The Central Committee of the KKE publishes its Theses for the 20th Congress of the KKE, which will be held from the 30th of March to the 2nd of April 2017, four years after the 19th Congress, in line with our Statutes.

From the 19th Congress we have a new programme that expresses the elaborated strategy of the party for workers' power, socialism, and provides directions for the leading activity of the party under all conditions.

The Programme that was adopted by the 19th Congress of the KKE and the Congress decisions as a whole have met with  mass acceptance inside the party and KNE, and also amongst the supporters and friends of the party, more broadly amongst working class and popular forces in Greek society. This acceptance is borne out in practise by the significant activity developed by the Party and KNE on the basis of the decisions of the 19th Congress.

Despite all this, this deep agreement with our decisions, as well as the work developed in all the party's fields of activity in the framework of the efforts to implement these decisions, does not lead us to complacency, self-satisfaction, and even more so to a lack of concern about the weaknesses, deficiencies and about how and to what extent the Programme and Statutes have been understood and are best served by our activity.

Furthermore, however, life itself, the domestic and foreign developments, the course of the international and Greek labour movement, the activity of the Party and KNE, the trajectory of the class struggle as a whole, constantly give rise to new elements that must be stably monitored and taken into account in relation to the party's activity. These new elements can create new difficulties, but in parallel create -even if it is not always apparent to the naked eye-new possibilities.

The international and domestic economic-political developments that have taken place from the 19th Congress until today, the conclusions and the experience that is drawn from them, as well as the tasks that arise from the analysis and study of them, also determine to a great extent the content of the 20th Congress' theme. We seek to provide- as best we can-answers, interpretations, predictions in relation to this and, on this basis, guidelines for the next period.

The basic goal of the Theses of the CC for the 20th Congress and the inner-party discussion that will begin after their publication, as well as the final decisions of the Congress, is the comprehensive ideological-political-organizational steeling of the party and its youth as a party for the revolutionary overthrow. This steeling is a necessary precondition so that we can carry out the complex tasks of regrouping the labour movement, of the struggle against imperialist war, of the construction of the social alliance in an anticapitalist antimonopoly direction with workers' power as its goal.

This steeling of the party also determines its ability to prepare the workers-popular masses for these tasks through the development of the labour-people's movement and the promotion of the alliance of the popular strata in a direction of rupture with and overthrow of the capitalist system. This is even more valid in conditions where everything seems immobile or moves slowly towards the goal of the workers'-people's counterattack or is even characterized by setbacks.

In the Theses, we attempt to specialize, as far as we can, regarding aspects of this preparation and the activity that serves it. We are trying to identify the difficulties that we have to face today, but also to predict possible new difficulties that will emerge in the course of the development of the class struggle in our country and internationally, in the international communist and workers' movement. At the same time, of course, we acquire the ability and readiness to utilize any possibilities, smaller or larger, that are created by the twists and turns of historic events.

We analyse the preconditions that are required so that we can proceed in an organized and dynamic way, with communist daring, responsibility and vigilance:

• Building "all-weather" party organizations in strategically important workplaces and sectors.
• Developing a network of party organizations everywhere the heart of the working class and popular strata beats.
• Strengthening the KKE and KNE so that they can play their vanguard role.
• Widening the influence and reach of the party into new working class-popular masses that express discontent towards the capitalist system, poverty and unemployment which it creates, as well as towards all the managers of the capitalist economy and the rotten and corrupt bourgeois political system, the bourgeois state.
• Carrying out leading work for the regroupment of the labour and trade union movement.
• Promoting the social alliance of the workers of the private and public sector, the toiling farmers and other self-employed and integrating more and more forces from the youth and women from the popular families into it.

In addition to the issues related to "mapping out" the domestic and international situation, the themes of the 20th Congress centre on the report of work of the Central Committee and the Party as a whole, on the new tasks and programme of activity up until the 21st Congress, as well as the election of a new CC and Central Audit Committee.

The basic content of theme of the 20th Congress in a condensed form is as follows:

"The comprehensive strengthening of the KKE for the task of regrouping the labour movement and developing the social alliance in an anticapitalist-anti-monopoly direction, in the struggle against imperialist war, for workers' power."

The Theses are comprised of 4 major chapters and various subsections.

The first chapter engages with the developments in the international imperialist system and includes assessments on the economic-social developments in the world at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. It identifies the arenas where the inter-imperialist antagonisms are sharpening, where there is an increase of local and regional conflicts and the dangers for a more generalized imperialist war in the conditions where the victims of war have increased the flows of refugees and immigrants. The adjustments-modernizations of the repressive apparatuses of the bourgeois states and their inter-state unions are being pushed to the fore on this terrain.

The second chapter engages with Greece's position in the international capitalist system, its position inside the European Union, the relations between the national and international dimension in terms of capitalist development and the class struggle.

The third chapter concerns the assessment of today's developments in Greece, both in relation to the Greek economy and also in relation to the situation of the working class and the other popular strata. It makes an evaluation of the government's political line, as well as of the course of the reformation of the bourgeois political system, as this is developing, particularly over the last four years.

The fourth chapter consists of the report of work since the 19th Congress and the new tasks of the party and its youth organization until the next 21st Congress. It has as its centre the entire report of work of the four year period concerning the strengthening of the party and KNE, the axes of the party's ideological-political intervention, the regroupment of the labour movement, the course of the social alliance. An attempt is made to more effectively shed light on the issue of the relationship between the party and movement in this report. This chapter engages in particular with the course of party building, the organizational redeployment of the party forces, the issue of the cadres, the party's finances, the situation in the international communist movement and the activity and cooperation of the KKE with other communist and workers parties in the world. There is an overall summary assessment concerning the performance of the Central Committee and the proposals of the CC are tabled for the new activities that will be scheduled for the period up to the 21st Congress.

The year when the 20th Congress will be held is the year of the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, headed by the Party of Lenin that paved the way for the working class and peoples all over the world to struggle and take power into their own hands. Irrespective of the mistakes, the weaknesses and deficiencies, of the fact that it ended in a counterrevolution and historic setback, the ice broke, the course was charted, the road opened.

In addition, the KKE will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its life and activity since its foundation in November 1918 in Piraeus. During this course it stood tall, was present in all the people's struggles, highlighted the path of struggle for the new society, for the final liberation of the working class, the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, socialism-communism.

At the same time, the KKE demonstrates through its own revolutionary character and activity the reason why, despite its 100-year history, it is the youngest party: Because what it proclaims for the relations of ownership, for all the social relations, for social organization as a whole is the new, necessary and only progressive future for humanity. Because the first attempt in history to construct the socialist-communist society, the first efforts, demonstrated this trend, despite the fact that it did not acquire the internal and external strength to be victorious in the end.

The Central Committee of the KKE calls on the members of the Party and KNE to study the Theses, to contribute to improving them with their concerns, proposals, suggestions so that the final decisions reflect the multi-faceted individual and collective experience accumulated over these years.

The pre-congress discussion in any case also means the discussion of the Theses with the aim of collecting the opinions and observations of the friends and supporters of the party, of every militant man and woman who-regardless of the various views they may have-understand the necessity of a much stronger KKE. A KKE with scientifically elaborated theses, powerful in the struggle for the necessary regroupment of the movement, in the struggle against exploitation, imperialist war and poverty, in the struggle for the construction of the social alliance in an anticapitalist-antimonopoly direction, for the social overthrow and workers' power.