Workers, employees, unemployed people, farmers, professionals, tradesmen, self-employed scientists, pensioners, young men and women, women from the families of the popular strata, you who are being burdened with the new unbearable measures of the third memorandum of SYRIZA-ANEL, which are being added to those of the previous ND-PASOK governments that are still in force.

We address ourselves to all those of you who in recent years placed your trust in various governments to manage the system, both single-party and coalition governments, “centre-right”, “centre-left” and “leftwing” governments,  and you saw one memorandum follow the other. In these elections, do not give the right to the parties that signed up to cuts in salaries and pensions, negative changes in labour relations, heavy taxes, the reduction of health and welfare benefits and education provision, the bankrupting of the small farmers and self-employed, to say that the people consented, voted to be massacred and that the people agree about the inevitability of  the permanent memoranda. In any case, the governmental programmes of the other parties, whatever differences they may have, contain the three-year agreement-memorandum with the EU and the other memoranda which will come in the future.

We address ourselves to leftwing radical people, militants, people who are very active in the labour-people’s movement, to those of you who believed in SYRIZA and today feel betrayed. You have the opportunity to draw valuable conclusions, to join with the KKE in the struggle, which will be carried out on a really solid and radical basis this time around. The importance of the KKE’s unwavering stance as regards its non-participation in the governments that manage capitalism has been demonstrated in practice.

We address ourselves to those of you who struggled against the memoranda in previous years, who believed that by voting NO in the recent referendum you denounced them and today you see SYRIZA bringing a third and even worse memorandum. This is the SYRIZA-ANEL government’s great contribution to the industrialists, the bankers, the ship owners, who have been demanding the implementation of even tougher measures for years. From the very first moment, it “dressed” its negotiations on behalf of capital, its compromise, with left slogans and with the mantle of dignity. It utilized the various trends and “platforms”, its allegedly democratic pluralism, fostered illusions in every direction-to its “left” and to its “right”. It transformed active militants into passive spectators in the face of every impending electoral confrontation. It hijacked and appropriated historic moments from the history of the labour-people’s movement of the 20^th century, bright pages etched in the peoples’ memory, in order to foster the illusions of an alleged left renewal, of left continuity.

Workers, employees, unemployed, semi-employed, pensioners, farmers and self-employed people.

Stand tall, take your fate into your own hands, turn your backs on the false dilemmas and traps that are being set!

Don’t make the mistake again in these elections of choosing another party that promises a way out of the economic crisis, productive reconstruction, development and income redistribution allegedly in favour of the people. In reality, they want to govern on behalf of the big capitalists, the monopoly groups and their power.

Enough is enough!

The KKE in particular addresses itself to those of who perhaps occasionally chose to vote for the KKE in the past, but then preferred a more immediate, as it seemed, political solution.

Today we call on you to think and to make your electoral choice on the basis of your experience.

We call on you to take a combative position and in these elections this can only mean a vote for the KKE, the vote that will strengthen the people’s resistance against every anti-people agreement and law, every single-party or multiparty governmental coalition, against every imperialist alliance of states.

History as a whole has demonstrated that the effectiveness of the struggles mainly depends on how strong the KKE is in every sector.

Today you have more experience and more reasons to support and decisively strengthen the KKE

A strong KKE, because it never tried to trick the people in order to win votes. It told the truth, it warned in good time about the course of the developments, it predicted the outcome of a SYRIZA government. It warned that SYRIZA’s programme and the Thessalonica declarations determined the compromise, the agreement with the EU and the new shameful memorandum. Its program was inherently an anti-people one, dressed up with some left slogans. You now have tangible and irrefutable evidence which demonstrates that no government can follow a pro-people political line inside the framework of the EU and the capitalist one-way street. Capitalism and its international unions, such as the EU, can not have their character changed by negotiations, referenda, allegedly left governments. Any government that operates on the terrain of the capitalist economy is obliged to observe its immutable anti-people laws, which make the people bleed in order to reinforce the competitiveness, profitability and investments of capital. All the other parties are deceiving the people that change and a differentiation of its political line are gaining ground in Europe. Discussions, plans, squabbles are under way, but these have nothing to do with the people’s interests. They are worried about the impasses of capitalism, they are arguing about how capital’s profits and the losses in the member-states will be shared out amongst them.

A strong KKE, because it says the truly genuine and unwavering NO to the memoranda and anti-people measures and at the same time proposes a path of development which is in the interests of and exclusively belongs to the people. It fights against the real causes of the memoranda which are the strategy of the EU and capital to overcome the capitalist economic crisis by forming new avenues of profitability for capital with an even cheaper labour force. The KKE was the only party that tabled a draft law in parliament to abolish the memoranda and the application laws, which was never brought for discussion or a vote in parliament, something for which all the MPs of SYRIZA-including those that have now split from SYRIZA- and the Speaker of the Parliament are responsible. It consistently organizes the struggle for immediate relief measures for the people, for solidarity, for the abolition of the antiworker-antipeople laws, for the recovery of the losses, for the satisfaction of the people’s needs today, in a course of rupture with the EU, capital and its power.

A strong KKE, because tomorrow it will be able to support the people even more decisively in the confrontation against the “chorus of blackmailers” which is comprised of all the other parties and is guided by the EU, Commission, IMF  and the country’s ruling class. The KKE will express the people’s opposition to every government, whatever its composition. A strong KKE will be in a better position to defend the workers’-people’s rights and will play the leading role in the organization of the people’s struggle so that the antimonopoly-anticapitalist activity of the labour movement acquires a mass and dynamic character, so that the people’s alliance is strengthened. The KKE devotes all its forces to the organization and unity of the workers so that they can take control of their own future. Today, think about the negative consequences for the people’s interests which the electoral weakening of the KKE in the previous years had. A strong KKE and movement can overthrow the “memoranda and the bosses”.

 A strong KKE, because the realism of the KKE is determined by the interests of the people and workers and by the recognition that the people, when they are in the frontline of the counterattack, can be victorious. Workers’-people’s power is the only one that can be the foundation for the centrally and scientifically planned social production and the social services – education, health, welfare- on the basis of social ownership of the concentrated means of production and workers’ control. On this basis it can deliver popular prosperity, disengage from the EU, unilaterally cancel the state debt in favour of the people, lead the country out of NATO and out of the plans of the imperialists.

Reject the fraudulent new dilemmas, the fraudulent anti-memorandum demarcation line, the false rupture with the Eurozone that does not dispute capitalist ownership and power

Those of you who transferred your votes from ND and PASOK to SYRIZA, with the hope of abolishing the memoranda and the anti-people application laws, must not be trapped again by the promises about an allegedly better management of the new memorandum, waiting for compensatory measures in favour of the people. Don’t support and don’t rely on such a disastrous new illusion.

Remember what the KKE said from the first moment that SYRIZA became the official opposition: that the SYRIZA government in the end will serve the EU, NATO and big capital. And now no votes from the popular strata must return to ND, PASOK, or be trapped by POTAMI or SYRIZA mark 2, the newly founded “Popular Unity” that emerged after the split in SYRIZA.

The squabble around the distinction between memorandum and anti-memorandum forces has been revealed not only to be superficial, but also false and therefore damaging to the people’s movement.

The key to the economic policy and overall political line of a party and what social forces it represents is the position it takes on the issue of the concentrated means of production and the country’s natural resources. This is the real demarcation line and not the currency. Today, everyone talks about “development of production” and “redistribution” not only parties labeled as being “left” but also “right” parties, the bourgeois liberal ones and the Nazi Golden Dawn party.

The main issue for the parties of the memoranda, the EU and capital is this: Who, which government, with which composition and alliances will implement the new memorandum and the anti-people application laws. Reject the confrontation between them that aims to entrap the people inside the anti-people framework.

• SYRIZA is once again shamelessly attempting to trick the people, saying that it will “overcome” the memoranda, while at the same time implementing and prolonging them. It claims that if it is in the government it will blunt the negative consequences of the memorandum and take compensatory “people-friendly” measures for growth and the reduction of the debt.  It conceals the fact the continuous attacks against the people are basic prerequisites for any capitalist recovery and decision about the debt, which will be paid for in its entirety by the working class-popular families in its entirety. The development packages and the adjustment of the debt will be directed towards supporting big capital and will once again be paid for by the people, just as the previous ones were. SYRIZA has fully adopted the propaganda about “inevitable choices”, which in previous years had been repeatedly used against the people by ND and PASOK. On the one hand SYRIZA absolves ND and PASOK of their sins, forming a front in parliament with them in order to pass and implement the barbaric measures of the memoranda and on the other it squabbles with them about who will form the next government.
• The other parties of bourgeois management, ND and PASOK, are utilizing the SYRIZA-ANEL memorandum as a vindication of the barbaric policies they supported and implemented in previous years. They want to extract a “statement of recantation” from the people who denounced and fought against their policies. They promote themselves as guarantors of the “European course” of the country, because they have “expertise” in the memoranda. They present themselves together with POTAMI as possible partners in a future government with SYRIZA.
• During the years of the crisis, the standard of living of the majority of the people fell by 40-50%, every right that had been won earlier through struggles in a more favourable global correlation of forces was smashed. All the parties that promise compensatory measures are lying. No other party recognizes the right of the people to take back what they lost and to consolidate and extend their gains. Today, you can only trust the KKE.

If they vote for other parties, the people will immediately come face to face with the negative consequences. The next government on every occasion will invoke this when the workers and popular strata make demands and struggle against the new measures and the new application laws.

No more wasted time and disappointments

You must not trust the party that has split from SYRIZA with the name “Popular Unity” and its cooperation with older splits from SYRIZA, like Plan B, that serve as shock absorbers. They played a basic role, up to and including today, in the deception of leftwing radical people. It is an imitation of SYRIZA which will have the same result. Every government that poses capitalist development as its goal will sacrifice the people’s needs on the altar of capitalist profit. Every government that accepts the obligations the EU member-states have in order to buttress the competitiveness of the monopolies will promote restructurings that ensure cheap labour power for capital. This anti-people direction does not change, whether Greece remains in the Eurozone or chooses to remain a member of the EU but with a national currency.

For 25 years they have been providing a “leftwing” alibi for Greece’s assimilation in the EU and EMU, for the attack against socialism. They supported, as members of the parliament, all the steps that prepared the new memorandum (the agreement of the 20^th of February, the Tsipras proposal of 47 pages etc.). They were silent when Tsipras stated that the position of Greece in the EU and NATO is non-negotiable, when he swore fealty to capitalism, to the Federation of Greek Industrialists, in the various fora of international capital. And today, they present themselves as having been “deceived”.

They confess that they want a national currency as a tool for capitalist development, while the keys of the economy continue to belong to the monopolies, Greece will be bound to the EU or other imperialist economic and monetary alliances. Sections of capital will once again benefit from this choice. This, in any case, is what is happening in capitalist EU countries that have a national currency (Bulgaria, Romania, Sweden, Denmark) or participate in other monetary alliances. They conceal the fact that the living standards and rights of the workers are in a downward spiral in all the eurozone and EU member-states.

The system supports such parties in many ways, as it did with SYRIZA and its “Left Platform” from 2012 onwards, as it does with “Popular Unity” today in order to trap radicalism and to place obstacles in the way of the anticapitalist-antimonopoly line of struggle advanced by the KKE.

“Popular Unity” is 100% a systemic party, like the leftwing systemic parties that have existed in Europe and which are responsible for the assimilation of the labour movement into the system. Their support for the imperialist system and for capital is hidden behind anti-memorandum rhetoric.

Isolate Nazi criminal Golden Dawn

Do not allow it to rear its head again, however much it tries to conceal and blur its criminal Nazi role. Its support for the most open dictatorship of capital, its transactions with the big employers, especially with shipping capital, its hatred of the workers, the struggles and the movement is hidden behind its rhetoric. Golden Dawn's slogan about “national production” and the priority of the primary sector- in order to flatter and win over the farmers- conceals the fact that the country’s productive potential is being destroyed mainly by the capitalist economic crisis and the weak and unequal position of Greece in the EU. Golden Dawn, in essence, does not reject the EU, but seeks the “improvement” of the position of Greek capital inside it. It fosters hatred against the other peoples, the refugees, the immigrants, the victims of capitalist barbarity and imperialist wars. It is the tool the capitalists use to “divide and rule”, a tool to divide the working class and working people.

There is an alternative solution, a way out in favour of the people

The KKE argues that there is another way, that there is hope. The memoranda, poverty, unemployment and the exploitation of the people for the profits of the few is not inevitable, nor can it be our future or our children’s future.

In the years to follow, the situation for the people, for all the peoples will deteriorate. The capitalist system is rotten. Crises and competition that are sharpening amongst the capitalist states and imperialist centres, inside and outside the eurozone, will lead to destitution, unemployment, wars, immigration. The SYRIZA-ANEL government, as the previous governments had done, is entangling the country even more deeply in these rivalries, going as far as to plan the creation of a new NATO base in the Aegean Sea.

Despite the temporary compromise and the agreement of the government with the EU-ECB-IMF, the competition and splitting tendencies are strengthening, which manifested themselves over the “Greek problem” and which want a Eurozone comprised of the states with the strongest economies.

It is a possibility that some states will leave the Eurozone, as a result of the various choices of capital and with the criterion of defending the competitiveness and profitability of capital at the expense of the peoples. Such a development will also have an impact on the cohesion of the EU. Such a development in the composition and the depth of the alliances of the capitalist states in Europe could be accompanied by the strengthening or weakening of the position of some capitalist states, however it will not be accompanied by pro-people policies.

It is one thing for the people themselves to willingly choose the disengagement from the EU, through their activity, simultaneously taking the keys of the economy and power into their hands and quite a different thing for a country to find itself outside the Eurozone as a result of the contradictions and competition of the capitalists. The first scenario is an alternative solution in favour of the people and is worth every sacrifice, the second scenario will lead to the people’s bankruptcy by another route.

The proposal of the KKE for PEOPLE”S POWER WITH THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE MONOPOLIES-DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE EU-UNILATERAL CANCELLATION OF THE DEBT can be implemented. This is the only realistic and hopeful proposal for the people that can finally put an end to the memoranda and the sacrifices imposed on them which aim to serve the needs of the capitalist development path.

The realization of this path depends on the will of the people. The path of rupture with the EU and IMF, local and foreign capital, requires that the people join forces with the KKE.

·         It is the only true alternative solution capable of utilizing and further developing the country’s productive potential in favor of the people. Greece has preconditions (industrial and agricultural production, mineral wealth, specialized labor force and scientific personnel) to produce the majority of the products the people need. And on this basis to develop mutually beneficial relations with other countries. Today this potential is either being restricted or utilized in a distorted way, at other times it is actually undermined because it is subordinated to capitalist profits, uneven capitalist development and the commitments to the EU.

·         The utilization of this potential requires emancipation from the shackles of capitalist ownership and power. It is the only proposal that can safeguard permanent and stable work for all, exclusively public and free services in education, health and welfare.

·         It is the only way to prevent our country’s dangerous participation in the anti-people military plans of NATO, the USA and the EU. The only way to ensure that we do not become entangled in the web of contradictions between the imperialists, which are fighting amongst each other over how the oil and gas transport routes will be shared out, transport routes which are always drenched with the people’s blood.

·         Such a path to overthrow the system will not be lonely or isolated as all the parties that defend capitalism claim. It will be supported by the struggle and solidarity of other peoples, movements and countries which are marching on the same path.

We can bring the people’s victory closer

Today, better preconditions for the organization and regroupment of the labor movement and the strengthening of the people’s alliance can be formed. Fissures can emerge in today’s negative correlation of forces that exists in Greece and internationally.

What is needed is that the people utilize their experience and use it to empower their struggle for the overthrow of the system

Yes, there is a way and a plan for our proposal to be realized and for the working class to see better days, as they should, as they deserve, on the basis of the potential that society has today. And this path requires the formation of a strong popular social alliance which will fight against the new anti-people measures and will have the struggle against the monopolies and capitalism as its stable compass. Its formation and strengthening today can help change the negative correlation of forces, empower the organization, combativeness and militancy of the working class and the other popular strata. It can counter submission and fatalism, the subjugation of the people to the old and new managers of capitalism’s barbarity.

An even more powerful KKE is needed for this course, in the Parliament and –above all- in the workplaces, in the big factories, in the popular neighborhoods, in the rural areas, in the youth.

The KKE is the only force that can support the struggle of the people against poverty, unemployment and a degraded life whether inside or outside the Eurozone, with the euro or with a national currency.

The KKE is the only force that fights for a rupture with capitalist exploitation and power. It is the force that can lead the people to a truly different and higher form of the organization of society as a whole and the economy. This entails social ownership of the means of production, central planning, workers’ control. These are the preconditions for the real liberation from the vice-like grip of the markets and capital, for a unilateral and complete cancellation of the debt, for disengagement from the chains of the EU.

NOW VOTE KKE!

IT IS YOUR FORCE FOR TRUTH, STRUGGLE, FOR THE OVERTHROW OF THE SYSTEM!

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE KKE

AUGUST 26, 2015