The KKE delegation consists of Giorgos Marinos, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee; Elisseos Vagenas, member of the Central Committee and head of its International Relations Section; Aris Evangelidis, member of the Central Committee and its International Relations Section; and Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos, member of the Central Committee’s International Relations Section and Member of the European Parliament for the Party.
Read below contribution of the KKE at the 24th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties:
Dear comrades,
We would like to begin by thanking the Communist Party of Cuba for organizing the 24th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (IMCWP), despite the immense difficulties imposed on the Cuban people by the intensification of the US blockade and aggression.
Here in Havana, Cuba, we once again condemn the long-standing imperialist blockade of Cuba. We denounce all the new measures through which the Trump administration is attempting to suffocate the Cuban people, particularly the energy blockade it has imposed over the past eight months.
From the very moment of the Cuban Revolution’s victory in 1959, the KKE has stood consistently alongside Cuba and its people and has steadfastly expressed its solidarity. We continue to do so with determination today. Together with dozens of other Communist and Workers’ Parties from around the world, we are strengthening initiatives to support the Cuban people and all peoples who are victims of imperialist intervention and war, including the peoples of Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, and others.
We support the common struggle of the peoples —who alone have the right to determine the course of events in their homelands— against capitalist barbarity and for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.
Today, we are once again here, faithful to our internationalist duty, standing alongside the Cuban people, and we demand:
- The lifting of all measures constituting the barbaric and genocidal US economic blockade against Cuba;
- An end to all forms of persecution directed against General Raúl Castro;
- The immediate abandonment of all plans for a US military imperialist attack against Cuba;
- The removal of Cuba from the despicable list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, established by the US Department of State as a means of imposing economic suffocation on the island of the Revolution;
- The lifting of all malicious sanctions targeting Cuban institutions and organizations, including ICAP and others.
In recent months, the KKE has launched hundreds of initiatives throughout Greece —including mass demonstrations, rallies, and other events— to express solidarity with the Cuban people. We condemned the escalation of imperialist aggression through two mass demonstrations outside the US Embassy, in which tens of thousands of people, including many young people, took part.
At a large rally in Athens, we paid tribute to the life and legacy of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, as one of the great communist revolutionaries of the 20th century, whose centenary we commemorate this year.
Our Party raises the issue in the Greek government, the National Parliament, and the European Parliament; it confronts all forms of anti-Cuban attacks and the EU’s anti-communism.
The KKE honours the memory and historical legacy of Fidel Castro, leader of the Communist Party of Cuba and the Cuban Revolution —the first socialist revolution on the American continent and one of the defining events of the 20th century. It also honours his contribution to the effort to build a new society and his internationalist solidarity with struggling peoples.
The Cuban Revolution demonstrated that imperialism is not invincible, that the peoples have the power to overthrow capitalist exploitation, injustice, and barbarity.
Fidel Castro will live forever in the historical memory and collective consciousness of the peoples of the entire world and of the oppressed, inspiring the struggle to free humanity from the exploitation of man by man, for the final victory, for socialism–communism.
In honouring his name, we pay tribute above all to the heroic people of Cuba, who for 67 years have chosen their own path of development based on their own needs. They continue to resist the most powerful imperialist force of our time: the US monopoly capital and state.
All these developments reaffirm that the only way forward for the peoples lies in the revolutionary transition to socialism–communism.
Dear comrades,
The promises made by the imperialist staffs and bourgeois governments that the counter-revolutionary overthrows of 1989–1991 would usher in a new world of peace and prosperity for the peoples have proven to be the exact opposite of reality. Instead, they have brought new imperialist wars and interventions; intensified exploitation of the working class internationally; deepening relative and absolute impoverishment; capitalist crises whose burdens are borne by the peoples; and waves of millions of migrants and refugees as a consequence of imperialist barbarity.
Thirty-five years on, the correlation of forces remains unfavourable to the class struggle worldwide, despite the problems facing capitalism and the intensification of its contradictions. At the same time, developments increasingly point to a system in decay, one that has become historically obsolete.
In the hands of capital, new technological possibilities are used not to meet the expanding social needs but rather to increase the profitability of the few —the capitalists— to intensify the degree of exploitation, and to strengthen the repression and manipulation of the working class and the people more broadly. The refusal to harness modern scientific and technological capabilities, above all to reduce the standard working week while increasing wages, establish fixed working hours, safeguard people's health and safety, meet their educational needs, and protect the environment, highlights the intensification of the fundamental contradiction between capital and labour.
The slowdown in the international economy in recent years highlights the vast volume of over-accumulated capital that cannot be recapitalized in a way that secures a satisfactory rate of profit. Capitalist economic crises arise periodically as a result of the normal functioning of the capitalist economy. They are not deviations from it but stem from the very heart of the capitalist system’s functioning.
The preceding period has once again demonstrated that no model of bourgeois management —whether Keynesian or neo-liberal, based on expansionary or restrictive fiscal and monetary policy— can break the cycle of capitalist economic crisis, overcome the unevenness in capitalist production, or eliminate the simultaneous creation of wealth and poverty, that is, the contradiction between the social character of production and the capitalist appropriation of its results, which constitutes the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production.
In this context, a shift towards a war economy and preparations for a large-scale imperialist war are being promoted. On the one hand, this provides an outlet for idle capital; on the other, it serves a dual purpose: facilitating a new division of markets and transport routes, while creating opportunities for investment in war-ravaged areas. This strategy is accompanied by an intensification in the degree of the exploitation of workers, cuts to social policy spending, and increasing authoritarianism and repression.
Once again, it is clear that there is no crime that big capital will hesitate to commit in order to preserve its power and maximize its profits. For the same reasons that it is escalating its attack on workers’ incomes and rights during this period of imperialist peace, it is dragging the peoples into war. All these developments confirm that the only progressive way out in our era is the revolutionary transition to socialism–communism. Strict adherence to the laws governing the socialist revolution and the construction of the new society, the smashing of the bourgeois state, the socialization of the means of production, and central scientific planning as a communist social relation are irreplaceable tools in the hands of workers’ power.
The widespread counter-revolutionary overthrows of the past 35 years do not alter the character of our era. We are living in an era in which the transition from capitalism to socialism is a necessity, since the material conditions for the socialist organization of production and society are ripe, despite the fact that the subjective factor has, in many cases, proved insufficiently developed and remains, to a significant extent, constrained. The character of the revolution is not determined by the correlation of forces; in the era of imperialism, the revolution will be socialist. The strategy of intermediate and transitional stages, together with bourgeois conceptions of socialism that equate it with Keynesian policies based on a “mixed economy”, or multiple forms of ownership —such as state, capitalist, and small-scale commodity ownership— has served as the vehicle of the counter-revolution over the past 35 years, thereby perpetuating the dominance of monopolies and the exploitation of man by man.
The redistribution of the word among the imperialists in the 21st century
Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, the danger of a generalized third imperialist world war is drawing ever closer.
Uneven development, as a fundamental law of capitalism, leads to shifts in the correlation of forces among capitalist states and imperialist alliances. Inter-imperialist rivalries are intensifying, imperialist axes are being shaken and realigned, and contradictions within capitalist states are becoming more acute.
The principal factor driving and intensifying imperialist competition and conflicts at the international level is the decline of US economic power in relation to China’s rise, together with the intensification of contradictions among the member states of NATO and the EU, as well as within those states themselves. Opposing the Euro-Atlantic alliance that has taken shape to date is the Eurasian alliance that is taking shape, whose principal powers are China, which is poised to assume the leading position in the global capitalist economy, and Russia, which remains the world’s second most powerful military force.
From Latin America to Greenland, and from the plains of Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific region, fierce imperialist competition is unfolding for control of markets, natural resources, energy and commodity transport routes. This has already led to two regional imperialist wars, in Ukraine and the Middle East, in which a large number of capitalist states from around the world are involved in one way or another. At the same time, dozens of other flashpoints persist, where people are being slaughtered in pursuit of the interests of the monopolies.
Under these conditions, diplomatic means are becoming less and less important for bourgeois states, and commercial and economic wars are taking priority; the shift towards the so-called war economy is becoming widespread; war budgets and armaments are increasing; new weapon systems are being tested and nuclear arsenals are being modernized; and overall, the preparation of bourgeois states for a generalized military confrontation is accelerating.
The new US National Security Strategy is an expression and adaptation of the immediate priorities of the US in the arena of the great confrontation with China. It sets out the objectives and dangerous plans being pursued by US monopolies across the American continent in order to counter China.
In this context, Venezuela became the target of a US military imperialist intervention a few months ago, aimed at facilitating the penetration of US financial groups, with the consent of sections of the state apparatus and key officials of the social-democratic government, as developments have shown. Its goal is to enable US monopolies to exploit Venezuela’s vast mineral wealth at the expense of their rivals.
In the Middle East, the US is advancing its plan to reshape the entire region in the interests of its monopolies, elevating Israel to the status of a key “player” through the so-called “Abraham Accords”. The Palestinian people are being sacrificed on the altar of imperialist plans for a “New Middle East” and the new Indian trade route of the IMEC, conceived as a rival to the Chinese Silk Road. Following the destruction of Gaza and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, the US and Israel are promoting a plan to transform the Gaza Strip into a protectorate. Together with other capitalist states, they have established the so-called “Board of Peace”, trampling on Palestinian territories in the name of reconstruction, while planning investments of billions of dollars in order to seize and exploit the area’s natural wealth and geographical advantages.
The promotion of the monopoly interests of the US, Israel, and the EU lies behind the imperialist military aggression against Iran that began on 28 February 2026. Iran is a major capitalist country that has aligned itself with the emerging Eurasian imperialist camp. The military attack launched by the US and Israel against Iran, with the Iranian people as its victims, forms part of the US strategy of securing “living space” in order to maintain its leading position within the international imperialist system. This has serious repercussions for the capitalist market that governs the production and transport of oil and natural gas, particularly through the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, for which the people are paying a heavy price. Thus far, the US imperialists, together with Israel, have failed to achieve their stated objectives. The Iranian people continue to resist, while a dangerous military escalation unfolds alongside the ongoing talks.
Practice has shown that ceasefires and arrangements reached within the framework of “imperialist peace” are fragile and temporary, paving the way for new phases of imperialist wars.
The struggle over the division of imperialist spoils is intensifying contradictions even within the ranks of the Euro-Atlantic camp, as was evident at the recent NATO Summit in Ankara. However, the contradictions between the US and the EU over trade, tariffs, Greenland, relations with China, and other issues have not prevented them from escalating NATO’s extensive armament programmes and intensifying military preparations, the cost of which will be borne by the people through immense sacrifices.
The KKE, together with dozens of other Communist Parties, has highlighted the imperialist character of the war in Ukraine on both sides. It has pointed out that the people of Ukraine are paying the price for the rivalries and interventions of NATO and the EU, which support the Zelenskyy government on the one hand, and capitalist Russia on the other. It has highlighted the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes of all the forces involved, rejecting their pretexts and refuting the anti-communist and anti-Soviet distortion of history to which both sides resort. It has also emphasized the need for the joint struggle of the peoples and opposed Greece’s multifaceted involvement in the war, for which responsibility lies with the New Democracy government and all the Euro-Atlantic parties that support the strategy of strengthening the role of the Greek bourgeoisie and defend NATO and the EU.
European states of the Euro-Atlantic coalition have formed the so-called “Alliance of the Willing” in an effort to secure a share of the spoils, intervene on behalf of their own monopolies, and participate in the provision of “security guarantees”. Discussions on the EU’s “strategic autonomy” are intensifying, while hundreds of billions of euros are being channeled into the military industry through the “ReArm Europe” programme and other military preparedness initiatives.
The KKE has clearly defined its programmatic position and the direction of its action with regard to imperialist war. We will not march under a foreign flag. Instead, the Party will lead the workers’–people’s struggle in all its forms, so that the people, united in a workers’–people’s front, may secure freedom and a way out of the capitalist system which, as long as it prevails, brings war and peace with a gun to the people’s head. This programmatic direction places great demands on the Party and is linked to strengthening its overall ideological and political capacity to fulfil its revolutionary character under all circumstances. It requires determined and well-founded intervention in the ideological and political struggle that is unfolding and will intensify in the period ahead.
The working class and its allied popular forces have no interest in aligning themselves with one imperialist camp or another, or in choosing between rival camps of thieves. The central task for the working class in our country, as well as for the other allied popular strata, is to avoid being ensnared —under various pretexts and illusions— by the aims of the Euro-NATO imperialist camp, in which the Greek bourgeois state participates; to struggle for Greece’s disentanglement from imperialist plans; to cultivate skepticism and distrust toward the bourgeois government and the state; to fight for disengagement from NATO, the EU, all imperialist alliances; and to strengthen the understanding that workers and capitalists share no common national interests, even in times of war.
No sacrifices for the capitalists’ profits and wars. In a world ablaze, the vanguard independent struggle of the working class and the people, with the KKE at the forefront, can emerge victorious.
It is well known that the imperialist war in Ukraine has given rise to new divisions within the chronic and profound ideological, political, and organizational crisis of the International Communist Movement (ICM). This issue is of paramount importance for the course of the class struggle, whose international dimension is decisive.
This situation has arisen at a time when developments have underscored the necessity of a revolutionary regroupment of the communist movement. This objective is upheld by the KKE and the Communist Parties with which it cooperates within the framework of the European Communist Action (ECA) and the International Communist Review (ICR), as well as by dozens of other communist parties across the globe.
In this effort, we seek, in particular, joint action and cooperation with Communist Parties and communist forces that meet the following criteria:
a) They uphold Marxism–Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
b) They oppose opportunism and reformism; they reject centre-left, social-democratic management or any form of bourgeois management, participation in or support for bourgeois governments, and all variants of the strategy of stages.
c) They defend the scientific laws of socialist revolution. They employ these in assessing the course of socialist construction, endeavour to investigate and draw lessons from its problems and mistakes, and reject positions advocating “market socialism” or denying the scientific laws of socialist construction on the basis of national particularities.
d) They condemn imperialist war and highlight the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes on both sides. They ideologically oppose erroneous conceptions of imperialism —particularly those that detach its military aggression from its economic basis— and reject any imperialist alliance. They refuse to take sides in imperialist conflicts.
e) They cultivate strong links with the working class, strive for active participation in the trade union movement and in the movements of the popular sectors of the urban and rural middle strata, and seek to integrate the day-to-day struggle for workers’ and people’s rights into a contemporary revolutionary strategy for workers’ power.
f) They do not separate the struggle against war and fascism from the struggle against capitalism, which gives rise to them. They reject spurious “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” employed by bourgeois and opportunist forces to entrap people within their plans. They engage in an ideological and political struggle against anti-communism and the suppression of workers’ and popular struggles.
The KKE, faithful to the principle of proletarian internationalism and mindful of the international character of the class struggle, as well as the need for a unified revolutionary strategy within the communist movement, strives for the formation of a Marxist–Leninist Pole and the revolutionary regroupment of the European and international communist movement.
A powerful KKE, steadfast in every struggle, ready to answer history’s call for socialism!
Under this slogan, the KKE successfully concluded its 22nd Congress a few months ago. We are intensifying our efforts to ensure that the Party’s activity and functioning are aligned with its revolutionary goals, its Programme and its Statutes, in the struggle to rally and prepare the workers’–people’s forces for the overthrow of the capitalist system.
Our Party advances this struggle every day within the working class, the popular strata, and the youth, strengthening its capacity to respond under all conditions of the class struggle. Through its independent ideological and political struggle, as well as through the trade unions and other mass organizations, the KKE plays a leading role in every struggle —large or small— for contemporary workers’ and people’s rights and needs. At the same time, it seeks to strengthen the current challenging the dominant political line, particularly by changing the correlation of forces within the labour movement, the student movement, and the movements of poor farmers and the self-employed in the cities.
We do not underestimate the overall unfavourable correlation of forces. At the same time, we make an objective assessment of the significant advances achieved in recent years through the KKE’s revolutionary strategy and the tireless efforts of the communists, together with our thousand friends and supporters, to strengthen the ideological and political ties with the working class and the popular strata. As a result of these efforts, the class-oriented forces, through the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), have won first place in the Labour Centre of Athens, the country’s largest Labour Centre; secured absolute majorities in the Labour Centres of Piraeus and Patras, and gained leading positions in dozens of other Labour Centres and Federations, as well as in hundreds of trade unions. They have also won first place in the Confederation of Public Sector Workers, in the Pan-Hellenic Federation of Hospital Doctors, and in the Pan-Hellenic Federations of Primary and Secondary School Teachers. For the fifth consecutive year, the list supported by the Communist Youth of Greece came first in the university student elections. Thanks to the vanguard efforts of the communists, major nationwide strike actions, strikes, and a wide range of mobilizations took place across numerous sectors and workplaces. The heroic struggle of the farmers lasted 55 days, during which they blockaded the roads with their tractors in accordance with decisions by the agricultural federations and farmers’ associations.
These were significant confrontations with the anti-popular policies of the New Democracy government, big capital, and the EU, as well as with the other bourgeois parties that are strategically aligned with the government.
Our Party is at the forefront of the struggle against Greece’s involvement in imperialist wars and plans, which continues to expand with the support of the liberal and social democratic parties. The KKE has undertaken hundreds of initiatives against the shipment of military equipment to Ukraine, the deployment of naval forces to the Middle East, and the presence of US and NATO bases with which the governments of New Democracy, PASOK, and SYRIZA —during Tsipras’s premiership— have filled our country. In doing so, it has once again demonstrated in practice the culpable and dangerous role of social democracy, which presents itself under the guise of a “friend of the people”.
We resolutely confront the false dilemmas advanced as part of their effort to reform the decayed bourgeois political system that encompasses all the parties of capital, both liberal and social democratic. This effort is aimed at curbing and controlling the growing popular discontent arising from imperialist wars, Greece’s involvement in them, and the prospect of a new capitalist crisis, in order to ensure the “political stability” required to safeguard the profits and interests of the monopolies and protect the system of exploitation and war. The KKE’s programmatic position of neither participating in nor supporting any government operating within the framework of capitalism is a significant achievement for communists, workers, and the people.
We remain vigilant in confronting attacks on the KKE, anti-communism in all its forms, the mobilization of various provocateur groups and criminal fascist gangs, employer-led intimidation, and state repression of workers’ struggles.
We continue our efforts with determination and confidence in the strength of the working class and its allies to regroup the labour movement and strengthen the social alliance, which, through its struggle for anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly goals under non-revolutionary conditions, lays the groundwork for the formation of the revolutionary workers’–people’s front under revolutionary conditions. We are convinced that, as the capitalist world continues to decay and become more aggressive, the conditions for its overthrow are maturing, while its contradictions —the fundamental weakness of the system of capitalist exploitation— become even more apparent. Its overthrow will come through the conscious, militant, and organized action of the workers and the people, under the leadership of the Communist Party. This is the path —difficult and demanding, yet the only one that leads forward. In this struggle, the KKE will remain at the forefront.
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