It has taken only a few days since the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) became the front-runner in Greece’s June 17 elections for the bankruptcy of its politics to become clear.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/pers-m24.shtml)

Tsipras praised Obama’s larger bank bailouts for making “recession less severe than in Europe.” He told the New York Times that he wants to “press Merkel to follow the example of America, where the debt crisis wasn’t tackled with austerity measures, but with an expansionist approach.”

What a fraud! While Washington has spent trillions on Wall Street bailouts and imperialist wars in the Middle East, the American working class has been bled white with social cuts. In the US as in Greece, access to health care and education is being slashed, millions are unemployed, and youth joblessness in major US cities like Washington, DC and Detroit equal the 50 percent level in Greece.

The working class faces a struggle not against one or another individual imperialist politician, but against a social order—capitalism—that has failed around the world.

In Europe, this is bound up with an international struggle to overthrow the European Union, a thieves’ kitchen in which imperialist politicians—of the right or, like Tsipras, of the bourgeois “left”—thrash out plans for attacks on the proletariat on a scale unseen since Hitler ruled Europe. Workers must reject any call for sacrifice for the sake of saving this reactionary institution.

The Trots make sense when they sound like KKE. But by the end of the piece the author has reverted to pointless, irrelevant admonitions to "Trotskyism", the most ineffectual "leftist" position...

First of a series of excerpts:


On SYRIZA

Certain international bourgeois media, presenting SYRIZA as the “winner” of the May 6th elections, did not explore beyond its title: “Coalition of the Radical Left” and came to the conclusion that it is a radical left or even communist party. Of course this has no basis in reality. The central force within SYRIZA is the party “Coalition of the Left” (SYN), which has a social-democratic programme. In 1992 it voted for the Maastricht treaty in the Greek Parliament and is a supporter of the imperialist European Union, which it believes can be improved. It joined the anti-communist campaign against the USSR and the other socialist countries we knew in the 20th century. SYN is a member of the Presidium of the so-called “European Left Party” (ELP), which is an instrument of the EU to eradicate the communist characteristics of the CPs in the EU countries.

Together with SYN there are forces that entered SYRIZA from the Social-democratic PASOK, as well as various smaller ultra-left groups of a Trotskyist hue, and mutated former “maoist” groups, which add political “spice” to the basically social-democratic and anti-communist “meal”. A basic goal of this particular formation is the reduction of the electoral, trade union and more general political influence of the KKE, Thus, there are numerous examples over the last decade of the anti-KKE character of this political formation. In dozens of trade unions, sectoral federations and labour centres (local trade union councils), the forces of SYRIZA cooperate and form electoral alliances with PASOK forces in order to impede the election of communist delegates to the higher trade union bodies. SYRIZA is the sworn enemy of the All-workers Militant Front (PAME) which is a rally of class-oriented trade unions. SYRIZA’s forces openly collaborate with government and employer-led forces in the leading bodies of the compromised trade union confederations in the private (GSEE) and public sector (ADEDY). In many instances they have a similar stance in local elections. A particularly characteristic example was the stance in the municipal elections of 2010 in Ikaria. The KKE possesses significant electoral influence on this island, which was a former place of exile for communists. In the 2010 elections SYRIZA collaborated with the social-democratic PASOK, the liberal ND and the nationalist LAOS so that the island would not elect a communist mayor. Then the KKE’s candidate received 49.5% of the votes and the municipality was won by the anti-KKE alliance by a few hundred votes.

Today SYRIZA is trying to attack the KKE with proposals of political expediency regarding the so-called “unity of the left”, in an attempt for the KKE to erase whole sections of its programme, to abandon its principles and to accept the policy of managing the capitalist system, which is proposed by SYRIZA.

Based on this, the least we could say is that the stance of certain CPs was not responsible, which rushed to salute the electoral rise of this opportunist and anti-communist formation in the name of the electoral increase of the “left”, without knowing the real situation in Greece. They saluted a sworn enemy of the KKE, an enemy whose participation in a coalition government of the supporters of the EU has been proposed by the president of the Greek industrialists.

http://inter.kke.gr/News/news2012/2012-05-23-arthro

Each of these sections is a discussion unto itself.



The illusion of “unity of the left” and the lie of the “left government”.

Many politicized workers, from various countries in Europe and the world, pose this question: Why does the KKE not make some compromises? Why does it insist on its political line for the rallying of social forces, which want to struggle against the monopolies, against capitalism, against the imperialist unions, for people’s working class power and does not support the political line of “unity of the left”, the struggle to correct capitalist reality, and the EU, with political and/or governmental collaboration with other “left” and social-democratic forces, as other CPs in Europe have done?

To begin with, The KKE has for some time now clarified that the meanings “left” and “right” are not terms that reflect today’s political situation. The term “Left” today could be used to describe the GS of NATO or the Prime Minister of a country who is conducting an imperialist war and is carrying out anti-worker and anti-people measures at the expense of the workers in his country. The Communist Party is not simply a “left party”, but the party which struggles for the overthrow of capitalism, the construction of the new socialist-communist society. It is this path, this line of struggle that can bring about gains and not the reverse!

As history has demonstrated, reforms, the struggle to “correct” the capitalist system, to blunt the most extreme anti-people measures, which is what the opportunist-social-democratic forces focus on, have never led to the overthrow of capitalism anywhere. On the contrary! On many occasions this approach has led to the consolidation of capitalism, through the creation of illusions amongst millions of workers, that capitalism can be allegedly humanized; that today the European Central Bank can be transformed from a tool of capitalism into… a charitable organization which will hand out interest-free loans or that the European Union, can be transformed from a union which serves capital into a “union of the peoples”, as SYN/SYRIZA and the ELP claim.

This is the reason why the KKE promotes its political proposal in a comprehensive fashion, which it specialized for the elections on the 6th of May in the slogan: “ Out of the EU, with people’s power and the unilateral cancellation of the debt.”

In this sense, the KKE remains consistently oriented to Marxism-Leninism. As Lenin wrote: “The proletariat is fighting, and will continue to fight, to destroy the old regime. Towards this end it will direct all its propaganda and agitation, and all its efforts to organise and mobilise the masses. If it fails to destroy the old regime completely, it will take advantage even of its partial destruction. But it will never advocate partial destruction, depict this in rosy colours, or call upon the people to support it. Real support in a genuine struggle is given to those who strive for the maximum (achieving something less in the event of failure) and not to those who opportunistically curtail the aims of the struggle before the fight.”[2]

The KKE has rejected the idea of forming a “left government”, which will keep Greece in the EU and NATO and the capitalist relations of production untouched, and which will allegedly be able to implement a pro-people management of the system. Our party is struggling for the development of the class struggle, the political consciousness of the workers, their liberation from the influence of the bourgeois parties and ideological constructs and for the formation of a social alliance, which will defend the interests of the workers and will also seek to extricate the country from imperialist interventions, and will also pose the question of power.

It ain't easy being red...



Goal : The reduction of the influence of the KKE and its assimilation into the system!

The refusal of the KKE to submit itself to “left” formations or even to a government of the “left” is being targeted by its enemies, and “friends”, who directly or indirectly call on the KKE to “unite” with the other “left” forces. The CPs which are in the presidium of the ELP are following this line. There were also some rather crude attacks e.g. by various Trotskyist groups that are more well-known abroad than in our own country who characterized the KKE as sectarian and dogmatic.

How is it possible for the KKE to rally hundreds of thousands of people in Greece, with the line of class struggle, if the party is sectarian? How is it possible, for example, for the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME) to rally dozens of first-level trade unions, sectoral federations, and labour centres which represent hundreds of thousands of workers?

We should note here that PAME, as the class-oriented pole in the labour and trade union movement rallies 8 sectoral federations, 13 labour centres, hundreds of first-level and sectoral unions, with 850,000 members. In addition, PAME also operates in trade unions where the class-oriented forces are not in the majority. For example, PAME is the second force in a series of sectoral federations (such as the federation in the tourist and catering sector and the Metalworkers’ Federation) as well as in the country’s two largest labour centres (Athens and Thessalonica).

How is it possible for the Panhellenic Anti-monopoly rally of the self-employed (PASEVE) to organize thousands of self-employed people, who understand the need to come into conflict with the monopolies? How is it possible for thousands of poor farmers, through their farmer’s associations and their committees, to be inspired by the struggle of the All-farmers Militant Rally (PASY) against the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy? How is it possible for women and thousands of students, who belong to the working class and popular strata to enter the struggle in the framework of the demands and the initiatives of the Federation of Greek Women (OGE) and the Students’ Front of Struggle (MAS)? The members and cadres of the KKE play a leading role in all these socio-political organizations without hiding their identity.

They accuse the KKE of being “isolated”, or even “dogmatic” and “sectarian” due to its rejection of a “left government” or due to the fact that its percentage in the elections does not increase as fast as that of the social-democratic formation of SYRIZA. These accusations against the KKE do not stick. We should remember that 2,5 years ago PASOK, the other social-democratic party, received 44% while this time it received just 13%. This decline, which took place in conditions of political fluidity boosted SYRIZA, its closest ideological relation. Even more so as a revolutionary communist party, like the KKE, is not judged exclusively by its percentage in elections.

Our party has accumulated immense historical experience regarding the policy of cooperation! It led the anti-fascist struggle of a large armed front that made an enormous contribution to the people’s struggle. Nevertheless, in that period the party did not manage to form a strategy for the transformation of the antifascist struggle to a struggle for the overthrow of bourgeois power. During the 1950’s and 1980’s the KKE formed “left” alliances. The KKE has drawn valuable conclusions from its experience regarding the policy of alliances and it does not intend to repeat similar mistakes.

But why they are attacking the KKE? Of course they are irritated by the significant international activity of the KKE for the reconstruction of the international communist movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Besides, the International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties as well as other international communist initiatives started in Athens. But the most important thing is that the KKE is a party with strong roots in the working class, with significant experience in the workers’ and people’s struggles, a party that refuses to abandon its principles, a party that refuses to become the “tail” of social democracy, a party that does not submit to the EU and NATO. At this point we quote a comment of an article published in the well known French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique: “the secret goal and wish of all the left people in Greece is to dissolve the Communist Party and reshape it on a new basis and give to the Greek left its proper position in society”. That is to discredit the KKE and transform it, like certain other mutated communist parties of Europe, into a “communist alibi” of social democracy for the management of capitalist barbarity.

Our own goal is to thwart their plans! To preserve and strengthen the KKE. Despite the pressure exerted on our party there are several encouraging signs that show that the KKE will prove to be a tough nut to crack. Ten days after the elections of May 6th the students’ elections took place in Greece. The lists supported by the Communist Youth of Greece received 16% in Technological Educational Institutes (TEI) and 14% in the universities, an increase compared to last year. On the contrary, the lists of SYRIZA achieved a low score with 2,3% in TEI and 6,9% in universities.