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Theses of the CC of KKE in view of the Party’s 16th Congress

 

A. Developments in the international imperialist system

B. Developments in Greece

C. The political proposal of kke regarding the anti-imperialist anti-monopoly democratic front

D. Report on party action

E. The party’s tasks during the period to come

 

The CC of the Communist Party of Greece hereby submits the text of its Draft Theses for pre-congress discussion in view of the Party’s 16th Congress. The text consists of a report on the Party’s action during a period when the most reactionary, anti-popular measures of the past 25 years were set in motion, when capitalist barbarity struck blows against the peoples of Europe and the entire Earth, and when the hotspots of imperialist war and violence increased in number.

 

It seeks to develop a lively, responsible dialogue with the active participation of KKE and KNE members, but also with thoughts, observations and proposals from its friends and followers, from cooperating forces, and from every sociopolitical element of good will.

 

On the basis of developments, the 16th Congress is called upon to elaborate KKE’s political proposal in greater detail regarding the composition of the Anti-imperialist Anti-monopoly Democratic Front of struggle (AADF), which provides an answer to the legitimate questions and concerns that trouble the broader forces in our society:

  • How to bring as many social and political forces as possible into the ranks of resistance and opposition to the monopolies and imperialism.
  • What factors could have a positive effect on the adverse correlation of forces, so that barriers are raised to the anti-popular measures and options.
  • But the most basic questions which KKE is interested in replying to are:
  • How can a popular militant majority be created, within the context of a programme and with targets for struggle, that will be capable of bringing success to the people’s great effort to overturn the power of the monopolies once and for all, in order to establish the power of the people, the only power capable of charting a different course of development for Greek society, exclusively in the interests of the people, with the leading role in these developments being played by the people themselves?
  • What is the role of KKE in this critical issue?
  • How and with what criterion will international alliances be sought, with bilateral and multilateral agreements drawn up for economic collaboration and common action against a common adversary, imperialism, so that the Greek people can deal with the imperialist counterattack and the machinery of intervention; so that the economy of the working people can be promoted from better positions; so that Greece becomes a factor in the struggle for peace in the region and for the right of every people to choose its own path to social development, in opposition to the vested interests of imperialist associations?

 

A. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL IMPERIALIST SYSTEM

 

A united front of struggle against capitalist restructuring, the «new NATO doctrine» and the imperialist associations, with no illusions that an imperialist war could be of a limited, regional, local nature

 

1. During the period of time that has elapsed since the 15th Congress, imperialist aggressiveness has evolved at an ever faster pace and in ever greater depth: in the economy, in labour relations, in social policy, in the political system, and in the ideological and cultural domain. New, crueler conditions of exploitation are being created for the workforce, with new systems of employment, widespread privatisation and the commercialisation of social security, health, education, sport and culture.

 

The rapid growth of new technologies and computer systems has provided new possibilities for adopting the neoliberal administration policy more widely and for creating a united reactionary, aggressive political block of neo-liberal and social-democratic parties that have appeared as poles for attracting centre-left and centre-right coalition governments, in some cases cooperating with forces that have come from the transmutation of communist parties or from groups that split off from them after the victory of the counter-revolution.

 

The separation into oppressor states and oppressed nations has been reproduced and sharpened today. Relations of domination and submission have become more acute and more oppressive. In the capitalist associations, there can be no equality among member-states. The relevant declarations have proved to be a hoax and an illusion for the peoples. The more acute the clash in the socialisation of production on the one hand, and in the concentration of the means of production and social wealth on the other, the greater the unequal development will be within the framework of capitalist integration.

 

Capitalist restructuring today, in one form or another, extends throughout the capitalist world, irrespective of the degree of development of the individual countries or regions. Capitalist relations in the former socialist countries have developed considerably. Social gains have been abolished or are on the way to being eliminated. Capitalist restructuring in Latin America, Asia, certain countries in Africa, and former colonies has exerted a strong influence.

 

The role of interstate monopoly arrangements has become stronger and more important, to the detriment of the state monopoly arrangements on a national level, which have nevertheless retained their role, and indeed function as a support and necessary supplement to the former.

 

Within the framework of the European Union (EU), all the procedures for full market deregulation and tough competition between monopoly corporations have been worked out. Large-scale buyouts and mergers are being engineered, mainly in the fields of telecommunications, energy, the petroleum industry, the transportation means manufacturing industry, the transport industry, and the financial and investment sector. The goal is to reinforce the position of the European monopolies in competition with the US especially, but also with Japan. As a result of these developments, the EU has improved its penetration into the US and Asian markets. New markets for EU penetration are the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Black Sea region. However, its share of total investments in these regions remains low.

 

2. In place of the International Law that was established in the post-war period – under pressure from the power of the socialist system, the international labour movement and the anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples – a new Law is being imposed, the basic expression of which is the so-called new doctrine of NATO, which seeks full legitimisation for open imperialist intervention, war and raids against independent countries, the re-drawing of borders, and the creation of protectorate states on pretexts fabricated by imperialism. The fight against so-called terrorism has replaced the anti-revolutionary policy of the so-called protection of human rights used against the socialist countries in the 1970s.

 

NATO has become a global terrorist. It has subjugated and taken over the United Nations, which was already under its thumb. It has also taken over the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is likewise acting within the framework of imperialist policy. For the first time, international imperialism managed to push the UN completely aside and waged the criminal war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The «Stability Agreement for Southeastern Europe» obliged the Balkan countries to intervene in the internal affairs of their neighbours, to re-draw borders. The new NATO doctrine and the Stability Pact are becoming the primary factors for accelerating capitalist restructuring and the realignment of the political system so as to adapt it to the modern aggression and interests of imperialism. The political and economic role of NATO is being expanded and its action is being extended to North Africa and the Middle East.

 

Existing international and regional organisations are being adjusted to accommodate NATO activities. NATO control over national armies is increasing.

 

The rapid deployment forces that are being created promote NATO order and security, and have become official accessories to NATO strategy. At the same time, the institution of the mercenary has been enhanced so as to create self-sufficient military forces, substantially under the control of NATO and of the imperialist associations.

 

The new military doctrine of the USA, which provides for the so-called «national anti-missile shield», poses an extreme threat to international peace. This development will spark a new sharpening of imperialist conflicts. It will lead to the cancellation of agreements limiting nuclear armaments, to the growth of military-industrial complexes, to the escalation and further proliferation of nuclear arms, to the increased militarisation and NATOisation of international relations. More than 17,674 atomic bombs are stockpiled today throughout the world. Their force is equal to half a million bombs like those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

The problem of nuclear weapons, which early in the 1990s looked as though it were becoming a secondary one, has re-appeared on the agenda today: in the war against Yugoslavia, bombs reinforced with depleted uranium were used in the Kosovo region, and other dangerous substances were used on Serb territory. In the domain of the war industry, large-scale privatisations and mergers are being promoted. Powerful military-industrial complexes are being created with a strong presence in the international field. Already, the imperialist associations that have been formed in the Americas, in Europe and Asia are proceeding with militarisation.

 

The EU, apart from being the watchdog of plutocratic interests in Europe, is turning into a global watchdog and competing with the USA for a leading role. On the basis of the Common Foreign and Defence Policy (CFDP) and the Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP), mechanisms are being created to develop this role: the Euro-army (50,000-60,000 in the first phase) for handling «crises» in a military way, the repressive mobile European police force (1000-5000), the Euro-police, the machinery of the correctional system, and the Schengen Treaty. All these represent a great threat to the democratic rights of peoples and migrants. The system of informers and electronic surveillance is being reinforced. The militarisation of the EU does not stand in the way of its cooperation with NATO. It does, however, harbour the danger that the conflicts between them will be sharpened, particularly by the ambitions of German, French and British imperialism.

 

The fact that the modern options of imperialist policy have been imposed without the anticipated resistance by the peoples, the internationalisation of the class struggle or international solidarity is due above all to the decline of the international balance of forces to the detriment of the peoples after the victory of the counter-revolution in Europe, and the repercussions from the international crisis in the labour, communist, anti-imperialist movement, which are still strong to this day.

 

The conclusion is that the peoples must be vigilant, they must not be complacent, because the danger of a generalised clash of global significance continues to exist and, from one point of view, is becoming more intense.

 

Conditions are being created for the abrupt sharpening of all the contradictions in the international capitalist system, and the aggravation of phenomena of corruption and stagnation

 

3. On the one hand, the socialisation of production is more intense, and on the other, the means of production and social wealth are being concentrated in ever fewer hands. Monopoly profit is increasing as is the degree of exploitation of the workers and the peoples.

 

Productive forces are being destroyed and downgraded, particularly human resources. Unemployment, hunger, poverty and destitution are growing by leaps and bounds. The wave of migration is growing. Social crime and drug addiction are mushrooming. Millions of people on earth are at the mercy of natural disasters, deprived of the most elementary protection or ability to defend themselves.

 

The contradiction between the potential for social well-being opened out by progress in science and technology, and discoveries in the field of genetics on the one hand, and their capitalist exploitation on the other, is becoming ever more manifest. At the same time, it is clear that capitalism is giving a special boost to the sectors of science that can offer financial, political and ideological gains to big capital. Capitalism is indifferent to, or consciously ignores, the fields of science and their applications that could improve people’s material and cultural living conditions. The enormous belts of poverty and disease, the inequities in the dissemination and application of technological achievements among different countries, both regionally and internally, are characteristic indicators of the class nature of development and of a system that is growing old, with the tendency to stagnation and corruption.

 

Despite the efforts and means used by capitalist power to intervene in the depth and extent of the crisis, in the forced restoration of the disturbed ratios of capitalist reproduction, it cannot overcome the crises and their repercussions. This has made capitalism more barbaric and aggressive. The objective conditions of the more generalised existing crisis will also create the objective features of a nationwide crisis in one or more countries, sooner in some and later in others.

 

The intra-imperialist contradictions in Southeastern Europe, in Eurasia, and the Middle East. The Balkan powder-keg

 

4. Intra-imperialist conflicts are now going through a new phase of aggravation over the distribution of markets and the maintenance or conquest of global primacy. However, despite the competition among themselves, the imperialist forces are united in their intervention in Eurasia, in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, in the Middle East, and in North Africa, objects of on-going negotiations between the most powerful imperialist forces, the US, the UK, France, Germany and Italy.

 

Interstate monopoly agreements and arrangements reflect the specific correlation of forces among the three centres (US-EU-Japan), for a greater or lesser period of time, in favour of the leading imperialist countries within their associations, but also in relation to the less developed or dependent countries. Among the most significant and increasingly bitter conflicts is the problem of the debt that burdens more than 100 countries, as well as the effort to shift the manifestations of the economic crisis from the leading powers to the periphery.

 

There are also the problems of water resources management, the destruction of the environment that has recently brought about dangerous climate changes, the waves of migration, the slave trade in human lives, the capitalist application of the achievements of biomedicine, genetics, and the use of genetically modified products, etc.

 

Some of the former socialist countries in the Balkans are characterised by political instability; their primary features are a negative rate of development, the stagnation or decline of their industrial production, their balance of trade deficit, the destruction and shrinking numbers of their productive forces and the sharp decline in their peoples’ standard of living.

 

In the Balkan region, the main ambition of the imperialists is to create protectorate states, to carve up the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and to reduce or abolish any barriers to investment on colonial terms.

 

The situation along the Greek borders is particularly alarming, with the increase of irredentism in Albania and destabilising tendencies in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The Balkan Peninsula is still a powder-keg. The dangers are heightened by the fact that the Greek government continues to be a steadfast partner and facilitator of the imperialist state of affairs in the region.

 

An integral feature of the EU is the existence of «axes» and «counter-axes», which are upset and alternated according to the conflicts between the leading imperialist forces and are today focused on the discussion about whether the EU will develop into a federation with a «European government» and European bodies, or into a federation of nation-states. The conflict is evolving between Germany, which is in a dominant position, France and Britain. In reality, both viewpoints move within the logic of a Europe that will be integrated politically under the leadership of a hard core, around which concentric circles will be created. The so-called enhanced cooperation is being promoted, according to which the hard core of the dominant forces will decide on behalf of the others.

 

The strong imperialist powers headed by the US, together with the EU bodies, are scheming and creating «alliances» with former socialist countries under their control, with a view to encircling Russia and any countries that aspire to a leading position in the imperialist system. These forces want to stabilise capitalism in Russia, but they do not want it to become a leading power in the imperialist system.

 

In the cogs of imperialist plans and the competition between the dominant forces there is also the Cyprus question and the accession process for the membership of Turkey in the EU. The imperialist powers, with an eye on the Turkish market and on its strategic position and role, are prepared to sidestep issues that have in the past been raised hypocritically as prerequisites for Turkish membership in the EU. The procedure for Cypriot membership in the EU is associated with the imposition of a confederal solution, which would constitute a form of partition, contrary to UN resolutions. The imperialist powers are taking advantage of economic and political schemes, and the antagonisms between the ruling classes and governments of Greece and Turkey to give the impression that the differences between the two countries are being settled. Their aim, however, is to exploit both countries in their expansionist and infiltrating plans in the Balkans and in the Black Sea region. The agreement signed in Madrid within the framework of NATO, and in Helsinki, touches upon Greek sovereign rights in the Aegean. It is associated with the plans to Natoise and Americanise the Aegean Sea.

 

Although the sharpening of the conflict between the imperialist powers and the dependent countries is not manifested in the same way for all, it can contribute to the rallying together of the peoples, and to the formation of local or regional alliances against the imperialist associations. The conflicts are becoming more internationalised, with a growing number of countries that, objectively speaking, have an interest in opposing and breaking with the international organisations and the arrangements imposed by them.

 

The working people in the dominant imperialist countries must respond by forming a united, common front with the working people in dependent countries and regions. Since there is a common adversary, its strategy against them should be a common one. Special responsibility for international solidarity against these associations falls on the labour and generally on the popular movement in the developed capitalist countries, so that the efforts to promote the myth of the classless division of «north-south», «rich-poor» countries will not succeed.

 

The contradictions inherent in the modern imperialist system are becoming more visible

 

5. The difficulty of reproducing social resources, which became manifest in the crisis of overproduction early in the 1990s, and in the decline of average rate of profit is obvious. The phase of revitalisation and recovery in the crisis cycle was not accompanied by any improvement in incomes or living standards, or any increase in the number of jobs for the majority of the working class and the poor and middle strata.

 

Nor was the phase of recovery in the EU accompanied by any reduction of unemployment, especially long-term. There are in addition contradictory predictions about the course of the Euro as a single currency. Any advantages to European monopoly capital that have appeared in the process of capitalist integration and monetary union are accompanied by tangible conflicts arising from unequal development. They were manifested in the disputes over the evolution of the EU into a federal form, over its enlargement, and over the role of the European Central Bank in relation to the International Monetary System. For the first time in official Community circles questions and doubts are being expressed about the advisability and necessity of enlargement, and about the danger of the EU being divided into three parts.

 

In the US, a country registering economic growth for the tenth consecutive year, unemployment is on the rise. It is made to appear to be dropping, through the use of false statistics on the general spread of various forms of part-time employment. At the same time, however, wages and salaries are falling, crime is increasing, prisons are proliferating, and significant segments of the population are being ghettoized.

 

The bourgeois government (whether held by the classic conservative or the social-democratic party) has long since abandoned the management of the system in the form of extensive state ownership of industry, transportation, telecommunications, the financial sector and tourism, together with the generalised social benefits that had been implemented mainly in Europe.

 

Capitalist restructuring and neo-liberal management created a broad network of economic integration and reproduction primarily of the middle strata, but also a «stratum» of highly paid salaried workers in the urban centres. These forces are used to create a climate of social consent. However, it is not certain that, in the near future, they will be able to manoeuvre to achieve a firm alliance with a large segment of the middle classes.

 

Bourgeois ideology and propaganda use the classless term «globalisation» to obscure the class nature of the international imperialist system and to impose the view that there is just one road to internationalisation, the capitalist one. It is trying to make the bourgeois state take on the appearance of an executive staff, supposedly neutral from a class viewpoint, whose mission is to facilitate each country’s participation in international cooperation. It is endeavouring to cover up the unequal development of capitalism and the conflicts within the bosom of imperialism, the relations of domination and submission that are characteristic of the imperialist pyramid, and the historic limits of the system itself; it is likewise trying to eliminate from people’s minds all the historic and modern elements that could create anti-imperialist orientations.

 

The «globalisation» theories have turned their fire against any move toward emancipation from imperialist policy, against movements for the defence of borders, sovereign rights and national independence. They are absolutely hostile to proletarian internationalism and internationalist solidarity.

 

The need to organise an international anti-imperialist movement, with the support of the popular movements on a national level, is high on the agenda. It will be a movement capable of taking advantage of the contradictions and conflicts of international imperialism, of demonstrating the weak links in a number of countries and regions, and of developing and coordinating more general struggles, thus reinforcing action on a national level.

 

The countries that are attempting to build socialism

 

6. Imperialist aggressiveness and capitalistic restructuring exert an influence on these countries and raise serious obstacles.

 

Starting in the 1980s and more rapidly in the 1990s, the People’s Republic of China has been implementing a policy of opening up its economy to the international market. It has established a connection with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (1980). It set up special «free trade» economic zones with capitalist-based relations of production in order to attract foreign capital and cutting-edge technology. At the same time, it began negotiations for membership in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This development has been facilitated by the agreements it signed in 1999 and 2000 with the US and the EU respectively.

 

The PR of China recently re-acquired Hong Kong and Macao and is now applying the policy of «one country two economic systems». Its relations with Taiwan are particularly tense on the subject of the latter’s incorporation into the Chinese territory.

 

The CP of China declares that it has not relinquished its leading role in the economy and society. It estimates, on the basis of the targets set at its recent congress, that through the redistribution of the accumulated wealth from the free trade zones, by the year 2050 it will have reduced to 50 million the number of poor among the population. The rates of development being achieved during this period by the PR of China’s economy (average annual GDP growth rate is about 7%) have aggravated the competition with the imperialist centres, and above all the US and EU. Its economy has already had a significant impact on the economies of Asian and Pacific Rim countries and has provoked a strong reaction from Japan.

 

It is indisputable that the general direction of Chinese policy generates complex problems, both internal (e.g. social differentiation, unemployment, repercussions on the lives of the farmers, who constitute 66.6% of the total population), which affect the political system, and in its external relations, in which it has to confront the aggressiveness of US imperialism in particular, but also that of the other imperialist countries. The aim of these forces is to undermine its socialist perspective and limit its ability to play a role in the international anti-imperialist movement. This situation is leading the PR of China to seek alliances in order to deal with this aggressiveness. Within this framework, its agreements and relations with the Russian Federation are of particular significance, as is the so-called initiative of the «Shanghai Five», in which Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan collaborate closely. The aim is to extend this initiative to other countries, such as India and Uzbekistan, so that it may constitute a counterbalancing force to the global domination of the USA.

 

The Cuban people, led by the Communist Party of Cuba and the government, have all these years been waging great, significant battles to confront the embargo, the anti-socialist campaign and sabotage. In Cuba, various forms of economic cooperation with foreign capital have been implemented, as well as petty ownership in trade and in the agrarian economy. The country’s international initiatives against capitalist globalisation have been reinforced.

 

The Communist Party of Vietnam and the country’s government continue their efforts to raise the people’s living standard. Strategic sectors of the economy have remained public, but the penetration of certain multinational corporations should be noted and the integration of part of the economy into capitalist relations (privatisation, establishment of a stock exchange). Its initiatives for peace and collective security in the region have increased.

 

The People’s Republic of Korea has managed to cope with its multilateral isolation and the slanderous imperialist campaign against it. Using its own resources almost exclusively, it has dealt with the greatest natural disaster in its history. It succeeded in obtaining diplomatic recognition from a number of young but also developed capitalist countries. The PR of Korea has become a serious factor in addressing the new NATO doctrine and ambitions, and the «new nuclear doctrine» of US imperialism. The long-term struggle by the Korean people and progressive movements all over the world have led to talks whose purpose is to normalise relations between the two Korean states. This process, in conjunction with the withdrawal of US troops and nuclear weapons from South Korea, can contribute to security and stability in the region.

 

The modern revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement

 

7. In recent years, there has been some doubt cast on the activity of imperialist associations and a demythologising of the doctrine of globalisation. There has been an increase of resistance and opposition to the imperialist war, to the global offensive against the peoples’ rights, and to the decisions on the part of international organisations that lead to poverty, unemployment, class and national oppression. In some countries of Western Europe such as France, Spain, Italy, Norway, and Greece, the front of resistance and opposition to the policy of the US and the strong imperialist powers and associations has become broader. This is particularly true of opposition to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Malaysia, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and countries in the Middle East, especially Palestine and Lebanon.

 

In some former socialist countries, the class struggle is being sharpened by the growth of labour struggles. Evidence of this is the fact that, in order to confront the struggle, new anti-communist laws have been passed recently in Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and the Baltic Republics, in order to avert an emancipation that would be a threat to their governments. On the basis of official data from countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, the positive opinion that once prevailed about the EU and NATO has now declined. Opposition to membership in the EU has appeared, without, however, breaking with or disputing the power of the monopolies.

 

In all the former socialist countries, in particular in the former Soviet Republics, more and more people are expressing dissatisfaction with the restoration of capitalism, although this has not led to the appearance of strong movements with advanced goals.

 

8. One of the most significant events was the appearance of the strong popular reactions and mobilisations sparked by the war against Yugoslavia. A surge of contestation of NATO and its new doctrine appeared more openly and militantly, even though it did not embrace all the countries whose governments were taking an active part. The fight against the New World Order took on a more intensely anti-American character. But the equally dangerous role of the EU in the threat against sovereign rights, borders and peace has not been realised.

 

Industrial action broke out against some very powerful international monopolies (strikes by the workers at Renault, at the Michelin plants, at Candy, Coca-Cola, and Air France, in the metalworking sector, and in Greek enterprises in Bulgaria). There were important labour mobilisations in South Korea that took on a more general political character, as well as in Mexico and a number of Latin American countries, against child labour and prostitution, and against the oil monopolies. And recently struggles have been stepped up in the US as well, while at the same time the number of people organised in trade unions is increasing.

 

Certain mobilisations against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments and against the World Trade Organisation had an international impact, even though they were supported by extremely heterogeneous forces, such as the protests during the meetings in Seattle and Washington, and the Workers’ May Day 2000, which were linked with the sufferings brought about by globalisation. This heterogeneity is a trend that has appeared in recent years, which contributes to the censure, even with a somewhat hazy content, of the role of the leading imperialist forces and especially that of the international monopolies.

 

However, these reactions and resistance, despite their intensification, are still fragmentary and opportunistic with weak links between them. They have not acquired continuity, with the result that they lack stability and any immediate prospect of evolving into a strong anti-imperialist movement which could join together the most radical, revolutionary forces of our times. Imperialism has in many instances managed to eradicate, reduce or absorb the poles of opposition. The international organisations that have acquired or are trying to acquire an anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly strategy today are very weak. Their operation is influenced by the dispute between opportunistic and reformistic viewpoints. They are affected by the efforts being made to absorb radical movements and radical and communist forces into the policy of imperialism. They have not been able to contribute to internationalising the efforts being made on national and regional levels, owing to their inadequate means of communication, lack of financial resources, etc. The problem in Europe is particularly acute in comparison with the dynamism of the trade union movement in the past.

 

9. The trends emerging show the possibility of stepping up the internationalisation of the class and anti-imperialist struggle. The immediate need is to strengthen the international alliance of the working class with the anti-imperialist anti-monopoly forces, in order to regenerate the international anti-imperialist and revolutionary movement, to bring the class-oriented, revolutionary forces into the vanguard of the movement, and to deal with the difficulties, obstacles, and splitting actions of imperialism as quickly and decisively as possible.

 

What is most important today is for the militant, radical forces in the trade union and generally in the anti-imperialist movement to rally together, so that they may begin to provide more coordinated and organised support for the international forces who want and are able to stand up against imperialism and its associations, thus giving hope to awakening peoples and national movements.

 

The international communist movement

 

10. The international communist workers’ movement, despite the progress that has been made in some countries on a world level, remains organisationally and ideologically fragmented. The ideological struggle in its ranks between the opportunistic, reformist and revolutionary communist forces has been particularly intense. The focal point is the timeliness of Marxism-Leninism, and the strategy of the communist and workers’ parties during the transition period from capitalism to socialism, under conditions of the temporary victory of the counter-revolution and the adverse change in the international balance of forces. The battle is being fought on the dividing line between «resistance-opposition» to the system of imperialism and «adaptation-integration» with it. It is related to the stance toward the capitalist crisis, imperialist warfare, the capitalist regional and international inter-state associations, the historic role of the working class, the natural laws of socialist revolution, and the assessment of the deeper reasons for the victory of the counter-revolution at the end of the 1980s. The problem appears to be more acute in the communist and workers’ movement in the powerful imperialist countries. Defeat and withdrawal continue to burden the communist and workers’ movement in the former socialist countries, which were the hardest hit by the victory of the counter-revolution.

 

Under these new conditions, there is a need for an ideological counteroffensive by the Communist Parties and the communist movement, which believe in the need to overthrow capitalism, in the role of the international anti-imperialist movement, and in the revolutionary process. In this way, substantial support would be offered to the effort to internationalise the class struggle, to create a powerful pole that would resist imperialism worldwide, to provide thrust and prospects for the fight on the national level, which is today the linchpin of the people’s positive influence on international developments.

 

Within the ranks of the communist movement a stronger dialogue must be developed and various viewpoints and orientations must be discussed on issues related to and immediately affecting unified action by communists, and on international developments; the significant or fundamental differences that have arisen must also be discussed. The primary responsibility of every party is toward its country’s working class and people, and each party is thus obliged to take into account the needs, possibilities and special features of its own country. However, the internationalisation of life and the struggle further increases the responsibility of each party in respect of more general developments and the course of the labour movement. Today there are many more indications of the significance of ideological and political unity within the ranks of the communist movement, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. Not only have the theories of eurocommunism, the so-called democratic path to socialism, that circulated in the 1970s and 80s not been vindicated, but they have proved to be harmful to the popular movements. They have led their organisations to submission to or agreement with the bourgeois parties, even on issues like the war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

 

B. DEVELOPMENTS IN GREECE

 

11. Greek state monopoly capitalism has entered a phase of aggravated contradictions. One factor that intensifies the situation is proving to be the country’s dependent and inferior position, especially in a region that is a hub of intra-imperialist conflicts.

 

On behalf of the interests of big capital, Greek governments have played and continue to play an active role in all the imperialist schemes in the region. Among these was the dissolution of the united Yugoslavia, with the active participation of the PASOK government in the armies of oppression and occupation. Greece took part in the war against Yugoslavia and in undermining the elected government. The PASOK government has proved to be an accomplice in the process of partitioning Cyprus. It has radically changed its stance toward the rights of the Palestinian people. It has declared itself to be on the side of imperialist planning in the broader region of the Mediterranean.

 

It acts as an intermediary for US and European investments, with the ambition of securing the penetration of the Greek oligarchy in the region as well. Despite the increase in the export of capital and commodities from Greece to the Balkan markets, in the long-term the competition with capital from the leading imperialist powers that have infiltrated the region will become more acute.

 

The oligarchy of the rich is taking advantage of the circumstantial detente in the relations between Greece and Turkey, which is primarily guided by the imperialist centres (US and EU), in order to extend their capital exports to the neighbouring country and to achieve corporate collaboration in order to penetrate markets in the Black Sea region.

 

12. In 1994, the Greek economy began to emerge from the crisis of overproduction (in the late 1980s and early 1990s). But the increase of industrial output has been weak and unstable, with the exception of electric power and natural gas. Greek industry continues to be in last place in the EU market, and shows signs of further decline. The weak competitiveness of Greek manufactured products on the EU market can be seen in the balance of foreign trade deficit, and the large-scale import penetration of the Greek market in almost all manufacturing sectors.

 

The basic planning of capitalist restructuring is being stepped up. A new level of concentration and monopoly has been reached.

 

The penetration of private monopolies in the social services sector has been rapid, and this will step up the process of concentration. The industrial sectors of transportation and telecommunications show an upward trend. Recently the tourism sector has been strained, while the broader financial and credit system has spread rapidly. Takeovers, mergers and the development of chain stores are characteristic of developments in commerce.

 

At the same time, small-scale commodity production continues to prevail in the agrarian economy, and in certain manufacturing sectors such as furniture, garments, ship repairs, commerce and services.

 

Neither the working class nor the poorer strata of the middle classes benefitted from the revitalisation and increase of economic activity in the second half of the 1990s. The only winner, and indeed scandalously so, was the country’s financial oligarchy, the international monopolies active in our country, and a «stratum» that shares in the squandering of EU funds through buying off consciences and the creation of the mechanisms of assimilation. Integral features include scandalous bribery, overt profiteering, and the logic of «grab and run», kick-backs, and «you die I live».

 

The state of the Greek economy has been affected by the more general developments within the EU, and by the course of the US economy. The next financial crisis will be more profound. It will aggravate popular discontent and, under certain circumstances, could have a positive effect in rallying people to fight for profounder realignments of forces on a social and political level.

 

13. The ideological offensive on all fronts, the intensification of state violence and oppression, the orchestrated misinformation on the part of the ruling class and the parties in power all constitute primary elements of the period that has elapsed since the 15th Congress. To strike at the popular movement, the bourgeois political system is taking back some limited bourgeois-democratic freedoms. Today there is a visible danger that fundamental rights of the people, won through tough, bloody struggles, may be abolished. The policy of oppression is being readjusted to the increased needs of capital and of imperialist organisations. The mechanisms of surveillance and oppression have multiplied on both state and interstate levels. The legal statutory framework has become increasingly more reactionary. It includes: Greece’s participation in Schengen-Europol and the EU expeditionary police forces, the agreements and legislative regulations to «combat terrorism», beefing up the police forces, reorganising and reinforcing special services for surveillance and suppression, creating a new repressive police machinery in the Hellenic Police (ELAS) («special guards», «border police») or cooperating closely with ELAS (municipal police, private police). The institutions that have emerged in Greek society have been transformed not only into organs of class collaboration, privatisation and taxation but also into instruments of intimidation, persecution and the dissolution of the movement. The Municipal Police, with many of the former responsibilities of ELAS, and private police is evolving into a supplementary mechanism for state repression in the workplace, in the municipality, in the neighbourhood, and on the block.

 

Under pressure from the general guidelines set by imperialist organisations and in particular the USA, an entire system has been created with ways and means to subjugate the people, to intimidate, force and harrass them, and to manipulate and buy them off. In comparison to the past, the government and employers show intractability even to the most limited popular demands. Typical facts are the thousands of trials of people fighting for their rights, the penalisation of pupils’ struggles, and open harrassment in the workplace. A special element is the widespread anti-socialist, anti-communist propaganda and the slandering of any idea of resistance to the present state of affairs. A systematic effort is being made to shape the mentality of a «European» «citizen of the world», to foster cosmopolitanism, consumerism and individualism, and to drive out any idea of developing the class struggle to overthrow the present status quo, any idea of cultivating the need for internationalist class and anti-imperialist solidarity.

 

Interventions among the intelligentsia, and in the fields of art and culture in general are being stepped up. The provincial media are being bought out by big corporate owners of powerful radio and television channels, newspapers and magazines, in order to marginalise any independent voice raised against the system. Using the fact that Greece will host the Olympic Games in 2004, and on the pretext of protecting athletes and state delegations, there will be a further offensive against democratic rights and gains.

 

Manoeuvres are being attempted to prevent more militant struggles in order for the integrated anti-labour package of measures to be pushed through unhindered. With the logic of «divide and rule» selective benefits are being granted, especially tax measures to curtail the rapid deterioration of the financial situation among certain strata of the people and to facilitate the rescinding of gains and abolition of collective rights. The Greek government is interested in broadening its relations with the highest paid segment of the working class and with certain strata, particularly the middle classes, to draw them into the policy of consent to and active support for its primary choices. The greater part of the Third Community Support Framework, the Olympic projects and the revenues from privatisations are being used to this end.

 

Toward the end of the government’s 4-year term, the situation will have become worse. The position of the people will deteriorate due to restructuring and its repercussions on working and living conditions.

 

14. The percentage of the total economically active population belonging to the working class is increasing. Thus the myth that the working class is shrinking or being eliminated has been disproved. This theory is based on the anti-scientific and anti-Marxist view that the working class is exclusively identified with factory workers and the industrial proletariat, or on totally superficial data coming from disturbances in labour relations. In 1996, the increase in the numbers of salaried persons in comparison with 1981 was 34.3%. In the same year, the share of wage-earning labour among the economically active population increased to 64-65%. In manufacturing, there was a decline in the number of people employed, including salaried employees. An increase in salaried workers was recorded in the fields of tourism, food supply, telecommunications, trade, and education, and in the broader financial and investment field, in real estate management and in private insurance. The so-called service sector employs 60.6% of salaried persons.

 

The working class lives in conditions of greater relative and absolute poverty. From all points of view, their position in the system is worse. The minimum remuneration of shopworkers is lower than the 1989 level and much lower than that of 1984, the year with the highest index of the quarter-century. The differences in the earnings of the working people in various branches and sectors have increased. The minimum earnings in the private sector show a small real increase (0.6%). The disposable income of the average salaried person is currently at the 1980 level. A large number of young people from the working class drop out of senior secondary school, while a significant percentage do not complete even the nine-year compulsory education. A large number of people are obliged to pay for health care, services in daycare centres, and other facilities for people with special needs or the elderly out of their own pockets.

 

In 1999, net profits before tax increased by 48.7% against 1998, while the value of total sales increased by 10%. (ICAP research on a sample of 4,561 industries and enterprises). That is, the profit margins of large and middle-sized businesses have increased, while those of the small ones have decreased.

 

15. The agrarian economy shows a protracted stagnation of output. During the last two decades, the rate of increase of capital reserve per stremma (1 stremma = 1/4 acre) has dropped. This is due to the corresponding reduction in total investments in fixed capital.

 

During the 1990s, the concentration of land and production in fewer hands continued, as did the forced uprooting of the owners of small and medium-sized farms. The problem of the aging of the rural population has become more acute, while employment in farming diminishes by 2.5% every year. The changes that took place in the percentage of salaried persons out of all those working in rural areas were insignificant, with the result that salaried people constitute 4.1% of the total agrarian employment, but provide 12.8% of the total agrarian labour. Thus family farms are still prevalent in agriculture, except for the production of white meat and fish farms.

 

The stagnation of the agrarian economy, in conjunction with the people’s greater needs for agricultural products, has increased Greece’s dependence even in foodstuffs, and had a decisive effect on the deficits in the country’s agricultural balance of trade. The severe structural problem is confirmed in the breakdown of farm production between the two main sectors: plant and animal output. Plant production dominates with 70% of the total.

 

In the next few years, with Agenda 2000 and the anticipated agreement of the World Trade Organisation, the rates of adjustment of Community agriculture to the world capitalist market will be stepped up. Rates of increase in production will fall. Prices of agricultural products will be brought to the level of international prices, so that the processing industries and agricultural product multinational corporations can buy produce at ridiculously low prices. The concentration of land will increase, as will output and the income of the few, to the detriment of the poor farmer. Farm employment will continue to decline at rates higher than 2% a year. The deficit in the agricultural balance of trade will increase and Greece will continue to be dependent on others for basic food products.

 

16. Small firms, which constitute 91% of the total of small and middle-sized enterprises, are burdened with many pressing problems. The tendency, objectively, is towards the great difficulty of survival and ultimately ruination. These firms have a small turnover, and no possibility of capitalisation, with adverse effects on their productivity and competitiveness. The cause can be found mainly in the dominance of the monopolies and in the tough competition between them in sectors that had once been held by small-scale enterprises. The supply of raw materials and intermediate commodities, bank credit and trade are subject to the terms of monopoly competition.

 

Medium-sized businesses are characterised by marked stratification. Firms at the low end of the scale, which are outside the processes of dependence on the monopolies in the form of cooperation, are squeezed and threatened.

 

There is a serious productivity problem, which is associated as a rule with the lack of specialisation and the difficulty of utilising the labour force effectively under such conditions.

 

The ruin and reproduction of small enterprises may not lead to the reduction of this stratum, but it does show the contradictory tendency in capitalist conditions. This liquidity will become stronger through the takeovers and mergers to effect the greater concentration of capital while, at the same time, higher unemployment and dismissals will reinforce the trend to small enterprises.

 

17. Young people in Greece and abroad are among the most hard-hit victims of the capitalist crisis and imperialist aggressiveness.

 

In Greece, with the changes in the educational system, the class barriers to education have been raised higher. Significant numbers of young people, especially from the poorer strata, are facing the spectre of forced marginalisation.

 

For the majority of youth, there is unemployment, insecurity, part-time employment, partial earnings, and an uncertain future. Young people today cannot start a family or satisfy their needs, even in the way their parents did. Phenomena of social pathology are multiplying among young people; drug use is spreading as a result of the contradictions, impasses and difficulties in their lives, and because of the more general prevailing ideological and political climate.

 

Young people are the specific target of a deliberate effort to keep them away from radical anti-imperialist ideas and from the organised popular movement.

 

The ruling class of Greece and those who express it politically have created a powerful complex of new ways and means to manipulate and mislead young people, closely linked with the educational system, with the home and workplace, with the centres for culture, entertainment and sport that are in the hands of the oligarchy.

 

The instruments of this policy include subsidised educational and other programmes, the selective financing of youth activities and organisations, and the ideological utilisation of new technologies to create in the eyes of the younger generation a false picture of a «self-renewing humanitarian capitalism» which supposedly guarantees full freedom of individual choice.

 

These programmes are combined with the effort to shape and impose a policy of selecting talented young people to enter into the service of the system and to disseminate its inhuman values. But despite this, most young people feel the uncertainty of their future. Among many young people, orientations and conduct are being created which express the feeling of marginalisation and questioning. On this ground confusions and illusions come into being and are reproduced regarding the possibilities of an individual way out. Thus we are shown the great challenge we must meet as a Party, as KNE, in order to be of decisive help in transforming this questioning into radicalism: to create a mass, dynamic youth movement capable of playing an active role in building the anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly democratic front of struggle.

 

C. THE POLITICAL PROPOSAL OF KKE REGARDING THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST ANTI-MONOPOLY DEMOCRATIC FRONT

 

18. Today the two radically different paths opening up for our country and our people, as assessed by the 15th Congress, have become clearer. One is the path of adjustment and assimilation into the imperialist state of affairs, i.e. in one form or another, the path of the greater and more rapacious exploitation of the working people. The other is the path of resistance and breaking with this policy, the path of creating the Anti-imperialist, Anti-monopoly Democratic Front of struggle (AADF) which is in the interests of the working class, of broad strata of people in the city and countryside, and of the majority of the nation. It is the path that gives the people the ability to take their fate into their own hands, along with the course of the country and the future of their children. It is the path of struggle to develop the country’s objective potential and natural resources, to give a radically different prospect to the people, for power to the people. The path that brings the Greek people to the side of all other peoples and forces whose interests lie in fighting against the monopolies and imperialism on a national and global scale. It is the path that creates the possibilities for socialist regeneration in Greece.

 

The AADF is based on the social alliance of the working class and the petty bourgeois strata in town and countryside, on their common interest in setting aside their differences to combat their common adversaries, big capital and the international monopolies. The Front is based on the dialectical relationship and interaction between social and political alliances. It derives its strength mainly from the development of the class struggle, from the processes and realignments brought about by the latter on the social and political level. In turn it lends a new dynamic to the movement and to the process of changing the correlation and realignments.

 

A decisive factor in the mass participation and militancy of the Front will be the united progress of the working class, winning its leading role and that of its party, KKE, in the popular movement through life and action.

 

The Front will be profoundly influenced by the situation prevailing in the working class trade union movement, by the degree of organisation of the working people, by developments in the international correlation of forces and by the state of the popular movements in neighbouring and nearby countries, in the EU and in Europe more generally. Systematic international initiatives on the part of the Front for cooperation and coordination on a regional, European and international level with other anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist forces, and with radical social movements that dispute the policy of the imperialist associations must constitute an integral feature of the AADF struggle.

 

19. In the ranks of the AADF, social and political forces are joined together that are heterogeneous from the point of social position and ideological and political stance:

  • Social movements of the working class, of petty bourgeois strata in the city and countryside, mainly small entrepreneurs and poor farmers.
  • Youth and women’s movements, movements in the fields of education, health and social policy, movements for trade union, democratic, and political liberties and rights and for the environment, the anti-imperialist movement for peace, movements in the realms of culture, sport, research and science.
  • Political forces, groups and movements that support the need for the anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly struggle, and the need for a different path of development for Greek society, in opposition to the interests of the monopolies and the imperialist associations.
  • Social and political public figures, patriots, democrats, and progressive people who agree with and want to take part in action to promote the interests of the people, in opposition to the choices of the monopolies and imperialism.

 

To create the AADF, it is not enough to have joint action based on common or similar views on the major current problems, or a line of defence against the offensive our people is sustaining on all fronts. There must also be a certain level of agreement on the general direction to be taken in solving problems, and on the need for breaking with the vested interests of the monopolies and imperialist choices.

 

The anti-imperialist anti-monopoly struggle, and the action of the Front as a sociopolitical alliance, irrespective of the particular composition and form it will take, will go forward. It may zigzag, depending on the correlation of forces, the quality and mass participation in the alliance, and the stability, consistency and capability of action that it will show. There may even be countervailing trends within the ranks of the Front or vacillations, with shifts and turns in the struggle, when the maximum decisiveness and steadfastness will be required, when there will be an urgent need to establish new priorities for the goals, demands and choices that will undermine the foundations of the capitalist system. There will be realignments and regroupings within the ranks of the Front on the basis of the evolving social and political reality.

 

As a social and political alliance, it will utilise the element of compromise in all its actions, so as to muster the greatest possible assembly of forces, as long as they do not hinder the dynamic of developments. KKE, in turn, will exhaust all possibilities to ensure that the alliance does not find itself vulnerable and trapped in the splitting plans of the ruling class, or in its pressure to bring as many forces as possible into the line of acquiescence with and management of the system.

 

Power to the people. The people’s economy. Terms and conditions

 

20. KKE believes that today the anti-imperialist anti-monopoly struggle is more closely linked to and an integral part of the struggle against capitalism, since this struggle by nature contains forces that undermine the foundations of capitalist domination. However, the struggle of the Front does not necessarily and inevitably lead to socialism.

 

The Party also takes into account the most important factor, that heterogeneous forces have come under its umbrella which, although they are against monopoly capitalism and the imperialist associations, also express a different level of awareness, different viewpoints about the nature of power, and a different attitude toward socialism. Therefore the AADF is not set up with the prerequisite of reaching agreement on socialism.

 

Irrespective of the differences, the AADF must promote among the people the idea that it is necessary and realistic for the interests of the oppressed popular forces to be imposed at the level of power, a target integrally linked with the drastic change and overthrow of the correlation of forces.

 

In other words, a policy must be put forward which is clearly defined and diametrically opposed to the policy of the bourgeois parties and their allies. Through its main guiding ideas, it must set out before the people and commit itself to popular power and the people’s economy. It must commit itself to fighting for Greece’s international orientations and the development of new roads to commercial and economic cooperation, and against the imperialist associations, in a world that will not be determined solely by imperialist domination, but also by the growing trends to confrontation, disengagement and emancipation.

 

The struggle of the Front will be reflected on the level of power according to the sharpening of the class struggle, the stability of the alliance of anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly forces, and whether or not a nationwide crisis exists.

 

On the basis of its Programme, KKE argues that the Anti-imperialist Anti-monopoly Democratic Front, under revolutionary conditions, can take on the characteristics of a revolutionary front that is fighting to overthrow the power of the monopolies, with preparedness and the ability to alternate all forms of struggle. Within this struggle, with the experience and decisiveness of the popular majority, new institutions of the people are created, that could reach the level of a revolutionary government. With the victorious outcome of this struggle, the features of this revolutionary government will be integrated and stabilised as the power of the working class and its allies, i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat, the opposite of the dictatorship of the bourgeois class and the monopolies.

 

Under conditions of class confrontations and the great decline in the influence of the bourgeois parties and their allies, and even though the conditions will not have been created for a radical social upheaval and a revolutionary transition, a government may emerge of anti-imperialist, antimonopoly forces based in the Parliament. In a brief period of time, the government will be judged on whether, using the weapon of the maximum popular mobilisation, it will be able to deal with the reaction of the ruling class, with a view to overthrowing or neutralising it, and contribute to the maturing of the situation and the onset of the revolutionary process. In any event, the AADF must have secured the maximum possible unity so that it can achieve unity of action by the working class, the rallying of the working people more generally, and organised popular intervention.

 

21. Despite its long years of being plundered by big capital and international monopolies, Greece has the prerequisites to create and develop an economy for the people. With the nation’s activity, experience, hard work and knowledge, with the skills of the working people, the people’s output and wealth may grow, the effects of imperialist reactions may be restricted, so that the people are not left at the mercy of capitalist crises but can stand and cope. Advantage must be taken of the conflicts and contradictions that are sharpening within the ranks of the international imperialist system.

 

Greece has a satisfactory concentration of production, means of production, technology and mineral wealth. But, first and foremost, it has a large, experienced working class with an improved level of education and training, and a large number of capable scientists and professionals. It still has the greater part of its mineral wealth, which is valuable for the manufacture of industrial products. It has specific and comparative advantages in the production of foodstuffs that can ensure the satisfaction of the Greek people’s needs and of international commercial demands for various other goods and products. It has the potential to produce modern products, machinery, tools and appliances. Capitalist industrialisation in the past and the new sectors of activity that are opening out today confirm that the Greek people can live better and that our country can stand on its own.

 

A prerequisite for this is for its natural resources and its basic and centralised means of production to pass into the ownership of society, to begin to serve the development of the people’s economy. In such an economy, the main incentive will be the prosperity of the people, in contrast to the present economy whose decisive, absolute incentive is superprofits for the monopolies, and the interests of big capital. Selection of the means of production concerns above all the fields of energy, telecommunications, mining, water supply, transportation, and the basic sectors of manufacturing, production of the means of production, and products for popular consumption; the banking system and the system for accumulating and channeling economic and material resources more generally; external trade and the network of domestic trade; and the sector of basic research and making available its discoveries for the well-being of the people.

 

A vital element is the creation of a central, nationwide economic machinery with the active participation of the working people. This machinery will manage and develop natural resources, will effect social and labour control, and develop democracy in the workplace. Thus not only will the increased popular needs be satisfied, but also broadened reproduction, the country’s security and defence, international cooperation, and labour and popular solidarity. Nationwide planning will include policies adapted to the regional, sectoral and intersectoral levels.

 

Central planning is the instrument by which production and distribution ratios will be ensured, and domestic output protected from the unrestrained activity of the monopolies in international markets. At the same time, interstate agreements will be sought in the fields of trade, in the utilisation of know-how on the basis of mutual benefit, in the prompt and broad application of the achievements of science and technology to production and to the sectors of reproduction of the labour force, i.e. health, education, welfare, housing and environmental policy.

 

Central planning serves the growth of the means of production, the productivity of labour, the direct liaison between agricultural output and processing, the policy of decentralisation, protection against floods, fire and earthquakes, and the real protection of the environment.

 

Alongside the state’s popular economy sector will be the cooperative productive sector, particularly in agrarian production and in manufacturing sectors with a low level of concentration, which stands in the way of higher productivity.

 

KKE believes that our country cannot embark on the path of development for the people since it has been assimilated into and committed to the bonds of the imperialist associations, the EU and NATO. The Party is struggling to convince the majority of the people to demand disengagement from these organisations and to create the necessary sociopolitical conditions to succeed. It is fighting to mobilise and take advantage of international solidarity and the conflicts triggered within these associations by the disparate development, inequity and dependency that prevail.

 

A united Europe could exist to the degree that the labour movement and its allies set their seal on developments. A united Europe that is in the interests of the peoples would ultimately be a socialist Europe.

 

A higher, socialist form of internationalisation in a group of countries in Europe and in the world will go forward to the degree that, on the national level, an effort is made to bring about a substantial breach with the interstate capitalist organisations, and to the degree that, at the same time, local and regional cooperations are formed in the economic, commercial and cultural fields: alliances against the leading imperialist forces. This will proceed and become a reality to the degree that the working people’s labour movement in each country acquires the ability to weigh and make use of all the opportunities that may arise for the transition to socialism and for rifts within the international imperialist system.

 

The AADF, as a sociopolitical alliance of forces whose interests lie in opposing the strategy of the monopolies, must put forward a policy of resistance, disobedience and breaking with these international associations. It must demand the country’s independence from imperialist associations, from military actions, from interventions to the detriment of the peoples, and from dismal commitments. It must put forward a political proposal to fight for international relations, cooperation and alliances, taking into account the country’s geographical position, its level of development, and productive potential, as well as the issues of security and peace. It demands the development of Greece’s international economic relations through bilateral and multilateral regional collaborations with European countries, with neighbouring Mediterranean countries and beyond, on the criterion of mutual benefit, according to developments, and the correlation of forces. Such a development in Greece, and in other countries as well, would strike a blow against the EU, and make a significant contribution to the international struggle.

 

Without such a prospect, it is not realistic to talk about development for the people or their well-being, or the ambition for Greece to implement an internationalist peace-loving policy, a policy of solidarity with movements, peoples and governments that want to stand up against imperialist policy, war, and armaments. The more countries resist firmly and consistently and disengage themselves from the EU and NATO, the more feasible will their demand be for the dissolution of these organisations.

 

22. KKE retains its independence, a right it recognises for all forces taking part in the Front. The independence of KKE is not contrary to its action in the Front. It does not eliminate the Party’s particular responsibility to maintain the unity and cohesion of the Front. On the contrary, it constitutes a factor guaranteeing this effort. The formation of the Anti-imperialist, Anti-monopoly Democratic Front and its progress will depend decisively on the course of the Party’s political influence and strength and its ability to rally forces, on the unity of the working class and their ability to fight in a pioneering way for their rights and to pursue a policy of alliances with petty bourgeois social strata and with young people.

 

KKE’s assessment of political forces today

 

23. KKE judges Greece’s political forces and parties on the basis of whether they help or hinder the policy of rallying together against the interests of the monopolies and imperialist policy, and on their stance toward Greek society’s two paths of development. Its judgement is not restricted solely to their general declarations, nor is it hindered by the stance they may have held in the past. The main criterion is their stance today, i.e. in a period in which choices of strategic importance are being implemented to the detriment of the people. They are judged on the basis of their attitude toward and practical contribution to revitalising the class trade union movement, to assisting the struggles of the farmers, the middle classes, and young people and, in general, to the rallying together and militancy of the people.

 

The PASOK and New Democracy parties, irrespective of the differences in the face they put forward today and in their historical origins, represent and serve the interests of the monopolies and the imperialist associations. The effort to weaken the political and ideological influence of these two parties among the people is one of the most significant prerequisites for developing and sharpening the class struggle, for changing the correlation of power, and for creating a strong Front, effective in action, whose fight will shape the conditions for drastic changes at the level of power.

 

The processes taking place now on the political scene – particularly within the ND and PASOK parties, with the logic of «re-establishment» or of creating a «modern» identity – and the mobility observed with the emergence of new parties and groupings (Liberals, AEKA, etc.) show that both the ruling class in Greece and the leading imperialist forces are interested in creating a political system in our country that is as stable and disciplined as possible, with the consent of the people, in the service of imperialism, and free of any form of resistance or opposition.

 

The Synaspismos, or Coalition of the Left and Progress, after its recent congress, has drawn closer to the positions and policy of PASOK in its programme, irrespective of the course of relations between them and the discussions about the possibility and type of cooperation between them. Its official negative stance toward the creation of the AADF constitutes additional proof that the main direction of its policy is not the struggle against the modern strategy of monopoly capital and the imperialist associations. In essence, it has adopted the line of class collaboration and capitalist modernisation that leads to the intensification of exploitation and the all-out offensive against the working people and the organised movement. It supports the imperialist policy of the European Union, on the pretext of the dangerous view that the EU could become the countervailing power to the USA. It accepts the imperialist penetration of the Balkans and demands a «common policy» within the framework of EU policy. By means of its stance, it entraps popular forces with a left and progressive orientation in a compromising policy of consent. Its policy, particularly its more general choices in respect of the EU and NATO, is encountering opposition and creating dissatisfaction among its members and voters.

 

The Democratic Social Movement (DIKKI), despite the criticism it levels against the neo-liberal policy of PASOK and the ND, and against the EU and NATO, does not put forward an alternative that is defined by the strategy of the monopolies and the imperialist associations. It makes a positive contribution toward rallying the class forces in the trade union movement. But the proposals it addresses from time to time for more general cooperation on the social and political level are imbued with superficial reasoning and concern piecemeal and secondary current problems. Its proposals about the EU and political union range within the logic of «the only way». They obscure the real dividing lines in Greek society and make it difficult to radicalise the popular masses and rally together the anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist forces. Since the elections, some ferment has been taking place in this party, which is completing its programme positions for its forthcoming congress.

 

KKE believes that with this political line and attitude of the above parties, there is no possibility of reaching any political agreement with them regarding the creation of the Front. But it will not stop making this proposal, nor taking initiatives for action in order to help speed up positive processes. It takes into account that some voters or followers of these parties are progressing toward positive thinking and tend to diverge from their leaderships’ policies. But even if the leaderships of these parties constitute an obstacle, it is possible to have common action and cooperation with forces that belong to or are influenced by these parties, to the degree that, on specific fronts of struggle, they maintain a position that helps resistance and the organisation and orientation of struggles.

 

KKE takes into account that the development of struggles can effect changes in the configuration of political forces, and in the creation of new formations, political forces and movements on the basis of the fermentation developing within the parties.

 

KKE seeks to continue its cooperation with the forces with which it is already collaborating in the social fronts of struggle, in establishing PAME (Panhellenic Workers’ Militant Front) and in the elections. It will continue cooperation with Communist Renewal, with the sociopolitical public figures with whom it has developed common action, and with all those who want to help and to add their strength to the cause of the Front. International developments and the awakening of popular movements could spark greater action in Greece, and the regeneration and revitalisation of the Greek movement could contribute to greater vigilance in the region.

 

From the particular fronts of alliance and cooperation to the building of the AADF

 

24. What appears realistic today is for various forms of alliance and cooperation to be created, on many levels, both nationwide and regional, with anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist aims and demands arising from the acute problems of the people and the country: alliances and cooperation on fronts of struggle against capitalist restructuring. They will mount resistance and raise obstacles to the choices of the EU and NATO. They will be linked with the major, acute problems that concern the people. They will be alliances that fight against nationalism, racism and chauvinism, the use of religion as a weapon and pretext to divide the people, and the creation of a climate of hostility toward other peoples.

 

In these fronts of struggle, it is possible for the broadest sociopolitical resistance to be expressed and for concessions or gains to be demanded that express the contemporary needs of the working people. Nationwide, local, sectoral or branch alliances with anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist goals and demands will contribute to the growth of the movement. They will function as adjacent paths, seeds, streams, and channels that will bring the creation of the Front closer in a distinctive, nationwide form, with a programme context and struggle objectives.

 

Confronting the critical problems of the trade union movement: the key to the efforts to build the AADF

 

25. One factor of decisive significance in strengthening popular resistance, as well as the key to accelerating the process of creating the AADF, is a strong class trade union movement capable of meeting the multiple demands of the class struggle, winning more advanced positions, and waging an effective battle against the prevailing reformist viewpoints and practices. It is urgent that crucial problems be addressed that have taken on a more or less permanent character and hinder the dynamism and effectiveness of struggles and of social alliances. Such problems include: the prevalence of neo-liberal consent by the leading bodies GSEE (the General Confederation of Greek Workers) and ADEDY (the confederation of civil servants’ unions), but also by a large number of federations, sectoral unions and shops, and labour centres. The majority of today’s labour leadership has been assimilated into the machinery of the state, management and the EU. It plays an active role in subjugating and buying off consciences, and in cultivating illusions through participation in the fictitious «social dialogue». The state of the labour movement, with strong phenomena of corruption in its leading bodies, is a serious factor keeping the working people away from trade union organisation and action and has led to reduced membership in unions and shops, together with unchecked management intimidation and the fear of dismissal. If this state continues and becomes permanent, if the class trade union movement is not strengthened and the class struggle developed, the ability of the working class to demand their rights and to gain some elementary concessions will be further undermined, and the process leading to assimilation will be dangerously reinforced. On the social level, the development of working class alliances with petty bourgeois strata, and with women’s, youth and radical movements, will also be undermined.

 

It is absolutely necessary and realistic today to strengthen the class forces and upgrade the role of PAME (Panhellenic Workers’ Militant Front). In the labour movement, PAME is the pole that can help marshal the class forces, promote common action and systematic coordination, organise the class struggle and the workers’ and people’s counteroffensive, and establish the Anti-imperialist, Anti-monopoly Democratic Front.

 

The immediate aim is to organise the struggle of the working class and other working people to mount a militant, decisive opposition to the new anti-popular measures promoted by the government, to give battle in the workplace against their implementation, to prevent the abolition of rights won through struggle, and to demand the broadening of gains. Among the most urgent issues are: the class anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist orientation in the action of the trade union movement; and the fight against the cruel and multi-faceted exploitation of the labour force in the attempt to convert it into an ever cheaper, submissive labour force, in complete opposition to its growing material and cultural needs. The creation of a framework for a programme of action that includes and is inspired by the ideas and goals of the people’s economy will meet the modern needs of the working people, and reflect the vanguard role of the working class in Greek society. This effort is integrally linked with interventions to change the correlation of forces on labour movement bodies in favour of class forces, with the increased participation and revitalisation of action in grassroots sectoral and factory shops, labour centres and federations, with committees of struggle and militant alliances, and by throwing off the stifling embrace and intimidation of management.

 

At the same time, new thoughts, ideas, and proposals must be investigated, taking into account the entrenched negative situation prevailing in the trade union movement in Greece, and in Europe as well, and taking advantage of all positive experience. New ways of organising the working people must be sought, based on the changes that have taken place in labour relations and in occupations. Also required is deeper discussion and practical action, so as to reinforce and support the movements of the unemployed and new types of movements (people without social security, or who have been persecuted for trade union action), initiatives on trade union liberties and rights, the fight against the policy of forced return to work, and the penalisation of struggles.

 

One issue of critical importance is to attract women and young people to the unions and shops and to modern forms of trade union organisation. This can be achieved if the class struggle is enriched with their particular problems.

 

An integral factor in the action of the class trade union movement, and a significant factor in its reorganisation is the development and forging of the militant unity of the working class, the development of class solidarity, organised coordination so that the struggle is fought in a unified way, in contrast to divisive, splitting actions, to the reasoning of narrow sectoral or local demands, or of accommodating individual interests. Foreign workers must be brought into action, and attention paid to their acute problems through the struggle for equal rights; any spirit of racism or xenophobia must be denounced.

 

The unwavering fight against the machinery of buying off and manipulation, against the union bosses and bureaucracy – which functions as a conduit for policy not only of the government and management but also of the EU – must become a cause for resistance by the working class. A break is required with this practice, as is confrontation with reformist, opportunist, and compromising views, and with the line of so-called class collaboration.

 

Union shops, committees of struggle, and labour organisations must be firmly rooted in workplaces. They should extend their action to neighbourhoods as well, to rally working class families. The working class, with its class forces as the advance guard, must work systematically and take initiatives to develop forms of social alliance and joint committees of struggle with shopkeepers, farmers and other social movements.

 

The right of the working class and other working people to social well-being, jobs, social security, retirement and health care

 

26. A planned people’s economy creates the objective basis for developing the forces of production, for providing prosperity and ensuring the rights of the basic productive force, i.e. the labour force. By means of the appropriate central sectoral and regional policy, through support for traditional sectors of the economy and the development of new ones, through the development and application of scientific and technological achievements for the benefit of the working people, the way will be paved for the inclusion of the unemployed, and for full and permanent employment of the country’s labour force. An integral part of the people’s economy is social control by the workers, the substantial participation of the working people in making decisions, in monitoring their implementation, in developing democracy in the workplace, and in upgrading the role of the trade union movement.

 

The planned people’s economy would ensure:

  • That social spending, pensions, education, relaxation, social security, health care, culture and sport for all, adequate, cheap, modern public transport, the right to leisure time and its creative use are the state’s obligation. Upgrading these rights to make them meet modern needs is a basic element in development for the people, and in raising the living standard of the working class and other strata of the people in the city and countryside. In the field of social policy, education and health care, private business activity will be abolished, as will every form of privatisation. Sport for all will be ensured. Equal rights will be granted to foreign workers and their families.
  • Reduced working hours, the target today being the 7-hour, 5-day 35-hour week and the 30-hour week for heavy, unhealthy and hazardous occupations.
  • Protection for all jobless persons and their families until employment is found. Full social security coverage. Calculation of the period of unemployment for pension purposes. Abolition of individual contracts, contracts for unspecified periods, and all forms of negotiations which split the working people and favour management intimidation.
  • Struggle for the public nature of transport, cheap fares, the reorganisation and modernisation of the sector. Enhancing the means of mass transit so as to reduce travel by private car.
  • The development of fronts of struggle and alliances takes on special significance in defending the right to work, against dismissals, to limit overtime and abolish overwork.
  • Upgrading the economic, social and social security rights of the working people. A single system for social security, health and pensions based on three main public organisations: one each for salaried workers, the self-employed and farmers. It would be self-administered and self-managed, adaptable to particularities on the basis of sector, gender, age and type of occupation. It would have special funds available for research on diseases such as AIDS, cancer and other conditions that are on the increase. It would provide special care and support for persons with special needs and their families, the elderly, single-parent families, etc. The working people’s insurance funds would cover workers fully from the moment they join the productive process throughout their entire lives, on the basis of contemporary needs and the utilisation of advances in science. The public health system would provide uniform, equal services to the people without discrimination. It would be oriented toward prevention. It would provide the essential link between all levels of health: primary, secondary and tertiary; and ensure services in the workplace, in the home and in places where education and training are offered.

 

The rights of farmers with small and medium-sized holdings

 

27. The agrarian economy should be based on the utilisation of its productive potential to the benefit of the people and on the reduction of its dependence on the importation of foodstuffs. The agrarian economy must be able to meet the contemporary needs of the Greek people. It must make the country capable of participating on an equal footing in international economic relations and collaborations that help deal with the global food problem. It must ensure the supply of raw materials to the manufacturing industry and contribute to the employment of the rural population. It should encourage a return to the countryside. At the same time, agricultural development will depend on improving the income of farmers with small and medium-sized holdings, along with respect for the environment.

 

The immediate priorities must be: to increase livestock production and the plant output that supports it, to develop coastal and deep-sea fisheries, and to find environmentally suitable locations for fish farming, to protect, upgrade and ensure the rational management of our forestry resources. To exploit Greece’s soil and climate conditions, to develop crops with comparative advantages over those of other countries and materials for reproduction.

 

The cooperative movement, within the framework of the people’s economy and its central planning, could become the nucleus for increasing and improving the quality of agricultural output. At the same time it could support the farm household, by ensuring a friendly environment and framework of action. Farmers with small and medium-sized holdings would join together in productive cooperatives in all phases of the agrarian economy: from the production, selection and processing of produce to marketing and sales. It would deal with the structural problems in the agrarian economy, reduce production costs and improve productivity. It would take advantage of new techniques and technologies, i.e. it would provide funds to improve employment, incomes, living standards and the social rights of the residents of rural areas.

 

Within the framework of nationwide planning, domestic agricultural research and technology would be developed as a responsibility of the state, as would the free training for farmers in their correct use so as to protect both consumers and the environment. The production of basic agricultural supplies and machinery would be secured, as well as funding for productive activities by cooperatives of farmers with small and medium-sized holdings. Insurance for agricultural output, for plant and animal stock would be provided by a state agency and would be mainly aimed at active rather than passive protection.

 

The struggle for profound changes in the agrarian economy in favour of farmers with small and medium-sized holdings includes the functional reorganisation of the agrarian movement, rallying around anti-monopoly targets and demands, disengagement from the logic of adaptation to the guidelines of the EU, CAP and the imperialist agreements within the framework of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

 

The problems and needs of people with small and medium-sized enterprises

 

28. There is an urgent need for us to struggle alongside the people to ensure that, within the framework of planning the people’s economy, the sociopolitical conditions are created to ensure that people with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) channel their output through cooperatives for production, supplying raw materials and sales, in cooperation with the corresponding public sector.

 

Their struggle today, within the more general aims to create the AADF, is linked with the demand for anti-monopoly measures such as: uniform working hours that will ensure humane conditions for both businessmen and the working people, cooperatives for production, the supply of raw materials and sales as the sole line of defence, with small enterprises financed at a low, subsidised interest rate guaranteed by the state in sectors in which there is large number of SMEs with particular problems, such as timber, leather and metal.

 

The struggle against imperialist agreements and organisations, for peace, and for the right to political independence. Every country, every people should determine their own path to social development

 

29. An intense, systematic struggle is required against the imperialist agreements that violate the declared sovereign rights of the peoples, that legalise the re-drawing of borders, and the military interventions that transform the country into an active ally of imperialism to the detriment of neighbouring peoples, against world peace, co-existence and cooperation.

 

The disengagement of Greece from EU, NATO and imperialist policy more generally must be the aim of the Greek people, in their common struggle with all peoples to dissolve this military-political organisation and every other imperialist organisation.

 

We must struggle to prevent Greece’s participation in multinational NATO forces, in military operations, in occupation forces in neighbouring countries, and in the European Army.

 

We must oppose the institution of a professional army, the establishment of which is being attempted with the demographic issue used as a pretext, with the period of service reduced. Professional soldiers will be used on missions beyond Greece’s borders, against the peoples of other countries and against the popular movement inside the country.

 

Action must be taken against the inflated military programmes which the Greek people are called upon to pay for, even though a large part of these programmes is not used for the real defence of the country.

 

US and NATO installations should leave Greece, as they transform our country into a centre for military and surveillance operations against neighbouring peoples. A struggle should be mounted against the activity of secret services and their many-tentacled mechanisms that erode and undermine political and social life and constitute springboards for attacks against the progressive movement and anti-imperialist fighters.

 

We should stand actively on the side of every people or minority (ethnic, linguistic, religious, or cultural) demanding their rights. Minorities can and should constitute bridges of friendship between peoples. Under no circumstances should they ever become tools in the hands of the imperialists, especially today when, throughout the length and breadth of the earth, they constitute a field of action for imperialist interference to justify war and intervention in all forms.

 

Under the conditions of the class society and imperialism’s international action, minorities must demand their rights in common action with the people of the host country. Common class interests constitute the basis for confronting divisive efforts, whether they come from national governments and the foreign element or from within their own leaderships. Because many times leaderships want to secede or become independent, not to liberate their peoples from oppression, but so that they themselves can oppress them or enjoy the rewards of acceding to the strategic plans of the imperialist countries.

 

Struggle for democratic rights and the liberties of the people. Social control by the workers

 

30. The cornerstone of democracy is social control by the workers. The freedom of the working people to demand their rights, to fight against the dictatorship of the monopolies in every manifestation of their lives, against the anti-democratic, terrorist interventions of the imperialists, and against state and parastate mechanisms. The fight for democratic liberties is integrally linked with the fight against the monopolies and imperialism, and for the overthrow of the present status.

 

The workers and the people need to take the cause of democratic liberties into their own hands, on the basis of their contemporary needs and rights. It is very important for them in their struggle today to see the essence behind its official statutory forms, so that the popular movement is not trapped by institutions that undermine its interests. They should support, broaden and shape institutions that will promote emancipation from the organs and machinery of monopoly power, that will reinforce the unity, rallying together and democratic operation of the mass movement.

 

Struggle is required to prevent electronic surveillance, to prevent Greece from participating in the Schengen agreement and in Europol, and for the abolition of Law 2472/97 which legalises the keeping of files on people and the establishment of private police forces. The new «anti-terrorist» agreements and legislative regulations should not go forward. The right of the working people to demand solutions to their problems with full trade union and civil liberties should be guaranteed in practice.

 

Under class society conditions, the Security Corps (SC) constitutes a repressive state mechanism. The fight to democratise the SC has its limits, nevertheless it is necessary and possible to develop a strong struggle to achieve this, so as to restrict repression through the intervention of the people. The complaints and demands that come to light through the ranks of trade unionists in the SC about their being used to suppress struggles should be supported.

 

Services for surveillance and repression aimed against the popular movement, the people’s organisations, and the parties that resist should be dissolved. The SC should be reorganised and more generally reoriented towards fighting crime.

 

The separation of church and state, with whatever this entails in the educational system, in family law, in the dispensation of justice, etc. will constitute a significant step forward in the struggle for democratisation.

 

Another important battlefield for democracy is the fight against the dictatorship imposed in the field of information by the state and private media, which are under the control of powerful corporate groups.

 

Education, training, research

 

31. According to pedagogical science, everybody can and must be educated. The possibilities currently provided by knowledge and its more generalised application to production have led to the demand for basic general education to be extended so that all young people will be able to develop a rounded personality before making any vocational choice or entering the social division of labour.

 

Education must be reorganised with the institution of a uniform twelve-year school system providing a general education for all young people without discrimination on the basis of class, racial, geographic, religious or other grounds, which will be the continuation of a compulsory two-year pre-school education and the necessary prerequisite not only for university, but also for any vocational training. Theory should be linked with practice. Curricula and textbooks should be reformed radically; they should be purged of fragmentary, conflicting and distorted «knowledge» which in essence «sanitises» the dominant policies of the monopolies. School life as a whole should be reoriented, to get away from quantitative learning and despotism. Instead of destroying the collectivity and creativity of young people, it should contribute to their socialisation, and teach them to organise their thoughts and their lives.

 

All forms of private education should be abolished, as should the indirect privatisation of education. There should be a generous increase of state spending, and teachers in the private sector should be utilised in the public one.

 

Existing secondary and post-secondary institutions (TEE, IEK, KEK) for vocational training should be abolished. Vocational education should be built at the «post-senior high school» level for those occupations that do not require higher learning, in special free vocational schools that are part of the public educational system.

 

Higher education should be free, public and unified in order to produce graduates who are proficient in their field and capable of undertaking the overall practice of their profession. The anachronistic separation between universities and technical colleges should cease. Within this context, departments of the technical colleges should be incorporated into the universities, through a reform of the syllabus, and upgrading of their teaching faculties and infrastructure, so as to ensure their university level, based on clearly defined disciplines. All universities should be equal. At the same time, their unified character should be guaranteed in terms of both undergraduate university studies that provide comprehensive specialisation leading to the linking of the degree with a profession, and post-graduate studies that will lead directly to a doctorate.

 

Financial and scientific support should be provided to teachers so that they will be able to perform their complex social function satisfactorily. This support will start from their pedagogical training and will continue with periodic further education. The teaching and research faculties of universities and technical colleges should be guaranteed exclusive employment, in conjunction with the coverage of their contemporary needs through remuneration. The main weight will be given to research, particularly basic research. Research policy will serve the planned development of the economy for the benefit of the people, the development of the forces of production and above all, the development and prosperity of human beings and science which serves them.

 

Regional development and local government

 

32. Local government is increasingly becoming an instrument of capitalist restructuring policy and for manipulating the people. It is called upon to enforce the application of market laws and privatisation, and to levy taxes for social and other services under the logic of «reciprocation», tailored to the dictates of the capitalists. The programme entitled «Capodistrias» is being used to concentrate and control local bodies, and to incorporate them directly into state and EU machinery. To this end, structures are being promoted that circumvent and replace even elected bodies, limiting the citizens’ participation. They downgrade and transform the institution of representation into a corporate activity, in the name of local government efficiency.

 

It is today a significant and urgent duty to fight the anti-popular choices applied by the agencies of local government, and to mitigate civic tax burdens. It is necessary to consolidate in the minds of the people a new and truly radical viewpoint about the relationship between regional policy and the more general policy of opposition to monopoly interests.

 

Protection of the environment, of the cities and countryside, and of forest resources against floods and fires; the danger of a water shortage. Social housing in a policy of anti-seismic protection

 

33. In conjunction with natural disasters, the privatisation of resources related to the environment (water, forests, etc.) has in recent years also contributed to the destruction of the natural environment. Science and technology are not being used to develop the environment in order to yield good quality products and infrastructures for humankind, but primarily for profit. In the food supply sector and its related environmental sector, a movement must be created in which the organisations of the working people will play a leading role. The struggle must be stepped up against the pollution of the atmosphere, of surface and underground water and the seas, against the unchecked management of garbage and toxic wastes, and the inadequate processing of liquid wastes. Health must be protected from genetically modified food.

 

Popular resistance should be organised against the destruction of forests and rare ecosystems, against turning free spaces into lots and paving them with concrete. Alliances should be formed to take action for the rational development of natural resources, against town planning chaos and damage to cultural monuments.

 

Anti-seismic protection, with immediate radical measures and medium-term infrastructure planning, constitutes a major issue in Greece.

 

The fight to protect the environment is a primary duty of communists, inseparable on the national and international levels from the struggle against the monopolies, against nuclear weapons and war. The working class and its movement can and must become a vanguard force in this struggle. It is they who, together with the other popular strata, are subject to the harshest environmental effects. It is they who defend themselves and fight to build a better world to hand down to the younger generation. Young people can and must make this struggle for the environment their own cause, as it is they who will live in it.

 

34. Social crime and the spread of narcotics are characteristic phenomena and expressions of the contradictions and corruption of capitalism. Addressing them constitutes a special front for rallying the people, as well as a basic component of the more general anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist struggle for emancipation from the bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology that defends submission to the dictates of big capital as being the only road.

 

The preparations for the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 must be used as an opportunity for struggle by the people against profiteering and the penetration of big capital, and against the paving over of our last green space. The struggle against the commercialisation of sport and the phenomena this generates (violence, hooliganism, individualism-antagonism, doping) must be developed. Profiteering in the field of culture and sport has led to the total distortion of their role in developing the human personality and in social well-being.

 

D. REPORT ON PARTY ACTION

 

35. After its 15th Congress, KKE found itself ideologically and politically prepared to deal with the savage neo-liberal offensive against the working people spearheaded by capitalist restructuring, and the problems that arose due to Greece’s participation in imperialist planning.

 

Its report is a positive one. It made significant efforts to organise popular resistance and common action and to rally forces. Its action shed light on the other path of development for Greek society. Efforts were made to deepen the Party’s investigation of major problems, to popularise its policy in a more spirited and persuasive way. KKE supported the struggles of the working people, and undertook significant initiatives. Its activity helped the development of some processes and differentiations that were expressed particularly in struggles, in alliances and cooperations.

 

The struggles that marked this period demonstrated the growth potential of the class struggle and of clashes with the anti-popular policy. Qualitatively and quantitatively, however, they were not sufficient; they were unable to create a battle-worthy popular movement to resist and make a break. But without these struggles, developments would have been even more adverse. They helped cultivate the need to struggle and fight back, and constituted a significant legacy of experience and militant rallying together. The Party itself acquired greater experience in leading complex struggles. Cadres and thousands of members were toughened under contemporary conditions. Thousands of friends and followers of the Party shared in its positive contribution, as did the forces who collaborated and rallied with us on specific fronts of struggle and in the elections: fighters, men and women of the people who supported the Party and its struggles in a multitude of ways.

 

The fact that our political positions and assessments were confirmed, and that our positions on various problems made an impact among broader segments of the people should not lead us to the complacent view that we have exhausted the margins for strengthening the party under the given conditions, particularly as regards the closer linking of the Party with the working class, young people, and the popular masses. These steps forward, however, did not lead us to its overall qualitative growth. We are still a long way from what is required by present-day circumstances.

 

Certain problems still exist today, as they did during the period of the 15th Congress. These include looseness of relations with the friends and followers of the Party and with broad strata of the people, a factor that makes it difficult for the Party to increase its political influence. This phenomenon is also expressed in the loose and content-poor organisational operation of the Party as a whole – its most significant expression being in the Party’s Base Organisations – and the slow pace at which its ranks are being renewed, particularly by the working class. Another problem is the fact that members and cadres are weak in terms of their ideological and political education, which leads to the low quality of the Party’s internal life, particular that of its most basic unit, the base organisation (BO). These factors, in turn, reduce the cability for increased contribution to the struggle based on present-day demands.          

 

Significant objective factors have intervened in a deterrent way, to one degree or another, in Party action, particularly in its initiatives, and continue to do so. These factors include:

  • The profound roots of reformism and the dangerous illusions that PASOK deliberately cultivates. The change in mentality that was consciously fostered particularly after 1981, in conjunction with the equally profound roots of the conservative ideas and prejudices that were cultivated in Greece after the war.
  • The modern multiform and many-tentacled spread of anti-communism, which also constitues an objective source of difficulty in terms of the maximum effectiveness of KKE action, as does the broad dissemination of opportunism after the victory of the counter-revolution during the 1989-91 period.
  • The significant changes in the working and living conditions of the working people raised new obstacles to the forging of social and political awareness, in conjunction with the phenomena of crisis in the labour union movement caused by its submissive stance, which in turn affects all social movements.
  • The modern policy of the repression and manipulation of consciences that was developed early, even before any resistance was manifested to restructuring and to Greece’s full adjustment to the EU and NATO.  

 

The growth of the Party, however, has not stopped in the face of these difficulties. It deals with them and on this basis its progress can be judged objectively.

 

36. KKE constantly finds itself facing a well-organised ideological campaign which now has made the transition to a higher level of tactics and planning, both by the domestic element and by foreign powers with a view to extending and consolidating passivity and compromise. The leadership of PASOK and the government has been responsible for escalating the offensive to a higher level, with lawsuits against Rizospastis. The essence of the offensive is to «clear» the air of any annoying voice, so that the new reactionary measures can go forward unhindered, for the unimpeded «progress» of imperialist policy. The class enemy, with its machinery, has launched an attack against the Party – as though it cared about the character of KKE – with the hypocritical and spurious argument that KKE has altered its personality, abandoned its world theory, and that it is supposedly being transformed into a nationalist-religious party.

 

The leadership of the Synaspismos (Coalition of the Left and Progress) and some of its cadres who left the Party in 1989-91, having failed to make it a social-democratic Party, have lent a hand to the anti-KKE attack. Recent experience shows that the front against opportunism and anti-communism must be stepped up, irrespective of the quantitative or qualitative strength of its organisations.

 

What is being sought is that the maximum possible pressure be exerted on the Party for it to change policy in the name of realism, so that it is assimilated into the plans to impose a political system which, in the best possible case, will permit differentiations and shades that are harmless to imperialism and the bourgeois ideology; for a thick veil to shroud KKE positions, so that the Party will be cut off from militant popular forces, left-wing and progressive people. The adversary’s sights are focused on the Party’s strength, which is its ideological and political unity, its Marxist-Leninist theory, democratic centralism, its Programme, and the proposal for the AADF.

           

37 The Party has kept open the front of opposition to the choices of the EU and NATO. The political positions of KKE and its efforts to shed light on the deeper nature of the neoliberal reforms being implemented have contributed to the people’s increasing dissatisfaction with the EU. Through its activity both inside and outside the national and European parliaments, it has helped to reveal the true nature of this interstate regional capitalist organisation.

 

Developments in the Balkans, the new structure of NATO and particularly the war in Kosovo, the handing over of Ocalan, the Clinton visit and the periodic transit of foreign troops through the ports and over the territory of Greece have drawn the particular attention of the Party, and have been of concern to broader strata of the people. With its positions and the effort to take unifying initiatives for action, the Party contributed decisively to the growth of a dynamic anti-war movement against NATO with international extensions. The stability and resoluteness of KKE with regard to imperialist interventions and the transformation of our country into an offensive bridgehead open up prospects for creating a broader front of struggle and solidarity.

 

38. It is significant that the Party’s political proposal for the AADF has been disseminated and that it has moved more minds and hearts among radical popular forces than was the case four years ago.

 

The choice made to throw weight behind individual fronts and alliances was a correct one, taking into account the level of the labour movement, the great delay in pushing forward social alliances, the unfortunate situation in the organised mass movement, and also the difficulty of reaching agreement with the other political forces on an anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly alliance and cooperation.

 

The Party met with broader forces, collaborated with them in struggles, as well as in election contests. Characteristic examples were: the cooperation and common action within the framework of PAME during the war against Yugoslavia, and in the education movement, the action taken against US policy on the occasion of Bill Clinton’s visit to Greece and the collecting of signatures on a petition for a referendum to be held on the Maastricht Treaty. Joint action was developed with other political forces or with forces from other political fields (DIKKI, SYN), even from PASOK and ND, on the level of middle-rank trade union cadres in the mass movement, for example, in some labour mobilisations, farmers’ struggles, and in activities related to the problems of owners of small and medium-sized businesses. On some issues, common actions were taken with other parties, such as DIKKI and SYN in Parliament, on the simple proportional electoral system and against providing facilities for the transit of foreign troops. Common action with forces from other parties was also achieved in the case of the Schengen Agreement. A common stance with cadres from other parties was likewise expressed in the field of local government.

 

KKE supported joint events by youth organisations in which KNE played an active role.

 

There was a significant effort to foster common action in the form of collaboration in elections held in the mass movement, and in local, European and national elections.

 

Some forms of alliance and cooperation were employed in mass struggles and in organising mobilisations when the official bodies of the labour movement followed a line of defending government policy and cooperating with management. In some cases, this joint action on the social level could not be kept up or deepened due to government pressure and the attitude of consent by the other parties. This does not mean that everything possible was done by the Party in all cases to deal promptly with the difficulties that arose.

 

Other forms of rallying were also used, on the basis of current events, with more advanced political features, such as during the period of mobilisations against the war in Yugoslavia, and against the signing of the new NATO doctrine. But they did not all continue, despite the fact that the problems in the region are acute. Common action on urgent demands (closing of factories and mass dismissals, enactment of reactionary legislation, etc) does not evolve automatically – and even less so spontaneously – into a more permanent alliance with anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly demands, into a line of opposition to Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).

 

Parallel to its efforts to rally together forces in Greece, the Party proceeded to similar efforts on an international level as well, to develop common action with communist parties, anti-imperialist forces and movements, starting out from the dialectical relation of the struggle on a national and international level.

 

Although the necessity of the Front is obvious from every point of view and while many positive processes have taken place to one degree or another, it is clear that we have not yet applied sufficient action to the cause of the Front. We have not succeeded in orienting all the Party’s forces, friends and followers to the on-going and constant effort to rally together the broadest possible forces in the front of struggle to cooperate in establishing the AADF.

 

39. Stronger efforts were made to develop our ideological work and the ideological front in general, to promote intra-party education, and to improve the Communist Review (COMEP). Despite all this, this field continues to fall short of the rapidly expanding needs.

 

The Party’s political and ideological intervention has improved. Positions were worked out on certain issues. A greater effort was launched by the Party to keep track of developments in the Greek and world economies. Positions on the imperialist state of affairs, the Balkans, and the EU were enriched and developed. The level of propaganda was improved, Rizospastis was upgraded, COMEP broadened its subject matter and raised its theoretical political level. There was also a significant improvement in the radio station «902 Left FM». Progress was made in our television channel with informative programmes and discussions, and programmes on specific subjects. Its contribution to the election battles was positive. However, further improvement is needed so that it will be able to respond to current needs. This requires financial resources and an effort to utilise the broadest possible range of journalists and associates. There has been a significant increase in the publishing of propaganda material and although its quality and format have improved significantly, the satisfactory level required has not been achieved yet, nor has all potential been exploited.

 

Campaigns were organised to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Democratic Army and the 80th anniversary of the Party during which, parallel to the effort to increase membership, an attempt was made to intensify ideological work, publicise the Party’s historical experience, and foster communist education and training. Although the results of this effort fell short of the potential and needs, its contribution was significant. It contributed to the formulation of a better plan for the Party’s organisational, ideological and political work in the workplace.

 

40. A nationwide party conference was held to discuss the situation and critical problems in the trade union movement. The conference worked out its tactics in mass struggles, particularly in the labour movement, in the anti-imperialist peace movement, in the education movement, and in the farmers’ movement in terms of modern conditions and demands. Thanks to the Party’s insistence and efforts, various forms of alliance were achieved in these movements, expressing a broader desire for struggle and addressing the deliberate inertia and disruptive efforts of the compromised trade union leaderships.

 

The organisational rebuilding of the Party has begun and is now under way, as is the regrouping of party forces, particularly in urban centres.

 

The effort to secure economic support for the Party’s political action continues to be the focus of attention, but the difficulties in this domain remain acute. Overcoming them will provide the Party with fresh opportunities.

 

41. A significant number of Party activities were devoted to its international obligations of coordination and joint action with other CPs, and of discussing ideological issues and differences. It made a significant contribution by holding three international meetings in Athens. It also took part in other international and regional meetings, some of which were on an inter-Balkan level, and in joint activities with other communist and anti-imperialist parties. It supported international mobilisations to the extent of its capability. It contributed to publishing an International Bulletin and to the exchange of information with communist parties and anti-imperialist movements, utilising the opportunities offered by the Internet. Increased interest has already been shown by young people from all over the world in receiving first-hand information about the concerns of KKE. Contacts with other parties were expanded and reestablished.

 

42. KNE has grown stronger and is moving toward becoming more of a mass organisation. It has played a positive role in struggles in the field of education, and in the fight for the right to work. It has upgraded its presence in the struggle against drugs, and in the cultural field with the recognised institution of its Festival, one of the most important political-cultural events in the youth movement. KNE’s action in the anti-imperialist anti-war movement has been multiform and significant. It has lent dynamism to the more general movement and helped instruct broader sections of the youth.

 

43. The basic reason for the delays and weaknesses shown by the Party today, more than four years after the 15th Congress, should be sought in the fact that attention was not focused resolutely on certain issues that provided a greater opportunity for strong bonds to be formed with the popular strata. These issues included:

  • The achievement of a uniform and stable orientation in action at all levels of the Party, on the main and basic front of struggle, the trade union movement, so that the working class, at least its more vanguard section, could begin today to acquire an awareness of its historic mission.
  • The constant, daily ideological and political activity among the people, focused on their major, acute problems, and rich in content and forms. The ceaseless fight against opportunism in all its forms, not only in the political and ideological realm, but also on questions of Party operation.
  • Dedication to the crucial issues of improving the Party’s operation, fighting against organisational slackness, and continuing to expand the bonds between the Party and the people.

 

It was necessary to keep fighting systematically against phenomena of detaching theory from practice, against empiricism, economism, over-emphasis on practical matters and generally against all the factors that ultimately downgrade the Party’s leading role and reduce its rallying ability. The required emphasis was not given to the effort to cultivate a higher spirit of collectivity, in conjunction with personal responsibility and the ability to take initiatives.

 

Despite the Party’s rich experience, both positive and negative, it has not been realised that we cannot possibly carry out the tasks that are decided upon without knowledge of theory, without acquiring and assimilating the Marxist-Leninist method of analysing developments, contemporary societies and economic phenomena, without assimilating the teaching about the Party and without the required political education and intellectual cultivation.

 

These problems and weaknesses constitute manifestations and symptoms of a deeper political and organisational problem: the level of the Party’s ability to make the dialectical link between strategy and tactics under the present-day circumstances that make it necessary for the confrontation and break with the monopolies and imperialism to be placed on the agenda as well as the struggle to overthrow the power of the monopolies and to establish socialism. The Party has the experience and ability to deal with this problem in a radical way.

 

Report of the Central Committee

 

44. The CC, particularly during the past two years, has shown progress in the effort to popularise Party policy and to enrich and elaborate it more deeply. It faced the ideological offensive sustained by the Party, and more generally by the popular movement, with comparative success. It improved the orientation toward developing mass struggles and took positive initiatives to rally together broader popular forces for the struggle. It made a greater effort to create focal points of struggle with anti-imperialist and anti-monopoly targets and demands. It improved the line of popular opposition to the interests of the monopolies and imperialism. It studied international developments in a fuller way, particularly developments in the Greek economy, and the role of Greece in the international imperialist system. It launched a more systematic study of our country’s development potential in order to substantiate the Party’s strategy better.

 

The Central Committee met regularly. It increased its collectivity, but did not reach a level where every member was working on the basis of collective experience rather than just the narrow experience arising from the division of labour. It did not focus its attention adequately on the problems of the Party’s growth. This is one reason for the weaknesses and deficiencies shown by this leading body in the coordinated, better performance of all tasks. 

 

Although it gradually improved its effort to orient the Party toward action in the trade union and youth movements, it did not manage to inspire and convey to the leading bodies a spirit of resoluteness in dealing with objective difficulties regarding these two significant movements.

 

It attached particular importance to developing the anti-imperialist peace movement, but in practice did not insist on regrouping and assembling capable people at the Base Organisation level in order to focus the entire Party’s attention on a very basic front of struggle, particularly during this period. A similar weakness was shown in the movement of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs and in the movement for women’s rights.

 

Through its action, the CC helped develop the Party’s ideological intervention, and responded with comparative success to many of the attacks it sustained in this regard. For a start, it created certain conditions for training cadres and for providing ideological help to Party members, organising lectures, and supplying them with appropriate material. But in many cases it did not persist to the degree required, and failed to check systematically on whether all this material was reaching Party members for them to study and apply.

 

The CC should have demanded more in order to overcome a tendency to underestimate the value of theoretical, ideological work that is observed in many cadres, who invoke daily tasks and workload. It should have been more demanding in promoting the ideological work programme to be carried out by the bodies it leads that were directly responsible for this programme.

 

The circulation and utilisation of Rizospastis and the other publications could have been increased considerably if this had been linked closely with political, ideological and mass party work. Fragmentary organisational measures are not enough by themselves, as experience has shown.

 

One very serious weakness of the CC is that it did not utilise the materials from the Panhellenic Conference containing early assessments of the reasons for the overthrow of the socialist governments. The effort to continue the discussion would have supplied the Party forces with all the arguments about the contribution of socialism to the 20th century, the achievements of socialist power, and mankind’s unprecedented progress towards abolishing the exploitation of man by man, even within the particularly adverse conditions of the international correlation of forces. At the same time it would have provided the opportunity for an objective assessment of the profounder reasons for the victory of the counterrevolution. And this would be valuable experience for the struggle today. This weakness was objectively equivalent to underestimating the influence exerted by the victory of the counterrevolution on the minds of the working class and the people more generally.

 

The members of the CC in their entirety failed to make the task of self-education and of enriching their work with the problems arising in the ideological struggle into their own personal cause and responsibility. By utilising their experience and our publications, they could have expanded their knowledge on all the great and burning issues, so as to become better informed, beyond their own special experience and skills in their particular fields of responsibility. The personal example in this crucial area was not utilised in such a way that interest in knowledge, political education, ideological training, and the broadening of one’s knowledge in many issues and aspects of the movement could be conveyed throughout the entire Party.

 

During the past two years, an effort has been made to implement the 15th Congress decision regarding the regrouping of forces so that the Party’s primary attention could be focused on action in the workplace, in sectors and more generally among the working class, but in petty bourgeois strata as well. An additional reason for this was that developments intervened in labour relations, with privatisations, the appearance of new enterprises, and the relocation of industrial plants. It should have shown greater decisiveness with regard to the difficulties encountered in the regrouping due to established habits and the reluctance related to increased demands in the operation of the BOs.

 

Serious efforts were made to address the Party’s very acute financial problem. KKE guided the successful achievement of goals during the financial campaigns in a positive way. But it could not provide an all-round thrust in this regard, nor orient the work of the leading bodies more decisively, so that the BOs could ensure that the constant, daily financial work would be done, to avoid the need for the inevitable emergency fund-raising campaigns that absorb additional energy. The Party’s financial work falls short of the possibilities and the intentions of comrades, followers, friends and ordinary fighters to support the Party.

 

The CC’s Political Bureau was active within the framework of the CC’s guidelines. It worked out questions of initiatives to rally forces. It progressively upgraded its performance on matters related to working out mass movement tactics. It devoted greater attention to the effort to popularise and disseminate the Theses in a better way. It contributed to the broader political opening of the Party Organisations, monitored political developments closely and, in most cases, contributed to orienting the organisations promptly.

 

One weak point in the PB’s work was in its leadership of the CC sections, in seeing to their more appropriate orientation to the cause of building the Front, in working out the Party’s positions, and in studying ideological and political issues. In a good many cases, it showed the tendency to give way to the organisations’ unwillingness to make forces available to support the work of the CC’s sections. It should have been more demanding and taken care to utilise Party and broader forces in the work of the auxiliary sections and the two parliamentary groups. Despite the improvement shown in the CC sections’ work during the recent period, the PB was unable to guide them toward the better monitoring of developments in their fields, so that they could acquire more effective leadership and deepen understanding of their fields.

 

The PB did not, to the measure of its share of responsibility, support the activity of the Centre for Marxist Research (KME) in developing scientific research and disseminating Marxist theory among the intelligentsia, scientists and scholars.

 

On the basis of CC guidelines, it should have dealt more seriously and resolutely with the question of communist education and with cadre promotion policy.

 

The Secretariat of the CC worked positively within the spirit and framework of the mission assigned to it by the CC. It contributed to drafting and particularising CC decisions. It made an effort to cooperate with CC sections so as to enrich decisions with the special needs of individual sectors. It helped to better orient the organisations regarding the mass movement and the policy of alliances, as well as to strengthen control over the implementation of decisions and to accumulate leadership experience.

 

It should have been more prompt in helping make the nature and purpose of the regrouping of the Party Organisations better understood so that this process could start out earlier.

 

45. The City, Regional and Prefectural Committees, through the improvement due to CC help, showed an upswing in their activity and intensified efforts to improve their links with organisations and movements. But they were unable to overcome the «organisationalist» style of work, fragmentation and an opportunistic viewpoint of duties. They did not utilise the decisions and conclusions of the CC as required. The leading bodies did not study the problems of young people. Regarding help to KNE, they limited themselves to assigning this duty to individual comrades, although it should have been the concern of the body, or every member of the CC, of every cadre. The appropriate forces were not made available to help the KNE organisations, to conduct a deeper and more comprehensive study of the living conditions of young people, and the factors that shape their awareness. It has not been sufficiently aware that the future of the Party is, to a large degree, associated with the progress of KNE.

 

E. THE PARTY’S TASKS DURING THE PERIOD TO COME

 

46. The Party’s main task remains to become stronger ideologically, politically and organisationally, as an integral part of action to build the AADF. This should not be understood as an ordinary duty, i.e. to cover the perceived gaps, lacks and weaknesses. The Party must arrive at the 17th Congress, having succeeded more substantially in accomplishing the tasks it has set: that of being more mass-oriented and militant, with new forces, particularly from the working class and youth, and more strongly rooted in the workplace. It should have improved its ability to foresee developments and to improve its vigilance so that, together with its allies, it can give a strong push to progress, to the revolutionary upsurge of the struggle, to the radical shaping of consciences. It should be able to stand up to the adversities and offensives that will increase during the next few years, and have the ability to orient the shifts and turns of the struggle.

 

Within the context of collective responsibility, the permanent concern of the CC, of the leading bodies and of every BO separately must be the considered preparation of interventions to create and build alliances on the various fronts of struggle which may evolve into building blocks, even nucleii, for building the Front. The issue of the Front should constitute a daily cause and task of the BOs and of every member and cadre personally because collectivity is not impersonal.

 

A higher degree of assimilation of Party strategy is required, as are the ability to link tactics with strategy in daily action and the knowledge of ideological and political issues, government tactics and the other mechanisms of the system. There should be frequent collective examination of the results, critical evaluation of efforts, steadfastness and insistence on this political line, without backing down in the face of hardships.

           

47. Significant progress can be made if attention is focused on three main factors that, in relation to others, play a decisive role:

  • Strengthening KKE and KNE ideologically, politically and organisationally, as demanded by the times.
  • Dealing with the negative situation prevailing in the working class trade union movement, and making an effort to put young people in the front lines of the struggle alongside the working class.
  • Disseminating the ideology of scientific socialism, defending the history of the workers’ communist movement, and averting distortion and slander. Bringing the tested principles and values of the popular movement to the forefront to show the titanic effort of the peoples and movements in the 20th century to gain social emancipation and to liberate humanity from all forms of exploitation and oppression.

 

48. If significant, visible changes take place in these critical fields, we can hope for a broadening of the Party’s influence and consequently for a greater capability and opportunity in the struggle to build the AADF.

 

Within this context it is necessary:

  • For the Party’s leading role in the labour movement to be upgraded, particularly in the trade unions and in union struggles, given that the class-oriented trade union movement constitutes a basic component in building the anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly alliance.
  • For the entire Party, down to the BO level, to acquire the directest and closest possible relations with the working class and its organisations at home and in the workplace.
  • For anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist demands and targets to be worked out more cohesively and in greater detail. We should have the front of research open constantly, monitoring developments closely, taking into account the total needs of the working class family, and all the factors that are linked with standard of living and present-day rights.
  • For the serious weaknesses and deficiencies in the field of communist propaganda to be addressed in terms of content, form and quality.
  • For a plan to be developed steadily and constantly, according to the needs, for an on-going approach and communication with the industrial zones and areas in which sectors and activities are concentrated. A special study should be conducted on coordination and cooperation with the party organisations in Attica.
  • For the Party’s Theses to be discussed, its Programme and theory disseminated on a daily basis, especially among the most vanguard groups of the working class and young people; this discussion should be held with priorities, but also flexibly according to developments. Classical forms should be utilised, particularly those which favour lively, direct dialogue and modern, widely used technological media.

 

The Party’s enlightenment and propaganda activity should not be downgraded exclusively to the level of the needs of trade union action and working class awareness, especially now when the serious changes spurred by capitalist restructuring are taking place; science and technology should be utilised under conditions in which forms of social life and action are being lost, in the neighbourhood, in the workplace, etc. Communists and friends of the party who have special knowledge in this field and can contribute to improving the content and form of propaganda should be called upon to cooperate and assist.

 

Systematic disclosures should be made to the working class and, above all, the party’s positions should be developed to reflect workers’ modern needs and demands, in terms of the reproduction of the labour force, and the life of the working class family.

 

The Party of the working class must show the working class the conflict between capital and labour in all of its manifestations, as well as the necessity for an alliance of the petty bourgeois and middle class strata of the town and countryside and with radical social movements. The problems of education, culture and health, the drug problem, nationalism and religious fanaticism, racism, the environment, and the problem of the imperialist world order must become the immediate targets of the working people’s action. The modern content of patriotism should be shown, one that rejects class collaboration and that rallies people together in an anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist direction and in the anti-capitalist struggle on the national and international levels. The necessity must be demonstrated for class solidarity, for proletarian internationalism, and for the internationalist solidarity of the peoples against imperialist policy.

 

A primary task is to increase the circulation of Rizospastis, COMEP, and the Party’s other publications, which must be supplemented with special editions for the working class and youth. This task is associated with the effort to improve their quality, in terms of both content and form. A special effort is required for Rizospastis to reach every corner of the country, including places it may not have reached to date.

 

A programme of lectures, one-day conferences, seminars, and party schools should be organised to ensure Marxist-Leninist training for members and cadres. The personal work of every cadre and the effectiveness of the Party bodies will depend on the promotion of this programme.

 

A more systematic struggle should be waged against the information monopoly of the state and private media, of the international media and networks. A broad movement should be supported in this field, with a special effort made to attract young people.

 

The new CC should contribute more substantially, on both the European and international levels, to the development of the discussion and the taking of initiatives to address the serious problems in the international labour movement, particularly in Europe. It should proceed, on the basis of 16th Congress decisions, to draw up a Party plan of action in order to strengthen the class movement in Greece. This plan should be discussed throughout the Party and approved at the nationwide party conference to be held in accordance with the statutes. At the same time a discussion and dialogue should be organised with cooperating persons and with non-party forces who want to engage in joint action with the Party and have something to offer.

 

49. The new CC should work out a comprehensive programme of action and contribution within the framework of a joint effort with other communist and workers’ parties, to make known the real causes that led to the reversal of the socialist regimes, to promote the vitality of the ideas of socialism, and to provide an objective criticism of the mistakes that were made under the particular circumstances. Positions and viewpoints about socialism should be enriched on the basis of the experience that will result from this. More adequate responses should be addressed to the anti-socialist, anti-communist campaign that seeks to vindicate the capitalist system. Rebuttals should be provided to the illusion that it could take on a more humane character.

 

Broader events should be held so that other forces can take part in this effort, including workers, intellectuals, and progressive people who have their own views to contribute to ensure that the discussion continues. There should be cooperation with communist parties that are working on texts on this subject, or with Marxist scientists and scholars from former socialist countries.

 

50. On the basis of the decisions taken and guidelines set by the 16th Congress, the new CC will proceed to draft a more specialised plan, with initiatives to promote new fronts in the anti-imperialist anti-monopoly struggle and the alliance of forces, and to strengthen the alliances that have already been formed in the trade union movement, in the movements for peace, democratic rights, etc.

 

The leading bodies in regions, towns and large municipalities should take their own similar initiatives, considering the particular conditions and possibilities in their areas. Only through such local initiatives that embrace broader spheres, both geographically and sectorally, will it be possible for every BO to find a field of action; and the BO in turn must support and enrich the more general initiatives with broader local forces.

 

The standardisation of initiatives, and methods and forms of work should stop. A considered originality based on the particularities of the field in question should be sought. New methods and modes of operation should be tried. even experimentally. Positive initiatives undertaken without party intervention should be supported, as long as they have potential and radicalism.

 

It is important for every initiative undertaken by the Party, from its earliest stages, to be expanded by seeking opinions from all the forces with whom we cooperate and certainly from friends and followers. From the very first moment, all those who want to offer their services should be utilised so that this initiative can be as comprehensive and realistic as possible.

 

51. The Party should do whatever it can, but in a more demanding way, to cultivate fertile ground for the regeneration of a strong anti-imperialist youth movement under modern conditions. The values of the struggle and the responsibility of the younger generation for the future should be demonstrated through their stance towards the problems of the people and the country. Continuing, direct communication should be maintained with young people.

 

Substantial qualitative help should be given to KNE, which must reinforce its political presence and ties with young people, particularly with young job-seekers and those who are employed in one form or another.

 

KNE must win a significant position in the minds of young people, as the force that defends their rights to work, education and access to new technologies, and as the force fighting against drugs, and for culture, sport, and leisure time.

 

The erroneous view that it is difficult for Party organisations to get to know firsthand the problems of youth and the concerns of KNE should be overcome. It is both possible and feasible. The issue is not to take over the responsibility of KNE, but to contribute on all fronts of struggle to making known the problems of young people and the responsibility of the working people to uphold their children’s rights.

 

Young people must learn about the history and struggles of the people. They must learn firsthand what KKE is and what it wants. They must be helped as much as possible so that more young people are not influenced by anti-communist and anti-socialist propaganda. The need for and realistic prospect of socialism, and the future of a communist society should be demonstrated. Young people should develop resistance and immunity to manipulation and capitalist barbarity.

 

Special initiatives and activities should be undertaken in the fight for equal rights to education, health, culture and sport for foreign children and youth.

 

The way in which KNE sections can be helped through cooperation with Party sections should be studied in more detail.

 

52. In cooperation with Party organisations, the issue of rallying together the consistent forces among the farmers in a united nationwide movement should be addressed through a framework of programme positions and goals that will demonstrate the role and rights of poor farmers, the farming household and the people’s cooperatives.

 

The main task among the petty bourgeois strata, especially people who have small businesses or are self-employed, is to deal with the problems of organising them on the trade union level. A labour organisation should also be established in the spheres of new occupations and activities. At the same time, systematic party work should be organised in these areas, the Party’s positions and prospects should be put forward, and existing prejudices should be overcome regarding the Party’s position with respect to the small entrepreneur. On such a basis, the more general effort to extend action to their trade union movement may be effective.

 

An integral element of Party work in building the Front, and in fighting for the rights of the working class and the other working people is the ideological, political and mass struggle to solve the special problems of women. There is an immediate need for the unions to engage in a joint struggle with radical women’s organisations and movements.

 

Strengthening the Party presupposes the renewal of its ranks with women from the working class and other popular strata, the promotion of women cadres to Party bodies, and the increased membership of young women.

 

53. The policy regarding cadres should be harmonised with the increased and complicated requirements of present day conditions. It should correspond to the nature of the Party and its purpose. Every leading body, starting with the CC, should have a plan for its cadre needs and particularly for specialised and trained people in different fields of work. At the heart of the plan should be its social composition, i.e. the mass promotion of cadres from the working class, the preparation of KNE cadres, and the promotion of women, particularly from the working class. At the same time, consideration should be given to preparing cadres suitable to meet serious needs in ideological work, teachers for party schools, propagandists and teachers for work among young people. There are serious needs in the realm of research, in promoting and utilising communist scholars and researchers, and in the field of culture.

 

Any element of slipshod work and subjectivism should be rejected. Today much more is required in terms of the maturity and development of the largest possible number of cadres. Planning should embrace KNE, the basic hatchery for producing the new generation of cadres who will take the cause of the Party onto their shoulders. The planned renewal and alternation of duties for cadres will expand their experience and help avoid routine and the standardisation of tasks.

 

Regarding the policy on cadres, among other things, they require study in party schools, periodic participation in seminars and lectures in the form of adult education or assistance in specialised fields. The primary responsibility falls on the CC, which should not give in to the excuses cited by organisations to the effect that giving Party leave to cadres for education creates gaps and difficulties in the current party work; such excuses are an example of short-sighted adherence to practical matters, but above all they underestimate the nature of the Party’s tasks and mission.

 

The periodic criticism of cadres’ work should be organised more systematically, whether by examining sectors of work, or in separate processes. The opinion of the BOs should be sought frequently about the cadres who lead them, and this should apply to the higher bodies as well.

 

Every cadre, irrespective of his or her particular division of work or experience, is obliged to reach a higher level in relation to the past in terms of theory, ideology, political training and ability, and to seek links with the working class and the popular masses. Cadres should act creatively, with initiatives in their own fields. They should be able to see through the complex reality and discern the main trends, the main cause and the basic link, and to understand the problems of the people in depth.

 

The necessary specialisation in one field of work should not lead to the distraction of interest from the overall duties of the Party or from the problem of building the party. The knowledge and experiences of cadres specialised in one field should be utilised by the entire Party. It is the responsibility of the leading bodies to pass on the discussions and conclusions about particular problems and sectors of the movement to the organisations. Special help should be provided to cadres working in specialised sectors to help them acquire deeper knowledge of their subject, and to overcome the tendency to one-sidedness and to becoming distracted from the general Party tasks. This is in reference particularly to cadres elected to mass organisations, to the parliament and to local government.

 

An issue of critical importance is the stance of cadres toward the efforts made by the class enemy to exploit the hardships and fatigue that appear under conditions in which the results are not obvious, or under conditions that change abruptly, requiring the rearrangement of tasks and rapid adjustment to new forms of work and new goals.

 

The cadre is judged by his or her abilities, skills, and constant efforts to improve, in order to combat the existing danger of routine and stagnation; and by his or her creative concern in following events, and in participating actively to raise awareness of new problems and needs.

 

These virtues can be utilised by the Party and the labour movement as long as they are combined with a steel will, endurance, heroism in daily work, dedication and sacrifice in the interests of the people.

 

The response to the long years of heroic traditions of communists in Greece and all over the world, the ideological and political vigilance against the policy and manoeuvres of the class enemy must be a virtue won by every cadre so as to increase the Party’s total vigilance.

 

Cadres should possess and have developed to the maximum degree the irreplaceable principle of collectivity, which is not exhausted by holding meetings and taking part in discussions. It is dependent on participation in practical action, on thinking responsibly, on speaking one’s opinion freely, but also on combatting the tendency to subjectivism, and the narrowness of personal experience. Cadres must seek the opinions of other comrades, those with whom they work and those they lead.

 

54. One immediate task which must be performed in the first months after the Congress is to complete the regrouping of Party forces, which is integrally linked with the orientation of action toward the working class and its movement, to social forces of the Front. It is a basic precept of the Statutes regarding organisation on a productive-geographical basis. The nature of the Party as the conscious vanguard of the working class must be reflected in the organisation of the BOs.

 

Care should be taken not to underestimate the difficulties existing today that affect the organisation of party life, such as changes in labour relations and the lengthening of working time, particularly for those who have more than one job because of the insecurity of part-time employment.

 

But these difficulties cannot be a justification for slackness, flabbiness, failure to contribute or to participate in Party procedures. The leading bodies and bureaus of the BOs should ensure maximum participation, regular briefing, and comradely help so that everybody offers what they can, giving ever more time to the popular movement, to the Party, and to the cause of the Front.

 

The leading bodies have the primary responsibility for upgrading the discussion of general political issues in the BOs, and for gathering, studying and utilising opinions. Any element of formality and routine in the BO should be rejected. The frequency of meetings and the various forms of internal party life are not determined solely by statutory obligations, but also by developments, events, and the lively reality that exists in the BO, or in the sector to which it belongs. Internal party life will become richer and more interesting when BO members and cadres maintain, develop and broaden the Party’s links with the popular masses, with their problems and struggles.

 

An end should be put to the phenomenon of general political issues being discussed exclusively. The internal life of every party link should be oriented toward its own planning and the examination of specific sectoral or local experience. The organs and BOs should use forms of political information such as special meetings or BOs convening in groups so that there is prompt orientation whenever necessary without time-consuming procedures. Lectures should be held on important or new issues. Special briefing on serious issues handled by the leading bodies should be organised with greater consistency, with a view to increasing the participation of Party members in dealing with and solving problems. Individual cooperation at the BO level should be organised methodically so that BO meetings are relieved of practical issues and can focus on drafting decisions, checking results and working out experience.

 

The frequent briefing of friends, followers and associates should be ensured at the BO level, through both individual work and collective forms, and it should take on a relatively organised form in thematic units and in support committees of the Party and its friends.

 

55. The new CC should secure support for its work with auxiliary staff suitable for present day needs, and utilise the modern media and possibilities for scientific substantiation. It should monitor the leading bodies and organisations, and vice versa, be monitored itself in this regard. It should secure the creative and correct operation of party groups throughout the Party, as recommended in the Statutes. All forms of internal Party operation should be used effectively to increase collectivity, to exchange experiences and to utilise all proposals and ideas. Given the role of new technologies under modern conditions, a special section should be organised in the CC that will provide continuity to the work and applications that have been carried out today, that will provide more systematic monitoring of technological developments in Greece and internationally and their application, in close cooperation with other CC sections. More particularly, studies should be conducted to determine the effects of the new technologies on the intensification and deepening of exploitation and oppression, on social stratification, on social alliances and on issues of democracy.

 

56. Rizospastis, COMEP and the Party’s publications more generally can and should be improved in terms of their content and form, so that they can cover a broader range of ideological, political and social issues, according to the nature of each publication.

 

The communists working at Rizospastis need more help so that they can broaden the range of their theoretical and political knowledge. They should improve their ability to write lively articles and reports, with greater depth in their thinking and greater clarity. COMEP also has room for further improvement based on articles from all cadres, and utilising all forces that can offer their services.

 

But the main issue concerns the need for a change of stance on the part of the cadres above all but of the members as well, toward studying, reading and books in general. Party organisations should have closer contacts both with Rizospastis and COMEP and the Party bookstore «Synchroni Epohi». Their articles and texts should be utilised in political and ideological work, together with certain books, to raise the political and educational level, and to expand information horizons about developments in Greece and abroad.

 

57. The KKE will continue its effort, in common with other communist parties that think in a similar way, to deal with problems of joint action so that the pole of the communist movement can become more visible worldwide, based on the positive experience of the 20th century, and at the same time having learned from the negative events that occurred at times. During the years to come, it will continue its efforts to create a distinct form of coordination and cooperation on the international and regional level, higher than what has been achieved to date through initiatives by communist and workers’ parties. At the same time, it will step up its activity to create alliances focused on confronting imperialist aggressiveness against the living standard of the working class and the other poor strata of the people, NATO and the so-called new world order. Some positive experience has already emerged from the international meetings of CPs and broader anti-imperialist forces.

 

Integral parts of the ideological counteroffensive include: defending the scientific theory of socialism as established by Marx, Engels and Lenin and as developed under modern conditions, and defending the contribution of the socialism we have known. At the same time, the discussion must continue of the reasons why the counterrevolution prevailed. The real problems that existed under the particular conditions must be revealed. Convincing, clear replies must be given to the bourgeois and petty bourgeois criticism levelled today about socialism in the 20th century.

 

The defence of the revolutionary role of the working class, its alliances with other poor strata of the people and with petty bourgeois forces on the social and political levels should be based on the line against the monopolies and imperialism on the national and international levels. The problem of power should be studied, as should the participation of CPs in bourgeois or petty bourgeois governments under conditions of monopoly dictatorship. Criticism should be levelled at the utopian view that a different management model could lead to an improvement in social prosperity without affecting the strategic directions of the international imperialist system. The confrontation between the two paths to internationalisation and the dialectical relationship of the struggle on the national and international levels should be examined.

 

As regards coordination and common action today, conditions are more mature than ever before for the following directions and actions: regional alliance and common action in Europe, an inter-Balkan alliance on the problems of the region, with special focus on stepping up efforts to reorganise the communist movement, in cooperation with the respective parties, development of relations with anti-imperialist, progressive forces and movements in Balkan countries, broadening of contacts on a bilateral level between CPs that are interested in regional alliances and cooperation on various broad fronts, but also in the exchange of experience.

 

The new CC will discuss the annual publication of the thoughts and experience of the Party for international use. It will discuss the establishment of a solidarity committee for persecuted communists and other militants and exchange thoughts with parties interested in this.

 

58. The Party’s financial difficulties are largely associated with objective problems. The complex developments and the struggle demand not merely adequate finances from the Party, but a surplus that will assist the modernisation and development of today’s more expensive propaganda means. The financial issue has evolved into a significant prerequisite for Party action to grow. The new CC must examine the problem of the Party’s entrepreneurial activity. It must get away from amateurism. The financial field has many pitfalls, given that the class enemy intervenes in every way to bring the party down economically and to limit its political activity. Resolving the Party’s chronic financial problem, particularly under present conditions, must become a cause undertaken by the leading bodies and the BOs, as well as by its friends and followers.

 

The new CC must study a plan for the decisive improvement of the Party’s electronic media, particularly television. It must proceed to the appropriate collaborations, mobilising broader forces, but without losing its character as a political information channel that serves popular struggles and democratic information and supports positive efforts in culture and science.

 

* * *

The cause of effective popular resistance to capitalist barbarity and the task of building the Front will largely depend in the years to come on progress in the ideological, political and organisational strengthening of KKE, on the reinforcement of the class trade union movement, on the mass militant struggle of young people alongside the labour movement, and on the strengthening of KNE. It will also depend on the contribution of KKE and the popular movement more generally to the global anti-imperialist struggle against capitalist barbarity, and for socialism.

 

Despite today’s great difficulties, communists retain their optimism.

 

They are heading toward the 16th Congress with responsibility and with the certainty that the struggle will have results and prospects.

 

They believe that with the contribution of its members and friends, KKE can, through its 16th Congress, take an important step forward in response to the modern conditions of the class struggle and to its historic mission.

 

The CC of KKE

September 2000

 


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