The new party, officially presented on Tuesday, May 26, in Athens under the name Hellenic Left Alignment (ELAS), is being promoted as a “progressive” force capable of reshaping the Greek center-left.
In an article published in Rizospastis, organ of the CC of the Party, on Wednesday, May 27, the KKE stresses that Tsipras’ political comeback has nothing to offer the working class and the popular strata. On the contrary, the KKE underlines that the SYRIZA administration demonstrated in practice the anti-people character of social democracy, imposing austerity measures and memoranda despite its pre-election promises, strengthening NATO cooperation, deepening the strategic alliance with the United States and preserving the anti-worker framework demanded by monopoly capital.
Particular criticism is directed at what the KKE describes as the cynical appropriation of the history, symbols and struggles of the communist and radical workers’ movement. The communists accuse Tsipras and his new formation of attempting to exploit the historical legacy of the Left and the resistance movement in order to give a “radical” image to a thoroughly system-bound political project. In this context, the choice of the name ELAS — historically associated with the Greek People’s Liberation Army, the communist-led resistance force that fought the Nazi occupation during World War II — is presented by the KKE as a deliberate attempt to manipulate historical memory and absorb militant popular traditions into a new social-democratic formation fully committed to capitalist and Euro-Atlantic strategy.
The KKE argues that the creation of ELAS comes at a moment of growing anger against the conservative New Democracy government, amid corruption scandals, attacks on labor rights, soaring living costs and deeper Greek involvement in imperialist wars and NATO plans. Under these conditions, the communists warn that sections of the bourgeois class are seeking to reorganize the political scene and build a new social-democratic reserve force capable of trapping popular discontent within the safe limits of capitalist management.
The article stresses that the strategic convergence between New Democracy, PASOK, SYRIZA and the new Tsipras formation concerns all major political questions: support for the European Union, NATO, capitalist profitability and Greece’s participation in imperialist interventions. The differences between them, the KKE notes, concern only the form of bourgeois management and not the essence of anti-worker policy.
Rejecting once again the illusion that a “progressive government” can serve the interests of the people within the framework of capitalism, the KKE emphasizes that the experience of the SYRIZA government exposed the bankruptcy of attempts to “humanize” the capitalist system. For this reason, the communists call on workers and youth not to place their hopes once again in recycled political saviors and new social-democratic illusions, but to strengthen class struggle and the organized fight against capitalism, the European Union and imperialist alliances themselves.