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THE COURSE OF PARTY BUILDING HAS BEEN PROVEN TO BE A VERY DIFFICULT TASK

47. Over these years, we have managed to come into contact with workers from dozens of industrial and other enterprises, per region and per sector. These are fields where we struggle with persistence and planning to build PBOs and BOs. An attempt was made for the leading organs and all party forces, regardless of their area of work and responsibility, to roll up their sleeves and struggle in this direction by assigning more forces, deploying forces where needed, receiving specific and substantial assistance from the CC and the other leading organs, utilizing Party supporters and taking other measures as well.

However, there has not always been a comprehensive commitment to this goal in order to  achieve tangible and concrete results. We need to assess that the leading organs and PBOs did not respond consistently and adequately to this central task in all cases.

Undoubtedly, the Party’s strengthening and the systematic monitoring of its course constitute a  permanent task for a revolutionary, workers', communist party.

 

48. In the period until the 22nd Congress, remains the task of renewing Party forces, expanding them based on class criteria, developing the KNE and, above all, ensuring the communist steeling of the members and cadres of the Party and KNE. A precondition for this task is the deep and extensive strengthening of the ideological element in the internal operation of the Party and KNE from the higher leading organs to the PBOs and the BOs of KNE; the ideological and political ties of the PBOs and the BOs of KNE with their circle of influence and their fellow militants in the various movements and fronts of struggle.

This is a very complex —and therefore difficult to accomplish— task that is hindered by old and new barriers such as:

- The very old contradiction between intellectual and manual labour, but also the new difficulties arising from the wide application of IT regarding rapid and condensed information, the addiction to which limits education, the ability to study, and the development of critical thinking and corresponding activity.

- The deterioration and instability of working hours. Teleworking.

- The reduction of the support provided to new parents by grandparents due to the increase in  the retirement age, in combination with the increasing number of working women. This problem  is exacerbated by the inadequate and degraded social support system that makes the care of children, the elderly, and the disabled an individual–family matter.

- The planned work of the employers’ and state mechanism to hinder the workers and the youth from coming into contact with the ideology and policy of the KKE as well as the activity of the labour–popular movement.

 

49. A necessary precondition for the strengthening of the Party is the expansion of its organized forces in mass workplaces and all sectors of wage labour, as well as among the urban and rural self-employed. During the period of the Party’s centenary celebration, we managed to make up for the losses incurred in previous years and achieve a relative increase in our forces. This positive change, which does not reflect our full potential, took place at a time of intense political developments, pressures and delusions that were widely cultivated in the popular forces in combination with defeatism. However, the small steps taken in the organizational development of the Party, the improvement of its composition in terms of the percentage of workers, the overall Party building in factories, large enterprises, and hospitals, do not correspond to the importance they have for the regroupment of the labour movement, especially in current conditions of the movement’s retreat and the pressure exerted to integrate large sections of the working class.

Despite a better orientation that most of the Regional Party Organizations seem to have attained towards the particular goal of developing the Party in the industrial sector and sectors of strategic importance, the steps taken and the achieved results are still limited. We have established contact with workers in more workplaces, but a combined and targeted work, as well as the utilization of these contacts with a joint intervention plan of the Party groups in trade unions and the forces of sectoral and area-based PBOs, has not been established everywhere. Better preconditions for Party intervention and development were created where we carefully examined each field; ensured a planned political opening, an ideological discussion, an elaboration of a framework of struggle to support the intervention; renewed our ties with the workers; worked in a multifaceted way by utilizing reserves and not recycling the same type of work. It was proved that without a systematic ideological and multifaceted work, which is a necessary infrastructure, no substantial steps can be taken in Party building.

There is a large number of Party and KNE members who, all these years, conduct a vanguard struggle in the workplaces under difficult conditions, utilizing the historical legacy of the Party. This militant political and trade union vanguard can be expanded and help ensure that the preconditions that have been created in hundreds of workplaces produce more concrete results for Party building.

Our sectoral PBOs need to have better orientation in order to form an infrastructure for building PBOs; first and foremost where we already have certain forces or even active supporters and the number of workers is considered favourable. The planning for Party building should be more specifically elaborated at the level of an enterprise, monopoly unit, hospital, and in each specific workplace, where the existing infrastructure can be developed into a cell consisting of a sufficient number of members to create a PBO. This requires a more concrete and persistent work in the orientation of the leading organs, the PBOs, and all the forces, providing assistance and support to the comrades who work in these enterprises. We seek to create preconditions by forming Party cells, aiming to create sections in sectoral or enterprise-based PBOs whose political guidance is particularly demanding, so that the discussion on the prevailing situation in the workplace as well as the specific political and organizational measures required become more substantial and concrete. At the same time, attention must be paid in order not to limit the enterprise-based PBO into its own microcosm, however important it may be, as this could lead to a certain narrowness, a limited horizon of discussion and activity, and possibly work confined within the framework of trade union struggle. Therefore, the leading organs need to ensure that the operation and activity of the PBOs are enriched with the general developments in the sector, area, and region, based on our theory, the historical conclusions, and the ideological superiority of our positions.

Sectoral PBOs with Party members in different workplaces should not be limited to a general discussion and targeting on the sector but should focus on the specific and main areas of their responsibility. They should be concerned about the struggle conducted in those areas, the activity of other forces, and the political guidance of Party cells in enterprises, aiming at building PBOs. They need to create infrastructure and be timely oriented towards the factors that play an important role in the sector, business group, and enterprise. The PBOs should be formed based on where the production and the main mass of the workers are mostly concentrated. Their composition needs to facilitate the implementation of activity, taking into account all the parameters such as distances, shifts, etc.

The area of responsibility must be set in clear terms when determining the composition of the sectoral PBOs. We should not perfunctorily convey the experience of large urban centres, where distances and areas are smaller, to more peripheral and remote regions, as this leads to fragmentation of forces and ineffectiveness. We need to avoid forming PBOs that cover many sectors —even if it is temporarily necessary due to the existing forces— and set goals for a better deployment of forces.

The sectoral and area-based PBOs need to ensure that the necessity and organization of their activity for the social alliance is put across in a practical way.

We focus our attention on industrial sectors; on enterprises active in the energy, metal, food, pharmaceutical, chemical industry, transport, construction, IT, and telecommunications sector; on the big shopping and hotel centres, the hospitality industry, hospitals, places of education (schools - universities), banks, and Local Authorities.

Experience shows that the building of PBOs, especially in large monopoly groups,  factories, and enterprises, necessitates the assignment of appropriate cadres and a staff that will plan, organize and monitor the course of the whole effort.