http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/images/rizospastis.jpgIf we, the KKE, were in the "place" of SYRIZA, meaning the place of bourgeois management, the place of defending the interests of capital demanding the restoration of profitability, seeking to use the advantages conferred on capital by membership in the EU, the eurozone, and more generally the Euro-Atlantic alliances and the NATO; if we were in the "place" of taking over 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 eurozone, 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 asking us, with good intentions, to "enter" a coalition government with SYRIZA, to support it, or at least to tolerate it on 5-10 issues. We explained, back then as well, that every government of bourgeois management, for all its intentions, declarations, and self-characterizations, for all its aspirations, is objectively forced into a specific anti-people path, because such a government is not the product of rupture with capital, its power, the imperialist organizations, the EU, etc. . . . But let us turn the question around: What would have happened if there had been 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 workers' and people's government, a tool of the power of workers and popular strata, in which communists would of course play a decisive role? Such a governmental power would not be trapped in the dead ends of an anti-people 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 legislative anti-people and anti-labor 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 them; it would overturn them. It would also not recognize commitments to the EU, the ECB, the IMF, and the NATO, nor the "obligations" deriving thereof. It would put an end to 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 of 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 to 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 workers' and people's needs, of broader social needs. This path will allow us to exit the crisis in the interests of workers and common people. It will make it possible 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 working-class and popular mobilization and the participation of the workers and popular strata in the exercise of power, through new institutions that will arise 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 international agreements with other states, to import medicine, food, energy, precisely because it would not have the commitment to participate in imperialist organizations like the EU, the NATO, etc. This is the place for which we are struggling today.

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