Alavanca: KKE's Merits

Preliminary note: We may have forgotten something. But we want to highlight what the KKE has done best since its leftward turn, its revolutionary turn, in 1991. We want to draw up a list here of what we consider the KKE's legacy for the future, despite having major disagreements with the KKE today. This is a list of principles that, if always followed, would guarantee the Marxist-Leninist path of the KKE or any other Communist Party.

KKE's merits:

1 - Criticism of Popular Fronts.

2 - Criticism of the dissolution of the Communist International in 1943.

3 - Universalism (as we call it), the idea that all countries have more in common politically than differences in particularities. This serves as the basis for the idea of ​​imperialism as a global system and rejects the idea that imperialists are only a few countries. And this also serves as the basis for the idea that there should be a global communist strategy and that there are no national types of socialism or Marxism.

4 - The idea of ​​a Unified International Revolutionary Strategy.

5 - The rejection of phases between capitalism and socialism. This is based on the idea that, in general, the time of bourgeois revolutions had long since ended throughout the world. However, the KKE considers, in theory correctly, that in a case like that of Palestine, the establishment of a new bourgeois State to end foreign occupation is a step forward - there is at least one case where the next step is not a socialist State.

6 - The KKE first advocated a Popular Alliance and then a Social Alliance (we cannot see much difference between the two, except for the change of words, which does not seem to have any special significance). We see this policy of alliances as a return to the concept of soviets and dual power.

7 - The defense of what the bourgeoisie calls "Stalinist purges" and which, in short, is called "revolutionary violence" by Marxist-Leninists. To make it clearer for those who didn't understand, this refers to a policy in military and police terms for combating external and internal enemies during socialism. The KKE stated that the class struggle continues throughout the entire process from socialism to a classless society (communism). This means that the dictatorship of the proletariat is not just words; it literally means what it says. Furthermore, the KKE was very clear in stating that the socialist revolution, as well as the possibility of civil war and combating foreign occupation, require the communist party to build its own military force (army).

8 - The rejection of commodity production in socialism and the rejection of the "law of value" in socialism. Socialism must move towards abolishing commodities and market elements, and the KKE stated that this is what should have been done in the Soviet Union after World War II - mentioning Stalin's ideological battle with pro-market Soviet economists (in the book "Economic Problems of Socialism").

9 - The crucial defense of the KKE's use of legal and illegal party organizations at all times. As a way for the Communist Party to be prepared for both bourgeois democracy and fascism.

10 - The KKE's detailed analysis of opportunism/revisionism and how it develops within Communist Parties, ultimately destroying them. The book "Theoretical issues regarding the programme of KKE", which includes the analysis of opportunism/revisionism and several other essential ideological and strategic issues.

11 - The idea that the value of Communist Parties is not measured primarily by their internal numbers (members, votes, unions, elections, etc.), and that instead, Communist Parties should be valued above all for their revolutionary ideological and strategic character.

12 - The idea that the Communist Party should not outsource theoretical work to the outside world (to bourgeois universities, which are bourgeois whether they are "State" or "private" universities), and that it is crucial that the Communist Party itself relies on its own internal theoretical production to develop and apply Marxism-Leninism.

13 - Aleka Papariga's ideas and criticisms of feminism and the LGBT movement. We would also include the KKE and KNE's position against drugs, as part of what bourgeois intellectuals would call cultural wars. In this case, we emphasize that the Communist Party of Mexico did something better than the KKE by transforming a critique of feminism into a political resolution at the Party congress level. We believe that the KKE should also gather Aleka Papariga's ideas and criticisms on the LGBT movement and transform them into a political resolution at the Party congress level, in order to serve as a strategic reference for the future.

14 - The KKE's analysis of the history of the Soviet Union and the Communist International in the 2008 congress resolution "Theses on Socialism" is a strategic document that no party had done before and paved the way for an entire Marxist-Leninist framework, correcting past mistakes and also defending vital ideas and policies that had been abandoned.

15 - The creation of the "International Meetings of Communist and Workers' Parties," Solidnet, the "International Communist Review," the "European Communist Initiative," European Communist Action, and so on, are part of a general trend to rebuild a Communist International, all at the initiative of the KKE. This path was and is correct, and you just needs to go further and delve deeper. After 1991, it was understandable to have a more open-door policy for any party that called itself communist, because there was a lot of confusion, but over time, and certainly today, it is more important to break ties and openly reject and oppose false communist, revisionist/opportunist parties.

16 - Strategy and tactics. Tactics must always be subordinate to revolutionary strategy. Tactics must be judged by how they contribute to the strategy, that is, to the ultimate goal of the socialist revolution. In this sense, the KKE's rejection of participating in or supporting any kind of bourgeois government in Greece, the KKE's position of rejecting the management of capitalism, should be a universal position that defines which communist parties are true or false and should lead to a break with parties that call themselves communist but manage capitalism.

17 - KKE trade union tactics within the PAME trade union front. The use of strike funds. The role of the unemployed within PAME and the unions in which KKE members are present, in which the unemployed can be members despite not having money to pay dues and have the same rights as an active worker and are elected trade union leaders (this was especially visible during the Troika years). The 9-month strike, which we call a "one big blow" type strike, carried out by the PAME unions at the "Greek Steelworks" (Χαλυβουργία Ελλάδος) company between 2011 and August 2012. This particular strike was supported by strike funds and the entire PAME union movement during the 9 months in which the workers of the "Greek Steelworks" company occupied the factory. The strike was supported by a large PAME and KKE demonstration with a speech by KKE leader Aleka Papariga at the factory gates. The tactic of this type of strike, which we call a "one big blow" strike, is a concentrated attack by an entire labor movement, dozens of unions, against a single capitalist company in order to show the working class of the entire country that it is possible to crush a boss and that workers have power in their struggle to crush a boss. This tactic is reminiscent, in military terms, of what guerrillas do who are unable to defeat a conventional army in a conventional (or trench) war, but who manage to defeat a large detachment of a conventional army at a single point when all the guerrilla forces concentrate against a small part of the conventional army, in a single barracks or military detachment.