70 years EAM 2011: Alliance for people’s Power. Socialization of monopolies”

The event on the 70^th anniversary of the foundation of National Liberation Front (EAM), which was organized by the CC of the KKE and the organization of the resistance fighters PEAEA-DSE focused on the lessons from the heroic struggle of EAM, of the National People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), of the United Nationwide Youth Organisation (EPON) and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) and above all on the current duties that the people has, so that this time it launches its counterattack against the monopolies and their power and paves the way for its own power and economy. Aleka Papariga, GS of the CC of the KKE delivered the central speech of the event and stressed amongst other things:

“We are proud and honoured to organise this event on the 70^th anniversary of the foundation of EAM, for all those, men and women, who fought with every means at their disposal against the invaders and occupiers.

World War II was an imperialist war, and therefore unjust, while on the part of the peoples, the national liberation movements and the USSR it was a just war. […] It has been unquestionably proved that no people can trust the defense of the territorial integrity of their country to the bourgeois parties and their class no matter if it operates through bourgeois parliamentary democracy or through the sidelining and the temporary suspension of the bourgeois parliament. […] The victory would have been impossible without EAM; without the KKE, which played the leading role in its foundation and in its activity, the great contribution of Greece to the successful outcome in Europe. The biggest share in this victory belongs to the Red Army, to the Soviet people and of course to the armed struggle of the Yugoslavs and of course to the peoples of Europe that, despite the fact that they were betrayed by the governments and the ruling parties suffered and struggled. In the Balkans, the national liberation movement of Albania and the antifascist movement of Bulgaria were of great significance. The working class, the working people must be prepared to build their own front in order to defend their territorial integrity so that it will be them and not the bourgeois class of their country who will get through this war as the winners; so that they achieve a double liberation from foreign imperialist occupation and the domestic political power, from the capitalist system which is inseparable from war. […]

The mass heroism of the people, the people’s initiative are not cultivated, neither emerge on a mass scale if there is not a communist vanguard capable of taking the initial initiative and then inspire, give a meaning and a deeper purpose to the struggle.

The lesson which is drawn is that the independent activity of the CP is a precondition for a correct policy of alliances which requires compromises, however, these cannot be determined by each conjuncture, cannot relegate strategy to a secondary position, or be subordinated to the needs of the one or the other electoral battle.

Over the last period the proposal for the so-called “unity of the left” has been substituted by declarations on the formation of a new, modern EAM. It is a phrase that is easy on the ear, stimulates emotion and sentimentality but has a clear political intention to exploit the consfusion it creates .

The declarations for a new EAM, taking into account the vague way in which they are promoted, count on the temporary satisfaction of the impatient popular masses who seek a mild way to stop the barbarity of the measures of the government and return to the situation before the memorandum. They consciously flatter the illusions of the popular masses, especially of the middle strata, that after an electoral “assault” a progressive government might emerge that will negotiate the rules of the EU and with the assistance of its rules so as to return back to the situation before the memorandum as if the memorandum was a conspiracy, something unexpected… As if in the previous period, and specifically from 1992 and onwards there had not been any successive steps for the strategic overturning of the labour relations, for privatizations, for the participation in the imperialist war. Or as if it is possible for any country to follow a path against the monopolies, in favour of the people and the workers’ without a rupture with and withdrawal from the EU. They consider that the cause of the bankruptcy of Greece is the memorandum or the debt which leads automatically to a mistaken strategy. The fact that the bankruptcy with the form of a debt haircut is inevitable for capital does not mean it is the only way for the people.

The inevitable choice of capital cannot be fought against with negotiations within the EU but with the struggle that leads to the workers’ power, to the disengagement and the cancellation of the debt by the new government, unilaterally. Opportunism has an inherent tendency to satisfy illusions, to succumb to the pressure of the anger. It hides its strategy and its thirst to participate in governments for bourgeois management. We go many, many, years back, to the period when PASOK spread the artificial dilemma “right or anti-right”, “light – darkness”, “with us or we return to Makronissos (note: to the islands of exile)”.

Opportunism has the inherent tendency to pass very easily from the open compromise in the name of realism to radical rhetoric with a vague political line. Without any respect for the workers’ and people’s revolutions of the 20^th century where the peoples strived to build another society, they shamelessly say that socialism will come in …. the Second coming.

The words of Marx that “the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” are very suitable in this instance.

There is one thing that remains stable in the perpetual wavering of opportunism, the fear and the hatred of the social revolution for the workers’ power.

In the conditions of the crisis – even more so under a crisis with the features of today’s crisis- the way out from this vicious circle is objectively identified with the struggle for workers’ and people’s power, with the socialization of monopolies, the disengagement from the EU and the cancellation of the debt. Today the KKE has accumulated a great deal of experience as regards the strategy and the tactics of the struggle. It is one thing to talk about tactical moves which contribute to the strengthening of the class struggle and quite another to talk about tactical moves which objectively weaken it.

Is it possible to make an alliance and indeed in conditions of a deep crisis of the capitalist system with the aim of forming a government and ignore the character and the nature of the bourgeois state and the bourgeois parties? The character and the nature of the EU, the fact of the inter-imperialist rivalries, the uneven development? We had never been nor will we ever be the political staff of the bourgeois state. Furthermore, there is the experience of the Italian, of the French experiments and others” concluded the GS of the CC of KKE.

The event also included a speech of the representative of the organizations of the resistance fighters (PEAEA-DSE) as well as musical programme with partisan songs.