Introduction

The 21^st Congress of the KKE assessed the Party’s work in the struggle for the regroupment of the labour–trade union movement and the Party building in the working class. It also determined basic directions for the years to follow.

 

These tasks are of particular importance. As underlined in the Programme of the KKE, the activity of the Party under non-revolutionary conditions decisively contributes to the preparation of the subjective factor —the Party, the working class, and its alliances— for the revolutionary conditions and the realization of its strategic tasks. It is highlighted that the attraction of vanguard sections of the working class and the mobilization of its majority with the KKE will go through various phases. The labour movement, the movements of urban self-employed and farmers, and the form of expression of their alliance with anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly goals, through the vanguard action of the KKE forces under non-revolutionary conditions, constitute the first form of the workers’–people’s front in revolutionary conditions. At the same time, the struggle having such characteristics constitutes a factor that can help to win some gains, to hinder or defer new anti-popular measures, to provide us with social and political experience, to intensify the exertion of pressure, and to instil confidence into the working class and its allies.

 

Several important issues regarding the role of the KKE in the labour and people’s movement were raised in the Resolution of the 20^th Congress. In this regard, the 21^st Congress assessed the new conditions and identified strengths and subjective weaknesses that need to be addressed in order to match our action with the demands arising from the needs of the working class and the other popular strata, from the goals we have set.

 

In this framework we examined:

 

1. The main trends in the class structure of the Greek society and the current condition of the working class ten years after the outbreak of the previous deep capitalist economic crisis; the living and working conditions; the conditions for the selling of labour power; the factors that affect its unity, the formation of class consciousness, and its stance towards bourgeois governments managing the crisis to the detriment of workers’ interests.

 

2. The current condition of the labour–trade union movement, the degree of organization of the working class into trade unions, and its participation in class struggle. The conclusions drawn from the struggles and efforts to create vanguard seedbeds of resistance and demands in the workplaces. The low degree of organization of the working class, which is an all-time low, the objective reasons for this, and our own weaknesses. The tasks arising in order to change these conditions for an impetuous development of organization and participation in trade unions. The course of PAME as a class-oriented rally of Federations, Labour Centres, trade unions, and unionists with an anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly line of struggle.

 

3. The elaboration of the experience from the joint action of trade unions and mass organizations of the popular strata, the urban self-employed, and the toiling farmers. The elaboration of the effort to form the preconditions for their social alliance, on the terrain of the two Nationwide Bodies that had preceded for our work in the urban self-employed and the farmers, highlighting that the objective leading role of the working class in the social alliance must be achieved in practice.

 

The Congress briefly examined some key trends in the development of the class structure in Greece in the past 20 years, with the central aim to better orientate the work of the Party towards the working class. It decided the continuation of the study and its publication in order to clarify aspects forming its overall condition, as well as to determine more accurately the sections of wage labour belonging to or approaching the working class.

 

It studied the strategic priorities in the policy followed by the bourgeois governments and the EU as well as their short-term or long-term impact on the working class and its potential allies.

 

In this context, based on the sectoral classification of the working class, the industry dynamic, and the respective importance of sectors to the extended reproduction of social capital, it assessed that the below sectors will be of increasing importance in the upcoming period:

 

• Manufacturing, with a particular focus on the large workplaces in Food, Energy, Pharmaceutical and Metal Industries. The subsector of large-scale constructions and public works.
• The key sector for the whole economy, which is Transportation–logistics (sea, air, land transportation etc.). The goods distribution sector (courier services).
• Telecommunication/IT, for its importance as the backbone of information transfer and storage, the increased role of technicians to ensure teleworking, etc. The IT sector due to its development in the country and in teleworking from abroad.
• The sector of Scientific–Technical services, which is expected to grow in the following period, since the new economic and social conditions increase the relative activities.
• Health and Education which, apart from their importance for the reproduction of labour force, are large sectors gathering self-employed and salaried employees.
• Hospitality–Tourism, focusing on large units, to which a section of employees is expected to relocate from the shrinking smaller enterprises in city centres.
• Trade, in which centralization continues.

 

The Party’s intervention focuses on the following particular objectives:

 

• The specialization of our work in the salaried working women increasing in numbers (proportionally to women in the economically active population).
• The comprehensive political and trade union intervention in the issues of working and non-working time, flexible labour relations, and teleworking.
• The appropriate elaboration of frameworks of struggle in sectors with higher wages than the average, taking account of the pressure exerted by the capital to reduce the average wage.
• The deployment of forces in relatively new sectors and subsectors presenting a dynamic growth trend (e-commerce, logistics, large-scale constructions etc.), taking into account the internal restructuring of sectors and groups that the new investments in green growth and digital transformation will bring to the fore (e.g. Energy, Telecommunications, Mass Media).
• The enhanced intervention in the sectors of Education and Culture, which play a decisive role in the formation of social consciousness, taking account of the particular problems faced by salaried employees working as freelance service providers as well as other forms of temporary and flexible work, copyright and related rights, etc.
• The improvement of our intervention planning in the large group of salaried employees working at small and very small enterprises.
• The specialization of our work in salaried immigrants.
• The planning of our multifaceted intervention in the unemployed and especially the long-term unemployed, the numbers of whom will increase.

 

The condition in the labour–trade union movement

Over the previous decade, the labour and trade union movement suffered an even greater blow. Its retreat deepened both in terms of the content of actions and the integration of the majority of the unions into the capital’s strategic goals and in terms of its organizational status and substructure.

 

In the past decade and the phase of the capitalist crisis, the working class has grown in number and percentage terms, but its degree of unionization has decreased, in the working class as a whole, by sector and at a regional level.

 

Over that period, class collaboration was promoted by the bourgeois governments of liberal, social-democratic, and opportunist parties. The defamation of class struggle and the contempt for unionization were strengthened. Under the responsibility of the employers and their bourgeois political and trade union forces, the phenomena of disorganization, rigging and buyoff were further spread; a more aggressive line and practice were shaped towards the class-oriented forces to shield the employers’ interests, the system itself. At the opposite end of these goals lies the activity of the KKE and the class-oriented trade unions.

 

The higher trade union Confederations are dominated by the state, government, and employer-led trade unionism

The activity of the Party, which has brought concrete results and valuable experience, has not changed the fact that, in the basic sectors of the capitalist economy, the trade unions and a number of second-level organizations are still in close relation with the employer and government-led section that prevails in GSEE and ADEDY, which is basically a mechanism of co-administration and management of employers’ and state claims and interests, a purely bureaucratic apparatus. Over the years, its role as a tool of manipulation, integration, and intimidation used by the employers and the state against the working class and its rights has been reinforced.

 

In any case, the bar is set high when it comes to the power struggle in ADEDY. The correlation of forces amongst bourgeois liberal, reformist, and opportunist forces is not the same in ADEDY and in GSEE; thus, the confrontation should not be understood as a replication of the private sector. In ADEDY, the link between the workers and the state is organic. Moreover, the social-democratic and opportunist influence expressed several times in its decisions also requires a well-elaborated plan regarding the content, the struggle, and the initiatives to confront the illusions that are being created. All the more so that due to the sharpening of the popular problems and the intensification of all the contradictions and conflicts of the capitalist mode of production, the reform agenda, in one form or another, addressed to the public sector employees proposes the strengthening of the state in the economy, based on the logic of an “anti-liberal”, “anti-right wing”, “anti-repressive” front, and adjusts itself to the movement to co-opt any form of radicalism.

 

The stifling state control of the unions is strengthened

The framework of state control over the trade unions is deepened through several laws, e.g. the laws voted under the SYRIZA government on the right to strike and the laws voted  under the ND government on the operating framework of trade unions and the control of their legality. The legislative framework continuously reinforces the interference by the bourgeois state.

 

The stifling legal provisions limit the activity of the trade unions and the workers’ participation.

 

Under conditions of capitalist economic growth, they attempt to co-opt the trade unions more deeply, not only into a line of consensus and class collaboration but also into the state apparatus. To transform them into a mechanism of a “just and democratic” co-management of the business demands, into bureaucratic mechanisms without a lively and active workers’ participation and a decisive role in their mobilization. That has already been happening in the European capitalist countries. Major sectors and industrial regions are Special Economic Zones without a union presence.

 

This planning, which was also introduced as an experiment, has been generalized, as it is reflected in a number of laws. The trade union is being transformed into an apparatus of the Ministry and the employers. The attack on the right to strike and the new repressive laws of the ND government are completing this offensive.

 

Of course, if the workers’ indignation grows, it is possible for unions with social-democratic opportunist majorities to start a limited struggle “within the resilience limits” of the economy. The experienced bourgeoisie does not want its representatives in the unions to be completely cut off from the workers. The key lies in their orientation, thus, our forces should be prepared for such a possibility.

 

The role of the INE/GSEE

The intervention of INE/GSEE and its branches, which will continue, is corrosive. This is an Institute that is interconnected with the corresponding research and study institutes of the employers’ organization (Hellenic Federation of Enterprises –SEV), the Chambers, and the state services of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. It has a budget of millions of euros and manages a high volume of European programmes, especially training programmes and courses, studies, and even programmes from the Partnership Agreement for the Development Framework (PA). In addition, it cooperates with the respective union institutes at an EU level and institutes of the European and international social democracy. Its declared goal is the consolidation of “social partnership”, i.e. “class cooperation”. For that reason, there is also an Academy of Executives (school of union leaders at the service of the employers). It participates and jointly plans the anti-labour policy and the promotion of restructuring with the employer-led organizations and the governments, thus making the Confederation a joint policy-maker. It is also being utilized to form a favourable correlation of forces in the trade unions, as in many cases the participants in these programmes are turned into an electoral body.

 

Organizational fragmentation

Under the responsibility of the forces dominating in GSEE, the organizational fragmentation of the labour–trade union movement and its division into second-level and first-level trade unions has continued.

 

The union groupings of the bourgeois parties invoke organizational unity only when it ensures the integration of the workers and the class movement; when it secures and promotes the acceptance of the theory of the common interests of the exploiting capitalists and the exploited workers. When conditions are being formed to achieve elementary unity of the salaried workers on the basis of their class interests, they also seek organizational measures by setting up new organizations at a primary and secondary level, pursuing fragmentation. This phenomenon is a continuation of the old guild fragmentation and also a choice to create organizations for the formation of favourable correlation of forces for the employers and the disunity of the workers, to put additional obstacles to the development of an anti-capitalist line of struggle. In this context, individual and enterprise-based contracts are being utilized.

 

The struggle for the regroupment of the labour–trade union movement

The KKE played an instrumental role in helping a significant part of the working class to resist and show resilience; it kept alive the importance of militant trade unions; it assembled forces; it regrouped trade unions; it educated the new generation of militants to pursue the line of struggle against capitalists, the state, and its mechanisms, against their imperialist alliances.

 

Particularly during the previous capitalist crisis, the activity of the KKE contributed to hindering the extensive retreat of the labour–trade union movement.

 

We have accumulated considerable negative and positive experience regarding the elaboration of our tactics. We have formed a crucial ideological, political, and organizational substructure as a Party and as a force within the movement to change the current situation by strengthening the unity of the working class and its class orientation for the workers’–people’s counterattack, in order to lead the social alliance in an anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly direction.

 

We must not undermine the objective factors that have resulted in the alienation of sections of the working class from class-oriented unionization and action. The effort to raise the standards of our activity by continuously facing the pressure exerted by the negative correlation of forces towards integration and the subjectivity that the intervention of the Party is the only factor for the overthrow of this negative correlation, constitute an element of the Party’s enhancement.

 

We have determined the basic content of the regroupment of the labour movement as the preparation and development of its ability to decisively and efficiently confront the unified elaborated strategy of capital and capitalist power, in alliance with the popular sections of the urban and rural self-employed struggling to make ends meet. Our activity must be aligned with the task of regroupment, which has a particular strategic importance.

 

We consistently work within the working class and its trade union movement, at all sectors and at neighbourhoods, municipalities, cities, and villages. We develop a comprehensive plan to organize and mobilize working and popular masses, to enhance the operation and activity of trade unions, to establish new unions, to change the correlation of forces in the unions in order to make steps forward, to achieve results, and to make adjustments wherever needed.

 

A crucial issue is to gain a joint perception of the following issue: “The Communist Party acts both individually and within the movement”. This element of our activity, which stems from the fact that the Communist Party is the higher and conscious form of expression of the labour movement, sometimes appears as two tasks that cannot be combined in practice; sometimes trade union and Party–political activity are either completely separated or identified. We place emphasis on the assistance provided by the leading Organs to tackle problems regarding the way that the relation of the Party with trade unions is in practice comprehended. These issues become more complex in conditions of retreat of the movement, which deprive us of a powerful impetus in our activity and at the same time do not form favourable conditions for Party building, which is a basic factor for the upsurge of the labour movement.

 

On the formation of a militant framework of struggle in the labour–trade unions organizations

Bourgeois and opportunist parties, together with the forces of government and employer-led unionism, promote the slogan of “productive reconstruction” in the framework of varied programmes. In reality, this is an expression of the capitalist recovery with a change in the “productive model”. Today, they promote the “green transition” under the pretext of tackling “climate change”. These goals of struggle of the movement are utilized to entrap people into various versions of bourgeois policy.

 

GSEE and the large Federations of the government and employer-led unionism promote a comprehensive framework that specializes the strategic directions of capital, supplementary to and in some cases even more specialized than the “Pissarides report”, fostering illusions that the capitalist growth can be profitable both for employers and employees.

 

In the next period, the two development paths, that is, development either for capital or for the people, will be the main line of confrontation within the labour–trade union movement. This confrontation will be expressed in all sectors. Focusing on the sectors of strategic importance, a more stable, persistent, and planned activity will be needed in each sector, with a specialized line per workplace and trade union, aiming at rallying forces, changing the correlation of forces, and building robust Party Organizations.

 

In any case, it is confirmed that a higher ideological, political, and organizational work is needed in the Party, together with a continuous elaboration of the ideological–political struggle within the ranks of the movement against bourgeois forces, the employers, the state, the strategy of the capital overall, and opportunism. The enhancement of the ideological–political work and the development of the communists’ ability to specialize their activity in each movement per sector, workplace, etc. can promote the organization, mobilization, and enlightenment of workers. It can also promote the increase of the KKE’s political influence among the working class, that is, a decisive factor for the radicalization of consciousness and the stimulation of the class-oriented political activity of the workers, which will raise the issue of radical changes at the level of power.

 

Due to the retreat in the movement and the intensifying attack by the bourgeoisie, the effort to organize the struggle and to form demands needs continuous study, lively contact with workplaces, and necessary adjustments that will reveal the plans of capital and its governments, as well as the impasses of the capitalist system; that will seize any opportunity to rally workers, to help them come together and struggle collectively. We aim at turning fist-level trade unions into a militant body of workers’ struggle, into an asset to strengthen the organization of the working class and its militant stance to assert its rights as one of the preconditions to direct the struggle against capital and its power, together with the influence of communist ideas and the general developments that will define the outcome of the class struggle.

 

In the current phase, it is necessary that the orientation of our political guidance is permeated by the fact that the formation of militant frameworks of demands requires deep roots in the working class, its current condition, its needs, and its problems, without being assimilated and integrated into the current difficult conditions, always taking into account the level and the experience learned from each sector and workplace. The struggle against the workers being trapped into one or another version of the capital requires a more suitable elaboration of an advanced framework of struggle, as in the case of the Piraeus port with demands highlighting the slogan “The port is public property” and the direction of struggle to make it become true.

 

We are at the forefront of the organization of the struggle of the working class as a precondition to communicate and form demands with the workers themselves —which constitutes an element of militant education—, to endow the working class with the need to demand the meeting of all its needs and rights. Especially in the current circumstances, workers in all workplaces and sectors face grave and acute problems. There are workplaces and sectors where workers are on low pay or are not paid at all, are faced with flexible working hours, etc., and other workplaces and sectors that the problems are presented in another form. At the same time, workers’ problems are not exclusively determined by the wage level but also from the general policy as regards social insurance, health, education, etc. Neither are they determined by the policy followed by each individual capitalist. The workers become the objects of exploitation by the bourgeoisie as a whole.

 

We are well aware that the framework of struggle to meet the contemporary needs is not adopted by all trade unions and workers from the very beginning, since each section of the working class is objectively influenced first and foremost by the situation prevailing in its workplace and sector. We need to decisively overcome addressing the workers with general slogans and restraining our intervention to the limits set by the negative correlation of forces within the movement or a mobilization. Furthermore, we must not have illusions about the concessions that can take place in the framework of capitalism; however, we cannot set in advance strict limits in the developing class struggle.

 

The increase of the degree of organization of the working class results from a combination of various factors, together with the crucial intervention of the Party and the scope of its ideology and policy. The absence from struggle provides fertile ground for defeatism, while participation in the struggle forms preconditions to gain militant experience and confidence.

 

In particular, the struggle against flexible working relations, covering their entire reactionary spectrum, is objectively turning into a conflict with a strategic choice of the capital, which is gradually being promoted in all sectors as a general trend. This is a field of confrontation which, under the intervention of the communists, could lead to more general conclusions about the system of exploitation and the real target that the movement must turn its attention to.

 

The demands regarding the rise in daily wages and salaries, the collective agreements, the stable working hours, the abolition of overtime work, and the reduction of working time are crucial demands that come into conflict with the heart of bourgeois reforms, while at the same time, the overall needs of the working class and popular families constitute a line that rallies forces, strengthens the struggle, and opposes the strategy of the capital. These are class-oriented demands that may lead to the rise of struggle and the improvement of organization, providing that we elaborate them in a correct and not perfunctory manner, taking into account all the factors in the framework of the struggle within the trade union movement. Our work is based on the firm conviction that the rise of class struggle and regroupment could provide some immediate gains to one extent or another. We utilize the experience from struggles and gains to help the working class realize the need of radical overthrows.

 

Our Party reinforces its ideological–political intervention to endow the movement with the framework of struggle for the contemporary needs of the working-class and popular families. Contemporary needs concern all aspects of life (wages, working conditions, health, education, housing, leisure time, entertainment, vacations, utilization of new technologies for people’s benefit, etc.). We take into account that social consciousness is also formed by issues raised by the bourgeois political system, such as human rights-ism, irrational theories about the “social gender”, etc. All these are issues that also concern the workers’–people’s movement and are particularly popular among younger ages. The highlighting of all contemporary needs provides the ability to step up the demands, to direct the struggle against the real causes, showing the boundaries of the capitalist system and shedding a light on the possibilities and conditions for these needs to be satisfied. We aim to make this a matter of concern for the working class and the allied social forces. Certainly, this process will not take place immediately. At first some demands for crucial issues that arise will be adopted and escalated; there will also be setbacks depending on the course of the class struggle. A more comprehensive framework will be gradually embraced in the course of the class struggle, in a phase of more obvious improvement of the correlation of forces as regards the political struggle, in conditions of a shock of bourgeois power and, of course, of revolutionary upsurge. The ultimate satisfaction of the ever-expanding contemporary social needs is a matter of the revolutionary workers’ power and the socialist–communist construction.

 

The new setbacks in labour rights and the law on trade unions, which were voted a few days before the 21^st Congress, compel us to update our goals concerning important fronts of struggle, such as the issue of wages and collective agreements, teleworking, the regulation of working time, the social security system, health and safety issues at workplaces, flexible labour relations, the fixed-term contracts and the programmes that essentially recycle unemployment in the public sector, the minimum wage, and the struggle to reveal the objectives of the further privatization of large productive units. We need to include the struggle to tackle acute problems at workplaces and sectors into the general struggle for the rights of the workers and the popular sections of the middle strata.

 

Our interventions and initiatives orienting the trade unions to develop such struggles are not an easy front of struggle, it does not always lead to an escalation. A new situation has being formed. A growing number of young workers, who consist the majority of working people, have not enjoyed the collective agreements and other rights of the previous generations. As a rule, the amount and the ways of remuneration are based on a multitude of flexible working relationships, where individual contracts prevail.

 

The leading organs, the Sections of the CC, and the Party groups need to insist on issues of orientation and specialization of the framework of struggle, particularly as regards certain sections of the working class such as women, immigrants, the new shift of workers and vocational trainees, in order for these sections to increase their level of organization and participation in the trade unions, but also to assist the emergence of union executives, especially women and immigrants, i.e. in critical areas where this work lags behind. Respectively, we also need to insist on problems concerning the workers and the people as a whole, such as social security and health. Before the pandemic and during its outbreak, we raised the issue of protecting health and safety in the workplace, the state of the public health system, and our demands for the public hospitals and Primary Health Care services. We need to continue this work. We also need to continue the effort to organize mobilizations that can contribute to the change of the correlation of forces in trade unions of large public Health Units and the Federation of Hospital Doctors, but also to coordinate trade unions, associations of the self-employed and farmers, and OGE  associations.

 

On the planning for a comprehensive intervention in the working class

The accumulated positive and negative experience confirms the importance of the comprehensive intervention of our forces including an aptly elaborated framework of struggle, the pertinent struggle with the influence of bourgeois and opportunist forces in the movement, and the independent ideological–political activity of the Party. The combined fulfilment of these tasks, which are not identified and each one demands specific planning and elaboration, is necessary for the mobilization of more workers’–people’s forces in the confrontational struggle against the strategy of the capital.

 

Particularly in the current conditions of an extremely negative correlation of forces, of limited participation in trade unions, and conservatism, the enhancement of the capacity of our forces to intervene in the movement is a complex and demanding task. It requires an adequate theoretical, ideological, and political level as well as careful monitoring of developments, knowledge of the problems, and elaboration of the arguments that highlight their causes. Trade unions are comprised of workers with varying degrees of class consciousness, with different trade union experience and action, while the trade union struggle by its nature revolves around the conditions of sale of labour power. Apart from the individual and direct contact of the Party, the communists’ intervention in the organs and the ranks of the trade union movement is also necessary for the trade unions to walk the path of anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist struggle.

 

The assimilation, utilization, and specialization of our elaborations is a crucial issue of the leading work of the Organs. Our intervention on the one hand needs to avoid being a mechanistic copy of the central Party propaganda and on the other hand it must not be limited to the reiteration of the demands of the framework of struggle that we put forward in each phase of a struggle. It needs to highlight the great opportunities for the meeting of the ever-increasing popular needs in order to contribute to the rise of militancy to struggle for them. This effort should be reinforced with the systematic work of the Party to defend socialism.

 

The guiding organs must focus their effort on increasing the capacity of our forces to highlight the criteria for putting forward demands, to reveal the mechanism of exploitation,  to stress the preconditions for resistance and counterattack against the strategy of the capital. Our intervention must target the true class opponent and not only the government in a well-documented manner, in order to contribute to the establishment and deepening of the anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly orientation of the movement. It must cultivate the need to expand the struggle for wider rights and needs, for setting up various fronts to give impetus to the escalation of the struggle and the coordination at a local, sectoral, and nationwide level. We should certainly be ready to immediately respond to any issue of topicality that might arise; however, we must not hesitate to open issues that have been silenced or do not seem to be of major or immediate concern for the workers.

 

The pertinent struggle to address, to the extent possible, the bourgeois and opportunist influence on the movement is of particular importance in the current conditions where the ND government anew provides SYRIZA and other parties with the opportunity to foster illusions about a pro-prople management by a “progressive left-wing” bourgeois government. These illusions might also be triggered by the fear of conflict.

 

Persistent political guidance work to tackle gaps and deficiencies in the assimilation of fundamental ideological–political positions and elaborations and to overcome difficulties in the specialization of our work per sector and workplace are decisive factors for extending and cementing our ties with the working class. It plays a decisive role both for securing the militant mobilization of  vanguard workers’–people’s forces and the effective overture to workers with liberal, social-democratic, and opportunist entrenched perceptions. It contributes to the efficacy of the effort to form preconditions for the organization and participation of indifferent, disappointed, and inactive popular forces in the trade union movement. It also contributes to the shielding of the Party’s forces against the pressure for immediate and impressive results; to the understanding of the lengthy character of this process, of the objective difficulties and the requirements of the ideological–political struggle.

 

The accumulated experience shows that it is very important for the Party, through the activity of its members and cadres, to undertake initiatives not only to raise issues but also to massively intervene among the workers; to consolidate a right basis for the demands, plans, and orientation from the very beginning, regardless of the dimension the may acquire. The assistance provided from the guiding organs should encourage the party basis to undertake initiatives, to acquire thorough knowledge of the situation prevailing in each area, without underestimating any problem that potentially could be the final straw, in order to immediately develop actions where the situation becomes acute. Constant readiness is particularly needed so as to intervene against problems created by the general political situation, such as the ones that recently emerged due to the pandemic. In such cases, we may achieve some immediate results, mainly concerning a rise in the class political consciousness.

 

When conditions for mobilization around acute problems are formed, the Party members play a vanguard role and intervene, even when the mobilizations are initiated by organizations and groups where we do not have the majority or have no representatives. We examine each time the form and the escalation of our intervention in a collective and specific manner. This also applies to our stance towards mobilizations that we deem necessary and strike rallies of sectors organized by federations and first-level trade unions, so that the communists, the Party supporters, and the trade unionists who rally in PAME intervene and participate in their trade unions.

 

In such cases of practical expression of our line in the movement, it is wrong to be entrapped in schematic approaches where distinction is based on the place and time of a mobilization. This of course should neither lead us to the opposite direction, turning the mobilization into a jumble of a shapeless and disorienting line of “unity”.

 

We do not face the issues of the intensification of state repression, employer-led intimidation in the workplace, the attack on trade union rights, on the rights of refugees and immigrants separately from the overall reactionary turn of the system and the overall policy implementing the strategic goals of the capital, as they are complementary to them. That is why we believe that these issues need to be at the forefront of the struggle of the class-oriented labour movement and the social alliance.

 

This fight must strengthen the anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly orientation of the struggle, the highlighting of the class essence of bourgeois democracy, against notions that detach repression from the character of the bourgeois state, reinforcing the false bipolar schemes of progress–conservatism and fostering illusions about a social democratic governance. Everyone has their place in this struggle. The defence of labour and trade union rights is based on organized discipline, on the struggle for the in practice abolition of reactionary laws, and the exposure of all the bourgeois governments that applied and extended them during their term (SYRIZA in 2015–2019, KINAL/PASOK in previous years), while the Hellenic Solution Party in any case advocates the intensification of repression.

 

We have the ability and it is necessary to assess in a timely and objective manner the disposition of the masses. Being the vanguard, we need to intervene in a planned and organized way in terms of the content, the direction, and the forms of organization and struggle; to be at the forefront of mass collective processes of the movement, showing flexibility towards the joining of new forces and at the same time being very careful, without diminishing the element of ideological–political vigilance and struggle.

 

A crucial element in regroupment is the course of PAME and the increase of trade union organizations rallied in it

The creation and activity of PAME all these years have proven to be of decisive importance. PAME was founded on the initiative of communists who were developing vanguard action in the labour–trade union movement. It is the class-oriented mobilization of Federations, Labour Centres, trade unions, and unionists in an anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly line of struggle and a highly significant achievement of the movement.

 

The development of its course and scope is important. It has become a point of reference, it expresses the necessity for the regroupment and counterattack of the labour–trade union movement, the existence of a distinct class pole in conflict with government and employer-led trade unionism and the line of the opportunist current.

 

Today, 335 first-level unions and 25 second-level organizations (9 Federations and 16 Labour Centres) are rallied in PAME. This positive course, however, must not foster complacency because it does not negate the limited participation in trade unions and the problems in union function and activity.

 

It is the responsibility of the cadres and the members of the KKE that are elected to the bodies and are active in the trade union organizations of the working class to strengthen the role and the mass participation of the unions rallying in PAME, for it to become fully established and expand as the class mobilization of forces of the labour movement whose action is based on mass and collective processes, with the active participation of the workers, and is not restricted to the oppressive framework imposed by state control of mass action. The function and the action of the unions must be ensured. Through our activity, the unions need to confirm their rallying with PAME and to reach a deeper agreement on the anti-capitalist line of struggle.

 

We must take into consideration and not underestimate the fact that even when the totality of members of a union have made a collective decision to participate in PAME, there are still different viewpoints and naturally disagreements, prejudices, and confusions. Even where the majority or the leading force are communists, it is not correct to interpret this as total agreement with the framework and the line of PAME, including the case where the statute of the union recognizes the principle of class struggle and accepts the abolition of exploitation as a declared goal.

 

The work of the communists on the elaboration of positions and slogans in each sector and union; on the development of apt demands and argumentation, of a framework of struggle, of a plan of action; on the choice of the appropriate forms of struggle, is also necessary within the unions that participate in PAME. There are even greater demands in those unions that are not rallied in PAME, in union organizations where communists are in the minority or we do not have representatives, much more so in workplaces without union representation. We need to understand and to distinguish criticism towards the viewpoints of workers and criticism towards the leaderships of the government and employer-led trade unionism or the line of the opportunist forces; in the first case, it is not directed towards the class enemy, but towards working men and women who have an objective interest in clashing with the capitalists and their state, to struggle with us to overthrow capitalism.

 

22 years after the founding of PAME, it is necessary for us to ensure the follow-up of initiatives, with goals and a plan, centrally and by sector; to become even more capable within the activity of the labour–trade union movement; to contribute so that PAME becomes its main force, expressing ever-wider sections of the working class. Thus, it is necessary for PAME to expand through struggles to win the majorities in new unions, Federations, and Labour Centres, with a plan to create mass unions and to establish new ones, to organize new working masses, further reinforcing its influence, drawing into the joint struggle those unions where communists are not in the majority. All these must take place in combination with the ideological–political intervention of communists in the workplace, person-to-person, so that we steadily win over sections of the working class with the political line of the KKE, freeing them from the dominant ideology and policy.

 

Understanding this issue is necessary to deal with an existent danger that, under the weight of the movement’s retreat, there is complacency and compromise in the guiding Organs and Party Groups around the very small steps that are occurring to make the unions mass organizations and to rally new ones around PAME.

 

The union organizations that participate in PAME took on initiatives that led to joint action with other unions that do not participate in PAME around large fronts of struggle, a fact that revealed new opportunities. Overall, in all the initiatives, approximately 165 unions that  are not rallied in PAME agreed on joint action. This militant coordination reached the point where general strikes took place six times over the past 3.5 years, with decisions by unions and second-level organizations, overcoming the undermining and openly strike-breaking action of the majority in the administration of GSEE. This effort and the joint action with the radical forces in the movements of the farmers, the self-employed, the women, and the youth are factors showing an awakening and pressure on the union organizations where forces are in the majority who are opposed to or who do not understand the need for a class orientation of the movement.

 

It is vital to continue to broaden and to maintain a network of unions and other types of collective organizations around PAME (who are not rallied in PAME) with mass processes, through struggle, with an ongoing effort, with planning per sector and region. Sometimes it will be more, other times less, striving for every initiative of the class movement to become a focus of struggle with the other forces, to create rifts.

 

Our planned activity aims to rally unionists and unions in PAME, through collective decisions,  and also to reveal to the workers the forces that hinder the organization of their struggle or attempt to subjugate the content and the waging of the struggle to capitalist interests. This is the most essential way for the working people to draw conclusions, through their very own experience, a process which of course cannot alone ensure that a revolutionary workers’ consciousness will mature but is an important precondition.

 

The struggle with the employer and government line, as well as with the opportunist stance, must be waged through mass processes in the first-level unions, either sectoral or enterprise-based. We should not retreat in facing the great demands that mass processes in the unions have (general assemblies, gatherings, meetings), in which our forces become more experienced and more capable. Here lies the opportunity to change the situation in the unions and to educate new forces about the movement.

 

This orientation must be mastered in depth, in a unified way by all the guiding Organs and the central Party Groups. A corresponding plan and orientation must permeate all the Federations and Labour Centres where out forces are in the majority as well as the corresponding Party Groups.

 

Despite the disrepute of GSEE, government and employer-led unionism, together with the notion of “social partnership”, dominate in the key Federations and the union organizations of strategic sectors (Energy, Banks, Transportation, Telecommunications), from which they draw their strength in GSEE as well. It is an element that will weigh down and hinder regroupment in the coming years as well. Of course, the objective difficulties also weigh us down, because despite the change in the composition of the workplaces and labour relations and the decrease in the number of permanent employees hired by the trade union groupings of the government parties, they continue to be sectors with the most hard-core segment of labour aristocracy, that maintained a decent level of benefits and income, even during the decade of the crisis.

 

In the past years, the struggle on the role of the unions, the orientation of struggle, and the rise in the degree of organization has intensified. It was expressed through struggles in which communists led the way, in congresses of Labour Centres and Federations; in the very Congress of GSEE in Kalamata, Rhodes, and Kavouri, which helped to expose the mechanism and methods of the employers and the bourgeois state to manipulate the labour–trade union movement, for the open and hidden buying-off of consciousnesses, and the flagrant intervention of employers. The confrontation with bourgeois and opportunist forces —who unite against the Party but also against PAME— has intensified.

 

The possibility for trade unionists who do not agree with the totality of our politics to join forces with communists was demonstrated through these confrontations.

 

Positive changes in the administrations of Labour Centres created more favourable conditions to escalate the struggle, that can contribute to the effort to step up the organization of first-level unions, an issue that cannot be resolved automatically as it requires a steady orientation and corresponding initiatives. Despite all this, there are many Federations and Labour Centres where we do not intervene, where we do not have any elected representatives.

 

The situation is not the same in all cities and unions, as regards both the unions that rally in PAME and those where communists are in the minority or there are no elected communists. There are, that is, unions that have problems with their functioning and the ability to mobilize workers.

 

The organizational power and influence of the KKE in each sector and workplace is a decisive element to change the situation. It requires foresight, steady orientation and planning from the guiding organs and the Party Groups, strong ties with the masses, enhanced ideological–political level, the ability to maneuver, boldness and initiative to cope with this task.

 

The retreat of the labour–trade union movement in our country is also affected by the situation in the international labour movement, with the domination of “Free” trade unions worldwide and the dominance of the ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) in Europe, which is an organic element of the EU. GSEE participates and is a member of ETUC.

 

Our Party supports the need to strengthen the class-oriented movement in each country, as it is expressed through the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and the organizations participating in it. PAME, as a rallying front of unions and trade unionists, individually participates in the WFTU and its presidium. The sectoral federations participate in the corresponding sectoral federations of the WFTU.

 

Throughout the previous years, very significant international activity was developed with informational campaigns, coordination of militant mobilizations, solidarity with large strike battles, in which the organizations that participate in the WFTU were at the forefront, e.g. in India with millions of strikers, in South Africa, and in France. This activity must continue and needs to be supported.

 

The WFTU was strengthened with new organizations from all the continents (e.g. South Africa COSATU, India, and at the European level) which was an important issue in previous years, with the development of joint action with second-level organizations, such as the Labour Centre of Marseilles, Labour Centres of boroughs in Paris, the Federation of Chemical Workers of France (FNIC-CGT), unions in Italy and Spain.

 

The recognition of PAME at the international level is great. Indicative is the Workers’ May Day demonstration of 2020 that gained international acknowledgement.

 

The WFTU was formed on 3 October, 1945 in Paris, immediately after the end of the imperialist World War II with the Anti-fascist Victory of the Peoples. It survived the counter-revolution and, with the contribution of KKE forces and other militant trade unionists on a global level, developed new action, demonstrating the capacity for mobilization and joint coordination.

 

The ideological–political struggle is also developing within the ranks of the WFTU, which reflects the situation in the International Communist Movement. Even trade unions supporting the bourgeois system and for various reasons (historical, geopolitical ones, etc.) have joined the WFTU, seek to exploit the slowdown of anti-capitalist reflexes and the ideological confusion prevailing, including in communist forces that act in the international trade union movement. The communists participating in the international trade union movement need to undertake the initiative to develop discussion on the correlation of forces in each organization that participates in the WFTU, their prospects, their framework of struggle, and our intervention.

 

The main task for regroupment is the increase in the degree of organization of the working class

Today, we urgently need to contemplate how to strengthen the unionization of workers at their workplaces. It is a task of primary importance and a basic criterion for effective action. Organization in the workplace, the increase in the degree of organization of the working class, and the changes in the correlation of forces are basic objectives and must be fought for in a unified way, in every sector and area.

 

We actively work in all the unions, independently of their form of organization (sectoral, enterprise-based, occupational). The situation in Attica and Thessaloniki, i.e. the largest regions of the country where the majority of the working class is concentrated, shows that the vast majority of salaried unionists are in enterprise-based unions.

 

The sectoral unions can embrace the great mass of young workers who are mainly working in a highly mobile and flexible environment with new forms of employment, without of course leaving the totality of salaried workers outside of the action. We strive for the sectoral unions to contribute mainly to organizing workers in large workplaces, to connect their struggle with the struggle of the enterprise-based unions in large enterprises in each sector, and to coordinate the unions in different sectors. Older and more recent experience has shown that it is difficult to develop struggles successfully, if they are not grounded in a strong organization in each enterprise. We can specify this orientation by sector more precisely.

 

We seek that the sectoral trade union of a city or region with a class orientation becomes a centre of coordination and struggle of unions existing in large enterprises, organizing joint initiatives, struggling against compromised and employer-led trade union leaderships, focusing on the large mass of workers and employees, having a plan in each sector to change the correlation of forces and rally more forces around PAME. In the past years, we have gained valuable experience from the Food and Hospitality, Pharmaceutical, Metal, and Pulp and Paper sectors.

 

There are workplaces all over the country where we are at the forefront to establish new unions, like the concentrated retail sector (commercial centres of all types, supermarket chains), in Tourism with the hundreds of hotels, the food production industry, etc. Where there are unions, we develop vanguard action within them, even when our forces are minimal. Otherwise, we contribute with a plan to the formation of sectoral or enterprise-based unions in large workplaces, which can unite all the categories of workers in each enterprise, in commercial centres, and groupings of enterprises.

 

We need to study more substantially the content and forms of our intervention in sectors that have dynamic development, that are prioritized by the capital, and are in a phase of concentrating new labour force. Accordingly, we need to study the internal changes in sectors that are also of strategic importance. We need to examine the elements of development, how they are reflected in the Party and trade union structures, the needs, identifying the objective factors that act upon this work and hamper, for instance, the organization of the trade union movement at the Federation level or of first-level unions that do not correspond to the developments in a sector and do not cover the totality of workers in them.

 

At the second-level Federations, we advocate sectoral federations and not occupational federations that foster division and fragmentation.

 

We contribute to the creation of unions in areas that harmoniously combine work at the workplace with the place of residence, with careful preparation and concentration of forces, but also making sure not to set up makeshift unions in every municipality and region. In any case, wherever and as long as there is no union, we need to be orientated to setting up Struggle Committees of workers, which can constitute an initial form of a union.

 

At the same time, we support and promote new forms of organizations, along with the unions, that will embrace the large section of precarious workers that are faced with flexible forms of work, under the table work, continual mobility, without sectoral consciousness. Such initiatives of organization and collective action are the Workers’–Youth Centres in the neighbourhoods, the Greek and Immigrant Workers’ Clubs that operate within a framework of solidarity and collective expression, teaching the Greek language to immigrant workers and refugees, which may not be forms of organization within the formal structure of the trade union movement but can unite the workers and educate them in the spirit of collective organization.

 

A primary issue is the activity of the unions to deal with the problems of immigrants, considering that objectively they are a part of the working class of Greece. Our experience has shown that it is not an easy issue. It is necessary to develop activity defending their rights, in opposition to the capital’s pursuit to utilize them for the further reduction of the price of the labour force.

 

We need to deal with the issue of immigrants more systematically so that they join the trade unions and struggle together with Greek workers, both for their own problems which are created by the exploitative system and for the totality of issues of the working class. This task needs to become a basic index for the strengthening and the regroupment of the labour–trade union movement and to be expressed with the election and utilization of vanguard immigrants in the organs of the trade union movement. In this regard, we also need to monitor the labour integration process of recognized refugees choosing to stay in our country.

 

In addition to the activity to unionize women and young workers that must be developed by the unions with the intervention of communists, the contacts of the Women’s Associations must be further utilized, particularly with working women in Retail, Health, and Education. This will provide impetus to the unions and will have a positive effect on their becoming mass organizations, to the degree that they coordinate their activity and are actively engaged with all the issues that concern the working class–popular family and the youth. There are scores of issues for activity starting with the neighbourhoods, in combination with activity around problems at work. In addition, we strive for cultural activities (music, theater, books), athletic activities, and solidarity actions, with organized intervention for leisure time, for them to become hubs of mobilization and cultural education. The utilization of artists, scientists, and intellectuals can give impetus to this activity.

 

The People with Disabilities (PWD) with of a working-class and popular class position or origin constitute an important part of the population. Their current needs and much more their additional needs are far from being met based on the current scientific and technological potential. They are a field of intervention of the government and employer-led trade unionism, an act of “charity” on the part of business groups, etc. In the following period, the issues concerning PWD and their families, the contemporary formation of a framework and goals of struggle must be a priority for the Party’s intervention in the workers’–people’s movement as well as in the PWD movement and its organizations.

 

A crucial issue is the goal to include PWD and their caretakers in the corresponding mass organizations and to effectively orientate them in a class-oriented and radical manner. In this regard, we need an apt deployment of forces. This also applies to the intervention in the associations of chronically ill people.

 

With the decisive contribution of the Party’s forces, we managed to achieve a stable activity and broader mobilization of the pensioners focusing on the front of the social security system. The majority of the pensioners’ organizations are rallied in SEA (Coordinating Struggle Committee). SEA has an important activity with a correct orientation, organizing several mass mobilizations, especially during a period when various mechanisms encouraged the pensioners’ movement to assert its rights in the courtrooms. We strengthen the effort to organize the pensioners in their unions, to tackle the fragmentation of the pensioners’ movement. The organization of pensioners in unions per region and municipality in large cities could promote joint action and the coordination with trade unions and mass organizations on issues of healthcare, prevention, and eldercare. At the same time, experience showed that the reinforcement of SEA with joint meetings of public and private sector trade unions helps our work.

 

The struggle over the role that the trade unions play is a tough ideological, political, and organizational struggle, first of all with the capitalists and their organizations, the bourgeois governments, the bourgeois parties and as an extension, their forces in the movement. Today, the bourgeoisie with its parties and the government are taking new measures against the trade union movement, striving to further manipulate it and to invest in bourgeois management for the difficult periods ahead.

 

The call for “parties out of the trade union movement”, trade union independence, without a political party identity has returned. Of course, the union has organizational independence, which we militantly defend against the multifaceted intervention of employers and the state. It is also crystal clear that the trade union movement and the unions are not a party; thus, they do not have an independent programme to seize power. They are addressed to all workers, independently of their political and ideological choices. However, they are constantly faced with the consequences of the exploitative economy and power, thus, in confrontation and clash not only with each capitalist, but also with the government and the bourgeois parties. There is no such thing as neutrality in the unions. Of course, this confrontation does not take place in a uniform way since there is no uniformly developed class political consciousness. The maturation of class consciousness through the struggles and the interventions of the unions is a complex issue under the responsibility of the communists.

 

Owing to the recent law, the state is dealing a heavy blow to the heart of union functioning, under the pretext of alleged existent problems. The absence of General Assemblies, gatherings, and workplace visits by trade union leaders as well as the lifeless congresses with empty auditoriums only for the election of the Executive Board and representatives on the presence of forces of repression are signs of a degradation that was brought about through conscious choice. The state uses methods such as holding union elections through postal and electronic voting, presenting them to the workers as a form of modernization, aiming at eradicating General Assemblies.

 

This direction will be implemented and will co-exist with the escalation of repression and the obstacles placed on the activity of the communists in the labour–trade union movement, to restrict union organization and action, especially against the rallying of class-oriented unions around PAME.

 

Based on the new “legality” that is being formed, in the next period there will be even more instances where institutions of the bourgeois state (ministries, trials, etc.) and employers will not recognize unions and collective decisions; they will reject the signing of Collective Agreements under legal pretexts; they will penalize action and even mass processes of union organizations. The confrontation between the labour–trade union movement and the stringent state-monitoring of the unions is a serious issue of ideological–political mass intervention and struggle. The period of the pandemic brought rich experience from the “Organized Disobedience” and the activity of unions against the prohibitions and the repressive measures that the government took under the pretext of the “healthcare crisis”.

 

Through the organization and mass participation of working people in collective processes and the activity of the trade unions, we strive to challenge the reactionary legal framework and also in cases of various forms of prohibitions to establish de facto the existence,  function, and collective processes of the unions. To exert the greatest possible pressure on the state and employer organizations so that they are forced to accept the activity of unions and even to legally recognize them as well as to reveal the limits of bourgeois legality.

 

Under the pretext of the pandemic, there was an effort to proceed to electronic voting processes for electing leadership and administrative councils in Education and in other sectors of the Public Sector. The almost universal abstention from the vote of more than 90% of educators demonstrates that there is resistance and reflexes among the working people, who comprehend the reactionary nature of these regulations.

 

We steer the guiding work and support of communists working in the trade union movement towards the content of action in the first-level unions, so that the latter are truly organizations that concentrate the majority of workers and wage class struggle. This also applies to the Party Organs, especially the Sectoral Committees, as well as to the Party Groups of the Federations, the Labour Centres, the CC itself and the CC Section on Labour–Trade Union Work.

 

The development of an integrated network of union organizations and the concentration of forces against the class enemy cannot take place unless, under the responsibility of the communists, the functioning of the unions is improved and enhanced, so that the Executive Boards are aware of the problems that their members face, of the situation in the workplace and the sector; so that they have a steady plan of initiatives promoting the framework of struggle; so that they are engaged in finding new ways and forms to make it easier for workers to participate. To utilize all the forms and opportunities so that the unionized workers, either in the sectoral or the company-based union, will play their role and will not limit their action simply to participation in elections. To be helped so that inside the workplace, in the production division where they work, to be the “eyes and the ears” of their union. Together with the other trade unionists, initially, workers can be gathered, even informally, in a group, a committee of the union that will inform and mobilize fellow workers, that will confront the bosses in a militant manner, that will mobilize their colleagues. To be an initial form of a possible union committee or a health and safety committee. To get more workers to join the union. A guiding task of vital importance for the next years is to widen the circle of workers that actively work next to the Executive Board of the unions, thus expanding the structure of the union organizations and creating at the same time a plan and the preconditions to get the majority of workers in unions, Labour Centres, and Federations. This issue does not concern only the battle in the period before the union elections.

 

An issue that must concern the guiding organs in the future is the political guidance of the KKE and KNE for their participation and activity as much in the unions but also around the acute problems that the working-class families face in their neighbourhoods. It requires tenacity to break down whatever boundaries exist between the activity of communist trade unionists in the workplace and in the neighbourhood, the logic that arises again from the past and says that workplace problems are taken care of by the union and neighbourhood problems are the responsibility of some other comrades in the area-based PBO or of those comrades with duties in Local Administration.

 

The task, for instance, of getting a worker to sign up and to participate in his union is more complex and difficult compared to previous years. The great devaluation of unions and the general retreat are serious constraints. For the necessary steps to be taken, the requisite trust towards the vanguard militant–communist–trade unionist must be developed. Consequently, action is needed in everything —they must see us at work, in the neighbourhood, in the Parents’ Committees, at the Health Centres, for every small and great problem; we need to be on the front line, for discussion to take place on all the problems in the workplace and for constant motivation to be provided through forms and initiatives for participation in the union. With militant action, which means apt and correct ideological–political work, so that the need to organize the struggle against the strategy of capital is assimilated more widely.

 

The need to establish Coordinating Committees of trade unions and other organizations of the movement or Struggle Committees on a territorial basis, in the neighbourhoods and the cities

The coordination and joint action between trade unions and other mass organizations have had a certain contribution as a way of intervention. Mobilizations and solidarity actions were organized in areas affected by natural disasters (e.g. Mandra, Mati, Lesvos, Karditsa, Samos). The communists were at the forefront of organizing solidarity actions through the trade unions, highlighting the causes of the disaster, and demanding infrastructure and services for protection against natural disasters (wildfires, floods, earthquakes). They participated in mass mobilizations against the policies followed by bourgeois governments and the Regional–Municipal authorities on the environment and the quality of life of the working class and popular strata, on waste management and industries that pollute Attica, Piraeus, West Thessaloniki, Volos, etc. and recently on wind turbines in Thessaly. These examples illustrate the struggle of the labour movement on a wide front that also took on the character of coordinated action of trade unions with associations of the self-employed, farmers, and women, youth organizations, student councils, parents’ associations, etc.

 

Of particular importance was the Party’s intervention and role regarding the sharpening of the refugee issue on the islands and in areas of mainland Greece, as well as its vanguard action against the entrapment of refugees and the tackling of reactionary forces that acted and continue to act supported by the tentacles of the state and other apparatuses together with NGOs, seeking to co-opt the workers and the people. The activity of the Labour Centres of Lesvos, of Samos, of the Northern part of the Dodecanese, and of the Chios Regional Section of ADEDY provided us with valuable experience for our political guidance work. They were at the forefront of the justified reaction of broad popular sections against the government and EU policy as well as the imperialist agreements and plans that are responsible for the entrapment of refugees. They reacted against the presence of enhanced repressive forces on the islands, expressed their solidarity with refugees, and isolated fascist groups and their slogans.

 

We need to creatively utilize the experience gained about the formation of Coordinating Committees of trade unions and other organizations of the movement or Struggle Committees in cities and neighbourhoods, avoiding schematic approaches.

 

Life itself provided us in the past with corresponding forms e.g. the People’s Committees, which tackled existing problems such as water and power cut-offs, foreclosure auctions of primary residences, bank and tax debts, seizures, the poverty and hunger of our co-citizens, and the lack of healthcare services. They organized social clinics, tuition for children of popular families and other forms of solidarity in the neighbourhoods, the sectors, and elsewhere, under conditions of consecutive memoranda and deep crisis.

 

Recently, life also provided us with new forms such as the Coordinating Committees of trade unions and other organizations or Struggle Committees, struggling for severe problems that the people face and in most cases achieving positive results, mobilizing more and more people. They operated as a more stable form of coordinated activity in relation to shapeless gatherings, the so-called “assemblies of the base”, the “groups of citizens”, etc.

 

However, they do not constitute a permanent form of expression of the social alliance, even though they contribute to a better understanding of its importance. There is no room for complacency as regards the special work that is to be done to highlight the significance of the joint action of the working class with the allied popular sections of the middle strata through their movements, in which the communists act as well. Particular work is needed in the Party and the class-oriented labour–trade union movement to adopt joint goals of struggle, despite the differences stemming from the different position of the workers and the allied popular strata as regards the means of production and therefore their oscillations.

 

We need to closely monitor how various radical groups and the alliance in the movement develop, constantly drawing useful conclusions and making adjustments whenever needed.

 

Through the planned and vanguard action of the KKE and KNE forces, we need to contribute to the formation of a militant movement that will rally broader popular masses around acute problems on a territorial basis (city or neighbourhood). The direction of this movement will be gradually reinforced through the struggle. At the same time, we strive to lay the foundation and substructure of sectoral and enterprise-based unions on a territorial basis. The expansion of the unions’ framework of struggle, that is, beyond demands related to financial and other working issues, needs to stimulate the struggle for all the problems that the workers and the people face, taking into account their sharpening and the necessary escalation. We need to create preconditions for joint action with the organizations of the self-employed and other mass organizations, with women’s associations, parents’ associations, etc.

 

The initiative of the communists in each area must be be grounded on existing possibilities in order to to help more organizations rally and mobilize around fair demands, which will open the way to come into contact and struggle with broader popular forces. Other political forces are likely to participate —since they are mass organizations— through their representatives in the movement. For this reason, elaborate preparation is required for all issues, demands, frameworks and forms of struggle.

 

Through this intervention, the movement can emerge more massive and robust in terms of organization. We can take steps to detach workers and people from capitalist manipulation, so that they will not be trapped in the system nor in social democratic and opportunistic delusions, to join forces with the Party and ΚΝΕ. We can also make steps towards the promotion of social alliance, so that the direction of struggle acquires an anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly orientation.

 

On the intervention of the Party in the allies of the working class and the promotion of social alliance

The 21^st Congress confirmed the need to assimilate the conclusions drawn from the recent Nationwide Bodies organized and carried out based on the Political Resolution of the 20^th Congress, that is, the Nationwide Conference on the intervention of the Party in the urban self-employed and the Extended Plenum of the CC on the work in toiling farmers. These conclusions will help us form a more unified view on the identification of potential allies of the working class, the direction of our intervention in their movements, and the promotion of joint action in the prospect of social alliance in an anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist direction.

 

We need to engage in implementing the Resolutions in order to reinforce the leading capacity of our intervention in these social forces. This task does not only concern the respective Party forces of the urban self-employed and the farmers. We highlight the elaborated positions–resolutions to which all party forces must concentrate their attention in the following period:

 

1. The social alliance includes the self-employed mainly in cities and towns who are characterized by the individual ownership of means of production and possibly limited commercial or other form of capital, limited extraction of surplus value.

 

The Party focuses on the self-employed without employees, knowing that they may also employ members of their family or other unregistered workforce, mainly on a seasonal basis. We must prioritize our work on the basic sectors that concentrate the urban self-employed, that is, Trade, Food and Hospitality, Constructions, Manufacturing, and Transportation. At the same time, we reinforce our orientation to self-employed scientists and artists, such as certain self-employed health professionals (e.g. physiotherapists).

 

In the lower middle strata, there is great variation from one sector to another and from a type of work to another in one specific sector, while the upper strata are clearly connected with the interests of capitalist ownership. The Party Organs and PBOs must prioritize their work within these social forces, knowing their composition, assessing their various sections on the basis of general Leninist criteria and also of contemporary analyses–estimations of the Party, as they were formed in the two Party Bodies.

 

Concerning the farmers, we prioritize our intervention in those who fight for survival as individual farmers, that is, those who depend on agricultural production to make ends meet.

 

The Party organizations should adhere to the combined criteria we have laid down, taking into account the economic size of the exploitation, the degree of expansion of wage labour —especially of permanent wage labour—, and the amount of subsidies.

 

Experience confirms that the effort to approach and unionize very small agricultural producers, who maintain farms for the purpose of supplementing their income, should be done on the basis of their main employment relationship and not as farmers. The same applies to farm labourers, permanent or seasonal, who are mostly immigrants, but also to women workers in the process of sorting and packaging.

 

2. It is confirmed that in order to make further steps towards working with the allies of the working class, it is necessary to ensure the specialized Party intervention, both independently as well as in their movement, with a constant commitment to develop the struggle around their basic problems, e.g. the intervention in the self-employed should focus on issues such as taxes and debts, social insurance, etc.; the intervention in the toiling farmers should develop around the axes of production costs, income/prices, protection of production, etc.

 

It has been proved that with the help of elaborated demands our intervention can be well received by self-employed and toiling farmers of other political persuasions. We can embrace forces from different starting points who nevertheless agree on some basic issues and are willing to struggle.

 

We can utilize this basis in order to open up an outlook in our work, together with the overall framework of our ideological–political struggle. Preparation is needed in order to open up discussion on the causes of the problems, to relate them to the social–economic and consequently the political system, to capitalism overall, in order to respond to the notion of “national unity and productive growth” of each government, to highlight the need for stability in the direction of the content and forms of struggle, etc.

 

A key element is the engagement of the organs and the operation of the respective Party Groups that must focus on the thorough study of their area of responsibility, on the monitoring of the developments and the struggle, on the elaboration and specialization of frameworks and positions, on the generalization of the experience gained from our activity.

 

The issue of the militant mass line of mobilization with an anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly character or even sowing the seed of radical ideas in more difficult areas requires a relatively long-term plan with specialization, prioritization of steps, and adaptations based on topicality. The communists’ intervention, in combination with the corresponding measures to improve the dissemination and scope of our positions in these strata, is a complex process with both successes and setbacks.

 

3. No form of mobilization or movement can have a perpetual and unchangeable character. A form of mobilization may occasionally take on anti-monopoly characteristics, sometimes more shallow and at other times more advanced. The selection of the respective forms of nationwide mobilizations, based on the general correlation of forces mainly in third-level trade union organizations, is made with the aim of gathering trade unionists; of creating mass associations, struggle committees, and federations in an anti-monopoly direction —which in its essence is anti-capitalist—, aiming to coordinate their action. We strife to create mass and militant organizations which will expand their action, strengthening their alliance with all the oppressed, the workers, the farmers, the urban self-employed, the women, and the youth of the popular families.

 

A crucial issue on which the Party should focus as regards the movement of the urban self-employed is the need to make improvements in the basis in order to form renewed preconditions of nationwide or regional coordination in a radical anti-monopoly direction.

 

In this regard, we are oriented towards proposing new forms of coordination. At the level of Attica, we support the effort of the Attica Federation of Craftsmen (OBSA). The struggle will be radicalized to the extent that the stabilization and expansion of our forces in the large cities and the mass sectors will be combined with the immediate initiative for certain problems with the well-founded reasoning of their causes, thus with the ideological–political struggle in the movement.

 

Respectively, as regards the toiling farmers we seek the organization of farmers who make ends meet as agricultural producers, per village or per group of villages, in the form of an Agricultural Association. A first step can be the establishment of a Struggle Committee, especially in a phase of mobilization. We aim to establish Federations of Agricultural Associations at a region or neighbouring regions. Of course, their approach is a demanding issue; it requires planning, flexibility, escalation of the constant ideological–political and mass intervention, of the vanguard action of the communists with an apt framework of struggle, slogans, and proposed forms of struggle.

 

We support the Nationwide Committee of Roadblocs (PEM) and its framework of struggle, the effort to help the national coordination be expressed in more stable forms of organization and alternating forms of struggle, in the direction of the regroupment of the farmers’ movement, of the constant expansion of mobilization in an anti-monopoly and anti-CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) direction.

 

4. The promotion of the alliance of the working class with the urban self-employed and the farmers is first of all the communists’ task. Under their responsibility, the class-oriented labour–trade union movement will achieve more stable joint struggles in the form of organizing social forces whose social position pushes them to greater oscillation and hesitation.

 

It is not correct to assume that social alliance will develop from the outset on the basis of the acceptance of the demands of the working class by the popular sections of the middle strata as a sign of solidarity or because, in the final analysis, the general interests of the working class —the social ownership over the means of production— constitute social progress for these forces as well. It is also not correct to take the leading position of the working class in the alliance as given. This above-mentioned objective position of the working class in the revolutionary social progress and the social practice must be achieved under the responsibility of its ideological–political organized vanguard.

 

The way in which the bodies of the labour–trade union movement —first of all under the responsibility of the communists— address to the organizations of the self-employed and the toiling farmers is an essential element that must be achieved. That is why it is necessary to elaborate a specialized line and framework of struggle and to tackle the perfunctory repetition of positions, forms of struggle and experiences gained in the labour movement.

 

It is a matter of the communists assigned to the trade union movement, so that the latter, through substantial collective processes (addressing executive boards, joint meetings, etc.), focuses on issues of survival and living conditions (health, social insurance, education, welfare, social infrastructure, nutritional needs and protection against natural phenomena) that concern more broadly the working class families, the majority of the self-employed and toiling farmers. It also needs to support their demands for protection from foreclosure auctions, seizures, etc., as well as to oppose imperialist wars, interventions, and pressure. That is the way to achieve joint action, to realize its necessity and benefits.

 

Acute social problems are the basis for a more stable development of the joint struggle of trade unions, self-employed and farmers’ associations, as well as womens’ associations and groups of OGE, organizations of self-employed scientists, artists, school and university students, in order to promote social alliance in practice.

 

In any case, the promotion of social alliance presupposes the increase of the forces rallied in PAME, but also the improvement of the communists’ positions in the farmers’ movement and especially in the movement of the urban self-employed, in order for farmers’ associations and federations and associations–unions–federations of the urban self-employed to be formed and to be freed from capitalist influence.

 

5. All the above presuppose the separately planned implementation of the ideological–political intervention in the farmers and the urban self-employed, based on the corresponding measures (allocation of tasks in the Organs, creation of PBOs, discussion in the PBOs); their central support, with propaganda material, articles, inner-party notes about positions, criticism against other forces, interventions in the Parliament, in the Municipal and Regional Councils, etc.

 

Particular political guidance attention is needed for the emergence of trade unionists, for their communist steeling through their participation in all forms of class struggles, for the development of their communist consciousness through inner-Party educational schools, lessons, seminars, etc. A programme of specialized Party visits, meetings, and events is needed as well. There is need for a recruitment programme, prioritizing the sector, the village, and the cultivation that has a relative potential, where we must organize forces, to form a Party Group that will be at the forefront of getting in contact with associations or founding ones.

 

Cadres are needed at all levels, from the CC to the PBO Bureaus, capable of orienting Organs and PBOs, to guide elected representatives on the administrative boards of mass organizations of farmers and urban self-employed.

 

On the activity of communist women in the radical women’s movement (OGE)

1. In terms of mass movement, communist women are active in the women’s associations of OGE, which is a nationwide radical women’s organization with a history going back 44 years. It is the women’s organization that since its foundation opposes the classless approach of inequalities to the detriment of women, the one-sided orientation to problems faced by women regarding legislation and behaviour on the part of men. Of course, communist women participating in this mass organization cannot consider that the mobilization of women is based on a unified political perception nor on the degree of awareness of women’s inequality. The unifying element is —at least in the central intervention of OGE— the class view of the problems of women’s inequality, of the acute popular problems overall, the militant demand of women’s contemporary needs, and the participation in the workers’–people’s struggles.

 

We have made some steps forward, especially owing to the reinforcement of the orientation of some leading organs. However, not all opportunities have been used to reach working women, mothers, and younger women, particularly students, who are not politically affiliated with the Party. Under the responsibility of communist women, it is necessary to improve the understanding of this movement’s role, which, after the pandemic, should enter a new phase of development, overcoming the problems that arose by the pandemic. The Party and KNE members need to be at the forefront of holding mass meetings of the associations and groups of OGE, generating lively discussion and activity on the occasion of the upcoming congress, which was postponed.

 

2. Communist women who participate at a national level in other bodies of the women’s movement as well need to secure that the activity of the administrative board is oriented towards the participation of women workers, employees, urban self-employed and farmers in the associations and groups of OGE. We utilize positive experience and develop multifaceted militant activity, focusing on the demands for the universal social right of women to work, for the social responsibility of protecting motherhood and supporting family, for the equal participation of women in social life and activity.

 

We utilize the communist’s work in women and the various central elaborations. We continue the activity of the radical women’s movement to inform women and encourage them to struggle for their demands based on the triad of stable employment–income from employment–social services, upon which the quality of life and free time depend, demanding permanent and stable work, fixed working hours, the abolition of flexible working conditions, the defence of the Sunday holiday, against the bourgeois state, bourgeois institutions, and capitalist employers. This activity not only does not come into conflict with the labour–trade union movement and other radical social movements (of the urban self-employed, of farmers), but also cooperates and jointly struggles with them to increase the participation of working women in the workers’–people’s struggles.

 

An important front of ideological–political work among women, which requires further specialization, is the revealing and denunciation of imperialist interventions, of NATO, of foreign bases in Greece, of the relatively recent US–Greek agreements; the joint action with EEDYE; the front against drug use, often in joint action with respective organizations; the expression of solidarity with refugees and particularly women and children.

 

The leading organs and Party Groups of associations and groups of OGE need to study the conclusions drawn from OGE campaigns in recent years. They have helped to open the discussion with more women at workplaces, universities, and neighbourhoods, about the framework of struggle which highlights that the problems that women face in every aspect of their social life are related to the convergence of female inequality and class division of society, of capitalist exploitation.

 

The leading bodies need to show resolve in the mobilization of female students in the radical women’s movement, for its joint action with students’ unions, something that can be achieved by raising the awareness of members and friends of the KNE in universities.

 

The Bulletin of OGE can be utilized in a more efficient way by women cadres and Party members, regardless of their assignments, but also from Party groups of unions in sectors with an increased participation of women (e.g. Retail, Services, Telecommunications, Tourism, Health, Education). Especially in recent years, the Bulletin has been improved in terms of content and form, it has been enriched with articles about workplaces by women trade unionists.

 

The leading bodies need to engage in orienting communist women in the administrative boards of women’s associations for the development of joint action with unions, associations of the self-employed, and farmers’ associations, so that their intervention acquires substantial content and to disseminate positions and demands for women employees in the life and operation of trade unions. It is necessary to utilize the nationwide experience of the joint action that has been accumulated in Attica, where more stable steps are being made in this direction, mainly in retail, with the development of joint action of the trade union of shop assistants, OGE, and the Attica Federation of Craftsmen (OBSA) on the issue of Sunday Holiday.

 

The existing correlation of forces in the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) reflects the participation of a large number of organizations in a social democratic direction and the negative condition of the communist movement.

 

A new element of the past period is that more and more women’s organizations of the WIDF adopt the bourgeois and opportunistic views of the feminist current in the women’s movement, as well as the views on “social gender”. Through the intervention of OGE, we need to continue strengthening the radical orientation in the women’s movement with mass women’s organizations based on women’s associations and their members. Their militant action needs to support the interests and demands of the women of a working class–popular social position or background. We assess that in the context of the WIDF, the forces of OGE confronted the orientation of several women’s organizations that support mainly bourgeois social democratic governments, as opposed to the liberal mixture of bourgeois management as well as the stance of women’s organizations against imperialist interventions, in order to reject the bourgeois bargaining and the entrapment in various imperialist centres. Under these difficult circumstances, the forces of OGE sought joint action with other organizations. This task remains for the following period as well.

 

The work of the KKE and KNE among the youth of working class families

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 activity 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  become a seedbed of militant demands and collective organized action, in order to struggle for their contemporary rights and needs.

 

Since the 20^th Congress, struggles have been developed that encouraged initiatives by 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.

 

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 action within the movement. We need to address the government policy in the field of Education in a class-oriented and well reasoned manner, 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 with resilience and perspective.

 

On the school students’ movement–vocational training and apprenticeship

In the field of schools (junior high schools, high schools and vocational upper secondary schools–EPAL) we took steps to coordinate the KNE Organizations with the respective Party Organizations to revive the school students’ movement. However, the intervention in school students’ councils, that is the heart of the students’ movement, still remains weak. In fact, the effort made by the government, the state apparatus, and other political parties to intervene in their content and function has been intensified.

 

KNE, through its elected members and friends, must play a leading role in the school students’ councils, so that they function as instruments of struggle for the acute problems and the needs of school students; to improve its intervention in all schools around the country.

 

The continuing changes in schools and the examination system, 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 Party must continue working, utilizing our 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. Correspondingly, we need to fuel concern and opposition to military interventions, to increase solidarity with their victims and refugees, and generally to multiply 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. As regards all the above issues, our forces need to intensify the struggle against the multifaceted intervention of the class enemy, which 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 programmes, by a wide range of sponsors, inspirers, staffs (NGOs, embassies etc.), and various other 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 students’ 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 students’ movement in various phases as well as on the establishment of new forms of organization of the students’ 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.

 

Without underestimating the weaknesses, certain preconditions have been created to make substantial progress in the expansion of KNE’s ties 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 school students’ BOs, their content, on the possibility to open new ways for our contact with students, focusing on each school unit.

 

It is important to strengthen the assistance provided by Party and KNE guiding organs so that the school students who are members of KNE continue playing the leading role in  fostering and strengthening the militant spirit, in recruiting new members, in engaging themselves more actively and confidently in the political confrontation, with the necessary adjustment to the social experience of these age groups.

 

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 Sections of the CC, the Party Groups of the Federations, of Labour Centres, and sectoral trade unions, together with the KNE forces, should form a plan for monitoring, elaborating issues and intervening, and finally a plan for building organizations in Vocational Education.

 

Our intervention must aim at strengthening the active participation of EPAL students in the school students’ struggles for their joint problems. We need to tackle the difficulties in acquiring a vocational–technical specialization due to the downgrade of their studies, which definitely affect the development of a militant mood. Our intervention in EPAL can be enhanced regarding those issues based as well on our updated position on Vocational Education. While making our intervention planning, we need to take into account that this is a field of particular importance due to the class origins of those students, who often have to combine work and school. These students are also targeted by drug traffickers and various groups such as hooligans of football clubs.

 

There has been a more active and mass participation in the procedures of the Students’ Unions of Public Institutes Of Vocational Training, of students’ assemblies, which can be further reinforced with the decisive intervention of the forces of KNE.

 

On THE STUDENTS’ MOVEMENT

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 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 direction. This is a demanding task for the Party and KNE forces.

 

Any positive steps taken have the stamp of our forces; however, they are not solid. The students’ movement is still in a deep crisis and retreat.

 

The strengthening of the Students’ Struggle Front (MAS) with new unions during the past years expresses certain positive elements that were developed in the students’ unions.

 

The accumulated experience in certain organizations from the elaboration of frameworks of struggle, demands, and agitation on specific issues can be generalized and used for guidance purposes. Engaging in the totality of student’s life, the terms of studies, education, degree, professional prospects; about issues of science and research, recreation, sports, and culture can help in mobilizing broader forces, in highlighting and demanding the contemporary students’ needs. We can cultivate more decisively, especially to KNE members, ideological excellence based on Marxist education and knowledge, together with the ability to monitor 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. In this regard, we should utilize all the relevant publications of the Party and KNE.

 

That is a guidance issue to be achieved, which concerns 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 have militant action are not fragmentary.

 

At the opposite side of the bourgeois planning to impose the online voting and a unified voting list for the students’ associations, we strengthen the discussion around the worth of struggles and collective–unionist organization and the need for a mass students’ association, 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 students’ unions and general assemblies, 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 various 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.

 

Our attention is turned towards the overall life of the youth

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 of capitalism, competition, and 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. 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 and local associations, sports clubs and sports areas, how to further develop initiatives such as cultural centres for the youth among others, sports activities that shall rally forces and send a combative message.

 

Struggle against all drugs

As a Party we have taken steps in strengthening the ideological–political and social front against the spread of drugs and the lifestyle they represent. However, our intervention must be intensified and acquire more steady characteristics.

 

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 make occasional or no use of drugs, 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 contemporary 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.

 

Epilogue

The KKE undertakes great tasks for the regroupment of the working class movement, for the formation of the social alliance. The 21^st Congress considers that, along with the negative developments, there are also reserves in the movement, various flashpoints of resistance that we should help to be revealed and dynamically expressed. The Party, all its members and cadres, assume increased responsibility.

 

We struggle to create mass organizations in the organized trade union movement; we are at the forefront of the conflict with fatalism and fear, with frustration and conservatism, with all reactionary perceptions that are strengthening.

 

We are at the third decade of the 21^st century. The hard work of the communists, of the militants together with whom we struggle to achieve our goals, and all our individual initiatives shall show that no version of anti-peoples’ bourgeois management in Greece, in Europe, and in the whole world can give an answer and solution to the main problem: today, while there is a full potential to improve the standard of living for millions of workers in our country and around the world, the results are just the opposite.

 

The gap between how workers can live today and how they eventually live is growing. Now, in the 21^st century, the studied experience together with the objective development of societies can lead us to the new society, if the peoples aim at it, if we decide to show our real power. The people have not yet tested their strength, so there should be no disappointment concerning the effectiveness of the struggles: the preparation of forces for the workers’ and people’s counterattack is paramount.

 

Within the struggle for the satisfaction of the contemporary peoples’ needs, the struggle against imperialist war and the participation of our country in the imperialist unions and plans, we can join forces with thousands of workers; we can cause cracks to the rotten exploitative system, to compromise and fatalism; we can build a great social alliance, not only to demand relief from the current acute problems, but also to create the necessary preconditions for a radical overthrow, for socialism–communism.