11. Under these objective conditions, we witness the growing phenomenon of new communists who lack of a strong Marxist ideological background and a broad educational cultural level. These elements help so that the rallying political line for the sharpened daily problems is not influenced by the bourgeois ideology and propaganda or the notion of bourgeois management, the methods and manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie, which are already massively channelled, reproduced, renewed and promoted by the most modern means. Therefore, the ability of each communist to reject this influence requires constant individual and collective effort. This is certainly a crucial task for the development of individual responsibility and initiative, as well as for the ability to wage class struggle in the movements and the fronts of struggle, with argumentative, persuasive and popularized discourse.

A reflection of this problem is that even in the four years after the 20^th Congress we have not seen a dramatic improvement in the circulation of the daily edition of Rizospastis and the ideological–political–historical–literary books, despite the steps taken to improve their content, including the study of new topics and new theoretical elaborations.

Even though we have some positive signs of elaborated popularized intervention and mass enlightenment, these efforts remain scattered; they do not embrace all the cadres and organizations and  do not always rely on a solid revolutionary ideological–theoretical background.

12. We sought to systematize Marxist education with schools, seminars, and lectures, but all these systems do not firmly embrace all forces and, above all, do not ensure the uninterrupted repetition required throughout the year.

Despite the positive steps, it remains a major problem that the system of inner-party education, and consequently of self-education, continues to function as a “parallel program”, which is not substantially and organically linked to the content of the daily activities of the organizations. It is understood as a complementary, specific task and not as a main element in trying to harmonize daily activity with the main political task. Political guidance does not focus on the continuation of Marxist self-education and its utilization in the current political activity. In essence, this problem concerns our political guidance weaknesses to apply in practice and disseminate our contemporary elaborations, our Programme, our strategy on socialism–communism; to overcome confusions and misconceptions.

To a great extent, the political guidance work from the top to the bottom has not improved and has not been harmonized with our strategic elaborations, especially at the level of the Sectoral organs, as the 20^th Congress had identified. The planning and implementation of the daily struggle, using our documents as a permanent tool, remains a challenge.

At the same time, we have not overcome our characteristic “lack of generosity” regarding the implementation of our collective decision to allocate the cadres' time so that they participate in the systems of organized communist education and training, also by disengaging senior cadres, of the CC, even of the PB, for the fulfilment of this task. The necessary time for continuous self-education is an integral element of improvement and effectiveness of political guidance, organizational work, the examination of problems and experience from class struggle. It is an individual obligation of the cadre but also a collective obligation of the organs.

At times, even when we achieved the discussion on ideological issues on a larger scale throughout the Party and KNE (e.g. on the occasion of the Party's 100^th anniversary, previously on the History Essay for the period 1949-1967), we did not ensure a continuous repetition, and as a result knowledge was even completely lost, given both the age renewal of the Party and the rapid renewal of the KNE forces.

The most important problem is that all the effort to assimilate historical and ideological conclusions, theses and elaborations based on developments and new demands is not consistently combined with direct political tasks and activity. This is partly objective, as the conditions in which we act are characterized by slow, tortuous, drawn-out work, because the issues we face in our activity concern the forming of the preconditions for revolutionary rise in the future. On the other hand, however, it expresses a subjective weakness, which we have to face, that is, how to utilize these conclusions to shed light on aspects and issues of the current activity, how to form the criteria for communist work. Fragmentation and standardization are aggravating factors.

In fact, some of the basic elaborations of the Party, such as the four volumes of the History Essay of the KKE 1918-1949, have not been studied–assimilated in an organized way neither by the cadres nor the KKE–KNE  forces, such as university students, the educators and our forces in Culture, who are constantly bombarded with bourgeois ideology due to their position.

The same need certainly applies for our workers' forces as well, although class reflexes provide to some of them, especially those working in the industrial sector, the background for greater resistance to bourgeois ideological manipulation.

This problem is also reflected by the fact that despite all the fundamental work that has been done with publications, articles, seminars and schools, discussions in organs and PBOs, some issues that indicate a non comprehensive knowledge and assimilation of what we have collectively achieved as a Party resurface. For example, the following issues stand out:

-        The understanding of the exploitative relation and especially the contemporary forms of capitalist exploitation, due to the application of new technologies and other methods of work organization. Issues such as surplus value, the average rate of profit, working time, the application of IT, and the effect of teleworking must be an integral part of articles, but also of public interventions, in order to explain the operation of the exploitative capitalist system.

-        Our view on the nature of the economic crisis in capitalism, the alternation of phases of economic crisis and recovery, issues that contribute to the correct understanding and assessment of the various forms of bourgeois management.

-        Our view on socialist construction in the 20^th century, free from its embellishment by the generations that mainly knew it, while the new generations have a completely distorted perception or ignorance. Particularly, our view on the causes of the overthrow of the socialist system in Central and Eastern Europe, China and elsewhere, especially the dissolution of the USSR and the CPSU, as it played a decisive role in the course of socialist construction and the line of the ICM and decisively affected our Party.

-        The understanding of a series of developments in the bourgeois superstructure, both independently as well as from the point of view of their relation with respective changes and trends in the capitalist economy and the social organization and dynamics, such as changes in state mechanisms, the formation of bourgeois parties, legislation, education, and family, having influence on social and interpersonal relationships, the use of leisure time, etc.

-        The difficulty of forming a political line to rally forces in the movement, based on the monitoring of developments per sector, workplace or social problem.