, on the very evening of the overwhelming vote by the Greek electorate against the European Union’s austerity demands, moved to conclude a deal accepting all of the measures demanded by the EU.

Tsipras justified this on the basis that it is “better that a progressive government implement terms of surrender that it despises than leave it to the local stooges of the troika [European Commission, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund], who would implement the same terms of surrender with enthusiasm.”

As events have demonstrated, the main “stooge” of the troika is Syriza, with Varoufakis himself having played a leading role.

The former finance minister describes how in the negotiations with the troika, he proposed “standard Thatcherite or Reaganesque” economic policies, including tax reductions and privatisations. These were not accepted, he complains, because the troika wanted only total capitulation and “regime change.”

Syriza came to power with the notion that it would seek to win alliances in Europe, including with Italy, France and other heavily indebted countries, behind its proposal for a negotiated settlement over Greece’s €300 billion foreign debt.

However, they were most concerned with winning the support of Germany. To this end, Varoufakis personally travelled to Berlin and hailed the architect of EU-wide austerity, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, as one of the greatest political leaders of his age.

When it became clear that Schäuble was opposed to making any concessions to Greece and was plotting for Greece to be forced out of the euro zone, the attention of Syriza and Varoufakis swung to convincing German Chancellor Angela Merkel to rein Schäuble in.

Varoufakis told the Observer, “It wasn’t that we ever expected the troika to see the error of their ways… We expected the European partners to intervene, and, in particular, Chancellor Merkel.”

Last week, Varoufakis published the documents he presented to the troika during negotiations in May and June. His proposals were co-authored by a “Board of International Advisors,” including Lord Norman Lamont, whom Varoufakis describes as a “close friend.”

Lamont was chancellor of the exchequer in the UK Conservative government of John Major. He held a number of senior positions in the government of Margaret Thatcher. He recently wrote that his friendship with Varoufakis was based on shared economic views:

“Yanis and I were participating in a debate in Melbourne in Australia about the euro and we were on opposite sides of the debate, but as the debate went on we realised that fundamentally we both agreed and that there wasn’t much difference between us in our views…”

Also advising Varoufakis was Thomas Mayer, a former chief economist at Deutsche Bank, and Lawrence Summers, a Harvard University professor and former US treasury secretary. An academic on the Board of International Advisers, Mariana Mazzucato, is a permanent member of the European Commission’s expert group on innovation for growth.

James K. Galbraith from the University of Texas is a long-time associate of Varoufakis. Prior to taking up his post in the Greek government, Varoufakis authored several versions of “A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Eurozone Crisis,” the first of which was written with former UK Labour Party MP Stuart Holland. The final version, released in July 2013, was published jointly with Galbraith. In June 2013, Varoufakis and Galbraith wrote an op-ed piece in the headlined “Only Syriza Can Save Greece.”

Varoufakis and Galbraith assured the ruling elite internationally that a Syriza government “wouldn’t be a bad thing for Europe or the United States.” Were Syriza to be elected, they wrote, “nothing vital would change for the United States… Syriza doesn’t intend to leave NATO or close American military bases.”

The documents Varoufakis presented to Schäuble and company in May and June were entitled “A policy framework for Greece’s fiscal consolidation, recovery and growth,” and “Ending The Greek Crisis: Structural Reforms, Investment-led Growth & Debt Management.”

They called for privatisations and the creation of a “bad bank,” such as that established by the pro-austerity Irish government, to channel state spending into the hands of the very banks that had brought the economy to the brink of collapse. The June document assured the troika that Syriza’s proposals “[W]ill cost Greece’s European and international partners not one euro of additional financing.”

Varoufakis concluded his Observer interview by again insisting that there is no prospect for socialism. “I don’t believe that the time of depression is a revolutionary time,” he stated, adding, “The only people who benefit are the Nazis, the racists, the bigots, the misanthropes.” [Emphasis added]

Tsipras, who handpicked Varoufakis for the most important position in his government, even though Varoufakis was never a member of Syriza, would disagree with none of this.

Varoufakis’ documentation of the reactionary, anti-socialist perspective of Syriza exposes the lies of the Left Platform and all of the pseudo-left groups the world over, which, after hailing Syriza for months as the way forward, now provide the same service to the party’s belated dissident faction.

Many of the Left Platform’s representatives, including their leader Panagiotis Lafazanis, occupied senior posts in the Syriza government and throughout the party. The Left Platform claimed at certain points to have a majority of the party’s Central Committee and held four seats out of 11 on the party’s Political Secretariat. They were the most enthusiastic supporters of Syriza’s coalition with the right-wing, xenophobic Independent Greeks.

Varoufakis maintained close connections with Lafazanis throughout his time in office. Shortly after Syriza agreed in February to extend the austerity programme that had been accepted by the previous New Democracy government, Varoufakis was photographed having a late-night discussion with Lafazanis in the Greek parliament’s café.

Lafazanis and his cronies knew everything Varoufakis and Tsipras were discussing with the troika and at critical stages ensured with their votes that Syriza remained in office.

A section of the Left Platform has now split from Syriza, having been forced out by Tsipras, who will no longer tolerate even their half-hearted opposition, to form Popular Unity (Laiki Enótita). In this guise they will continue to devote their efforts to opposing the development of a revolutionary movement by the working class in Greece

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/24/varo-a24.html

In the face of the early elections

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/In-the-face-of-the-early-elections/

The SYRIZA-ANEL government recently resigned, resulting in new early parliamentary elections (most likely on the 20/9).


http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/In-the-face-of-the-early-elections/
As is well known, SYRIZA won the elections in January 2015, deceiving the workers, promising the abolition of the anti-people laws, which had been previously passed by the governments of PASOK and ND, after the agreements (memoranda) with the imperialist organizations (EU, IMF, ECB).



The KKE had warned in a timely fashion that SYRIZA, a “left”, an opportunist party which mutated into a social-democratic party, was chosen by the bourgeoisie to manage the crisis and can not implement a political line in favour of the people.



Our party had formulated its position that there can be no way out in favour of the working class and the other popular strata inside the capitalist development path, the EU and NATO.



As was demonstrated in a few months of managing capitalism, the “left” SYRIZA, which governed together with “right” nationalist party ANEL, not only did not abolish the 2 previous memoranda and most of the 400 anti-people application laws of the previous governments, but implemented them and passed through Parliament a third even more painful agreement (memorandum) with the imperialist powers. This agreement had the support of the other bourgeois parties and was voted for in Parliament by them: “rightwing” ND, “Social-democratic” PASOK, the “centre” party “POTAMI”. This new agreement massacres any rights that have remained, imposes new reductions in wages and pensions, abolishes social-security rights, imposes even more intense taxation of the popular strata, promotes the policy of privatizations etc.



In addition, the “Left-patriotic” government consistently operated during these months inside the framework of our country’s participation in the imperialist unions of NATO and the EU, of the “strategic alliance” with the USA. It participated in every NATO mission and exercise, it organized military exercises even with Israel, it promised a new base for the USA and NATO (on the island of Karpathos), it voted in the EU for the extension and reinforcement of the trade war against Russia etc.



So, in practice it has been demonstrated that the SYRIZA-ANEL government is another anti-people government, which with “”left” slogans served in an equally faithful way the bourgeoisie, the EU and NATO as the previous governments had done. Today, the governing SYRIZA-ANEL parties, using the same arguments that ND and PASOK had used in the past, defends the new anti-people agreement as the only way of keeping the country in the Eurozone and EU, something that it presents as the people’s salvation. SYRIZA, just as all the other bourgeois parties, sows the illusion amongst the working class and people that the EU and capitalism can be humanized, as long as the workers continue to endure the anti-people measures.



At the same time, the bourgeois political system in order to curb and control any radical changes in the people’s consciousness that could be brought about by the exposure of SYRIZA’s role continues to manufacture new parties. One such party, with the title “Laiki Enotita” (People’s Unity), was formed by MPs and former ministers from SYRIZA. These forces, which were active as a “left platform” inside SYRIZA, bear grave responsibilities as regards the deception of the people. They participated, even as ministers, in the implementation of the previous anti-people laws. They actively participated in the attempt during the previous period to trick the people that there is an alternative proposal for them inside the walls of the EU and agreed with the anti-people agreement that was signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government with the Troika on the 20th of February, with the anti-people proposal of 47 pages submitted by SYRIZA to the EU etc. Now that the illusions fostered by SYRIZA have been dented, these forces promote the return to the national currency as a solution for the people, along with other measures for the management of the system. They act as a “barrier” to the radicalization of the people, seeking to trap the people inside the capitalist development path.



Over this entire period, the KKE consistently exposed the role of SYRIZA and the other bourgeois parties, struggled for the abolition of the memoranda and all the anti-people measures, to prevent new measures, to develop the workers’-people’s struggle for the recovery of their losses and the satisfaction of their needs in combination with the only alternative solution that is in the interests of the working class and other popular strata:



The regroupment of the labour movement and the construction social-people’s alliance between the working class, the poor farmers, the urban self-employed, the youth and women from the families of the popular strata in order to strengthen the antimonopoly-anticapitalist struggle for the real overthrow, the socialization of the monopolies, the disengagement from the EU and NATO and the unilateral cancellation of the debt, with workers’-people’s power.



We are waging the struggle with this line in order to strengthen the KKE in the labour-people’s movement and in Parliament, unwaveringly continuing the struggle for the interests of the working class and its liberation from the shackles of capitalist exploitation.



24/8/2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/In-the-face-of-the-early-elections/

“SYRIZA Mark 2” and the new attempt to deceive the people

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The ancient philosopher Heraclitus said “You cannot step twice into the same river”, but some Greeks today seem to be ignorant of this dictum. There is a discussion about the political forces that recently detached themselves from SYRIZA and announced the creation of a new party, Popular Unity (PU). The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, in reference to this development, stressed that “the same scenario must not be repeated at the expense of the people. In any case, the sequel is usually worse than the original film.”

The system used its “left reserve”
In order for us to understand the latest political development in Greece, it is worth mentioning certain facts about the history of SYRIZA. SYRIZA was formed as a union of various opportunist groups with Synaspismos as its basic component, i.e. with forces that left the KKE in the 1990s, influenced by the ideas of Gorbachev, after they had previously and unsuccessfully attempted to achieve the social-democratization and organizational self-liquidation of the KKE. These forces were joined by those that had previously left the KKE (1968), under the influence of the opportunist euro-communist current.

Synaspismos’ programme was always a programme for social-democratic management, via reforms.
Since the early 2000s and onwards, especially after the assimilation of various groups (Trotskyists, Maoists etc.) and the transformation of Synaspismos into SYRIZA, this social-democratic programme was artfully enclosed in “radical”, “Anti-system”, “movementist” wrapping paper. Something that was reinforced after 2010, with the outbreak of the capitalist economic crisis. The signing of the anti-people agreements (memoranda) of the governments of PASOK and ND with the imperialist organizations (EU, IMF, ECB), which were accompanied by harsh anti-people measures, resulted in the adoption of the blurred “anti-memorandum” line by SYRIZA. At the same time, the rapid collapse of the social-democratic PASOK led to the absorption of many cadres of this party by SYRIZA. The false dilemma “memorandum-antimemorandum” allowed SYRIZA to hijack ideas, to deceive popular forces, promising that the people could be saved from the harsh anti-worker measures while remaining inside the framework of the EU and the capitalist development path, promoting the demand for the reduction of a section of the state debt, i.e. in essence accepting that the debt created by the governments of the plutocracy should be paid for by the people.
In the context of the recomposition of the political scene in 2012, SYRIZA was supported by a section of the bourgeois class and increased its electoral strength enormously, achieving victory in the elections of January 2015. It formed a government with another party, ANEL, the basic core of which came from the conservative ND party and has nationalist tendencies.
After 6 months of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, the Greek people came face to face with a new 3rd memorandum, which includes new antiworker-antipeople measures.

The “left” sloganeering in the service of capital
If anything has been demonstrated in the most glaring way by the developments of recent months in relation to SYRIZA and its bourgeois governance, it is the complete bankruptcy of the political line which claims that it can serve both the monopolies and the people. That it can via a bourgeois government, inside the European Union and the imperialist alliances and in conditions of capitalist barbarity, serve the people’s interests. The new massacre of the Greek people and the working class and popular families came about with the signature of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government, which has proved to be a worthy successor of the ND-PASOK coalition government, and with the votes of the other bourgeois parties (ND,PASOK, POTAMI).
Amongst the measures of the 3rd unbearable memorandum are new dramatic cuts in salaries and pensions, negative changes to labour relations, a new round of tax burdens, the reduction of health and education services and welfare provisions, new privatizations, as well as the coup de grace at the expense of the poor farmers and self-employed. And at the same time the previous memoranda and the 400 anti-people application laws will be kept in place.
In the face of the exposure and bankruptcy of the new-style social-democracy in these few months, something the KKE had accurately predicted and warned the people about, it is obvious that the bourgeois political system needs to create new barriers to the radicalization of the people.
So, the scenario that unfolded from 2012 to 2014 with SYRIZA as its protagonist is being repeated in Greece now with the newly formed “Popular Unity” of P. Lafazanis, until recently the Energy Minsiter of the SYRIZA-ANEL government. The parliamentary group, bearing this name, that emerged on Friday 21/8 after the withdrawal of 25 MPs from SYRIZA seeks to be the precursor of a new political formation-“shock absorber” to entrap those leftwing, radical militants who in previous years had illusions about SYRIZA, its government and the possibility of it paving the way for a pro-people perspective for the country. PU promotes a return to a national currency as the way out and openly regurgitates neo-keynesian positions and proposals, which SYRIZA had used in recent years to foster illusions regarding a leftwing pro-people management of capitalism.

Champions in deception
This split in SYRIZA was carried out by forces that had positions as leading ministers in the SYRIZA-ANEL government and implemented precisely what the decisions of the two previous memoranda and accepted without protest all the decisions that prepared the ground for the 3rd and most painful memorandum.
These forces that had previously existed inside SYRIZA as its “Left Platform” accepted the agreement of the government with the EU, ECB and IMF on the 20th of February, which provided for the implementation of all the anti-worker measures of the previous memoranda and the satisfaction of all the demands of big capital.
Over this entire period, they accepted the government’s proposals to the Troika for a new memorandum with painful anti-worker measures. It is indicative that they did not bring down the SYRIZA-ANEL government before the passing of the barbaric memorandum and that they continued to provide clear assurances that they supported the government despite their disagreements… right up until the Prime Minister Tsipras announced the resignation of his government…
These forces were silent when the SYRIZA-ANEL government promised the USA and NATO a new military base in the Aegean, and when their government held joint military exercises with Israel, when it voted to continue the EU’s sanctions against Russia, and when the Defense Minister stated that the country will participate in all the imperialist activities of NATO and the EU.
Now they present themselves as … “cheated spouses” and as the genuine representatives of SYRIZA’s “radicalism” and will participate in the elections on the 20th of September independently.


A capitalist Greece with a national currency
What is this specific political force proposing? If SYRIZA up until now has been promising that Greece will remain a part of the Eurozone, PU talks about “an orderly exit from the euro, if necessary”. It does not however pose the issue of the country leaving the EU and the capitalist development path. Why is PU talking about an “exit from the euro, if necessary”? As the head of PU, P. Lafazanis, clarified, with a nod and a wink to capital, such an exit will occur in the instance that the capitalist economy needs it in order to recover. In addition, PU regurgitates a number of well-known neo-keynesian measures to manage the system e.g. “the socialization of the banks so that they play a developmental role”, arguing that the banks can become charitable institutions that will hand out ready state money in order to support the much-vaunted capitalist recovery. In this way it is sowing illusions amongst the people, concealing the basic laws that govern the capitalist economy, which constantly demand new “sacrifices” from the workers, the reduction of social and labour rights and the shriniking of the people’s income with the aim of aiding the recovery of capital’s profitability.
Finally, PU talks about “canceling the largest part of the debt so that the country can breathe”, in this way accepting, as the other parties of the system do, that the people are responsible for the debt and must pay for it.
The cadres of PU also refer to “other countries outside the euro which are getting along just fine” as a model. Which countries is the head of the new opportunist party, Lafazanis invoking? Britain, Denmark, which are not in the Eurozone, something that does not impede the destruction of workers’-people’s rights in these countries, while other cadres invoke the Le Pen’s National Front in France, Italian industrialists, a section of German capital…
What do the peoples of these states, the people of Greece and the hopes for their needs to be satisfied have to do with aims of their exploiters? These aims are reflected in the political proposals for national currencies, wearing the “mantle” of radicalism in order to trick the people and hide their true anti-people content. This new false dichotomy “euro-drachma” aims to conceal from the people that the basic issues are capital’s course and power, participation in the EU and the imperialist system. The people must confront these things and not align with sections of capital that are flirting with idea of a national currency, another monetary alliance.

The new attempts to deceive the people must fail
The effort to set up a SYRIZA Mark 2, now that any doubts about the role of Mark 1 are dissipating, must not be welcomed at all by the people, who have already experienced the painful refutation of the expectations which it fostered. There is no room for new disappointments, for the wasting of valuable time again, which will be at the expense of the people.
The people have experience. They can draw conclusions. They must not be deceived again. There can be no solution in favour of the people inside the capitalist system, with the alternation of governments of bourgeois management. There can be no solution without a rupture with the capitalist development path and imperialist system. The people must not be deceived by those who prioritize the productive reconstruction of the capitalist economy as their main goal and indeed served this very goal as members of the government. All those who give a nod and a wink to sections of capital that are flirting with the idea of a national currency can not follow a different path other than the one that leads to the people’s bankruptcy. It is not important whether this is carried out via a memorandum or not. It is not important whether this is carried out inside the Eurozone or outside. What is important is that the efforts to trap the people in yet another choice in favour of capital must be thwarted.
The people, the poor popular strata that have a militant stance, must not allow themselves to once again become spectators in the same show, to experience new disappointments. Today, they can place their hopes with even greater certainty in the KKE, both as regards the daily struggle in the workplaces and working class neighbourhoods and also as regards the upcoming elections. Because it is the only force that has a truly realistic alternative hopeful proposal for the way out, the axes of which are disengagement from the EU and NATO, the unilateral cancellation of the debt and the socialization of the country’s wealth, with the people holding the reins of power.

Article of the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/SYRIZA-Mark-2-and-the-new-attempt-to-deceive-the-people/

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The alternative solution that is in the people’s interests is to be found on the path to overthrow capitalism. This requires a strong KKE in every sector and neighbourhood.

The GS of the CC of the party, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, speaking on the 27/8 at the major rally organized by the Attica Party Organization in Syntagma sq. opposite Parliament, called on the people to contribute to the organization of the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism with their votes as well, by strengthening the consistent and militant voice of the KKE for the real way out.



The rally was the launching pad for the call to strengthen the KKE in the elections to reach every popular household, starting from today.



“You have tried them… Now the solution is to be found on the path to overthrow the system, joining forces with the KKE”, was the slogan written behind the podium of the rally, expressing in a condensed way the call of the communists for the people to evaluate their experiences from the previous years and months, to judge using their experience what they hear and see today, to reach the ballot box holding the list of the KKE in their hands.



D. Koutsoumpas stressed that in reality parties like SYRIZA, ND, POTAMI, PASOK and ANEL, which voted for the 3rd memorandum (agreement) of the government with the imperialist organizations (EU, IMF, ECB), are asking the people to say “yes” with their votes to the massacre of their rights, to choose which government will implement the 3rd memorandum. He stressed that the people must not be tricked by SYRIZA’s promises for a better management of the memorandum, and that no votes from the popular strata must return to ND and PASOK or be trapped by POTAMI.



The GS of the CC of the KKE called on the workers to reject the effort to revive the fraudulent anti-memorandum line of “SYRIZA Mark 2”, which is expressed by the new party ‘Popular Unity”. He noted the responsibilities of the members of Popular Unity who had participated in the SYRIZA-ANEL government, and that this party defends capitalist ownership and power, just as the rest of the parties do.



He also asked the people not to absolve the criminal fascist Golden Dawn organization and referred to its criminal activity (murders, assaults) and exposed the fact that this organization supports the interests of the bourgeois class.



Finally, he made a detailed reference to the political proposal of the KKE, noting that it is the only hopeful proposal that can finally put an end to the anti-people measures, which are being imposed in order to serve the capitalist development path. He stressed that the people must become the masters of the economy and power, joining forces with the KKE, for a real workers’-people’s sovereignty and power.



He argued that today better conditions can be formed for the organization and regroupment of the labour movement, the reinforcement of the people’s alliance, in order to pave the way for the overthrow of the system. A more powerful KKE in every sector and neighbourhood is needed for this course.

28.08.2015


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=09yhqVbmIbs

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-alternative-solution-that-is-in-the-peoples-interests-is-to-be-found-on-the-path-to-overthrow-capitalism-This-requires-a-strong-KKE-in-every-sector-and-neighbourhood.-00001/

Slide show at link.

Joint Statement in Solidarity with KKE


Dear comrades,

We, Communist and Workers Parties are following the developments in Greece, the offensive of the European Union, capital and its political representatives against the workers'-people's rights.

We, Communist and Workers' Parties have supported the struggles of the Greek workers and we have expressed our internationalist solidarity with and support for the struggle of the KKE.

For many years, the governments of ND and PASOK in cooperation with the EU-ECB-IMF have implemented memoranda and harsh anti-people laws with painful consequences for the working class and popular strata.

Today, the anti-people agreement-third memorandum which was signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, supported by ND and PASOK, with the Troika maintains the anti-people measures of the previous governments and thrusts new burdens onto the workers of Greece, unbearable taxation, the abolition of social-security and labour rights, the reductions in wages and pensions, privatizations etc., worsening the situation of the families from the popular strata even further.

These developments allow us to draw certain useful conclusions in order to strengthen the people's struggle, such as:

Capitalism can not be humanized. It gives rise to crises, unemployment and poverty. In reality, it has been demonstrated that every kind of management of the system sharpens the people's problems and increases the profits of big capital.
The EU is a reactionary imperialist organization. "Democracy", "Solidarity" and social justice can not exist inside its framework.

We, the Communist and Workers Parties which sign this message, appreciate the decisive-consistent stance of the KKE at the side of the working class, the Greek people for the abolition of the memoranda, against the anti-people agreement signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government (and the other bourgeois political parties) with the Troika (EU-ECB-IMF).

Our parties salute the struggle of the communists in Greece for the workers'-people's rights, the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, for socialism.



17/07/2015



CP of Albania
CP of Australia
Party of Labour of Austria
Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS),
CP of Bangladesh
WP of Bangladesh
CP of the Workers of Belarus
Brazilian CP
Communist Pole Luis Carlos Prestes - Brazil
CP of Britain
NCP of Britain
CP of Bulgaria
Party of the Bulgarian Communists
Union of Communists in Bulgaria
CP of Canada
CPof Denmark
CP in Denmark
CP, Denmark
Communist Wokers' Party - For Peace and Socialism (Finland)
Pole of Communist Revival in France
UCP of Georgia
Workers' Party of Hungary
Workers' Party of Ireland
CP, Italy
Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
CP of Luxembourg
CP of Macedonia (FYROM)
CP of Malta
CP of Mexico
Popular Socialist Party of Mexico
NCP of the Netherlands
CP of Norway
CP of Pakistan
CP of Palestine
Palestinian PP
Phillipinese CP [PKP-1930]
CP of Poland
CP of Puerto Rico
CP of the Russian Federation
Russian CWP
CP of Soviet Union
NCP of Yugoslavia
CP of Slovakia
South African CP
CP of the Peoples of Spain
Galizan Movement for Socialism
Primeira Linha, Galicia
CP of Sweden
Syrian CP
CP (Turkey)
CP of Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine
Communist Refoundation Uruguay
Party of Communists USA
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (USA)
CP of Venezuela

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Joint-Statement-in-Solidarity-with-KKE/

No “second chance” for the anti-people plans and illusions

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The intense activity of the communists of Greece for the elections on the 20th of September is under way with the slogan “You have tried them… Now the solution is to be found on the path to overthrow the system, joining forces with the KKE” so that the political proposal of the KKE reaches every family from the working class and popular strata.



At the same time, the “leftwing” SYRIZA is asking the people to give it “a new opportunity”, claiming that it will elaborate a “parallel” programme, which will allegedly in practice negate the most anti-people aspects of the memorandum, the agreement it signed with the imperialist institutions: the EU, IMF, ECB.



On the other side, “rightwing” ND, “centrist” POTAMI and social-democratic PASOK, which also voted in parliament in favour of the 3rd memorandum, are trying to conceal their strategic convergence with SYRIZA. They are promising that they will bring capitalist ‘growth”, which allegedly will save the people, and that SYRIZA can not do this as it has been demonstrated in its 6 months in government to be “incompetent” and “unprepared”.



Fascist Golden Dawn, once again is trying to exploit the question of immigration in our country, sowing racism and xenophobia, with the aim of strengthening its electoral performance and continuing its criminal activity, as the “guard dog” of capital.



SIRIZA mark 2, so-called “Popular Unity”, which is comprised of ministers and MPs from SYRIZA, who split from it a month ago after the government’s resignation, are sowing illusions amongst the workers that there can be a pro-people administration inside the EU, by returning to a national currency (if necessary) and by transforming the banks into “charitable institutions” that will provide ready money as a tool for (capitalist) growth. In this way, they are using the same arguments deployed by SYRIZA before the elections in January 2015.



In these conditions, the KKE is stressing that the people must not give a “second chance” to the parties that support the path of capitalist development and the EU, the path that brings the memoranda and the anti-people measures. They must not approve the implementation of the new anti-people memorandum with their votes. They must not give a “second chance” to those who, in the recent past as well, sowed illusions about the “humanization” of capitalism.



Dimitris Koutsoumpas, speaking at an event in commemoration of the “Kokkinia Blockade” (when in August 1944 the German fascists and their local collaborators rounded up the entire male population of this popular neighbourhood of Piraeus in the square in order to identify and then execute over 200 communists and other resistance militants), said: “It is in our hands over the next few weeks to nullify the traps they are setting, one by one. Traps like the new shock-absorber, SYRIZA mark 2 of Lafazanis, which serves the same goal as it did before, but from another position now, which is the recovery of capitalist profitability. We are initiating a broad discussion with the working class, the people, the youth, that with a strong KKE we can fight against the memoranda which bankrupt the people. We can pave the way for the final liberation form the anti-people agreements-memoranda. We can rid ourselves of those forces which are really responsible for the situation: the power of capital and its unions.”

03.09.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/No-second-chance-for-the-anti-people-plans-and-illusions/

PAME in Solidarity with the Migrants
on 15 August 2015. Posted in Immigrants
PAME in solidarity with the migrants who arrive in Greece, uprooted by imperialist wars and poverty, delivered goods to migrants who are station at Areos Park, as a first gesture of support. PAME distributed the following statement in English and Farsi
Brother, sister, migrant,

We, the workers of Greece, the trade unions of the Greek working class, PAME, we welcome you in our country. We know you come here from a difficult journey, uprooted by poverty and imperialist wars in your country. Now you face the inhospitable policy of the Greek Government, the obstacles and the difficulties they create in your effort to get papers and continue your journey. You face the lack of infrastructure, hospitality areas, translators, food, legal aid and whatever else you and your children need. But you know, as was in your country, Governments and bosses only care about their profits and not for the peoples who suffer.

We, the workers, we are brothers regardless of country, religion, or race. We are brothers and sisters because, together we suffer from imperialist wars and poverty, from unemployment and cost of living. That is why the workers of Greece, our unions, PAME, will do whatever is possible to help you in the difficulties you face.

PAME demands

Immediate solution in the problem of your housing and decent living for as long as needed, until your departure to your destinations, by providing interpreters, medical attention, food, legal aid and whatever else is needed.

To be assigned the status of asylum or subsidiary protection to all refugees, victims of imperialist wars, interventions, with fast, reliable and fair procedures.

No involvement of our country in the imperialist plans of the USA, NATO and the European Union

http://pamehellas.gr/index.php/en/component/content/article/113-english-categories/secretariats-of-pame/immigrants/5356-pame-for-the-migrants

Sam Webb's 2 cents: Opportunism poorly disguised as pragmatism. Resistance is futile & Syrzia is as good as it gets.


Thoughts on Greece, Syriza and its left critics, Part 2
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by: SAM WEBB
september 11 2015
tags: Greece, Germany, Europe, capitalism, economics, communists

gr
This is part two of a three-part series. See part one here.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." - Karl Marx

"What childish innocence it is to present one's own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!" - Frederick Engels

If any of us wants to judge the conduct of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Syriza in their negotiations with the Eurogroup (the finance ministers and heads of state that make up the Eurozone) in July, a close look at the concrete situation in Greece and Europe is necessary. At the core of any analysis is an examination of the distribution of power among contending class and social forces, the larger socio-economic matrix in which these forces collide, and the parameters and limits of social change.

That may seem obvious and not require mentioning, but I'm afraid it's a method some on the left seem averse to and thus avoid.

But this omission inevitably leads to speculative and abstract thinking which then tacks in the direction of 1) sweeping and negative judgments of classes, people, and parties who fail to "measure up" to what are considered moments of "transformative" possibility, and 2) grandstanding to show off one's radical temper and credentials.

This may make for good political theater complete with righteous indignation at "opportunities squandered." But once the noise in the room subsides, it becomes apparent that beneath the militant bluster and sharp criticism of those who are doing the heavy lifting in difficult circumstances, something is missing. And that something is a reliable framework for making such evaluations - not to mention constructing a politics that has the potential to bend, even rupture, the structures of exploitation and oppression to the advantage of working people and their allies.

Which brings me back to Syriza and its leader Alexis Tspiras. Any fair evaluation of their role must ask: What is the concrete situation in which they govern? Is the playing field level between Syriza and its ruling class adversaries? Or does one side have an advantage, and if so, how much of an advantage? Does each side have the same to lose? Is Grexit - Greece quitting the Eurozone - a realistic option? And if so, is an orderly exit possible? What solidarity can be expected across Europe and globally?

What about Tsipras?

Tsipras didn't go into the negotiations with the leaders of the Eurogroup in Brussels with his eyes closed. As numerous interviews show, he was well aware that the balance in political, economic, and institutional power overwhelmingly favored his opponents sitting in the political and financial centers of Europe. And he knew that the objective of his main adversaries, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, was to cut the new prime minister and Syriza - a party of the left - down to size, while imposing another round of harsh measures on the new Greek government in exchange for some financial assistance.

Nevertheless Tsipras still hoped that the large "no" vote of the Greek people in a referendum a week before the negotiations began might give German leaders reason to pause, to reconsider their draconian bargaining posture, and maybe, just maybe, consider some form of debt relief.

Or, alternatively that the vote would nudge France and Italy, as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to show some backbone and stand up to the German capitalist juggernaut.

When neither happened, Tsipras had to know that the "jig was up" and that he (and the Greek people) would have to accept a punishing settlement and a humiliating defeat. Which is what happened.

Upon returning to Athens, Tsipras said as much to the Greek parliament. He didn't prettify the settlement. But he also made the point that there was no good alternative.

If the negotiations (or "waterboarding" as one observer called it) had any redeeming virtue, it was only in the fact that it laid bare for the rest of Europe the exploitative, unequal, anti-democratic, and coercive relations that are at the core of the structure and practice of the European Union (EU) and Eurozone.

Greece and the Eurozone

Unsurprisingly, not everyone was happy with what they heard. The main criticism coming the left was that Tsipras should have had a plan B. And for most of these critics, plan B amounted to leaving the Eurozone, which is a monetary union of 18 of the 28 countries of the EU, that use a common currency - the euro - and abide by a set of common rules.

Tsipras, however, rejected this option as an unmitigated disaster.

And he has a point. For Grexit to be a realistic alternative it has to rest on more than the ideological disposition of its advocates. They have to demonstrate that the majority of Greek people supports such a course of action; that Greece has the necessary economic wherewithal to withstand the economic firestorm that will inevitably and immediately come with an exit; and, finally, that sustained and substantial solidarity, including material, can be expected from the rest of Europe.

But none of these conditions can be met.

First of all, polls and interviews show the Greek people aren't ready to bail out of the Eurozone. Public opinion in Greece has been consistently and emotionally attached to membership in the European Union and the Eurozone. The "no" vote on the referendum prior to the Brussels smackdown was both a rejection of austerity and an insistence that a new path, anchored in debt relief and sustainable growth, be found within, not outside of, the Eurozone.

To the extent that Grexit is a realistic option, it is, ironically, an option for Germany, not Greece, in this sense: Germany, with its powerful economy, deep financial reserves, and nearly unchallenged voice in Europe, doesn't fear that a Greek exit would trigger a financial breakdown across Europe.

Indeed, Schauble floated the idea that Greece should be expelled from the Eurozone for a year or two after which it could, if its financial house was deemed back in order by the Troika (European Central Bank, European Commission, and IMF), apply for readmission.

With German leaders saying they basically did not care if the Greeks left the Eurozone, Greece's bargaining position effectively collapsed. It became an easy target for the Germanic capitalist bully to teach all of Europe a lesson.

If, as the German leaders believed, chaos spreading to the rest of Europe was very unlikely in the wake of a Greek exit, the same couldn't be said for Greece. No one knows exactly what a country's exit from the Eurozone would look like. It has never happened so far. But what can reasonably guessed is that it wouldn't be pretty for a poor country like Greece.

It's one thing for the restive British to consider leaving the EU and quite another for Greece - a small country at the bottom of the food chain in Europe - to quit the Eurozone. Its resources are meager and it doesn't possess anything close to an integrated and modern economy. And this is more so today than when it entered the EU 14 years ago.

Let's face it: if Greece were to give the finger to the Eurozone, its credit markets would freeze up and its banks would be thrown into deeper crisis. It is almost certain that inflation would spike up as the price of imported goods would skyrocket. Exports, meanwhile, might become more inviting, but that isn't automatic by any means. Investment, private and public, would go south for sure, while business and consumer savings would take a hit. And the crisis of everyday living would spread and deepen.

No "sugar daddy" for Greece

If there is a "sugar daddy" ready to step in and fill the breech upon Greece's exit from the Eurozone, it is still a well-kept secret. Cuba on its exit from the grip of U.S. colonialism had the Soviet Union to assist it, but Greece has no such benefactor waiting in the wings.

It is simply wishful thinking, therefore, to believe that after a short period of pain and privation, a dynamic developmental path would somehow assert itself and whisk Greece out of the kingdom of hardship and plunk it down in the kingdom of plenty.

Finally, any viable exit strategy from European institutions has to include sustained and substantive solidarity actions of the left, progressive, and working class movements in Western Europe and North America. But so far that hasn't developed. In fact, the various detachments of the working classes and people across Europe (and worldwide) are in most instances fighting from defensive positions against the austerity policies of their own governments and the EU. The challenges to the regime of austerity and neoliberalism across Europe haven't been sustained or successful yet. If they had, the dynamics of the current struggle between Greece and the Eurogroup and Germany would be very different.

This undeniable reality should give some modesty to the insistent claims of some on the left outside of Greece that Syriza should show some chutzpah and choose a policy of "rupture."

To criticize Tsipras and Syriza, therefore, for their failure to Grexit seems more than a little quixotic and fanciful to say the least.

Now no one should interpret this to mean that remaining in the Eurozone is a good option. But the fact is that the Greek people are not choosing between a bad and a good alternative. Their choice is between which is the least painful and which might position them over the medium term to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) and some others on the left want to hear none of this. The choice between staying or leaving in their view is a false one. The only alternative in present circumstances is a socialist revolution, they say. Anything less than that isn't worth considering.

Reality-based strategy

But here's the problem: There is no evidence that the Greek people favor such a course of action. If the Greek people are ready to overthrow the system, it escapes me. Then again, I'm thousands of miles away. But I do know this: it can't be based on the voting strength of the KKE in parliamentary elections. At last count it received about 5 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, and if polls are accurate, its vote will be about the same in coming elections in October.

All of which underscores the fact that communists like the rest of humanity have to live in the world as it is. They can seek succor in Marxist Leninist texts (but the question is how to interpret these for today) and the notion of socialism's inevitability (a very problematic claim if not qualified and reconstructed), but neither can substitute for a reality-based elaboration of program, strategy, tactics, demands, and political initiatives.

The final chapter in the riveting saga that is playing out in Greece and Europe hasn't reached a denouement. Just as it was premature to think that the "no" vote in the July referendum in Greece heralded a new day for that beleaguered county, it is also unwise to conclude that the latest negotiations (or really, the hazing of Tsipras) in Brussels bring to a conclusion this savage confrontation. German capital and its acolytes won this round, and won it decisively. But not so decisively that white flags of surrender are flying in Athens.

Moreover, the Greek elections next month will once again put the future of the country into the hands where it belongs: the hands of the Greek people. In going to the voting booth they will have the opportunity to support one or another party and their respective path to extricate Greece from its present troubles.

Syriza and the left

Obviously, in calling a snap election, Tsipras hopes Syriza will be able to expand its representation in Parliament and its influence in society. People on the left should hope for its success.

Syriza is not your garden variety social democratic party that was ascendant in the last half of the 20th century. Many of its leaders and members were part of the KKE up until 1991, while others come from other traditions on the left. Marxism and socialism are part of its vocabulary and figure prominently in its analysis and direction. And notwithstanding recent political setbacks, it retains transformative aspirations.

Its rise a few years ago is part of a necessary process of reconstitution of the left in the wake of the historic defeat of communist, socialist, and working class movements in the 1990s. Its defeat will not create more favorable conditions for the left to emerge in some newly packaged, strengthened, and "pure" form in Greece or elsewhere.

The recent decision of a group of Syriza's members of Parliament to form a new organization on a "more radical ground" certainly has an appealing ring to it. But one has to ask: Will the division of the left strengthen the hand of the Greek people in their fight against austerity, or weaken it? If experience elsewhere is of any value, it seems the latter is more likely.

Now what?

At any rate, while anything is possible when the Greek people go to the polls in two weeks, it is likely that they will once again show no desire to exit the Eurozone.

Instead, they will probably choose to "stay put," but not passively, not in a supine position. All evidence suggests a closely contested election. If Syriza prevails, its mandate from the Greek people will be to create as well as take advantage of whatever space exists in the present situation to defend popular democracy, living standards, and national sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the left across Europe has a responsibility to step up the pressure on the Troika, to exploit the cracks appearing between the IMF and the other capitalist "institutions," and to open up new fronts of solidarity. Securing debt relief is of crucial importance.

If at some point an exit from the Eurozone begins to look like a necessary course of action, it has to be the result of a conscious decision of a majority of the Greek people. Only they have that right. It can't be the fancy of any party no matter where it sits on the political spectrum.

Why? Because in the event that they exit the Eurozone, the Greek people will surely experience some difficult days (to say the least) and they may well feel buyer's remorse. That doesn't necessarily constitute a major problem. But what would is if they feel, based on the hardship that they will inevitably endure in the short and medium run, that they have been sold a fraudulent "happy days are here again" bill of goods about leaving the Eurozone. If that happens politics could quickly take a sharp turn to the extreme right.

It is natural to look for a quick fix to the crisis in Greece and Europe, but there probably isn't one in present circumstances. In the end, a strategy that stands a chance of lifting Greece and its European neighbors out of the current economic crisis necessitates a relentless and united struggle to qualitatively shift the balance of forces in Europe as well as Greece. Such a shift would create the conditions to enact - not socialist revolution - but radical economic and political reforms and replace outdated and anti-democratic structures of governance in Greece and Europe.

While Greece is a tiny country and Syriza a new party of the left, their success in overcoming the current crisis would give fresh momentum, confidence, and experience to people in Europe and worldwide, including the United States, who themselves yearn for a world in which peace, substantive equality, sustainability, solidarity, and humanism are at the core of daily living.

http://peoplesworld.org/thoughts-on-greece-syriza-and-its-left-critics-part/

My god, what a bloody fucking tool. He has the gall to call the USSR Cuba's "sugar daddy"? How on earth can this ... creature be a leader of any communist party? He confuses "reality on the ground" with actions in regards to it. "A Greek exit would trigger a financial breakdown across Europe." And?

Then he has the classlessness to either pretend to not understand KKE's position or to actually NOT understand KKE's position. They only have 5% of the voters support? How would the CPUSA like to have 5% of US voter support? Again, the tool. This asshole says the KKE is calling for "socialist revolution"(!) MY god! A communist party advocating socialist revolution? It's the apocalypse! But Again he is a dumb-ass. KKE is calling for workers and the popular strata to move toward policies that support and benefit themselves. Do the things and take the actions that most fully support their own lives, and future.

I just can't go through any more of it, it is too full of shit and vomit.

Webb has joined a small group of people who inhabit the darkest corner of class traitor hell.

Message of solidarity with the KKE for the electoral battle on the 20th of September

We, the communist and workers parties that sign this statement express our solidarity with the communists of Greece in the face of the difficult electoral battle on the 20th of September.

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/foto-kke.jpg_1510849530.jpg

We call on the workers, the youth, the popular strata of Greece to strengthen the KKE at the ballot box as well. As it is the KKE that militantly defends their rights all these years, against the anti-people policies of the governments, the EU and IMF.



The increase of the KKE’s forces is what guarantees the strengthening and effectiveness of the struggles of the Greek people for the rights of the working class and the popular strata, for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, for workers’-people’s power



1.CP of Albania
2.CP of Australia
3.Party of Labour of Austria
4.CP of Azerbaijan
5.WP of Bangladesh
6.Communist Party of the Workers of Belarus
7.Brazilian CP
8.CP of Brazil
9.CP of Britain
10.NCP of Britain
11.CP of Bulgaria
12.Union of Communists in Bulgaria
13.Party of the Bulgarian Communists
14.CP of Canada
15.Socialist Workers’ Party of Croatia
16.CP of Bohemia and Moravia, Czech Republic
17.CP in Denmark
18.Pole of Communist Revival in France
19.Union of Revolutionary Communists of France
20.CP of Macedonia (FYROM)
21.UCP of Georgia
22.German CP (DKP)
23.Hungarian WP
24.CP of India
25.CP of Ireland
26.WP of Ireland
27.Tudeh Party, Iran
28.CP, Italy
29.Socialist Movement Kazakhstan
30.Lebanese CP
31.CP of Luxembourg
32.CP of Malta
33.CP of Mexico
34.Popular Socialist Party - National Political Association , Mexico
35.Movement “ Popular Resistance” , Moldova
36.NCP of the Netherlands
37.CP of Norway
38.CP of Pakistan
39.Palestinian CP
40.Palestinian People’s Party
41.Peruan CP
42.Philippines CP (PKP-1930)
43.CP of Poland
44.CP of Puerto Rico
45.Russian Communist Workers’ Party
46.CP of the Russian Federation
47.CP of the Soviet Union
48.Party of Communists of Serbia
49.CP of Slovakia
50.CP of the Peoples of Spain
51.CP of Sweden
52.Syrian CP
53.CP, Turkey
54.CP of Ukraine
55.Union of Communists of Ukraine
56.Party of the Communists, USA
57.Network of Communist Clubs, USA
58.CP of Venezuela






The statement is still open for signatures




14.09.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Message-of-solidarity-with-the-KKE-for-the-electoral-battle-on-the-20th-of-September/

CPUSA is not on the list, sez it all.

Interview with the Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
CP of Greece, Interview of the International Relations Section of the CC published in the Jacobin magazine [En, Ru, Es]

Wednesday, 16 September 2015 13:44 Communist Party of Greece
http://www.solidnet.org/greece-communist-party-of-greece/cp-of-greece-interview-of-the-international-relations-section-of-the-cc-published-in-the-jacobin-magazine-en-ru-es
Interview of the International Relations Section of the CC published in the Jacobin magazine [En, Ru, Es]




What level of support does the party expect in the coming elections?
The KKE told the people the truth, it warned them about the course of the developments and predicted what would be the outcome of a Syriza government. It warned that Syriza’s program and the Thessalonika declarations determined the compromise, the agreement with the EU, and the new shameful memorandum.

Its program was an inherently anti-people one, dressed up with some left-wing slogans. Now that the third memorandum has been passed with the votes of the “left-wing” Syriza government, together with the votes of liberal New Democracy (ND), social-democratic Pasok, “centrist” Potami and nationalist ANEL, there is tangible and irrefutable evidence that no government can implement a people-friendly political line in the framework of the EU and the capitalist development path.

Capitalism and its international unions, such as the EU, cannot have their character changed by negotiations, referenda, allegedly left-wing governments. Any government that functions on the terrain of the capitalist economy is obliged to observe its immutable anti-people laws that bleed the people in order to reinforce capital’s competitiveness, profitability, and investments.

In addition, in the last seven months after the January elections, the KKE has unwaveringly fought against the anti-people measures and at the same time has proposed the development path that is in the people’s interests and belongs exclusively to them.

We fought against the real causes of the memoranda which are none other than the strategy of the EU and capital that aims to overcome the capitalist economic crisis by creating new avenues for capital’s profitability, with an even cheaper labor force.

The KKE was the only party that tabled a draft law in parliament to abolish the memoranda and the four hundred application laws. All the MPs of Syriza — including those that have now split away and founded “Popular Unity,” Syriza mark two — are responsible for the fact that this draft law was never brought to the house for discussion or a vote.

The KKE consistently organizes the struggle for immediate relief measures for the people, for solidarity, for the abolition of the anti-worker, anti-people laws, for the recovery of the losses, for the satisfaction of the people’s needs today, in a trajectory of rupture with the EU, capital, and its power.

So, in conclusion, we believe that the KKE should be further reinforced in the elections this September, without setting specific numerical targets. And this is because at a time when the bourgeois political system is spawning new political parties, i.e. in conditions of more general realignments and the recomposition of the political system, it is not helpful to adopt specific numerical targets in the elections.

The political goal of the KKE is to strengthen itself comprehensively in every field, politically, ideologically, organizationally, in the movement, and electorally. Particularly now, when the people have tried every form of bourgeois government (social-democratic, right-wing, left-wing) and as we note in our central slogan: “You have tried them . . . Now the solution is to be found on the path to overthrow the system, joining forces with the KKE.”

Within the trade union movement, in what sectors is the party strongest?
The KKE has significant, historic, enduring blood ties with the working class and its trade union movement. The Communists have the political obligation, an obligation which is also included in the Party’s statutes, to actively participate in their trade unions.

In Greece, in contrast with some other countries, there is a unified trade union structure, i.e. there are no confederations formed on the basis of political convictions, but two confederations of trade unions (one in the public sector and one in the private sector).

This does not mean that there is not a robust ideological-political confrontation within the ranks of the trade union movement. Two lines come into conflict inside the labor and trade union movement. On the one side, the line of “Social Dialogue”, class collaboration, i.e. the subjugation of the working class. This line is expressed by the government and employer-led majorities in the confederations.

And on the other side, there is the line of class unity and struggle — the Communists play the leading role in promoting this line, which has been expressed in Greece by the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) for the last sixteen years.

PAME is a front which seeks to include in its ranks the liveliest and most militant forces of the labor and trade union movement.

PAME is organized on a nationwide basis and focuses, without exception, on all the workplaces and production sectors in the public and private sector. The common agreed position of these forces is to follow a line of struggle against capital, the European Union, and the government. PAME’s forces oppose imperialism and its wars.

Sectoral federations of workers, employees and pensioners, labor centers (geographical associations of trade unions), hundreds of local unions, elected trade-union officials, struggle and coordinating committees of workers-employees participate in PAME. The activity of PAME extends to every sector of industry and education, construction, transport, tourism, retail, and banks etc.

Today, PAME has substantial forces in nearly every sector, especially in the private sector. It has the majority, for example in the federations in construction (the largest federation in Greece), the pharmaceutical industry, textile-clothing, accounting, beverages, food processing, print, the paper industry, and it has a very strong presence in the metal industry, tourism, restaurants, maritime transport, local government, and telecommunications.

It has the majority in many labor centers and a very strong presence in the largest labor centers: Athens, Piraeus, and Thessalonika.

How large do you estimate your active membership is — cadre, level of support in the student movement, and so on.
As you may be aware a large part of the nearly 100 years of our party’s existence was characterized by persecution, imprisonments, exile, torture, executions.

Today, we might operate in conditions of parliamentary democracy, but we do not forget that this is one of the forms of capital’s dictatorship, which uses many forces and mechanisms for the repression of the labor and Communist movement.

For this reason, we do not consider it prudent to announce the number of members and cadres. However, we can inform your readers that in the recent elections in January 2015 our party received 338,000 votes, about 5.5 percent, and had fifteen MPs elected to the national parliament. In the recent EU elections it received 349,000 votes, about 6.15 percent, and had two MEPs elected to the EU Parliament.

As regards the student movement, every year elections are held for the councils of the student unions. In recent years, “Panspoudastiki”, the electoral list supported by KNE, the KKE’s youth organization, has steadily increased its vote and this year emerged as the second largest group, receiving 19 percent in the universities and 22 percent in the Technological Institutes.

How did the party relate to the movement of the squares and view the class composition of many of the social movements that came to fore during the early years of the crisis?
The so-called “movement of the squares” that designated itself as being “non-party aligned,” was highly publicized by organizations of the bourgeois mass media that are owned by the capitalists. Its rationale concerning the issue of democracy at the least indicates hypocrisy, just as their effort to unite the people supposedly beyond the issue of class does, projecting a vague anti-memorandum content.

In practice, the position “outside of the parties,” “outside of the unions” on the part of the “square movement” was nothing but a reactionary position. They position themselves against the memorandum and its horrific measures, while they say nothing at all against the government, the EU, or the political forces that align themselves with these policies.

On the contrary, they attempted to speak in general terms about politicians that they characterized as “traitors,” lumping the KKE together with the bourgeois forces and lumping the class-oriented trade unions together with those that follow a policy of compromise.

It’s not by chance that this movement was utilized by the fascist Golden Dawn party, among others, that saw their electoral support shoot up rapidly after the movement appeared, which ideologically-politically prepared the ground in order for the criminal organization Golden Dawn to sow ideologically reactionary seeds of fascist deception.

In terms of social composition, this movement was directed at petty-bourgeois sections of society that are being violently destroyed under conditions of the capitalist crisis, at politically backward sections of the working class, and at lumpen elements.

It was supported as well by sections of the bourgeois class, the bourgeois mass media that publicized the “movement of the squares” and other similar movements, such as the “movement of the potato” with the goal of disorienting the working people, distancing them from the organized class struggle that has an orientation of rupture with the monopolies, with capitalism and the EU; in order for the popular strata not to comprehend what is happening and not to struggle against those who are responsible and against the causes of the capitalist crisis; to not see that the only alternative solution in favor of the people, proposed by the KKE, is found in the socialization of the means of production, unilateral cancellation of the debt, central planning of the economy, disengagement from the imperialist unions of the EU and NATO, with the people in power.

In what ways, concretely, was the movement of the squares utilized by Golden Dawn? Was it just a matter of the party feeding off of vague stirrings in the middle classes? Wouldn’t “vague anti-memorandum content” possibly mean the movement could be won over to a more radical line?
What is very important to understand is that the vague anti-memoranda slogans which were dominant in these demonstrations in the squares, it is quite a stretch to characterize this phenomenon as being a “movement,” concealed the fact that the memoranda are a part of the EU’s and capital’s strategy. This was also exploited by Golden Dawn, as we have already noted.

The “squares” were an activity that was backed and promoted by the bourgeois mass media against and in opposition to the organized class-oriented trade union movement.

For a section of the people, their participation in the “squares” not only did not deepen their understanding of the causes of the capitalist crisis but added to their confusion, which was exploited by political forces like Golden Dawn. The hatred of anything organized, whether politically or in the trade unions, that was prevalent clearly did not create favorable conditions for popular masses, who participated in these demonstrations, to be won over to a more radical direction.

However, it should be noted that in the same period we witnessed the significant activity of the labor and people’s movement, with major strikes, occupations of roads and state buildings etc. However, the mass media, both local and international, insisted on advertising the essentially harmless for the system “movement of the squares,” despite the fact that in the overwhelming majority of instances the mass participation of the people in the mobilizations of PAME and the other organizations of the People’s Alliance was many times greater than the participation in the “squares.”

Was the KKE able to relate better to the solidarity networks that sprang up during the same time, or does a similar analysis hold?
The communists of Greece actively participate in the various solidarity actions of the trade unions and people’s committees that exist in nearly every neighborhood and workplace in order practically support those in real need, to help the workers stand on their feet. The people’s committees supported those who could not pay their electricity bills and had their electricity cut. They organized interventions in order for the electricity to be reconnected to these homes, with great success.

Trade unions and people’s committees collected and continue to collect and hand out food and medicine. Another example was the organization of solidarity during the nine-month strike of the steelworkers in Aspropyrgos. Many labor centers and people’s committees have created free night schools to help the children of the unemployed with their schoolwork. They are also intervening so that the managements of the hospitals agree to carry out operations/medical examinations for people who cannot afford to pay etc.

At the same time, we are opposed to structures that are being utilized as “substitutes” for public and free health-welfare structures, which are and should be the responsibility of the state. For example, public health units that were responsible for — even if very basic — health checks for a number of illnesses have closed and programs being managed by the municipalities in partnership with private companies and NGOs have sprung up in their place. We are opposed to this development.

Unfortunately, forces from Syriza (especially in the municipalities) have played an unacceptable role in relation to this development, as a kind of “trojan horse,” by opposing the demands of the people’s movement for public and free social services.

How does the party view its experience in government in 1989? Why did the party join a bourgeois coalition with New Democracy then? What has changed in its analysis since?
The KKE has experience from its very specific participation in two successive governments in 1989-90; in the first case with the liberal party (ND) and in the second case, together with the social-democratic party (Pasok) as well.

Its participation in these governments occurred for very specific reasons. In this period, following the elections, no party was able to form a majority government and if elections were to take place again a political-economic scandal would have passed its statute of limitations that — according to the indictment — the social-democratic Prime Minister and other PASOK leaders were involved in.

Our party paid dearly for that participation, even though from the nature of those two governments — that were both transitional until new elections could be held — it was not forced into destructive compromises. Despite this, however, a section of the people — guided by the social democrats — accused the party of a policy of unholy alliances.

We did experience a loss in votes, but this was not the most important issue. There were two even more damaging aspects to the party’s participation in these governments: 1) the strengthening of the idea (during a period when opportunism had reared its head within the party) that it is not a matter of principle that the party should not participate in a bourgeois government, 2) even more negative was the strengthening of the view that at some climactic moment when the bourgeois political system faces obstacles and difficulties the KKE should set aside its strategy and support the formation of a government with the logic of a so-called minimum program which in reality, in all cases, cannot create a rupture in the bourgeois political system; on the contrary, it allows the system to regroup its forces.

Recently in mid-2012 immense pressure was exerted on the KKE to participate in a government of “the Left” as it was called, with the forces of opportunism that suddenly became a significant parliamentary force, as a result of the collapse of social democracy under conditions of rising poverty due to the capitalist economic crisis that broke out in Greece and the eurozone.

The sudden increase of opportunism’s parliamentary presence did not take place exclusively due to great popular dissatisfaction but in combination with the mass transfer of votes corralled by a large number of social-democratic leaders and their apparatuses.

In the transfer of forces towards opportunism (Syriza), sections of the bourgeois class participated, seeing the need for a new pole of social democracy to be created before the workers and popular masses were drawn towards real radicalization.

The KKE estimated at that point that the Syriza government would serve the needs of the EU, NATO, and big capital in the end just as has happened. We had serious electoral losses due to our refusal to support such a government and to take part in it as a section of our voters turned towards the opportunist party because they preferred a more immediate, as they thought, political solution. They decided to try the “first time left” government with its alluring slogans that turned out to be just hot air.

What was shown in practice? That the “left” SYRIZA government that has at its side its “patriotic” partner, the nationalist ANEL party, not only refused to abolish the previous anti-people measures, but thrust new ones onto the backs of the people with the third memorandum.

In addition, it proved to be a faithful ally of the imperialists, the USA, NATO, the EU. It even reached the point of proposing to the USA and NATO the creation of a new military base in the Aegean (on Karpathos), something that no right-wing government ever dared to propose in the past because of the popular outcry that would have ensued.

Despite this, the “Left Platform” of Syriza that split and became SYRIZA mark two under the name “Popular Unity” did not raise any substantial objection. On the contrary, its party leaders in governmental positions, e.g. the Minister of Energy, the Deputy Minister of Defense, etc., supported the implementation of the anti-people measures, the launching of new ones and the further harnessing of the country to the US-NATO “tank.”

In conclusion, there is now much more evidence that a government within the framework of the capitalist system, formed based on universal suffrage, cannot constitute a starting point for a form of governance that will benefit the working class and the other popular strata.

Capitalists cannot be compelled to accept attacks on their profitability in favor of the workers, especially when the capitalist system is in a difficult phase where it cannot achieve expanded capitalist reproduction in the same way that it managed to do in the past.

Communists under conditions of capitalism must constitute a constant force of workers’/people’s opposition inside and outside of the parliament in order to strengthen the class struggle and to mobilize workers and popular forces to overthrow the system. That is to say, they must not be pulled behind any government of bourgeois management.

As long as a government manages the fate of the people and the country, trapped in the shackles of the EU and the capitalist development path which is on its last legs and is rotting, we will constantly be led towards new anti-people governments, regardless of their labels (“left” or “right”).

The people need to be liberated from all of the anti-people governments and their policies and to take power in their own hands. We are fighting for a higher form of organization of the economy and society. With social ownership, central planning, workers’ control. Of course it is at this point that the KKE will have the leading role in the governance of the country.

How does the party view the eurozone? Is it for a break from the euro, even if only to put Greece in a better position to pursue more radical socialist transformation?
The KKE has a consistent, well-grounded political proposal, based on the scientific worldview of Marxism-Leninism. Clearly, a Greece of workers’-people’s power, for which we are fighting, outside the EU and NATO, where the means of production are socialized, i.e. they will be the property of the people, where the economy will operate on the basis of the planned satisfaction of people’s needs today, and not on the basis of the profitability of capital, it will have its own popular currency, not the euro.

However, this is something completely different from what is being proposed by sections of the bourgeoisie in Greece and the EU, even in Germany, where they are openly discussing the possible withdrawal of Greece and possibly some other countries from the eurozone and a return to a national currency.

What will a return to a capitalist Greece with a national currency mean today for the workers and other popular strata? It will mean the impoverishment of the people, the rapid deterioration of living standards. Who will benefit from this? Again, as today with the euro, it will benefit sections of the bourgeoisie, for example, those who have taken care to transfer their deposits abroad, or those which believe that the rates of profitability will recover through the return to a national currency.

Therefore, it is a false dilemma. They are using the dilemma of the euro or the drachma to exculpate the capitalist development path. The capitalist development path, either with the euro or with the drachma, leads to crises, unemployment, poverty for the many, wealth and privileges for the few.

The drachma that Schauble, Le Pen, Soros, the British eurosceptics and various other fascists in Europe such as Golden Dawn in our country hope for does not constitute a way out for the people. The people will continue to sacrifice their needs at the altar of competitiveness for the monopolies, which will continue to hold the keys of the economy in their hands.

Is this not the case in the capitalist countries that have a national currency (Bulgaria, Romania and elsewhere) or that participate in other alliances? In all capitalist countries, inside or outside of the eurozone, the people’s rights are under attack, the capitalist crisis is in full swing.

The difference between those that fondly envision a national currency from those who are committed to the eurozone is that the former call upon the people to sacrifice themselves for a capitalist recovery through a — both domestically and abroad — devalued currency, while the latter, including all governments to date, utilize measures to devalue the currency domestically, which is why they need the memoranda within the eurozone.

This applies to Syriza mark two, “Popular Unity,” which defends capitalist property and power, like the rest. They confess that they want a national currency as a tool for anti-people capitalist development.

There are of course some other small leftist groups in our country, such as Antarsya, that present the exit from the euro, together with various Keynesian management measures, as a “stage” on the way to a radical socialist transformation.

Let us ask ourselves, however, whether it is possible that by aligning ourselves with a bourgeois choice, with a choice of the bourgeois class that concerns the currency and capitalist management measures, we can lend impetus to radical social change? In our opinion, the answer is no. No formula of bourgeois management can prevent the outbreak of the capitalist crisis, nor can it abolish capitalist exploitation.

The overthrow of capitalist barbarism cannot take place through a simple change of currency and a change of the management formula (whether it be Merkel’s formula or Obama’s) of capitalism.

The counterattack of the labor movement can only take place only through a line of rupture with the EU, with capital and its power. It requires the defeat both of the standard-bearers of the euro and the standard-bearers of the drachma that obscure the real opponent of the people and the working class.

How does the party relate to other “official” Communist Parties on the continent, particularly the Portuguese Communist Party that has seemed more willing to work with Bloco than the KKE has with Popular Unity for instance?
The KKE maintains relations with dozens of Communist and workers’ parties. It contributed and continues to contribute to the realization of the International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties, which began in Athens and were hosted by our party on many occasions.

The KKE supports the joint activities of the CPs that are decided on at the International Meetings, as well as the website Solidnet that provides information about the activity and positions of the participant parties.

In addition, our party has taken a number of initiatives at a regional level, in the Balkans, in the eastern Mediterranean, in Europe. The “initiative of Communist and workers’ parties in order to study and elaborate European issues and to coordinate their activity” was founded at the initiative of our party.

European Communist and workers’ parties participate in this European Communist initiative. In addition, our theoretical journal Kommounistiki Epitheorisi together with the theoretical journals of ten other parties jointly publishes the International Communist Review.

Of course, all these initiatives on their own can not overcome serious ideological and political differences that exist within the ranks of the international communist movement, which — something we do not conceal — has been undergoing a serious ideological-political crisis.

In our opinion, this crisis will be overcome in the direction of defending Marxism-Leninism, the contribution of the USSR and the other socialist countries and at the same time drawing useful conclusions from this historical experience and that of the communist movement as a whole. It requires the militant defense of the scientific laws of the socialist revolution and socialist construction, of proletarian internationalism.

What is needed is the creation of a pole of CPs, which defend Marxism-Leninism and the revolutionary strategy. Of course, this does not exclude our party’s cooperation on issues like the struggle against NATO, against the imperialist powers, against anti-communism, on matters of solidarity etc. with those CPs with which we have serious ideological-political differences.

Does the KKE believe that there is progressive elements within the Greek bourgeoisie?
Many CPs in the past (our own party was no exception) chose an alliance policy that included forces from the bourgeois class, those they characterized as being “nationally conscious/patriotic,” as distinct from the so-called “subservient” (“comprador”).

Sometimes they argued that the bourgeois class had “monopoly” and “non-monopoly” sections and sought an alliance with the latter. We assessed at the 18th Congress of our party that such a distinction is mistaken and has no basis.

Of course, there are differences inside the bourgeoisie and often fierce intra-bourgeois conflicts over the formula for the management of the system, fiscal policy, its international alliances, etc. However, these differences inside the bourgeois class have nothing to do with the working class.

We assess that the political line of looting the weakest countries and of abandoning sovereign rights is not the result of the political immorality of a section of the bourgeoisie or a matter of servitude and cowardice on the part of a country’s bourgeois class.

It is something that flows from its position in the international capitalist market, from its economic and political-military position in the international imperialist system.

This is related to unequal relations of interdependence, uneven capitalist development, which both characterize the imperialist system. So, a bourgeois class that feels its strong partner does not treat with it on equal terms knows that it has no other choice, because apart from anything else the alliance with the stronger partner ensures that it has strong political protection inside its country against the threat of the sharpening of the class struggle.

In addition it is not possible for the bourgeoisie or some section of it to defend the sovereign rights in the people’s interests. It will only do so to defend its own interests. And if necessary, it will ignore some of its specific interests as a price worth paying in order to maintain power for as long as possible.

In conclusion, the historical contribution of the bourgeoisie belongs now to past centuries. It is futile for someone to search for fragments of “progressiveness” in the bourgeoisie. It is now a 100 percent parasitical class and its power is the source of crises and wars.

We live in the era of the necessity of the transition from capitalism to socialism, as the material preconditions for the socialist organization of production and society have matured. And the counterrevolutions of recent decades can not change this. Our century will be the century of new social revolutions.

What’s the party’s “minimum program,” the minimum conditions that it would participate in any broader left coalition?
The KKE since 1996 (its 15th Congress) has moved past the rationale of “stages” to socialism, which were from time to time accompanied by similar minimum programs.

We have assessed that in the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism there is no room for political positions that trap the working class inside the management of the bourgeois system, through forms of intermediate stages between capitalism and socialism.

There is no room for political positions that advocate support for or participation in the various governments that manage the system, which have a “left-wing” or “progressive” label. Power will either be held by the bourgeois/capitalist class or by the working class. The means of production will either be socially owned or owned by the capitalists.

Solutions within the framework of the system, regardless of intentions, do not constitute forms of approaching a socialist solution but assist the perpetuation of capitalism, by affording it time and fostering illusions amongst the workers.

Today, the party’s program, which was adopted at its most recent 19th Congress assesses that:

The Greek people will be liberated from the bonds of capitalist exploitation and the imperialist unions when the working class together with its allies carries out the socialist revolution and moves forwards to construct socialism-communism.

The KKE’s strategic goal is the conquest of revolutionary working-class power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the socialist construction as the immature phase of the communist society.

The revolutionary change in Greece will be socialist.

It also notes that:

The motor forces of the socialist revolution will be the working class as the leading force, the semi-proletarians, the oppressed popular strata of the urban self-employed, the poor farmers, who are negatively affected by the monopolies, and for this reason have an objective interest in their abolition, the abolition of capitalist ownership, in the overthrow of its power, in the new relations of production.

Based on the above, we think that it is clear that the KKE does not follow a political line of “left alliances” and does not have parliamentary illusions about the role of “left-wing” governments.

History has taught us that the rationale of reforms and the rejection of the revolutionary path, the rejection of the socialist revolution constitute a painful retreat from and denial of the most central feature that characterizes a Communist Party.

So, the KKE works in the direction of preparing the subjective factor for the prospect of the socialist revolution, even if the specific period of time when it manifests itself is determined by objective conditions, by the revolutionary situation.

Today, in non-revolutionary conditions, our party prioritizes the regroupment of the labor movement, so that it can become capable of responding to the needs of the class struggle, so that the working class can fulfill its role as the leading class in society, the vehicle of revolutionary change.

The regroupment of the labor movement means strong, mass trade unions that will struggle in a class direction, based on the workers, on the young working people, the women, the immigrants, through collective procedures that safeguard the participation in decision-making and the implementation of the decisions.

Strengthening of PAME, of the class-oriented rally in the labor movement, the change of the correlation of forces at the expense of the forces of reformism, opportunism, employer and government-led trade unionism, the vehicles of social partnership are basic features of such a regroupment.

It requires strong party organizations in the factories, in enterprises of strategic importance.

The labor movement must struggle in a militant and organized way concerning all the problems of the working class based on the criterion of the contemporary needs, achieving the orientation of confrontation against the forces of capital for the overthrow of the capitalist exploitation as well as a high level of class unity.

The working class with its vanguard stance must play the leading role in the construction of the people’s alliance that provides an answer to the question regarding the organization of the struggle to repel the barbaric anti-labor, anti-people measures, to organize the people’s counterattack.

The People’s Alliance expresses the interests of the working class, the semi-proletarians, the self-employed and the poor farmers, the young people and the women of the poor popular strata in the struggle against the monopolies and capitalist ownership, against the assimilation of the country into the imperialist unions. The People’s Alliance is a social alliance and struggles in terms of the movement, following a line of rupture and overthrow.

Today it is being formed on the basis of the common struggle of PAME, the class-oriented rally in the labor movement, of PASY among the poor farmers, PASEVE among the self-employed, MAS among students, OGE among women.

It struggles for salaries, pensions, for an exclusively public and free system for healthcare, welfare, education, for all the problems of the workers and the people.

It supports the view that the struggle for a pro-people way out from the crisis is inextricably linked with the struggle for the disengagement from the EU, the unilateral cancellation of the public debt.

The struggle for the disengagement from the EU is linked with the struggle against the power of the monopolies and the struggle of the working class and its allies, for working-class and people’s power.

The People’s Alliance adopts the socialization of the concentrated means of production, central planning, workers’ social control.

The rallying of the majority of the working class with the KKE and the attraction of leading sections of the popular strata will pass through various phases. The labor movement, the movements of the urban self-employed and farmers and the form that their alliance takes on (the People’s Alliance) with anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist goals, with the vanguard activity of the KKE’s forces, in non-revolutionary conditions, constitute the first form for the creation of the revolutionary workers’ and people’s front in revolutionary conditions.

In the conditions of the revolutionary situation, the revolutionary workers’ and people’s front, using all forms of its activity, can become the center of the popular uprising against capitalist power.

It must prevail in the basic regions, particularly in the industrial-trade-transport centers, communications and energy centers, so as to achieve the full demobilization of the mechanisms of bourgeois power as well as their nullification, the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, so that revolutionary institutions created by the people can emerge and prevail, institutions that will undertake the new organization of society and the establishment of revolutionary working-class power, which will be based on the productive unit, the social services, the administrative units, the producer cooperatives.

Then the proposal of the KKE for people’s power with the socialization of the monopolies, disengagement from the EU, and unilateral cancellation of the debt can be implemented.

This is the only realistic and hopeful proposal for the people that can finally put an end to the memoranda and the sacrifices imposed on them which aim to serve the needs of the capitalist development path.

The realization of this depends on the will of the people. The path of rupture with the EU and IMF, local and foreign capital, requires that the people join forces with the KKE.

It is the only true alternative solution capable of utilizing and further developing the country’s productive potential in favor of the people. Greece has preconditions (industrial and agricultural production, mineral wealth, specialized labor force, and scientific personnel) to produce the majority of the products the people need. And on this basis to develop mutually beneficial relations with other countries. Today this potential is either being restricted or utilized in a distorted way, at other times it is actually undermined because it is subordinated to capitalist profits, uneven capitalist development and the commitments to the EU.

The utilization of this potential requires their emancipation from the shackles of capitalist ownership and power. It is the only proposal that can safeguard permanent and stable work for all, exclusively public and free services in education, health, and welfare.

It is the only way to prevent our country’s dangerous participation in the anti-people military plans of NATO, the USA, and the EU. The only way to ensure that we do not become entangled in the web of contradictions between the imperialists, which are fighting amongst each other over how the oil and gas transport routes will be shared out, transport routes which are always drenched with the people’s blood.

Such a path to overthrow the system will not be lonely or isolated as all the parties that defend capitalism claim. It will be supported by the struggle and solidarity of other peoples, movements and countries which are marching on the same path.

Today, better preconditions for the organization and regroupment of the labor movement and the strengthening of the people’s alliance can be formed. Fissures can emerge in today’s negative correlation of forces that exists in Greece and internationally.

What is needed is that the people utilize their experience and use it to empower their struggle for the overthrow of the system.

So, there is a way and a plan for our proposal to be realized and for the working class to see better days, as they should, as they deserve, on the basis of the potential that society has today. And this path requires the formation of a strong popular social alliance which will fight against the new anti-people measures and will have the struggle against the monopolies and capitalism as it stable compass.

Its formation and strengthening today can help change the negative correlation of forces, empower the organization, combativeness, and militancy of the working class and the other popular strata. It can counter submission and fatalism, the subjugation of the people to the old and new managers of capitalism’s barbarity.

An even more powerful KKE is needed for this course, in the parliament and — above all — in the workplaces, in the big factories, in the popular neighborhoods, in the rural areas, in the youth.

The KKE is the only force that can support the struggle of the people against poverty, unemployment, and a degraded life whether inside or outside the eurozone, with the euro or with a national currency.

The KKE is the only force that fights for a rupture with capitalist exploitation and power. It is the force that can lead the people to a truly different and higher form of the organization of society as a whole and the economy.

This entails social ownership of the means of production, central planning, workers’ control. These are the preconditions for the real liberation from the vice-like grip of the markets and capital, for a unilateral and complete cancellation of the debt, for disengagement from the chains of the EU.




Интервью Международного отдела ЦК КПГ интернет изданию Jacobin

1) Какой результат ожидает ваша партия на предстоящих выборах?

Ответ: Коммунистическая партия Греции (КПГ) говорила правду, оперативно предупреждала о ходе событий, предвещала конец правительству СИРИЗА. Она предупреждала, что Салоникийская программа СИРИЗА предусматривала компромисс, соглашение с ЕС и новый позорный меморандум. С самого начала это была антинародная программа, облаченная в ряд левых лозунгов. Теперь, после 3го меморандума, за который проголосовали в парламенте «левая» партия СИРИЗА вместе с либеральной НД, социал-демократической партией ПАСОК, "центристской» партией «Потами», националистической партией АНЭЛ, есть конкретные и неоспоримые доказательства того, что в рамках ЕС и капиталистического строя, ни одно правительство не может проводить политику в пользу народа. Характер капитализма и его международных группировок, таких как ЕС, нельзя изменить переговорами, референдумами, якобы левыми правительствами. Любое правительство, действующее на почве капиталистической экономики, обязано соблюдать железные и антинародные законы, которые предусматривают «выжимание соков» из людей для повышения конкурентоспособности, прибыльности и эффективности инвестиций капитала.

Кроме того, в течение этих 7 месяцев, после январских выборов, КПГ бескомпромиссно боролась против антинародных мер, предлагая одновременно путь развития, который соответствует интересам народа и должен принадлежать исключительно ему. Она боролась с реальными причинами меморандумов, то есть с самой стратегией ЕС и капитала, предусматривающей преодоление капиталистического экономического кризиса путем возникновения новых прибыльных сфер капитала, использования более дешевой рабочей силы. Коммунистическая партия Греции была единственной партией, которая представила в парламент законопроект об отмене меморандумов и действующих законодательств, но который никогда не был внесен на обсуждение и голосование, и за это ответственны все депутаты СИРИЗы и те, кто сегодня отделился от СИРИЗы, и создал СИРИЗу №2, («Народное Единство»). КПГ организовывала последовательную борьбу за неотложные меры, облегчающие жизнь народа, за солидарность, за отмену антирабочих – антинародных законов, за восстановление потерь, понесенных народом, и удовлетворение его современных потребностей, за разрыв с ЕС, с капиталом и его властью.

Следовательно, мы считаем, что КПГ должна быть усилена, в том числе и на сентябрьских выборах, хотя мы не ставим конкретные количественные показатели. Это потому что в то время, когда буржуазная политическая система "рождает" новые политические партии, в условиях реформатирования политической системы, нет смысла ставить арифметические показатели. Политической целью КПГ является ее всестороннее укрепление во всех отношениях: в политических, идеологических, организационных, в народном движении, на выборах. Особенно сейчас, когда народ опробовал всевозможные буржуазные правительства (социал-демократические, правые, левые). Как характерно отмечено в нашем центральном предвыборном лозунге: «Ты их опробовал... Теперь вместе с КПГ есть выход по пути свержения».

2) В каких секторах профсоюзного движения ваша партия имеет наибольшее влияние?

Ответ: КПГ имеет существенные, исторические, неразрывные кровные связи с рабочим классом, с его профсоюзным движением. Коммунисты берут на себя политическое обязательство, описанное и в уставе партии, активно участвовать в своем профсоюзе. В Греции, в отличие от других стран, профсоюзная структура является единой, т.е. нет конфедераций профсоюзов на основе политических убеждений, а есть две конфедерации профсоюзов частного и государственного сектора. Это не означает, что в рядах профсоюзного движения не ведется ожесточенная идейно-политическая борьба. В профсоюзном движении сталкиваются две линии: с одной стороны, линия "общественного диалога", т.е. классового сотрудничества, а именно линия подчинения рабочего класса. Эту линию представляет большинство руководства профсоюзов, подконтрольное правительству и работодателям. С другой стороны, существует линия классового единства и классовой борьбы. В этом направлении ведущую роль играют коммунисты, и эта линия представлена в Греции в течение последних 16 лет ПАМЕ.

ПАМЕ (Всерабочий боевой Фронт) стремится объединить в своих рядах наиболее яркие, боевые силы рабочего профсоюзного движения.

ПАМЕ имеет общенациональные черты и активизируется во всех без исключения производственных секторах как частного, так и государственного сектора. Силы, участвующие в ПАМЕ, берут на себя обязанность следовать по линии борьбы против капитала, Европейского союза и правительства. Быть противниками империализма и его войн.

В ПАМЕ принимают участие отраслевые федерации рабочих, служащих и пенсионеров, рабочие центры, сотни первичных союзов, активисты, избранные в профсоюзные комитеты, координационные комитеты борьбы. Деятельность ПАМЕ распространяется повсюду в промышленности и в сфере образования, в строительной и в транспортной сфере, в сфере туризма, торговли, банковской сфере и т.д. ПАМЕ имеет в настоящее время почти везде мощные силы, особенно в частном секторе экономики. Например, ПАМЕ имеет большинство в федерации строителей (самой массовой отраслевой федерации в Греции), в отраслевых федерациях фармацевтической и текстильной промышленности, в федерации бухгалтеров, в федерации пищевой промышленности, в федерации трудящихся в сфере печати, имеет достаточно сильные позиции в отраслевых федерациях трудящихся в металлургической промышленности, в туристской сфере, в сфере торговли и телекоммуникаций, в местном управлении. ПАМЕ имеет большинство в ряде Рабочих центров, т.е. территориальных объединений профсоюзов, в том числе имеет прочные позиции в самых крупных рабочих центрах в Афинах, в Пирее, в Салониках.

3) Сколько у вас активных членов – активистов? Какой степень поддержки партии среди студенческого движения?

Ответ: Как вы, наверно, знаете, в течение почти 100летнего существования нашей партии, многие годы члены нашей партии подвергались преследованиям, изгнаниям, пыткам, расстрелам, находились в тюремных застенках. Теперь мы можем действовать в условиях парламентской демократии, но мы не забываем, что эта одна из форм диктатуры капитала, который использует множество сил и механизмов для подавления рабочего - коммунистического движения. Таким образом, мы не считаем целесообразным афишировать количество членов и активистов нашей партии. Тем не менее, мы можем сообщить вашим читателям, что на последних парламентских выборах, в январе 2015 года, наша партия получила 338 тысяч голосов, или 5,5%, избирая 15 депутатов в национальный парламент, а на последних европарламентских выборах мы получили 349 тысяч голосов, или 6,1%, избирая 2 депутата в Европарламент.

Относительно студенческого движения, ежегодно проводятся выборы для избрания советов студенческих профсоюзов. В последние годы "Панспудастики" – избирательный список, который поддерживает Коммунистическая молодежь Греции, т.е. молодежная организация КПГ, неуклонно усиливает свое влияние, и в этом году заняла второе место, набирая 19% голосов в университетах и ​​22% в техникумах.

4) Каким образом партия отнеслась к «движениям площадей» и каков, по ее мнению, социальный состав многих общественных движений, возникших в первые годы кризиса?

Ответ: Так называемые «движения площадей», носящие «беспартийный» характер, были широко разрекламированы буржуазными СМИ, принадлежащими капиталистам. В вопросе демократии они проявляли, по крайней мере, лицемерие, а также стремление объединить народ не на классовой основе, демонстрируя туманное содержание своей деятельности, направленной против меморандумов. На деле, их лозунги «долой партии», «долой профсоюзы» с площадей имели реакционный характер. Так, протестуя против меморандума и жестких мер, они не выступали против правительства, ЕС, политических сил, соглашающихся с этой политикой. Напротив, они пытались обобщенно говорить о политиках, которых характеризовали «предателями», суя в один мешок КПГ и буржуазные силы, а также классовые профсоюзы и профсоюзы, придерживающиеся компромиссной политики. Не случайно то, что это движение было использовано, в частности, и фашистской «Золотой зарей», избирательная клиентура которой стала расти после появления этого движения, подготовившего идейно-политическую почву для заброса реакционных идеологических семян фашистской преступной организации «ЗЗ».

Социальный состав этого движения составляли мелкобуржуазные слои населения, сильно пострадавшие в период капиталистического кризиса, а также политически отсталые слои рабочего класса и люмпенские элементы. Но оно было поддержано и разными частями буржуазии, буржуазными СМИ, которые афишировали «движение площадей», а также аналогичные движения типа «движение дешевого картофеля», с целью дезориентировать трудящихся, отвлечь их от организованной классовой борьбы, которая ориентирована на разрыв с монополиями, капитализмом и ЕС. С целью отвлечь сознание народных слоев от борьбы с настоящим виновником и истинными причинами капиталистического кризиса, от единственного предложения по выходу из кризиса в интересах народа, на котором настаивает КПГ, суть которого – в обобществлении средств производства, одностороннем списании долга, централизованном планировании экономики, в выходе из империалистических союзов ЕС и НАТО, в народной власти.

5) Каким образом «Золотая Заря» (ЗЗ) воспользовалась «Движением площадей»? А возможно ли было это неясное содержание движения, выступающего против меморандума, которым воспользовалась ЗЗ, политизировать и направить в радикальное русло?

Ответ: На этих сборищах людей на площадях, так как трудно охарактеризовать это явление как «движение», преобладали мутные лозунги против меморандума, которые скрывают, что меморандумы есть стратегия капитала и ЕС. Как мы уже отметили, этим воспользовалась ЗЗ. Скопление людей на площадях, разрекламированное буржуазными средствами массовой информации, было направлено против организованного классового профсоюзного движения.

Часть народа, принимавшая участие в этих митингах, не только не узнала о причинах капиталистического кризиса, но пришла в состояние полной путаницы, которой и воспользовались такие силы, как фашистская ЗЗ. Ненависть ко всему организованному, ко всему политическому и профсоюзному, которая там доминировала, явно не благоприятствовала тому, чтобы направить массы, участвующие там, в более радикальном направлении.

Следует, однако, отметить, что в тот же период, рабочее и народное движение осуществляло серьезную деятельность: забастовки, захваты дорог и государственных зданий и т.д.. Тем не менее, средства массовой информации как греческие, так и международные, настаивали на рекламе этого "холостого" для системы "движения площадей". И это происходило несмотря на то, что, чаще всего в мероприятиях ПАМЕ и других организаций народного союза принимали участие гораздо больше народных масс, чем в этих скоплениях на площадях.

6) Как КПГ относится к сетям солидарности, которые появились в этот период?

Ответ: Коммунисты Греции активно участвуют в различных мероприятиях солидарности, организованных профсоюзами, народными комитетами, которые в настоящее время существуют почти на каждом предприятии, в каждом районе, чтобы поддержать тех трудящихся, кто нуждается в помощи. Народные комитеты, например, были солидарны с теми, кому электрическая компания отключали электрический ток, в связи с задолженностью. Благодаря их вмешательству вновь восстанавливалось электроснабжение. Профсоюзы и народные комитеты собирали и по-прежнему собирают и распространяют продукты питания и лекарства. Особенно важным моментом была, например, организация солидарности с металлургами, которые в течение несколько месяцев проводили забастовку. Многие рабочие центры и народные комитеты организовывали бесплатные дополнительные занятия для детей безработных. Они выступают с инициативами и оказывают давление на администрацию государственных больниц, когда пациентам требуется операция а у них нет денег заплатить за нее и т.д.

В то же время мы против структур, которые используются для замены общественных и бесплатных медицинских учреждений социального обеспечения, действующих при ответственности государства. Например, были некоторые учреждения здравоохранения, которые занимались фундаментальными профилактическими исследованиями ряда заболеваний. Они закрылись и на их месте возникли разные программы, реализующие муниципалитетами вместе с частными компаниями и НПО. К сожалению, такую неприемлемую роль, роль "троянского коня" против требований народного движения за общественные, бесплатные социальные услуги, играли силы СИРИЗА, в основном в муниципалитетах.

7) Как партия оценивает опыт, полученный от участия в правительстве 1989 года? Почему тогда партия приняла участие в буржуазном правительстве вместе с НД? Как изменилась оценка партии с того периода?

Ответ: У КПГ есть опыт участия в двух сменяющих друг друга правительствах в 1989-1990годах, в первом случае с либеральной партией НД, а во втором и – с социал-демократической партией ПАСОК. Имелись специфические причины участия в этих правительствах. Тогда, после выборов, ни одна партия не могла сформировать правительство большинства, и если бы состоялись повторные выборы, то политический скандал, в котором, согласно обвинительному заключению, фигурировали премьер-министр социал-демократической партии и другие политические деятели ПАСОК, был бы замят.

Наша партия поплатилась за это участие, несмотря на то, что эти два правительства были переходными и действовали до следующих выборов, и нашей партии не было необходимости идти на нежелательные уступки. Однако часть народа под воздействием социал-демократии обвинила партию в неблаговидном союзе. Мы потеряли голоса избирателей, но главное не в этом, а в том, что распространилось представление (в период роста оппортунизма в партии), что участие партии в буржуазном правительстве не является принципиальным вопросом. Ещё более пагубным было распространение представления о том, что в особо важный момент, когда буржуазная политическая система испытывает затруднения, КПГ должна на время отказаться от своей стратегии и поддержать формирование правительства на основе программы-минимум, которая, в действительности, никогда не наносит удара по буржуазной политической системе, а, напротив, позволяет ей реорганизовать свои силы.

В середине 2012 года на КПГ было оказано большое давление, для того чтобы партия согласилась на участие в так называемом «левом» правительстве с оппортунистическими силами, прошедшими в парламент с большим процентом голосов в результате ослабления социал-демократии, в условиях роста бедности вследствие капиталистического экономического кризиса в Греции и еврозоне. Значительный рост оппортунистических сил в парламенте не был результатом только сильного народного недовольства. Он произошел и вследствие того, что большая часть руководящих кадров социал-демократической партии и ее механизмов обеспечила оппортунизму массовый приток голосов. Притоку голосов к оппортунистическим силам (СИРИЗА) содействовала и часть буржуазии, видевшая необходимость в формировании другого, нового социал-демократического полюса, прежде чем рабочие и народные массы начнут действительно радикализироваться.

Тогда КПГ дала свою оценку правительству СИРИЗА, заявляя, что оно в конечном итоге будет обслуживать интересы ЕС и НАТО, крупного капитала. Все так и произошло. Партия пережила серьезную потерю голосов избирателей из-за того, что отказалась поддержать такое правительство и участвовать в нем, и поэтому часть наших избирателей сделала свой выбор в пользу оппортунистической партии, так как надеялась на быстрое политическое решение проблемы. Они говорили, что надо испробовать «первый раз левое» правительство, идущее к власти под соблазнительными лозунгами, которые куда-то испарились.

Показательно то, что «левое» правительство СИРИЗА вместе с его «патриотической» подпоркой – националистической партией АНЭЛ не только не отменило предыдущие антинародные меры, но и взвалило на плечи народа новый 3-ий меморандум-соглашение. Кроме того, оно оказалось верным союзником империалистов, США, НАТО, ЕС. Оно дошло до того, что предложило США и НАТО разместить новую военную базу на острове Карпатос в Эгейском море, - то, что не решилось сделать ни одно правое правительство, опасаясь волны народного гнева. «Левая платформа», отделившая от СИРИЗЫ и создавшая СИРИЗУ №2, под названием «Народное единство», принципиально не возражала против всего этого, а, наоборот, ее руководящие кадры, занимая государственные посты, например, пост министра энергетики, заместителя министра обороны и т.д. поддерживали реализацию антинародных мер, принятие новых, а также дальнейшее, привязывание страны к "колеснице" США-НАТО.

В заключение отметим, что в настоящее время существует гораздо больше доказательств того, что правительство в рамках капиталистической системы, сформированное на основе всеобщего избирательного права, не может выражать интересы рабочего класса и других слоев населения. Оно не может обязать капиталистов пожертвовать своей прибыльностью в пользу трудящихся, особенно когда капиталистическая система находится на стадии, на которой трудно добиться расширенного капиталистического воспроизводства точно таким же образом, как это происходило в прошлом. Коммунисты в условиях капитализма должны быть непоколебимой силой народной оппозиции внутри и за пределами парламента для укрепления классовой борьбы и объединения сил трудящихся, которые приведут к свержению власти. Т.е. они не должны участвовать в каком-либо буржуазном правительстве. Так как пока правительство управляет судьбой народа и страны, находясь в оковах ЕС и на капиталистическом пути развития, пока существует система, которая загнивает, мы постоянно будем сталкиваться с новыми антинародными правительствами независимо от их ярлыков («левое» или «правое»).

Народу необходимо избавиться от всех антинародных правительств и их политики и взять власть в свои руки. Мы боремся за высокий тип организации экономики и общества в целом, в основе которой лежит общественная собственность, централизованное планирование, осуществление рабочего контроля. Естественно, что тогда КПГ будет играть передовую роль в управлении страной.

8) Каково мнение вашей партии о еврозоне, и выступает ли она за выход страны из евро, если бы это поставило Грецию в лучшее положение и способствовало проведению более радикальных социалистических преобразований?

Ответ: Коммунистическая партия Греции имеет последовательное, аргументированное политическое предложение, основанное на научном мировоззрении марксизма-ленинизма. Очевидно, что Греция рабочей, народной власти, за которую мы боремся и которая будет освобождена от оков ЕС и НАТО, где средства производства будут обобществлены, т.е. будут народной собственностью, где экономика будет работать на основе планового удовлетворения современных потребностей народа, а не на основе прибыльности капитала, будет иметь свою собственную, народную валюту, а не евро. Но это совершенно отличается от того, что предлагают разные слои буржуазии в Греции и ЕС, и в той же Германии, и которые открыто обсуждают вероятный выход Греции, возможно, с некоторыми другими странами, из еврозоны и возвращение к национальной валюте. Что будет означать сегодня для трудящихся и других народных слоев возвращение к капиталистической Греции с национальной валютой? Это также будет означать обнищание народа, быстрое ухудшение его жизни. Кто от этого выиграет? Опять же, как и сегодня, имея в качестве валюты евро, в выигрыше окажутся части буржуазии, например, те, кто позаботился перевести свои вклады за рубеж, или те, кто считает, что вернется к более высоким темпам прибыльности путем возвращения страны к национальной валюте.

Так что дилемма евро или драхма является шантажом, ложной дилеммой, которую специально пытаются поставить, для того чтобы оставить нетронутым капиталистический путь развития, который и при евро и при драхме ведет к кризису, безработице, бедности большинство народа, в то время когда кучка людей концентрирует в своих руках богатство и имеет привилегии.

Для народа не является выходом возвращение к драхме, как предлагают Шойбле, Ле Пен, Сорос, британские евроскептики, а также различные фашистские группировки в Европе, например, ЗЗ в нашей стране. И это потому, что народ и в этом случае будет продолжать жертвовать своими потребностями на алтаре конкурентоспособности монополий, которые будут продолжать держать в своих руках ключи от экономики. Разве это не происходит в других капиталистических странах, где имеются национальные валюты (Болгария, Румыния и в других странах), или которые участвуют в других валютных союзах? Во всех капиталистических странах, как внутри, так и за пределами еврозоны, народные права урезаются, углубляется капиталистический кризис. Разница тех, кто выступает за национальную валюту, от тех, кто поддерживает сохранение страны в еврозоне, в том, что первые призывают народ жертвовать своими интересами для капиталистического восстановления экономики путем внутренней и внешней девальвации валюты, в то время как вторые, т.е. те, кто были в правительствах, выступают за меры внутренней девальвации валюты, поэтому они и нуждаются в одном или в нескольких меморандумах внутри еврозоны.

Вышеописанное касается и СИРИЗА № 2, так называемого «Народного единства», которая также защищает ту же капиталистическую собственность и власть, как и остальные. Она признается, что выступает за национальную валюту как инструмент для капиталистического, а на самом деле, антинародного развития.

Есть, конечно, и некоторые другие более мелкие левые группы в нашей стране, как АНТАРСИЯ, выступающая за выход из евро и за реализацию различных мер кейнсианского управления. Все это они представляют как "стадию" к более радикальному социалистическому преобразованию. Но может ли поддержка одного буржуазного плана, одного выбора буржуазии, касающегося валюты и капиталистических мер управления системой, способствовать радикальным социальным изменениям? На наш взгляд, ни в коем случае. Ни один рецепт буржуазного управления не может предотвратить вспышку капиталистического кризиса, не может упразднить капиталистическую эксплуатацию. Свержение варварства капиталистического общества не осуществляется путем простого перехода от одной валюты к другой или от одного рецепта правления капитализмом к другому (рецепт Меркель или Обама).

Контрнаступление рабочего движения может идти только по линии разрыва с ЕС, с капиталом и с его властью. Для этого необходимо нанести поражение как знаменосцам евро, так и знаменосцам драхмы, загораживающим реального противника народа и рабочего класса.

9) Каковы ваши отношения с другими "официальными" компартиями на континенте, особенно с Португальской коммунистической партией, которая, кажется, более готова сотрудничать с Блоком, чем вы, например, с ЛАЭ?

Ответ: КПГ сегодня поддерживает отношения с десятками коммунистических и рабочих партий. Наша партия внесла свой вклад и продолжает вносить его в проведение Международных встреч коммунистических и рабочих партий, которые впервые были организованы в Афинах, и проводились там неоднократно. КПГ поддерживает совместные акции, согласованные на этих встречах, а также систему быстрой информированности компартий - http://solidnet.org. Кроме того, наша партия принимает ряд инициатив на региональном уровне, на Балканах, в Восточном Средиземноморье, в Европе, где в последнее время по нашему предложению была создана «Инициатива коммунистических и рабочих партий для изучения и разработки европейских вопросов и координации своей деятельности» - http://www.initiative-cwpe.org. В этой европейской коммунистической "Инициативе" участвуют 29 европейских коммунистических и рабочих партий. Кроме того, наш теоретический журнал "Коммунистики Эпитеориси", вместе с теоретическими журналами еще 10 партий совместно выпускает "Международный коммунистический обзор» - http://www.iccr.gr.

Конечно, сами по себе все эти инициативы не могут преодолеть серьезные идеологические и политические разногласия, которые имеют место в рядах международного коммунистического движения. Мы не скрываем, что в последние десятилетия оно переживает серьезный идейно-политический кризис. На наш взгляд, этот кризис будет преодолен в направлении защиты марксизма-ленинизма, защиты вклада СССР и других социалистических стран и одновременного извлечения полезных выводов из их истории, в целом из истории коммунистического движения, при твердой опоре на линию поддержки закономерностей социалистической революции и строительства, пролетарского интернационализма. В этом направлении необходимо сформировать полюс компартий, защищающих марксизм-ленинизм и революционную стратегию. Конечно, это не исключает сотрудничество нашей партии и с теми компартиями, с которыми у нас имеются серьезные идейно-политические разногласия. Такое сотрудничество возможно по вопросам борьбы против НАТО, против империалистических сил, антикоммунизма, по вопросам солидарности и т.д..

10) Есть ли прогрессивные элементы у греческой буржуазии?

Ответ: В прошлом многие компартии, в том числе и наша партия, выбирали линию политических союзов, в том числе и с силами буржуазии, с теми, кого считали «национально мыслящими» в отличие от так называемых «компрадорских» сил буржуазии. Или же делили буржуазию на "монополистическую" и "не монополистическую", выступая за союз с последней частью. На 18-м съезде партии, в 2009 году, мы пришли к выводу, что такое деление является ложным и неверным. Конечно, внутри буржуазного класса имеются противоречия и часто они могут приводить к жестким межбуржуазным конфликтам, например, относительно способов буржуазного управления, налогово-бюджетной политики, международных союзов страны и т.д. Тем не менее, это внутренние разногласия буржуазии и они не касаются трудящихся.

Мы считаем, что политика ограбления слабых стран и отступление от суверенных прав не является последствием политической безнравственности некоторой части буржуазии, вопросом ее повиновения и трусости. На самом деле такая позиция исходит из места, которое буржуазия каждой страны занимает в международном капиталистическом рынке, от ее экономического и военно-политического положения в международной империалистической системе. Такая ситуация связана с неравномерной взаимозависимостью между капиталистическими странами, с капиталистической неравномерностью развития, характерной для империалистической системы. Таким образом, буржуазия каждой страны, когда чувствует, что более сильный партнер относится к ней неравноправно, знает, что она не может поступить иначе, так как благодаря союзу с более сильным партнером она обеспечивает сильную политическую защиту внутри страны, оберегая себя от угрозы обострения классовой борьбы.

Кроме того, буржуазия или любая ее часть не в состоянии отстаивать суверенные права страны в пользу народа, а только исключительно в своих собственных интересах. И если надо, она может игнорировать даже свои собственные интересы, если взамен удастся сохранить свою власть как можно дольше.

В заключение, можно отметить, что все то, что буржуазия могла дать человечеству, она уже дала давным-давно, в течение предыдущих столетий. Сегодня бесполезно искать элементы "прогрессивности" буржуазии, которая в настоящее время на 100% паразитирована, и ее власть является "источником" кризисов и войн. Мы живем в эпоху необходимости перехода от капитализма к социализму, так как созрели материальные предпосылки для социалистической организации производства и общества. И этот факт не могут изменить контрреволюционные перевороты последних десятилетий. Наш век станет веком новых социальных революций.

11) Какова программа-минимум КПГ и каковы минимальные предпосылки для участия вашей партии в более широкой левой коалиции?

Ответ: КПГ с 1996 года (на 15ом съезде) вырвалась вперед и преодолела логику "этапов" к социализму. Такая логика выдвигала в прошлом подобные минимальные программы.

Мы пришли к выводу, что во время эпохи перехода от капитализма к социализму нет места политическим позициям, которые удерживают рабочий класс в рамках буржуазного управления в виде промежуточных стадий между капитализмом и социализмом. Нет места политическим позициям поддержки или участия в одном или другом правительстве буржуазного управления, представленного под «левой» или «прогрессивной» вывеской. Власть будет буржуазной капиталистической или рабочей. Средства производства будут находиться в капиталистической или общественной собственности. Решения, которые движутся «в стенах» капиталистической системы, независимо от их намерений, не только не являются формами, приближающими социалистический выбор, а наоборот, способствуют увековечиванию капитализма, дают ему время, распространяют иллюзии среди трудящихся.

Сегодня в программе КПГ, единогласно принятой на последнем – 19ом съезде (2013), написано: «Греческий народ избавится от цепей капиталистической эксплуатации и империалистических союзов, когда рабочий класс со своими союзниками совершит социалистическую революцию и приступит к строительству социализма-коммунизма.

Стратегической целью коммунистической партии является завоевание революционной рабочей власти, диктатуры пролетариата, используемой им для построения социализма как незрелой ступени коммунистического общества.

Революционное преобразование в Греции будет социалистическим».

Там же отмечается: «Движущими силами социалистической революции будут рабочий класс как руководящая сила, полупролетарии, угнетаемые народные слои самозанятых города, бедное крестьянство, страдающие от гнета монополий, поэтому они объективно заинтересованы в их упразднении, в ликвидации капиталистической собственности, свержении власти и установлении новых производственных отношений».

На основании вышеизложенного, понятно, что КПГ не придерживается политической линии создания "левых союзов», она не имеет парламентских иллюзий по поводу роли «левых» правительств. История учит. Логика реформ и отказ от революционного пути, отказ от социалистической революции является болезненным отступлением и отрицанием самой основной черты, характеризующей Коммунистическую партию.

Следовательно, КПГ работает над подготовкой субъективного фактора грядущей социалистической революции, хотя период её проявления определяется объективными условиями — революционной ситуацией.

Сегодня при отсутствии революционной ситуации наша партия отдаёт приоритет реорганизации рабочего движения, чтобы оно стало соответствовать требованиям классовой борьбы, чтобы рабочий класс исполнил свою роль – роль передового социального класса, несущего революционные перемены.

Реорганизация рабочего движения – это сильные, массовые профсоюзы, борющиеся в классовом направлении, поддерживаемые рабочими, молодыми трудящимися, женщинами, мигрантами. Такие профсоюзы посредством коллективных процессов будут обеспечивать участие в принятии и осуществлении своих решений. Реорганизация означает усиление ПАМЕ – классового сплочения в рабочем движении, изменение баланса сил против реформизма, оппортунизма, работодательского и проправительственного синдикализма, против представителей социального партнёрства.

Нужны сильные партийные организации на заводах, на предприятиях стратегического значения.

Рабочее движение должно активно, организовано бороться за решение всех проблем рабочего класса, исходя из современных потребностей, ориентируясь на столкновение с силами капитала за свержение капиталистической эксплуатации, завоевывая высокий уровень классового единства.

Рабочий класс, подтверждая свою передовую позицию, должен стать лидирующей силой в построении народного союза, который займется вопросом организации борьбы против варварских антирабочих, антинародных мер, а также организацией народного контрнаступления.

Народный союз выражает интересы рабочего класса, полупролетариев, самозанятых и бедных крестьян, молодёжи и женщин из рабочих народных слоев, в борьбе против монополий, капиталистической собственности и присоединения страны к империалистическим союзам. Народный союз является социальным союзом и имеет черты движения, направленного на размежевание и свержение системы.

Сегодня он формируется на основе совместной деятельности ПАМЕ – классового сплочения в рабочем движении, ПАСИ – среди крестьянства, ПАСЕВЕ - среди самозанятых, МАС – среди студентов и учащихся, ОГЕ - среди женщин.

Он борется за увеличение зарплат, пенсий, исключительно государственное и бесплатное здравоохранение, социальное обеспечение, образование, за решение всех проблем рабочих и народа.

Он защищает представление о том, что борьба за выход из кризиса на благо народа неразрывно связана с выходом из ЕС, с односторонним списанием государственного долга.

Борьба за выход из ЕС связана с борьбой против власти монополий и с борьбой рабочего класса и его союзников за рабочую, народную власть.

Народный союз выступает за обобществление монополий, всех концентрированных средств производства, централизованное планирование и рабочий, общественный контроль.

Сплочение большей части рабочего движения вокруг КПГ и привлечение передовых частей народных слоев пройдёт через различные этапы. Рабочее движение, движение самозанятых трудящихся города и бедного крестьянства и форма выражения их союза (Народный союз) с антимонополистическими, антикапиталисти*ческими целями, при передовой деятельности сил КПГ в отсутствии революционных условий является прообразом для образования в условиях революционной ситуации революцион*ного рабочего - народного фронта.

В условиях революционной ситуации революционный рабочий - народный фронт, использующий все формы деятельности, может стать центром народного восстания за свержение диктатуры буржуазного класса, за установление революционных институтов, отвечающих за организацию нового общества, установление революционной рабочей власти, фундаментом которой будут производственные единицы, социальные службы, административные единицы и производственные кооперативы.

Тогда и можно реализовать предложение КПГ за НАРОДНУЮ ВЛАСТЬ С ОБОБЩЕСТВЛЕНИЕМ МОНОПОЛИЙ – ВЫХОДОМ ИЗ ЕС – ОДНОСТОРОННИМ СПИСАНИЕМ ДОЛГА, которое и есть единственное реальное и обнадеживающее предложение, которое может поставить окончательный крест на меморандумах и народных жертвах, положенных на алтарь капиталистического развития.

Реализация этого пути зависит от воли народа. Путь разрыва с ЕС и МВФ, местным и иностранным капиталом, находится в непосредственном сплочении с Коммунистической партией Греции.

Это единственно реальный альтернативный выход для народа, способного использовать и развивать производственный потенциал страны в своих интересах. Греция располагает предпосылками (промышленным и сельскохозяйственным производством, минеральными ресурсами, квалифицированной рабочей силой и научным потенциалом) для производства большей части продукции, необходимой для народа. А в дальнейшем будет заключать взаимовыгодные соглашения с другими странами. Эти возможности иногда ограничиваются или неправильно используются, иногда массово недооцениваются, т.к. подчинены капиталистической прибыли, неравномерному развитию капитализма и обязательствам перед ЕС.
Их использование предполагает избавление от оков капиталистической собственности - власти. Это единственное предложение, которое может обеспечить постоянную и стабильную занятость для всех, исключительно общественные и бесплатные услуги образования, здравоохранения, социального обеспечения.
Это единственный путь, предотвращающий опасное участие страны в военных планах НАТО, США и ЕС, направленных против других народов, это единственный способ не увязнуть в клубке противоречий империалистов, отчаянно грызущихся между собой за передел нефтегазовых путей, которые всегда были вымощены кровью народов.
Этот путь перемен не будет одиноким, оторванным от будущего других народов, как утверждают все другие партии, защищающие капитализм. Он будет опираться на борьбу и солидарность с другими народами, движениями и странами, которые пойдут по тому же пути.
Сегодня могут быть созданы лучшие условия организации, реорганизации рабочего движения, укрепления народного союза. Может измениться нынешний отрицательный баланс сил, существующий в Греции и на международном уровне.

Достаточно, чтобы народ смог использовать свой опыт и преобразовать его в силу для борьбы и перемен.

Да, есть способ и план для практического выполнения нашего предложения, с тем, чтобы рабочий класс и народ в целом жил лучше, как надо, как он того заслуживает сегодня, исходя из возможностей, которыми располагает общество. И этот путь проходит через формирование мощного, сильного народного союза, который будет бороться против новых антинародных мер, и компасом которого будет направление борьбы против монополий и капитализма. Формирование и укрепление такого Народного Союза может и сегодня помочь изменить негативное соотношение сил, усилить организованность и готовность к борьбе, поднять боевой дух рабочего класса и других народных слоев населения, пойти наперекор раболепству и фатализму, против покорения народа старыми и новыми представителями варварского капитализма.

Для этого нужна более сильная КПГ ПОВСЮДУ, в парламенте и - прежде всего - на рабочих местах, на крупных предприятиях, в рабочих районах, в сельской местности, среди молодежи.

КПГ является единственной силой, которая может поддержать борьбу народа против нищеты, безработицы, ухудшения жизненных условий внутри и за пределами еврозоны, имея евро в качестве валюты или при возвращении страны к национальной валюте.

КПГ является единственной силой, способной на разрыв с капиталистической эксплуатацией и властью. Это сила, которая может привести к чему-то по-настоящему иному, не только альтернативному, но и к высшему типу организации экономики и общества в целом. С общественной собственностью, централизованным планированием, рабочим контролем. Таковы предпосылки для подлинного избавления от тисков рынка, капитала, для одностороннего и полного списания долга и освобождения от цепей ЕС._


Entrevista del Departamento de Relaciones Internacionales del Comité Central que se piublicó en la revista Jacobin

1) ¿Cuánto apoyo espera su partido en las elecciones que vienen?

Respuesta: El KKE dijo la verdad al pueblo, advirtió con tiempo sobre el curso de los desarrollos, previó cómo acabaría un gobierno de SYRIZA. Advirtió de que el programa de SYRIZA y las declaraciones de Tessaloniki determinaban el compromiso, el acuerdo con la UE y el nuevo memorándum vergonzoso. Era desde el inicio un programa antipopular, vestido de algunas consignas de izquierda. Ya, después de la votación del 3er memorándum por el gobierno de SYRIZA de "izquierdas", junto con la Nueva Democracia neoliberal, el PASOK socialdemocrata, el Río del centro, el partido nacionalista de ANEL, existen datos tangibles, incuestionables que comprueban que, en el marco de la UE y del camino único capitalista, ningún gobierno puede ejercer una política pro-popular. El capitalismo y sus uniones internacionales, como la UE, no cambian de carácter con negociaciones, referéndum, gobiernos supuestamente de izquierda. Cualquier gobierno en el terreno de la economía capitalista está obligado de cumplir sus leyes antipopulares de hierro, que imponen el aplastamiento del pueblo para reforzar la competitividad, las ganancias y las inversiones del capital.

Además, estos últimos 7 meses después de las elecciones de enero, el KKE luchó sin retroceder contra las medidas antipopulares y al mismo tiempo propuso el camino de desarrollo que está en favor de los intereses y pertenece únicamente al pueblo. Luchamos contra las causas reales de los memorándums, que son la estrategia de la UE y del capital en si, para sobrepasar la crisis económica capitalista con nuevos terrenos de ganancias para el capital, fuerza laboral aún más barata. El KKE era el único partido que presentó en el Parlamento una propuesta ley por la derogación de los memorándums y de las 400 leyes aplicatorias antipopulares. Con responsabilidad de todos los diputados de SYRIZA y de los que ahora se separaron y crearon el partido "Unidad Popular", el SYRIZA no.2 , no vino nunca a votación. Nuestro partido organizó con coherencia la lucha por medidas directas de alivio del pueblo, por la solidaridad, el derrocamiento de las leyes antipopulares y antiobreras, la restitución de las pérdidas, el cubrimiento de las necesidades actuales, en ruptura con la UE, el capital y su poder.

Entonces, consideramos que el KKE tendrá que reforzarse más también en las elecciones de septiembre, sin que pongamos objetivos numerales concretos. Y eso es porque, en el momento que el sistema político burgués "da a luz" nuevos partidos políticos, es decir en condiciones de restituciones y de reforma del sistema político burgués, no ayuda en nada adoptar objetivos electorales numerales. El objetivo político del KKE es su refuerzo total en todos los aspectos, políticos, ideológicos, organizativos, electorales. Sobre todo ahora, que el pueblo probó todo tipo de gobierno burgués (socialdemócrata, de derechas, de izquierdas) y, tal como anotamos en nuestra consigna central: "Los probaste....ahora hay solución con el KKE en el camino del derrocamiento".

2) ¿En qué ramas dentro del movimiento sindical tiene el partido más influencia?

Respuesta: El KKE tiene lazos de sangre históricos e inanulables con la clase obrera, su movimiento sindical. Los comunistas tienen una obligación política, que se expone en el Estatuto del Partido también, de participar activamente en su sindicato. En Grecia, en contradicción con otros países, la estructura sindicalista es homogénea, es decir no hay confederaciones sobre la base de creencias políticas, pero sino confederaciones el sector público y privado. Esto no significa que en las líneas del movimiento sindical no hay conflicto ideológico y político intenso. Dentro del movimiento obrero y sindical están en conflicto dos líneas: por una parte, la línea de los "diálogos sociales", de la colaboración de las clases, es decir de la sumisión de la clase obrera, que expresan las mayorías del sindicalismo gubernamental y patronal y por otra, la línea de la unidad clasista y de la lucha. En esa línea están en la primera fila los comunistas y esta linea expresa el PAME en Grecia los últimos 16 años.

El PAME (frente militante de todos los trabajadores) es un Frente que busca tener en sus filas las fuerzas más vivas y militantes del movimiento obrero sindical.

El PAME tiene características panhelénicas y echa peso en todos los lugares y sectores de la producción del sector público y privado, sin excepción alguna,. Estas fuerzas tienen un acuerdo común de seguir la línea de la lucha contra el capital, la Unión Europea y el Gobierno. Ser oponentes del Imperialismo y de sus guerras.

En el PAME participan Confederaciones ramales de obreros, empleados y pensionistas, Centros Obreros, centenas de uniones de primer grado, cuadros sindicales electos, Comités de Lucha de obreros y empleados y Comités de Coordinación. La acción del PAME se extiende por todas partes, en la industria y la educación, la construcción y los transportes, el turismo, el comercio y los bancos etc. El PAME tiene casi por todas partes fuerzas potentes, sobre todo en el sector privado de la economía. Por ejemplo, tiene la mayoría en la federación de construcciones (que es la más grande en Grecia), de medicamentos, de téxtil, de los Contables, de las Bebidas y Comidas, de prensa y papel, gran fuerza en el Metal, en Hostelería y Restauración, el comercio, la administración local, los empleados del sector privado, las telecomunicaciones. Tiene la mayoría en muchos Centros Obreros (es decir en las uniones territoriales de los sindicatos) y tiene fuerzas muy potentes en los Centros Obreros más grandes de Atenas, Pireo y Tesalónica. y en otras ramas.

3) ¿Cuántos miembros – cuadros estiman ustedes que tienen? ¿A qué medida el partido está apoyado al movimiento estudiantil etc?

Respuesta: Tal como sabrán ustedes, durante la mayoría de los alrededor de 100 años de existencia de nuestro partido, hemos sufrido persecuciones, encarcelamientos, exilios, torturas y ejecuciones. Puede que hoy actuemos bajo condiciones de democracia parlamentaria, pero no olvidamos que también esta es una de las formas de la dictadura del capital, que utiliza varias fuerzas y mecanismos para la represión del movimiento obrero-comunista. Por eso no consideramos correcto declarar el número de nuestros miembros y cuadros. Sin embargo, podemos informar vuestros lectores de que en las últimas elecciones de enero de 2015, nuestro Partido tuvo 338 mil votos, el 5,5%, elegió 15 diputados en el parlamento nacional. En las últimas elecciones europeas, tuvo 349 mil votos, el 6,1% y eligió 2 diputados en el parlamento europeo.

Respecto al movimiento estudiantil, cada año hay elecciones para los consejos de las asociaciones estudiantiles. Los últimos años, Panspoudastiki, la agrupación electoral que apoya la KNE , la juventud del KKE, presenta un alza estable y este año fue la 2ª fuerza, concentrando el 19% en las Universidades y el 22% en las Escuelas de Formación Técnica.

4) ¿Cómo afrontó el partido el Movimiento de las Plazas y qué opinión tiene sobre la composición social de muchos de los movimientos sociales que aparecieron en los primeros años de la crisis?

Respuesta: El llamado “movimiento de las plazas”, que se autodeterminaba como “no partidista”, fue divulgado por los grupos de los Medios de Comunicación burgueses, que pertenecen a los capitalistas. Su lógica respecto al tema de la democracia, se comprueba que es al menos hipócrita, tal como su aspiración de unir supuestamente al pueblo, fuera de las clases, proyectando un contenido anti-memorándum borroso. Prácticamente, su posicionamiento de “fuera los partidos- fuera los sindicatos” de la plaza fue un posicionamiento completamente reaccionario. Así, al mismo momento que se oponían al memorándum y a las medidas brutales, ni siquera hablaban contra el gobierno, la UE , las fuerzas políticas que están de acuerdo con esta política. Todo lo contrario, querían hablar en general de políticos, caracterizados como “traidores”, arrasando de esta forma también al KKE, junto con las fuerzas burguesas, así como a los sindicatos de clase, con los que siguen una política de compromiso. No es casual que este movimiento haya sido utilizado, entre otros, por parte del partido fascista “Amanecer Dorado” que vió su “clientela” electoral en alza después de la aparencia de este movimiento, que preparó el terreno ideológica y políticamente para que la organización criminal del “Amanecer Dorado” sembrase después las “semillas ideológicas” de la desorientación fascista.

Respecto a su composición clasista, este movimiento se dirigía a capas pequeñoburguesas que se destruían violentemente bajo condiciones de crisis capitalista, a partes de la clase obrera políticamente retrasados o a elementos lumpen. Se apoyó sin embargo, por partes de la burguesía, los medios burgueses que proyectaban al “movimiento de la plaza”, otros movimientos correspondientes, tal como el “movimiento de la patata barata”, afín de desiorientar a los trabajadores, para que se alejaran del movimiento clasista organizado que tiene orientación de ruptura con los monopólios, el capitalismo y la UE. Y para que las capas populares no se den cuenta y no luchen contra los responsables reales y las causas de la crisis capitalista, para que no vean la única alternativa en favor del pueblo, que propone el KKE y que está en la socialización de los medios de producción, eliminación unilateral de la deuda, planificación central de la economía, salida de las uniones imperialistas de la UE y la OTAN , con el pueblo en el poder.

5) ¿Cómo estima el partido la experiencia de la participación en un gobierno en 1989? ¿Por qué entonces el partido participó en un gobierno burgués junto con la Nueva Democracia ? ¿Qué ha cambiado en el análisis del partido desde entonces?

Respuesta: El KKE tiene experiencia de una forma de participación particular en dos gobiernos sucesivos en 1989-1990, en el primer caso con el partido liberal (ND) y en el segundo junto también con la socialdemocracia (PASOK). La participación en estos gobiernos fue por razones muy particulares. Entonces, después de las elecciones, ningún partido podía formar un gobierno con sus propias fuerzas, y si hubiera otro turno de elecciones, se prescribiría un escándalo económico y político, cuyo jefe, según la acusación, era el primer ministro socialdemocrata y otros cuadros del PASOK.

Nuestro Partido se vió dañado por esta participación, aunque por la naturaleza de estos dos gobiernos, que eran transitorios hasta las elecciones siguentes, no se obligó a hacer retrocesos que causarían daño, sin embargo, parte del pueblo, guiado por la socialdemocracia, acusó al partido de llevar a cabo una política de alianza nefasta. Sufrimos pérdida en votos, pero lo más importante no era esto, sino que se desarrolló (en un período en el que el oportunismo se había expresado dentro del partido) la percepción de que la negación de la participación del partido en un gobierno burgués no es una cuestión de principios. Y aún peor fue la divulgación de la percepción de que, en algún momento muy importante, en el que el sistema político burgués afronta obstaculos, el KKE tiene que apartar su estrategia y apoyar la formación de un gobierno, en la lógica del llamado programa mínimo, que en realidad, en todos los casos, no causa fisuras al sistema político burgués, todo lo contrario, le da la oportunidad de recomponer sus fuerzas.

Recientemente, a mediados del 2012, se ejerció gran peresión al KKE afín de adoptar la opción de la participación en un gobierno “de izquierdas”, tal como se denominó, con fuerzas del oportunismo, que tuvieron gran fuerza parlamentaria, como resultado del desmantelamiento de la socialdemocracia, en condiciones de pobreza que aumentaba, a causa de la crisis económica capitalista que estalló en Grecia y la Eurozona. El súbito aumento parlamentario del oportunismo no fue exclusivamente el resultado de un gran descontento popular, sino también del traslado masivo de votos bajo la dirección de gran número de cuadros de la socialdemocracia y de sus cuadros. En el traslado de fuerzas hacia el oportunismo (SYRIZA), contribuyeron también partes de la burguesía que veían que era necesario formar un otro, un nuevo polo de la socialdemocracia, antes de que las masas obreras y populares se dirigieran hacia la radicalización real.

El KKE estimó entonces que también el gobierno de SYRIZA serviría a la UE y a la OTAN , al gran capital, tal como pasó al final. Tuvimos importantes pérdidas electorales, a causa de la negación de apoyar un tal gobierno y más precisamente de participar porque parte de nuestros votantes fue hacia el partido oportunista, porque prefirieron una solución política más directa, tal como pensaban. Pensaron probar la “Izquierda por primera vez”, con las consignas atractivas que resultaron vacías.

Y ¿qué es lo que se comprobó en práctica? Que el gobierno de “izquierdas” de SYRIZA, junto con su parte “patriótica”, el partido nacionalista de ANEL, no sólo no derogó las anbteriores medidas antipopulares, sino añadió nuevas al pueblo, con el 3er memorándum. Además, comprobó que es aliado fiel de los imperialistas de los EEUU, la OTAN y de la UE. Llegó a proponer a los EEUU y a la OTAN una nueva base militar en el mar Egeo (en Karpathos), algo que no se había atrevido de hacer ningún gobierno de derechas, a causa de la reacción popular que esto causaría. Por todo esto, la “Plataforma de Izquierdas” de SYRIZA, que ahora se desviculó y formó SYRIZA número 2, con la nominación “Unidad Popular” (Laiki Enotita), no expresó ninguna objección esencial, todo lo contrario. Cuadros suyos, desde posiciones gubernamentales, por ejemplo del Ministro de Energía, del vice-Ministro de Defensa etc., apoyaron la implementación de las medidas antipopulares, la programación de nuevas y la implicación más intensa del país a los EEUU y la OTAN.

Por lo tanto, hoy hay aún más pruebas de que el gobierno en el marco del sistema capitalista, formado sobre la base del derecho electoral en general, no puede ser el punto de partida por una gobernación en favor de la clase obrera y de las demás capas populares. No puede obligar a los capitalistas de sufrir daños en sus ganancias en favor de los trabajadores, y aún más cuando el sistema capitalista está en una fase en la que tiene dificultades en lograr la producción capitalista ampliada de la misma forma que lo lograba antes. Los comunistas, en condiciones de capitalismo, tienen que ser una fuerza estable de oposición obrera y popular, dentro y fuera del Parlamento, para fortalecer la lucha de clases y concentrar las fuerzas populares y obreras por el derrocamiento. Es decir, no arrastrarse detrás de ningún gobierno de gestión burguesa. Porque, mientras un gobierno gestione el destino del pueblo y del país, atrapado en las cadenas de la UE y del camino de desarrollo capitalista, que ya está pudriendo, llegaremos contínuamente a nuevos gobiernos antipopulares, independientemente de su caracterización “de izquierdas” o “de derechas”.

Es necesario para el pueblo liberarse de todos los gobiernos antipopulares y de su política, tomar el poder. Luchamos por un tipo superior de organización de la economía y de toda la sociedad. Con propiedad social, planificación central, control obrero. Entonces, obviamente, KKE será el protagonista en la gobernación del país.

6) ¿Qué cree el partido de la eurozona, está en favor de una salida del euro, incluso si es sólo para poner Grecia en una mejor posición para buscar una transformación socialista más radical?

Respuesta:El KKE tiene una propuesta política coherente y fundamentada, basada sobre la concepción teórica científica del marxismo-leninismo. Está claro que Grecia del poder obrero y popular, por la que luchamos, fuera de la UE y la OTAN , donde los medios de la producción serán socializados, es decir serán propiedad popular, donde la economía funcionará en la base de la satisfacción planificada de las necesidades populares actuales y no sobre la base de las ganancias del capital, tendrá su propia moneda popular y no el euro. Sin embargo, esto es una cosa completamente diferente de lo que proponen partes de la burguesía en Grecia y en la UE , en Alemania, donde hablan abiertamente de la posibilidad de salida de Grecia, posiblemente también de algunos otros países de la eurozona y la vuelta a la moneda nacional. ¿Qué significará hoy para los trabajadores y las demás capas populares la vuelta en una Grecia capitalista con moneda nacional? Significará también la pauperización del pueblo, el empeoramiento violento de su vida. ¿Quién se beneficiará de esto? De nuevo, tal como hoy con el euro, se beneficiarán partes de la burguesía, por ejemplo, los que han trasladado sus depósitos al extranjero, los que estiman que volverán más rápido a los ritmos de las ganancias con la vuelta de la moneda nacional.

Entonces, el dilema entre la dracma y el euro, con el que intentan dejar intacto al camino de desarrollo capitalista, que lleva con la dracma o con el euro a la crisis, el desempleo, la pobreza, a la riqueza y las ventajas para pocos, es un dilema falso y de chantaje.

No es una salida para el pueblo la dracma que desean Scheuble, Le Pen, Soros, los euroscepticistas Británicos, así como otros fasistóides en Europa, tal como el Amanecer Dorado en nuestro país, ya que el pueblo seguirá sacrificando sus necesidades en el altar de la competitividad de los monopólios, que seguirán teniendo en sus manos las llaves de la economía.

¿Acaso esto no está pasando también en países capitalistas con moneda nacional (Bulgaria, Rumanía y en otros lugares) o que participan en otras alianzas? En todos los países capitalistas, dentro o fuera de la Eurozona, los derechos populares se han aplastado, golpeados por la crisis capitalista. La diferencia entre quienes ven con buen ojo la moneda nacional de los que hablan del camino único de la eurozona es que los primeros llaman al pueblo de sacrificarse por la recuperación capitalista a través de una moneda devaluada interna y externamente, mientras los segundos, los gobiernos hasta ahora, a través de medidas de devaluación interna de la moneda, por eso hacen falta uno o incluso más memorandums dentro de la eurozona.

Lo anteriormente expresado también vale para SYRIZA número 2, que lleva el nombre Unidad Popular, que defiende la misma propiedad y el mismo poder capitalista que los demás. Confiesan que quieren que la moneda nacional sea herramienta del desarrollo capitalista antipopular.

Por supuesto, en nuestro país hay también otros pequeños grupos izquierdistas, como ANTARSYA, que presentan la salida del euro junto con diversas medidas de gestión keynsiniana, como una "etapa" en un camino de una transformación socialista radical. Pero, preguntémonos, si es posible la alineación con una versión burguesa, con una opción de la burguesía respecto a la moneda y las medidas de gestión del capitalismo, ser la base para cambios sociales radicales? En nuestra opinión, en ningún caso. Ninguna medida de gestión burguesa no puede poner obstaculos al estallido de la crisis capitalista, ni derogar la explotación capitalista. El derrocamiento de la barbárie capitalista no pasa a través del cambio simple de moneda y de la mezcla (¿de Merkel o de Obama?) de gestión del capitalismo.

Ofensiva del movimiento obrero puede haber sólo con línea de ruptura con la UE, el capital y su poder. Requiere la derrota de los apoyantes del euro y de los de la dracma, que ocultan quién es el enemigo real del pueblo, de la clase obrera.

7) ¿Qué relaciones tiene el partido con otros Partidos Comunistas "oficiales" del continente europeo, sobre todo con el Partido Comunista Portugués, que se ve dispuesto de colaborar con el Bloque, en relación con la postura del KKE ante el partido Unidad Popular, por ejemplo?

Respuesta: El KKE mantiene hoy relaciones con decenas de partidos comunistas y obreros. Contribuyó y sigue contribuyendo a la realización de los Encuentros Internacionales de Partidos Comunistas y Obreros que empezaron en Atenas y fueron hospedados muchas veces por nuestro partido. El KKE apoya tanto las acciones comunes de los Partidos Comunistas que se deciden en los Encuentros Internacionales, como el sistema de información rápida entre ellos, el http://solidnet.org/. Además, nuestro partido toma una serie de iniciativas, a nivel regional, en los Balcanes, en el Mediterráneo del Este, en Europa, donde recientemente, previa nuestra iniciativa, se fundó la "INICIATIVA de Partidos Comunistas y Obreros por el estudio, la elaboración de asuntos europeos y la coordinación de su acción"- http://www.initiative-cwpe.org. En esta "Iniciativa" comunista participan 29 partidos comunistas y obreros europeos. Además, nuestra revista teórica, " Kommounistiki Epitheorisi", junto con revistas teóricas de 10 partidos más, publican comunmente la "Revista Comunista Internacional" - http://www.iccr.gr.

Está claro que todas estas iniciaticas de por si, no pueden sobrepasar las diferencias ideológicas y políticas en las lineas del movimiento comunista internacional que, no ocultamos que en las últimas décadas está sufriendo una crisis ideológica y política grave. En nuestra opinión, esta crisis se sobrepasará en la dirección de la defensa del marxismo-leninismo, de la defensa de la contribución de la URSS y de los demás países socialistas y con conclusiones útiles de su recorrido, del movimiento comunista coyunturalmente, en la línea del apoyo combativo de las leyes de la revolución y construcción socialista, del internacionalismo proletario. En esta dirección es necesaria la creación de un polo de Partidos Comunistas, que defienden al marxismo-leniismo y a la estrategia revolucionaria. Esto por supuesto no excluye la colaboración de nuestro partido también con los Partidos Comunistas con los que tenemos diferencias ideológicas y políticas graves, en asuntos de la lucha contra la OTAN, las fuerzas imperialistas, el anticomunismo, en asuntos de solidaridad etc.

8) ¿Hay elementos progresistas dentro de la burguesía griega?

Respuesta: Muchos Partidos Comunistas en el pasado, sin excluir nuestro partido, optaron por la política de alianzas también con fuerzas de la burguesía, las que se caracterizaron como "con pensamiento nacional", separándolas de las llamadas fuerzas compradoras o hacían la separación entre burguesía "monopólica" o "no monopólica", buscando la alianza con la segunda. En el 18º congreso de nuestro partido, en 2009, estimamos que una separación así es errónea, no está fundamentada. Por supuesto, dentro de la burguesía, hay diferencias, a menudo conflictos intensos dentro de la burguesía, sobre la mezcla de gestión burguesa, la política monetaria, sus alianzas internacionales etc. Sin embargo, estas diferencias en lo interno de la burguesía, no tienen que ver con los trabajadores.

Estimamos que la política del robo de los países más débiles y del abandono de derechos de soberanía no es resultado de la inmoralidad política de alguna parte de la burguesía, ni un asunto de sumisión y de cobardía por parte de la burguesía del país. Es un asunto que resulta de su posición en el mercado capitalista internacional y su posición económica y político-militar en el sistema imperialista internacional. Está relacionada con la interdependencia desigual, con la desigualdad capitalista que caracteriza al sistema imperialista. Así, la burguesía que siente que su socio fuerte no la trata de forma igual, sabe que no puede ser de otra forma porque, aparte de todo el resto, la alianza con el socio más fuerte asegura también una protección política más fuerte en lo interno del país, ante la amenaza de la agudización de la lucha de clases.

Además, la burguesía o alguna parte de esta es imposible que defienda los derechos de soberanía en favor del pueblo pero únicamente por su propio interés. Y si hace falta, ignorará sus intereses particulares, si se trata de un contrapeso para que no pierda su poder, para que lo mantenga cuanto más se puede.

Entonces, la burguesía, le ha dado a la humanidad lo que tenía que darle desde hace algunos siglos. Es vano que alguien busque elementos de progresismo en la burguesía, que ya es a 100% parasitaria y su poder es una "fuente" de crisis y de guerras. Vivimos en la época de la necesidad por el paso del capitalismo al socialismo, ya que las condiciones materiales por la organización socialista de la producción y de la sociedad son maduras. Y esto no lo pueden cambiar los derrocamientos contrarrevolucionarios de las últimas décadas. Nuestro siglo será el siglo de nuevas revoluciones sociales.

9) ¿Cuál es el programa mínimo del KKE y cuales son las precondiciones mínimas para su participación en una alianza de izquierdas más amplia?

Respuesta: El KKE, desde 1996 (en su 15o congreso) ha tirado para delante y ha sobrepasado la lógica de las "etapas" hacia el socialismo, que proyectaban los programas mínimos correspondientes.

Hemos estimado que en la época de paso del capitalismo al socialismo no caben posiciones políticas que atrapan a la clase obrera en la gestión burguesa bajo la forma de etapas intermedias entre el capitalismo y el socialismo, no caben posiciones políticas de apoyo o de participación en uno u otro gobierno de gestión burguesa que se presenta bajo una bandera "de izquierdas" o progresista. El poder será burgués, capitalista o obrero. Los medios de producción seran propiedad capitalista o social. Soluciones dentro del sistema, independientemente de las intenciones, no sólo no constituyen formas de abordación de la solución socialista, todo lo contrario favorecen la eternización del capitalismo, le dan tiempo, cultivan ilusiones a los trabajadores.

Hoy, nuestro Partido tiene un programa, aprobado en nuestro último, 19o congreso (2013). En este Programa se estima que: "El pueblo griego se liberará de las cadenas de la explotación capitalista y de las uniones imperialistas cuando la clase obrera con sus aliados lleve a cabo la revolución socialista y avance a la construcción del socialismo-comunismo.

El objetivo estratégico del KKE es la conquista del poder obrero revolucionario, es decir, la dictadura del proletariado, para la construcción socialista como fase inmadura de la sociedad comunista.

El cambio revolucionario en Grecia será socialista".

Además, se anota que "Las fuerzas motrices de la revolución socialista serán la clase obrera como fuerza dirigente, los semiproletarios, los sectores populares oprimidos de los autónomos en la ciudad y los campesinos pobres, que se ven afectados negativamente por los monopolios, por eso tienen interés objetivo de su abolición, de la abolición de la propiedad capitalista, del derrocamiento de su poder, tienen interés de las nuevas relaciones de producción."

Según lo anterior, creemos que se entiende que el KKE no sigue la línea de las "alianzas de izquierdas", no tiene ilusiones parlamentarias sobre el papel de los "gobiernos de izquierdas". La historia enseña que la lógica de las transformaciones y el rechazo del camino revolucionario, el rechazo de la revolución socialista constituye un retroceso muy duro y negación del elemento más básico que caracteriza un Partido Comunista.

Entonces, el KKE actúa en la dirección de la preparación del factor sujetivo por la perspectiva de la revolución socialista, aunque el período temporal de su estallido se determina por condiciones objetivas, la situación revolucionaria.

Hoy, en condiciones en las que no hay situación revolucionaria, nuestro partido prioriza la recomposición del movimiento obrero, para que éste sea capaz de responder a las necesidades de la lucha de clases, para que la clase obrera cumpla su papel como clase de vanguardia en la sociedad, de portador del cambio revolucionario.

Recomposición del movimiento obrero significa sindicatos fuertes y masivos que lucharán en dirección de clase, apoyados en los obreros y las obreras, a los jóvenes trabajadores, las mujeres, los inmigrantes, con procesos colectivos que asegurarán la participación en la toma y la realización de las decisiones. Fortalecimiento del PAME, de la agrupación de clase en el movimiento obrero, cambio de la correlación de fuerzas contra las fuerzas del reformismo, del oportunismo, del sindicalismo patronal-gubernamental, portadores del paternariado social.

Células fuertes en las fábricas, en empresas de importancia estrategica.

El movimiento obrero, combativamente, organizadamente tiene que luchar por cualquier problema de la clase obrera, teniendo como criterio las necesidades actuales, conquistando una orientación de conflicto con las fuerzas del capital, por el derrocamiento de la explotación capitalista, conquistando un alto nivel de unidad de clase.

La clase obrera, con su postura de vanguardia, tiene que ser protagonista en la construcción de la Alianza Popular que responde a la pregunta de cómo se organizará la lucha de rechazo de las medidas bárbaras antipopulares, cómo se organizará la ofensiva popular.

La Alianza Popular expresa los intereses de la clase obrera, de los semiproletarios, de los autónomos y de los campesinos pobres, de los jóvenes y de las mujeres de las capas populares y obreras en la lucha contra los monopólios y la propiedad capitalista, contra la integración del país en las uniones imperialistas. La Alianza Popular es social y tiene características de movimiento, con una línea de ruptura y de derrocamiento. Hoy se constituye sobre la base de la lucha común del PAME, la agurpación de clase en el movimiento obrero, de PASY, en el campesinado, de PASEVE en los autónomos, del MAS en los estudiantes de las universidades y de los institutos técnicos, de OGE en las mujeres.

Lucha por los salarios, las pensiones, por un sistema de salud, de sanidad, de educación público y gratuito, por cualquier problema popular.

Defiende la percepción de que la lucha por una salida propopular de la crisis está estrechamente ligada con el desencadenamiento de la UE, la eliminación unilateral de la deuda pública.

La lucha por el desencadenamiento de la UE está ligada con la lucha contra el poder de los monopolios y la lucha de la clase obrera y de sus aliados con el poder obrero y popular.

La Alianza Popular adopta la socialización de los medios de producción concentrados, la planificación central, el control obrero - social.

La aglutinación de la mayoría de la clase obrera con el KKE y la atracción de partes de las capas populares de vanguardia pasará por diversas fases. El movimiento obrero, los movimientos de los autónomos en las ciudades y de los campesinos y la forma de expresión de su alianza, de la alianza popular con objetivos antimonopólicos-anticapitalistas, con la acción de vanguardia de las fuerzas del KKE bajo condiciones no revolucionarias, constituyen la formación preliminaria para la constitucion del frente revolucionario popular en condiciones revolucionarias.

En condiciones de situación revolucionaria, el frente obrero-popular en todas las formas de su acción puede ser el centro del levantamiento popular por el derrocamiento de la burguesía, para que pervalezcan las instituciones revolucionarias que toman en sus manos la nueva organización de la sociedad, el establecimiento del poder obrero revolucionario que estará fundamentado sobre la unidad de producción, el servicio social, la unidad administrativa, la cooperativa productiva.

Es entonces que la propuesta del KKE por el PODER POPULAR CON SOCIALIZACIÓN DE LOS MONOPÓLIOS-DESENCADENAMIENTO DE LA UE-ELIMINACIÓN UNILATERAL DE LA DEUDA, que es la única propuesta realista y prometedora que puede poner un fin definitivo a los memorándum y los sacrificios a los que se somete el pueblo en el altar del camino de desarrollo capitalista, se puede realizar.

La realización de este camino depende de la voluntad popular. El camino de la ruptura con la UE y el FMI, el capital local y extranjero, pasa obligatoriamente por la agrupación con el KKE.

Es la única salida alternativa real por el pueblo, capaz de utilizar y de desarrollar más las capacidades productivas del país en favor del pueblo. Grecia tiene precondiciones (producción industrial y agrícola, riqueza mineral, personal obrero y científico especializado) para producir la mayoría de los productos que necesita el pueblo. Y así fundar relaciones de beneficio mútuo con otros países. Estas capacidades en otros casos se limitan o se usan de forma errónea, o se minan de forma más masiva porque se someten a las ganancias capitalistas, el desarrollo capitalista desigual, a los compromisos de la UE.
Su uso requiere la salvación de las cadenas de la propiedad- del poder capitalista. Es la única propuesta que puede asegurar trabajo estable y permanente para todos, servicios de Educación, Salud y Sanidad exclusivamente públicos y gratuitos.
Es el único camino que evita la participación peligrosa del país a los planes militares de la OTAN, de los EEUU y de la UE, a costas de los pueblos, es el único camino para que no nos impliquemos en las contradicciones de los imperialistas en conflicto feroz entre si sobre el cómo repartirán los caminos del petróleo y del gas natural, caminos que siempre han sido regados con la sangre de los pueblos.
Un tal recorrido de derrocamiento no será aislado y solitario, tal como defienden todos los demás partidos que defienden al capitalismo. Se basará sobre la lucha y la solidaridad de los otros pueblos, de movimientos y de países que caminarán en el mismo camino.
Hoy, pueden haber condiciones mejores de organización, recomposición del movimiento obrero, de fortalecimiento de la alianza popular. Pueden haber fisuras en la correlación de fuerzas actual y existente en Grecia e internacionalmente.

Basta con que el pueblo haga uso de su experiencia, que la transforme en fuerza de lucha y de derrocamiento.

Entonces, existe una forma y planificación para que nuestra propuesta se vuelva realidad, para que el pueblo trabajador viva mejor, tal como se debe, tal como se le merece hoy, según las capacidades de la sociedad. Y este camino pasa a través de la composición de una alianza social popular grande, potente que luchará contra las nuevas medidas antipopulares y tendrá como orientación estable la lucha contra los monopólios y el capitalismo. Su formación y fortalecimiento puede hoy también ayudar en el cambio de la correlación negativa de fuerzas, al fortalecimiento de la organización, la combatividad, el espíritu militante de la clase obrera y las demás capas populares, contra el fatalismo y el servilismo, la sumisión del pueblo a los antiguos y nuevos gestores de la barbárie del capitalismo.

En este recorrido hace falta un KKE mas fuerte POR TODAS PARTES, en el Parlamento y, sobre todo, en los lugares de trabajo, las grandes fábricas, los barrios populares, el campo, los espacios de la juventud.

El KKE constituye la única fuerza que puede ser apoyo en la lucha del pueblo contra la pobreza, el paro, la vida degradada dentro y fuera de la eurozona, con el euro o con moneda nacional.

El KKE es la única fuerza de ruptura con la explotación y poder capitalista. Es la fuerza que puede llevar a lo que es realmente diferente, no sólo alternativo, sino un tipo de organización de la economía y de toda la sociedad superior. Con propiedad social, planificación central, control obrero. Estas son también las precondiciones por una liberación real de los mercados, del capital, por una elminiación unilateral y total de la deuda, por una liberación de las cadenas de la UE._

Last Updated on Wednesday, 16 September 2015 18:07

Syriza attempts to rewrite history in futile effort to stem collapse in support
By Robert Stevens

17 September 2015
On Tuesday, just five days before the September 20 Greek general election, Syriza finally issued its programme. The fact that Syriza puts out a 130-page document, with just days to go before the vote, is a travesty. It befits the fraudulent character of the snap election called in August by Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras, then prime minister.

The election is not intended to register the democratic will of the population. The move to elections was a manoeuvre aimed at establishing a new political framework for pushing through deeply unpopular austerity measures. Tsipras said his government, elected in January on an anti-austerity ticket, had “exhausted” its “political mandate.” The “political mandate” of Syriza was in fact exhausted by the government’s betrayal of the anti-austerity sentiment that brought it to power.

Syriza’s election programme is a pack of lies. Under conditions in which the party has haemorrhaged support in the population, the programme is a desperate attempt by Syriza to rewrite history. Just weeks after signing along with the European Union-led “troika” the harshest austerity programme yet imposed against the Greek population, Syriza’s manifesto claims that the party remains an anti-austerity movement, dedicated to reversing the savage cuts it has just embraced and held up as the only realistic alternative available.

Syriza’s programme declares, “The aim of Syriza is to implement with different terms, after seven months of experience with negotiation and governance [!] , a four-year government programme to disengage from neo-liberalism and austerity, to achieve a radical, democratic transformation of the state, while at the same time seeking solutions to limit the [negative] repercussions of the agreement” (emphasis added).

While stating that what it agreed with the troika is “a harsh programme,” it claims there are some “limited gains” within it for the majority of society.

It continues, “In many areas, the direction of implementation will depend on future negotiations between Greece and its creditors. There is ample room to develop policies and social struggles to defend wage-earners, the self-employed, and public property.”

Just writing these words reveals the contempt these petty-bourgeois dissemblers have for the working people of Greece.

Referring to the austerity agreement it signed, the manifesto states, “At a given moment with given balances of power, one must make a temporary and tactical compromise, so as to be in a position to continue to struggle for the strategic aim of socialism.”

Syriza, as is amply evidenced by its history, programme and social composition, is a party that supports capitalism and has nothing to do with socialism. Its signing up to mass austerity was not based on any “temporary and tactical compromise , ” but flowed inevitably from this history, programme and class character.

In June, after months of negotiations with the troika, which consisted of Syriza ditching every promise contained in its pre-election “Thessaloniki Programme” to reverse austerity, Tsipras called a referendum on the troika’s austerity package. Syriza officials have since confirmed that Tsipras wanted a “yes” vote to austerity, in order to justify his planned capitulation to the EU’s austerity demands.

On July 5, the population rejected austerity in a landslide vote. Syriza responded by rapidly agreeing to the harsher measures now to be imposed. Syriza’s programme has the gall to describe the referendum as the party’s “crowning achievement.”

To rub salt into the wound, the manifesto pledges that following a first adjustment review by the troika of the austerity programme, scheduled for later this year, Syriza will forward a comprehensive proposal to restructure Greece’s debt.

The reality, as everyone knows, is that the troika agreement turns Greece into a de facto colony of the European Union and places the country under the dictates of Brussels and Berlin. There will be no genuine debt relief. Indeed, the terms of the austerity programme stipulate that Greece will fund its own debt through privatisations. The remaining most valuable national assets are to be pillaged, so that Athens can continue to pay back loans from the EU, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Syriza is promoting its false version of history as a last gasp attempt to stem the stampede away from the party by many workers and youth who previously gave it their support. From what was an unassailable lead it commanded in winning the January elections, Syriza is now neck and neck in the polls with the conservative New Democracy (ND).

Syriza’s support has collapsed most particularly among working class youth, who have been among the worst hit by the imposition of years of savage cuts to living standards, ongoing recession and mass unemployment.

According to a recent poll published by Ethnos, just 18.6 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds are set to vote for Syriza on Sunday. This is almost half of the more than 30 percent in this age group who voted for the party in January. This disillusionment was expressed within Syriza itself. According to reports, there has been a mass exodus of youth out of the party, with just a few dozen activists now remaining.

One of those who left posted a message on the Syriza Youth Facebook page reading, “The reason why many people left SYRIZA and youth of SYRIZA (including me) is that we took a decision to keep on fighting against capitalism and memorandums as the only way to survive and implement our true beliefs.”

This week, Agence France-Presse reported the comments of Manos Papazoglou, a political scientist at the University of the Peloponnese, who observed, “In January, Syriza represented youth, hope and change. But they have lost this image very quickly. It’s very rare in Europe to see a party lose its political capital like this so fast.”

Syriza’s former Left Platform, whose leaders participated at the highest levels of Tsipras’s government and who have now established a new formation, Popular Unity, bear a central responsibility for the betrayal. Claiming to represent the “radical” pre-January Syriza, Popular Unity is standing in the elections as a separate party. But their attempt to conceal their involvement in Syriza’s betrayal is not proving successful. According to opinion polls, Popular Unity may not even score above the three percent threshold necessary to enter parliament.

Today Syriza’s programme differs in no fundamental way from that of the pro-austerity New Democracy and Pasok. Both of these deeply discredited parties have been able to gain traction because of Syriza’s betrayal. In addition, the fascist Golden Dawn, which poses as an opponent of austerity, has also gained support and now place third or fourth in Sunday’s poll.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/09/17/gree-s17.html

The KKE will utilize its forces for the regroupment of the movement, for the people’s alliance

Statement of the General Secretary of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/koytsoympas-dhlosh-2.jpg_1302204135.jpg

According to the final results, the KKE received 5.55% of the votes.



Dimitris Koutsoumpas: “The KKE salutes the hundreds of thousands of people who honoured it with their votes. All those men and women who ignored the extortion, the dilemmas, overcame hesitations and various reservations in order to join forces with the KKE.



The KKE will utilize its political, electoral and parliamentary strength to work for the comprehensive regroupment and strengthening of the labour-people’s movement, for the construction of a great social, people’s alliance.



The KKE is the only force whose struggle against the memoranda is at the same time a consistent struggle against the capitalist system itself, the system that also creates the predatory alliances which only bring new torments for the people, the country and the youth.



The KKE, as always, will stand shoulder to shoulder with our people, consistently against any government that is ready to implement the barbaric memorandum.



The correlation of forces in parliament will in any case produce a coalition government. Its programmatic statements are already ready-the implementation of the 3rd memorandum. Capital, its political and governmental personnel, together with the Troika, wants to win the people’s consent in order to implement the barbaric measures without resistance. They want a harmless, fake opposition so that its hands are free to wage the anti-people offensive.



The election results as a whole are negative for the workers, the employees, the urban and rural self-employed, the youth, the pensioners.



The KKE will consistently and continually struggle inside Parliament and inside the people’s movement in order to isolate the Nazi monstrosity, Golden Dawn."



There needs to be a stronger KKE everywhere, in the workplaces, in the places of education, the popular neighbourhoods, in the places where the heart of our struggling and sorely tested people truly beats.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-KKE-will-utilize-its-forces-for-the-regroupment-of-the-movement-for-the-peoples-alliance/

Back to the well again...what's it gonna take? Mao aside, will the Greeks serially elect every opportunists in the country?

Back to the well again...what's it gonna take? Mao aside, will the Greeks serially elect every opportunists in the country?

Patience is the hardest task of all - especially when it must be coupled with strong action.


There needs to be a stronger KKE everywhere, in the workplaces, in the places of education, the popular neighbourhoods, in the places where the heart of our struggling and sorely tested people truly beats.

The truest statement I have read in a long time - and is needed and applicable on an even broader scale.

Statement of the Central Committee of the KKE on the results of the Parliamentary Elections on the 20th of September

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/20.jpg_1302204135.jpg

1. The CC salutes the members, friends and supporters of the party and KNE, its allies, all those who struggled and joined forces with it. The party received 5.6% of the vote and maintained its 15 MPs. These election results express the negative correlation of forces as a whole, the more general retreat of the labour-people’s movement in conditions of a deep capitalist economic crisis, the level of class struggle in our country and internationally.

The KKE will utilize its political, electoral and parliamentary strength in the titanic effort necessary for the regroupment and strengthening of the labour movement, the people’s movement more widely, the strengthening of the people’s alliance, in order to reinforce the line of counterattack and rupture, of calling into question and opposing as a whole the capitalist development path, the EU and the political line that supports this path.

The concentration of forces in this direction, the political emancipation of the working people from the false dilemmas and confusion fostered by the bourgeois political system, through the alternation of parties and political figures in various roles, is a precondition in order to militantly impede the anti-people measures and win partial gains, until the final overthrow of the capitalist system.

In particular, we want to salute those who voted for the KKE for the first time, appreciating its consistency, its selflessness, its militancy in the struggle for the interests of the working people, even if they do not agree with all of its positions. We salute those who voted to acknowledge the fact that the KKE for many years and especially in the last 7 months of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, against the current of expectations and false hope fostered by the change of government in January, revealed that on the terrain of capitalist dominance and the international imperialist alliances, like the EU and NATO, objectively there can be no management and negotiations in favour of the people.

We address ourselves to all those, even if they appreciate the militant pro-people stance of the KKE, did not take the decisive step to vote for it, chiefly under the pressure exerted by the polarization and by SYRIZA that asked for votes “so that we do not return to the past” or preferred to abstain.

The developments and the struggle of the communists in Greece attract the interest of many workers in Europe and in other countries around the world. We want to thank the dozens of Communist and Workers Parties that expressed their support for the KKE, at a time when the Party of the European Left (PEL) and social-democracy in general continue to sow illusions regarding the role of SYRIZA and its government.



2. A large section of the people chose to abstain from these elections, the largest percentage of abstention in recent years. Even if to a large extent this expresses discontent with the bourgeois political system, a feeling of anger and disillusionment amongst sections of workers and youth, it is not an active stance that disputes and opposes the situation today and the causes that give rise to it. On the contrary, it strengthens defeatism and surrender with the rationale “that nothing can happen”, “nothing can change”, and it also reinforces the blanket and mistaken impression that “they are all the same”.

Those who had sometimes voted for the KKE or thought about voting for it, but in the end chose to abstain, need to think about the fact that all the small and major battles, including elections, can and should be used to create fissures in the current negative correlation of forces, to gather forces with the aim of completely overthrowing the system. The level abstention is also related of course to the difficulties that a section of the people found it difficult to travel, as they face real problems of poverty and survival, and from this standpoint the recent governments bear responsibilities for not taking measures to facilitate their travel, as the KKE had repeatedly demanded.

We call on all these working class and popular forces, from tomorrow, to join with us in the everyday struggles in the trade unions, the sectors, in the workplaces, in the places where the youth are found, in the movement in order to repel the measures of the 3rd and the previous memoranda, for the recovery of the losses, and also more generally in the overall struggle to change the class in power. Through the struggle and collective activity, hesitations and reservations can be overcome and the KKE’s proposal for the way out and power can be better understood.



3. The elections results in general express the consolidation of the retreat, passivity and intensification of conservative trends that are to be found in a large section of the people. The result is a negative one for the workers, employees, self-employed, unemployed, their children and the pensioners. To a great extent, it reproduces the correlation of forces amongst the parties of the bourgeois political system that existed in the previous elections 8 months ago. It reflects the spirit of compromise in the face of capital’s offensive in conditions of the economic crisis and also the fraudulent hopes in the reorganization of social-democracy, with SYRIZA largely replacing PASOK.

The votes for SYRIZA, despite the fact that as the government it brought the anti-people prerequisites and the 3rd memorandum, express the regurgitation of the choice of the “lesser evil” in relation to ND and the fact that people were ensnared by the false slogan “a second chance so that the Left does not become a parenthesis.”

There continues to be the negative fact that Nazi Golden Dawn has formed a stable level of political influence. All the other parties bear serious responsibilities i.e. the governmental party SYRIZA, the official opposition of ND, as well as other minor opposition parties, which in essence did not wage an open political battle against Golden Dawn either in the election period or in the previous period. The KKE will continue to raise the banner of struggle against Nazism-Fascism and its representatives today in Greece, who poison the workers’-people’s consciousness, organize assault battalions, set up slave-trading offices to provide cheap workers for the employers, despite the effort to present a more “law abiding” visage, due to the criminal prosecutions that are underway.

A certain reshuffling amongst the bourgeois parties, such as the rise of “Democratic Alignment” (PASOK-DIMAR) and the fall of POTAMI, reflect the ongoing process for the reformation of the bourgeois political system, from which the people can expect nothing favourable. The parliamentary presence of the “Centre Union”, with its positions that are in fact reactionary, is being used as a shock-absorber in order to trap some of the indignation that exists and render it harmless.

The positions of the newly formed “Popular Unity”-which emerged from a split in SYRIZA and in the end did not enter Parliament- represent a political proposal for a way out from the crisis with a national currency, without in essence calling into question the capitalist system and the EU.



4. SYRIZA has provided valuable services to the system during this entire period. In the first phase, it utilized the discontent of the people concerning the anti-people measures, exclusively targeting the governmental management of ND and PASOK, the memoranda, concealing their real character, as policies to support capital in the phase of the capitalist economic crisis, which is an inevitable phenomenon of capitalist development. It tried to deceive working class and popular forces that its political proposal would have an allegedly pro-people-anti-memorandum orientation, that it is possible without ruptures and overthrows, without the people making sacrifices in the struggle, to achieve popular prosperity, because it is allegedly just an issue of negotiation, honesty, competence, intelligence.

The signing of the 3rd memorandum by the SYRIZA-ANEL government and the hasty announcement of early parliamentary elections was accompanied by the renewal of the dilemmas in order to manipulate the popular forces and gain the people’s consent for the anti-people measures. In the run up to the elections, SYRIZA tried to foster the false impression that, in contrast to the previous governments, its government “fought”. That, despite the compromise, the battle of the negotiations has allegedly not been completed, that the EU can change, that there are still open issues (adjustment of the debt, development programs, equivalent measures) which its government can better manage. In this way, SYRIZA co-opted working class and popular forces that in the previous years had fought against the anti-people measures and the memoranda. SYRIZA’s responsibility and that of its various dissenting offshoots is that it disarmed the movement; it undermined it with illusions and fraudulent promises.

It most negative contribution in recent years is expressed by its elevation in the trade union movement as an employer-led bureaucratic force, assimilating the corresponding apparatus of PASOK and accepting the plaudits of a significant section of the capitalist employers and EU mechanisms. Consequently, SYRIZA prepared the terrain for the adoption of new anti-worker anti-people measures, both as the official opposition in the past and in the 7-month period of its government.

The political line of SYRIZA allowed ND and PASOK to present themselves as being vindicated in relation to their governmental past. They are attempting to appear as genuine representatives of the EU one-way street, of the so-called “reforms”, of the investments for capitalist growth, which allegedly SYRIZA does not believe in.



5. The new SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government will proceed along the path of implementing the anti-people measures and memoranda in favour of capitalist profitability. It will implement the EU guidelines, which concern all the member-states.

The bourgeoisie in Greece and at the European level, the EU mechanisms, the EU-ECB-IMF, the bourgeois parties want a parliamentary majority that will support a government capable of passing antiworker-antipeople measures with relative ease so that the recovery can be facilitated and at the same time so that the movement can be kept in a state of retreat, frozen. They will use the people’s votes as a sign of consent so that they can pass all the measures without resistance and implement their strategy with out any political cost.

It seems that in this phase ND will keep its role as a harmless, fake opposition, a “responsible opposition” which will assist the government’s work and its accelerated implementation in the name of “stability” and “national unity”, which in essence means that the ruling class has a free hand in order to unleash its offensive, which means class collaboration and the intensification of authoritarianism.

We have major battles in front of us regarding the burning issues that concern the working class and popular strata in their entirety (e.g. the social security system). The KKE will contribute with all its forces in order to organize the people’s counterattack, to orient the movement in an anti-monopoly, anti-capitalist direction, to lend mass characteristics to the movement and the struggles.

The declarations of all the parties about equivalent measures, counterbalances and parallel programmes, which can allegedly soften the grave consequences of the 3rd memorandum, are obviously fraudulent. There will not be the return of even a small section of the losses experienced by the people in recent years. In the best case scenario, a section of workers will receive something, which will be paid for by all the other workers. The poor will pay to give something to those even poorer. The bourgeoisie and its governments will utilize the various equivalent measures in order to foster the rationale of “divide and rule”, the separation of the workers, in order to prevent the strengthening of a movement that will unite the workers with common and unified demands and fight against the pro-monopoly policies, capital and the EU.

A prerequisite for even a tepid capitalist recovery is the maintenance and extension of the abolition of any gains, an even cheaper and more subjugated labour force, tax havens for capital. Capital will drastically cut and abolish even the low levels of social spending, while it will maintain a high-level of unemployment and semi-employment. The recovery which was witnessed in other capitalist states did not dramatically reduce unemployment, did not lead to a recovery of the people’s losses or to the abolition of the antiworker-antipeople laws taken during the years of the crisis. The people will pay for the adjustment of the debt, regardless of how and when this will happen, and also for the development programmes, which will be directed to big capital, precisely in the same way as the previous ones were.

The situation could deteriorate, as the signs of the outbreak of a new international synchronized crisis are appearing and at the same time the contradictions between the imperialist centres are sharpening in our wider region.



6. The KKE, consistent to what it said before the elections as well, will not support or tolerate the new government. It will utilize the actual rallying of forces to do what it promised to the people: to be a strong workers’ and people’s opposition in the Parliament and above all in the movement, to strengthen the People’s Alliance that will fight concerning today’s problems but also for the future. The people did not give strength in order for us to exploit it by taking part in anti-people coalition governments that will implement the memoranda, i.e. harsh measures at the expense of the people that serve the profits of the plutocracy.

This stance of the KKE is neither easy nor “from a safe distance” as the other parties claim. The communist workers’ –people’s opposition is a very difficult and complex task, it entails a lot of sacrifices and responsibilities. However, it is the only stance that can exert pressure, create obstacles and above all pave the way for radical changes and overthrows. It is this stance that serves the interests of the people and the workers and not the participation in governments that manage the system.

The majority of the people and the workers, the youth, regardless of what they voted for, must not submit to the anti-people measures; they must reject the claims of the government and the bourgeois opposition that they consented to the implementation of the memorandum.

The intervention of the movement must impede the adoption of measures and as the class struggle develops it can hamper the “stability” of the bourgeois political system, its ability to find alternative solutions, to create and utilize other shock-absorbers, to exhaust and disappoint the people, and drag them in any direction it wants. The KKE will continue to fight for the political emancipation of the workers and the people, following the line of class struggle for the overthrow of the system.

It will continue the tough ideological political struggle against the false demarcation lines “memorandum- anti-memorandum”, “new-old”, “Euro-drachma” that obscure the real demarcation line against the parties that defend the capitalist system.

It will fight for the emancipation of the people from the conflict being waged over which are the more favourable conditions for capitalist development, a conflict that has nothing to do with the people’s interests and presents itself either as “productive reconstruction” or as “a national development plan” that will allegedly benefit the people. It will continue revealing the real demarcation line between capitalist power, the capitalist path of development and those that serve it on the one hand, and on the other, the class-oriented labour movement, the People’s Alliance, with the KKE in the frontline, that oppose this path.



7. The KKE utilized the electoral battle in order to underline the necessity to come into conflict with the capitalist ownership and power that are the cause of all the people’s problems, the decay that emerges in all aspects of social life: poverty, unemployment, corruption, including the creation of the increased flows of immigrants and refugees.

It tried to promote the alternative solution, its proposal concerning the issue of power that can lead to a truly different, not merely alternative, and superior organization of the economy and society, with the abolition of capitalist ownership, with social ownership over the means of production, central planning, workers’ control for a constantly increasing people’s prosperity. Under these conditions the disengagement from the EU can operate in favour of the people with a unilateral cancellation of the debt and liberation from the vice of capital markets. Only in this way can the people prevent the worst and fight for the improvement of their living conditions.

This proposal has been more deeply and widely discussed with the people. Our positions and our political proposal as a whole can be systematically discussed in the workplaces, in universities, neighbourhoods, utilizing the significant experience of the previous period. From the Central Committee to each Party Organization of the party and KNE all comrades have the responsibility and the duty to continue the effort to develop militant bonds with new working class and popular forces, explaining the political proposal of the KKE to those who voted for the party in the elections.

The CC of the KKE

23.09.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Statement-of-the-Central-Committee-of-the-KKE-on-the-results-of-the-Parliamentary-Elections-on-the-20th-of-September/

PAME holds demonstration in solidarity with refugees and immigrants

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/sygkentrosi-pame-prosfyges-37.jpg_205347674.jpg

On 23/9, PAME organized a large and militant march in solidarity with refugees and immigrants, a march which ended up at the EU’s offices in Athens. There the demonstrators of PAME raised a banner on the frontage of the building of the EU’s delegation. There was an image of little Aylan, who drowned during his family’s attempt to pass from Turkey to Greece, on the banner alongside the slogan “The European imperialists are murderers, robbers, hypocrites.” Afterwards they threw paint on the building’s façade and burnt an EU flag.

The demands of PAME’s demonstration were:

The immediate transit of refugees from the islands to their final destination countries, under the responsibility of the EU and UN, even utilizing direct charter flights.
The creation of decent reception centres, which will provide food, medical care, interpreting services and legal assistance.
The increase of personnel and strengthening of the infrastructure related to rescue, registration-identification, accommodation-food-care and the safe transit to the country’s exit points.
Immediate funding from the UN and EU
The abolition of the Dublin Regulations and the Schengen Agreement.

In addition, PAME will struggle:

Against new interventions in third countries, under the pretext of allegedly striking against the traffickers. Against the new measures of the EU for repression at the borders, which only complicate and exacerbate the problem and do not lead to a solution.
For the end of the imperialist missions and interventions of the EU-NATO-USA in third countries.
For the end of our country’s involvement in these interventions. For the closure of the Suda base-a launching pad for wars. For the end of Greece’s participation in the joint military exercises. For no Greek soldier to be found outside our borders. For the naval ships to return home.
So that not even one euro is spent on NATO military equipment.


http://youtu.be/lg4NZK1Bz4w

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/PAME-holds-demonstration-in-solidarity-with-refugees-and-immigrants/

Slide show at link.

Interview in the newspaper of the German CP, “Unsere Zeit”, of Elisseos Vagenas member of the CC and responsible for the International Relations Section of the CC

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/13.jpg_1302204135.jpg

All over Europe people are talking about the political developments in Greece. However the participation in the elections on the 20th of September was only 57%. Why did do many voters stay at home?



Answer: The abstention to a large extent expressed discontent with the bourgeois political system, a feeling of indignation, disappointment that was intensified amongst sections of workers and the youth by the 7-month SYRIZA-ANEL government. There was the feeling that “nothing can happen”, “nothing changes”. Of course, the abstention which also had an impact on the KKE’s electoral strength is not an active stance of opposition and resistance to the current situation and the causes that created it.



In addition, the abstention is related to the difficulties a section of the people have in terms of traveling, because they face serious problems related to poverty. From this standpoint, the recent governments bear responsibilities as they have not taken measures to facilitate this, as the KKE has repeatedly demanded.



We call on all those who in the end chose to abstain, to think about the fact that all the small and major battles, together with that of the elections, can and must be used in order to create fissures in the current negative correlation of forces, in order to concentrate forces with the aim of overthrowing the system as a whole.



SYRIZA as a party of government at last tried to react against the EU’s austerity directives. Is it not positive that Tsipras remains leader of the government?



Answer: The parties are not to be judged by their proclamations but by their deeds. Tsipras and SYRIZA did not negotiate for the interests of the people, but for the interests of the monopoly groups, which wanted ready money in order to increase their profitability. It carried out a 100% anti-people negotiation which in the end led to the 3rd memorandum that was adopted also with the votes of ND, PASOK and POTAMI. The 3rd memorandum includes harsh anti-worker anti-people measures, also maintaining the 2 previous memoranda and their over 400 anti-people application laws. Now, with the support of the other bourgeois parties, it is going to transform parliament into a slaughterhouse for the remaining labour and people’s rights.



Fascist Golden Dawn possesses a stable body of voters, even if the party’s leadership is on trial, and although they do not conceal the fact that they adopt terrorism against leftwing people and immigrants. How do you explain the strong influence of the fascists?



Answer: The election results in general express the passivity and strengthening conservative trends amongst a large section of the people. The fact that the criminal Nazi Golden Dawn (which has links with the state apparatus and exploits poverty and unemployment) has formed a stable level of political influence is a negative feature. All the other parties bear serious responsibilities i.e. the governmental party SYRIZA, the official opposition of ND, as well as other minor opposition parties, which in essence did not wage an open political battle against Golden Dawn either in the election period or in the previous period.



The KKE will continue to raise the banner of struggle against Nazism-Fascism and its representatives today in Greece, who poison the workers’-people’s consciousness, organize assault battalions, set up slave-trading offices to provide cheap workers for the employers, despite the effort to present a more “law abiding” visage, due to the criminal prosecutions that are underway.



The KKE was able to maintain its electoral percentage that it has received in January, but in absolute terms it received 35,000 fewer votes. In these elections, you had focused on the rupture with capitalism being necessary and that a socialist future is possible. Was this correct?



Answer: Lets examine this. In these lections “leftwing” SYRIZA lost about 300,000 votes, rightwing ND lost 200,000 votes, the governmental ally of SYRIZA, nationalist ANEL, lost 100,000 votes etc. They did not talk about socialism in their programmes and positions, but they received fewer votes. Other parties, like “Popular Unity”, created by forces that had departed from SYRIZA, promoting a Keynesian social-democratic programme, with its “solution” of returning to a national currency, capsized and did not reach the 3% election threshold to enter parliament.



The ideological-political confrontation is hard and the KKE on a daily basis, in every political battle (including the elections), must tell the people the truth and promote its political proposal for workers’-people’s power, with socialization of the monopolies, central planning and disengagement from the EU-NATO in order to inform the workers and create the preconditions for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, paving the way for and contributing to the maturation of the subjective factor.



Every form bourgeois management leads to anti-people policies. Consequently, the necessity of socialism is the central issue and emerges from the very impasses of the capitalist mode of production that creates crises, unemployment, wars. This necessity arises from the fact that the material preconditions for the creation of a new society, with the exploitation of man by man, exists.





The new government will continue with the immediate implementation of the 3rd memorandum. How will the KKE contribute to the organization of the resistance?



Answer: The KKE maintained 5.5% and had 15 MPs re-elected to Parliament, put forward its positions in the factories, workplaces, popular neighbourhoods, won over young workers, The KKE, consistent with what it said before the elections, is not going to support or tolerate the new government. It will utilize the actual rallying of forces to do what it promised to the people: to be a strong workers’ and people’s opposition in the Parliament and above all in the movement, to strengthen the People’s Alliance that will fight concerning all problems of the people but at the same time willl pave the way for a confrontation against the monopolies and capitalism in their entirety. Our aim is, through the regroupment of the labour and people’s movement, for the majority of the people and the workers, the youth, regardless of what they voted for, not to submit to the anti-people measures and to reject the claims of the government and the bourgeois opposition that the people consented to the implementation of the memorandum. The KKE will continue to fight for the political emancipation of the workers and the people, following the line of class struggle for the overthrow of the system.

02.10.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Interview-in-the-newspaper-of-the-German-CP-Unsere-Zeit-of-Elisseos-Vagenas-member-of-the-CC-and-responsible-for-the-International-Relations-Section-of-the-CC/

Interview of Giorgos Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE, with Boyun Egme on the results of the elections held on the 20th of September

1/ How do you evaluate the answer given by the people at the ballot box?

Answer: In these elections, a large section of the people chose abstention in order to express their discontent. In addition, they were trapped by false dilemmas and the polarization between SYRIZA and ND about “who would better implement” the anti-people measures, included in the 3rd memorandum. SYRIZA won as it was able to foster new illusions that despite the signing of the new memorandum with the imperialist institutions (EU,ECB,IMF) its government could manage this situation better than a ND government. In this way, SYRIZA co-opted working class-popular forces, which in the previous years had fought against the anti-people measures and now gave it a “second chance”, aiming for an allegedly “fairer” and “gentler” implementation of these measures.
These election results express the negative correlation of class forces, the retreat of the labour-people’s movement in conditions of a deep capitalist economic crisis.
In these difficult, complex conditions the KKE tabled its political proposal to be more widely and substantially discussed amongst the people and received 301,632 votes, 5.55%, in the elections of September 20th. It maintained its 15 MPs.

2/ The left platform of SYRIZA took part in the elections as a new formation, Popular Unity (LAE), which was not able to pass the election threshold and remained outside Parliament. What were the key issues of the electoral programme of this party led by P. Lafazanis? Why did it not find resonance?

Answer: LAE, led by former SYRIZA ministers, who for 6 months had been implementing anti-people measures, tried to deceive working class-popular forces by “recycling” the arguments SYRIZA used in January 2015. It promoted a social-democratic programme, with an allegedly anti-memorandum orientation, claiming that it is possible to provide a solution for the people’s problems with a return to a national currency, via (capitalist) “growth”. We aptly characterized it as SYRIZA mark 2, as its positions do not dispute the capitalist system and the EU. It has been demonstrated that a capitalist Greece with a national currency can not be the goal for those who consider themselves to be leftwing and radical.

3/ Despite the large-scale abstention of he people, the KKE kept the same number of MPs. What will be the central axis of the activity of the KKE’s forces in the future?

Answer: The KKE will utilize the actual rallying of forces to be a strong workers’ and people’s opposition in the Parliament and above all in the movement, to strengthen the People’s Alliance that will fight concerning today’s problems but also for the future.
The KKE will struggle so that the workers’-people’s majority, its youth, regardless of how they voted or whether they abstained, do not submit to the anti-people measures and the claims of the government and the bourgeois opposition that the people gave their consent to the implementation of the memorandum.
The KKE will fight for the political emancipation of working class-people’s forces in the direction of the class struggle and it will continue to promote the alternative solution, concerning the issue of power that can lead to a truly superior organization of the economy and society, with the abolition of capitalist ownership, with social ownership over the means of production, central planning, workers’ control. These are the conditions for the disengagement from the EU in favour of the people with a unilateral cancellation of the debt and liberation from the vice of capital’s markets.
On this basis, our goal is the regroupment and strengthening of the labour movement, the people’s movement more widely, the strengthening of the people’s alliance, in order to reinforce the line of counterattack and rupture against capital, the EU and their power.
On this path we can prevent the worst and struggle to improve the people’s lives.

4/ It is clear that there was an increase in Golden Dawn’s vote in the islands of the Eastern Aegean where the immigration question remains on the agenda. What is the stance of the KKE towards this human wave caused by the ongoing war and which flows from Syria, through Turkey to Greece and is trying to reach Europe?

Answer: To begin with we should note that the KKE’s forces in the Eastern Aegean withstood the nationalist, racist and xenophobic pressure and in several cases achieved very good results. For example, It won 1st place in Ikaria with 33.2% (up from 31.8% in the January 2015 elections), in Fourni it was in 2nd place with 23.14%. It also received high percentages in Lesvos 10.68% (the island which has the received the largest number of immigrants,) and in Samos 10.05%.
Of course it is correct to identify the fact that fascist GD exploited the issue and was strengthened on some islands. However, there continues to be the negative fact that Nazi Golden Dawn has formed a stable level of political influence. The other parties bear serious responsibilities i.e. the governmental party SYRIZA, the official opposition of ND, as well as other minor opposition parties, which in essence did not wage an open political battle against Golden Dawn. The KKE will continue to raise the banner of struggle against Nazism-Fascism and its representatives today in Greece, who poison the workers’-people’s consciousness.
As regards the issue of refugees and immigrants, we briefly note that the KKE calls on the people, the labour-people’s movement to vigilance and to intensify solidarity with the refugees and immigrants in order to struggle for the following demands in conflict with capitalist barbarity: abolition of the Dublin Regulations, the Schengen Agreement, Frontex and all the other repressive mechanisms of the EU. No to the new measures of the EU for repression at its borders. For an end to the imperialist interventions and wars of the EU-USA-NATO. No Greek participation in them. The direct transit of refugees from the islands and the entry points to their final destination countries, under the responsibility of the EU and UN. The increase of personnel and strengthening of the infrastructure related to rescue, registration-identification, accommodation-food-care and the safe transit to the country’s exit points. The creation of decent reception centres.

05.10.2015

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Interview-of-Giorgos-Marinos-member-of-the-PB-of-the-CC-of-the-KKE-with-Boyun-Egme-on-the-results-of-the-elections-held-on-the-20th-of-September/

The people must organize their struggle together with the KKE

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/503505.jpg_1422996966.jpg


The MPs of the KKE on the 7th of October voted against the government during the discussion of the government’s programmatic statements. In the end, the government received the votes of 155 MPs (out of the 300 that sit in the Greek Parliament).

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-people-must-organize-their-struggle-together-with-the-KKE/

Earlier, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE, in his speech in Parliament stressed that the people must not show any more tolerance to the government’s political line. They must fight for their rights in an organized way. The government has no right to interpret the election results as approval for its anti-people policies and the harsh measures it is bringing.



The GS of the CC of the KKE underlined that development with capitalist profit as its criterion runs counter to the people’s prosperity, stressing that for as long as we follow this path, the people will suffer new losses in service of the interests of the business groups both in the crisis phase and in the phase of any form of recovery. It is not the only way, despite what all the other political forces say. There can and must be a radical change of course, there is a development path that can satisfy the needs of society.



D. Koutsoumpas noted that the KKE today is the only guarantee that there will be a genuine people’s opposition inside and outside Parliament with a line of confrontation against the real enemy of the workers, the EU, capital and their power. It will use every means at its disposal to fight for measures to relieve the people.



It advances forwards and calls on the people to organize their struggle, to prepare their counterattack, in a line of rupture with exploitation and capitalist power.



When the people decide to truly take matters into their own hands, nothing can stop them.



08.10.2015

When the people decide to truly take matters into their own hands, nothing can stop them.

This must be repeated, loudly, to everybody, all the time.

A message for the counterattack with the KKE’s proposal for power

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/sygkentrosh_36.jpg_1302204135.jpg

““Two different worlds” were found, are found and will be found in constant and permanent conflict: On the one side the world of work, which with its hands and mind produces everything and on the other side the world of the exploiters, a handful of parasites that exploits the work, sweat, efforts and torments of the millions. This contradiction is expressed today and runs through history”. This was underlined by D. Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE, in his speech to the 41st Festival of KNE-Odigitis.

D. Koutsoumpas, at the beginning of his speech, referred to the bomb attack in Ankara which led to many deaths. He expressed the solidarity of the KKE with the working class and people of Turkey.

He stressed that the only new and realistic thing today is for the people take power. He then made reference to the deep decay of capitalism, which is also reflected in the bourgeois political system and the parties that defend it and stressed that the justified discontent and indignation of thousands of young people can be utilized in the struggle against the exploitative system, which will acquire dynamism if it joins forces with the KKE and if it si transformed into participation in the movement and class struggle.

As regards the SYRIZA-ANEL government, he said that it is carrying on where it left off before the elections, sending the heavy and unbearable bill for the 3rd Memorandum to the popular families.

He added that the Greece described by the Prime Minister in his programmatic statements is a capitalist Greece which “through the completion of the agreement’s implementation in the 4-year term (which is what the government is promising) will be plunged into a new crisis on the basis of the situation that is prevalent in the Eurozone and in the other powerful economies at an international level.” Or “will have passed into the recovery phase which will once again be to the benefit of the monopolies, supported on the ruins of the rights of the workers, a development which will not give the armies of the unemployed their jobs back, with the salaries they had.” He said that “this new Greece of SYRIZA is the Greece of the Oligarchy.”

The GS of the CC of the KKE from the 41st festival issued a call for a wide popular unity and alliance amongst the workers, underlining that “on this path to overthrow the system, the people today can, regardless of how they voted in the elections, react and prevent the worst and struggle for relief measures and the improvement of their lives.”

He added that through the dynamics of the processes and realignments in the labour-people’s movement, the seeds of this people’s alliance are being formed, by PAME’s forces that rally the class-oriented trade unions, PASEVE (the rally of the self-employed), PASY (the rally of the poor farmers), MAS (the rally of the students), OGE (the women from the popular strata). And he added:

“The KKE participates in the People’s Alliance, which is a social alliance with workers’-people’s power as its political perspective, through its members and cadres who are active in its ranks and organs of struggle.” He stressed that the alliance has an anticapitalist-antimonopoly direction and is formed on the basis of class criteria and not the ideological-political labels ‘which are used by other political forces in form of “Right-Left”, “Left-Right”, “Memorandum-Antimemorandum front”, “Left”, “Populist Right”, “Extreme Right”, “merkelist and anti-merkelist forces” which simply falsely divide the workers, farmers, self-employed, youth.”

In answer to the question that is often put to the communists, “where has the alternative proposal of the KKE been implemented”, he defended socialist construction in the 20th century, underlining that it solved major problems for the working class and people, the ones that capitalism can not solve in the more than four centuries that has been dominant and stressed that “And today, using the experience of constructing socialism, we can say: The proposal of KKE can be implemented, can be realized in Greece today and this can really be the new Greece.”

He also noted that this is the only way to prevent the country’s dangerous participation in the military plans of NATO, the USA and the EU which are against the people’s interests. He sounded the alarm and pointed out the danger of the wider region of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean being transformed into a “powder keg” and of greater Greek involvement in this, due to the sharpening of the competition and the military interventions.

He criticized the Greek government for its proposals to the USA and NATO and for its readiness to accept the USA’s request to station drones in Crete and added that “the participation in these plans serves the interests of Greek capital so that it can acquire a share in the dividing up of the markets, i.e. from the robbery carried out against the people.”

Invoking the well-known lessons of history, D. Koutsoumpas also stressed that “capitalist crises and imperialist wars go together.”

“That is why today the slogan "the people and especially the youth should not shed blood for the interests of capital, of the exploiters." is extremely important.” The GS of the CC ended his speech by saying that “The people and the youth have one choice:

To put an end to the system that inevitably generates exploitation, crises and wars.

To struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a new socialist society.”



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AT-oShJrz68

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/A-message-for-the-counterattack-with-the-KKEs-proposal-for-power/

He stressed that the only new and realistic thing today is for the people take power.

Who would deny this? Who would say, publicly, that people should not take power? This is why the world appears to be upside down. No one would say this, but no one believes this...

PAME occupied the Ministry of Labour

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/pame-yp-ergasias-74_2.jpg_1957581865.jpg

On 15/10 workers form dozens of trade unions of the private and public sector, which are rallied in the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME), carried out a symbolic occupation of the Ministry of Labour in the morning.


Dozens of PAME’s activists occupied the Ministry and hung a giant banner on its façade which had written on it: “We will not become the slaves of the 21stcentury. No to the destruction of Social Security, to mass dismissals, to repossessions, to poverty and unemployment,” issuing an appeal for participation in the demonstrations of PAME on the 22nd of October, as well as for the strike on the 12th of November.

PAME noted in its statement that the government’s measures “smash what is left of the social character of insurance, at the same time it hands over money to and frees the business groups from their debts, it is attempting to destroy social security and transform it into an individual matter for each worker.

They want us to work until extreme old age, without pensions, without protection in the workplaces, without access to healthcare and welfare. They are pushing the workers into the claws of the predators that treat insurance as an opportunity to make profits, into the clutches of the insurance companies and the health businesses.”

The destruction of Social Security must not succeed!

The new offensive against the rights won with many years of struggle and blood must not succeed.”

Christos Katsotis, member of the CC and MP of the KKE, attended PAME’s rally.

The occupation continued on Friday the 16th and PAME will hold a demonstration in the centre of Athens in the evening of the same day.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlhLGLOMHA&feature=player_embedded

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/PAME-occupied-the-Ministry-of-Labour/

Slide show at link.

Militant mass demonstrations of PAME on 22/10 all over the country against the anti-people political line of the SYRIZA-ANEL government (photos, videos)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNz5sCF89wM&feature=player_embedded

Slide show at link.


http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Militant-mass-demonstrations-of-PAME-on-22-10-all-over-the-country-against-the-anti-people-political-line-of-the-SYRIZA-ANEL-government-photos-videos/

Guess they didn't get to this point bitching about philosophy...

Guess they didn't get to this point bitching about philosophy...

No, I'll bet they didn't. I would bet that if someone wanted to know details about theory and ideology, they would be directed to the guy who knows that stuff best. If you wanted to pick-up your two inch thick, four foot "flag pole" for the demonstration, I'll bet somebody handles that, too.

Information note of the KKE for the representatives of the parties at the 17th IMCWP, in relation to the developments in Greece

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/17IMCWP-logo.jpg_523476075.jpg

Greece over the last 7 years has been experiencing a deep economic crisis, something inherent in capitalism itself and independently of how it is politically managed. Over this entire period, all kinds of political forces have been exercising bourgeois governance: liberal, social-democratic, so-called “leftwing” forces, but in each instance the result was always painful for the people and in favour of the interests of the big business groups.

Since 2008, Greece, a country with a population of 11 million, has seen a 25% reduction fof GDP while- officially recorded unemployment has surpassed 25%, with the highest number of unemployed being between 30 and 54 years of age, at 62.81 %. Flexible labour relations, work without social-security cover and unpaid work are becoming generalized phenomena. Pensions are being cut even more every year and the retirement age is increasing. To a great extent, health and education are being handed over to the businessmen who are enjoying enormous profits. The percentage of the population in Greece that lives under the official “poverty line” is 36%. If the number of those that receive a very small social benefit is added then this percentage reaches 52.2%. At the same time the Greek companies that are on the stock exchange announced a 291% increase in profits for the first 6 months of 2015, while Greek shipping capital is in the 1st or 2nd place at a global level.

The 7-month SYRIZA-ANEL government led to the 3rd memorandum with the imperialist institutions, which includes new harsh anti-people measures and the maintenance of the previous measures.

In the national elections held on the 20th of September, working class and popular forces that in previous years fought against the anti-people measures and memoranda supported their alleged “fairer” and “gentler” implementation. While a large section of the people chose abstention, which to a great extent expresses discontent with the bourgeois political system, a feeling of indignation and disillusionment amongst sections of workers and youth, but also compromise and passivity towards the anti-people political line and its causes. This development was SYRIZA’s valuable contribution to the bourgeois political system. SYRIZA, the new style social democracy and its coalition government with the nationalists of ANEL contributed to this with the illusions they created.

Inside this negative correlation of forces, the general retreat of the labour-people’s movement, in conditions of a deep capitalist economic crisis, the KKE received 5.55% (up from 5.47%) and kept its 15 MPs.

The other bourgeois parties like ND, PASOK, POTAMI which played the leading role in promoting and supporting the anti-people political line and now present themselves as being vindicated by the passing of anti-people measures by the SYRIZA-ANEL government. Vindicated in their insistence on the inevitability of the anti-people offensive charted by the monopolies. It is also negative that criminal Nazi Golden Dawn has formed a stable level of electoral influence, as amongst other things it is being promoted by big capital and state mechanisms. The split from SYRIZA (Popular Unity) that advanced a social-democratic programme focusing on the return to a national currency did not enter parliament.

The new SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government has set out its stall and will continue on the road of implementing anti-people measures. In addition, the government is undertaking an active role in NATO’s plans, with military exercises together with USA-Israel, utilizing the pretexts about the “war against terrorism” etc. In this explosive situation in the Middle East, in the South East Mediterranean and North Africa, Greece has received, as a result of the imperialist wars, thousands of refugees and immigrants mainly from Syria. The KKE took a position against the repressive policy of the EU, standing at the side of the refugees, fighting for measures for their health, security and facilitation of travel to their destination countries. The KKE also struggles for the end of our country’s involvement in the imperialist plans of the USA-EU-NATO, which create the “waves” of immigration.

In the next period, the KKE will continue to wage battles regarding the crucial problems of the entire working class, popular strata and will contribute with all its strength so that people’s counterattack of the labour movement is organized in an antimonopoly anticapitalist direction.


http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/aw.jpg_1510194803.jpg
Demonstration of PAME in Athens on the 22nd of October



Already at the initiative of PAME and the other forces of the People’s Alliance (rallies of farmers, the urban self-employed, women and youth) militant mobilizations have been carried out e.g. on the 15th of October outside Parliament, an occupation of the Ministry of Labour and a demonstration outside, demonstrations on the 22nd of October in dozens of cities, while general strike is being prepared for the 12th of November.

For more information about the activity and positions of the KKE you can visit the foreign language web pages of the KKE: English: http://inter.kke.gr/en/,
Russian: http://inter.kke.gr/ru/, Spanish: http://inter.kke.gr/es, Arabic: http://inter.kke.gr/ar, French: http://inter.kke.gr/fr, German: http://inter.kke.gr/de, as well as : Albanian: http://inter.kke.gr/sq, Bulgarian: http://inter.kke.gr/bg, Italian: http://inter.kke.gr/it,Portuguese: http://inter.kke.gr/pt/, Turkish: http://inter.kke.gr/tr

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Information-note-of-the-KKE-for-the-representatives-of-the-parties-at-the-17th-IMCWP-in-relation-to-the-developments-in-Greece/

SPEECH AT THE 17TH INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF COMMUNIST AND WORKERS PARTIES IN ISTANBUL WITH AS ITS THEME:
“The tasks of Communist and Workers’ Parties to strengthen the struggle of the working class against capitalist exploitation, imperialist wars and fascism, for workers’ and peoples’ emancipation, for socialism”
30 October- 1 November 2015

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Dear comrades,
We are particularly happy to be here with you for the work of the 17th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties in Istanbul.
I would particularly want to underline the unwavering bonds that connect the communist movements of the two neighbouring peoples, the Greek and the Turkish peoples.
And using this opportunity we express our thanks to the Communist Party in Turkey for hosting today’s meeting.
We express our full solidarity with the struggling Turkish people, our support for the families of the victims of murderous provocation that led to the death and serious injuries of hundreds of our fellow people in Ankara, while they were demonstrating for justice and peace.
In the recent period, all humanity has focused its gaze on the sea between Turkey and Greece. They saw tens of thousands of people seeking to cross the Aegean Sea in every way imaginable, to reach some Greek island after leaving the Turkish coast with the aim of heading to other European countries, in order to seek a “better future”.
This “passage” has proved fatal for thousands of people, for many children, who perished struggling against the waves. However, the factor that led so many people to uproot themselves from their homes has a name. It is capitalist barbarity that creates economic crises, poverty and unemployment, imperialist wars and interventions.
The KKE struggles against the causes that lead to refugees and immigration; it struggles against Nazism-fascism and its representatives today in Greece, who sought amongst other things to use this major issue of immigration waves in order to sow nationalism, xenophobia and racism amongst the people.
Our party calls on the people, the labour-people’s movement to be vigilant and to intensify their solidarity with refugees and immigrants, demanding:

The end of the imperialist interventions and wars of the EU-USA-NATO. No Greek participation in them.
The abolition of the Dublin Regulations, the Schengen Agreement, Frontex and all the other repressive mechanisms of the EU.
No to the EU’s measures for repression at the borders.
Immediate transit of refugees from the island and entry points to their final destination countries, under the responsibility of the EU and UN.
The creation of decent reception centres.  The creation of decent reception centres. The increase of personnel and strengthening of the infrastructure related to rescue, registration-identification, accommodation-food-care and the safe transit to the country’s exit points.
Dear comrades,
Our region, the region between Europe and Asia, the Black Sea and the Middle East, the region of the Eastern Mediterranean like a magnet attracts hundreds of warplanes and warships, as well as every other kind of military hardware.
Military forces from dozens of countries, inside and outside of NATO, are constantly participating in military exercises and some of them have already been used in battles in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine etc. What we have described is just the tip of the iceberg of the intense inter-imperialist competition which endangers the peoples.
This is a competition that is being expressed over the division of the raw materials, the transport routes of the commodities, the market shares. In short, over capitalist profit, which is the motor force of capitalist society. A society that is based on the exploitation of man by man.
In recent years, due to the consequences of the counterrevolutions in countries of socialist construction, and also due to the capitalist crisis that reshuffled the deck, due to uneven capitalist development, we can see the inter-imperialist competition sharpening. The famous so-called “multi-polar world” is none other than the world of harsh inter-imperialist confrontations, which are being waged with economic, diplomatic and military means, as it is well-known that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”.
We all know that in Ukraine we had the open intervention of the USA, EU, NATO in the framework of their competition with Russia, while the previous relations of socialist cooperation and integration inside the Soviet Union had already been overturned. The intervention of the USA-NATO-EU, relying on nationalist and even openly fascist forces, has led this country to collapse and unspeakable bloodshed.
We see similar developments in the Middle East region, where there was an attempt to hijack and exploit the people’s desire for social and democratic rights. Through the vehicle of the so-called “Arab Spring”, there was an attempt to “recompose” the international alliances in the region, and possibly to carry out some bourgeois modernizations. The USA, the EU and their “allies” in the region, like the authoritarian regimes in the Gulf and Turkey trained and supported the jihadists of the “Islamic State” in order to advance their plans.
The same is true of the developments in Syria, where after the interventions of the EU, USA and NATO, the knot of antagonisms is being further complicated by Russia. It has goes beyond the whiff of gunpowder, the wider region of the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean is being threatened. There is a real danger that the entire region could explode.
It is precisely these major contradictions in the region that increase the danger of a generalization of the military conflicts, because in our wider region imperialist centres like the USA, NATO and the EU, old and new emerging powers like Russia, China, Turkey, Israel, the Arab monarchies in the Gulf, are coming into conflict, with a real danger of the greater involvement of other countries, like Greece.
The SYRIZA-ANEL government in only 7 months of ruling has proposed the creation of a new NATO-US base on Karpathos, the establishment of a multi-national command and control unit on Crete, as well as the expansion and reinforcement of the Suda base.
While now it is ready to accept the request of the USA so that the notorious drones of the US airforce can station on Greek territory and specifically in Crete in order to bomb the region and of course create new waves of refugees and immigrants. The peoples, like the Greek people, will once again pay the price for this.
The issue of the EEZ is more clearly bringing to the fore the savage confrontation amongst the imperialist powers, old and new, something that further entangles our country in the danger of being involved in an imperialist war at the side of one or the other predatory alliance.
The participation of Greek governments in these plans serves the interests of Greek capital which aims to increase its share in the redivision of the markets, i.e. from the robbery carried out against the peoples.
The Greek government, on behalf of the Greek bourgeoisie, Greek capital, is advancing the aim of transforming Greece into an energy hub and thus involving it in the competition over the energy transport routes and pipelines like TAP
We can not really understand these developments and, what is important, examine what we should do if we do not study some factors:
For example, the synchronized character of the capitalist economic crisis in the last decade that has affected powerful capitalist states. It is doubtful whether these states will achieve a dynamic expanded reproduction at pre-crisis levels. This crisis is due to the nature of the capitalist system and demonstrates its boundaries.
In these conditions, the realignments in the correlation of forces amongst the capitalist states are accelerating. New powers are emerging that seek a redivision of the markets that is to their benefit.
They are seeking this, using all means available-economic, diplomatic, with compromises and fragile agreements, but when this is not possible military means are used. This is how capitalism, the system of exploitation, functions.
That “war is the continuation of politics by other means” is absolutely valid. When the system, the ruling class can not service its predatory interests it resorts to open war. This been demonstrated at many points in history.
We should not forget that before the two previous world wars, major global capitalist crises had broken out.
It is a tremendous historical inaccuracy what is said and written in the history books, in the books of the bourgeois political economy, which are taught in schools and universities, something that various social-democratic forces, like SYRIZA in Greece, as well as opportunist forces in the communist movement loudly proclaim: that the great capitalist crisis of the period 1929-1932 was solved by the Keynesian management! This is used to excuse their own anti-people management formula, their anti-people strategy, like that of SYRIZA in our country.
In fact, the crisis was finally overcome by the enormous destruction of productive forces in World War II and after the economy was first oriented to the military industry,
These are not theoretical and academic issues. They are issues that above all must be learned and understood by the youth. They are historical experiences that should be used to see how developments are moving today, where things are going, what should be done to get rid of this barbarity
The capitalist system, especially today when it is in its highest and final stage of imperialism, can offer nothing positive to the workers, to the peoples, but only an intensity of class exploitation, oppression, naked barbarity, economic crises and wars.
All this demonstrates one great truth to the peoples of the entire world: that capitalist crisis and imperialist war go together.
That is why today the slogan "the people and especially the youth should not shed blood for the interests of capital, of the exploiters." is extremely important.
And as regards the workers of our countries, this is not safeguarded by the participation of our countries in the imperialist organizations, the EU and NATO that is accepted by all the bourgeois parties, liberal and social-democratic, left and right, and in Greece this includes the parties from ND, SYRIZA, until Nazi Golden Dawn.
It is not safeguarded by the logic cultivated by various parties that the people should choose imperialist, select a block of imperialist powers, a block of international geopolitical alliances.
It is something entirely different for worker’s-people’s power to utilize existing contradictions and different interests of capitalist states and quite another to attach oneself to an imperialist alliance, a union of capitalist states, with the illusion that this could benefit the working class and the people and the prospect of people’s power, socialism.
We believe that the communist movement must utilize the inter-imperialist contradictions, with the aim of weakening the imperialist alliances, destabilizing capitalist power in its country or other country, whether the aggressor or the one under attack.
For a CP to correctly utilize the inter-imperialist contradictions it must not be trapped in the plans of any imperialist centre, it must defend the vital working class interests in its country, in the region and at an international level.
In this direction, the KKE seeks to actively highlight the consequences of our country’s participation in the imperialist unions, their interventions, in imperialist war for the working class and people. We fight against the irredentist nationalist slogans. We fight to isolate the fascist forces and the supporters of Euro-atlanticism, to isolate all those who work to create a “pro-war current”.
Our party directly raises the issue of Greece withdrawing from all the imperialist alliances, such as NATO and the EU, underlining that this can be ensured by workers’-people’s power, the socialist development path.
At the same time we stress that the struggle for the defense of borders, for Greece’s sovereign rights, from the standpoint of the working class and the popular strata, is inextricably linked to the struggle for the overthrow of capital’s power and of course, has nothing to do with the defense of the plans of the various imperialist poles or the defense of the profitability of the various monopoly consortia.
The working class, the popular strata and their youth, in our opinion, have only one choice:
They must put an end to the system that gives rise to exploitation, crises and wars, to direct the militant insurgent forces towards the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of the new socialist society.
Dear comrades,
Today the bourgeoisie, benefiting from the negative correlation of forces internationally, is carrying out an ideological offensive, seeking to gain not just the passive toleration but the active support of the working class-popular masses for its imperialist plans, concerning issues related to imperialist interventions and wars.
Here, beyond the issue of defending the “homeland” and other new pretexts are being utilized such as the “promotion of democracy”, “humanitarian reasons”, the “war against terrorism”, “combating piracy”, “the non-dissemination of weapons of mass destruction”, “the prevention of the immigration and refugee current”, “the protection of religious and national minorities” etc.
Unfortunately, there are still forces that call themselves “leftwing”, “progressive” and pro-labour which accept these imperialist pretexts.
We consider that the forces that participate in the Party of the European Left and voted in favour of the NATO intervention in Libya and accepted the imperialists’ arguments regarding Syria bear enormous responsibilities. They had a similar stance towards the earlier imperialist interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
In conditions where the inter-imperialist contradictions are sharpening, the workers must not have illusions that it is possible via “round tables” or “regional security systems” to prevent war. The events in Syria, Ukraine etc demonstrate that the “peaceful path” for the resolution of the problem of the division of markets sometimes remains closed to capitalism, imperialism. Then there is only one way out: the new division of the markets and spheres of influence through violence, military conflicts, new imperialist wars.
The communist movement must hold a decisively independent class ideological-political stance and fight against any attempt to co-opt the peoples to the aims of the bourgeoisies, whether they be older or new emerging sections of this class.
It is particularly important for the communist movement to have a consistent ideological-political front against every imperialist power, regardless of how it presents itself.
Dear comrades,
We must not overlook the fact that in the context of the fierce competition, which alternatively is expressed as an economic, political or diplomatic war, there is the confrontation over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The TTIP is proceeding very slowly, as sections of the French and German bourgeoisies consider that the US proposals are a “Trojan Horse” in order to secure US hegemony in Europe in the medium term.
The recent US acts to expose the scandal of the Volkswagen pollution emissions and the similar attempts to reveal the illegal funds of Siemens by the USA are examples of the sharpening of the competition between the USA and Germany in the sphere of the economy. It is becoming obvious that the US pressure on Germany is increasing in order to advance the TTIP.
Another front is the confrontation underway inside the EU itself around issues of the further deepening or not of capitalist unification, where France, Italy and also more discreetly Britain (in the medium term) are disputing Germany’s primacy.
In addition, the confrontation of the USA-EU against Russia over Ukraine is a major and special issue that is connected to energy policies in Europe and elsewhere.
Another important issue is the exacerbation of the contradictions between USA and China, in the first phase economically, while there is intense activity at the military level as well for the control of the Pacific.
Inside the framework of the competition between stronger and less powerful capitalist states, a number of contradictions and conflicts over the demarcation of sovereign rights in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is rich in hydrocarbons, remain unresolved. Characteristic examples of this are: the war in Israel-Lebanon, the Cyprus question, the Palestinian issue and the contradictory nature of the relations between Israel and Turkey.
All of these point to the danger of a general imperialist confrontation in the Middle East, in Eurasia and the world more generally and are rightly of concern to communists.
Dear comrades,
It is true that the bourgeoisie of our country is not united as regards what formula will contribute to the most rapid and stable capitalist recovery. This is also true of the bourgeoisie at a European and international level. The entire web of inter-imperialist contradictions is manifesting itself in the context of these formulas and variations. Axes and anti-axes are altering quite frequently and while it is understood that the capitalist system, especially in capitalist Europe, can not use Keynesian measures, general state productive investments and social benefits in the same way as it had done in the past in order to boost the market.
The formulas of Keynesian and liberal management of the crisis are confronting each other on this terrain, both with the same class aims. These management models frequently alternated during the 20th century and of course did not prevent cycles of economic crisis, dozens of local wars for the redivision of markets or to change the first positions in the imperialist pyramid.
The character of the strategy and tactics of parties is not determined by how they define themselves ideologically (left, socialist, communist), but by how they act in relation to the basic interests of the classes in society. And chiefly in relation to the two basic opposing classes, the bourgeoisie and the working class. In addition they are defined by how they deal with the intermediate social strata, which are characterized by significant stratification and differentiations of interests amongst them as well as regards what common interests they have with the working class.
A policy of supporting the general interests of the bourgeois class is being followed not just by bourgeois liberal parties but also by parties with leftwing, socialist or even communist references that are calling on the working class and the popular strata to contribute to and support the goals of the capitalist class, such as “productive reconstruction”, “the enhancement of national production-economy”, “modernization”, of bourgeois economic and political structures etc. In other words, they are pushing the people into fighting under a false flag instead of their own flag, into choosing between the various anti-people governments for the management of the system.
As is also the case in our country, the people are being trapped by the question of government; they are being trapped into supporting the reformation of the bourgeois political system, in conditions when the older bourgeois parties and social-democracy are in decline.
In these conditions we can observe fluidity and mobility in the bourgeois parties, both in those that are liberal and those that are social-democratic in ideology.
In the conditions of the prolonged economic crisis in Greece, on the one hand we saw the emergence of national socialism-fascism as a parliamentary party, detaching forces from ND, and on the other hand the regroupment of social-democracy, through the formation of SYRIZA, also assimilating opportunist forces which had sprung up over the last 25 years.
At the same time, there continues to be fluidity in the centre-left, social-democracy (PASOK) and the opportunist pole as a current of the communist movement (ANTARSYA, Popular Unity, other forces that claim they will form a new revolutionary workers’ party).
Our party studies these realignments which had negative consequences on the electoral influence of the KKE itself over the last 3 years, despite the fact that it maintains significant forces in the national and EU parliaments, and chiefly maintains the ability to intervene militantly in conditions of a major retreat of the movement and of combativeness. It is able to influence forces well beyond its electoral influence, in the struggles of the workers, farmers and people for survival.
Certain “well-wishers”, who are allegedly interested in the strengthening of the KKE- mainly in the previous period, now after the failed experiment of SYRIZA they are of course quieter- criticized us because we do not promote cooperation with SYRIZA or some sections of it with the aim of halting the downward spiral of the people’s living standards and then afterwards to examine how the struggle will progress to socialism, because allegedly these forces remained stably in favour of this perspective.
They are proposing that we again adopt a political line that has already been tried and tested in Greece as well, e.g. the cooperation with the government of George Papandreou after the liberation in 1944, the support provided to the Centre Union by EDA (the United Left Front where communists were active) in the 1960s before the military dictatorship. Alternative forms of management of the system were tested in many European capitalist states before the crisis (as both centre-left and centre-right formulas had been tried out), with the participation of communist parties and other opportunist, renewal as they call themselves, parties that arose from splits in the CPs. We have also seen governments, even if relatively short-lived, with the participation of far-right parties as in Austria, Netherlands, Norway etc. We have seen alternation between parties with different formulas of bourgeois management in Latin America as well.
They are proposing that we ignore the relationship between politics and the economy; they are telling us to forget that the monopolies prevail everywhere in the economy and the superstructure and are being reinforced through centralization of capital, that Greece’s integration into the EU in reality imposes greater commitments and dependencies, new restrictions and concessions of rights and powers.
They are suggesting that we overlook the fact that capitalist relations have extended into agricultural production, education, health, culture, sports, the Mass Media. That there is a greater concentration of capital in manufacturing, retail, construction, tourism. That with the abolition of the state monopoly in telecommunications, energy and transport, businesses have developed and chiefly those based on private capital. Enormous European monopolies are pouncing like crows in order to buy property, businesses, land, while interest is mounting around the prospect of the extraction of hydrocarbons in the Aegean and Ionian seas, and in the region south of Crete.
That we should forget that the capitalists, the monopolies are the economically dominant class, while the government and parliament are their organs.
And that SYRIZA, as a party of government, accepts the monopolies, the EU, the capitalist businesses, their competitiveness, as the motor force of the economy.
SYRIZA played an especially valuable role for the bourgeois class, chiefly in order to avert political instability in conditions of a prolonged economic crisis and the major reduction of the workers’-people’s income. Only a party with social-democratic references, like SYRIZA, could curtail the mass popular protests, as Juncker also admitted.
Certain parties, of various political shades, elevate as the main issue, capable of constituting the basis for the cooperation of anti-memorandum forces, the question of dealing with the “neo-colonial” situation that has enveloped the country, as it is under the guardianship, the heel of the Troika. They say that the country has lost or is endanger of losing its national status and independence.
Of course, Greece has a subordinate position inside the established imperialist alliances in which it participates (EU, NATO, IMF etc). This position, however, arises from its economic-political-military strength as a capitalist state. This is the source of the unequal relations that prevail amongst capitalist states-allies (antagonistic relations that can even lead to rupture and war), which does not negate the common basis of the alliance. History has shown the dangers related to the uneven development of capitalist states, the unequal antagonistic relations between them when the differences are not resolved by political and economic methods, lead to these states choosing military methods, war, state violence. Capitalism does not just advance capitalist internationalization, the various forms of imperialist unions, whether formal or informal, and is not just permeated by cosmopolitanism, but also by nationalism and belligerent tensions.
All the parties promoted the Greek problem as being a European one. This view is accompanied by the position that there can be no pro-people changes at a national level, beyond the alternation of governments, i.e. changes in the political personnel of the system and not in the economy. I.e. that the people ca not struggle for another socialist society. It fosters the utopian and compromised view that radical changes, overthrows, will either happen simultaneously throughout Europe as a whole or globally, or nowhere at all. “Left” governments, like SYRIZA-ANEL, with this slogan, demand submission as regards the new deterioration of the workers’-people’s living standards.
Greece today has major unutilized productive potential which can be liberated only through the socialization of the means of production by the working class-people’s power, with the Central Scientific Planning of production and workers’’ control at every level of its organization.
We raise the issue that the preconditions exist in order to satisfy not just the people’s needs in general, but the people’s needs today. To abolish unemployment, to reduce the working hours, to increase free time. To secure a certain future for the children of the workers, to stably and substantially improve the people’s living standards. So that development does not come into conflict with the environment, so that health is based on prevention, that there will be an extended network of exclusively public and free services, along with other issues that we have positions on. The family and mainly women should be liberated from the exclusively private care of children, the elderly, the chronically ill. There should be extensive social services to support maternity, positive discrimination so that maternity is combined with social labour, so that women have more time available for cultural and social activity and to participate in workers’ control.
Greece possesses important domestic energy sources, considerable mineral resources, industrial, craft and agricultural production which can meet a large part of the people's needs: in food and energy, transport, the construction of public infrastructure works and people's housing. The agricultural production can support industry in its various sectors.
The position supported by SYRIZA and other parties that demand a new “haircut” of the debt, adopting the IMF position, is completely different from the KKE’s position in favour of the unilateral cancellation of the entire debt and not its reduction through equivalents, new measures, new memoranda, new anti-people programmes, with privatizations of strategically significant sectors and property etc.
The withdrawal from the Eurozone, as proposed by some, or the view that the euro is not a fetish have nothing to do with the KKE’s position for disengagement from the EU.
The KKE’s position that there should be no participation in any imperialist union, something that will be ensured by workers’ power, is completely different to the position for withdrawal from the EU in order to enhance participation in other centres.
The KKE’s proposal for the governance of workers’-people power has nothing in common with SYRIZA’s proposal for a “left” government. Especially now that the Greek people have got to know at first hand “the first and second time left” that votes for memoranda and anti-people prerequisite measures.
In the first instance we are talking about the radical change in political power, in the second instance a mere change in government-figures that will operate within the same framework as the previous governments, as the monopolies and capital will determine the decisions and choices made for economic recovery.
Comrades,
Our party from the beginning of the 1990s confronted the reformist and opportunist view that we are living in the era of the return of liberalism, which is called neo-liberalism. This view argued that on this basis it is necessary to establish an anti-neoliberal front. This position is also prevalent today and indeed is used to explain the basic cause of the crisis. This is an ideological construct that is widely used by SYRIZA and social-democracy in general. We exposed, using concrete arguments, that the abandonment of Keynesian management was a necessary choice which corresponded to the needs of capital for expanded reproduction, after the general crisis at the beginning of the 1970s.
Nevertheless, many CPs enthusiastically promoted Keynesian programmes and on this basis cooperation with social-democracy. This position was based on whether social-democracy was being drawn to neo-liberalism or not. In this way, the ideological front against it was weakened to a great extent. In the name of the unity of the working class (which looked to the creation of governments together with social-democracy or a section of it) the CPs carried out serious ideological and political retreats, while the declarations of unity on the part of social-democracy did not look to the overthrow of the capitalist system, but to the class alienation of the working class and to detaching it from the influence of communist ideas.
The great Leninist legacy is timely, the lesson that the victory of the working class, the exploited people, and even the rise of the class struggle is not possible without a struggle against opportunism that is unrelenting and uncompromising. That the content of the struggle was different in the conditions of the development of the bourgeois revolution and that it is different today in the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism, in the conditions of the highest stage of capitalism.
In any case, no party can become a party of government if it does not provide the relevant credentials to the capitalists as a class, to their domestic and international personnel. This has been confirmed by the actions of SYRIZA. It is a myth that universal suffrage in capitalism can change the correlation of forces between the opposing classes. For this reason the issue of whether a government based on parliament can contribute to the beginning of the revolutionary process is groundless and utopian, we would say completely misleading, on the basis of the experience of the 20th and the first part of the 21st centuries.
The KKE attaches importance to all the forms of struggle in non revolutionary conditions, such as today’s, and utilizes the electoral struggle and its parliamentary presence to inform the people, to reveal what is being planned at their expense, to impede-as far as possible on the basis of the correlation of forces-the antiworker, antipeople measures, above all to strengthen the class struggle so that the need for total conflict is understood by more people.
In this framework, the KKE focuses on the regroupment of the labour-people’s movement, the construction of the social alliance with a rise in class struggle, the expansion of the communist party’s bonds with new forces of working men and women, other employees, farmers and self-employed, mainly youth and women from the popular families, with the construction of robust party organizations in all the workplaces, in strategic sectors of the economy.
The struggle against capitalism, imperialist interventions and wars, Nazism-fascism that is rearing its head again, requires strong communist parties in our countries, with a strategy of conflict and overthrow, with coordination and common action, chiefly ensuring common strategic activity and the preparation of forces to fight against capitalist exploitation, imperialist barbarity and to pave the way for the only hopeful future for humanity, socialism.
Today is the period that will determine the existence, maintenance and regroupment of the revolutionary vanguard, so that it is capable of directing the insurgent working class-popular masses towards the revolutionary solution, when the mood of masses and situation matures due to the sharp and general crisis of bourgeois power.
The KKE, which took on the responsibility of organizing the international meetings after the counterrevolutions, will continue the effort, despite the difficulties, both inside the International Meetings, and also through other forms, which in our estimation not only do not come into contradiction with the IMCWP but act in a way that reinforces and promotes joint activity and the formation of a unified revolutionary strategy of the communist movement, on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and Proletarian internationalism.
As the great Turkish communist poet, Nazim Hikmet, said “We have a centuries-old impetus… We will emerge victorious even if our sacrifices are great.” Yes however great are sacrifices, this rotten world “this pirate ship, will sink - come hell or high water, it will sink. And we will build a world as hopeful, free”


http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/SPEECH-AT-THE-17TH-INTERNATIONAL-MEETING-OF-COMMUNIST-AND-WORKERS-PARTIES-IN-ISTANBUL-WITH-AS-ITS-THEME/

Slide showat link.

The KKE issues a call from the Acropolis: Solidarity with refugees, condemnation of the EU and NATO

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/akropolh-4.jpg_1302204135.jpg

The forces of the KKE and KNE raised 2 giant banners on the Acropolis early on Saturday 31/10 to show solidarity with the refugees. The banners were in Greek and English, with the slogan “The EU and NATO are turning the Mediterranean into a sea of the dead. Stop this crime now. Solidarity and immediate support measures for the refugees.”

The members of KNE and the KKE raised red flags on the Acropolis for many hours, while a statement was read in English and Greek from a megaphone.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-KKE-issues-a-call-from-the-Acropolis-Solidarity-with-refugees-condemnation-of-the-EU-and-NATO/

As the great Turkish communist poet, Nazim Hikmet, said “We have a centuries-old impetus… We will emerge victorious even if our sacrifices are great.”... “this pirate ship, will sink - come hell or high water, it will sink. And we will build a world as hopeful, free”

This pirate ship will sink! It is the only light in the darkness. This bloody shit will stop - come hell or high water - indeed.

KNE salutes the mobilizations of the school students

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/athhna-mathhtes-kinhtopoihsh-4.jpg_1302204135.jpg

The Press Office of the CC of KNE, saluted the major school student mobilizations held in dozens of Greek cities on the 2nd of November and noted in its statement:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdZkhNW6Qvg&feature=player_embedded

“KNE salutes the thousands of school students in Athens and all over Greece who today provided a first response, taking to the streets of struggle, struggling for their rights to education and life.



The members and friends of KNE will continue inside the schools to play a leading role for the escalation of the militant mobilizations and collective struggle in every way. So that the struggles of the school students continue more decisively for a school that educates and will not be a very expensive exam centre, for exclusively public and free education. We will work for the joint action of school students-parents-militant teachers, providing a combative response to the anti-people political line of the government and EU.”

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/KNE-salutes-the-mobilizations-of-the-school-students/

Slide show at link.

42 YEARS AFTER THE POLYTECHNIC UPRISING: A large march to the US embassy with a clear message for disengagement from the imperialist plans

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On the 17th of November 2015 the uprising of the students and workers of Athens, which became known in history as the Polytechnic uprising, against the military junta in 1973 was honoured all over the country.

Thousands of people in Athens, the majority of them in the contingents of the KKE and KNE, took part in the large march to the US embassy, sending a clear message to the SYRIZA-ANEL government for Greece’s disengagement from the imperialist plans.

Dimitris Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE, participated in the demonstration and stressed in his statement to the representatives of the media that: “This is the beginning of new struggles against fascism, the monopolies, and their system. People’s sovereignty, out with the USA, the EU and NATO. These are the timely messages today of the heroic militants of the Polytechnic.”

In the statement of the Press Office of the CC of the KKE on the 42nd anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising, it is noted amongst other things that “The people must be in a state of vigilance and readiness, because the government entangles the country and the people in dangerous machinations of the imperialists against the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East and actively participates in the plans of NATO, the USA and the EU, providing entire regions of the country for the creation of new NATO bases and aggressive military infrastructure.”

It also notes that: “The lessons of this uprising are relevant today, as the power of capital remains in place as well as the country’s integration in the imperialist organizations, like NATO, i.e. those factors that led to the imposition of the dictatorship (…) the transition from the military dictatorship to bourgeois parliamentary democracy in July 1974 did not provide a substantial and final solution to the people’s problems of poverty, unemployment, the constant undermining of popular rights and liberties (…) It was demonstrated that whatever concessions are won by the workers inside the capitalist system are temporary. That whatever governments are chosen to manage this rotten system and its laws, they will inevitably follow anti-people policies. This has been demonstrated by the “left” government of SYRIZA-ANEL, which continues the political line of the previous governments of ND and PASOK. The crises, unemployment, austerity, poverty, wars will exist as longs as power is in the hands of the capitalists, as longs as Greece is shackled to the imperialist organizations of NATO and the EU (…) The experience of the last 42 years since the Polytechnic uprising and the fall of the junta a year later highlights that the real issue for the working class and the other popular strata, in each historical phase and turning point, is the concentration of forces for the struggle against the monopolies, the imperialist unions, capitalism, aiming for workers-people power, socialism. Only in this way will the workers’-people’s struggle, which develops on the basis of the intensifying problems, become more effective, be able to repel anti-people measures and win some victories, i.e. when it targets capitalist power and ownership itself, without being trapped into supporting bourgeois governments, whatever mantle they may wear.”






A brief review of the Polytechnic uprising

On the night of the 20th to the 21st of April 1967, the reactionary military circles of the country, which were closely connected to the secret services of the USA and NATO, conducted a military coup. The operation of the surrender of power to the army had been developed at the staff of NATO, under the code name "Prometheus". Colonels G. Papadopoulos and N. Makarezos, who were actively involved in the preparation of the coup, became known as "the black colonels". During the fascist occupation 1940-44, several of these officers participated in the security forces and the mopping'up operations against communists; some of them even worked with Gestapo and were later connected to the secret services of the English and Americans. The military junta, headed by G. Papadopoulos, N. Makarezos and the generals S. Pattakos and G. Zoitakis, having planed a conspiracy with the king and based on the article 91of the Constitution of Greece, published a decree stating the transition of all of the power to the army and the abolition of a series of articles of the Constitution, concerning democratic rights.

Having seized the power, the military dictatorship proceeded with the materialisation of the "Prometheus" operation. Every democratic liberty in the country had been abolished, a marshal law had been imposed, strikes and meetings were banned, harsh censorship was introduced, political parties and progressive social organizations were also banned. The army took upon it extensive authority, arrests and searches had been conducted. By the order of the dictatorship, thousands of political and social fighters of our country were arrested, first and foremost cadres of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the legal, until then, political party, United Democratic Left (EDA), through which, communists also fought. According to statements by the officials of the dictatorial regime, more than 40 thousand communists had been arrested till the May of 1967.

In order to deceive people, the colonels named their coup "national revolution", which was supposed to have been conducted "for the benefit of all the classes of the Greek society". The army and especially the officers, were declared "driving force of the revolution", and the struggle against communism had been set as the main goal.

The coup became possible in Greece, because the military forces of the country were under the strict control of the reaction. The labour and democratic movement had not still reorganized its forces after the defeat in the civil war of 1946-1949. The development of the mass movement in Greece was impeded by the emergency laws, which first of all prohibited the action of KKE. The leaders of the "Centre Union" Party followed a policy of fragmentation of the democratic forces, disintegrating any common stance of the opposition, aiming at the repulse of the reaction, thus enforcing it. The opportunist elements that existed inside KKE during that period had succeeded in 1958 a decision to be taken for the dissolution of the illegal party organizations, to be taken, supposing that KKE, could, at the end, allegedly be replaced by a wider structure of the Left, EDA. EDA, despite its' high election results, up to 28%, not only failed to develop a true alternative, but even failed to prepare the party forces and the popular movement before the coup.

The regime of the 21st of April of 1967 was an overt terrorist military-fascist dictatorship of the domestic and foreign monopolies. A characteristic particularity of the military-fascist regime has been no other than the close involvement of the American imperialism, in the preparation and the establishing of the dictatorship.

The anti-dictatorship struggle

Straight after the coup, KKE strengthened its' struggle for the rallying of all of the democratic and patriotic organizations. It summoned all the patriots, despite their party belonging, at factories, neighbourhoods, villages, universities, schools and state institutions, to organize in resistance committees, in order to overthrow the fascist dictatorship. On the initiative of KKE and EDA, the Patriotic Anti-dictatorship Front (PAM) had been formed on the May of 1967. Later, other anti-junta organizations made their appearance, such as PAK and the "Democratic Defence".

KKE at deep illegality and in spite of the blows it had endured not only from junta, but also from the opportunists who had split the party in 1968, managed to regroup the party organizations, created the "Unified Trade Union Anti-dictatorship Movement" (ESAK) and set up its' youth organization, the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE), which was going to play an avant-garde role in the Polytechnic uprising in 1973.

The uprising of the Polytechnion

The sharpening of the socio-economic contradictions in Greece and the rise of the anti-dictatorship movement, in 1973, lead to the deep crisis of the regime. The dissatisfaction grew even in the army, the regime's main support.

In the mid of 1973, the demonstrations of the workers embraced one branch of the economy after the other. One federation after the other gave notice of termination of their collective contracts and demanded a 45-50% rise in their salaries. These mobilizations were characterised by the vivacity and unity of workers, independently of their political beliefs and lead to the isolation of juntas' people in the trade union movement.

The struggle of the university and technological institutions students was an important parameter of the political developments in Greece, especially in 1973. Their main demands were the progressive reforms in the educational system, the restoration of trade union, academic and political liberties. The students of Athens, Thessalonica, Patra, Ioannina, conducted meetings, assemblies, demonstrations with slogans such as: "Democracy", "Down with fascism", "Down with the dictatorship", "One is the leader, the sovereign people", "Freedom to the political prisoners".

Because of the worsening of the financial standing of the poor peasantry, mass manifestations started to break out through the whole of Greece, and took the form of refusal of handing the goods over to the trade. The solidarity with the political prisoners and their families' movement, aiming at the release of the political prisoners, also developed.

In order to diminish the pressure towards the regime, the military dictatorship, Papadopoulos went on to remove several of their collaborators from the government and to form a "political" government headed by the leader of the 'Progressive Party' S. Markezinis. The main task of the new government (October 8 1973) was to prepare 'parliamentary elections'.

The political manoeuvres of Papadopoulos did not lead to the stabilization of the situation the in the country. The anti-government manifestations persisted. It is worth mentioning that the opportunist fraction that split from the party in 1968 and created the eurocommunist 'KKE-interior' supported the manoeuvre of 'politization' of the dictatorial regime. A top moment had been the uprising of the students of the Polytechnic University of Athens and of the young workers of Athens, on the 14-17 November 1973, which gave the final blow to the attempts to disguise the regime. The main slogans of the uprising were: 'Bread, Education, Liberty', 'National Independence', 'Down with Papadopoulos', 'Out the Americans and NATO' e.t.c. Large masses of workers supported the students and the young workers. The students' mobilizations acquired the form of university building occupations, in Thessalonica and Patra. Demonstrations had also been organized in Trikala and Drama.

In Athens, the students managed to create a radio station and inform people from the building of Polytechnic of the mass manifestations. KNE in Athens and the Anti-dictatorship Students' Union (Anti-EFEE), played a special role in the organization of the struggle.

On the 17th of November, at night, tanks had been thrown at the revolted students and workers. At that night, 56 people were killed, according to official records. According to police records, 1103 citizens and 61 policemen had been injured. As it became known after the fall of the dictatorship, 34.000 bullets had been used by the police, in addition to the 300.000 cartridges of all kinds, used by the army, so as to repress the revolt. In the days of the revolt, the regime went on to arrest 2.500 people, although it announced merely the arrest of 866, having made the following presentation of their social status: 475 workers, 268 students, 74 pupils, 49 Polytechnic students.

Although the revolt had been drowned in blood, the overall reaction to the regime grew. Eight months later (24 July 1974), the dictatorship fell under the weight of its treason and adventurism in Cyprus, where the coup, that it had organized in cooperation with the secret services of NATO, aiming at the extermination of the progressive regime of President Makarios (15/7/1974) led to the Turkish invasion and occupation of the 37% of Cyprus.

Then, mass demonstrations against the dictatorship had been held in a lot of cities of Greece. The pressure of the masses had been so great that the Greek oligarchy, decided to remove junta and to hand the power over to a coalition of bourgeois parties, in which right-conservative elements persisted, in order to avoid the worst. This coalition had been but an expression of the compromise among the junta supporters, the imperialist circles of NATO and USA, as well as of the bourgeois political powers of Greece, for the 'legal' handing over of the power to the latter.

At the same time, and without waiting for the release and return of the comrades in exile and from abroad, the illegal organizations of KNE and KKE regained legality. The legal activity of KKE had been won de facto and the circulation of the daily party's newspaper 'Rizospastis' began. The new bourgeois government was forced to abolish the anti-communist law 509, through which the political activity of KKE had been prohibited for whole decades, since 1947.

Each year, activities are held in honour of the students and workers, who revolted in the November of 1973. The culminating moment of these annual manifestations is the demonstration to the US embassy on 17th of November.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hbOeWrDb9fk


http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/42-YEARS-AFTER-THE-POLYTECHNIC-UPRISING-A-large-march-to-the-US-embassy-with-a-clear-message-for-disengagement-from-the-imperialist-plans/

Slide show at link.

Riot police against strikers

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/sygkentrosh-pame-exo-apo-th-gadth-thessalonikh-3.jpg_2126691551.jpg

At the daybreak of Saturday 21/11 the coalition government SYRIZA-ANEL deployed, at the request of the employer, riot police forces against the workers of “Zoura” poultry breeding industry in Thessaloniki because they dared to go on strike to demand their wages that the employer has not paid for months.

A mass planed intervention of the riot police forces took place at the daybreak approximately at 4:30 a.m. at the factory. 28 workers were arrested in the presence of the Magistrate of the Police Court with the charge of “illegal violence” and “disturbance of social peace”, amongst them Leonidas Stoltidis, secretary of the Labour Centre of Thessaloniki and member of the Executive Secretariat of PAME, Manolis Karantousas, chairman of the Federation of Workers in Food and Beverage Industry, Giannis Tzavaras chairman of the workers’ union in “Zoura” company, 4 members of the board of the trade union in Food and Beverage industry in Central Macedonia etc.



PAME denounced the assault, while a delegation of the KKE protested at the Central Security Directorate of Thessaloniki. Throughout their mobilization the workers had the support of a large delegation of the Party Organization of the KKE in Central Macedonia, the MP and member of the CC Sakis Vardalis and Sotiris Zarianopoulos MEP of KKE.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Riot-police-against-strikers/

And the Philistines wonder why KKE wouldn't join the opportunists in government...

No compromise with poverty and misery

http://inter.kke.gr/export/sites/inter/.content/images/news/athhna-pame-kinhtopoihsh-15-12_20_0.jpg_2126691551.jpg

Workers, self-employed, small farmers, youth and women from the popular strata demonstrated on 15/12 in Athens, Thessalonica and dozens of cities around the country against the anti-people “prerequisite” measures. Demonstrations organized by trade unions and other movement organizations, in response to PAME’s call.

Despite the fact that the government announced without any prior warning the dates for the discussion and voting of the draft law with the “prerequisites” in Parliament, the class-oriented forces demonstrated readiness in organizing the workers’ response, with the demonstrations that took place yesterday, which PASEVE, OGE and MAS also took part in.

Panagiotis Kataras, President of the federation of workers in the print and paper industries, spoke at the rally of the mass demonstration that began in Omonia, Athens. Slogans against the government’s measures that are handing over the peoples houses to the bankers resounded at the demonstration, as well as against the antisocial-security-anti-labour measures that will be taken in January and which the government is trying to secure consensus and toleration for.

After the rally there was a march to Parliament.

A large delegation of the CC of the KKE , headed by Dimitris Koutsoumpas, GS of the CC, attended the rally in Omonia. Also present were Ammar Bakdash, GS of the Syrian CP, Victor Tyulkin, First Secretary of the Russian Communist and Workers Party, and Kemal Okuyan, Secretary of the CC of the CP, Turkey, who were in Athens for the event of the Attica Party Organization of the KKE in the “Sporting” stadium held on the 15/12/2015.

Dimitris Koutsoumpas noted the following in his statement to the mass media:

“Today’s prerequisites that have arrived in parliament as a draft law, with fast track procedures, and those that will arrive in the days to come, particularly at the beginning of next year, demonstrate that the our people, the labour-people’s movement, the youth of our country are obliged to follow a specific path: to resist, to rise up, to struggle constantly, with demands against the rottenness of the system, against the EU and the governments that serve them in Greece, to pave the way for a better future for our people and children.”

In the end, the new draft law was passed with the votes of the 153 MPs of the SYRIZA-ANEL government. The KKE voted against the draft law, highlighting via the interventions of its MPs both the real aims of the draft law and also the fact that the other parties, despite their empty squabbles, are political forces of capital belonging to the same bloc and that the people must answer by establishing their own camp, the people’s alliance which will struggle to overthrow the power of capital and the forces that serve it. Speaking from the podium in Parliament, D. Koutsoumpas stressed: “The working class, the people’s movement, their people’s alliance are determined to greet the New Year in a militant, dynamic and class-oriented way. Our people have no other choice. They have already tried everything else. It is time for them to test out their true strength. This is the only way they can realize their hopes and real goals.”

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/No-compromise-with-poverty-and-misery/

Slide show at link.

Manolis Anagnostakis-I speak.../These lines/Poetics

https://dimartblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/cebcceb1cebdcf8ccebbceb7cf82-ceb1cebdceb1ceb3cebdcf89cf83cf84ceb1cebaceb7cf82-ceb1cebeceb9cf89cebcceb1cf84ceb9cebacf8ccf82.jpg?w=450&h=599
I speak...

I speak of the last trumpet calls of the defeated soldiers
Of the rags from our holiday clothes
Of our children, selling cigarettes to passers-by
I speak of the flowers that have wilted on the graves and are rotting under the rain
Of the houses that gape, windowless, like toothless skulls
Of the girls begging, showing the wounds on their breasts
Of the barefoot mothers crawling in the debris
Of the flaming cities, the corpses piling in the streets
The pimp poets, trembling in thresholds at night
I speak of the endless nights when the light is lessened at dawn
Of the loaded tracks and the steps on wet cobblestone
I speak of the prison yards and the tears of those condemned to death.

But most of all I speak of the fishermen
Who left their nets and followed on His footsteps
And when He got tired, they did not seek rest
And when He betrayed them, they did not denounce
And when He was glorified, they averted their eyes
And their comrades spat on them and crucified them
And they, peaceful, take the road that has no end
Their gaze undarkened, unbent

Standing up and alone inside the terrible desert of the crowd.


http://youtu.be/vpTbGsWKZvo
Mikis Theodorakis, Maria Farandouri, Petros Pandis sing "I speak", 1973.

These lines

These lines may be the last
The last of the last to be written
Because future poets are no longer alive
Those who were to speak all died young
Their sad songs became birds
In another sky, where a strange sun shines
Wild rivers were born and they run into the sea
And you can't tell their waters apart
In their sad songs, a lotus sprang
so we may be born in its juices, younger.

(video at link)
Manolis Anagnostakis reads "These lyrics", two recordings.

Poetics

-You are betraying Poetry again, you 'll say
Man's most sacred manifestation
You are using it again as a means, a beast of burden
for your dark pursuits
Being fully aware of the damage
your example does to the youth.

- Tell me what you didn't betray
You and those like you, all these years
Selling your belongings one by one
In international markets and popular fairs
Left without eyes to see, without ears
to hear, with sealed mouths, so you don't speak.
What human sacred are you charging us with?

I know. You' ll say: rhetoric and preaching again.
Well, yes! Rhetoric and preaching.

Words must be hammered like hobnails

So the wind doesn't take them away.

(video at link)
Manolis Anagnostakis reads "Poetics".

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com/2015/12/manolis-anagnostakis-i-speakthese.html?spref=tw