Fifty years since the fall of the Greek junta

the day of the generals

by our Balkan affairs correspondent

On 24 July 1974 the military dictatorship that had ruled Greece collapsed. Seven years before, on 21 April 1967, a group of far-right army officers led by Brigadier-General Pattakos and Colonels Papadopoulos and Makarezos seized power after a coup d'etat. In the early morning of that day, tanks marched onto the central streets of Athens while small mobile units of the army were arresting politicians, government officials and prominent figures who were regarded as having left-wing sympathies.The coup was  supported by the American imperialists, the Greek oligarchs and some of the   bourgeoisie. 
The same junta, made up of right wing generals that acted on the behalf of President Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the CIA took power claiming that an “imminent communist plot” was about to take place. In reality scheduled elections were due in May of that year that would have seen George Papandreou’s moderate Centre Union Party come to power. But unfounded fear, spread by the Western powers, that a Papandreou government would undermine the country’s role in NATO allowed the Generals to ‘save Greece’ with the acquiescence of the then king, Constantine II, and the powerful Orthodox Church. 
“The Revolution of 21st April” was the slogan of the military dictatorship. Their symbol was a soldier standing in front of a phoenix rising from the flames. But resistance began from day one. Outside Greece communists and other democratic forces built solidarity movements to demand the release of political prisoners and the end of military rule. Inside Greece the fight-back was led mainly by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).The Junta was finally brought down by the actions of communists, left wing students, unions and ordinary working class people. 
This year the conservative New Democracy party government wanted to make a big show of the ‘Restoration of Democracy’, but in reality, after 50 years, the same bourgeois system is still in power along with its hallmark corruption, nepotism and populism.
In the 50 years since the fall of the Junta the country has seen many changes. The formation of a Hellenic Republic and the abolition of the monarchy by a nationwide referendum.The creation of a welfare state, a national health service, state schools and the like. However a small, wealthy landowning elite made up of powerful dynasties and oligarchs, still control the country through their old mechanisms. While the other “left wing” social democrat and liberal parties joined in the “celebrations”, to their credit , the leaders of KKE did not take part in the festivities marking the 50th anniversary of the "Restoration of Democracy".
Instead a speech was read out in Parliament and a letter published decrying the restoration of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. A senior KKE MP, Nikos Karathanasopoulos, stated that Greece had forgotten that the KKE was the only party that actively fought against the Junta , and that after "democracy was restored " it only lead to the stabilisation of capitalist power, further anti-communist persecution and greater integration into  NATO and the US Alliance.
He added that for all the achievements of the post dictatorship governments, a small minority still dominates the working classes. The struggles and sacrifices of the KKE may have brought the collapse of the dictatorship but the mechanisms that created it were still hard at work exploiting the masses. And that slogans such as "Greece Out Of NATO" must be heard even louder and the strikes against privatisation and labour exploitation must be expanded. As well as the popular struggles that still need resolving such as the Cyprus issue and anti union laws.
The invasion of Cyprus 50 years ago was a direct result of the Junta taking power and gave Washington the green light to allow Turkey to invade a weakened Cyprus under a puppet dictatorship, similar to the one in Greece. Fifty years on and the island is still divided, to the shame of the so called “guarantors”, namely, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom with its military bases at Akrotiri and Dhekleia from where it launches its air-strikes against the Arabs in the Middle East.
The fall of the military dictatorship in Greece owes everything to the brave working class people of Greece who stood up to seven years of crackdowns , to the banning of political parties and newspapers. to the arrests of prominent communists and union leaders and to the complete militarisation of justice and law. The people and their leaders freed Greece from a tyranny that could have lasted decades. Thankfully the people remember the communist resistance ,the siege of the students at the Athens Central University, the general strikes and other acts of bravery, even if the current regime chooses to whitewash them from history.

Nikos Zachariadis: a great communist leader

 August 1^st marked the 47th anniversary of the death of Nikos Zachariadis, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1931 to 1956, one of the most significant figures of the European and international communist movement in the 20th century.

         

   Nikos Zachariadis was born to ethnic Greek parents in the Turkish Ottoman Empire's Edirne (Adrianopolis) in 1903. At the age of 16, Nikos moved to Istanbul (Constantinople) where he worked as a docker and a seaman in the port. It was there that he started having his first organised relationship with the working-class movement. 

            In 1919-1922 he travelled extensively to the new Soviet Union. In 1923 he became a member of the Communist Party of Turkey. He studied in the newly-founded "KUTV" (Communist University of the Toilers of the East), also known as the "Stalin School", in the Soviet Union. After the Greco-Turkish War and the exchange of populations in 1922 the Zachariadis family moved permanently to Greece, during a period of severe political and economic crisis.

 During his stay in the Soviet Union Zachariadis had become a member of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and in the summer 1924, after finishing his studies in the Soviet Union, Nikos travelled secretly to Greece where he undertook duties for the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE). In 1926, during the dictatorship of General Pangalos, he was arrested and imprisoned in Thessaloniki. He managed to escape and worked secretly in various party positions. He was re-arrested and re-imprisoned in 1929, but once again he escaped and fled to the Soviet Union.

Nikos Zachariadis moved back to Greece in 1931 following a decision by the Communist International and became Secretary of the Central Committee of the Greek Communist Party (KKE). He led the Party during extremely difficult times, especially in a period of harsh anti-communist laws and violent persecutions by the bourgeois governments. He was captured and imprisoned in August 1936 by the State Security of Metaxas' fascist regime. From 1936 to 1941 he remained in prison. After the Nazi German invasion of Greece in 1941, he was transferred to the notorious Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria. Zachariadis was released in May 1945. Returning to Greece he re-assumed the KKE leadership, thus becoming the Party's General Secretary. During the peak of class struggle in the country following the restoration of the monarchy by Anglo-American imperialism he organised the heroic Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) which fought against the bourgeois army and it’s British and American imperialist allies during the 1946-1949 Civil War. After the defeat of DSE in 1949, the KKE leadership, including Zachariadis, fled into exile in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. Zachariadis spent a few years in Tashkent, the capital of Soviet Uzbekistan, which has become the exile home of a large number of Greek communist exiles. 

The death of Joseph Stalin and the right, opportunist turn of the CPSU that followed had a serious impact in the Greek communist movement. In May 1956, the 6th Plenum of the Central Committee of KKE – significantly influenced by Khrushchev's revisionist leadership – wrongfully denounced Zachariadis for "serious mistakes" and "sectarianism”. On February 1957 he was expelled from the Party. Nikos Zachariadis passed the rest of his life in exile in Siberia, particularly in Yahuta and Surgut. On 1^st August 1973, at the age of 70, he was found dead in his home in Surgut. According to the official account of his death, Zachariadis had committed suicide.

In December 1991, his remains were repatriated in Greece where he was given a funeral at Athens' First Cemetery.In July 2011, taking a historically and politically significant decision, the National Conference of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) fully rehabilitated Nikos Zachariadis as General Secretary and Party member, reversing the unjust decisions of the 6th Plenum.

 

Nobody can take away your honour. You can only lose it by yourself - Nikos Zachariadis.

 

Charilaos Florakis: The story of a Greek communist leader

by Nikos Mottas

Charilaos Florakis, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1972–1991, passed away on 22^nd May 2005 at the age of 91. Florakis's life, indelibly tied to the struggles of the KKE, was devoted to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism.

Born in 1914 in Paliozoglopi, a small village in Thessaly, Charilaos Florakis joined the Greek Young Communist League (OKNE) in 1929. As an OKNE member and later as a student and active worker at the ‘TTT’, the Ministry of Posts, Telegraphs, Telephone Offices, he began his political activity during a politically turbulent period for Greece.

As a teenager, he felt the first signs of the ongoing class struggle in the Greek countryside of 1930s. A telegraph worker, he was a member of the TTT struggle committee active in union campaigns during the especially difficult circumstances of General Ioannis Metaxas’ fascist dictatorship.

Due to his union activity, he was transferred many times from town to town. Wherever he went however, young Charilaos worked to build clandestine groups of communists.

Guerrilla fighter

Florakis joined the resistance against the German occupation that began in 1941. In June 1941 he became a member of the KKE. He was amongst the organisers of the first mass strike in Nazi-occupied Europe, which took place in Athens in April 1942. At the same time, he joined the ranks of EAM-ELAS (National Liberation Movement – Greek National Liberation Army), going underground in May 1942.

As a member of the anti-fascist liberation movement in the Second World War, Florakis became a commander in the EAM-ELAS guerrilla army. From 1943 to 1945 he was promoted successively to the ranks of Captain and Major in the ELAS army. He participated in the bloody events of December 1944 against British imperialists and the Greek bourgeois administration. He was arrested in October 1945.

The struggle of the Democratic Army (DSE) against the Greek bourgeois forces and their imperialist allies was the most significant moment of class struggle in 20th century Greece. Charilaos Florakis had an active role in the 1946–1949 civil war as a senior officer in the Democratic Army, first as a Lieut-Colonel and later a Major-General in 1948. In September 1949, after the defeat of the DSE, he moved to the Soviet Union. Between 1950 and 1953 he studied at the MV Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, where he graduated with honours.

‘Captain Yiotis’ – his movement name – never submitted to ‘political correctness’. Well known not to mince his words in calling a spade a spade, he told journalist Christos Theocharatos: “Yes the Civil War was unavoidable because the domestic and foreign reactionaries had decided to subjugate and exterminate every patriotic and democratic resistance.

“We could have avoided it if we had simply waited to be arrested, tortured, humiliated and murdered. But wouldn’t this extermination, without resistance, be a unilateral civil war? The Civil War was a patriotic and democratic struggle, like the Resistance (in the Second World War), and not a fight for a regime. It was the continuation of the Resistance.”

For his political ideas and activity, as a communist and a Democratic Army commander, Florakis was persecuted by the Greek bourgeois state. He faced numerous trials and was imprisoned several times – but he would always manage to find the courage and transform his defence speeches in the courts into fierce tirades against his prosecutors.

In a testimony to the court in Larisa in April 1955, Florakis said: “Communists aren't those who have no homeland. Communists are simple people, hard-working people, having ties with the land they were born in…those who don't believe in homelands and who have no country are the plutocrats. Wealth gives them the ability to live in any place and any country they choose. The [German] Occupation proved, as well as the present situation does, who has a homeland, who loves her and who sacrifices himself for her freedom and prosperity.”

The accusations against him, the persecutions, the threats against his life, could never uproot from his mind his strong belief in the communist ideal, in the Communist Party, in the great values for which he fought. Addressing his prosecutors at the end of a trial, he said: “Personally – as I told you in the beginning – I am filled by the great ideals of communism. There is no power in the world that can oblige me to denounce them. For the realisation of the Party's policy, for the service of our People's interests, for Greece, I gladly offer all my powers and, without doubt, even the most valuable possession for a human being – my own life...”

Charilaos Florakis served a total of 18 years in the prisons of Greece's post-Civil War bourgeois state. He was imprisoned at the age of 40. He was released under conditions at 52, and then re-arrested and sent into exile at 53. In 1972, in the midst of the struggle against the Colonels’ dictatorship in Greece, he was elected First Secretary of the then-banned Communist Party and later General Secretary of the Central Committee.

He served as the General Secretary of KKE from 1972 until 1991, fighting with all his power for a Communist Party dedicated to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, and against any opportunist or revisionist deviation.

Staunch opponent of revisionism

Florakis’s role and stance against opportunism was particularly significant during the counter-revolutions of 1989–1991 in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Aleka Papariga, who succeeded him as General Secretary of the KKE, described his role: “In front of us, is the decisive contribution of Charilaos Florakis in 1990 in defence of the socialist system at the wide plenary of the Central Committee during the 13th Congress in 1991.

“He took the courageous stance of defying the mountains of lies against socialism and socialist ideology. He had – especially in the then extremely difficult and dark times – the solid belief that the world will change, that socialism will win. It isn't always easy to go 'against the flow'. It isn't always easy to remain firm when others are falling. And, even more, to pave new ways.”

Charilaos Florakis remained a consistent supporter of the important achievements of 20th century socialist construction. When Eurocommunists and revisionists were saluting the counter-revolutionary events in the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s, Florakis remained a staunch defender of the ideological heritage of Marx, Engels and Lenin. He knew that the counter-revolution was a negative setback for the international communist movement, but he was also deeply assured that it wasn’t the “end of history”.

“So, therefore, the overthrow in Eastern Europe is a 'triumph of Democracy' (ironically speaking)! But what powers were strengthened by this 'triumph’? The real democratic powers or those powers which, in the name of democracy, have literally come out against socialism? 'Triumph of Democracy' with the Communist Party outlawed! 'Triumph of Democracy' with new capabilities for imperialism's intervention! 'Triumph of Democracy' with unemployment, misery, hunger and crime!”

Charilaos Florakis never accepted the theory of the “end of history” that prominent bourgeois analysts and theoreticians, such as Francis Fukuyama, were promoting back then. More specifically, Florakis said: “Despite its metaphysical content it can't change reality. And the reality states that now, with the Soviet Union dissolved capitalism’s existing contradictions haven’t been weakened, but are getting stronger … Neither capitalism is eternal, nor the end of communism has come, for the simple reason that the people will not renounce the vision of a just society and won't abandon the struggle for socialism.”

Charilaos Florakis died on 22^nd May 2005 at the age of 91, in Athens. His funeral was attended by thousands of people, members and supporters of the KKE, communists and non-communists, young and old, working men and women. According to his own wish, he was buried at Agios Ilias, a quiet mountainous place surrounded by forest, close to his birthplace, Paliozoglopi.

Florakis was one of the 20^th century’s most significant figures in the Greek and European communist movement. A fighter, a leader, an extraordinary personality, but most of all, an unwavering communist who remained loyal to his ideas until the end.

In a speech in 1989, at the age of 75, Charilaos said: “If, like Faust, I had to restart my life, what would I do? I would become a communist once again and I would fight for a better world and, again, I would struggle – with less or more mistakes, doesn't matter – for the homeland, for democracy, for social justice, for Socialism.”

Memory eternal, comrade Charilaos Florakis.

IDOC

On the 150th anniversary of the birth of V I Lenin

 Joint Statement of Communist and Workers' Parties

We honour the great revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin, we are committed to continuing his work!

The Communist and Workers' Parties, which co-sign this Joint Statement, would like also in this way to honor a great revolutionary and theorist of scientific socialism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, as April 22 marks the 150^th anniversary of his birth.
 Especially in the current conditions, and while the pandemic of CoVID-19 is spreading, tragically demonstrating the great shortages of health systems in capitalist countries as well as the anti-social and parasitic nature of the capitalist system, in the face of the new crisis, the burdens of which will be again put on the workers' shoulders, the aggressive nature of capitalism and the escalation of imperialist competitions, which pose new dangers to peace and peoples, we feel an even greater need to refer to the historical physiognomy of V.I. Lenin. A personality that dedicated his life to the cause of the working class and other popular strata, to the struggle for the abolition of exploitation and the construction of the socialist society.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the founder of the contemporary working-class party, the "party of a new type", which was firmly separated from the opportunism and apostasy of the old social-democratic parties. Such was the Bolshevik Party, which was at the forefront of the class struggle of the proletariat and the other oppressed strata of Russia. Lenin's party led Russia's working class to victory by overthrowing the exploiting classes and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers' and peasants' government, in the service of the interests of the many, the exploited and the oppressed. V.I. Lenin defined and substantiated the leading role of the Communist Party, not only in establishing workers' power but also in constructing socialism.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the theorist who, taking into account the particular reality, further developed the constituent parts of Marxism, i.e. philosophy, political economy, and scientific communism. As an opponent of any opportunistic and revisionist distortion of revolutionary theory and practice, dogmatism, sectarianism, and parliamentary illusions, without denying the intervention through the parliament.
His works, such as What the friends of the people are and how they fight the Social-Democrats, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, What Is to Be Done, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Marxism and Revisionism, The Collapse of the Second International, Socialism and War, On the Slogan for the United States of Europe, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, The State and Revolution, The April Theses, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, and The Great Initiative are milestones in the propagation and development of Marxism and revolutionary struggle. Lenin's valuable theoretical work is still timely and serves as a beacon for the ideological-political education and action of every new generation of revolutionaries.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the leader of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which about a century ago shook the world. The victorious revolution illuminated the power of the class struggle, the power of the exploited and the oppressed -when they take the case of their interests into their own hands and turn the wheel of history forward- in the direction of social liberation. The October flame led and accelerated the establishment of a number of Communist and revolutionary Workers' parties. Lenin had an insightful strategic ability and skillfully handled alliances, abilities that he devoted to the cause of the socialist revolution.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the leader of the world's first socialist state, which for the first time established workers' power based on new revolutionary institutions, such as the Soviets, sought the economic functioning of society on a new basis, the basis of the satisfaction of contemporary people's needs and the multi-faceted free development of all people, not the profitability of the few. The USSR, the first socialist state in the world, which was realized with the special contribution of V.I. Lenin, brought to the fore new unprecedented economic, social, political, and cultural achievements for the working class and the wider popular strata that had a profound effect on historical progressive developments around the world. It was a support to the peoples in the struggle for socialism and peace.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the great internationalist, the leader who raised the flag of proletarian internationalism against the treacherous attitude of the Second International during the imperialist World War I, opposed bourgeois nationalism and other bourgeois views such as the cosmopolitanism of the capital, and led the establishment of the Third Communist International, which made a major contribution to the international labor and communist movement and today is a basic source for drawing useful lessons from the experience it accumulated through its action. Lenin's positions on colonialism led the Communists to understand the issue of colonies and inspired them to lead the anti-colonial struggles, both in colonial countries and colonies.

We honour V.I. Lenin as the tireless and consistent opponent of the imperialist war, the defender of peoples' struggle for national and social liberation, social justice, peace, and socialism.
The counter-revolution and capitalist restoration cannot conceal the achievements of Socialism. The disasters and injustice we are experiencing, the acute problems and the suffering of the working class, the small-middle strata, the peasantry and the peoples overall caused by capitalist exploitation and oppression, emphasize the necessity and timeliness of socialism all over the world.
The Communist and Workers' Parties denounce the wave of silence as well as the reactionary and anti-communist distortion that has been unleashed around the world by the political forces that serve the interests of the capital against V.I. Lenin to the workers and the youth. We struggle for the continuation of his work, we are committed to continue defending and propagating his legacy and we call on the workers and the people to learn from it.

22/04/2020

SolidNet Parties signing the Joint Statement

1. Communist Party of Albania
2. PADS, Algeria
3. Communist Party of Argentina
4. Communist Party of Armenia
5. Communist Party of Australia
6. Party of Labour of Austria
7. Communist Party of Azerbaijan
8. Democratic Progressive Tribune of Bahrain
9. Communist Party of Bangladesh
10. Communist Party of Belarus
11. Communist Party of Belgium
12. Brazilian Communist Party
13. CP of Brazil
14. Communist Party of Britain
15. New Communist Party of Britain
16. Communist Party of Bulgaria
17. Party of Bulgarian Communists
18. Communist Party of Canada
19. Communist Party of Chile
20. Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
21. AKEL, Cyprus
22. Communist Party of Bohemia-Moravia
23. Communist Party of Denmark
24. Communist Party in Denmark
25. Force of the Revolution, Dominican Republic
26. Communist Party Ecuador
27. Egyptian CP
28. Communist Party of El Salvador
29. Communist Party of Finland
30. United Communist Party of Georgia
31. German Communist Party
32. Communist Party of Greece
33. Hungarian Workers Party
34. Communist Party of India
35. Communist Party of India (Marxist)
36. Communist Party of Kurdistan – Iraq
37. Tudeh Party of Iran
38. Workers' Party of Ireland
39. Communist Party of Ireland
40. Communist Party of Israel
41. Communist Party, Italy
42. Italian Communist Party
43. Jordanian Communist Party
44. Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
45. Workers' Party of Korea
46. Party of the Communists of Kyrgyzstan
47. Lebanese Communist Party
48. Socialist Party of Latvia
49. Socialist Party, Lithuania
50. Communist Party of Luxembourg
51. Communist Party of Malta
52. Communist Party of Mexico
53. Popular Socialist Party- National Political Association, Mexico
54. Communist Party of Norway
55. New Communist Party of the Netherlands
56. Communist Party of Pakistan
57. Palestinian Communist Party
58. Palestinian People's Party
59. Paraguayan Communist Party
60. Peruan Communist Party
61. Communist Party of Poland
62. Portuguese Communist Party
63. Philippine Communist Party (PKP-1930)
64. Communist Party of Ukraine
65. Union of Communists of Ukraine
66. Communist Party of the Russian Federation
67. Communist Workers' Party of Russia
68. Communist Party of the Soviet Union
69. Union of Communist Parties - CPSU
70. New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
71. Communists of Serbia
72. Communist Party of Slovakia
73. South African Communist Party
74. Communist Party of Spain
75. Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
76. Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
77. Communists of Catalonia
78. Communist Party of Sri Lanka
79. Communist Party of Swaziland
80. Communist Party of Sweden
81. Sudanese Communist Party
82. Syrian Communist Party
83. Communist Party of Turkey
84. Communist Party of Venezuela

Other Parties signing the Joint Statement

1. Union of Communists in Bulgaria
2. Communist Revolutionary Party of France
3. Pole of Communist Revival in France
4. Shiso-Undo, Japan
5. Communist Party of Puerto Rico
6. JVP Sri Lanka
7. Galizan People's Union
8. Communist Party, Switzerland
9. Party of Communists, USA

Greek communists speak out!

Dimitris Koutsoumbas and Theo Russell

Last month Greek communist leader Dimitris Koutsoumbas, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), came to London for a number of events, including a visit to the Marx Memorial Library and Marx’s tomb at Highgate Cemetery. During his stay he talked to the New Worker’s Theo Russell about the current situation in Greece.

Theo Russell: What are the main problems that working people in Greece face?

Dimitris Koutsoumbas: The Greek economy was at the centre of the international capitalist crisis for a decade, from 2009, when the first memorandum was signed, until 2019 when these programmes formally ended. The capitalist economy in Greece is currently entering into a phase of weak recovery but there are ominous forecasts for the economy worldwide in the near future.

Capitalist development requires and demands attacks on the rights of workers and the people by targeting wages and pensions, imposing job losses and deterioration of working conditions (especially for young people), and maintaining a pool of unemployed people. At the same time, trade union rights are under severe attack. The most recent examples are the efforts to restrain the right to strike and force the unions to succumb to the control of the government and employers.

Finally, we have to note our great concern over the continuous and prolonged questioning of the sovereign rights of Greece by the Turkish bourgeois class through the unacceptable maritime agreement with Libya for the establishment of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). We are very concerned over the increasing involvement of our country in imperialist war plans of the USA, NATO and European Union, to which all the people in our region (including Greek people) must be alert as antagonisms intensify in the Aegean Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East.

Has the Greek economy recovered from the crisis of 2009–2010?

According to figures and indexes, the Greek economy has recovered to some extent. Nevertheless, living standards, rights and incomes that were lost during the years of the crisis have not been recovered. Of course, any recovery of the economy is uncertain and unsafe due to the conditions prevailing in the European and global economy as well as the deceleration of strong economies, which might bring forward and expedite an upcoming new crisis.

None of the rights that were stripped by the governments have been recovered. On the contrary, the anti-people policies are still in force and the flexible labour relations intensify. This barbaric reality for the workers and the popular strata cannot be hidden behind benefits for the extreme poverty given by governments – either the previous only-by-name left-wing government of SYRIZA or the current right-wing government of New Democracy (ND). These benefits aim only to hide the cause that creates and augments poverty along with the fact that the product of any economic growth will be at the hands of capitalists.

It is proven that in the vicious ‘crisis-recovery’ circle of the capitalist economy the only victims are the workers, so the aim of the struggle must be to break this circle through the fight for a development path where the needs of the people will be at the centre, for socialism.

How is the Greek economy affected by the migration of young people?

It is a fact that during the recent years due to the capitalist crisis, the immigration of young scientists, students and workers to other countries, including Britain, increased dramatically. This deprives Greek society of the workers, including the scientific workforce, that could contribute positively. It also worsens the demographic problem in Greece as the population is ageing.

At the same time, though, Greece becomes a host country of other migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. They arrive in our country and they stay trapped because of the reactionary EU policies. It has been established that economic crises, wars and labour being a ‘commodity’ in capitalism are the causes of immigration and refugees. The working class and people’s movements must aim at the elimination of these causes.

How did SYRIZA survive the treachery of the 2015 referendum?

It is worth reminding that the so-called ‘settlement’ or ‘treachery’ perpetrated by SYRIZA was foreseen and rather anticipated. SYRIZA, even when it was only a small opportunist party, always supported Capital’s strategic priorities and strived to present them as ‘left’. People’s disillusionment of the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks (ANEL) coalition government’s administration did not therefore, come as a consequence of some sins committed by some leading cadres of SYRIZA.

SYRIZA never ‘lost its way’ or proved ‘inadequate’. Its true identity was just revealed: a force willing to be a life-jacket for the bourgeois system as its two basic pillars, ND and PASOK, could not form a stable government to manage the crisis to the benefit of Capital. It actually took this step, contributing substantially to the plans of US–NATO imperialism in the area.

Even the referendum organised by SYRIZA was set with a trap question. It actually asked people to choose the memorandum. It eventually joined the group of political forces that supported “Yes” as its MPs voted a third memorandum together with the rest of the bourgeois parties.

This course of SYRIZA, from false hopes to denial, caused a great deal of damage to people’s consciousness. It led left-wing, progressive people who believed in its misleading slogans, to the biggest disappointment, fatalism, resignation. It contributed to greater conservatism inside Greek society, which was also reflected in the election victory of the right-wing party New Democracy last summer. This has always been, after all, the role of social democracy. KKE has highlighted this danger since 2012, when a stream of illusions erupted that SYRIZA would deliver pro-people solutions within the context of EU and capitalist barbarism.

The conclusion that emerges from all this is that the struggles of workers and the people, which break out on the ground of the aggravated problems that the system generates, should target bourgeois governments, international alliances of the Capital, the capitalist economy and the bourgeois state. These struggles should not be trapped in the supposedly ‘humanitarian’ or ‘pro-people’ management of the system, which has never occurred anywhere.

Does the extreme right-wing threat remain eminent after the collapse of Golden Dawn?

The threat of fascism and extreme right-wing will exist for as long as the capitalist system exists; for as long as the big business interests and parts of the capitalist state support and feed organisations such as Golden Dawn, in their attempt to absorb popular discontent; for as long as bourgeois parties that play games with fascism exist. For example, it’s far from coincidence the fact that at the ongoing Golden Dawn trial the prosecutor’s proposal is very lenient despite the fact that plenty of evidence came to light proving that Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi, criminal organisation.

The Central Committee of KKE in its statement after the latest national elections when Golden Dawn failed to win any seats in the parliament noted: “No one should underestimate the fact that the same forces that previously promoted Golden Dawn ‘withdraw’ it in order to keep this neo-Nazi organisation as a reserve; that a part of its votes moved to other bourgeois parties or to political forces of similar ideology, such as the new party ‘Greek Solution’.”

The strengthening of KKE is the basic precondition to repel, and for the complete isolation of, such forces because KKE is the only power fighting the capitalist system that breeds and uses them. KKE steadily and consistently fought such forces, showed no tolerance, played no games, did not fish for votes from nationalists like other parties did.

What is KKE’s position on the EU and the North-South divide?

The examples of the peoples of Britain, Greece and other EU countries, demonstrate that this capitalist union has far from satisfied the contemporary popular needs. To the contrary, people in all member states are faced with very intensive and long-lasting issues.

This interstate capitalist union serves the capitalist exploitative system and cannot be improved or transformed to a pro-people union, as is argued by those who apologise on the EU’s behalf such Labour in Britain, or SYRIZA and DiEm25 in Greece.

The imperialist nature of the EU has been portrayed as a problem of management regarding which the interests of the ‘hard-core neoliberal’ North and the ‘open-minded’ South collide. This matter is neither geographical nor cultural.

For example, one may consider that the current dangerous situation in Libya is a result of the actions of the EU, USA and NATO, whilst countries of the so-called South such as France and Italy have played a leading role assisted by Greece through the use of the NATO base of Souda in Crete, which has been used for bombings in Libya.

Similar anti-people measures for the dismantlement of the social security system are promoted not only in Greece and France, but also in other countries such as the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. The fake and disorienting ‘North–South’ division hides capitalist economies of different sizes and at different phases of capitalist development.

In any case, without the working class and the people who will play a leading role in any developments and take the power and control of the economy, any renegotiation of a country’s position inside the EU – or even the departure from the EU – unavoidably serves the interests of the bourgeois class and specific parts of Capital.

The disengagement from the EU can be for the benefit of the people through people’s power and the development of mutually advantageous relationships with other countries and peoples.