Interview of Elisseos Vagenas, member of the CC of the KKE and responsible for the International Relations Section of the CC, with the newspaper “Riktpunkt”, organ of the CP of Sweden
Riktpunkt: What is the final election result for KKE?
KKE: Initially let us say a few words about the political scene and the forces that contested these elections. 43 parties and 1,299 candidates took part in the EU parliamentary elections for the 21 seats that Greece has in the EU parliament (1 less that in the 2009 elections). 59.9% of the electorate took part in the elections and an atmosphere of polarization between the two new bourgeois poles was formed. On the one hand, ND sought votes so that, as it claimed, “There will be no instability and derailment from the way out of the crisis”. On the other hand, the new social-democracy, SYRIZA, sought the transformation of the elections into a “referendum”, so that it could demonstrate a significant increase and outstrip the dynamism of the governing parties. With the slogan “we vote on the 25th so that they leave on the 26th”, SYRIZA set as its goal victory in the EU parliamentary elections so that the government would resign and call early parliamentary elections.
In these difficult political conditions, when the bourgeois parties promoted false dilemmas for the workers, the KKE achieved an increase (+1.6%), in relation to the elections of 2012 and received 347, 467 votes or 6.1% of the votes (+70,000 votes).
The conservative ND received 22.7% (– 7%) and the social-democratic PASOK, which participated in the elections with the “Olive Tree” coalition 8% (– 4%). The “Democratic Left”, which for a period participated in the government with ND and PASOK, was crushed receiving 1.2% (-5%).
The rightwing party “Independent Greeks”, which has not undertaken any governmental responsibility, lost 4%, gathering 3.46%. A part of the losses of these parties went to the new formation “THE RIVER”, which emerged with vague and muddy slogans and received 6.5%, while another part went to the Nazi Golden Dawn which maintains a high percentage reaching 9.4%.
SYRIZA received 26.58% and emerged as the first party. SYRIZA is trying to replace the main social democratic party, PASOK, which is now in quite a weakened state. However, it also had losses in relation to the elections in 2012 (around 150,000 votes). It did not manage to exceed the percentage of 2012 (26.9%).
The other 34 parties that participated in the elections did not pass the electoral threshold of 3% and did not elect MEPS; in total they received around 17% of the votes.
The KKE re-elects 2 MEPs. This result acquires particular significance because the political line of the KKE is a line of conflict against the capitalist development path and the imperialist EU, the bourgeois class and the parties that serve its interests. The KKE put forward the framework that corresponds to the people’s interests: disengagement from the EU and unilateral cancellation of the debt, with workers’-people’s power and the socialization of the concentrated means of production. This framework was attacked by every means at the disposal of the bourgeois and opportunist parties, the mechanisms of the bourgeois state. However, it has laid foundations for the increase of the people’s demands, for the understanding of the class character of the exploitative system and the imperialist predatory alliance.
In addition, the KKE achieved notable results in the municipal and regional elections which were held in the same period. It had an increase in the country’s 13 regions, receiving 8.8% and 498,573 votes. It increased its votes in 214 municipalities. In 50 municipalities its percentage exceeded 10%. In addition, in 4 municipalities it won the mayoralty and the majority in the municipal council: in the municipality of Patras (3rd biggest city), in the municipality of the island of Ikaria and in two municipalities in Athens, Petroupolis and Haidari.
Furthermore, the KKE elected 31 councilors in the regions and more than 400 councilors in the municipalities without taking into account the councilors elected in the district councils.
Riktpunkt : What are the main reasons for the success in the election?
KKE: Thousands of members and friends of the party and KNE, people who cooperate with the party fought in the battle of elections. They joined forces with it and contributed to the strengthening of the KKE. This positive result would have been impossible without this massive mobilization which can be translated into thousands of rallies, meetings and other activities during the election period.
In addition, we should note that today a part of the working people see more clearly than in 2012 why the KKE rejected the possibility of forming a “left government” comprising of SYRIZA and KKE to manage the power of the monopolies today.
The assessment of the KKE is that the participation of Communist Parties in governments of bourgeois management has not contributed to the satisfaction of people’s needs. On the contrary it has been utilized for the imposition of anti-people measures. These parties have been assimilated to the system; indeed they have supported military interventions.
I would like us to bear in mind that the partners of SYRIZA in Italy and France were part of the governments of the centre-left when, precisely 15 years ago, NATO was slaughtering the people of Yugoslavia and these countries had been transformed into a launching pad for the NATO bombers …
There are recent examples from France and Italy. The example of Cyprus, with the participation of AKEL in the government, is more recent and characteristic of the utopia that the crisis can be halted in that way or that it can be managed in favour of the people. And this fact holds true irrespective of one’s good intentions.
The results can be dramatic. Capitalism is no laughing matter; you will either fight against it in order to overthrow it or it will absorb you.
This experience highlights the importance of the decision of the KKE not to become accomplice with its participation in a government to manage the interests of capital. This time this experience has been useful, given the development of the capitalist crisis in Cyprus and the deflation of the illusions regarding Hollande in France.
Of course the KKE does not refuse to take on governmental responsibilities. Yet it stays firm to its principles; it fights against the rationale of saviours from above; it believes that the people have the strength to fight for the people’s power. In these conditions our party will undertake its responsibilities in the governance of the country along with the working class and the popular strata.
Riktpunkt : How has KKE been working before the election?
KKE: The daily, stable work of the communists regarding every problem of the people had preceded the elections. This ranged from struggles regarding the price the farmers are forced to sell their oranges to the resistance against the selling off of energy units of the state electricity company. From the organization of the struggle against unpaid labour time in large companies to the need to take measures to relieve the unemployed, from the struggle against the downgrading of public health services to the opposition to the disastrous restructuring in the agricultural and livestock sectors promoted by the EU-anti-people governments. From the three-hour, four-hour shifts and the flexible labour relations as a whole that are expanding to the continuing closures imposed on the self-employed. From the uncertainty that the new generation experiences who see their future being destroyed to the reductions of the income of the pensioners. The KKE was in the frontline of the struggle concerning these things and many others. The KKE, the communists are struggling so that no one is left isolated in the crisis, to strengthen the people’s solidarity regarding the home, the electricity, food, education. The KKE devotes its forces to strengthen the People’s Alliance, which today, in its initial stage, is expressed by the joint struggle of PAME in the labour movement, PASY that rallies the poor and medium sized farmers, PASEVE that rallies the self-employed, MAS in the student movement, OGE that rallies women from the families of the popular strata. These forces by intervening on every problem provide provides a perspective. At the same time, the KKE maintains a steady compass for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity. It exposes the futile efforts of all the parties to humanize the EU, to turn the wolf into a lamb. It promotes the only pro-people solution: disengagement from the EU and NATO, with the workers’-people’s power and socialization of the means of production, which will allow the central planning of the economy and the utilization of the productive potential for the satisfaction of the contemporary needs of the people.
A significant section of the workers, a more numerous section than those that vote for us, appreciate the activity of the communists, as well as the unwavering stance of the KKE, its clear ideological-political consistency. A section of this positive evaluation was expressed in the elections.
Finally, the fact that the KKE waged the struggle in a unified way all over the country against the anti-people policies contributed to the positive result. This unified struggle was related to the anti-people policies that came from the municipal, regional councils, as well as against those from the EU parliament or the EU. We called on the people to support the KKE everywhere, so that there can be a strong worker’s opposition, regardless of what government exists.
Riktpunkt : Why does KKE participate in the election of the European Parliament?
KKE: The KKE participates in the EU parliamentary elections for precisely the same reasons that it participates in the national-parliamentary elections. Lenin, generalizing the experience of the October Revolution in 1917, as well as in 1905, formulated revolutionary tactics of the party as regards the bourgeois parliament. The participation of the party in bourgeois elections and its presence in the parliament must serve its extra-parliamentary activity, its strategy: “that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class.”[1]
We do not believe as a party that capitalism can be changed and that the new communist-socialist society will be constructed through the bourgeois parliament, the bourgeois elections, through the formation of “left governments”. Indeed, through our study of the history of the party and the international communist movement we have come to certain conclusions and we criticize the strategy that prevailed in the international communist movement after the 2nd World War, about a “peaceful path to socialism”, as well as so-called ‘Euro-communism”, which sowed a plethora of illusions that capitalism can be transformed into socialism via elections, the bourgeois institutions and the improvement of the bourgeois constitutions and laws. We abandoned this view and the viewpoint of stages to socialism in 1996. We consider that the revolution in Greece will be socialist. In our programme, we describe basic aspects of the tasks of the party for the preparation of the subjective factor for the prospect of the socialist revolution, even if the specific time of its manifestation is determined by objective preconditions, the revolutionary situation.
In brief we can say that we are struggling for the formation of the People’s Alliance, which will unite the working class, the urban and rural petty bourgeois strata in an anti-monopoly-anti-capitalist direction and in conditions of a revolutionary situation will be transformed into a revolutionary workers’-people’s front that will undertake the construction of the new society.
All the activity and the parliamentary work in the national parliament and the EU parliament must serve our strategic goal. The focus must be on the factories, the workplaces with very kind of intervention in order to organize the struggle of the workers.
Specifically, our participation in the EU parliament assists the KKE:
A) to have a clear picture of the anti-people measures that are decided on by this imperialist centre. The overwhelming majority of the laws and measures are now presented in the EU parliament and afterwards are sent to the national parliaments.
B) To help the party, the class oriented labour movement, and the other anti-monopoly-anti-capitalist rallies in a timely fashion to organize the workers’ struggle against the anti-people measures of the EU and the bourgeois governments.
C) The participation in the EU parliamentary elections provides the ability to promoting its positions in a detailed way on all issues to the workers, to cast light on the causes of the capitalist crisis, to expose the anti-people character of the EU, to come into conflict with bourgeois and opportunist views etc.
D) The participation in the EU parliament is a platform for intervention, the enlightenment of the workers and the promotion of the positions of the KKE.
E) It provides additional means (political, financial) that are utilized by our party for the coordination of the activity of the activity of the communist and workers’ parties of the EU that are in rupture with the EU, do not participate in the so-called “European parties” established by the EU, but participate in a new form of regional cooperation, the ‘European Communist Initiative”.
The KKE until recently participated in the group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL). However, after the abolition of its confederal character by the so-called “European Left Party” and because today the conditions do not exist for the creation of a communist group in the EU parliament, we decided that the MEPs of the KKE would not join any parliamentary group, as all the existing groups now have the prettification of and support for the EU as their main political line. For more on this issue you can refer to the recent statement of the CC of our party.
Riktpunkt: Can the communists in parliament change the European Union?
KKE: Clearly they can not! In the same way that they can not change their countries by participating in the national bourgeois parliaments! We have already explained why we participate, however, respecting the stance by certain other CPs on this issue, allow us to also note the following:
The goal of the participation of the communists in bourgeois elections and in bourgeois parliaments is their utilization for the needs of propaganda and political work against the power of capital, the governments and its political parties, as well as against the opportunist parties.
The participation of communists in parliaments should not foster illusions about their role, but on the contrary to expose them as organs of capital’s power. This is what the KKE does in the case of the EU parliament was well. In any case the KKE is the only strong political party in Greece that openly exposes the reactionary character of the EU and supports disengagement from the EU and every form of imperialist alliance.
At the same time we assess that abstention, without underestimating its political basis as a trend and choice, above all impedes the recovery and revival of the movement that today is needed more than ever. We do not doubt that a section of the people who do not vote consider that in this way they express their discontent towards the EU and the domestic political establishment. However, we assess that abstention leads the workers either to passivity or on the other hand to the ideological-political embrace of bourgeois, opportunist and even nationalist and fascist forces.
If abstention could impede the taking of anti-people measures, then the 55-60% abstention in the EU parliamentary elections in recent years would have blocked the EU from increasing the age of retirement for men to 70 and for women 65, from murdering the peoples of Africa, from carrying out interventions and massacres, as is happening now in Ukraine.
We assess that not only is abstention not necessary, can not provide results, but there needs to be much more activity. Abstention, even though the bourgeois parties say that it “troubles” them, is not going to change their minds, is not going to change their political line.
There needs to be more organization and more combativeness in the workplaces, in the sectors, in the offices, in the companies, in the streets, in the struggle of all the workers, farmers, self-employed, educational institutions, workplaces where the youth is found. And the parliamentary forms of activity, such as the participation in the EU parliamentary elections and EU parliament, must be utilized in this direction.
Riktpunkt: Something you want to add?
KKE: Reality demonstrates that the EU, the European imperialist centre, has never served the wellbeing of working people. It has always been the tool of the European big capital to increase its profits and to secure its rule.
It cannot be radically changed and cannot become “pro-people”. The expectations being fostered for a change in favour of the peoples through a change of the president of the Commission are fraudulent.
It is in the interests of the peoples to struggle to change the situation, to change the correlation of forces, for the Europe of socialism, which will safeguard the right to work, social and social-security rights, income, the future of the workers.
Our parties are defending, the interests of the working class. We are struggling against the anti-people measures being imposed by the governments and the European Union for the reduction of salaries and pensions, the abolition of labour, social-security rights, the commercialization of health, education, welfare, the destruction of the environment, the abolition of democratic rights and freedoms. We are fighting against the EU, which is attempting to overcome the crisis at the expense of the peoples. We condemn anti-communism, repression, the restriction of sovereign rights.
The communist and workers’ parties that fight against the EU and the capitalist path of development must coordinate and develop even further our activity for a Europe with prosperity for the people, with peace, social justice and democratic rights, for a Europe of socialism!
[1] V.I. Lenin. ”Left-wing Communism, an infantile disorder”.