Greece and the KKE

The fightback
Post Reply
User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 17, 2017 4:41 pm

This thread is a continuation of a couple from the Bell:

www.thebellforum.net/Bell2/www.thebellf ... l?t=144078

&
www.thebellforum.net/Bell2/www.thebellf ... tml=135243


KKE politburo member G.Marinos in Venezuela: “We must walk in the steps of the October Revolution”
by worker
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
KKE politburo member G.Marinos in Venezuela: "We must walk in the steps of the October Revolution"

In the 15th Congress of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) which took place between 22 and 25th of June in Caracas, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was represented by its Political Bureau member Giorgos Marinos and Dimitris Karagiannis, member of the international relations section of the CC and journalist in 'Rizospastis'.


On June 21st, the PCV organised the 2nd International Ideological Seminar with the subject being "The timeliness of Lenin in the 100 years of the Great Socialist Revolution", in which 18 Communist and Workers Parties participated.

What follows is the speech by Giorgos Marinos, reproduced from inter.kke.gr:
We honour the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, of the world-historic event of international significance, which demonstrated that capitalism is not invincible. The working class, the leading class of society with its allies have the strength to overthrow capitalism and construct the socialist society.
Whatever the supporters and apologists of capitalism do, they cannot erase the fact that this system has already entered a course of degeneration and decay, is becoming more reactionary and dangerous, is identified with the poverty of millions, with unemployment and capitalist crises.
Whatever the apologists of the system do, they cannot conceal the fact that two world imperialist wars were created by capitalism, as well as hundreds of local and regional wars and today we see the danger of a generalized military conflict.
The persecutions against communists and militant workers cannot stop the forward march of history. Social development does not stop, it is an objective process where the new social relations and the leading classes that express them in the class struggle, the motor force of history, overthrow the old social relations.
However painful the consequences of the counterrevolution are, the Leninist position is still of great importance: "We have made the start. When, at what date and time, and the proletarians of which nation will complete this process is not important. The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown."
We struggle in the conditions of monopoly capitalism, imperialism, with its basic characteristic being the dominance of the monopolies, which are the product of the concentration and centralization of capital.
At the end of the 19th century, Marx and Engels had already noted in Capital that the “centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."
This is the great necessity. The abolition of private capitalist ownership that negates the potential for all the workers to live in conditions that correspond to their increasing human needs, with work, free time, housing, high level exclusively public and free education, health, welfare, culture, sports.
The necessity of socialism flows from the sharpening of the basic contradiction of system, the contradiction between the social character of production and labour and the capitalist appropriation of the results. Our era is the era of transition from capitalism to socialism and this has historical and international dimensions.
However, as the experience from the class struggle teaches us, despite the fact that the material conditions for the new society mature under capitalism, for there to be a change of system there must be a socialist revolution.
This revolution requires the creation of a revolutionary situation that is defined according to Lenin by the following factors:
Those "above" (the ruling class of the capitalists) cannot govern and run the administration as they did in the past.
Those "below" (the working class and the popular strata) do not want to live as they did in the past.
An extraordinary rise in the activity of masses is observed.
The appearance of such a favourable situation has an objective character, but each revolutionary situation must be combined with the revolutionary uprising of the working class, led by the CP, its conscious vanguard, which must be equipped with the Marxist-Leninist worldview and be capable of leading the socialist revolution.
Despite the fact that it cannot be predicted when and how the revolutionary situation will manifest itself, historical experience highlighted the manifestation of a deep and synchronized capitalist crisis, combined with the outbreak of an imperialist war as being important factors.
The course of the Bolsheviks to the victorious October revolution passed through the "fire" of the harsh persecutions of the Tsarist absolutist state, of the strike and other tough conflicts connected to the revolution of 1905, which despite its defeat was a trial that contributed to the preparation of the oppressed for the victory of the revolution.
The Soviets were born in the revolution of 1905, the seeds of workers' power.
In this period, Lenin assessed that the revolution should establish a temporary revolutionary government, the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry", for the convening of the constituent assembly, universal voting rights, agricultural reforms etc. This power would eradicate the vestiges of Tsarism and would spark the proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist Western Europe.
The entrance of Russia in the 1st World War sharpened the social contradictions. The defeats of the Russian army at the front, the loss of territories caused significant discontent, not only amongst the workers and peasants who were suffering due to the destruction of war, but also amongst the bourgeois class of Russia.
The plans of the bourgeoisie to overthrow the Tsar were combined with major popular mobilizations and strikes, which were carried out in February 1917, as a result of the rapid intensification of the social problems. The formation of a revolutionary situation, the mass political activity of the workers and peasants organized in the Soviets, the disintegration of the army, led in the end to the revolutionary overthrow of the Tsar.
The Provisional Democratic Government was established by representatives of the bourgeois liberal parties of Russia and constituted an organ of bourgeois power. At the same time,however, the mass political struggle of the workers and peasants brought to the surface the organization of the armed masses that participated in the overthrow of the Tsar via the Soviets.
The Mensheviks and the SRs dominated the Soviets in this period and supported the Provisional Democratic Government. This situation was characterized by Lenin as being "dual power".
Lenin studied the February revolution, assessed that power had passed into the hands of the bourgeois class and that the bourgeois-democratic revolution had been completed and with the "April Theses" he adjusted the strategy of the Bolsheviks for the overthrow of bourgeois power and the socialist revolution.
The adaptation of the tactics, the slogans to the needs of strategy and of the revolutionary struggle led Lenin to withdraw the slogan "All power to the Soviets" in July 1917, when the repression of the Provisional Government had escalated and brought it back in September when the Bolsheviks had won the majority in the Soviets of Moscow and Petrograd, giving it new content, as a slogan for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the revolutionary uprising.
The decisiveness of Lenin and those from the leadership of the Bolsheviks who supported his positions led in the end to the victorious socialist revolution on October 25 (November 7, according to the new calendar) 1917.
We must underline the decisive importance of the important events and political choices, such as:
The separation of the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress (1903), the formation of a separate party (1912), the intense constant struggle against opportunism.
The systematic theoretical efforts for the development of the strategic view of the Bolshevik party for the socialist revolution that matured in the difficult conditions of the 1905-1917 period.
The tireless efforts for the preparation of the subjective factor, the party, the working class and its allies.
The consistent communist stance against imperialist war and the tireless struggle against the bourgeois class in all conditions.
The prediction of the changes in the correlation of forces and the correct decisions gave the Bolsheviks the initiative.
A decisive contribution for the formation of the strategy of the socialist revolution was provided by the study of capitalism in Tsarist Russia, of the characteristics of monopoly capitalism-imperialism (in the work "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism"), of the stance towards the bourgeois state and the character of workers' power, i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat ("State and Revolution") and other valuable works.
These elaborations highlighted the potential for the socialization of the concentrated means of production in the era of monopoly capitalism and also the potential created by uneven economic-political development and the sharpening of the inter-imperialist contradictions in order for the weakest link in the imperialist chain to break and for the efforts for socialist construction in one country or in a group of countries to begin.
Soviet power paved the way for the abolition of capitalist relations of production and this was what dealt with the intense problems of the workers (land, bread, peace) and not bourgeois power or some form of "intermediate" power, which in reality cannot exist.

Giorgos Marinos (Archive Photo).
The October Revolution confirmed the leading role of the revolutionary communist party, the need to rally the working class against the power of capital, the need to draw the poor peasantry and the other middle strata to the revolution, and to render other sections neutral. The historically outdated and reactionary character of the bourgeois class, the necessity of not participating or supporting a government in the framework of capitalism, the non-existence of transitional forms of power between capitalism and socialism, the need to smash the bourgeois state.
The October Revolution led to the building of another superior society, with as its basic characteristic the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.
The right to work and the eradication of unemployment were secured in the USSR. The foundations were laid for the abolition of discrimination against women. Science developed very rapidly. Free education at all levels, free high-quality health-care for all the people, and universal access to culture and sports were ensured. Institutions were created that would safeguard the substantial participation of the workers in building the new society.
This was a historically significant leap in conditions of the backwardness of pre-revolutionary Russia in comparison to the powerful capitalist states, in conditions of imperialist encirclement and pressure, with the grave consequences from the 1st and 2nd World Wars, in the latter the USSR made the decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism, with 20 million dead and enormous material destruction.
Socialist construction in the USSR was not free of problems. Until the Second World War, in the USSR the struggle for the development of the communist relations of production, the abolition of wage labour and the dominance of the socialized sector of production on the basis of Central Planning was generally successful.
After the Second World War, socialist construction faced new challenges and demands that were interpreted as inevitable weaknesses existing in the nature of central planning and not as a result of the contradictions of the survival of the old, as a result of the mistakes of the non-scientifically elaborated plan.
Thus, instead of seeking a solution towards the invigoration and expansion of the communist relations of production and distribution, it was sought backwards, i.e. in the exploitation of tools and production relations of capitalism. The solution was sought in the expansion of the market, in “market socialism”.
The 20th CPSU Congress (1956) stands out as a turning point because in that, with the vehicle being the so-called “personality cult”, a series of opportunist positions were adopted on the issues of the communist movement strategy, while the central management of the economy was weakened.
A few years later, beginning with the so-called “Kosygin reforms” (1965), the bourgeois category of “business profit” of each individual production unit was adopted and the wages of managers and workers were linked to it.
The individual interest was strengthened at the expense of the social interest and the communist consciousness was damaged. The so-called "shadow capital" emerged that sought its legal function as capital in production, the restoration of capitalism. Its (the capital's) owners constituted the driving force of the counter-revolution.
In about the same period, the Marxist-Leninist perception about the workers' state was also revised. The 22nd Congress of the CPSU (1961) described the USSR state as an “all-people's” state and the CPSU as an “all-people's party”.These positions led to the mutation of the revolutionary characteristics and social composition of the party. The transformation of the CPSU's opportunist degeneration into an open counter-revolutionary force was manifested by the policy of "Perestroika" and "Glasnost".
The KKE tried all these years to study the contemporary developments, to draw conclusions from the historical experience of the class struggle in Greece and internationally and, at the same time, to deepen and expand its militant ties with the working class and the popular strata. It tries not to detach the daily struggle from the main revolutionary political task of overthrowing the power of capital
he KKE has charted a modern revolutionary strategy increases its ability to organize leading sites of resistance and counterattack in every sector of the economy, every large workplace, in every region of the country,with an anti-capitalist/anti-monopoly line of struggle, to prepare the working class and people in the instance of an imperialist war.
The ideological-political and organizational strengthening of the KKE, which was an important issue at the recent 20th Congress of the Party, constitutes a prerequisite for the promotion of its revolutionary policy.
An integral part of the KKE's contemporary strategy is its programmatic perception on the socialist character of the revolution. Socialist construction begins with the revolutionary conquest of power by the working class. The workers' state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, is an instrument of the working class in the class struggle which continues in socialism with other forms and means. It is utilized for the planned development of the new social relations, which presupposes the suppression of the counter-revolutionary efforts, but also the development of the communist consciousness of the working class. The qualitatively new feature of workers' power is the transformation of the workplace into the core of society's organization.
The Programme of the KKE states:
The concentrated means of production are socialized, but initially there remain forms of individual and group ownership that constitute the basis for the existence of commodity-money relation. Forms of productive cooperatives are formed, where the level of the forces of production still does not allow the socialization of the means of production. The forms of group ownership consist a transitional form of ownership, between the private and the social one, and not an immature form of communist relations.
On the basis of social ownership of the centralized means of production, the central planning of the economy develops as a communist relation that connects all the producers.
At the same time, the KKE struggles for the regroupment of the international communist movement, according to the principles of proletarian internationalism, the internationalist solidarity of the people against capitalism and imperialist war, which is expressed in the slogan “Workers of all countries unite!”.Its supports the efforts for the creation of a distinct pole based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism , through the “International Communist Review” and the European Communist Initiative.
The study of the experience of the October Revolution and the events that will be held will be effective to the extent that the communist movement stands up and fights against the negative correlation of forces, examining in a strict way and changing the line of intermediate stages and the so-called leftwing governments. This step will contribute decisively to the adaptation of the strategy of the CPs to the character of our era, the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism, which also determines the socialist character of the revolution.
The struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, for the socialist revolution must leave its imprint on the everyday activity, political line of every CP so that they play the leading role in organizing the working class, to preparing it to meet the challenges of the class struggle.
This year, 100 years after the Great October Revolution, we must intensify our efforts to strengthen the struggle for the revolutionary regroupment of the international communist movement.
The October Revolution, the construction of socialism in the USSR and the painful experience from the counterrevolution highlights the need for a revolutionary strategy and the strict observance of the laws of socialist construction, for workers' power, the socialization of the means of production, central planning and workers'-social control. This is the basis for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, in opposition to the caricatures and arbitrary fantasies about "21st Century Socialism" and "Market Socialism" which are features of the counterrevolution and function within the the framework of capitalism.
The communist movement has a great history and has made a significant contribution to the abolition of exploitation and today must learn from history, must be guided by our worldview and what Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 remains very relevant:
"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of All Countries, Unite!"

We thank the CP of Venezuela and we wish it every success in its Congress. The KKE has always stood unwaveringly at the side of the CP of Venezuela and continues on this path. Our party denounces the imperialist interventions and expresses its internationalist solidarity with the working class, the people of Venezuela and the other countries of Latin America. The interests of the working class lie in strengthening its struggle against the bourgeois class and the capitalist shackles, in fighting for worker's power and to become the owners of the wealth they produce, in constructing socialism-communism.
Αναρτήθηκε από In Defense of Communism
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 17, 2017 5:19 pm

“Achievements and successes of the working class in socialism”, presented by the KKE in Athens

Image

Τhe work “Achievements and successes of the working class in socialism”, published by “Synchroni Epochi”, was presented by the KKE's Central Committee, on July 12th in Egaleo, Athens.

“Our future isn't capitalism. It is the new world, socialism”! This slogan was shouted by hundreds of members and friends of the KKE and KNE at “Alexis Minotis” municipal theatre of Egaleo, where the publication was presented. Working people from various sectors, who live the intensive capitalist exploitation, listened with interest the significant information that the new publication contains and which proves the superiority of the socialist system. The publication- a result of a collective effort by the Central Committee's department for Labor and Trade Union work- consists part of the KKE's greater multiform activity for the 100th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution .

Major speakers at the event were Yannis Protoulis, member of the Political Bureau of the CC of the KKE, Stefanos Loukas and Vivi Dagka, members of the CC of the Party. The cultural programme of the event included recitation of Bertolt Brecht's poems, from Greek poet Kostas Varnalis' work “What I saw in Soviets' Russia”, revolutionary soviet songs and the hymn of Comintern.

KKE politburo member Yannis Protoulis refered to the reasons which led to the counterrevolution:

(abstracts from his speech)


"This is a publication that takes its place next to the Declaration of the CC, next to the many publications of the Party that have been issued and those that will follow in the battle for knowledge, so that the truth will shine against slander, mud and distortion and, at the same time, for the invigoration of the fruitful debate for today's way out from the system of capitalist exploitation, of crises and imperialist wars.

We are addressing a special call. A call to give a great battle to conquer and spread the knowledge, the truth for socialism that mankind met. A fight which is inextricably connected with the pioneering struggle which is developed by the members, friends and collaborators of the KKE on all the acute problems faced by the working class, the youth."

"The socialist construction in the 20th century, which began with the Red October, proved that the labor movement can create revolutions and prevail, can win in only one country or a group of countries. It proved that this is not a utopia, it was constructed for decades.

An important aspect is that the workers' achievements in socialist states, for many decades, had been a point of reference and contributed to the conquest of achievements by the labor-popular movement of capitalist societies".

"The KKE was and remains unwavering in defending the USSR socialist course's offer, in general the socialist construction during the 20th century, in the struggle for social progress, for the abolition of exploitation of man by man.

We highlight the contradictions, the mistakes and the deviations under the pressur of the international correlation of forces, without leading ourselves to nihilism.

Since the early 1990s, we have characterized the 1989-1991 devenopments as a victory of the counterrevolution, as an overthrow. We reject the term "collapse", because it downgrades the counter-revolutionary activity, the social base in which it can be developed and dominate, due to weaknesses and deviations of the subjective factor during the socialist construction, as it happened.

Life showed that the problems which were presented had not been properly interpreted and hadn't been dealt on the basis of strengthening and expanding the communist relations, the central planning, the socialization, the workers-social control.

Thus, insteading of seeking a solution onwards, to the expansion and strengthening of the communist relations of production and distribution, it was sought backwards, in the widening of the market, in "socialism with market", that is the utilization of tools and production relations of capitalism."

Image

Protoulis also referenced to the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 as a "turning point" where various opportunist perceptions were adopted, as well as to the "Kosygin reforms" and the consequent weaking of the central planning.

Among other things, Yannis Protoulis mentioned:

"The bourgeois propaganda of the "sovietologists" continues today, turning white into black. It projects the concepts of "democracy" and "freedom" through the bourgeois criteria, not the ones of the workers of course, but for the capitalists. Freedom to exploit, to have people in their work, to be the bosses, to live and enrich from the hard labor of the others and, as a democracy they mean the one which stops at the gates of their enterprises.

The real content of freedom and democracy in capitalism is the economic coercion of wage slavery and the dictatorship of the capital in society in general and especially within capitalist enterprises.

The greatest achievement which made possible the realization of all the rest after the October Revolution was the revolutionary workers' power, the dictatorship of the proletariat as a state which expressed the interersts of social majority of the exploited ones and not the social minority of the exploiters. It emerged as a superior form of democracy."

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/07 ... rking.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 24, 2017 6:15 pm

Tsipras-Varoufakis: Loyal servants of the capitalist system
By Nikos Mottas*.

Image

During the last few days we are witnessing a highly hypocritical “blame game” between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. In his latest book titled “Adults in the room”, Varoufakis tries to present himself as a “fighter” who resisted Europe's “deep establishment”.

In his “political thriller”, the ex-finance minister describes how the Tsipras government handled the negotiations with its creditors, outlining the role each government official played during that period. As for his former collaborator, Varoufakis writes among other things: “Alexis Tsipras appears totally overwhelmed, unable to collide with his own consultants who were pro loan agreement, in some cases he was totally manipulated by the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ Troika”.

From his side, in a recent interview with the “Guardian”, the Greek PM launches an indirect attack against Varoufakis. We quote from the interview: “I have made mistakes … big mistakes,” he says, adding that his biggest error may have been “the choice of people in key posts”. Asked if that is a direct reference to his first finance minister, the maverick economist Yanis Varoufakis, the leftist rejects the notion, saying he was the right choice for an initial strategy of “collision politics”, but dismisses the plan he presented had Greece been forced to make the dramatic move to a new currency as “so vague, it wasn’t worth talking about”.

The “blame game” between Tsipras and Varoufakis- two politicians whose role as servants of the bourgeoisie has been undoubtedly proved- has nothing to do with the actual interests of the Greek people. Both of them share immense responsibility for deceiving the people, both before and after the January 2015 elections.

Regarding the role of Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis, let us remind the following:

As an opposition party, SYRIZA had promised to tear up the austerity memorandums, which the previous governments had signed with the foreign lenders (the EU, the ECB and the IMF), and which contained the antiworker-antipeople measures. It was February 2015, just a few weeks after SYRIZA's electoral victory, when the then Finance Minister Varoufakis revealed that the government agrees with 70% of the “reforms” included in the memoranda and disagrees with 30%, which it describes as “toxic”.

As an opposition party, SYRIZA had established a fierce rhetoric against privatizations. After being elected in the government, according to the statement of the then Finance Minister, Y. Varoufakis, the position had changed: “We want to move on from the rationale of cut price sales to the rationale of their development in partnership with the private sector and foreign investors”! So, the government of Tsipras and Varoufakis had adopted privatizations in order to reinforce the private sector but also tried to present other forms of privatizations, like, for example, public private partnerships and concessions to business groups, etc as being beneficial.

The- highly advertised by Tsipras and Varoufakis- “negotiations” between the Greek government and the creditors had a specific content which wasn't related to the “end of austerity”, as SYRIZA and other opportunist or social democratic parties were claiming. That specific content was- and still is- an inter-bourgeois game, related to the needs of the monopoly groups which arise from the negative consequences of the deep capitalist crisis.

Image

Regarding the so-called “revelations” of Yanis Varoufakis and the “blame game” between the former finance minister and PM Tsipras, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has made the following comments:

"If the revival of the discussion about 2015 proves something, that is how the dominant circles of the system and the EU “used” SYRIZA and its fake radicalism in order to continue the antipeople policy that New Democracy and PASOK didn't finish, as well as to sow frustration within the people.

It also proves that the real pro-people alternative does not exist in the various sectors of the capital that lead the people to bankruptcy, inside or outside the eurozone, for the sake of capitalist profitability, but towards a radically different way of development, in favor of the popular needs” (23/7/2017).

The KKE also states: “The transformation of SYRIZA into a “pure blood” bourgeois social democratic party cannot be explained neither with Mr. Tsipras' statements of repentance nor with “political thriller” like the ones of Varoufakis. That was the specified ending of a party which undertook the management of the antipeople capitalist way and the service of the capital's needs, something that the KKE had predicted from the very first moment” (24/7/2017).

Indeed, neither Mr.Tsipras nor Mr.Varoufakis have the right to pose as “defenders” of the people's rights. Their role is well-known to the working class of Greece. Both SYRIZA and the new political platform of Varoufakis (DiEM25) are loyal servants of the capitalist system: despite any particular differences, their goal is common and that is to foster illusions among the working class about a supposed “pro-people” management of capitalist economy.

The capital- the bourgeois class- has the ability to use a variety of (supposedly) “radical” political representatives who are eager to serve the aim of people's manipulation. The interests of the working class do not lie in the demagoguery of any Tsipras or Varoufakis, but in the strengthening of the struggle against the bourgeois class and the capitalist shackles, for worker's power and towards the construction of a new society, the one of socialism-communism.

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 31, 2017 12:29 pm

TRUTH AND LIES ABOUT SOCIALISM - The phony dilemma: "Democracy" or Totalitarianism"?

TRUTH AND LIES ABOUT SOCIALISM:
ON THE SOCIALIST POWER.

Image

Central Council of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE).
Published by Synchroni Epochi, 2013.
Click here to read the book in pdf.

PART I: THE PHONY DILEMMA: "DEMOCRACY" OR TOTALITARIANISM"?

INTRODUCTION.

A great part of anti-communist, anti-socialist propaganda focuses on the issue of the so called lack of “freedom and democracy” during the construction of the new society, of socialism-communism. The main focus of that attack is the revolutionary workers’ power, the state of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the Communist Party. The capitalists cannot abide it; they tremble before the idea that the working class will emerge as the dominant class, and that they will be thrown into the dustbin of history.

When someone reads the word “dictatorship” they imagine many things, as it is usually equated with harsh regimes, the authoritarian imposition of the will of a minority over a majority. However, if we examine the issue more carefully we will realize that the term dictatorship expresses the power of one class over the others. When we refer to the dictatorship of the bourgeois class and respectively to the dictatorship of the proletariat, we talk about the class that has the power. In other words, the meaning of dictatorship is not synonymous with the form of governance of military imposition of the exploiting classes (the slave owners, the feudalists, now the capitalists) over the poor working class- popular masses.

Dictatorship is also the power of one class even when it guarantees formal political equality between the members of different classes. Just as it occurs today in bourgeois parliamentary democracy, which is none other than the dictatorship of bourgeois class, as we have everywhere the domination of the capital, which is concealed and hidden behind formal equality, formal equal political rights, even though there is a whole legal “arsenal” and the mechanisms of the bourgeois state are ready to put aside any right if bourgeois’ power is threatened.

In reality, the bourgeois classes’ power to impose its will, to form its own institutions and mechanisms that serve its interests, originates from its economic power, the capitalist ownership of the means of production. The whole superstructure, the institutions and the mechanisms exist to defend and assist the reproduction of its domination.

Therefore, with the term “dictatorship of proletariat”, Marxism scientifically refers to the political domination of the working class. The conquest of political power by the working class is also a precondition for its economic domination, for the overthrow of capitalist relations and the socialization of the means of production. The liberation of the working class from the dictatorship of the capital, from the yoke of the monopolies and its emergence as a dominant class also liberates the rest of the working people.

What is the state?
The state in capitalism.

The state did not always exist. The state is a product of unresolved class contradictions that are present in the society. The state appears during the evolution of history in places when the class contradictions objectively could not be compromised. And vice-versa, the very existence of the state demonstrates that class contradictions cannot be resolved.

ImageThe birth of the Athenian State.
(Click on the picture to read).

In the primitive communal societies there was no need for a state, because classes did not exist. The state was born along with the class society thousands of years ago. This happened when the surplus product was created thanks to the development of the productive forces, meaning one part of the produced product (from working the land, livestock, etc.) which was not used for the satisfaction of immediate needs of the community. The appearance of the surplus product led, over the course of time to its private appropriation ,and furthermore led to the formation of private ownership over the means of production, in other words, class contradictions were born. The complete development of these contradictions created the exploitative distinction of society between the slaves and the slave-owners. The first state, in history, formed was the state of the slave-owners in order to impose their power on the slave class. Thereafter, during the evolution of the society the exploitative relations change according to the evolution of productive forces. The distinction between slaves and slave-owners was replaced by the serfs and the feudalists and today by the workers and the capitalists. In each corresponding period, the state evolved and strengthened to serve the specific exploitative relations.


The state consists of many institutions for the systematic implementation of compulsion against the exploited. It creates permanent, specific mechanisms and it organizes the violence of the dominant class, (army, police etc.). Also, several functions existing (administrative, defensive for the protection of the community etc.) before the appearance of state in the context of the primitive community become detached and are exercised by special institutions.

These transitions during the evolution of humanity were hard but necessary, since the relations of production must correspond to the development of the productive forces that has been achieved at a specific time. However, today, the productive forces –that mark huge progress and development– suffocate in the context of exploitative relations. The abolition of the exploitation of man by man, a great social leap, will contribute to a situation where the productive forces will correspond to the relations of production. The creation of these social relations, along with the institutions that emerged with them, was necessary in the evolution of history, and to that extent today their abolition is equally necessary for the further evolution of the society. Therefore, speaking of the state, we must always have in mind that the main issue is the issue of power of one class over the other.

Image

The working class and the bourgeois state.

The working class, as a direct producer that does not have, however, ownership over the means of production, as the exploited class in capitalism, is placed in various ways under the coercion of the bourgeois class and its state. The bourgeois state, as a mechanism for the domination of the capitalists over the workers, is a mechanism of oppression, repression and manipulation against the workers.

Nevertheless, the bourgeois class does only not organize the brutal repression and the exclusive practice of violence by the state mechanisms (which is, however, a basic function of the state), but it also exercises multifaceted oppression. It organizes state judicial institutions in order to implement the law, which has as its core the defence of private ownership. It creates laws, constitutions; it establishes courts of justice and institutions to enforce this law, which in fact is “unjust” for the working class.

In modern capitalist societies, the state also organizes the state educational system, it builds schools and universities, i.e. it organizes the “consent” of the exploited working class and organizes the health and welfare system, guaranteeing the conditions for the reproduction of the working class. Namely, it guarantees a basic level of education, a basic satisfaction of health etc., as well as the reproduction of dominant ideology and politics in order to obscure class exploitation. Moreover, the bourgeois state intervenes in the economy by passing measures facilitating the reproduction of capital on an extensive scale.

The duty of the proletariat is to overthrow the bourgeois state as a precondition for the construction of the new society. The bourgeois state cannot change its class nature and cannot be used in favour of the working class and the poor popular strata. The working class must take advantage of any gains- democratic rights acquired as a result of the class struggle- but not by restricting its aims to the improvement and the democratization of the bourgeois state, but in the direction of organizing the struggle in order to overthrow bourgeois power. The bourgeois state is a state of the capitalists in order to secure their interests. In its place the working class must build its own state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. And the overthrow of the bourgeois state is not possible without violence, without the proletarian, socialist revolution.

The “withering away” of the state in developed communism.

The communist socioeconomic formation expresses the new leap in the evolution of human society, on the basis of the development of the means of production. Labour in capitalist production acquires an increasingly social character. There no longer exists the need for a class – owner of the means of production, i.e. the class of capitalists, who do not contribute anything to production; they are parasites. At one time, the division of society into classes was a necessary step in human evolution. Today, thanks to the development of the productive forces, this division of society has become an obstacle. The disappearance of classes is inevitable, as inevitable as was their creation during the past.

The socialization of the means of production and central planning as the new social relations eliminate, over a course of hard struggle and contradictions, the root cause of the existence of the class inequalities.

Image

As during mankind’s past primitive societies managed to live without a state, therefore, the new, fully developed communist society will no longer need a state, i.e. it will no longer need a mechanism of coercion, of enforcement. However, this not due to incomplete development, but on the contrary is due to the enormous development of the productive forces, labour productivity and the new social relations.Nevertheless, the state as a state cannot be “abolished” all at once, because it is not possible to eliminate at once the root of class inequalities. Through the social revolution, the bourgeois state is abolished and is replaced by the state of the working class. Bourgeois power, disorganized in conditions of revolutionary situation by the decisive action of the organized workers and their allies, is crushed, destroyed, smashed. From the first moment of its formation, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the socialist state is a “semi-state”, according to Engels; it is not a “state per se”. This occurs because its mission is not the continuation of class exploitation, but the abolishment of any source of class exploitation. It is a state that is expected to abolish itself, to wither away, because it is no longer needed.

The state is withering away over the course of development, during the passage from the lower to the higher phase of the communist society. The economic base for the complete withering away of the state has to do with a high development of communism that eradicates the contradictions between intellectual and manual labour, the submission to the division of labour and transforms labour not only into means of subsistence, but also into a prime necessity of life, i.e. when the sources of the appearance of social inequality disappear.

Advanced communism as a classless society is a society without a state. The state will be able to wither away completely only when people have become so accustomed to observing the basic rules of living and their work is so productive that they are working according to their abilities and the distribution of products is carried out according to their needs.

The state in socialism.

Socialism, as the first, the immature phase of communism, is a society in which initially classes and class contradictions still exist, while afterwards some class contradictions and differences, potential class differences, are still maintained, i.e. differences including the potential of historical regression. Firstly, there are the remnants of the defeated bourgeois class, which will fight until the end in order to take back the power that they lost. In addition, several contradictions or differences remain such as these between the people of the city and the countryside, between manual and intellectual labour, which have their origin in the entire history of exploitative societies. Moreover, there are contradictions originating from the possibility that some sectors of production are not socialized directly, at once. These are differences resulting from the division of labour. The historical experience of the USSR showed that sections of agricultural production etc. maintained commodity relations. Commodity relations are a source of class inequalities. In addition, the conscience corresponding to the new, communist relations, e. the communist conscience, the Assembly of Petrograd’s soviet, 1918. “Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the forms, has brought a development and expansion of democracy unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the population, for the exploited and working people. (...)Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.” (V.I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution And the Renegade Kautsky, Sinchroni Epochi, p. 31-33) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/ communist attitude towards labour, is not shaped in a cohesive and “automatic” way among all the sections of working class and the people. Namely, there are still elements of the past that struggle against the new society that has been born. Historical experience has highlighted that this kind of struggle continues for a very long time.

Image
Assembly of Petrograd’s soviet, 1918. “Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the forms, has brought a development and expansion of democracy unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the population, for the exploited and working people. (...)Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.” (V.I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution And the Renegade Kautsky, Sinchroni Epochi, p. 31-33) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/

Thus in socialism, the working class is constituted as the dominant class by its state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class opposes the dictatorship of the bourgeois class (regardless of the form that it takes, e.g. parliamentary system, fascism, military dictatorship etc.) with its own dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the democracy of workers who are dominant since they overthrew the power of the bourgeois class; they took the means of production in their hands and are leading the construction of the new society expressing also the interests of the other exploited strata by liberating them.

Consequently, the dictatorship of the proletariat constitutes a means of continuing the class struggle with other means and forms under the conditions of the socialist construction.

The necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the socialist state arsies from the basic revolutionary duty of the workers’ power, namely the formation of the new communist relations. A difficult task, since the passage to communism is not just a passage from one society to another; it is not a replacement of one exploitative class by another, but the definitive and complete abolition of any form of private and group ownership over the means and results of production, of every exploitative class and every social inequality. This necessity also arises from the continuation of the class struggle internationally, since the simultaneous passage socialism at global level, in every country at the same time, is impossible.

Only the vanguard social force, the working class, which is the vehicle of the communist relations, can accomplish this task with the leading role of its Party, the Communist Party.

Image

The phony dilemma: "Democracy" or "Totalitarianism".

“One the opposite side of “democracy” lies “totalitarianism”. In this (socioeconomic) system only one, the ruler, possesses absolute power and has the ability to control the society. Dictatorship is one of the forms of totalitarianism, which constitutes an authoritarian system of governance based on violence. The characteristics of totalitarianism are the following: imposition of a particular ideology, the one – party system, existence of an organized plan of intimidation of the citizens, absolute control of the army, absolute control of mass media, an economy controlled and planned, by the state”

( “Sociology” Coursebook, 3rd grade of High School).

“Democracy” for whom?

For many centuries, beginning from ancient times until the present day, the concept of democracy has been the centre of numerous discussions and written texts. Democracy has existed as an ideal, as a political demand and slogan for millions of militants, as well as a deceptive ideological construct, a fraud.

The bourgeois and opportunists theoreticians and propagandists do not understand political history as a result of interchanges of socioeconomic formations, as scientific communism does (because they would be forced to admit the inevitable overthrow of capitalism), but as succession of regimes. Based on that they distinguish regimes (democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, etc.) concealing class relations, the class essence of socioeconomic formations and their respective state.

In general, they identify democracy with bourgeois parliamentary democracy. They claim that within the framework of the bourgeois state ‘’all of us are equal citizens, we have the right to vote and to be elected, we have universal voting rights and trade union rights, etc guaranteed by the Constitution”. The political system, the administration mechanisms, the Constitution, therefore, are presented as “classless’’. But, behind the term “citizens’’, the class division that exists in capitalism and the division between the exploiters and the exploited are being concealed.

Lenin noted that when someone hears the words democracy and freedom he should ask: “democracy and freedom for which class?”

Since the dawn of capitalism, when the bourgeois class was still a revolutionary force, it became clear that the slogan “equality, freedom, brotherhood” of the bourgeois French Revolution -that overthrew feudalism– had a content that was expressing the interests of the domination of bourgeois class. For example, just two years after the victory of the French Revolution, measures were taken in order to dissolve all trade unions and to ban strikes. These were the so-called Le Chapelier laws (after the French bourgeois judicial and politician Isaac Rene Guy Le Chapelier), which were in effect from June 14, 1791 until 1864, i.e. they were applied for 73 years.

Bourgeois democracy is democracy within the framework of capitalism. It is a form of expression of the dictatorship of the bourgeois class. Of course, bourgeois democracy was progressive compared to feudal autocracy, which was overthrown by the former. But bourgeois democracy defends capitalist exploitation. The democratic rights and freedoms, existing in most of the bourgeois Constitutions, reflect the victory of the bourgeois class against feudalism, they weren’t generously granted by the bourgeois class to the working class but only after a tough class struggle and only when the bourgeois class acquired the ability to assimilate wider workers’ and people’s masses due to these concessions.

Image
(Click on the picture to read).

During the era of bourgeois revolutions, the bourgeois class consisted of a large mass of small and big owners of means of production. In order to overthrow feudalism, they attracted to the political struggle large popular masses of farmers and proletarians, the ancestors of contemporary working class. On this basis, the democratic and political freedoms were established on the terrain of capitalism. The bourgeois class didn’t hesitate to restrict or ban these freedoms when it considered it necessary for the stabilisation of the capitalist system. In conditions of contemporary capitalism, the imperialist stage of its development, where the bourgeois class has the place once held by feudalism, the rise of reactionary influences, the restriction of rights and freedoms and the manipulation of people’s protest, is the general tendency.

In our country we have certain examples proving that the bourgeois class takes action as soon as it becomes aware that its profitability and power can be negatively affected. For example, there were certain moments during the 20th century when the bourgeois class suppressed strikes, even though the strikes were for economic demands only, without disputing bourgeois power and these strikes resulted in harsh conflicts between the working class and the mechanisms of bourgeois state, with many dead militant workers as a result.

Although, even those who claim that “the above mentioned events happened years ago, now democracy is consolidated and t things have changed” conceal the fact that bourgeois class imposes itself using its own power over the popular masses with multifaceted mechanisms that combine manipulation and repression. Let’s remember the tremendous persecution of the monumental students’ demonstrations struggling against the so-called Arsenis – law (High school educational reform 1998), or even the repression against struggles in the following years. At that time the government applied the despicable Legislative Act (implemented by the subsequent governments) which considered that student protests were a “statutory offense” and brought district attorneys to schools in order to terrorize the school students. Hundreds of school students across Greece were tried on charges such as “disruption of domestic peace”, “occupation of public areas”, etc.

The bourgeois governments tried more than 10,000 farmers across the country on the charge of ‘’obstruction of transportation’’, during the period of the monumental agricultural protests. Do not forget the dozens of strikes and workers’ protests declared illegal by civil courts. Based on the data of the First Instance Court of Athens relating to the period 1999-2008, 215 out of the 248 employers’ appeals against strikes were accepted. In other words 9 out of 10 strikes were deemed illegal .The bourgeois governments attacked large demonstrations of seafarers, having the bourgeois courts and their court rulings as their weapon and at the same time using brutal repression in order to impose “civil mobilization” of the workers and use savage means of repression. Recently, the bourgeois governments the magnificent strike of the steelworkers in Aspropyrgos declared illegal and deployed riot police at the factory in order to break the strike. Additionally, the state utilizes against the organized class-oriented movement and the Communist Party, a complex of mechanisms of provocation, thugs, various agencies - operating in cooperation with the ‘’official’’ repressive forces – in order to strike against the struggles. Provocation was always a powerful weapon in the hands of the bourgeois class against the working class and its Party.

Image
"Greek steelworks", Aspropyrgos, July 2012. The Constitution and the laws of bourgeois state exist only to ensure the capitalist ownership over the means of production. The attitude of bourgeois state against the heroic struggle of the steelworkers was characteristic. Complete support for the capitalist Manesis, court rulings and persecution, brutal repression against the strike.

The bourgeois parliament, the multi – party system and the bourgeois elections are the ‘zenith of the Democracy’’.

We face the argument that capitalism has a multi – party system, many different parties can express their views and can participate in elections, that even the enemies of capitalism, even the Communist Parties, have the potential to exist and act. On the other hand they say that in socialism there is no parliament and multiparty system, so there is ‘’totalitarianism’’.

First, the bourgeoisie conceals a fact that applies first of all to themselves, namely that the classes form political parties with the aim of serving their interests. This also applies to their own parties, which serve the interests of the bourgeois class. However, the bourgeois class is expressed by more than one party. These parties are formed on the basis of historical, ideological differences that concern the management of capitalism, express intra-bourgeois contradictions. The differences between bourgeois parties guarantee the alternation in the formation of bourgeois governments; reproduce the support of the workers’- people’s strata through the universal right to vote. This is the essence of the multi-party system. Namely, these are parties that don’t express something different taking into consideration their class essence, because they agree on the perpetuation of capitalist exploitation over the working class and any differences concern the different “formulas” for the workers’ exploitation.
The myth of ‘’Totalitarianism’’.
The identification of the former socialist societies and socialism in general with so called totalitarianism is one of the new-old ideological constructs re-emerging in the political analysis of the bourgeois mass media, public interventions of governmental cadres and cadres of bourgeois political parties, but also in the curricula of higher education institutions. Most often, the concept of totalitarianism, the totalitarian phenomenon, totalitarian ideologies (...) is mentioned in newspaper articles and magazines artfully and uncritically. They never give a definition of this phenomenon, and it is presented as something well-known and obvious. (...) Substantial emphasis is given to the identification of fascism, especially Nazism, with existing socialism and respectively fascist with communist ideology. (...) The concept of totalitarianism first appeared in the "Times» in 1929 and described as totalitarian a type of state that is "cohesive», with a oneparty system either communist or fascist, generally it appears as a reaction against the state of parliamentary democracy. The equation of this two incompatible phenomena, namely the fascist and socialist, state and society ,aims to impose the political forms of the state as the main criterion and characteristic based on which we can compare different types of society without any further analysis (on the contrary, it aims to obscure) over the content of state power and its relations with the structure of society, i.e. the social classes and the struggle waging between them. Bourgeois ideology, since defends the capitalist system and generally chooses to face the world in that way, presents the world as the embodiment and struggle of some ideas and ideals, the most important of which is (bourgeois) "democracy».
The theoreticians that “confront totalitarianism” perceive man and “human nature” as something static and metaphysical, they cannot see the possibility of the change of social relations and they perceive it as destruction of humanity and abolition of freedom. Socialism does not aim to turn people into “servants of the State” and spineless beings, as these theoreticians claim. This duty belongs to the daily tasks of the capitalist system (either fascist or “liberal”), which we are experiencing today intensively. Socialism aims to construct a new civilization, a new type of social relations (that means a “new human’’, not to uproot all human qualities, as these theoreticians claim!), which will release the creative capabilities of people in order to be able handle collectively and to develop further the tremendous forces and potential accumulated in the current stage of mankind’s development.
Kommounistiki Epitheorisi, issue 2/2000 "”Totalitarianism”, the return of Cold War mythology».

The differences developed during the previous years are significant, not only among the Greek bourgeois parties, but at a European and international level, in relation to the variations of crisis management. There are different tendencies and intra-bourgeois contradictions, however what all of them have as common ground is the attempt to exit the capitalist crisis at the expense of the working class and the popular strata, and these are not differences in favour of the people’s interests. The working class has nothing to expect from such ‘’polyphony’’, besides it has important acquired experience. Basically, for decades two parties were alternating in government, the bourgeois social-democratic party and the bourgeois liberal party, however now we have a period of rotation between alliance governments. now of the ‘’centre-right’’, tomorrow of the ‘’centreleft’’, without excluding other forms. History has shown that when the rule of bourgeoisie is questioned then the differences between bourgeois parties “disappear” and united as a fist they struggle for their class. In our country for example during the period of the armed class confrontation, in 1946-1949, all the bourgeois parties were united to face the Communist Party and the Democratic Army of Greece. It is significant the example of the so-called ‘’seven-headed’’ government formed in 1947, named as such because of the participation of all the political leaders from the whole range of the bourgeois political system (C. Tsaldaris, G.Papandreou, S.Venizelos, P.Canellopoulos, N.Zervas, etc). Also, more recently, under the present conditions of the economic capitalist crisis, New Democracy and PASOK (old social democratic party) put aside their differences and formed anti-popular governments under the Prime Minister L.Papademos and A.Samaras later: The former with the support of ‘’extreme-right’’ party LAOS, the later with the support of the ‘’centre-left’’ party DIMAR.

The bourgeois parliament and elections express the ‘’popular will’’ determined by the influence of employers’ intimidation, threat of unemployment, mechanisms that buy the workers’ consciousness off, anticommunism, fear before the revolutionary perspective, bourgeois ideology fostered through education and so many other factors that form attitude of assimilation and submission to the system among the larger part of popular strata and their families. Only when the above factors are secured firmly, then the bourgeois class allows the realization of universal right to vote that operates as an assimilation tool. Besides, the universal right to vote presented as the “cornerstone” of bourgeois democracy, was neither established at once, nor was truly universal. During the period of bourgeois revolutions the right to vote initially was connected to class criteria, such as the possession of land, property, wealth, etc. It didn’t concern everyone. The same happened with the right to vote of women, of black people, etc. In our country the right to vote for women was established in 1952 by the bourgeois laws [while they had voted for the first time in the areas freed by the National Liberation Front (EAM) – Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) in 1944]. In Switzerland, presented as a particularly democratic country, women gained the right to vote in 1971! In the US, the right to vote for black people was acquired in 1965.


As long as the working class and the popular strata believe that through the elections they will serve their own interests, they will remain chained of the bourgeois class, their political emancipation will be blocked. Of course the Communist Parties are “obliged” to work in parliaments in order to uncover exactly their bourgeois exploitative character. But only when the working masses believe in their power, in their ability that they have to get organized and rule themselves, only when they overcome their parliamentary illusions, they will be able to enforce radical changes for their profit. In parliament, decisions that in reality are taken elsewhere, outside of it, that are based on the economic domination of the bourgeois, are simply validated. The bourgeois state has at its disposal institutions and mechanisms of enforcing the domination of the bourgeois class (judges, police officers, army etc.) that their class orientation is not affected from the correlations in parliament.

Besides, historically it has been proved that within the bourgeois parliament, there cannot be formed political correlation that will express the general interests of working class and popular strata. Even in the theoretical occasion that something like that happens, the bourgeois class will not stay with crossed arms). History has shown examples that even reformist majorities got violently overthrown (e.g. Allende in Chile).

Some present the argument that, like in capitalism that the lawful action of the Communist Parties is permitted, in socialism the action of parties that express capitalists or other defenders of “open market” should be permitted.

This comparison cannot be, because the historical role of working class in relation to the bourgeois’ role, concerning the social progress, is different. With the consolidation of capitalism and the domination of bourgeois, this class ceases to be pioneer and emerging. It becomes reactionary, it survives only because it exploits the working class. It has a parasitic role in social production because it does not produce anything, but because it owns the means of production, it usurps the wealth that the workers produce.

The pioneer social force is the working class because it is the conveyor of the new productive relations, the communist ones. It is the class that produces the biggest part of social wealth, that in capitalism it does not own any means of production and that in its struggle for its own domination, it has nothing to lose, but its chains. In Socialism it’s not just one party in power, but the working class organized as the dominating class, led by its party.

Image
Sunday 3rd of December 1944. When the bourgeois power is in danger the bourgeois class does not hesitate to drown the people in blood. “The struggle of KKE during the decade 1940-1949, with the armed fight of EAM-ELAS on December of 1944 and DSE (1946-1949), constitutes the biggest offer of our Party to the working class and the poor popular strata, as well as its biggest contribution to the action of the international communist movement during the 20th century”. (From the introduction of the History Essay of KKE, Volume 2, 1946-1968).

The bourgeois “forget” that when bourgeois class took power it did not leave the feudal lords-aristocrats that it overthrew, safe and sound. Not only did it not permit them to form parties, but it also it also sent them the guillotine.

The defense of the open, public action of the Communist Parties in capitalism by the working class and the people, is in essence the defense of the political expression of the pioneer social force. In contrary, the defense of the existence of capitalist parties in Socialism, in a society that exploitation is abolished, and as a result the class that represents it, can only be realized as a setback and an obstacle of social development. As in capitalism today, not only is it not permitted but it would seem unheard of for parties that support the totalitarian (slavery) or the partial (serfdom) ownership of people by other people, to exist, i.e. the previous productive relations, in socialism it will be unheard of for parties that support and propagandize the exploitation of people by other people, the exploitive relations, to exist. This is how the comparison should be.

The position of the bourgeois democracy against the Communist Parties.

The working class is expressed by its own party, the Communist Party, that its own formation is a result of the maturing of the working class. The CP struggles for the working class to gain conscience of its historical mission, which is to abolish all kinds of exploitation and oppression and to lead the way into a classless society.

It is a lie that the bourgeois class generally lets the Communist Partiess to act undisturbed. It knows that they fight to overthrow it and when its domination is in danger, it takes harder measures against the Communist Parties. The history of the global communist movement and of KKE in Greece is full of persecutions against communists. Lawful, public action of the Communist Party is a conquest.

of the working class. In our country the democratic government of El.Venizelos in 1929 declared communism as a statutory offense and criminalized the communist ideology. KKE remained illegal for 27 years (1947-1974), the 20 of which were not during facist or dictatorship governments, but during “bourgeoisdemocratic” governments, years that were accompanied by terrorism, tortures, exiles, executions.
Bourgeois state against KKE.
Since its primary years of existence, KKE faced persecutions, class hatred of the bourgeois state. State violence does not only show its superiority in the correlation of forces, it mainly shows the fear of the bourgeois against the working class, the people. The bourgeois legislative grid against the workers movement is dated before the founding of KKE, when the socialist ideas started being appealing. It is constantly strengthened after the founding of the party in 1918.The law on the constitution of Committees on Public Security in each Region” ” of the government of Al. Papanastasiou in 1924,that the dictatorship of Pangalos in 1926 modified and used, the concentration camp of communist soldiers in Kalpaki, the “Idionym” of Venizelos in order to “Protect for now, but mainly for the future the social regime“, the forbiddance of the circulation of “Rizospastis” are characteristic examples. Thousands of communists convicted, martyred in prisons and exile of bourgeois government parliamentary or of dictatorship. KKE during the king’s and Metaxas dictatorship of the 4th of August 1936 took a big blow. State security could constitute the squealer “Temporary Leadership ” in the role of the leading body of the party that issued a “Rizospastis”with a content directed thereby. KKE was deprived of the important service of hundreds of cadres that the government of Metaxas gave to the Germans, even its general secretary of the Central Council Nikos Zahariadis.
After the liberation of Greece in 1944, the bourgeois forces resorted to murderous violence, they chose the bloodshed of the struggling people that were united around KKE, EAM and ELAS. During the armed struggle of KKE in 1946-1949, the state repression was shielded even more with the “3rd decree” in June 1946 and the voting of O.L.. 509/1947. The armed struggle highlighted the ethical greatness, the heroism, the contribution and sacrifice of thousands of communists, popular fighters. After the civil war, new heroic pages were written at the jails and exiles, the Military Courts, the firing squads, cladestinity and political refuge. New persecutions and sacrifices for thousands of communists at the purgatories of the soldier dictatorship in 1967-1974, at the dungeons of EAT-ESA, at the places of exile. But even after the junta, in times of democracy and legality, KKE faced employer violence and terrorism by the bourgeois democracy. A martyr of this struggle, Sotiria Vasilakopoulou, member of KNE, was murdered at the gates of the ETMA factory at 28/7/1980. KKE follows that road today, the one of class struggle, with consequences such as layoffs, persecutions and trials of communists and other fighters. Against the violence of the bourgeois class today the answer is: “We never did and we never will sign a declaration of repentance to the national and international bourgeois class”.

Let us not forget though that the defenders of parliamentarism and multiparty system, that until recently hypocritically presented EU as the apogee of democracy, hide that in a number of countries of the EU, Communist Parties and Youths, the communist symbols are forbidden by law. In Czech Republic, the Communist Youth was until recently illegal because, as the bourgeois court judged: “At its program it expresses the necessity to replace the private ownership at the means of production with social ownership” and that is a “crime” for capitalists! In Poland and elsewhere the use of communist symbols is forbidden, in Germany there is a law that forbids hiring communists to work for the bourgeois state, at the Baltics they forbid Communist Parties and praise the Nazi SS. EU has made its formal ideology the historically inaccurate and provocative identification of fascism and communism, the anti-communism.

But even in the occasion that the Communist Parties are legal, bourgeois class puts a lot of obstacles to the spread and promotion of their ideas and of course under no circumstances are they allowed to implement them. It is clear that for the bourgeois political system, the bourgeois state, the Communist Parties are their “Number One” opponent. For example, how many times has the KKE been attacked for its slogans, that compact political ideas, as “law is the right of the workers” but also its actions to defend the popular interests (strikes, organization of disobedience and indiscipline against the bourgeois poltcy etc) are at the verge of legality and ask from KKE to take oaths of submission to the bourgeois state? Besides, these are not just a matter of declarations for the bourgeoisie. How many times have we seen efforts to legally restrict and supress communist action (e.g. dismissal of members of KKE and KNE and pioneer fighters because they were ay the frontline of strikes. persecutions against members of KNE because they lead students’ mobilizations, persecutions of communists and other fighters for various mobilizations.

Besides the above, let us not forget that in the conditions of bourgeois democracy, the massive projection of the positions of the communists is objectively limited by socioeconomic conditions, as large-type complexes, electronic and printed media, publishers, internet etc. are under the control of the monopolies and the bourgeois state. Whatever means the KKE has (“Rizospastis”, “90.2”, etc.) to project its positions, the struggle of the labor movement are struck from every side from the bourgeois in order to be silenced (politically, economically, judicially with lawsuits etc.).

The screams that are occasionally heard on “KKE’s immunity” that it “moves on the limits of legality” and the like, prove that the constant aim of the bourgeois class is to achieve a crushing blow on the party of the working class by putting obstacles in on its relatively legal action, without leaving out the aim to integrate it on the bourgeois political system.

Even the formal rights stop for the workers in the workplaces.

The right of the working class to organize, although it is formally established, practically is blocked, while it is also limited institutionally.

For the bourgeois, even this formal democracy has no power in the workplace, inside the factory gate and company. The worker within the framework of parliamentarianism is “free” to vote for any party they want, to have any opinion they wish, formally they have the right to strike, but as soon as they stands up for themselves in the workplace, the employer is ready to crush them. There are maybe laws that allow the existence and action of trade unions and workers’ organizations, but these are only tolerable to the extent that they are manipulated and part of the network of assimilation of the working masses. In addition, there are laws that ensure labor rights, however, they are not actually applied or they are easily utilized to limit working rights to something “realistic” or “achievable” that is always determined by capitalist profitability. However, the moment that the working class fights for the contemporary workingpeoples’ needs that come into conflict with capitalist profitability, they are confronted by the multipronged attack of the employers and the bourgeois state. Besides, when the class struggle sharpens, when the workers’ struggles acquire tendencies to come into conflict with bourgeois domination, even minimal labor rights are abolished at once.

At the same time, the bourgeoisie also uses other methods in order to undermine the labor movement and to ensure the desired “class peace” in the workplaces. It forms a whole bribed stratum of workers, the labor aristocracy, representatives of which are promoted to the leadership of the labor movement. When needed, the bourgeoisie can also accomplish it by trampling upon the formal, legally protected correlation of forces in the trade union movement (e.g. deposing the elected leaderships etc.). In that way, the workers’ organizations are converted from defenders of the workers’ interests to defenders of the interests of the bourgeoisie, they become enemies of the workers, traitors inside the working class.

Image
The parliamentary group of the Nazi party in the German Parliament in 1930. The bourgeois pretend to “forget” that fascism arose from the bourgeois parliament. Hitler was elected to the Parliament, with the support and tolerance of the bourgeois political world. He was supported financially and politically not only by the German bourgeoisie, but also by American monopolies and British interests that sought profitable transactions and support from Germany against the USSR.

Regimes that suppress bourgeois democracy- the other side of bourgeois power.

However, bourgeois parliamentary democracy may not be in all the phases the “appropriate” form of management of bourgeois power. In times of difficulties, crises, fissures in the bourgeois system, there are many historical examples, as well as contemporary, when the bourgeoisie puts aside its “angelic face” and chooses to exercise its power through non-parliamentary regimes. Military dictatorships, fascism are all in the service of the capital and are just different forms of management. The changes and the differences in the mode of governance do not change neither the class nature of the economic relations or the class essence of the state. Namely, regimes presented as “anti-democratic” or as “democratic” serve the same class, the same system, that of the capitalist exploitative relations. For example, behind the “anti-parliamentary” rhetoric of the Nazi and fascist parties basically lies the need to confront more decisively the workers’ and people’s movement, to ensure order and stability in order to safeguard capitalist domination and the profitability of the monopolies.

These regimes suspend a wide range the formerly established freedoms and rights, which for the workers are rights won through blood, the product of hard class struggles. For the working class and its Party it means a wave of repression, a possible passage to illegality, imprisonments and persecutions, murders of militants, prohibition and restriction of workers’ demands and trade-union action etc. Their class nature cannot be obscured by the fact that within the framework of intra-bourgeois conflicts there is a restriction of rights for sections of the bourgeoisie, e.g. for political opponents, rival bourgeois parties etc. Intra-bourgeois conflicts can be savage when the contradictions of the bourgeois are very sharp. In Greece, and even within the framework of parliamentary governance, there have been times when the intra-bourgeois conflicts were so intense that there was bloodshed. For example, the conflict between the pro-venizelist and the anti-venizelist, in the 1910’s, or the “Trial of the Six” (1922), when the liberal group sent 6 prominent officials of the Popular Party, former prime ministers and ministers, to the firing squad in order to put the blame on them for the defeat in the Asia Minor in 1922. Global history is full of examples of anti-people regimes that were characterized by “emergency” measures to enforce order. Those kinds of regimes are usually temporary, and most of the times the transition to bourgeois parliamentary democracy is smooth and without serious consequences for a large number of their officials, which also proves the continuity of bourgeois power regardless of the form of governance. Those kinds of regimes have even been supported by other capitalist “democratic” states around the world. The example of the USA is characteristic. The country that is presented as the “land of the free”, a state-zenith of democracy, has in its record hundreds of antidemocratic actions, imperialist interventions, imposition and support of dictatorships, attempts to overthrow governments etc., actions that served its interests. This is the democracy of the capitalists.

However, even if the bourgeois liberties existed and were “fully” functioning, they would still be historically outdated. A chasm is separating them from worker’s democracy, the liberties and the rights under the conditions of the abolition of exploitation of man by man.

Image

IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM ©.

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/0 ... phony.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 03, 2017 5:36 pm

TRUTH AND LIES ABOUT SOCIALISM - Dictatorship of the Proletariat: A Higher form of Democracy

TRUTH AND LIES ABOUT SOCIALISM:
ON THE SOCIALIST POWER.
Central Council of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE).
Published by Synchroni Epochi, 2013.
Click here to read the book in pdf.

Image

PART II: THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT: A HIGHER FORM OF DEMOCRACY.

The leap that takes place during the socialist construction, i.e. during the transition from capitalism to communism, is qualitatively higher than any previous one, since communist relations, as non-exploitative, cannot be formed in capitalism. The political revolution is the precondition for these new relations to be imposed and dominate, i.e. the conquest of power by the working class and the establishment of its own state, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This is a basic difference in the transition to the communist socioeconomic formation in relation with the previous. In the framework of the transition from an exploitative socioeconomic formation to another, the new relations could be developed and dominate first in the confines of the previous socioeconomic formation and then, as the last part of this process, the class that was the bearer of the new relations struggled for and took power. This happened for example in relation to capitalism.

Capitalist relations were first developed and dominated within the confines of feudalism, which brought about an unavoidable conflict between the rising bourgeois class and the class of the feudalnobility that was declining. The great bourgeois revolutions completed the absolute domination of the bourgeoisie through the seizure of political power, which of course was necessary in order for the capitalist relations to dominate everywhere and become fully developed.

But, communist relations are non-exploitative relations. Only their preconditions are developed within capitalism. Their appearance and domination requires the abolition of capitalist ownership of the means of production, which can only be done after having overthrown capitalist power and its state.

Thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat has a ‘’double’’ duty. On the one hand to suppress and overcome the efforts of capitalists to retake the power, on the other to form and develop the new relations, a task that is longterm and includes the whole period of the socialist construction, which is the period of the social revolution.

The task of the revolutionary workers’ power is to deepen and expand the communist relations in production and distribution, to form the new communist consciousness, the new man. This task is complex and long-term and includes economic, political, cultural, educational activity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the guidance of the Communist Party.


The core of power and the character of the organs of power.

Revolutionary workers’ power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, expresses a higher form of democracy, having as a basic feature the active participation of the working class in the construction of the socialist society.

Democratic centralism is a fundamental principle in the formation and functioning of the socialist state the direction of the production unit, every social service. That is, the united will and action of society in the direction of socialist construction, the active participation in making and implementing decisions, the subordination of the will of the minority to the will of the majority, the ability to elect and recall the organs of power. Revolutionary workers’ power will be based on institutions that will be born from the revolutionary struggle of the working class and its allies. The bourgeois institutions will be replaced, after being overturned, by the new institutions of workers’ power.

The Communist Party of Greece through its resolutions has set some basic principles regarding the characteristics of the workers’ power, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The representatives in the organs of power will be elected and recalled (if necessary) by the assemblies of the workers in the production unit, decisions will be made, control will be exercised . The representatives for the intermediate institutions will be elected and recalled directly ; there will be indirect representation through the assemblies of the representatives of the highest organs of power (i.e. the representatives to the intermediate organs will elect the representatives to the highest organs of power). The representatives will not have privileges, they will have responsibilities and they will be accountable ‘’to those below’’.

The organs of power that are elected by the workers in the production units have as their tasks the specialization of the central planning, the implementation of the tasks of social production, the social services, the cultural development, the protection of the revolution. There, at the level of the production unit, the participation of the working class is established and ensured, from the ‘’bottom’’ to the ‘’top’’, as is the exercise of workers’ control, the criticism of decisions and decrees, complaints about arbitrary and subjective attitudes, bureaucratic attitudes, weaknesses and deficiencies that can appear during the socialist period.

The workers’ collectives are accountable and monitored in order to promote the collective decisions of the higher organs of the workers’ power, which have the overall responsibility of guidance, specifying the goals of each project that is decided on in the context of central planning. The effectiveness or otherwise of each project is associated with the ability to understand the scientific laws in order to produce for the expanded satisfaction of social needs. The effectiveness of the project is tested in life itself, by practical experience itself. It is confirmed by the participation of the working masses in the control and the management of power.

Image

Workers’ participation in the control and the management of the power is guaranteed by the reduction of working time, which enables the development of the cultural and educational level of the workers. Besides, the dictatorship of the proletariat means just that: The state of the workers is based on the organization of the working masses and their participation in the management, the organisation of the production and all services, the control of the administrative machinery, planning and its implementation.

With special provisions, it the participation in the organs of power for sections of the population who are not in the process of the production will also be ensured. For example, young men and women who are still out of production because they are in the educational process will take part in the election of representatives through the educational units. In a similar manner the participation of the non-working women, the pensioners, will be guaranteed etc.

The highest organ of workers’ power is an organ of workers. It legislates and administers at the same time, within its framework there is a division between legislative, executive, supervisory and disciplinary powers. It is not a parliament. The representatives that participate are not permanent but subject to recall, they don’t have financial or other benefits, they are not cut off from production, from their work, but they are detached for the duration of their term.

On the basis of the new relations of production, social ownership, central planning, workers’ control, a new revolutionary constitution and legislation is formed to correspond to these new social relations and defend them. Similarly the entire legal system, all the legal establishment of the new social relations is also formed. A new judicial system is established, which is based on revolutionary popular institutions of justice. The new courts are under the direct responsibility of the organs of the workers’ power. They consist of people’s judges that will be elected and recalled by the people itself, and by a permanent judicial staff that will be accountable to the institutions of workers’ power.

The revolutionary workers’ power replaces all the old mechanisms of administration that receives with new ones, corresponding to the character of the proletarian state.

The new organs of the revolutionary protection and defence are based on the workers’ and peoples’ participation, but also on permanent professional personnel. In place of the bourgeois army and the repressive forces new institutions are created on the basis of the armed revolutionary struggle in order to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to defend the revolution and socialist construction.

Image

Historical experience of the USSR.

The new state power that emerged from the October Revolution had to face a lot of problems and complex conditions; the working class was a minority within a population of farmers that were in a state of political and cultural backwardness. It was from the very first moment encircled by the counter-revolutionary activity and imperialist attack. A huge part of the vanguard of the working class was lost because of the imperialist intervention and the civil war. Initially, it had to utilize sections of the old bureaucracy and bourgeois specialists in sectors of the economy, production and administration, while the kulaks (the bourgeoisie in the villages) maintained great power in the countryside; they even had the control of the rural soviets. The establishment and stabilization of soviet power was not an easy or quick task.

The new power was based on the institutions that were borne from its revolutionary struggle. The institutions of socialist power were the soviets, the councils of the workers representatives, the representatives of military and afterward the farmers’ soviets, hence the name Soviet Union.

The new state that was constructed was the revolutionary workers’ power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Based on the social ownership of the concentrated means of production and on the cooperative of peasants from the 1930’s onwards, it expressed the interests of the majority of the exploited that overthrew the power of the minority of the exploiters. The dictatorship of the proletariat proved to be a superior form of democracy, since workers’ power led the working masses into participation, control and administration of the power and of the social life in general, it drew the masses from the sidelines. Through the organization of power in the production unit, the working class was able to develop organization and discipline. Through participation in the control and administration of the production unit, there had been steps in order to change the consciousness, in order to put the social interest above the individual.

Apart from the institutions of the workers’ power, the soviets, a vast number of mass organizations were also developed; trade unions, cultural, educational, women’s, youth, where the majority of the population was organized and participated.

The direct participation of workers took place until 1936 through the nuclei of the workers’ power at the factory, the production unit, the village, but also through the function of a series of mass organizations. During the procedures for the approval of significant state laws, i.e. the constitutional amendments, assemblies of the nuclei of the workers’ power were held, where the workers expressed their opinion and, through voting, their position.

The direct participation of workers was accompanied by the indirect election in the representative bodies as was established in the first Constitution of the USSR in 1924. The representatives were accountable and the collective unit had the right to recall them and elect others in their position. The indirect electoral representation ensured the will and participation of workers in the institutions of the soviet power. In that way the will of the majority was established.

The soviets were not only responsible for the decision making but also for their application. During the assemblies, the nuclei of the workers’ power discussed the central and particular plans of the branches, the decisions that they made, they implemented them as working organs, with delegates that were not cut off from production.

Image

In the Constitution of 1936, direct electoral representation was established through geographical electoral wards (and not through the production unit). As it is stated in the Resolution of the 18th Congress of the KKE: “The critical approach to these changes focuses on the need to study further the functional downgrading of the production unit as the nucleus of organisation of workers’ power, due to the abolition of the production unit principle and of the indirect election of delegates through congresses and assemblies. We need to study its negative impact on the class composition of the higher state organs and on the application of the right of recall of delegates (which according to Lenin constitutes a basic element of democracy in the dictatorship of the proletariat).”

After the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 and under the weight of more general weaknesses, a deviation, a retreat in the Party’s perception was expressed, regarding the class-oriented revolutionary character of the state and the rejection of the scientific law for the continuation of the class struggle during socialist construction.

Nevertheless, in the USSR the institutions’ functioning expressed an unprecedented participation of the masses in political action. According to statistical data of 1977, the local organs of state-power (i.e. the soviets of representatives) were more than 50,000 all over the country. In these soviets there were more than 2,200,000 elected representatives, namely around 1% of total population of the Soviet Union. It is also estimated that within 41 years, from the Constitution of 1936, more than 25 million people participa- ted in the soviets. In addition, it is estimated that in the organs of people’s control, at the production units, the services and the kolkhozes (production cooperatives) were elected every 2 years at the workers’ assemblies and that about 9.2 million workers participated in these organs. Comparing to this, the bourgeois parliamentary democracy seems like a joke…

In the soviet constitution, despite any criticism that may be made, the nature of the organs was safeguarded. For example, even in the Constitution of 1977 (a period in which the opportunist turn of the CPSU was already a fact and there are serious problems in its strategic and the socialist construction), article 104 described the non-professional nature for the elected delegates and their exclusion from privileges: “Deputies shall exercise their powers without discontinuing their regular employment or duties”. In addition, article 107 specified the obligation of the deputies to report on their work and the possibility to be recalled; “Deputies shall report on their work and on that of the Soviet to their constituents, and to the work collectives and public organisations that nominated them. Deputies who have not justified the confidence of their constituents may be recalled at any time by decision of a majority of the electors in accordance with the procedure established by law.”

Image

However, in that process there were some weaknesses. The procedure of the socialist construction constantly creates new problems that seek new solutions, and this is when the ability of the workers’ power is judged. First of all, is judged the ability of the CP to lead in accordance with the scientific laws.

In the Soviet Union, the legacy of the old social system weigh heavy, as the new one Assembly of women in a village of the Soviet Union. 1920. Soviet power had been proved a superior form of democracy. It drew the masses from the sidelines and led them to participation, control and administration. 44 emerged from its bowels For example, from the first years of the social construction problems of detachment from the interests of the working class arose re employees of the state mechanism and especially by those who came from the old, tsarist state mechanism.

The adoption of the thesis concerning the “state of the whole people” (consolidated in the constitutional revision of 1977) cancelled out the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat as workers’ power, rejected the vanguard role of the working class as the bearer of communist relations.

The sharpening of the problems in soviet power was a consequence of the weakening of the socialist economy through the adoption of the market reforms (q.v. first part of the publication “Truths and Lies About Socialism”), which led to the reinforcement of the individual and group interests vis-a-vis the overall interests of society. As a result, the forces that had an interest in the overthrow of socialism and the restoration of capitalism gained strength.

This development influenced the structures of power and the workers’ control which had attained a formal character. In the decade of the 1980s, through perestroika, which was the final attack by the counter-revolution, the soviet system degenerated into a bourgeois parliamentary organ with a division of the executive and legislative functions, a permanence of office holders, an undermining of the right to recall, high remuneration, etc. I.e. everything negative that was developed was an element of the forms of the bourgeois power.

Image

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/08 ... alism.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 11, 2017 11:45 am

"Our co-workers are executed in cold blood": PAME denounces new occupational murders in Greece

"Our co-workers are executed in cold blood" points out a recent statement issued by the Executive Secretariat of the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) in Greece, regarding the new occupational "accidents" in the country.

It must be noted that on August 1st, two workers were killed and two were severely injured during work inside a biological waste treatment shaft in the town of Skala, in Laconia, Peloponnese. A 51-year old worker was cleaning the shaft when he started having breathing problems and called for help. A 37-year old Greek rushed to his assistance and jumped in the pit but he also felt unwell. Two more men, a 66-year old and a 22-year old who jumped in the pit also suffered from respiratory problems. Furthermore, two firemen and one policeman who participated in the efforts to save the men were also treated for breathing problems.

Other recent victims of occupational murders include a 43-year old fishery worker in Magnisia, central Greece, as well a worker at the Corfu airport.

"The worker isn't a number in statistics", writes the PAME statement and continues: "These colleagues will not go back to their families. They can't anymore dream and struggle for a better world and a decent life for their children".

"Capital kills. It does not care about the life of the workers. Above all, it has one god, the profit. That is vefiried by the 6,515 occupational "accidents" that took place only in 2016, 73 of which were fatal".

"It means that it is cheaper (for the employers) to have the workers killed, as long as they do not take the necessary measures for their safety", stresses out the PAME statement and adds: "The occupational murders bear a political seal. They are premeditated. They are the antiworkers policies which sweep the labor rights, which increase exploitation in the working places, with endless 12-hours long labor in miserable conditions, without any measures of hygiene and security, with hunger wages, under the terrorism of the employer...".


The statement of the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) strikes against the current SYRIZA government, as well as the previous ones: "All the New Democracy, PASOK governments, as well as the current SYRIZA-ANEL one, offered with their laws a free field for the activities of business interests, they offered free and flexible labor. They removed whatever "prevented" their profitability. They handed over (public) Health to the private capital and the working class is paying a very high price."

PAME demands the legal punishment of the employer-contractor of the biological waste treatment shaft in Skala, as well as compensation to the families of the murdered and injured workers. Stating that "the life and health of the working people is more valuable", PAME also presents a list of demands to the government and calls the working class people to invigorate their fight for their rights.

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/08 ... -cold.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 15, 2017 6:49 pm

Who is to blame for Greece's disastrous wildfires?

Firefighters in Greece battle wildfires northeast of Athens for a third day trying to prevent a blaze that scorched thousands of hectares of pine forest from spreading further. The fire near Athens started in Kalamos, a coastal holiday spot some 45 km (30 miles) northeast of the capital, and spread to three more towns, damaging dozens of homes. A state of emergency was declared in the area.

On Monday 14 August, firefighters battled more than 90 forest fires across Greece, an outbreak fed by dry winds and hot weather that saw blazes burning near Athens, in the Peloponnese, and on the Ionian islands of Zakynthos and Kefalonia.

ΚΚΕ: Both SYRIZA and New Democracy share responsibility for their policies over forest protection, land commercialization, privatization of firefighting services.

Communicating with the Citizens Protection Minister Nikos Toskas, the parliamentary representative of the Communist Party of Greece Thanasis Pafilis asked for measures in order to combat wildfires, while a KKE group headed by MP Giannis Giokas visited the area of Varnavas in Attica.

In a statement issued on Monday, the KKE mentions: "The existence of a possible arson plan based on the commercialization of the land, not only does not decrease, but increases the responsibilities of the SYRIZA-ANEL government which, following the policy of the ND-PASOK governments, maintains and strengthens the under-funding and the huge deficiencies in the sector of forest protection and firefighting. As a result of that, the "fight" between the SYRIZA-ANEL government and New Democracy over the burned land, cannot hide their guilt for their "incendiary" policy". (Source: 902.gr).

Michalis Michael, Firefighter (retired): "All governments dismantled forest protection".

In an interview with Real FM radio, the retired firefighter and KKE member Michalis Michael, underlined that the state authorities should be ready to combat the weather conditions, the many fronts and any arson plan but it is not because the policy of the governments is to shrink spending on fire protection.

As Michael said, since 2009 and each following year, 120 million Euros have been reduced from the Firefighting Service budget and added that hundreds of firefighting vehicles are stationary due to faults, because the necessary credits do not exist.

Moreover, he said that the force of the Firefighting Service has been decreased by 4,000 seats in the permanent, while the aim is the privatization that has already taken place with air-firefighting and commercialization, the sale of fire safety as it has been done with Fraport, as well as of the privatized road axes.

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/08 ... trous.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 25, 2017 12:45 pm

VULGAR ANTICOMMUNISM BY THE EU: They equate Marx's "The Capital" with... Hitler's "Mein Kampf"!

Image

The EU and the Estonian Presidency of the European Council have reached the ultimate limits of political vulgarity and anticommunist distortion of History. The- organised by the Estonian EU Presidency- despicable "conference" in Tallinn proved its role as an unhistorical, hideous forum where the participants tried to equate communism with nazism.

Among the many unhistorical references and efforts to distort the historical truth, the most horrible one came from Goran Lindblad of Sweden, President of the so-called "Platform of European Memory and Conscience". In his speech, Lindblad refered to the importance that the condemnation of all the "totalitarian regimes" has, and added that: "communist ideology in itself was bad, not that something had gone wrong when it was implemented. “Both the texts of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and Karl Marx include it, the idea to use terror to keep dictatorships in power,” Lindblad, a member of the Swedish Moderate Party, said.


For the record, other participants in this despicable, anticommunist "conference" were: Estonian MEP Tunne Kelam (IRL/EPP), Dr. Olaf Mertelsmann of the University of Tartu, also include Dr. Anna Kaminsky, director of the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship in Germany, Andres Kasekamp, professor at the University of Toronto, Igor Casu, professor at the State University of Moldova, and Dr. Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefanczyk of the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity in Warsaw.

Image
Despicable anticommunists: Tunne Kelam (left) and Goran Lindblad.

* * *

KKE: The EU's vulgar anticommunism has no bottom.


"The vulgar anticommunism of the EU has no bottom" mentions a statement by the Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and continues "the identification of the unprecedented work of Karl Marx "The Capital" with the nazist manifesto "Mein Kampf" of Hitler, was among the vulgar things that were said in the anticommunist fiesta in Estonia".

In another part of the statement, the KKE writes: "This is the proof that the EU constantly strengthens and process her anticommunism, the so-called equation between communism-nazism, which in the end of day justifies the hideous monster of nazism".

The KKE attacks the conservative, opposition New Democracy Party for participating "in this anticommunist drain", but also blames the SYRIZA-ANEL government for its hypocrisy. More specifically, the KKE statement writes:

"The SYRIZA-ANEL government cannot present itself as justified for its decision not to participate in Estonia, not only because it has already legitimize it by its presence in the respective last year's fiest (in Bratislava), but also because it acquits the EU for her anticommunism, which goes hand by hand with the attack on the workers-people's rights.".

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/0 ... quate.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 31, 2017 1:13 pm

Kostas Papadakis - The equation of Communism with Nazism is unacceptable and provocative

By Kostas Papadakis*.

Image

Article first published in the “Efimerida ton Syntakton” newspaper, 22/08/2017, reproduced from inter.kke.gr.

The anticommunist conference-provocation of the Estonian Presidency of the EU is no bolt from the blue. Similar anti-communist events being organized in the framework of the so-called "European day of remembrance for the victims of totalitarian regimes", as the EU with enormous budgets is trying to establish the 23rd of August. This is an orchestrated campaign that aims to slander socialism, rewrite history, and to unacceptably and provocatively equate communism with the monster of fascism. I.e. equating Nazism with the forces that in historical terms smashed it.

A basic goal is to conceal the fact that fascism is a form of capital's power in specific conditions. In Germany, Nazism constituted the ideal form to support capital in the conditions of the military preparations for the conquest of new markets, in the conditions of a very deep capitalist crisis, of the rise of revolutionary ideas, of the increase of the prestige of the KPD and the USSR. It was supported politically and financially by sections of German capital, it identified with monopolies (Krupp, I.G.Farben, Siemens etc.), it collaborated with the colossi of the "democratic" capitalist states (General Motors, General Electric, ITT, Ford, IBM).

Nazism-fascism met its deadliest and most determined opponent in the socialist society of the USSR, which was established by the October Revolution 100 years ago. The 20 million dead soviets was the bloody proof of this deadly confrontation between socialism and Nazism. The communists in every country were the most determined and combative anti-fascist force, with the role of the KKE and EAM in our country being a characteristic example of this.
The anti-communist campaign of the EU, of this capitalist union, goes hand in hand with the offensive against the workers'-people's rights and has been going on for many years.

The wretched anti-communist memorandum of the Council of Europe in 2005 lent impetus to these anti-historical efforts. However it did not gain the necessary majority in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that would have made the measures that accompanied it compulsory for the member-states.
Through the decisive contribution and mobilization of the KKE, it met with the broad and mass condemnation of the Greek people and other peoples of Europe, of trade unions and other mass organizations, of public figures. The then governments of Greece, Portugal and Cyprus expressed their intention not to support it. The majority of MPs, MEPs of the Greek bourgeois parties stated their opposition.

There followed the anti-communist resolutions in the European Parliament in 2006 and particularly the resolution of April 2009 entitle "European consciousness and totalitarianism", it should be noted that no Greek MEP voted in favour of it. There then followed other anti-communist proclamations and decisions of the EU.
Beyond the declarations and resolutions, practical anti-communist measures are being pushed forwards in a number of EU member-states (e.g. Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania) as well as in countries connected to it (e.g. Ukraine). We are referring specifically to the persecution, prosecution, and condemnation of communists, bans on the activities of the CPs, bans on communist symbols etc.

A self-evident consequence of the anti-communist campaign is the justification, prettification and exoneration of Nazism-fascism and its atrocities. In these countries, honours are bestowed on, pensions and privileges granted to the Nazi collaborators and their political descendants are being promoted.

This year, the EU generously financed the "House of European History" in order to promote its anti-historical anti-communist proselytizing while for years it has been organizing the anti-communist programme "Europe for citizens" in order to slander socialism, with the involvement of local municipalities, NGOs etc.

Several forces utilized the opportunity provided by the anti-communist fiesta in Estonia to rear their heads. Primitive and crude anti-communism, in which ND plays the leading role, followed by PASOK and POTAMI, together with of course Nazi Golden Dawn, copies all the propaganda with aim of slandering socialism, the USSR, with the aim of falsifying the history of the peoples.


The absence of the government from this year's anti-historical anti-communist fiestas in Estonia cannot conceal the fact that the forces of SYRIZA in the movement are propagandizing-overtly or covertly-the equation of Stalin with Hitler, are playing a leading role in anti-soviet and anti-communist propaganda, while they hide or distort the relationship between capitalism and fascism.

A characteristic example of the government's hypocrisy is that fact that a representative of the government has attended similar anti-communist events last year in Bratislava, something the KKE had denounced, while a few weeks ago, on July 15th, "Avgi" published a vulgar article propagandizing the equation between communism and fascism.

The people's experience proves that escalation of anticommunism is a precursor for new anti-people measures and restrictions on people's rights, a precursor for the launching of a new round of imperialist wars. The struggle for the abolition of the anti-communist persecution and bans, the struggle against anti-communism, for the satisfaction of the contemporary needs of the people and their rights, is integrally linked to the struggle for workers' power, for the working class and popular strata to be emancipated from the shackles of capitalist exploitation and the imperialist unions, for the peoples to become the owners of the wealth they produce.

Whatever they try to do, history is not going to be rewritten with blue, green or black letters. It has been written with the blood of the millions of militants and communists who fought Nazism-fascism. It is in the hands of the peoples today to join forces with the communists in order to consign capitalism, which creates poverty, wars, fascism-Nazism and its nostalgists, to the dustbin of history.

* Member of the CC and MEP of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).
Αναρτήθηκε από In Defense of Communism

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/0 ... unism.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10588
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Greece and the KKE

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 09, 2017 4:33 pm

PAME: The anti-workers attack across Europe is unified, lasting and continuous

On the occasion of the visit of French President Macron to Greece, PAME issued the following statement:

The “growth” of the profits of business groups, the competitiveness of capital requires the attack on workers’ rights and gains.
Therefore, irrespective of the country and the political label of each government, European Union and the political parties of the capital promote anti-workers’ reforms that target to reduce wages, pensions etc., and at the same time to put obstacles (if not to totally ban) in the Collective Action and Demands of Workers, in the trade union rights and freedoms of the working class.
Either with memorandums or without, the antiworkers’ attack across Europe is unified, lasting and continuous.
At the time when the SYRIZA government of Greece repeats the fairy tail of the “Fair Growth”, utilizing the visit of French President Macron, it is important to look at some indicative measures that are promoted in France, against which the working class of France goes on strike on September 12.
In the name of facing unemployment, the government of Macron promotes the reduction of compensations in dismissals.
Servicesare being reformed to the most reactionary for the workers, e.g. reduction of the time limits for the workers’ appeals against the employers, as well as which dismissals will be classified as “fair” or “unfair”.
At the same time, the reforms give companies more power to adjust working hours and wages to market conditions on the basis of agreements between employers and workers which are validated by a simple majority.
As it happens also in Greece, it is paved the way for further undermining of Collective Agreements through the essential abolition of Collective Bargaining in businesses which employ up to 50 employees. In these enterprises the employers will create “workers’ associations” to sign contracts “freely”, without the workers’ trade unions to be involved. This is the continuation of previous antiworkers’ reform which already allowed business contracts to be signed with worse terms – for the workers- than the sectoral agreements.

All these antiworkers’ measures come after the announcement of the French government to reduce taxation for businesses from 33% to 25%.
We call the working class and its trade unions to prepare our response in workplaces and sectors against the antiworkers’ policy and the attack of the capital which is implemented unified by the governments of all colors across Europe.
We express our solidarity with the workers’ strike in France on September 12.

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/09 ... urope.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

Post Reply