Communist Party of Greece (KKE): Statement for the World Refugee Day

Source: 902.gr / Translation: In Defense of Communism.

On the occasion of the World Refugee Day, the Press Office of the CC of KKE issued the following statement:

"The UN data for 2015- with the unprecedented number of 65.3 million refugees and domestically displaced people, 50% of which are children and 5.4 million people who became refugees for first time in 2015- is the mirror of a system which the only that has to offer is crises, poverty, wars, uprooting and refugees. The (the data) also show that if people do not put their own stamp, targeting the actual responsible, the monopolies and the imperialist war, the millions of the persecuted and uprooted people will be increasing every year.

What is the actual role of the NGOs in Greece's Refugee Crisis?

What is the role of the NGOs?

Source: Rizospastis / Translation: In Defense of Communism.

In Rizospastis' travelogue in refugee camps around the country, which started on May 29, there are shocking information about the entrapment, the miserable living conditions, the wounds that the war has left to thousands of people. This journalistic travelogue will continue in the following days, in an effort to highlight all the aspects of the refugee-immigration question. 

One aspect, for example, is what is happening with the so-called "Non-Governmental Organisations" (NGOs), which literally have the total control inside the refugee camps, operating as "state within the state". The government has left in their hands the infrastructures (which host refugees), while- along with the EU- provides to these NGOs financial aid of many million euros. Various organisations have taken control of all services. From the feeding sector to the entertainment of the refugee children. From Ellinikon to Ritsona, in Larisa and in Central Macedonia. 

Spain Elections: 'Podemos' coalition is a spanish version of SYRIZA; a social-democratic fraud

Alberto Garzón (left) with Pablo Iglesias.

COMMENTARY.

The electoral alliance between 'Podemos' and 'Izquierda Unida' (United Left) in Spain aims in offering an alternative of Capitalism's management. The leaders of the two parties, Pablo Iglesias and Alberto Garzón hailed the formation of the coalition as a "historic step". Amid anti-austerity fever in the country, polls in Spain show that the 'Unidos Podemos' coalition could unseat the long-established the center-left 'Socialist Party' (PSOE) for first time in Spain's political history.  Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said the party has offered to form a coalition with PSOE after the election. "We need to agree with them [the PSOE] so that we can have a progressive government", he said.

What does Iglesias mean by "progressive government" is something we can easily understand by having a look at the 'Podemos' ideology and political program. In fact, the electoral alliance of Iglesias' party with 'Izquierda Unida' (in which the opportunistic Communist Party of Spain-PCE participates) is a spanish version of SYRIZA. It consists a social-democratic formula which uses radical slogans in order to foster illusions to spanish people that "another capitalist world is possible". The 'Podemos' program, like SYRIZA, does not - in any case- questions the EU and NATO membership of Spain. On the contrary, it tries to offer an alternative political vision within the boundaries of the capitalist system.

European Parliament: Enormous hypocrisy by SYRIZA MEPs regarding privatizations

Source: 902.gr / 

Translation: In Defense of Communism.

The hypocrisy of SYRIZA was once again highlighted during a discussion in the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg regarding a resolution which promotes the privatization of the railways. 

More specifically, the SYRIZA MEPs signed an amendment which denounces the railways privatization, while, on the same time, they promote the privatization of the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) in Greece! Furthermore, some of them signed the above resolution but avoided to sign another resolution which calls the governments (the SYRIZA-ANEL government in Greece as well) to reject the privatizations of the railways! Hypocrisy at it's best!

Addressing the plenary session the KKE MEP Sotiris Zarianopoulos said the following:

"KKE votes against the resolution because it further promotes the privatization of the railways project, in detriment to the industry's workers and the passengers as well. 

The Varoufakis Illusion- An "erratic Marxist" at the service of Capitalism

By Nikos Mottas.

Last April, the former Finance Minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis was among those who addressed one of "Nuit Debout" movement's rallies in Paris. Expressing his solidarity, Varoufakis compared the french "Nuit Debout" with the 2011 Greek movement of indignant citizens: "It was an earthquake. We changed the policy in Greece, but also in Europe" he said. Of course, that was another example of bombastic nonsense by the former Minister. 

Varoufakis and his former political alter ego, Alexis Tsipras, didn't change anything, neither in Greece nor in Europe. The coalition government of SYRIZA-ANEL, which came to power on January 2015, continued on the steps of the previous governments; they served the aim of Greek capitalism's recovery and they continue doing so. Mr.Varoufakis- who since then has been an international 'celebrity' by presenting himself as a 'guru' of economics- never disagreed on the fundamental policy of the SYRIZA government. As we wrote in a previous article ("The simple truth about Varoufakis and his DiEM25 party"), Mr.Varoufakis had agreed on the 67% of the austerity reforms, according to his own words in a Berlin press conference, on February 2015. 

Discontent for EU's anti-people policies grows- Nearly half of europeans aren't happy with the Union

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Forty-seven percent of Europeans have an unfavorable view of the European Union, a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 10 large EU states has revealedThe poll published on Tuesday showed that the number of people with favorable view of the bloc had almost come up with the number of their opponents and estimated at 51 and 47 percent respectively.

The research center added that Euroscepticism was on rise among the EU nations and in such states, as Greece, France, United Kingdom and Spain showed that EU adherents were outnumbered by their opponents.

The survey showed that such issues, as possible Brexit, migration crisis, the European Union's handling of economic problems and Brussels' policy of "ever closer union" fueled concerns of EU citizens over prospects of the bloc.

The KKE is fighting for Greece's disengagement from the EU and NATO with workers' power

Interview of the MEP of the KKE, Sotiris Zarianopoulos, with the Russian newspaper IZVESTIA. Reproduced from inter.kke.gr.

There is a scandal around the already approved plan of economic reforms proposed by the party in power, "Syriza". As it turned out after the plan has been carried out hastily through Parliament, it contains a clause that allows the country's top officials to own offshore companies. Party and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is now accused of bad faith and a departure from its own commitment to fight corruption. Could you give your reaction? Why your party think this item needs to be?

Answer: The SYRIZA-ANEL government has also been exposed by the unacceptable governmental provision concerning offshore companies, which it later withdrew. Nevertheless, the KKE stressed in Parliament that the offshore companies, the tax havens, the multifaceted privileges of capital are integral to the rotten system of exploitation today and are being reinforced in every way by the EU, which is a reactionary anti-people union. For this reason the government and the other bourgeois parties do not dare to even look at the proposals of the KKE for the abolition of the confidentiality of shares and the naming of the shareholders. We have no illusions that any provisions in the conditions of capital's dominance can deal with the decay and corruption that is a fundamental characteristic of the capitalist system. It is in its DNA.

KKE political event held in London - The political developments in Greece and Britain's EU referendum

Source: 902.gr / Translation: In Defense of Communism.
Read the full speech of G.Marinos here.

A successful political event organised by the KKE Party Organisation of Britain took place in London, with major speaker being Giorgos Marinos of the Political Bureau. The subject of the event was "The political developments in Greece, the British EU referendum and the positions of KKE". A large number of Greek immigrants, as well as British people, attented the event.

In his introductory speech, Giorgos Marinos refered to the anti-people policy of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government: "The political route of this government must be condemned in the peoples' conciousness, this is a precondition for the development of class-struggle and the confrontation of the fake dilemmas which favor the phony bipolarism between SYRIZA and New Democracy [...].

What the Capitalist Economic Crisis in Greece has taught us

By Nikos Mottas.

It was six years ago, on May 2010, when the then Prime Minister George Papandreou, in a televised message from the picturesque island of Kastelorizo, was announcing Greece's entry to the support mechanism of the IMF and the EU – the 'memorandum phase'. The economic crisis in Greece had manifested itself a year earlier, in 2009, when it entered in a phase of rapid recession, following the outbreak of global financial crisis in 2007-2008. Today, after four bourgeois governments (Papandreou, Papademos, Samaras, Tsipras) and three memorandums of harsh austerity packages, we can draw some significant conslusions. What did the Capitalist Economic Crisis in Greece teach us?

1. The Source of the Crisis.

Contrary to various bourgeois interpretations and theories of the economic crisis (over-consumption, casino-capitalism, etc.), there is one clear, scientifically proven, reality: Capitalism itself contains in it's DNA the inevitability of crises. Capitalist production, with it's contradictory character and anarchy, contains the seed of such crises. In Capitalist economy lies the motive to push capitalist reproduction to extremes levels, to accumulate immense profits, thus giving a monetary speculative form to the appropriation of surplus value from the working class labour. The devaluation of capital (either commercial or financial) and the devaluation of labour power (as a commodity), has occurred repeatedly in the past and will certainly occur in the future for as long as the exploitative system called 'Capitalism' exists.

Brexit: Why workers in Britain should vote to leave the EU

Why British workers need a Brexit.

Source: Proletarian (CP of Great Britain, Marxist-Leninist), 

Issue 71, April 2016. 

Leaving the EU would undoubtedly weaken the ability of British, European and even US imperialists to dominate the globe, thus taking our struggle for socialism one small step forward.

“From the standpoint of the economic conditions of imperialism – ie, the export of capital and the division of the world by the ‘advanced’ and ‘civilised’ colonial powers – a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary ...

“Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe ... On the present economic basis, ie, under capitalism, a United States of Europe would signify an organisation of reaction.” (On the slogan for a United States of Europe by VI Lenin, 23 August 1915).

Vladimir Putin visits Greece: Russian Monopolies seek to participate in Energy and Transportation privatization deals

Russia's President Vladimir Putin arrived in Athens today, bringing with him numerous businessmen and representatives of Russian monopoly groups, including Gazprom and Rosneft. Mr.Putin is scheduled to meet with the President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos as well as with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, while on Saturday he will pay a visit to Mount Athos in northern Greece. 

What is the major purpose of Putin's visit in Greece?

President Putin has clearly stated Moscow's intentions to strengthen Russian economic and geopolitical presense in Greece and the Balkan peninsula. In an article published in 'Kathimerini', Vladimir Putin pointed out his government interest in deepening the Greek-Russian relations, as long as they consist part of the relations between Russia and the EU. 

KKE: The anti-people work of the government has been acknowledged and approved via the Eurogroup agreement

Communist Party of Greece: Statement of the Press Office of the KKE on the Eurogroup Agreement, 25.5.2016 / Source: inter.kke.gr.

The anti-people work of the government has been acknowledged and approved via the Eurogroup agreement on the completion of the assessment.The agreement confirms that the downward spiral is endless, as each tranche installment has new anti-people measures as its precondition. Similarly, any "lightening" of the debt, which was not created by the people, will be accompanied by a new raft of measures in the various phases of its discussion, regardless of how the competition between the IMF and sections of the bourgeois classes of the EU will be expressed and regardless of what its result will be.

The lies of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition will unravel quickly, as the laws that have just been passed are not the last difficult measures, as the government officials pretended in the previous period.

Turmoil in France: Hollande's social-democratic government fiercely attacks workers' rights

Do it like Tsipras! The social-democratic government of Francois Hollande has unleashed a horrific attack against working class rights with it's anti-labour 'El-Khomri' law.

220,000 French workers have blocked roadways, burned police cars, and violently rioted in opposition to measures that limit pay and expand poor working conditions.

On Tuesday, French transportation workers took to the streets in a wave of weeklong strikes and protests in opposition to new Brussels-backed 'labor reforms' forced through by executive decree last week, without parliamentary approval.

€600,000 for Hitler's political descendants: How the EU funds Neo-Nazi Parties

Here's another prove of how Imperialist institutions, instruments of the European bourgeoise, promote fascism and nazism. We republish here an article appeared on EurActiv (27 April 2016) which reveals that the EU gave 600,000 euros to the so-called 'Alliance for Peace and Freedom' (AFP)- member of which is the prosecuted for criminal activities Greek Neo-Nazi party of 'Golden Dawn'.

European Parliament funding of neo-Nazi conference rings alarm bells.

 By Daniel Mützel.

The far-right Alliance for Peace and Freedom (APF) party has received EU-funding to the tune of €600,000, highlighting the ease with which neo-fascist groups have access to European Parliament financing. EurActiv Germany reports.

“It is a terrible and disturbing state of affairs that we are helping to finance such activities,” Swedish MEP Marita Ulvskog told EurActiv.de, in relation to a financing scandal uncovered by the Expo Foundation. Expo, a Swedish anti-racism magazine, reported that the Parliament had granted €400,000 to a foundation linked to the APF and a further €197,625 in funding that will be used to organise a neo-Nazi meeting in Stockholm this summer.

"Europe's Day" or "People's Antifascist Victory"? KKE's intervention in the European Parliament

Information from 'Rizospastis', 11 May 2016.

On the anniversary of the Peoples' Great Antifascist Victory of May 9th, the European Parliament organised unhistorical "celebrations" about the "Day of the European Union" accompanied with a lot of anticommunism. That happened within the frame of EU's provocative effort to re-write History, to erase from people's memory, especially of the youth, the great achievements of the working class in Socialism, the irreplaceable achievements of the first socialist state in the world, of the Soviet Union and it's people, of the millions of communists who decisively contributed to the defeat of nazism and fascism.

The German social-democrat president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, managed, through using anticommunist slogans about "communist dictatorship", to show what bourgeoise and the politicians who serve her, fear most...

A response to the distortion of the historical truth and anticommunism of the EU was issued by KKE's MEPs. Addressing the plenary session of the Europarliament, KKE MEP Sotiris Zarianopoulos said the following:

The New Worker- Britain should leave the EU to save the NHS

Leave the EU to save the NHS.

Republished from "New Worker", the weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain.

DR DAVID Owen, once a Labour Foreign Secretary who led a right-wing split in the party in the early 1980s to form the short-lived Social Democrat Party, was once a staunch supporter of Britain being part of the Common Market. But last week he called on people to vote to leave the European Union in order to rescue the NHS.

Dimitris Koutsoumbas- The good (EU), the bad (IMF) and the SYRIZA-ANEL government

The good (EU), the bad (IMF) and the SYRIZA-ANEL government.

By Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of KKE.

Published in Ethnos newspaper, 10/4/2016.

Translation from Greek: In Defense of Communism.

The discussions of the IMF's executives, which were published on "Wikileaks" site, highlighted the sharp contradictions between the IMF, parts of US Capital on the one hand and the EU, particularly parts of the German Capital on the other, which (contradictions) are manifested on the occasion of the Greek program and the difficulties regarding the completion of the current evalution.

Because it is naive for someone to think that the publication of these discussions, at this time, but also what followed, such as the Merkel-Langarde meeting, have to do only with the process of the Greek government's negotiation and the attitude of technocrats like Thomsen and Velkulescu.

The causes are much deeper and are related to the debt management as a whole and not only of Greece, as well as the course of the eurozone itself.

The simple truth about Yanis Varoufakis and his DiEM25 party

By Nikos Mottas/ In Defense of Communism.

On February 8th, in Berlin, the former Finance Minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis presented the 'manifesto' of his new pan-european party called "Democracy in Europe Movement 2015" (DiEM25). Having as a major slogan "transparency in Europe", the DiEM25 manifesto was stating among other things: 

"The European Union was an exceptional achievement, bringing together in peace European peoples speaking different languages, submersed in different cultures, proving that it was possible to create a shared framework of human rights across a continent that was, not long ago, home to murderous chauvinism, racism and barbarity. [...] Alas, today, a common bureaucracy and a common currency divide European peoples that were beginning to unite despite our different languages and cultures. A confederacy of myopic politicians, economically naïve officials and financially incompetent ‘experts’ submit slavishly to the edicts of financial and industrial conglomerates, alienating Europeans and stirring up a dangerous anti-European backlash. Proud peoples are being turned against each other. Nationalism, extremism and racism are being re-awakened. [...] At the heart of our disintegrating EU there lies a guilty deceit: A highly political, top-down, opaque decision-making process is presented as ‘apolitical’, ‘technical’, ‘procedural’ and ‘neutral’. Its purpose is to prevent Europeans from exercising democratic control over their money, finance, working conditions and environment. The price of this deceit is not merely the end of democracy but also poor economic policies".

The New Worker- Leave the EU to save our steel

Leave the EU to save our steel.

Republished from "New Worker", the weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain.

SAJID Javid, the Business Secretary, has been running round like mad going to India to plead with the giant company Tata to go slowly with its process of selling off the last remaining working steel plants in Britain. He has been talking about a “responsible sales process”.

And the big steel unions have also been pleading to Tata not to go for a fire sale to asset strippers, who will cherry pick the lucrative bits and ditch the rest, leading quickly to the complete demise of the whole industry.

The international economic crisis and the position of Greece - The theses of KKE

The international economic crisis  the position of Greece. 

The theses of KKE / By Eleni Bellou.

Source: International Communist Review, Issue 1, July 2014.

The international capitalist economy is going through a profound crisis characterized mainly by its extensive synchronization. It initially manifested itself in 2007 in the USA, in the construction sector, with the depreciation of capital in financial companies, due to the extensive circulation of investment derivatives in securitized precarious housing loans.

The danger of collapse of US financial giants -that hold powerful positions in the international market of money capital- caused a gradual and generalized large decrease of prices in the most important stock markets in the world. It was the “tip of the iceberg” in the manifestation of a generalized crisis of overproduction, overaccumulation of capital.

An optimistic version of the current data and assessments of the international economic organisations pinpoint 2010 as the year of the lowest point of recession. An increase of the number of unemployed by 25 million has already been registered and it is estimated that another 40 millions will be added by the end of the year. In 2009, the Gross World Product is expected to shrink by 1,7% according to the World Bank and by 2,75% according to the OECD. The latter estimates that the international trade will shrink by 13,2% in 2009.

The International Monetary Fund estimates the depreciation of money capital to 4,1 trillion dollars since the manifestation of the crisis.