50. The intervention of the Party and KNE in the young men and women of working class families can provide a substantial way out of the concerns about their present and future. This ideological–political intervention —through the action and elaboration of content and forms of struggle in the mass movement— can be decisive so that the problems that the young men and women encounter in their effort for education, work, creative use of free time, in the development of social activity, personal relationships, in starting a family, etc to become a seedbed of demands, of collective organized action, of rights, in order to struggle for their contemporary needs.

A detailed reference was made in the previous chapters to the young workers, as part of the working class of the country that is of particular importance for the course of the labour movement. The Party is equally interested and engagedin the young men and women in all levels of education, who, in the near future, will mainly join the ranks of salaried employees as well as of the self-employed, of the allied strata of the working class.

Since the 20^th Congress, struggles have been developed that encouraged initiativesby Party and KNE forces, both at an independent level and in mass organizations, which of course showed differences in the level of the mobilization of the masses (school student struggles, university students’ uprisings, mobilizations of substitute teachers, participation of parents in students’ rallies, etc.). Some more permanent positive features emerge in our perception of the communists’ intervention in the movement, especially in the field of Education, which need to be maintained and expanded as a way of thinking and acting.

It can be concluded that the work based on our programmatic specializations in each field and educational level contributes decisively to the ability to elaborate goals of struggle  while taking lively actionwithin the movement. It provides us with the possibility to address  the government policy in the field of Education in a class-oriented and well reasoned manner. It also helps to promote a number of new issues or problems that acutely  arise in the field of Education, even though they express problems of the development of bourgeois society (e.g. poor language skills, bullying, the impact of capitalist utilization of the Internet  on young people's consciousness).

The above conclusions were confirmed also in relation to school students’ struggles, where the issue of the ideological substructure of young communists became a necessary element as well as a factor that provided the movement withresilience and perspective.

Our forces, first and foremost the leading organs,have made steps in understanding that the educational issue must be addressed as a social–political issue, both in terms of general theoretical positioning and of formation and elaboration of goals of struggle that unite the individual movements and organizationsin the field of Education.

51. Objectively, due to the large concentration of young people in schools (junior and senior high schools, EPAL), KNE has a special responsibility for specializing the intervention in this field, as well as for collecting and studying the experience.

Since the last Congress, progress was made in the coordination of the KNE Organizations with the respective Party Organizations for the revitalization of the school students’ movement. Of course, the situation in school students’ councils, in the “heart” of the student movement, remains weak while the effort of the government, state apparatus, and other political parties to intervene in their content and operation has intensified.

All these years, KNE, through its elected members and friends, has played the leading role in the school students councils, so that they function as instruments of struggle for the acute problems and the needs of the school students; it intervenes, more or less, in all schools of the country.

The ongoing changes in the school and especially in the examination system are a key factor in the development of the struggles. The increasingly ossified knowledge provided by school, the monotonous and stressful daily life that creates stress to the students, is the ground on which the KNE and the Party worked, utilizing the position on the “Unified Twelve-Year School of General Education”, i.e. the updated pamphlet which was elaborated by the School Students’ Committee of the Central Council. Our intervention, among others, has given rise to discussion and reflection on the opposition to military interventions, to actions of solidarity with their victims and refugees, and generally to actions against fascism, racism, and the marginalization of people on the basis of sex, religion, sexual orientation, as well as on environmental issues, the use of free spaces, etc. In all the above issues, our forces are faced with the multifaceted intervention of the class enemy which is unfolds in many fields and is adapted for these age groups.

There remains an urgent need to take more decisive steps in sharpening the ideological struggle against the prevailing ideology, which is expressed both in schoolbooks as well as in various school programs, by a wide range of sponsors, inspirers, staffs (NGOs, embassies etc.) and more and more projects.

It was confirmed that it is the multifaceted action of the elected members and friends of KNE in their school and their classroom for everything that concerns the school student community that gives militant characteristics to the student councils, enhances their operation, raises the level of collective discussion and the organization of school students and consolidates our own forces.

In this way, it is possible to exert influence on a permanent basis both on the content and the framework of demands adopted by the school student movement in various phases as well as on the establishment of new forms of organization of the student movement, mainly that of the Coordinating Committees of Schools in municipalities. The forces of KNE support the Coordinating Committee of the School Students of Athens, which has been widely recognized, while its action has been recognized at a national level.

This effort must be further supported by the coordinated action of our forces among parents and teachers nationwide, by region or school unit.

The mobilizations of school students before the second wave of the pandemic are of great importance for the confrontation with the government over health issues. Significant conclusions have been drawn, especially in relation to the elaboration of the demands, the slogans, the escalation and alternation of forms of struggle, the activity of the KNE forces with arguments that responded to the considerations of school students improving the cooperation with party organizations, parents and teachers. It was proved that sought to characterize the student struggles as a “movement against masks” as part of a more general plan.

Without underestimating the weaknesses, certain conditions have been created to make substantial progress in the expansion of the KNE's links in schools, with the promotion of its members to student councils, to the coordinating committees which have been established through their activity. It is very important to support this work throughout the next period, through a multifaceted activity, to give emphasis on the BOs of school students, their content, on the possibility to open new ways for our contact with students, with the eye to the school units.

It is important for the school students who are members of KNE to continue playing the leading role in the creation and strengthening of militant spirit, to recruit, to engage themselves more actively and confidently in the political confrontation, with the necessary adjustment to the social experience of these age groups. The work of the Party and KNE leading organs, which is more demanding in comparison to the previous years, can provide assistance in this direction.

52. Our work in Vocational Education and Apprenticeship is a work with an outlook to the future regarding the working class, the regroupment of the labour movement, and also the work aiming at intervening in the self-employed. We have still a long way to go when it comes to the coordination of the Party and KNE as per school, sector, specialization and region. The CC Departments, the Party Groups of the Federations, the Labour Centres and the sectoral trade unions, together with the KNE forces, should have a plan for monitoring, elaborating issues and intervening, and finally a plan for building organizations in Vocational Education.

Especially the students in vocational upper-secondary schools (EPAL), as a section of the school students’ movement, have actively participated in students’ struggles for common problems over the past years. Due to the downgrade of their studies, the difficulties in acquiring a vocational–technical specialization definitely affect the development of a militant mood. Our intervention in vocational upper-secondary schools (EPAL) can be enhanced regarding those issues based as well on our updated position on Vocational Education. It is an area of special importance since their very class origin affects them, while it is not unusual for these students to work while at school. We need to take into consideration the targeted drug trafficking, the activities of various rings and various football fan clubs, etc.

In recent years, there has been a more active and mass presence in the procedures of the Students’ Unions of Public Institutes Of Vocational Training, of the assemblies at schools, with the decisive intervention of the KNE forces and young and inexperienced forces that need significant support.

53. The efforts of the Party and KNE within the students’ movement were made under special conditions. However, it has been proved to be a demanding task. The development of our organized forces at universities, the strengthening of the multifaceted ideological and political intervention linked to the each-time discipline, the study of the experience from our intervention to develop militant and combative processes over the previous period are all decisive factors that can help progress the militant regroupment of the students’ movement in an anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist orientation.

Any positive steps taken have the stamp of our forces, but they are not solid. The students’ movement is still in a deep crisis and retreat. Apart from the long-term absence of an organized structure, the low participation in the movement processes, the line of consensus and compromise with the dominant policy through the opponent’s multifaceted intervention, a more intense effort to slander the students’ struggles was thrown into the mix by using various ways. The degeneration was also intensified due to the fact that there were no mass procedures (general assemblies, students’ elections, etc.) for about a year due to the universities being basically closed since the pandemic outbreak. At the same time, the legal repressive framework has been enhanced and still is enhanced to prevent any positive processes in the struggles and the radicalization of consciousness. Further attempts to dissolve the movement by utilizing electronic voting is also amongst their priorities.

These years the strengthening of the Students' Struggle Front (MAS) with new unions expresses certain positive elements that were developed in the students’ unions. Today, 11 years after its foundation, important steps have been made for its establishment and its wide recognition amongst the students. That is also reflected in the fact that it affiliates a higher number of students’ unions (69 students’ unions, unions of former Technological Educational Institutes–TEI, associations of boarding students and some struggle committees, year committees, etc.). This increase mostly results from a more favourable correlation of forces in the administrative boards of the unions in which Panspoudastiki KS (the list of KNE at universities) was first in elections.

These unions have been at the forefront of the efforts to coordinate and have a joint action and demands, and have contributed in the direction to organize the students’ movement to respond to the mounting governmental policies against the students’ rights.

The experience gathered in certain organizations, from the elaboration of frameworks of struggle and demands and agitation on specific issues can be generalized and used for guidance purposes. Caring about the sum total of the student’s life, the terms of studies, education, degree, professional prospects; about issues of science and research, recreation, sports, culture is a direction that can help in mobilizing broader forces, and, in many cases, in highlighting and demanding the contemporary needs of the students. We can cultivate more decisively ideological excellence to the members, especially of KNE, which will be based on Marxist education and knowledge, the ability to keep track of each discipline and develop critical thinking. Our members should be distinguished in all of the above, graft radical–revolutionary ideas onto young issues and concerns, and have a positive impact on the progress of the movement.

Of course, we do not forget that this elaborated work has yet to reach the grassroots of the movement, has yet to massively reach the students, and this is also concerning the unions in which MAS participates.

That is a guidance issue to be achieved and is basically the assistance that the Party and KNE members at Universities need. Assistance so that the efforts to agitate, inform, confront other forces on the struggle orientation, and —of course— have militant action are not fragmentary.

We should not underestimate the discussion on the value of the struggle and collective and trade union organization, on the need to have a students’ union with a mass students’ participation, which is a weapon in the militant, collective and organized struggle for their rights. All the above should be highlighted through a multifaceted activity at all levels (on the future of the graduates, activities based on each discipline, issues of Culture, Sports, History, etc.), having also in mind that this is a responsibility that first and foremost is placed on our forces that have the majority in administrative boards. There is a need for greater support in the effort to build mass unions, to change the correlation of forces where we are the minority; in the study and utilization of the substructures formed in the students’ movement; in the possibility of creating forms of organization at a year and faculty-level, especially where there is a complete absence of collective struggle due to the dissolution of unions; in the process of establishing new unions at the former TEI.

54. The struggle of the Party and KNE members, particularly within the youth movements, is an integral component of the struggle for culture and sports, generally for creative and quality use of free time, recreation, the right to holidays, etc. We aim to spread a wider and more multifaceted activity that shall come to conflict with the consequences of the domination of commercialization and the fact that for many youngsters the above is today an expensive “luxury” or a hobby for those who have the time to do it. It shall also oppose the attempt to exploit them in many ways to promote the values and standards ofcapitalism,competition, the bourgeois ideology.

From this point of view, it is necessary to monitor the developments as a whole and to intervene at a central political level. But it is even more imperative to focus on how to integrate these fronts to the demands of the mass movement, how to work within cultural, local associations, sports clubs and sports areas, how to also develop other initiatives such as cultural centres for the youth among others, sports activities that shall gather forces and send a combative message. The initiatives we sporadically develop are very successful, however there is not an integrated plan in most of the Organizations.

55. The policy of the bourgeoisie towards the social phenomenon of drug addiction follows the axis of “legalization”, repression, “less harm”, generalization of heroin substitutes provision in Supervised Drug Consumption Areas and the unscientific distinction of drugs into “hard” and “soft”. It essentially aims to manage the problem, not to confront it.

As a Party we have made steps in strengthening the ideological–political and social front against dissemination of drugs and the lifestyle they represent.

We shall focus on:

a) The strengthening of a broad discussion within the movement and its structures (workers’ unions, youth organizations, Parents' Associations, sports and cultural unions), highlighting the causes of the phenomenon.

b) The study of the consequences of addiction on the formation of consciousness and action in young people, but also how a perception of tolerance is formed among people who occasionally consume drugs or not consume at all, a fact that has a multiplying effect and negatively affects familiarity with the phenomenon.

c) The integrated promotion of the framework of demands and claims put forward by the KKE and KNE across the spectrum of prevention, treatment, social reintegration and research, which focuses on the causes of the phenomenon and the actual human needs.

d) Highlighting the fact that only workers’ power is fully capable of eliminating addiction to psychoactive substances and for this reason the KKE has already formed a programme about how the workers’ power will respond to this social phenomenon.