On 14/7/23, Eliseos Vagenas, member of the CC of the KKE and Head of the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE, delivered a speech during the 32^nd Anti-imperialist Camp of KNE, held in Nestorio, under the theme “NATO Summit: more fuel to the fire of war and competition”.

In his speech, E. Vagenas referred to NATO’s criminal action against the peoples over time and stressed that NATO’s main opponent at the time when it was formed “was none other than the first workers’ state, the first socialist state, i.e. the Soviet Union, which came out of the Second Imperialist World War wounded but emerged victorious, with a raised prestige among the peoples who had fought fascism, which was flesh of the flesh of the capitalist system. Back then, several countries, the People’s Democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, clustered around the USSR.

However, even when the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies were overthrown NATO was not in the doldrums [...] The US and European capitalists, who built this political-military arm, had no reason to dismantle it. They chose to further reinforce and adapt it so that it would continue to get the job done, at that point in time against the competing interests of the capitalists of other countries such as Russia and China, which today competes with the USA over supremacy in the international capitalist world.

They could not do otherwise as there is one thing that cannot escape the minds of its architects; and that is capitalist profit. That is the pinnacle and cornerstone of the society we live in. So in order to secure it, to keep for themselves as many slices of the pie of energy and mineral wealth as they can, of the production base and market shares, they need NATO and other similar tools, which will help them to gain geopolitical footholds, military bases and organized troops ready to intervene. If the carrot doesn’t work, there’s always the stick, i.e. imperialist military intervention and war.

Lenin said that war is “an inevitable stage of capitalism, just as legitimate a form of the capitalist way of life as peace is”.

Such is the case with the war in Ukraine, which has been going on for 506 days since its formal start. The preconditions for this war were set by the historical setback of the counter-revolution in 1989–1991, when the counter-revolutionary process of overthrowing socialism was completed, the USSR was dismantled and the means of production, the factories, the mineral wealth and labour power became a commodity again and capitalism and class exploitation prevailed.

We are talking about a war where the bourgeoisie of Ukraine, allied with NATO, the EU and the USA, is clashing with Russia and its allies. It is an unjust war on both sides; both on the part of NATO, which uses Ukraine as its spearhead, and on the part of capitalist Russia, which objectively acts as China’s cushion in the above-mentioned great conflict. It is a war waged by bourgeois classes over raw materials, geopolitical pillars, the possibility to exploit labour power,  transport routes for commodities, market shares, etc.

Of course, each side dresses up its stance with various pretexts. You see, today, if you are bluntly told that your children or yourself will have to get killed for the profits of the few, i.e. the exploiters, you will not take it light-heartedly. Therefore one side, that of NATO, tells you that the war is supposedly waged for the homeland and democracy and the other side, that of capitalist Russia, tells you that it is an anti-fascist war waged for the salvation of the Russian world.”

E. Vagenas referred to the KKE’s assessment of the recent NATO Summit, which adds more fuel to the fire of the war in Ukraine as well as to the future war plans of this aggressive political-military mechanism. “The New Democracy government, with the support of SYRIZA, PASOK and the other Euro-Atlantic parties, co-signed the NATO Summit decisions and is increasingly deepening Greece’s participation and involvement in the imperialist war in Ukraine, posing greater risks for our people”, he denounced.

The cadre of the KKE underscored that “under these conditions, it is of great importance that the people and the youth do not take the bait of Euro-Atlantic propaganda, which is peddled by all other parties. The forces of the KKE and KNE highlight the real causes of the imperialist war and are at the forefront so that our people do not give a ‘carte blanche’ to the New Democracy government, which together with the sinful social democracy of SYRIZA-PASOK and the decay expressed by the nationalist and far-right forces, are dragging them into the carnage of war.

The recent election result, the significant strengthening of the KKE, the fact that hundreds of thousands of people voted for our Party and many more thought about it but did not take the step, shows that the brainwashing of the people and the youth by the bourgeois staffs is facing certain difficulties, thanks to our action.

Today, more workers’–people’s forces can understand that NATO is not a pro-peace organization or a force for peace and democracy but a military tool against the peoples, the armed arm of Euro-Atlantic imperialism, which is clashing with the opposing imperialist camp.

The anti-imperialist camps organized by KNE all over Greece and the mass demonstrations held by the Party Organizations of the KKE in the areas that host military bases and serve as launching pads for war and targets of retaliation, have made a great contribution to the fact that germs of resistance to capitalism, to the monopolies, to imperialist unions and alliances, such as NATO, remain and grow stronger in the people’s consciousness.

• Because the KKE did not compromise, unlike ‘leftist’ forces such as SYRIZA who voted for the further enlargement of NATO with the accession of Finland and Sweden;
• Because the KKE does not speak vaguely about the ‘dismantling’ of NATO, as a number of other forces in Europe do, but struggles to disengage our own and every country from it. At the same time, it underlines that this exit from imperialist unions, such as NATO and the EU, can be put into practice and work irreversibly and in favour of the people when they hold the keys of the economy and power.

The struggle against the imperialist organization of NATO, its armaments, nuclear weapons, unjust wars and its plans is a very important task of our struggle today.

It is, if you like, a revolutionary task closely linked to our struggle to overthrow capitalism, for the Greek people to be masters in their own land and the means of production to work for the entire people, who, based on science and through workers’–people’s control, will be able to manage the economy to meet the contemporary needs of the people and not the profits of the parasitic bourgeoisie. In such a case there will be no place for foreign bases and troops! Nor, of course, will its participation in the alliances of the bourgeoisie, such as the EU and NATO, be necessary, since the bourgeoisie, together with the capitalist exploitative system, will have been consigned to the dustbin of history.

That is why our struggle against NATO is not simply a phrase in our programme but a contemporary, timely and necessary revolutionary task, which concerns all the popular forces of our country and of the other peoples in NATO member states.

We will not hand over this revolutionary task either to bin Laden and various reactionary Taliban-type organizations that are linked in a thousand ways to the imperialists, or to bourgeois regimes that have emerged from counter-revolutionary processes, such as that of Putin in today’s Russia, or, of course, to the billionaire former US President, D. Trump.

This, if you like, is an additional element separating us from various ‘anti-imperialist’ forces, which treat imperialism in a distorted way, as an aggressive foreign policy, and not as the current monopoly stage of capitalism, and get into the trap of choosing what seems to be the lesser evil.

Our opposition to NATO has as its starting point the popular resistance and rupture with NATO, the revolutionary understanding of the world and the confidence in the power of the class struggle in Greece and everywhere in the world.

Because history is written with class struggle!

This is the force that will overthrow the system of exploitation, the world of imperialist competition and interventions, of wars and refugees. In their place will bring forth another society, of peace and fraternity of the peoples, of socialism-communism, like the one experienced by the peoples of Russia and Ukraine before the capitalist restoration; however this time struggling to free it from the weaknesses and mistakes that led to its overthrow, as now we have more weapons.

Because the future of humanity, our future, is not capitalism; it is the new world, socialism!”

20.07.2023