I speak of the last trumpet calls of the defeated soldiers
Of the rags from our holiday clothes
Of our children, selling cigarettes to passers-by
I speak of the flowers that have wilted on the graves and are rotting under the rain
Of the houses that gape, windowless, like toothless skulls
Of the girls begging, showing the wounds on their breasts
Of the barefoot mothers crawling in the debris
Of the flaming cities, the corpses piling in the streets
The pimp poets, trembling in thresholds at night
I speak of the endless nights when the light is lessened at dawn
Of the loaded tracks and the steps on wet cobblestone
I speak of the prison yards and the tears of those condemned to death.
From "The Alliance Politics of the KKE and the Critique to 'Left Unity'"
In Contemporary Right-Wing Opportunism, Publication of the CC of the KKE, Synchroni Epohi, Athens 2008.
The purpose of this article is to encode, as much as possible, the objective differences between these two propositions for an alliance [the alliance politics of the KKE and the notion of "Left Unity"]. Alliances, it should be understood, are not based on agreement on terms and slogans or general ideas, but on issues of strategic importance and orientation, on the issue of alternative power.
For the KKE, alliance politics is a permanent, not a conjunctural policy. We struggle to make it materialize, to foreground it and to popularize it, independently of the existence of the subjective preconditions for its materialization at the political level. For the KKE, the creation of an alliance is an issue of struggle, of developments in the correlation of forces, of radical reorderings within political and social consciousness, such that they can bring changes to the composition of the political landscape. Ultimately, the level of the movement will play a determining role in this all-important issue. Of course, we are not simply waiting for possibilities to drop on our hands like overripe fruit. We take initiatives, and first of all we foster dialogue within the people, with radical popular forces, with social agents acting in a positive direction; we follow developments, we try to assist positive trends.
Yesterday, and after meeting with representatives of ESEE and GSVEE, the leader of SYRIZA 2.0, aka "Popular Unity", Panayiotis Lafazanis made the following statement, which is very interesting from the standpoint of the kind of class consciousness it represents, and, of course, the class consciousness it addresses and solicits:
Within the context of the mandate I have received from the President of the Republic [as "third Party", despite never having been elected as such], I had the honor to meet two of the greatest Confederations of our country, GSVEE and ESEΕ. It was especially honoring to me that we sat and talked and exchanged views with honesty, for quite some time, I would say.
It was a meeting of many hours, but also a substantial and productive exchange of views. What I derived from it is of course well-known, but I will repeat. The Memoranda have two great victims in Greece: the first and great victim is of course our youth, which is unfortunately compelled to migrate in order to survive; the second great victim of the Memoranda are medium and small businesses. Medium and small businesses have been placed in the gallows, in the guillotine. With the Memoranda, austerity, tax raiding, lack of cash flow [bank closure was implemented while Lafazanis and other members of "Popular Unity" were in the government cabinet], the robber bank system, which becomes constantly more rapacious, under these conditions, medium and small businesses cannot survive. They have no future whatsoever. And with them, of course, the Greek economy, Greece and the Greek people have no future.
In a letter addressed to the President of the Europarliament, Martin Schulz, the Europarliament group of the KKE has condemned the adoption of a reactionary law imposing Mass Media censorship in Ukraine as well as the initiative of a Czech MEP, known for his anticommunist activity. The letter is as follows:
"With the present letter we would like, first of all, to denounce the new, reactionary law of the Ukrainian government, which imposes a regime of censorship on the Mass Media, publishing, films and every cultural and artistic creation, in the name of "protecting national security" and preventing the "fomenting ethnic hatred." This law constitutes another dangerous element of the politics of the forces that seized power after the intervention of the USA-EU-NATO in Ukraine, which took place in the midst of competition with Russia and the antipopular schemes of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie.
This is another strike of the Ukrainian government against the people; supported by fascist forces, the government continues to bomb Donbas and has banned the CP of Ukraine, while abductions, persecution and threats against communists and other workers and racist murderous attacks by fascist shock troops continue.
As I have already argued in the past, it is time we throw the concepts of promise and acceptance, that is, the concept of a contract, to the garbage bin as tools for the understanding of politics. These are concepts of moral(istic) and legal descent, that don't help us understand the motion of the multitude. It is also time to get rid of an idea with a long past, especially in the discourse of the Left and of social movements: the concept of a demand, and the conception of political discourse as a "plan" that "materializes." Politics is elsewhere; politics doesn't mean that some sovereign subjects meet and delegate to some other, "even more sovereign" subject, the "materialization" or the "satisfaction" of some of their demands [...] This is the scenario of classic bourgeois political philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries, based on the model of the market and of contracts.
[...] This schema is desperately inadequate. It can account only for normality, normalcy, accountability -- that is to say, non politics. Politics is not communication; or at least, it is not, and it is not desirable or possible that it becomes, communication based on rules where all messages are transparent, regulated and distortion-free. Politics is that which escapes, that which is not planned. It is noise, the parasite. What is politically interesting is that which deconstructs, not that which institutes palliative equivalences.
Q: You had stated last October that a SYRIZA government will "abolish the Memorandum and its implementation laws in one night, with one legal act, just as they were dictatorially imposed." What has changed, Mr. Minister, and you forgot about this statement? Was the raw reality stronger than the pre-election wishes of your party or do you think the government has backtracked in many of its commitments when faced with the lenders?
A: There is no statement of mine that we will abolish the Memorandum in one night; it only exists as a total distortion of what I have said at different times. Personally, I always underlined, indeed, that Memoranda and their implementation laws must be abolished by a government in which SYRIZA will participate not "dictatorially", but with normal parliamentary procedures, with respect to the Parliament and with a full observance of the Parliamentary Regulations and Constitution. The first act of our new government was to immediately stop the implementation of the Memorandum that was in process. The austerity measures and the taxes that the ND-PASOK government was about to implement were thrown in the garbage. Our commitment for full abolition of the Memoranda and their implementation laws is still wholly valid; and this commitment, despite the great post-election difficulties and the blatant blackmail from abroad, will be fully honored in the next few months. The full abolition of memoranda is a position equivalent to SYRIZA's identity and the precondition for a new, consistent, progressive, developmental course and prospect for the country.
In its comment on the intensification of the phenomenon of migration and the government-EU measures, the Press Office of the CC of the KKE notes:
"The KKE had warned, in a timely fashion, that the drama of thousands of persecuted and entrapped refugees and migrants flooding the country, especially the islands of the Aegean, cannot be dealt with through the patched-up measures of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, which, like the previous governments, is looking for "solutions" within the path of the EU migration policy.
The KKE calls on the worker and popular movement to take the lead, intensify its solidarity, isolate racist manifestations and the phenomena of exploitation of refugee needs. The movement should demand: the abolition of the rules of the Dublin and Schengen Treaties, the obtainment of obstacle-free and secure transport of refugees to EU member states, which are their real destination, the immediate hiring of necessary personnel for the services of first reception and refuge, the creation of human reception and hospitality spaces, the abolition of the participation of our country in the imperialist plans of the US-NATO-EU, the non participation in imperialist intervention in other countries, the disengagement from Euro-Atlantic organizations."
14 March, 1952. Nicos Belloyannis, Dimitris Batsis, Nicos Kaloumenos and Elias Argyriades have been sentenced to death as enemies of the state and Soviet spies. A letter arrives in the offices of the newspaper "Proodeftiki Allagi" [Progressive Change]. It is signed by member of the KKE CC and PB and director of the party's organizational structure in Athens and Piraeus, Nicos Ploumbides. He is in hiding from the revanchist post civil war Greek state. It is published two days later. The letter reads (transcription follows original notation):
Dear General Editor,
I am sending you a copy (handwritten) of a letter I have sent to the lawyers of my comrade, Nicos Belloyannis, and I beg you to publish it. I give you and the GREEK PEOPLE my promise to present myself and stand trial if the death sentence on Belloyannis is repealed.
Sincerely,
Nicos A. Ploumbides
Member of the CC of the KKE
Athens, 14 March 1952
SYRIZA MPs sleeping in Parliament during "fast-track" imposition of the third Memorandum by their Party
What is "the Left"? Ten Remarks
Originally published in Greek, in Lenin Reloaded, 21 June 2014
1. In Greece, "the Left" exists since 1951, and the foundation, during that year, of the United Democratic Left (EDA). As a category of political thinking, it had no significance in the country in the period before the 1950s. "Anarchism" was far more important as a designator of ideology at the beginnings of the Greek worker movement than "the Left" -- not to mention the significance, for an anti-bourgeois politics, of terms like "Bolshevism" and "Third International". Structurally, the precondition for the birth of "the Left" was the self-censorship of the self-designation of a sector of the population as "communist" as a result of state terror. "The Left" is born under conditions of state repression as a defensive misnomer and as a pseudo-apellation for purposes of self-protection.
2. The defeat of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), in combination with state terror and repression, however, also created the preconditions for the pseudo-category of "the Left" (as a nominalist abstraction, rather than as a concrete designator of a tendency within a worker-socialist party -- a use with an entirely different genealogy) to acquire its own substantive meaning. It created, to put it more simply, the possibility for a section of the communists to really (and not just superficially) make the transition to "democratic ideology", which in conditions of unshakeable capitalist domination necessarily means the transition to the side of bourgeois democracy. "The Left" is the product of the effective surrender of a section of the communists to the victorious bourgeois state.
Using the government legislation [on taxing MP income] as an opportunity, the KKE reiterates its position for a drastic reduction of monetary compensation for Members of Parliament, for the abolition of a tax-free bracket for them, for the full abolition of MP pensions and other income related to the function of a Parliament member.
Instead of this, the government signs the slaughter of remaining labor rights and at the same time tries to dazzle and distract, by announcing a reduction of the wages of the MPs and other cadre of the government, while fully retaining parliamentary rights to monetary compensation, in an effort to make the new Memorandum more palatable.
The third Memorandum, agreed upon with the Institutions by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, and coming to the Parliament for approval, must face the greatest possible reaction on the part of workers and the entire people. It contains measures of such harshness and cruelty that no government in the past dared implement, fearing popular reaction. This is the great contribution of the SYRIZA government to the system. Using the fairytale of the "left government" and of the "Prime Minister who tried but was prevented", the government is moving ahead with the implementation of barbaric measures, that were permanent demands of big capital and of EU directives, and that demolish whatever was left standing of worker and people's rights.
The third Memorandum and its accompanying implementation laws include the continuation of all previous Memoranda and the commitment that anti-popular measures will be implemented to the letter. It contains new, painful measures on labor rights, insurance, the self-employed, small and middle farmers, making their survival even more difficult. At the same tie, it contains the implementation of measures aiming at the improvement of competitiveness and profitability of capital, the concentration of wealth into even fewer hands, through privatizations, OECD directives, the recapitalization of banks, the further liberalization of the energy market, the fund to which 50 billion euros worth of state property will be deposited.
Q: - You say that whether on the drachma or on the euro and with Memoranda, the people will suffer under present conditions. Is it possible that this line demobilizes citizens since the prospect you offer does not seem to have contemporary relevance?
A:- You are grossly mistaken. The political proposal of the KKE is and remains contemporary. The other proposals, those of the current and the former governments, are the ones pointing to a "Neverland" of exit from the crisis in the interests of the people. Those are proposals that satisfy only big capital and its sectors. The proposals of the other parties refer either to new agreements of the Memorandum type or simply to a change of currency through Grexit. Both proposals, adopted for different reasons by the present government and other parties on the one hand, and by Golden Dawn and various extraparliamentary formations on the other, are mathematically calibrated to lead the people to total bankruptcy. The KKE proposal, conversely, is the only realistic and authentically pro-people proposal, since it links disengagement from the Eurozone and the EU to a comprehensive plan and program for the economy and society, including the socialization of the concentrated means of production, national central planning, abolition of the debt, with the people organized and determined, in the framework of an authentic worker-popular power. The people can move in this direction actively, utilizing the experience of what the KKE has been saying yesterday and says today, in plain language.
The KKE denounces the murder of a Palestinian infant, tragically killed in an arson by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The Press Office of the CC notes in its comment: "This event is a result of the constantly rising aggression of the state of Israel in the region. Part of the share of the responsibility for the perpetual crime against the people of Palestine belongs to the EU, the USA, but also the Greek government, all sustaining and extending political, financial and military cooperation with the murderous state of Israel."
Syrian refugees, Omonoia Plaza, Athens, 17 July 2015
"The East" is the name of a lie; the lie of the West. Consciousness of the lie is the only path to truth. The East reveals the lie in which western (wo)man lives -- a (wo)man less human the more s/he thinks s/he is human, more than other humans -- a human protected from dehumanization, the deprivation of human identity, because s/he is white and "civilized." The East reveals the need of the western (wo)man for the lie, their identification with the lie. The foundation of the lie is the belief that exploitation does not poison consciousness; that there is a "spontaneous" expression that is not based on exploitation within societies dominated by capitalist relations of production. The western (wo)man is the one who benefits from the fruit of such exploitation but refuses to acknowledge it. It is the (wo)man who has forgotten the East, does not wish to know about the East, and yet pretends to "know" what exploitation is. The western (wo)man is the one who may accept debating capitalism but does not wish to speak of imperialism. Because for that (wo)man, "capitalism" is not something that concerns the East, that is baptized in its blood; its protagonist and its victim, western (wo)man believes, is, once again, western (wo)man. Like imperialism, western (wo)man is a parasitic entity dreaming of being the universal subject: dreaming that his/her fantasy is reality, his/her desires are a moral law, the satisfaction of their Ego a moral demand, their pleasure the historical end justifying the means of martyrdom for others. The world, which is not western (wo)man, will keep turning into hell for as long as every human being does not rebel against the infamy of being "western" -- nothing more than western.
We often hear the following, well-intentioned question: "What would you have done if you were in the place of the SYRIZA government"?
The question is not illogical. But we must place it in the right perspective.
If we, the KKE, were in the "place" of SYRIZA, meaning the place of bourgeois management, the place of defending capitalist interests, in search of winning back profits, seeking to use the advantages conferred on capital by membership in the EU, the EZ and Euroatlantic alliances and NATO; if we were in the "place" of taking up a government that is a tool of the power of monopolies; if we were in the "place" of negotiating on behalf of Greek capitalism by sitting in the roundtables of the EU, the EZ and other imperialist organizations;
"It is both them who are at fault!" SPD Poster, 1932.
The KKE has long argued that the role of the Left Platform is not at all, as it has pretended, to "radicalize" SYRIZA, or, in another of its formulations, to "pressure it to the Left", but rather to: a) bolster illusions that this is possible and even desirable for SYRIZA and the Left Platform itself; b) hence, prevent those who buy into the illusion from making a real left turn toward KKE; c) assist in the overall effort to create a fracture within the KKE -- hence regularly hosting and promoting those who have been expelled from the KKE in more recent years, including venomously anti-KKE initiatives like "Ergatikos Agwnas" (Labor Struggle), as well as other, increasingly anti-KKE formations like ANTARSYA, in a broad "more left than SYRIZA, but still anti-KKE" alliance.
PAME salutes the thousands of workers, unemployed, pensioners, young workers and students, the women, the self employed and small farmers who took part massively at the demonstrations of PAME on July 15th, all over Greece. The demonstrations send a message of struggle, not disappointment, of militancy, not defeatism, against the new brutal measures of the 3rd Memorandum of the SYRIZA Government.
We denounce the upgraded provocation plan of the Government of SYRIZA, to use the oppression forces of the riot police, alongside with parastate mechanisms during the enormous demonstration of PAME in Athens, on July 15th. This was a plan that aimed to break the demonstration of PAME, to intimidate the workers and the popular strata.
The Tsipras government has been exposed following the police attack, on July 15, against the PAME rally. The attack took place as the Parliament was discussing the third Memorandum. Besides immediate experience, the collection of data regarding the attack leads to the conclusion that the attack was well planned. The police acted on a command plan and with the clear goal not only of emptying the area outside the Parliament, but of beating protesters far away from the Parliament. A characteristic example is the attack by police "Delta" teams, which took place at the "Fix" juncture, kilometers away from the Parliament, and at a time when the protesters were folding up their banners.
All the data leads to the same conclusion: well before the attack, groups of 6-7 members were spotted spread around the Syntagma plaza. At about 9 pm, i.e, at the time in which Parliament discussion was scheduled to start, a group placed near the Grand Britania hotel began throwing stones at police forces that were placed near the flower stores. As streets were empty of protesters, both toward Panepistimiou street, which was empty, and toward Georgiou street, which was empty as well, the police opted to turn the initial small group of supposed anarchists toward the main body of the protest, using tear gas for that purpose.
The KKE calls on the Greek People to reject both proposals [Eurogroup's and government's] and to adopt the proposal of the Parliamentary team of the KKE which states:
"The government is proposing conducting a referendum with the question of whether the people approve or disapprove the proposal for an agreement submitted by the EU-IMF-ECB.
The Parliamentary team of the KKE believes that the issues that should be put to the people's judgment are the following:
NO to the EU-IMF-ECB and to the government's proposals.
Disengagement from the EU, Abolition of Memoranda and of all anti-popular implementation measures thereof."
The proposition, submitted by the Parliamentary Team of the KKE in quorum, was read in the Parliament by Thanasis Pafilis, member of the CC and Parliamentary Representative of the party, during his statement on the issue of the anti-constitutional character of the Referendum posed by Ev. Venizelos of PASOK.
In the cellar of the tavern
surrounded by smoke and swearing
(the music barrel screeching upstairs)
our whole crew was drinking yesterday.
Yesterday, like every night,
so the poison could be swallowed.
In the 66 years since the creation of the imperialist mechanism of NATO, humanity has experienced dictatorship, war and terrorism. This was and remains the role of such a mechanism, whose goal is to serve the interests of the plutocracy -- who created it in the first place -- and to repress and murder the peoples. The governments of our country, worthy supporters of capital all these years, not only did not oppose imperialist plans, not only chose to remain passive observers in all the wars close or far from our "neighborhood", but actively participated in them, since they sent the army outside our borders and offered military bases to assist the butchers of the peoples, to provide Americans, the EU and NATO with their attack base.
The Samos Peace Committee (member of the EEDYE-Greek Committee for International Disarmament and Peace) and the Samos Labor Center are calling for a PanAegean mobilization against the creation of a NATO base in the Aegean that was announced by the SYRIZA-ANEL government. The mobilization will take place on Thursday, 18 June at 7.30 pm; it will take place in all islands at the same time, so as to raise a popular wall in the defense of national independence and sovereignty and to create a human, anti-imperialist and pacifist chain from Lemnos to Kastelorizo. This chain will shout:
- No to the plans of the SYRIZA-ANEL government for a NATO base in the Aegean.
- No involvement of our country in the imperialist interventions of NATO, the EU, and the USA.
- No earth and no water to the murderers of the peoples.
In response to the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government plans for a NATO base in Karpathos or another island of the Aegean, the Rhodes Peace Council hung a giant banner on the Rhodes Medieval castle.
The banner states, in Greek and English: "No NATO base, not in Karpathos, not in the Aegean".
Minister of Defense P. Kammenos announced that the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government will propose the creation of a NATO base in the Aegean, a fact that involves the country even further in the dangerous imperialist plans of the wolf pack.
Speaking at an "Economist" conference, P. Kammenos noted that he will submit this proposal during his upcoming visit to the U.S.
Confirming that the elaboration of this proposal is at an advanced stage, he mentioned that there is a Ministry study that takes into account the Suda, Crete base and NATO needs. However, he did not reveal the island on which the proposed base will operate.
The excuse he gave for the creation of this new attack base in the NATO war machine was that with this base the "Alliance" will have direct knowledge of Turkey's behavior. Of course, through the previous years, the elevation of NATO to the status of an arbiter of Greek-Turkish differences not only did not prevent Turkish provocations, but legitimated Ankarra demands, as NATO does not recognize borders in the Aegean.
The Tsipras-Juncker joint statement is the harbinger of a new, guillotine-type agreement
P.A.ME
The Tsipras-Juncker joint statement issued today, and relating to labor and social security issues, as well as the presentation of its content as an indication of progress, mean that we are getting closer to new anti-labor and anti-people measures. The joint statement is the harbinger of a new, guillotine-type agreement for the people -- a new "Memorandum."
Just as the "Troika" was rebaptized as "Institutions", so the butchering of whatever labor and popular rights have remained in labor relations and social security is rebaptized "a modern and effective system of collective bargaining" and a "modernization of the pension system."
Do not be fooled! What they announced with the joint statement is the new onslaught that will base itself on laws on which the slaughter of labor and insurance rights was built during all the previous years. It is proved in practice that the bravado of the government concerning alleged "red lines" was thin air!
President [of the European Commission] Jean-Claude Juncker and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had a telephone conversation today. They noted the progress achieved in the last few days in discussions between Greece and its partners on the question of the comprehensive lit of reforms required for the successful completion of the evaluation procedure.
There was special reference to the importance of reforms for the modernization of the pension system, so as to render it fair, fiscally sustainable and effective, in the direction of avoiding the impoverishment of the elderly.
There was also a discussion on the need to have wage-related developments and the institutions of the labor market play a supportive role in the creation of jobs, in competitiveness and in social cohesion. Within this context, there was agreement on the role of a modern and effective system of collective bargaining, which must develop through broad discussion and fulfill the highest European standards.
The constructive talks must continue within the framework of the Brussels Group.
The May 1 rally of communists and veterans of the antifascist war was held in the Ukrainian capital in an atmosphere of intense repression, provocation and police intimidation. The delegation of the KKE, comprised of G. Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE and Elisseos Vagenas, member of the CC and Responsible for the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE, was in Kiev at the invitation of the CP Ukraine.
Speaking at the event, G. Marinos noted the following:
Dear comrades,
The CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), thousands of members and friends of the party and the Communist Youth (ΚΝΕ), thousands of workers, express their internationalist solidarity with the CP of Ukraine, with the communist men and women of your country and decisively denounce anticommunism, the wave of persecution that is being organized by the government, by the Ukrainian authorities.
We denounce the anticommunist law 2558 that was recently passed in the Ukrainian parliament and we demand its annulment.
The reader can judge on their own the civilities I received as a response to my query on the motivations of such oblivion (I was subsequently blocked as a nuisance), but this piece concerns a particular such civility, which different "left" groupuscules in Greece have been trying to circulate abroad, namely, that in Dialogos' words, the KKE "supports destructive mining activities", and is in fact an ally of Eldorado Gold and its Greek affiliate, Hellenic Gold. I promised a response, which will restrict itself purely to the cataloguing of a number of facts -- as always, substantiated by the relevant documentation. Any more serious engagement has been unfortunately preempted by the very obvious anti-communist animus of the website, though this is an animus whose barely rational character those of us familiar with EPAM's chief, Kazakis, are quite familiar with.
The legislative adjustments the government has so far submitted to parliament -- above all the two Acts of Legislative Content, one stipulating the looting of available public funds, the other the deletion of up to 100% of fines for tax violations, including those involved in smuggling, of the major corporate groups -- lie within the strict framework of fiscal austerity imposed by the EU and the IMF (i.e, the lenders), so that competitiveness and the profitability of monopoly groups, of big capital, are protected.
Through such legislation, the government maintains the entire anti-labor, anti-popular framework that has been set in place by the Memorandum-related implementation laws of previous governments.
These are legislative adjustments that lag behind even the electoral program announced by SYRIZA in Thessaloniki, hence cutting down even on the few breadcrumbs intended for those living in conditions of extreme poverty. Not only is there no relief for the people, but essentially, the people is told to forget recovering what it has lost.
At the same time, the government continues to refuse to bring to Parliament the agreement it made with the lenders on February 20. It is obvious that on the one hand, it wishes to avoid the image that would be created were New Democracy and the other parties of the bourgeois political system to support the agreement, and on the other, to avoid having the people see the measures in store for them -- measures they 've already dubbed "mild austerity", in the interests of capitalist profit recovery.
In 2000, four high-profile members of the KKE made a series of public appearances in which they accused the Party leadership of deviations from the party ideology, denounced the Party theses on the way to the 16th conference, and finally publicly called on the so-called "veterans" of the Party to support them.
What followed was a series of letters of response to "Rizospastis" by a large number of Party veterans. In one of these, we read the following:
"Our duty to respond to the plea of the four former comrades, and our right to do so, derive from the elements of our Party identity:
1. Afalis Panagiotis - Party member 65 years, prison and exile 15 years.
2. Zotas Dimos - Party member 58 years - ELAS, DSE member.
3. Kapoutsis Panagiotis.- Party member 59 years, ELAS, DSE member.
4. Kostopoulos Sotiris - Party member 58 years, prison and exile 22 years.
5. Mavridis Kostas - Party member 57 years, prison and exile 16 years.
6. Bousios Harilaos - Party member 61 years, prison and exile 9 years.
7. Nikolaidis Nikos - Party member 57 years, prison and exile 20 years.
8. Panagiotidis Yannis - Party member 57 years, prison and exile 25 years.
9. Papadopoulos Nikos - Party member 59 years, prison and exile in Makronissos 20 years.
10. Papathanasiou Thanassis - Party member 58 years, prison and exile in Makronissos 13 years.
11. Papatheodorou Andreas - Party member 58 years, ELAS, DSE member.
12. Sahinis Mitsos - Party member 57 years, prison and exile 13 years."
On 27/4/1944 Communist bandits ambushed and murdered, in unmanly fashion, a German general and three of his entourage in Molaoi, Sparta. Many German soldiers were injured.
In retaliation, we shall:
1. Shoot 200 Communists on 1/5/1944,
2. Shoot all the men the German troops encounter on Molaoi, on the way to Sparta, in the surrounding villages.
Under the influence of this crime, Greek volunteers [Nazi collaborators] have willingly murdered 100 more Communists.
The Military Commander of Greece.
***
Historian Menelaos Haralambides on the Kaisariani executions:
On Thursday, 30 April 2015, a Delegation of the Central Committee of the KKE, composed of Giorgos Marinos, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of KKE, and Elissaios Vagenas, member of the Central Committee and Cordinator of the Department of International Relations of the CC of KKE, will depart for Kiev, after the invitation of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
The KKE Delegation will participate in Labor May Day activities organized in Kiev by the CP of Ukraine, a few days after the Parliament ratified the unacceptable law that equates communism and fascism and that forbids communist symbols and the propagation of communist ideology.
This year, on April 30, we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the heroic victory of the Vietnamese communists and the people of the country, when American imperialists were forced to evacuate even their Embassy in Saigon, the capital of "South Vietnam", and to withdraw their last troops.
In one of the bloodiest and longest wars, where more than 3 million Vietnamese were killed, while major parts of the country and its infrastructure were destroyed, the forces of the People's Republic of Vietnam, joining forces with the rebels of the revolutionary government in the South, achieved military victory and hence liberated the South and opened the path for the construction of a united country.
This was preceded in September 1945 by the defeat and withdrawal of Japan (which occupied Vietnam) and the declaration of the People's Republic of Vietnam in the North, which was faced with the French colonialists-imperialists' declaration of war and the legendary victory of the Viet Minh in the battle of Dien Bien Phou, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and general Võ Nguyên Giáp, in 1954.
KKE MPs Giorgos Marinos, Liana Kanelli and Thanasis Pafilis have submitted the following Parliamentary question:
«During his recent visit to the USA, Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Kotzias stated, after meeting with American counterpart John Kerry (Washington, D.C, 20/4/2015), that he informed his American colleague of the "aid we provide to Ukraine at present."
This statement comes at a moment when:
- The Ukrainian Parliament has approved an anti-historical law that equates fascism and communism and uses this as a basis to obstruct the activity of communists and the propagation of communist ideas.
- Historically legitimated local fascists, belonging to the so-called Ukraine Liberation Army, through another law.
- Dmitro Yarosh, head of the Nazi organization "Right Sector", is appointed as consultant to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
Still from Theo Angelopoulos' The Suspended Step of the Stork
The Europarliament team of the KKE condemns the European Union's murderous policy against immigrants and refugees through a question submitted by the KKE MEP, Sotiris Zarianopoulos, to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission. The question was occasioned by the dismemberment of fourteen refugees by a train, on the railway line Beles-Skopje. They had been entrapped in the Greece-FYROM borders, with no possibility of escape.
In his question, the KKE MEP noted the following:
«Fourteen refugees were dismembered by a train, which rode over a group of 100 refugees approximately, in the railway line Beles-Skopje. Hundreds of refugees from various countries --victims of imperialist aggression by the EU, USA and NATO-- have been trapped in the neutral border zone of Greece and FYROM for months, without the possibility of escape. They cannot move to other European countries.
The word of Demosthenes
Even if I were to get out of this prison, no one will be waiting for me.
The streets will be empty and my city more foreign.
The coffee shops will all be closed, and my friends will all have gone abroad.
The wind will be blowing me away, even if I were to get out of this prison.
And the sun will go to sleep on the ruins of Olynthos
my friends and my enemies will look like mythical things
The rhetors and the crooks will stand frozen
beggars, concubines and prophets will stand frozen
I will stand in front of the gate, blankets under my armpit
and moving my head slowly, I shall greet the guard.
Without will, without God, like a king in an ancient drama
I will say the word and the letter; I will stand in front of the gate.
Music, Lyrics: Dionysis Savopoulos. From the album Dirty Bread, 1972.
Vietnam, yeah, yeah
In Vietnam, they 've set the rice on fire, they 've set the rice on fire.
In Saigon, you could not live
the air was not enough to live on.
Now, hidden in the river, you breathe
Fo Minh Chi, you breathe
through a straw, through a straw.
Yeah, yeah, yeah....
The weather would have been beautiful in the forest,
would have been beautiful in the forest
if leaves did not go deaf from the explosions
if the sun didn't freeze from the terror
Hey!
if the children did not eat garbage
if the rain did not set huts to fire
the weather would have been beautiful in the forest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Fo Minh Chi, what would you really do.
what would you really do,
if the children did not eat garbage,
if the rain didn't set huts to fire?
Ah!
You would take your girl for a stroll,
holding hands, Fo Minh Chi,
you 'd stroll in the forest holding hands.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Music, Lyrics: Dionysis Savopoulos. From the album Truck, 1966.
Our old friends
Don't tell me, our old friends -- don't tell me --
have gone forever.
Don't! I've learned it by now
the old books, the old songs
have gone forever.
The days that hurt us have gone
the days that hurt us have become
toys in children's hands.
Life changes without caring about your melancholy.
The time comes when you must decide whose side are you on
and who you stand against.
The old ideas, the old loves, the screams
are gone forever
they have become toys in children's hands.
This moment is beautiful. Should I say it again?
It is beautiful. Let me speak to you.
I see fires in ports, in stations
and I am with you.
When our world burns,
when the bridges behind us are cut off,
I will be there
to remind you
of the old days.
Music, Lyrics: Dionysis Savopoulos. From the album Truck. 1966.
What use are your songs?
What use are your songs?
They never tell the truth.
The people suffer and go hungry
and you keep on with the same fairytales.
What use are your songs?
They are too sugary
they are fit for candy-fed kids
but not for me.
Lyrics: Dinos Christianopoulos
Music: Dionysis Savopoulos
From the album Ten years of songs, 1975.
I conclude by saying that in 2015, after five years of a disastrous recession, where everyone is ultimately a victim (there's only a handful of sharks who have profited from this crisis), the era in which the government of the Left was by definition opposed to the sphere of enterprise is over. If we get to the point where we will have development and an output cap of zero, then we can begin again to talk about the conflicting interests of capital and labor. For now, the two must join together.
Joint Statement of the Communist Party of Greece, Communist Party, Italy, Communist Party of Malta, Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
At the initiative of the KKE, the Communist Parties of 4 European countries of the Mediterranean, which are receiving the largest waves of refugees and immigrants, denounce the political line of the EU and point to the causes of the problem, as well as the direction of the communists’ struggle on this issue. The joint statement is as follows:
The KKE, CPI,PC Malta, PCPE wish to stress the following regarding the unspeakable tragedy unfolding in our countries’ seas in relation to the refugees and immigrants:
The ongoing tragedy has a “name”: it is the political line of the EU and other countries, like the USA, that is responsible for the wars in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa. This tragedy is rooted in the capitalist system itself, on this terrain we have the manifestation of poverty, the class exploitation and oppression of the working class and peoples by reactionary regimes, the sharpening of the imperialist contradictions, which cause the imperialist wars and interventions.
The following text was written by a Greek comrade, Stergios, as a comment to one of my posts back in 2010. The title here is mine, as is the translation to English.
***
My sensitivity to your text derives from your words: "when I was young, I thought revolutionaries were special people". I don't remember where and how I published what I am drawing on in my response. It is an extract from a larger, unpublished text I wrote on the basis of a conversation I had with my son (I showed him your post and he smiled, pleased) years ago. That conversation had to do exactly with what your post discusses, the idealist and the dialectic conception of heroism. My son underestimated the struggles of his own generation (on the basis of their results) and thought that "he has done nothing", while for my generation, of the 1960s and 70s, he thought everything was marvelous... "but, you were heroes", he told me!!!
My reaction to this was an immediate dialectical analysis of heroism in its fully human dimension, in contradistinction with the idealist conception of heroism, which regards heroism as something superhuman. The point of my whole argument was that heroism is a possibility in us as we are.
The ongoing acts by the reactionary Ukrainian government which, with a law it voted on, attempts to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine, while at the same time cooperating openly with fascist parties and their armed gangs, are condemned by the European Parliament Group of the KKE through a Question of the MEP, Kostas Papadakis to the High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the EU Commission, F. Mogherini. The question highlights the following:
"After the fiasco in which the trial to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine developed in, the government rushed defiantly, shortly before the 9th of May -the 70th anniversary of the Antifascist Victory of the Peoples - to pass a law that, ignorant of history and based on the unacceptable notion promoted by the EU, equates fascism and communism and calls to "prohibit their propaganda". The law aims only on the actions of the communists and the fighters who opposed against the imperialist intervention of the EU - US and NATO in Ukraine. At the same as the trial to outlaw the Communist Party of Ukraine is pending and there was recently a request for the prosecution of its President Petro Simonienko, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Ukrainian government is by law making heroes out of the fascists of the so-called Ukrainian Liberation Army, which acted in World War II. The reactionary government of Ukraine is at the same time using fascist parties and their armed criminal organizations, as shown by the recent appointment of Dmytro Yarosh, head of the Nazi organization "Right Sector", at the position of adviser of the Ministry of Defence.
The SYRIZA-ANEL government, operating in the same framework as the previous ND-PASOK government, is also taking further steps in the connection of the Greek armed forces with those of the USA and Israel.
So from Monday the 20th to Thursday the 30th April, the joint, medium-scale exercise “Iniohos 2015” will be conducted in combination with the Navy’s “Astrapi” exercise. The exercise provides for the conduct of complex aerial missions over the entire Athens FIR, with the participation of a large number of airforce-naval forces, as well as units of the army, while, for the first time, military forces from foreign counties, specifically Israel and the USA, will take part.
On 9 April 2015, one month before the 70th anniversary of the antifascist victory, the Parliament of your country approved Law 2558, "on the condemnation of communist and nazi totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and the prohibition of their propaganda and symbols." On the same day, the Parliament of your country approved another law, which glamorizes the local Nazi collaborators.
These decisions are a provocation for those who fought against the fascist monster. They are blasphemy against the millions of people who gave their lives in the struggle against fascism during the Second Imperialist World War. They aim at the unacceptable equation of the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany, whilst the contribution of the USSR, under communist leadership, in bearing the principal burden of the war against fascism, is well known. These decisions are an insult against the communists of other countries, such as Greece, who stood at the forefront of the struggle against fascism and imperialism, for popular rights and freedoms.
The pseudoelevation of problems specific to politics (that is, problems specific to the organization of relations of production and their political mediation) to problems of "ontology", "ethics", and "philosophy" is in fact a drastic measure against radical political thought, a measure of demoting the revolutionary significance such problems might otherwise obtain. The investment of politics with a false theoretical dignity (in the form of endless philosophical pomp) is in fact a thoroughly counter-revolutionary measure, invented in the twentieth century by Nazi ideologue Carl Schmitt and propagated by a host of supposedly "leftist" acolytes of the idea of the "primacy" and the "autonomy" of "the political", however hypostatized (ethically, ontologically, pseudo-anthropologically, "structurally", etc): Hannah Arendt, Cornelius Castoriades, Claude Lefort and Ernesto Laclau, to name but a few. That most of these neo-Aristotelian propagators of the "dignity of the political" were expressly anti-communist is anything but an accident; it was precisely such "dignity" that was explosively refuted by Marx's demonstration of the impotence of a merely "political" emancipation when the question is that of exploitation and inequality within so-called "civil society" -- the sphere where "Man" is not a "political" being but one defined by painful need and the competition for resources. Nor is it accidental that Marx demolished centuries of Platonic and Aristotelian thinking in a youthful essay ostensibly written "On the Jewish Question": the "Jew" was his own time's antisemitic synonym for what, bound as it is to the despised and enslaved world of "matter", cannot ascend to the Olympian realm of the "dignity of the political." After him, the insistence on ignoring his rigorous de-construction of bourgeois political self-heroicization could not but take the form of an anti-Semitism that could for some time forego explicit reference to the "dirty Jew" by haughtily castigating the "external determination of the political" via "concerns that do not belong to it" (cf Schmitt, The Concept of the Political); after Schmitt, the reaction against every and all effort to demystify the philosophizing mystique around "the political" could continue only by proclaiming its unwillingness to see through the genocidally fascist implications of a position for which only those willing to "risk their being" are entitled with the right to comprehend the decidedly Occidental arcana of bourgeois "political freedom" (cf Arendt's regression to Aristotelian hypostatizations of slave-owning "freedom" and "autonomy" against Marx's "economism" in The Human Condition).
Given the fact that "sectarianism" originates in the study of religious factions and the violence that sometimes characterizes their attitude to antagonistic groups, it's supremely ironic but no less revealing how the term is used by political ideologues of the "New Left" today: the position that capitalism is, as an economic system, subject to a number of laws that cannot be bent or changed at will or by fiat of "good intentions" is the primary target of accusations of "sectarianism." One is "sectarian" because one is indiscrete enough to remind others that "democracy" is as much the alternative to capitalism as scissors are an alternative to computers; it is "sectarian" to not pretend to ignore that a form of political administration can never be an "alternative" to a system of organizing production (which is why the slaveholding US of the American Revolution, for instance, was certainly anything but less "democratic" than its postbellum industrial or its post 1890s imperialist counterparts). It is "sectarian" to not pretend to ignore that "distributive justice" is severely limited by the determinate form of specific relations of production and can never transcend them. It is "sectarian" to remind others that "justice" itself is never independent of these relations as far as its actual content is concerned. It is "sectarian" to insist that an economy founded and regulated by the law of competition can never be changed as regards its nature and consequences by not wearing ties or by proclaiming the rights of transgendered persons, or by espousing ecological causes. It is "sectarian" to not pretend ignorance at the fact that a falling rate of profit can only be recouped through the intensification of the exploitation of labor or through the destruction of forces of production. And it is "sectarian" to argue against the possibility of a "conciliation" between labor and capital that does not take the form of the submission of the former but is somehow achieved through the good offices and dialogical finesse of an "open minded" and "impartial" enough Left government.
In short, "sectarianism" consists in the proclamation of the existence of regulatory laws specific to the economic realm which are not suspended or abolished by personal ethics, appealing posters, catchy slogans and heartfelt speeches, and which shape the form of imaginable political practices. It is a derisive word for "respect for science", which becomes unpalatable when it makes visible necessities the petty bourgeoisie wishes to obfuscate and mystify (sometimes, through the crackpot positing of some imaginary Quantum law of political and historical "indeterminacy"). "Sectarian" are those who refuse to invest petty bourgeois placebos and fetishes with the magical efficacy the petty bourgeoisie demands. They are precisely those who refuse to proclaim their faith to the regressively religious, pseudo-transcendental heart-on-its-sleeve mode of responding to reality that masquerades as "ethics", "philosophy", and "politics" today.
An infomercial is a shamefaced commercial, whose shamefacedness compels it to appear as presentation of "information" in order to sell a product more effectively. It is therefore a fusion of two genres of discourse that is at the same time a pseudo-fusion: the discourse of "information" is merely a carapace, whose purpose is to protect and reinforce the discourse of advertising.
Writing on politics, traditionally another genre of discourse than informercials, generally falls under two categories: journalistic writing, whose characteristic is the production of the illusion of a reporting "objectivity", and explicitly political writing, characterized by a more explicit foregrounding of the writer's own political principles and ideas.
Marxist political writing is by its nature the most explicit of the subgenres of political writing: since Marxism is, among other things, a critique of the dominant ideology, ideological presuppositions, both on the side of the writer and on the side of that which the writer discusses and argues for or against, must be visible and consciously expressed.
My argument here is that a great deal of the writing that postures as political writing, and even --implicitly or explicitly-- affiliates itself with Marxist political writing these days is in fact an instance of the extension of the discourse of the infomercial in the arena of political expression. It is, additionally, that, at least when it comes to international writing on Greek politics, this is nowhere more frequent than in writing on SYRIZA, whether as a rising political force, or, since 25 January, as a government partner.
The responsibility for the fact that the land of Greece is full of graves and ruins lies exclusively with the foreign imperialists and their Greek servants. [...] We love Greece and its people more than our accusers. We have shown it when its liberty, independence and integrity was at risk, and we have fought so our country can live through better days, without hunger and war. This is the purpose of our struggle, for which, when it is necessary, we lay down our lives. I believe that by trying us today you are trying the struggle for peace. You are trying Greece. [...] The organizers of this trial, Greeks and foreigners, have undertaken unprecedented efforts to slander the struggle of the KKE, without hesitating to distort well-known texts. [...] Yet it was proven despite all this that the KKE is a patriotic party, with national deeds no other party can present. Because it has offered tremendous hetacombs to the altar of Greek independence and freedom. [...] For this reason, the bullets of the execution squad will not murder us. They will murder the peace and honor of Greece.
(Second trial, February 1952)
This is the freedom of communists: this is the freedom to struggle in order to overthrow class slavery under any conditions. From this grows the strength and stamina of communists. This strength illustrates the values of our struggle, of disinterest in our daily and relentless contribution, whose only payback is the justification given by fulfilling one's duty: the fight against the system until its overthrow, so that a communist society can be built.
The Press Office of the Central Committee of the KKE has issued an announcement on the unacceptable and dangerous statements of the Minister of Defense, where it notes the following:
"The Minister of Defense of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, Panos Kammenos, has made a series of unacceptable and dangerous statements during his visit to the USA.
He attempted to present the proposition of sharing of the energy wealth of the Aegean sea and of the country more broadly with the United States as a panacea for the capitalist crisis. However, life has shown that energy issues, in capitalist conditions and in conditions of the intensification of intra-imperialist antagonisms, not only fail to secure prosperity but are in fact a "magnet" for conflicts and bloody contests, the "source" of the dismemberment of states and of other evils.
The government bears grave responsibility. The invitation to the USA to act as a transatlantic arbiter of the energy wealth of the country, and its presentation as a force guaranteeing stability, are a provocation to our people.
Experience has shown that "solutions" of this nature not only undermine sovereign rights but lead our people to new adventures, as has been shown by a series of developments in other countries, who are close allies of the USA in the region, like Georgia and Ukraine. The shared exploitation of resources, to which the Minister of Defense has invited the USA, relates to the "dinner fest" pursued by American energy monopolies along with local businessmen, on the backs of the working class and of other popular strata.
Equally dangerous are the Minister's statements regarding an extension of the united defense doctrine of Greece and Cyprus "with the participation of Israel, in combination with tighter co-operation with the USA." For they involve our country even further within intra-imperialist competition, while peace in the Aegean and the Mediterranean cannot be safeguarded by those responsible for scores of crimes on earth, those who continue to butcher the people of Palestine.
The Minister of Defense has offered once more to have the country support the aggressive plans of NATO and the USA, which are under preparation in the Middle East and Northern Africa with the excuse of "the war against Terror."
The above, as well as the hymns to the USA to which Mr. Kammenos has resorted, and his statement "fear not, Greece is not changing its course", constitute the guarantees offered by the SYRIZA-ANEL government to the USA. These statements come on the heels of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' visit to Moscow. They show the desire of the new government to use risky maneuvers in the geopolitical conflict of capitalist "mega powers", intending to guarantee the greatest possible benefits for the country's bourgeoisie. However, it is well known that "when buffalo fight in the swamp, the frogs pay for the fight." For this reason, the KKE position for disengagement from the imperialist alliances of NATO and the EU, for the unilateral cancellation of debt, for the socialization of economic instruments, of the wealth produced by the workers, under popular power, is necessary and timely. Under this orientation, the mineral wealth of the country, which is in fact the people's property, can be used with the criterion of the people's interest instead of being offered up or sold to monopolies."
