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Message of the CC of the KKE on Workers’ May Day

This year’s Workers’ May Day finds the working class of our country and all over the world in the middle of a pandemic. The working people, the poor popular strata are once again the great victims of this “healthcare” crisis that functions as a catalyst for a new deep capitalist economic crisis, but also for the promotion of plans and demands from big capital and its political representatives.

The collapse of the public healthcare system, even in the apex of capitalism, the USA, despite the heroism of healthcare workers there, the intensification of labor and the lack of even the most basic protection measures with risks to the lives and the health of the working people, unemployment, the testing out of new, more advanced forms of exploitation, such as telework, are just a few of the daily images that reveal the decay and the historical bankruptcy of capitalism.

At the same moment, the quest for profits and competitions around it undermine the existing capabilities of science and research that could provide a faster way out of today's pandemic and to satisfy contemporary needs. The “global war” between the capitalist states and the giant corporations over the patent for the new vaccination, the therapies and the vital healthcare supplies, confirm what most people all over the world comprehend and shout out “Capitalism is the real virus”. All of this brings closer the necessity of the socialization of the means of production, of distribution, of services, of scientific central planning, of Socialism.

The teachings from the History of the labor movement in our country and all over the world are more relevant than ever today. Whatever the working class gained, it won it through tough battles, through a clash with capital and its power, overturning the correlation of forces that may have seemed indestructible.

Above all, History has proven that the working class, the most vanguard force of society, can, in alliance with the oppressed popular forces, overthrow the power of capital, to build a new society that will have as its focal point the satisfaction of expanding popular needs.

The experience of socialist construction in the 20th century, although it concerned countries with absolute and relative – in comparison with today’s scientific and technological standards – conditions of great delay, demonstrate the superiority of socialism in the protection of health, insurance, work, extensive social protection. The overthrow of socialism and the global retreat of the labor movement neither vindicate the capitalism barbarism we live in, nor do they halt wheel of History that despite the difficulties and the obstacles, always moves forward.  

 This barbarism is not vindicated by individual measures to mitigate its consequences, by the attempts at covering up what its governments do, its parties, the international imperialist alliances, in total, all the forces that defend and serve this unjust exploitative system.

They deify “individual responsibility” in order to cover up the vast state deficiencies, mainly in the public Health systems.

They attempt to put a silencer on the workers, with the pretext of the pandemic and a false “national solidarity”.

They seek to subjugate workers to the aims of capital, with the false argument that ‘we are all in the same boat.”

They develop measures for direct economic state intervention – with investments and funding, even the nationalization of huge bankrupt companies – in order to boost capitalist incentive and profit-making However, the workers will pay for all of this through new harsh measures and memorandum in the name of “emergency conditions”.

They evoke the myth of “European solidarity” to hide the fact that the EU, the Eurozone, is by its very nature an alliance of competing nations and economies, which especially in times of crisis “show their teeth”, both amongst themselves but above all,  against the people.

Both the ND government and SYRIZA as well as the other bourgeois parties of our country are moving in this line preparing for the next day, which for working people will be painful if they do not stand up more decisively, in a mass way and militantly , if they do not go on the counter-attack.

No illusions, no deceptions are allowed for employees,  pensioners, the self-employed of the city and the countryside. NO change in the mix between fiscal and monetary policies, no new “Marshall Plan”, no digital modernization of state services will constitute a “progressive reform” of capitalism, it does not absolve it of its giant deadlocks and the upcoming crisis, as occurred in 2009. From the new large-scale economic crisis, the working people will not emerge victoriously.

For this reason, a workers’ counter-attack, the alliance of the working class with the other popular forces does not remain “on ice”.

We remain strong under pandemic conditions.

We fight for the protection of the health of the people, for Education, labor, Culture, tackling the refugee problem, the defense of labor and and wider trade union rights and civil liberties, by repealing any laws restricting trade union and political action, the intensifying of repression.

We strengthen the struggle for those who are responsible to pay, the capitalists, with an increase in their taxes, with the abolition of tax-exemptions for capital, a crackdown on obscene  profiteering.

We step up the fight for the abolition of all the older memorandum laws and the recent anti-people measures.

With the demand for a statute of limitations on the state debt that was not created by the people who are paying for it dearly and continually all these years.

With the withdrawal from the program and the dangerous plans of NATO, that as a country we pay for with 4 billion euros every year. With the total and liberating for the people clash with and disengagement from the imperialist alliances of NATO and the EU.

The only path for the working people to not pay for the crisis is the road of struggle and workers’ power.

The coronavirus will be cured and the pandemic will end, just as others did in the past. Capitalism, however, is incurable and will continue to torture humankind, with poverty, unemployment, wars, the destruction of the environment, until the peoples decide to lead the way in the developments.

Today’s system can only be overthrown and replaced by a superior social system, socialism – communism, where social ownership of the means of production with workers’ power, scientific central planning for the satisfaction of people’s needs, workers’ control of all the administrative organs and participation in all the organs of power, from the bottom to the top, can lead to prosperity for the people, to peace and the progress of humankind.

Workers’ May Day symbolizes the invincible battle against the class enemy. This is the precious legacy of our time.  With this weapon in our hands and in our thoughts, we honor Workers’ May Day, the dead workers of Chicago in 1886, the tobacco workers of Thessaloniki  in ‘36, the 200 executed communists in Kaisariani May 1st 1944, all those who remain unflinching in the class struggle, all those who were sacrificed for a society without exploitation of man by man.

We continue on this path, for the satisfaction of all of the modern social – popular needs.

 

PROLETARIAT OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!

 

                                                                               

 Athens 25/ 4/ 2020