Experiences from the struggles, the alliances
and the co-operative actions among communists today

Speech by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece,
Aleka Papariga.

International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties,
Athens, June 23-25, 2000

The communists of our country, the members of KNE, the Central Committee 
welcome you to Athens, to our new meeting. The friends of the Party, along 
with the forces which we have co-operated with in the recent period in 
political and social struggles as well as electoral battles, many 
progressive people, are awaiting with great interest the exchange of 
opinions and experiences.

We proposed the specific topic because many of the comrades who had 
attended previous international meetings had expressed their thoughts on 
this issue. The topic was at the center of discussion as well at many 
important international initiatives such as at the meeting of the Forum in 
San Paolo, the meeting for cooperation in the Mediterranean that AKEL 
hosted and others.

Important events have marked the year that has passed and new initiatives 
that are becoming visible now make even more timely this exchange of 
opinions around the issue of co-operation and alliances. We are referring 
to the mobilisations against capitast integration, known as globalisation; 
to the mobilisations in Seattle, in Davos, in Washington. We are referring 
to the initiative of the group of 77, to the developments in the struggle 
in Colombia, and in a series of countries in Latin America, to the 
mobilisations against NATO and the war in Yugoslavia, to the 
intensification of the conflict in Palestine, in Cyprus, in the Ukraine, in 
South Africa, and in all of the African continent. In practice this means 
struggle in many areas of the world.

We are referring to new initiatives that are being prepared such as the 
mobilisation against the WTO in Prague in September that is being supported 
by the CP of Czechoslovakia and other forces.

First: The issue of political alliances of communist and workers' parties 
is inseparably tied to daily struggles but also to our final goal, 
socialism, that today is becoming more and more timely. Especially today 
when capitalist restructuring and the new dogma of NATO have an even deeper 
impact on all the countries, independently of whether they are members of 
imperialist alliances, independent of the level of capitalist development 
in one or the other, independently if they are on the path to building 
socialism. Today, we have a clearer picture of how the opponent outlines 
his own policy of alliances, how he encourages or makes use of obstacles. 
We know the methods that are being used to push the Communist Parties and 
in general the anti-imperialist forces or to attract them through outside 
pressure into a line of consent and class submission.

Second: We are not discussing today the general necessity for alliances but 
the specific experiences that we have gained in a period where the most 
important struggles of the past decade have been expressed in many 
countries around the world, in places where resistance had come to a 
standstill. Certainly the movements that are developing and the coalitions 
that are appearing have a lack of uniformity. They do not always have 
continuity, they are characterised by a certain fragmentation. Despite all 
of this, the myth of so-called globalisation is starting to be called into 
question.

Third: The policy of alliances provides the answer to the agonising 
question of how it will be possible for the people to obstruct and put a 
stop to imperialist policies. How will as many countries as possible break 
away from imperialist integration, dependence and subjugation. The policy 
of alliances is inextricably linked to the strategically important question 
of how we will pass into a new period of development of powerful social 
movements, revolutionary movements. It lends wings to hope, to optimism, to 
the defeat of fatalism.

In 1996 at the 15th Convention of our Party the strategy of alliances of 
the Party was elaborated in the proposal for the constitution of a social-
political alliance with the form of a Peoples' Front that would rally social 
and political forces around it, socio-political elements that would agree 
that the struggle must be conducted in the direction of opposition to the 
interests of monopoly capital, and of imperialist alliances.

At the end of the year our 16th Convention will take place. There our 
estimations will be made public, placed before the people. What have we 
done for the building of the Front? What results have we had? What 
experience can be extracted?

The Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Monopoly Democratic Front (AADF) as an alliance 
with all-Greek character and a program of action has not been formed yet. 
Such decisions that are inevitably tied to the sharpening of the class 
struggle and the maturing of the political consciousness of the people are 
not pushed forward within such severe timelines. The AADF does not 
constitute a plan on paper. Clearly however we are not all at the same 
point. We can say that we have laid some groundwork for its construction, 
inadequate as of yet. The responsibility is not all our own. It is not 
possible for some obstacles to be overcome from one day to the next: the 
negative situation that exists in the trade union movement with the 
responsibility of its leaders, the climate of compromise and consent that 
prevail in the forces that are considered as left and progressive by some 
elements of public opinion. We will continue and we will increase our 
initiatives. We believe that in the next years on a national and 
international level the contradictions will be sharpened, and we must be 
prepared to jump in and move ahead without delay.

The proposal of KKE causes debate, causes activity around it and our Party 
comes under attack. Today, one especially intense wave of ideological and 
political attack has our 16th Convention in its sights. The mechanisms of 
imperialism that were especially bothered by the anti-imperialist 
initiatives of the Party which expressed the will of a broad spectrum of 
peoples' forces, non-communists, are participating actively in this attack. 
A few years ago, they accused us of acting alone, under the pretext then 
that we had not yet managed to widen our affiliations. Today, now that 
positive tendencies exist in the policy of alliances, today we are under 
attack again because supposedly we make bad alliances. We have reached the 
point of attack-comedy, as we are being accused by the class enemy that the 
alliances we make distort our communist character. The bourgeois parties 
and their mechanisms want us either at the absolute fringes or for us to 
participate in alliances to their liking, so that they have us under 
control.

1. Alliance: yes, there is no other choice, but with whom, in what 
direction and for what purpose. Each day we are more and more convinced by 
the developments in Greece and in all of the world that the minimum line of 
coalition-building at the social and political level must be the expressed 
decision to oppose the options of monopoly capitalism and the imperialist 
alliances, to stand against the regime of the monopolies to the point of 
confrontation. Behind this line not many other hopes exist. The danger of 
integration exists. We know however, that it is not possible from the 
beginning for an alliance on an all-Greek level to have the necessary 
political depth. It would not be possible from the beginning to judge its 
stability or even its viability with great certainty until the end of its 
declared goal. However, from the beginning a tough direction of overall 
opposition must be guaranteed, that describes the prospects for getting out 
of the framework of today's system.

Greece is not on the path of alignment in the EU and NATO. It has been 
integrated and it participates actively, actively in imperialist schemes in 
the area. It is not possible today to get round the fact that generalised 
privatisations are taking place in areas of strategic importance, and that 
lax working relations are being introduced, social insurance is being 
overturned, that a mercenary army is being founded in our country for 
action even within Greece itself against the peoples' movement, and in the 
Balkans and in the Black Sea.

2. We are not merely standing by. We are continuing our political 
initiatives. We are helping in the maturation of the pre-requisites for the 
Front within smaller individual fronts of struggle and organising around 
anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist goals that for us are the torrents, the 
streams towards the big river. In this way, we meet with social and 
political forces, socio-political elements where in practice we are all 
being tested as to whether we can agree on overall goals. We already have 
obtained good experience with co-operations in the struggles against NATO, 
in the war against Yugoslavia, in workers' and farmers' struggles, in the 
struggles for education, in issues of democracy. In the recent electoral 
battle, 1/3 of those participating in our electoral platform were not 
members of the party. They came from other areas; they were co-operators. 
We cooperated as well with a new political grouping that is called 
Communist Renewal. Of course, all of the cooperative actions and all of the 
fronts and organising do not constitute the Front but they sow the seed. 
They accelerate to one degree or another positive actions towards its 
construction.

3. In the lines of the Front we see the participation of class, radical 
organisations and the movements of the working class, of the petit 
bourgeois sections of the cities, of the countryside, small business people 
and the poor farmers, movements for peace, for the rights of women, the 
youth, movements for the environment, for democracy, against the roots of 
social criminality, of drug-abusers, etc.

It is an alliance of social and political forces that is not limited to the 
above struggle, to the support simply of mass movements, in the demand for 
a change of the balance of forces in the Parliament only, but an alliance 
that aims at the organisation of the people and the conducting of its 
struggle from the top and from the bottom, with the prospect of opening up 
a different road of development for Greek society. It acts in today's 
institutions but at the same time it helps within the popular struggle for 
the birth of new peoples'institutions.

An alliance that will help to gain concessions in favour of the people, it 
raises the question of power.

4. The AADF will encompass dissimilar social and political forces. 
Consequently it will be marked as much by the element of unity as by the 
differences that demand a particular struggle within its ranks. It will be 
based on necessary compromises because we want to help in the integration 
of as many forces as possible, compromises however that will not lead the 
peoples' movement into dissolution and towards the logic of managing the 
system.

5. We are aware of our responsibility to preserve unity of action, for the 
ranks of the Front to be widened, enriched and re-aligned with new forces 
that will appear. When we say to the people that KKE must be strengthened 
we say it because this is in the interest of the Front. The alliance will 
be judged especially in periods of heightening of the attack by the 
bourgeois class and by international organisations, when the greatest 
decisiveness, stability and militancy is required.

6. We believe that alliances such as the one we are proposing inevitably 
will shelter forces with different concepts about the character of power, 
so much more so that the AADF will not be built on agreement about 
socialism. The progress of the struggle, the balance of power, the 
existence or not of a revolutionary situation, will decide the final 
outcome. Other disagreements that will appear or that already exist and may 
be strengthened will also have an impact, independent of the initial 
agreement. It is not possible for us to speak in Greece about the prospect 
of a way out towards another road of development without taking into 
consideration that we have to solve the knotty issue of obedience or not to 
the EU and NATO, resistance or not, participation or not. Consequently, the 
alliance can only have a direction openly declared to the people.

If a government with anti-imperialist anti-monopoly character appears in 
the course of the struggle of the AAD Front, when the necessary pre-
requisites for socialist power have not yet taken shape, that government 
had better put through in as short a time as possible substantial changes, 
otherwise it will find itself under attack from two sides. One the one 
side, from the people who are not satisfied with their life, and on the 
other from the enemy who will hammer on it in order to overturn it. 
Detailed and specific choices cannot be outlined analytically from now. 
However, at least one general direction must exist from the viewpoint of 
the Front so that the people can be politically prepared.

7. We do not consider correct the concept that a struggle on a national 
level is a deadend, that solutions can be obtained only through world-wide 
based struggle that will bring simultaneous world-wide results. The enemy 
knows that the national field of struggle cannot be abolished under the 
pretext of so-called globalisation. It strives to integrate it, obedient 
and subjugated to its own imperialist policies. 

Clearly today the internationalisation of the class struggle, of the anti-
imperialist struggles and the fight for socialism have taken on greater 
weight. Clearly today there is the need for us to conduct simultaneous co-
ordinated strikes at the centers of imperialism. However, the 
internationalisation of the struggle cannot bring results unless a powerful 
peoples' movement, a workers' movement with class orientation, a powerful CP 
with a correct policy of alliances that guides in the solving of the issue 
of power, in the detaching of its country from the international 
imperialist system, exists at a national level. The difficulties and 
weaknesses that presently exist must not be converted into a theoretical 
concept proposing that on the national field everything is over, or that 
the national field is out of date. Uneven development is being intensified 
today, therefore the struggle will have an uneven course. That which has 
importance is that the movements at a national level will make as many 
advancing steps as they can, to claim significant changes and overturns and 
in this way can give momentum to the change in the international balance of 
forces.

Precisely because the internationalisation of the struggle has still 
greater weight today, we support the need for the workers and communist 
parties to be co-ordinated, for us to fight to develop a broad discernible 
pole of the communist movement but also generally of the anti-imperialist 
struggle, so that international support and solidarity can be promoted.

We believe that we, the communist and workers' parties, the anti-
imperialist forces, the radical forces that exist all over the world, must 
undertake more seriously the support of the existing or the creation of new 
international movements, of initiatives with the form of international 
organisations, especially now that the imperialist alliances are spreading 
so-called non-governmental organisations everywhere, a large part of which 
they have under their control or on their side.

Temporary facts from the EU for our country state that from 1985-1991 24 
non-governmental organisations were given aid while in the period 1995-1996 
their number reached 73.

We must contribute to the co-ordination of the struggle of the class trade 
union movements and organisations at the center of capitalist 
restructuring. The internationalisation of the struggle without basing it 
on a class oriented workers movement is almost impossible.

An issue of special importance is the support of international and regional 
movements against NATO and the international monopolies, against the 
militarisation of Europe, against the anti-ballistic system of the USA, 
against nuclear arms, imperialist intervention and military occupation, 
against the changes in borders. The struggle against laws with the pretext 
of terrorism lead to the creation of an individual file, to the suppression 
of movements, prosecutions, murders, etc. Very serious problems exist which 
are caused by genetically engineered products, generally the use of science 
and techniques at the expense of human beings. The problem of hunger, 
starvation and of poverty.

We believe that the international communist and generally the anti-
imperialist movement must have strength at a national level, and the 
national forces will become stronger if all together we give a dynamic push 
to the international movement.

It is not a luxury but a need and of interest to the Greek movement to be 
concerned and to organise solidarity actions based on whatever happens in 
the Middle East, in Africa, in Latin America, in South-East Asia. Actions 
concerning the debt that is hanging like a noose at the expense of 
countries that have fallen into the noose of the IMF and World Bank. It is 
to the benefit of every people to be interested in and to fight against the 
crimes of imperialism that are taking place in the Balkans, against "euro-
atlanticism", for what is happening at the expense of the Palestinian 
people, for what is happening in Cyprus, in Cuba.

We believe that we must counter-attack as well on the ideological front. We 
must unmask the myth of so-called globalisation. It is important that the 
people do not get trapped in non-class terms.

We must de-mythologise the theories around capitalist integration, that 
underestimate, willingly or not, the case of uneven development, the inter-
imperialist contradictions, the circle of countries that have an interest 
to resist relations of dependence and inequality that they are condemned to 
as members and allies of imperialist unions.

To counter-attack for the necessity of socialism, to project our scientific 
world-theory and the principles of Marxism-Leninism, without inhibitions 
due to the overthrows or the mistakes and deviations that were noted. For 
us to project the vision of socialism in every country.

No people, no working class will become a vanguard revolutionary force 
condemning only imperialism, fixed on some fragmented goals and struggles. 
Nor is the projection of the vision of socialism enough if we do not manage 
to help in the organisation of struggles, the struggle for conflict and the 
overthrow of the foundations of the capitalist system, on all of the fronts 
in the area of work, education, in social policies, in the area of culture, 
athletics, the environment, the media, struggles of all kinds.

The alliances in the direction of conflict with the monopolies and 
imperialism give the possibility to the people to limit the consequences, 
and to even extract some concessions but also to counterattack with the 
goal of final victory.