Dear comrades,

171 years have passed since the assessment that "the spectre of communism is haunting Europe" was formulated.

This is the same "spectre" that is haunting today the majority of the European Parliament, the EU itself, which has elevated anti-communism into its official policy.

Then as 171 years "all the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies."

In today's era, and specifically last September, the political groups of the People's Party, Social-Democrats and Liberals, the Greens and Conservative Reformers united in the European Parliament to approve an anti-communist resolution, 535 votes in favour, 66 against and 52 blank votes.

As two centuries ago, it is the same today, all the basic political "powers of old Europe" were united against the "spectre" of social revolution, social justice, the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, the new socialist-communist society, which continues to haunt them.

Then, the authors of the "Communist Manifesto". Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, formulated that "Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power"

Today the anti-communist offensive, with the shameful resolution of the European Parliament, reveals that the revolutionary ideals of communism, continues to inspire the popular-working class forces of Europe, despite the very grave consequences which the counterevolutions in the USSR, Central and Easter Europe had for the communist movement, despite was written about the "end of history" and the major difficulties, which the activity of the Communist and Workers Parties in Europe face.

We are here, present!

We should say to all these forces of "old" and "aged" Europe, which defend the old rotten capitalist society and they have their reasons to tremble, that their efforts will prove to be in vain.

The "river does not turn back!" "The ice has broken, the course has been charted!"

Dear comrades,

We do not ignore the size of the anti-communist offensive that has been unleashed all these years at a European level, in every European country.

We know very well the difficult conditions, in which the communists operate in a number of European countries, in the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Poland, the repeated arrests of militants, the trials and imprisonments of communists and other militants.

And from this podium, we want to express the solidarity of the KKE with all the parties and communists, who face this type of persecution.

However, we see that on the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the 2nd World War, the recent anti-communist resolution, demands the further taking and generalization all over Europe of harsher anti-communist measures, with the banning of symbols, monuments and the reinforcement of repression at the expense of communist parties.

EU anti-communism reaches the level of absurdity, when it presents the Soviet Union as an "ally of Hitler" and co-responsible for the outbreak of the war.

They are trying to alter the reality that says that the 2nd World War like the 1st World War was a result of the major sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions and the struggle to redivide the world.

These contradictions sharpened even more due to the existence of the Soviet Union in combination with the global capitalist economic crisis (1929-1933). After a juncture, they could not solve the problems of the major crisis of capitalism, except via a war between the capitalist states.

Both before and after the outbreak of the 2nd World War, the goal of both imperialist blocs, fascist and non-fascist capitalist states, was the destruction of the first workers' socialist state, the USSR, which was a beacon for the peoples.

Both global imperialist wars, as well as hundreds of local ones, took place in the interests of the most powerful capitalist states, were enormous imperialist crimes against humanity, including thousands of crimes of mass murder and atrocities of unprecedented savagery.

This is the truth! 

The communist and workers parties of Europe reject the slanderous campaign of the so-called "two extremes"! 

We highlight the organic link between the monstrosity of Nazism-Fascism and monopoly capitalism!

We note that it is not accidental that the anti-communist offensive is combined with the efforts of the bourgeois political forces to exonerate fascism, to heroise those who collaborated with the Nazis in the Baltic, Ukraine and elsewhere.

In this effort, the EU countries as a whole participate, which for years have been voting against the resolution "condemning the heroisation of Nazism", which is tabled every year by Russia in the General Assembly of the UN.

…While a few years ago we saw that the EU had no problem in supporting reactionary, even openly fascist forces, in order to achieve, together with the USA, their geopolitical goals in the Ukraine.

We remind the peoples of Europe and the whole world that it was the Red Flag, the banner of the first socialist state, the Soviet Union, that was raised in triumph over the Reichstag by the Red Army, which had just crushed the main bulk of the supposedly invincible armies of Nazi Germany.

The aim of the EU was apparent in the anti-communist resolution where it called for a new "Nuremberg" to be set up, this time for communism.

... Talking about the urgent need " for full understanding and the moral and legal assessment of the crimes of stalinism and the communist dictatorships".

This is not only aimed at the communists, but seeks to revise the outcome of the 2nd World War.

An outcome that was achieved through the rivers of blood given by the Red Army, the Soviet Union, the anti-fascist-national liberation struggles of the communists, other militants, of all the peoples of Europe.

At every opportunity we highlight the impending 75th anniversary of the Anti-fascist Victory of the Peoples, a tribute to all those who gave their lives or were disabled on the battlefields and in the underground struggle to crush fascist imperialism. To the communist parties all over the world, which led the national liberation struggles.

Truly, why is this offensive taking on such dimensions against the communist ideals and the communists, when our opponents stress that they have finished  communism, that it is a lost cause?

We know that they say these things because they know very well that however much ink they spill, proclaiming the "end of the class struggle", that they will never achieve this while the so-called "market economy" exists.

Capitalism, the system that is based on profits through exploitation, creates, maintains and sharpens the people's problems, cannot satisfy the contemporary needs of the people.

It is governed by its basic contradiction, capital-labour, which creates unemployment, poverty and injustice for the many, new capitalist crises, while in its bowels rage fierce inter-imperialist conflicts that sow war, bloodshed, create millions of refugees and immigrants.

In contrast, socialism in the 20th century solved important issues for the working people: free health, education, housing, the eradication of unemployment, the right to social security, pensions, rest, culture and sports.

The unprecedented achievements of the Soviet Union, of other socialist countries, were and continue to be a beacon for the peoples all over the world, which proves that this vision could become a reality.

Another society could become a reality, which is not based on capitalist profit, a humane society, which will safeguard the "certainty for the next day", in a life of dignity and substance.

Their goal is to use slander in order to blacken these efforts to build the new socialist-communist society, which took place in Europe in the last century.

Not just because they want to exploit its overthrow, but because by defaming the socialist experience of the 20th century, they seek to persuade mainly the younger generations that there is no point in questioning the exploitative system, in struggling to overthrow capitalist barbarity.

In this plan, they use not only ideological political means, but also judicial, police, repressive measures in many more EU countries.

Measures that are combined with the strengthening of nationalist, racist, far right and fascist forces, which "raise their heads" and are used as forward posts to serve the interests of the bourgeois class.

Comrades

Unfortunately, their special contribution to the anti-communist operation, have been made by various forces that describe themselves as "left and progressive". 

These are the well-known forces of opportunism in Europe, which since the era of so-called euro-communism have joined in anti-soviet slander, particularly targeting the period when the bases of the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as in the period that it led the anti-fascist anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples before and during the 2nd World War.

What have we not heard all these years from the "left chorus" of the EU?

We should bear in the mind that Mr Tsipras, head of SYRIZA and the only party in the PEL which has governed, signed last year in May, in Sibiu, Romania, in an informal EU Summit, a proclamation of anti-communism, celebrating the overthrow and dissolution of the socialist system, with the claim that: " thirty years ago, millions of people fought for their freedom and for unity and tore down the Iron Curtain."

It is the "European Left" of the PEL, which participates in the fiestas of the fall of Berlin wall, as a whole in the systematic efforts that aim to inculcate the youth with the idea that socialism is an "unfree and anti-democratic regime", in contrast to capitalism which is an "oasis of freedom and democracy".

In the mill of ideological manipulation, they throw terms like democracy and freedom into the grinder, so that they lose the historical and class characteristics that govern them.

As if the "democracy" of previous eras was all the same, from Athens of the slave-owning system, to England in the feudal era or France of the bourgeois revolution, that signaled the passage from feudalism to capitalism, where we are now in monopoly capitalism, in the epoch of imperialism, which is the epoch of the transition from capitalism to socialism-communism.

Democracy has always differed, but always subordinate to the fact that it served the dominant system, ie in the previous and contemporary exploitative societies.

Only socialism-communism, as a genuinely workers', people's power can build a higher form of democracy. 

In the final analysis this is what all those who defame the 70 year history of the USSR, and especially the period where its socialist base was established, seek to conceal.

In any case, they support political choices that identify democracy with bourgeois parliamentarism, freedom with bourgeois individualism and private capitalist ownership.

The real content of freedom and democracy in capitalism is the economic coercion of wage slavery and the dictatorship of capital generally in society and specifically in the capitalist businesses.

Dear comrades

A question arises: Can and how do we impede the anti-communist offensive?

The assault against communist ideology and the CPs, all over the world goes hand in hand with the assault on social, democratic, trade union rights, on gains, which have been achieved through hard struggles by the working class and other popular strata.

This means that the bourgeois class will not stop its machinations to attack the CPs in order to promote its anti-people plans.

Of course the CPs can and must respond to this offensive.

The experience of our party says that major educational work in the youth and workers, which is realized through multi-faceted events by the members and friends of the KKE and KNE, as well as similar publications, contribute to an extent to confronting anti-communism.

In addition, the defense on principle of socialist revolution and construction and at the same time, at  the same time critical examination of the results, mistakes and shortcomings in the economy, in the political superstructure, in the strategy of the international communist movement, the collective research and study of the causes, which led the restoration of capitalism-issues that we attempted and were able to achieve to a great extent to study and realize in our country-reinforced ideologically, theoretically and politically our party and every communist, worker and youth, who acquires this collective understanding.

Anti-communism, the revival of nationalist, racist, fascist forces, cannot be consistently, stably and effectively dealt with by various alleged "anti-fascist fronts" with bourgeois  and opportunist forces.

As the great communist intellectual intellectual Bertolt Brecht said:

“In fascist countries capitalism only survives as Fascism, and Fascism can only be resisted as capitalism, as the most naked, brazen, offensive, and deceitful form of capitalism. How does someone propose to speak the truth about fascism, to which he is opposed, if he does not propose to speak out against capitalism, which produces it? How will this truth have practical importance?”

The KKE believes that the labour movement in each country and in Europe and the world as a whole can and must make its mark on the developments.

The workers understand, experience that the anti-communist offensive goes hand in hand with assault on their rights.. 

Social, trade union, democratic rights that have been gained in Europe in previous decades, with hard and often bloody struggles of the labour movement and under the influence of the social gains in the USSR and other socialist countries.

Today, the bourgeois governments, rightwing, social-democratic and pseudo "left" (like SYRIZA which recently governed in our country, and now ND whose path was paved by the previous government) reduce and abolish workers'-people's gains, in the name of competitiveness of the economy, the profitability of capital.

Because it is the workers who see that the communists are those that stand at their side, when their wages are reduced, their rights are attacked, from pensions to medical care, their children's education, when they are dismissed, when the environment is polluted and destroyed, for the interests of the monopolies.

It is the workers that can understand that the offensive against the communists, to silence the CPs, is an attack on themselves and their rights and aims to deprive them of the "shield" they have today, the "barrier" against the anti-people "wave" of the EU and its governments' measures.

Because it is the workers that see that the KKE persists in the struggle to overthrow the current unjust "social order", in the struggle to build the new society, without injustice, unemployment and destitution, without class barriers in education and health, without imperialist wars.

Despite the current difficulties, the KKE considers that today the communist movement in Europe as well, overcoming mistaken positions that were prevalent in the international communist movement in previous decades, combining revolutionary action with revolutionary theory, building solid bases in the working class, in strategic sectors of the economy and reinforcing its intervention in the labour-people's movement, can not only repel the anti-communist offensive, but also lay the foundations for the regroupment of the labour movement and the building of the social alliance, which in our opinion constitutes the necessary precondition in the struggle for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, for socialism.

11.12.2019