"The KKE has traveled a long way and has a long way to go ,

because the cause of the proletariat, communism,

is the most universally human,

the deepest, the broadest."

(From the Programme of the KKE)

        The KKE this year completes a century of struggles and sacrifices, remaining the only truly new party in Greek society because it is only one that struggles for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. It was founded in an era when the flame of the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 lent impetus to the revolutionary workers' movement.

        With the founding of the KKE, the working class acquired its own party in our country for the first time. The Communist Party. From the first day of its foundation, the KKE has been struggling consistently for the only progressive future for humanity so that the working class and popular strata can escape the torments of exploitation, oppression, poverty, unemployment, state violence and repression, wars.

        It struggles for the abolition of all forms of exploitation and oppression, for a new organization of society, with social ownership of the means of production, land, with scientific central planning of the economy, the active participation of the workers in the organization and administration of social production.

        It struggles for socialism-communism, the only society that can safeguard work  for all, in line with their specialization, with real free time, enjoying a high level of free social services in healthcare and education, sports, cultural activity, people's housing, vacations and high living standards in general, responsible participation in organizations for the administration and control at every level of the workers' state.

        The KKE stably held the banner of socialism-communism high, even when the counterrevolution climaxed in the Soviet Union, in other countries of socialist construction.

        It had collectively acquired the necessary class criterion and in the end came into conflict with anti-communism, domestic and international opportunism that promoted "Perestroika", the vehicle of the counterrevolution, as progress, as socialist renewal.

        It came into conflict with the bourgeois and opportunist defenders of the capitalist system that claimed that the "end of history" had arrived, the end of the class struggle. It highlighted that no one can stop the course of the revolutionary class struggle in historical development towards socialism-communism.

        It highlighted that socialism, the immature phase of communism, remains necessary, realistic, hopeful. It shines a light on this necessity that does not depend on the contingent correlation of forces of the class struggle in a country or globally, undeniably a decisive factor as regards when the socialist revolution may manifest itself, with what preconditions it can be victorious in one country or a group of countries.

     It highlighted that the working class, which creates the social product, is the only social force that can organize the economy and society with satisfaction of the constantly increasing social needs as its criterion. It is the class that can correctly calculate and safeguard the interests of the urban and rural popular strata.

     The KKE, firmly believing in the right and potential of the working class to understand and change the world, struggled from the first moment of its foundation so that this can be prepared through the daily class struggles as a leading force of socialist construction. It struggles and fights for the development of the scientific understanding of the workers, of their physical and intellectual abilities, for their cultural development and the cultivation of their aesthetic criterion. It stresses the importance and contributes so that the working class can utilize the book, new technologies, the internet.

     The KKE highlighted and highlights the decay of capitalism, the relative stagnancy and crisis in relation to the progress that can be carried out, if capitalist ownership and its profit motive are abolished.

     Above all, the KKE shed light through its positions and activity that the only path which leads to social liberation is the path of socialist revolution, of the planned and organized uprising and offensive of the working class and its social allies for the overthrow of the power of the capitalist class.

     The KKE is struggling every day for the development of the subjective factor (labour movement, its alliance with the popular sections of the middle strata) so that in conditions when capitalist power is shaken it can respond to its task as the leading force of the victorious socialist revolution. It wages the battle every day in order to vindicate in a practical way its leading visionary and organizational role in the struggle for the radical revolutionary overthrow of capitalist barbarity, the construction of socialism-communism.

1. The revolutionary storm created by the October Socialist Revolution hastened the foundation of the Socialist Workers Party of Greece (SEKE) on November 17 1918 in Pireaus. The issue of the working class fighting for the overthrow of capitalist society in favour of the communist society was placed for the first time ever on a scientific basis.

        The first period was difficult, a period of the gradual maturation, with key moments being the renaming of SEKE as KKE (3rd Extraordinary Congress, 26 November-3 December 1924), the establishment of "Rizospastis" as the organ of the CC (August 1 1921), the founding of OKNE (Communist Youth Organization at the end of December 1922) and Workers' Assistance of Greece (28 November- 5 December, 1924).

     It fought against liquidationist views and later Trotskyist ones, taking steps to establish the revolutionary characteristics of the party of a new type, such as the recognition of democratic centralism as a principle of its collective organization and functioning, the combination of legal and clandestine work, the vigilance against the activity of the class enemy.

     The KKE since its foundation has consistently striven to highlight the historical role of the working class, its potential as a revolutionary class, to acquire and exercise its power. It confronted the bourgeois parties that want the working class submissive, manipulated, so that it pleads for the crumbs that will fall from the table of capitalist profitability and to shed its blood for the interests and competition of the imperialists.

     It united in its ranks the leading militant workers, as well as intellectuals. It place its trust in working women, the youth from working class and popular families. Through its members and influence it organized and supported tough assertive struggles for the 8 hour day, labour conditions, wages and salaries, the rights of women, the protection of children, public health and education. One of the first goals, from the foundation of SEKE, was the separation of the church from the state, the recognition of children out of wedlock etc.

     It acquires strong bonds with the working class because, expressing its historic interests, it was at the forefront of every battle for its demands, because it played the leading role in organizing the labour-trade union movement every day and in all the crucial periods of history. Without these unbreakable bonds, it could not endure the constant attacks and persecution of the bourgeois class which aims to weaken the revolutionary character of the KKE, to marginalize it or even to liquidate it.

     At the same time, the KKE highlighted the path and the necessity of the alliance with urban and rural popular strata, with the self-employed in various sectors of the economy, especially with the small and medium farmers who were the majority for many years in Greece, so that their common struggle against their common enemy, capital, can lead to the fulfillment of the historical mission of the working class and their own objective interest through their integration into direct social production.

2. Throughout its entire history, despite weaknesses and mistakes, the KKE never bowed its head to the real enemy, the power of capital. It confronted and continues to confront all the forms of the dictatorship of capital, using all forms of struggle, both in conditions of long-term illegality and also in conditions of long-term legality, in the framework of bourgeois parliamentary democracy or its suspension, in line with the needs of the bourgeois system. It is always a party of militant action, with deep roots in the working class and the popular strata in general, dedicated to the struggle for socialism.

     The KKE was founded in a country that was backward in terms of development and working class concentration in comparison with countries that were the cradle of the revolutionary workers' movement, of the communist movement. The dissemination of basic works and declarations of scientific communism in the Greek language also lagged behind. Despite all this, from the its earliest years the party began the effort to translate, publish, disseminate and popularize basic works of Marxist-Leninist, communist worldview. Its forces also contributed decisively to cultural creativity and issues of enhancing real education in our country.

     Through the publication of "Rizospastis" and "Kommounsitiki Epitheorisi" (January 1921) as organs of the CC of the KKE, it highlighted issues related to capitalist exploitation in Greece, the leading role of the working class and the historical necessity of the socialist revolution.

     It fought against obscurantism, prejudices, anti-women theories and practices, defeatism, fatalism and individualism. It promoted the importance of working class-popular solidarity.

     In conditions of exacerbated inner-party struggle over its revolutionary orientation, it contributed decisively to exposing the character of the imperialist wars and the first attempts at a Marxist approach to the historical research of Greek history, which were truly groundbreaking for their era.

     Over the largest part of its heroic and stormy history, despite certain of its problematic strategic elaborations in various periods, the KKE attempted to play its role as a political vehicle for the unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionary political practice.

     It highlighted the major unutilized productive potential of the country, in opposition to the bourgeois theory of Greece as a "poor relation", exposed the character of the imperialist alliances in which the domestic bourgeois class participated. It exposed the capitalist character of the state, the dictatorship of capital in Greece with or without a king, with a parliamentary system or its temporary suspension in the form of military dictatorship etc.

3. The KKE consistently and combatively supported the firsts state of workers' power in global history, Soviet Russia and later the USSR. From its foundation, it fought against the Greek bourgeois political line of anti-sovietism, which was expressed in many forms and also through Greece's participation in the invasion of 14 states in the Ukraine in 1919. The KKE focused on the main issue in defending the USSR and socialist construction in the 20th century more generally. The struggle for a new society, the socialist-communist one, against the old, capitalist society, and for this reason it stably and consistently fought against the anti-communism and anti-Sovietism of the bourgeois political forces and the opportunist current inside the labour movement; it fought against reformism and sectionalism.

     In its early years, it denounced the Greek army's campaign in Asia Minor, the bourgeois strategy of the "Great Idea", which served the imperialist aims of the Greek bourgeois class at the side the strong capitalist states of the Entente, Britain and France. It revealed in a timely fashion the danger of a new major imperialist war in the 1930s. These are positions that marked the internationalist proletarian stance of the KKE from the beginning.

     It fought against and fights against the bourgeois currents of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, which are two sides of the same reactionary political coin. It exposed and exposes the goals of the bourgeois ambitions, which attempt to pull the working class into supporting the goals of bourgeois strategy in each country, to divide on the basis of the contradictions between the imperialist centres. It opposed the bourgeois line"we belong to the West" and later the petty bourgeois theories regarding the contradictions between the "Metropolis and Periphery" between the "North and the South" etc.

     A year and a half after its foundation, the KKE participated in the Founding Conference of the Communist Federation of the Balkans. It also decided to break off relations with the 2nd International (1919) and move to the 3rd International (1920) and over time completed its accession to it, as the Greek Section of the Communist International (CI) (end of 1924).It stably expressed its solidarity with the struggles of the working class at an international level, with the peoples that are struggling for their national liberation, for socialism. In crucial and difficult phases it received the support of the International Communist Movement. The participation of the party in CI, despite its positive contribution, impacted to a significant level on the formation-through a contradictory course-of the strategic view that posed as its goal an intermediate type of power as a transitional towards socialist power. The reasons for this course-which demonstrates that the positive experience of the October Revolution was not absorbed and did not prevail-clearly require deeper detailed study, which we are continuing as a party.

4. All the major steps, not only for the trade union organization of the working class in Greece, but mainly for the consolidation of the class orientation of the labour movement, are linked to the historic contribution of the KKE. It opposed in practice the separation of workers on the basis of religion, nationality, gender and fought for the unity of the working class against its class enemy. It fought against fatalism and defeatism which were widespread in the ranks of the refugees, who were the lifeblood of the labour movement in Greece before the World War II. It fought against the line of employer-led and reformist trade unionism in the movement, utilizing the formation of the Unified GSEE. The main struggles of this period were the strikes and demonstrations of heroic May of 1936 in Thessalonica. The forces of OKNE participated and made a special contribution in the multifaceted struggle of the KKE.

     Throughout the entire inter-war period, the KKE heroically fought against the mechanisms of the bourgeois state and the capitalist employers, the "Special Law" of E. Venizelos and the persecution more generally, the murderous attacks, imprisonment and exile. It began the preparation of the people against the impending imperialist war, combining it with the fight against nationalism and the defense of the workers', farmers', youth demands, against women's inequality.

     In that period, when even the struggle for wages entailed deaths, injuries and imprisonment, the party built organizations and increased its influence and impact in the trade unions of many sectors, such as amongst the tobacco workers, the textile workers, the seamen.

     The confrontation of the KKE's forces with the line of class collaboration and compromise, was constant, despite the weaknesses in facing social-democratic forces created by its tactics.

     Heroes emerged from its ranks, well-known historical figures and many others who remained unknown, who did not hesitate to give their lives, to withstand torture, with selflessness, conscious of their responsibility to the working class and popular strata.

     The Metaxas dictatorship (August 4 1936), which served to reinforce the power of the bourgeois class, demonstrated particular fury against the KKE, with the extensive persecution, murders of its cadres and new methods of torture and coercion for the signing of statements of recantation, with the provocation of the establishment of a fake "CC" of the KKE in the conditions of the imprisonment and isolation of the General Secretary Nikos Zachariadis and many members of the PB and the CC.

5. The beginning of the 2nd World Imperialist War and the participation of Greece in this with the outbreak of the Greco-Italian war (October 28 1940) found the KKE buffeted by the Metaxas dictatorship. Despite all this, the party made efforts from the first moment to intervene, to provide a direction to the people's struggle against the foreign invader, with the three letters of N. Zachariadis. Of course, this effort was not free of contradictions and problems which existed in the strategy of the CI in this period in relation to the character of the war and the connection of the struggle against imperialist war with the struggle for the overthrow of the power of capital.

     In the period of the Occupation, the KKE was able to regroup its organizations, to play the leading role in the mass political and armed national liberation struggle, through the establishment of EAM and ELAS, EPON, Workers' Solidarity, OPLA and the popular institutions that emerged in liberated Greece,  and in this way it became the leading political force and lifeblood of the struggle. It waged the titanic battle against hunger and forced mobilization, in opposition to the bourgeois parties and their leaders who went abroad, while a section of them remained to collaborate with the occupier.

     The KKE under the influence of the strategic line of the International Communist Movement (e.g. 7th Congress of the CI) and the strategy that it had elaborated (6th Plenum) and in 1935 (6th Congress) could not in practice combine the heroic national liberation struggle with the conquest of workers' power, with the result that it was not able to meet the challenges in the conditions of the revolutionary situation that was formed in Greece during the liberation. The KKE before the liberation accepted compromises, with the subordination of ELAS to the British Command in the Middle East and the with the agreements of Lebanon and Caserta. The KKE and EAM participated with ministers in the formation of the "national unity" in the period from September to December 1944. However, the confrontation was inevitable.

     The KKE refused to accept the conditions and the violence imposed by the "National Unity" government (of the Lebanon Agreement).It chose to wage the magnificent struggle for 33 days in December of 1944 against the bourgeois class and Great Britain, which intervened at the invitation of G. Papandreou, with the aim of breaking the EAM movement and the KKE.

     Even if it had signed the Varkiza Agreement (February 1945), in the end it did not submit and it organized the three-year armed people's struggle of the DSE (1946-1949).This glorious three-year struggle expressed the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population against the interests of their exploiters and oppressors and stands as the climactic manifestation of the class struggle in Greece during the 20th century.

     The DSE confronted the domestic bourgeois class, all the political forces ("right-wing" and "centrist"), their state and the powers allied to them, the capitalist states of Great Britain and the USA. Without the military, economic and political reinforcement of the latter, the bourgeois class in Greece would not have been able  to win.

     In the face of the dilemma "Submission or the organization of the struggle and counterattack", the people's movement chose the second path. The DSE is the clearest example that the social contradictions cannot be smoothed over by ideological constructs about the so-called "national harmony" and the abolition of class differences. The DSE saved the honour of the people and the KKE.

6. In the 1950s, after the defeat and withdrawal of the DSE, the KKE was in clandestine conditions, faced with the crimes organized by the bourgeois state and its parties. Tens of thousands of communists, militants became political refugees, or found themselves in internal exile and prison, faced the firing squads unbowed.

     The KKE was confronted with the task of combining illegal and legal work so that the labour-people's movement could be regrouped. The choices that prevailed in the International Communist Movement, their impact on the party, in the conditions of the defeat of the movement and illegality, led over the course of time to deviations. Basic milestones were:The decisions of the 6th Plenum of 1956-which in essence condemned the choice to carry out an armed struggle in 1946-1949 and led to the compromise of the KKE's struggle with the bourgeois class- as well as the decisions of the 8th Plenum in 1958, the major mistake of deciding to dissolve its illegal organizations in Greece and for the party members to move over to EDA.

     The contribution of EDA as a social-democratic force-initially as an alliance and later as a unified party- in the development of workers', farmers', popular mobilizations and student/school-student struggles, in no instance balances the loss of the ideological, political and organizational independence of the KKE. The specific decisions did not serve the need to form a social front of alliance and struggle, which would target the real enemy, the bourgeois class, its parties, its imperialist allies.

     After the war, in conditions of deep illegality and despite the existing ideological-political-organizational deviations and weaknesses, the KKE resisted Greece's accession to the imperialist alliance of NATO and the installation of US military bases. It highlighted its dangerous role and decisively opposed Greece's participation in the imperialist campaign against Korea.

     In addition, it promptly highlighted the EEC's character as an imperialist alliance and decisively influenced EDA's position against Greece's accession, which was condensed in its characterizations of the EEC as a "Lion's Den".

7. The KKE from the very first day of the imposition of the 7-year military dictatorship (1967-1974) resisted and aimed to overturn it. It was the only party that did not assign the overthrow of the Junta to the imperialists, exclusively to the bourgeois political forces, but promoted the organized grass-roots anti-dictatorship struggle as a form of people's uprising, without ruling out the necessity of an armed confrontation. The forces of the party and later of KNE played the leading role in the organization of the anti-dictatorship struggle, with their significant contribution in the Law School occupations and the Polytechnic Uprising in November 1973.

     Despite the dissolution of its Party Organizations and the longstanding diffusion of its members in EDA, the KKE possessed strong roots in Greek society, with as its legacy the recognition of Marxism-Leninism as its worldview, as well as proletarian internationalism, the necessity of the struggle for socialism.

     A historically significant event in the history of the KKE was the 12th Extended Plenum of the CC of the KKE (1968), where its historical continuity was settled, through the condemnation of the opportunist group that sought the end of the KKE as a working class revolutionary party of the new type.

     It then made important decisions like the creation of party organizations in Greece so  that the organization independence of the KKE could be restored and also the foundation of KNE in 1968. Thanks to these decisions, the KKE and KNE could be the heart and soul of the anti-dictatorship struggle, which once again required self-sacrifice, heroism and consistent devotion of its members and cadres.

     The 9th Congress decided on certain positive changes and corrections of assessments, regarding the recognition of the fundamental mistake of abolishing the party organizations. However, it left the strategy of the "two stages of the unified revolutionary process" unchanged, while it could not correctly assess the development of Greek capitalism and the position of Greece in the international capitalist system.

     The efforts of the KKE to study the developments, to chart and effectively implement a revolutionary strategy were determined to a great extent by the prevalent strategic views of the Communist International and later of the International Communist Movement, of which it was an integral, consistent section.

     The ascendancy in the International Communist Movement for a long period of mistaken criteria for the definition of the character of the revolution, such as the lower level of the development of the productive forces in a capitalist country (and the quantitative superiority of the farmers) in relation to the higher level in the leading powers of the international imperialist system, as well as the negative correlation of forces, led to the strategy of stages, the struggle for a utopian intermediate form of power between bourgeois and workers' power and the support for the formation of a government on the terrain of capitalism.

     However, the KKE remained upright in the class struggle, fought against "Eurocommunism" (rejection of the necessity of the socialist revolution and the leading role of the working class) and defended the Marxist-Leninist worldview.

8. The KKE was the only party that on the July 24 1974 characterized the transition form the Junta to the "national unity" government as consensual and declared to the Greek people that they "did not bleed to change the appearance of their yoke".It had the immediate readiness to win its legalization de facto through the return to Greece of the First Secretary of the CC, C. Florakis and other members of the CC.

The acceptance of the legalization of the KKE on the part of the "national unity" government was an inevitable development in that it expressed the aspirations of the bourgeois parties that it could be integrated into the needs of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.

With the restarting of its legal action in 1974, the KKE set as an immediate goal the formation of Party Organizations everywhere, along with the KNE, especially in workplaces, in trade schools and universities; the re-establishment of bonds with the vanguard sections of the working class, the popular forces, under conditions where the bourgeois political system was openly supporting the opportunist group that had left the Party in 1968 calling itself "KKE Interior".

However, the KKE was not ideologically and politically prepared at that point to cope with the rapidly developing political formation of the social democratic current which became PASOK and functioned as the other pole of the bipartisan bourgeois political system. The PASOK, which emerged as a government in 1981, proved to be a valuable tool of the system for incorporation, manipulation and distortion of any radicalization that had developed along the way within the workers', popular, university student - secondary school student, women's movement. The vanguard action of the members and friends of the KKE and the KNE had contributed to developing the mass character and anti-imperialist orientation of these movements in circumstances, of course, of significant defeat for international imperialism, mainly of the USA (i.e. Vietnam). In addition, under conditions of Keynesian management certain gains were achieved, some modernizations to the benefit of the workers’ – popular forces ( i.e. family and civil law for the benefit of women, the establishment of certain trade union rights, and others ). This was a form of management that served the particular needs of post-war capitalist reconstruction and importantly, under conditions where the prestige of the socialist system was increasing, where socialist social policy had a significant influence.

In the late 1980s, the KKE's overall programmatic view of stages and respective alliances eventually led it to form The Coalition of the Left and Progress, which gradually "slipped" into a single-party mode of operation. The choice of its founding and its wrong choice to participate in the bourgeois government formations of Tzanetakis (ND and Coalition) and Zolotas (ND, PASOK, Coalition) expressed the strengthening of the opportunist current and at the same time this current was further strengthened among the leadership and ranks of the KKE . This situation provided the opportunity for the ruling class to strengthen is attack aiming at the dissolution of the KKE, which had been planned by collaborating forces in the Coalition in partnership with members of the leadership and other KKE officials. The victory of counter-revolution in the late 1980s found a KKE with its ideological-political unity shaken, with consequences for the KNE, resulting in the outbreak of a deep crisis threatening the continuation of the party's independent action and very existence, in conditions of crisis with phenomena of deterioration in the trade-union movement.

The Communists at the 13th Congress (February 1991) resisted the pressures of social democratic and bourgeois forces within the framework of the Coalition of the Left and Progress and belied ruling class expectations that the KKE would gradually be led to full diffusion within the Coalition of the Left, and eventually to complete dissolution,

9. In the period 1991 to the present, under conditions of the victory of counter-revolution, additional new difficulties and demands have been created for the KKE. In these new circumstances of the EEC's transformation into the EU, the accession of Greece to the Eurozone, the expansion of international trade and direct and indirect foreign investment with the liberalization of the markets, capitalist competition and contradictions between different imperialist centers have been intensified, while a new cycle of regional imperialist wars and more synchronized capitalist economic crises has begun, the most representative being that of 2007-2008.

The KKE militantly opposed the Maastricht Treaty for the European Union (1992), the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia (1999), the imperialist invasion of Afghanistan (2001), of Iraq (2003), of Libya (2011), of Syria (2011), exposing the complicity of the Greek bourgeoisie.

It foresaw the coexistence of contradictory tendencies in the cohesiveness of the transnational imperialist European Union: on the one hand, due to competition at the international level between countries with the dimensions of the USA, China, India, the Russian Federation, etc., on the other, due to the unevenness between the economies of the individual Member States, but also due to the competition between them. The KKE has astutely demonstrated that both in the intermediate and long-term, that neither the convergence of the economies of the EU and the Eurozone, nor the convergence of wages, pensions, or a rise in living standards approaching those of the most powerful economies will be realized. It has also documented that any form of a union of capitalist states - economic, military and political - would only have a reactionary content.

The KKE has shown today that the uneven development of the capitalist economies and the unequal relations between bourgeois states cannot be abolished within the context of capitalism. It utilizes historical experience to establish that each transnational imperialist alliance is by its nature reactionary and that no imperialist alliance is permanent and stable. It projects the goal of conflict and rupture with NATO and the EU as elements of the struggle to overthrow the power of capital in order to achieve workers’ power, which is a prerequisite for the liberation of the country from any imperialist alliance, and in favor of the people. Additionally, it is struggling to have the NATO bases removed from Greece, to prevent any attempt to change the borders, condemns the deployment of any Greek or foreign army using its territory as starting point. It struggles based on the principles of Proletarian Internationalism for international solidarity and friendship of the peoples.

The KKE calls on the people not to trust any bourgeois government, either under conditions of imperialist peace or imperialist war. The policy of the bourgeois government in the case of war will be a continuation of the more general bourgeois policy, which is to make the people bleed and butcher people's rights. In any case of warfare in Greece, the Party will lead the labor-popular struggle in order to link it to the struggle to take power, leading to the defeat of both the domestic bourgeoisie and the foreign bourgeoisie as an invader.

10. One of the most important decisions of this period is the Party's initiative to establish and support PAME as a pole around which to rally the class-oriented primary and secondary-level trade unions, as the direct opposite of employer-led and government-led unionism, with a line of conflict with the modern strategy of capital.

At the same time, the KKE played a leading role in trying to re-establish the farmers’ movement, the self-employed movement in the cities, to set themselves apart from the leaderships of their respective professional associations, to orient themselves in a framework of struggle with anti-monopoly characteristics, in a common line of struggle with the workers' movement. In the same direction, the radical movement of women, the movement of university students, secondary school were reorganized, providing the basis for organizing action from below.

Today, the KKE leads an even more decisive fight to build a stronger, reinforced and organized force in industrial production and other strategic sectors, struggling to strengthen the backbone of the revolutionary political vanguard.

It fights for a workers' movement with a unified stance against the class of capitalists, the governments and its state as a whole, in joint action with popular forces, clashing with capitalist interests, in struggles for the economic, social and political conditions and overthrows that will make it possible to meet the needs of the people's forces.

As a new element of political and more general developments, the KKE has resolutely dealt with the pressure to participate in or support the bourgeois governance of the opportunist party of SYRIZA, which ascended to power in February 2015. Pressures, which began with the gradual contempt shown for PASOK in combination with the process of completing SYRIZA's social democratic features, and culminated in the 2012 elections. The KKE warned early on about SYRIZA's attempts to take credit for the history of the movement, In order to manipulate and deceive radical consciousness, left militants, with refined anticommunism, which, the more popular anger grows, gives way to overt anticommunism. It anticipated the social democratization of SYRIZA, its emergence as a new pillar of the bourgeois political system and capitalist development. It focused its attention on the demands of the struggle under conditions of the economic capitalist crisis, but also in the case of an anemic recovery, the imperialist military conflicts and the willing role of Greece to participate in them with the consent of all the bourgeois parties; in the struggle against the Nazi Golden Dawn, with the simultaneous ideological, political preparation of the people against imperialist war, which could in fact create conditions to put the struggle for workers’ power on the agenda.

11. The KKE, in conditions of victory of the counterrevolution and the enormous retreat of the International Communist Movement, attempted to study developments and draw conclusions from the historical experience of the class struggle in Greece and internationally. It was deeply aware that the theoretical maturity of the communist workers' vanguard, the creative effort for modern scientific Marxist elaborations is a prerequisite for pulling broader labor and popular forces into the revolutionary class struggle

It was a complex and painstaking effort to analyze the theoretical problems of revolutionary strategy and socialist construction, which was combined with the attempt to regroup the labor movement and the sharp political confrontation with the escalating ideological and political attack of capital.

The KKE chose the difficult path of critically evaluating the course of socialist construction in conditions of a generalized prevalence of counter-revolution which fueled unprecedented ideological-political, social reactionism, confusion and defeat in the working and popular forces, and the unimaginable retreat of the Communist movement.

At that time, many Communist parties openly rejected Communist ideology, the necessity of socialist revolution and revolutionary workers’ power, directly or indirectly joining up with the bourgeois social-democratic current.

The KKE faced the bourgeois assault that slandered and distorted Soviet history, supporting the superiority of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and capitalist production relations.

It was faced with the urgent need to investigate the causes of the counter-revolution and what was to blame for mistaken choices, retreats and violations of the laws of socialist construction by the Communist Party leaderships in the socialist countries.

It highlighted the history of the USSR, particularly in the early decades before the Second World War, demonstrating the important productive, social, cultural achievements of centrally-planned production and social services with social ownership and workers’ involvement in their organization and management.

The rapid elimination of unemployment, illiteracy, the efficient specialization of workers, the conversion from a peace to war industry during the Second World War, rapid economic recovery from the disaster of war, achievements in Space exploration, high level social achievements in free Education and Health are just a few examples. The examination of historical experience demonstrated that a series of problems that arose in the course of socialist construction after the Second World War (e.g. delays in the technological modernization of the sector of popular consumption goods resulting in their lower quality, stagnation in agricultural production in the post-war period, several problematic proportions between the sectors of production, increased differentiation as regards money income) were not interpreted correctly. As a result, they were not dealt with with a view to reinforce and extend the socialist relations of production, to evolve them into communist relations of production embracing the sphere of distribution as well. The solution that was sought did not lead to any progress but, rather, to a step backwards.  The elements of commercialization that continued to exist were extended to the distribution of the products of socialist production and this retreat was theoretically conceptualized as “market socialism”.

The KKE characterized the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956) as an opportunist turning point. The Congress adopted a negative assessment on the previous period of socialist construction denigrating it with the discussion about “personality cult” as well with the retreat on several questions regarding international relations and the international revolutionary strategy. At the same time, it led to developments that had a crucial negative impact on the composition of the leading organs of the party. 

At the subsequent Congresses (e.g. the 22nd Congress of CPSU) the party openly adopted opportunist positions and measures that led to the weakening of central administration of economy planning. The social character of ownership was weakened as a result of constant retreats and the individual and group interests were reinforced. This course reached its peak with the victory of counterrevolution.

The efforts of KKE to elaborate theoretical issues over the years led to the Assessments on Socialism in the USSR which were adopted by the 18th Congress of the KKE in 2009. The KKE is committed to continue this arduous research focusing on the problems of socialist construction in the subsequent years.

12. At its 15^th Congress (1996)  the KKE laid the foundation of a new strategic perception which was further elaborated in its new Party Programme adopted at its 19^th Congress (2013).

The contemporary programmatic positions of the KKE highlight that the character of the revolution in each capitalist country - irrespective of the position of the country in the international imperialist system- is objectively determined by the main contradiction that it has to resolve, namely the contradiction between capital and salaried labour as well as by the character of the era at international level, i.e. the era of monopoly capitalism. It underlined the possibility of the socialist relations of production, which liberate the labour force from the bonds of capital, to give a great impetus to the development of the productive forces, to revitalize and upgrade all spheres of social life, overcoming in a short period of time any backwardness that might have existed before the revolution.

This contemporary revolutionary strategy reinforces the ability of the KKE to organize sites of resistance and counterattack in workplaces, in all sectors of economy.

The KKE elaborated its programmatic perception not only on the socialist-communist economy but also on the institutions of working class power.

Based on the study of the socialist construction, the party’s programme highlights the class character of the state as working class power which continues to exist for a long period of time, throughout the formation of the new communist society. In addition, it underlined the socioeconomic basis of the class struggle which continues in socialism with other forms and other means. The working class state is necessary until social relations as a whole are transformed into communist ones, until the eradication of all kinds on inequality, until the formation of communist consciousness in the vast majority of the working people.  The new qualitative element of  working class power, i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat, is that it expresses the socialist relations of production. For that reason, the core of the working class power are Workers’ Assemblies which are established in all productions units, in social and administrative services and elect their representatives for the organs of state power from the bottom up with the right to control and recall them.

The responsible participation of the working people in all issues regarding the organization, the administration of production and services, their responsibility for the formation of the communist consciousness among the young people and the working people plays a fundamental role in the realization of working class power.

13. After the overthrow of socialism, the dramatic retreat and crisis that broke out in the ranks of the International Communist Movement the KKE took initiatives for the development of joint activity among Communist Parties against the attack of capital, against imperialist interventions, opportunism.

In the framework of the establishment or the restoration of Communist Parties, the annual International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ parties, which started from Athens in 1999 and continue to the present day have offered a space for ideological-political struggle against the old social democracy, against the new form of opportunism

At the same time, the KKE has been fighting for the formation of a pole comprising of Communist and Workers’ Parties that recognize and to some extent share the need to regroup the International Communist Movement.

Of course, the revolutionary policy in each country must take into account the particular course of the class struggle, the correlation of forces, the way in which the inter-imperialist contradictions are manifested. However, the regroupment of the Communist Movement requires the ideological and strategic unity of the communist movement against the international strategy of capital.

The new elements in this arduous effort are the Declaration of Istanbul (2009) and the publication of “International Communist Review- Space for Discussion” as well as other forms of permanent cooperation such as the European Communist Initiative (2013).

The KKE celebrates one century of struggles and sacrifices and is committed to the working class, and the people to be worthy of its history. It is committed to endeavour to fulfill its role as the revolutionary ideological-political vanguard of the working class. Based on its contemporary Programme and on the Marxist-Leninist worldview it will enhance its ability to endure and deal with all difficulties created by the correlation of forces at national and international level for the revolutionary struggle for socialism-communism.

We draw lessons from our 100 years’ experience and wage an every-day struggle to enhance the ability of the party forces in all workplaces, in all sectors of economy, in all regions to play a leading role in the development of militant, economic and political struggle that will be connected with the main political task, i.e. the revolutionary struggle for  working class power.

We increase our efforts to study the contemporary social phenomena, the scientific achievements in all fields, as well the significant experience from the problems that arose during the socialist construction of the 20th century in order to increase our ability to promote the historical necessity of socialism-communism , the need to resolve the basic contradiction of the capitalist system i.e. the contradiction between the unprecedented socialization of labour and production and the appropriation of its results by capital; to promote more effectively the new possibilities created by the development of the productive forces in the 21th century including the new scientific and technological achievements.

We utilize the lessons drawn from our history in order to increase our effectiveness to promote the revolutionary strategy and struggle against revisionist and opportunist conceptions and practice. We highlight the negative experience from the retreat of the communist movement from revolutionary strategy, from the mistaken view that detached the struggle against fascism, against dependence and countries’ unequal relations from the struggle for socialism so as not to repeat the same mistakes.

We oppose all kinds of reformist-governmental political goals in the framework of bourgeois parliamentary system as well the participation of the Party in governments in the framework of capitalism. We utilize the participation of the party in various institutions of the bourgeois political system (Parliament, regional and local  government etc) in order to inform, to enlighten, to exert pressure, to organize the struggle of the workers and the people.

We struggle decisively in order for the party organizations to strengthen their roots in the working class, to forge stronger links with the working people, especially in sectors of strategic importance, among young couples and working women, among immigrants and refugees. We work on a daily basis in order to build strong, militant party organizations that  will guide and contribute decisively to the class-oriented regroupment of the labour movement and to the formation of a social alliance between the working class the lower sections of the middle strata so that their common struggle is directed against the bourgeois power. We continue our efforts for the coordination of Communist and Workers’ Parties.

At our 100th anniversary we honor all those people who were sacrificed, tortured, imprisoned, sent to exile for the ideals of our party.

We call on the people who fight today in a period that also requires sacrifices and self-denial, ideological and personal endurance in conditions of retreat, in conditions of increased personal and family needs; in a period that requires persistence and patience despite the lack of visible results and awareness of the significance of the daily revolutionary political activity under any circumstances.

We are confident that the immature seeds will soon mature, we are ready to respond to any developments and turning points of the class struggle.

The members and the friends of KKE celebrate 100 years of struggles and sacrifices and increase the efforts to strengthen the revolutionary characteristics of our party as a party of a new type, so as to increase its ability to act as a revolutionary vanguard under all circumstances.

We strengthen the KKE which is the basic precondition in order for the working class to fulfill its role as the force of social liberation, socialism-communism.

What we need today is a stronger KKE that will fight more effectively for the regroupment of the labour movement, the consolidation of the anti-capitalist anti-monopoly social alliance, capable of leading the struggle against imperialist war, for  working class power, for socialism-communism.

100 YEARS KKE

WITH THE PEOPLE, FOR SOCIALISM

THE CC OF THE KKE

DECEMBER 2017