On 25 September 2026, the international delegations participating in the 52nd KNE- “Odigitis” Festival visited the KKE headquarters. During their visit, Nikos Ambatielos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE, gave an introductory speech in which he mentioned the following:
«On behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), we welcome you to Greece, to Athens, to the headquarters of the Central Committee, to this meeting of ours in the framework of the 52nd KNE- “Odigitis” Festival.
As you have already seen in the slogan for this year’s Festival, we have borrowed the words of Bertolt Brecht: “General, man has one defect … he can think!”.
It is precisely because people can think that they are able to question and seek solutions beyond the confines of the current system. They can overthrow the power of the exploiters and build a different society: socialism and communism.
Our aim is to convey this message to hundreds of thousands of people, particularly young people, through the festival events that have been taking place since June in towns and villages across the country and are culminating these days at Tritsis Park in Athens, with your own special presence and contribution.
Comrades,
Under the slogan “A powerful KKE, steadfast in every trial, ready to answer history’s call for socialism!”, our Party successfully concluded its 22nd Congress a few months ago. Today we are in a period in which we are stepping up our efforts to align the Party’s actions and functioning with its revolutionary aims, its Programme and Statutes, and the struggle to rally and prepare the forces of the working class and the people for the overthrow of the capitalist system.
Overall, we consider that our Party’s capacity and preparedness concern not only the corresponding strategic and programmatic readiness but also its current organisational policy and action under present-day conditions, in an unbroken unity.
After all, even in a non-revolutionary situation such as the present one, we must carry out revolutionary preparatory work with a long-term perspective.
We are fighting to persuade more and more workers – both men and women, in the private and public sectors – as well as the wider popular strata, to break away once and for all from bourgeois ideology and every variant of it (liberal, social-democratic, etc.), opportunism, and all bourgeois parties, whatever guise they may take; and to consolidate and strengthen, with all their might, the struggles, demands, strike actions, demonstrations and the revolutionary movement. In this effort, we spare no sacrifice, nor do we set limits on our contribution, organising long-term, persistent preparation.
It is crucial to realise exactly what phase we are in now that the first twenty-five years of the twenty-first century have passed.
Thirty-five years after the counter-revolutionary overthrows, the balance of power in the class struggle remains unfavourable on a global scale. At the same time, developments increasingly demonstrate a system that is ageing and decayed, and is now historically obsolete.
Following the counter-revolutionary overthrows of 1989–1991, imperialist staff and bourgeois governments asserted that a new era of peace and prosperity was dawning for the peoples. These proclamations have been utterly disproved.
Currently, there are more than 55 active war zones worldwide, the highest number since the Second World War.
The EU alone is spending more than 800 billion euros on the war economy as part of the “Re-Arm Europe” programme, and all the other bourgeois states are moving in the same direction by drastically increasing their military spending and flooding the 'merchants of death' and arms industries with money at the expense of social needs.
The number of refugees forcibly displaced across the globe has reached 122 million as a result of imperialist wars and intensified capitalist exploitation within countries.
It is confirmed that capitalism can now only offer wars, economic crises, poverty and displacement.
Rather than being used to meet social needs, new technological advances in the hands of capitalists serve to increase the profits of the few, intensify exploitation and suppress and manipulate the working class.
The slowdown in the global economy in recent years highlights the large amount of over-accumulated capital, which cannot be recapitalised at a satisfactory rate of profit. The signs of a new international capitalist economic crisis once again demonstrate its reccuring nature within the normal functioning of the capitalist economy. This is not an aberration; it lies at the very heart of how the capitalist system operates.
Throughout this entire period, it has become clear that no proposal for bourgeois management, whether Keynesian or neoliberal, expansionary or contractionary fiscal and monetary policy, can abolish the cycle of capitalist economic crisis, the uneven capitalist production, the simultaneous creation of wealth and poverty, that is, the contradiction between the social character of production and the capitalist appropriation of its results, which constitutes the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production.
In this context, the shift towards a war economy and preparations for a large-scale imperialist war are being promoted; on the one hand, this provides an outlet for capital that lies stagnant, while on the other it serves a dual purpose: the redistribution of markets, transport routes and investment in the ruins of war-torn areas. This strategy is accompanied by reduced social spending, and intensified authoritarianism and repression.
All of these developments confirm that the only progressive way out today is a revolutionary transition to socialism - communism. This requires strict compliance with the laws governing the socialist revolution and the construction of the new society. It also requires the smashing of the bourgeois state, the socialisation of the means of production, and central scientific planning, which are all irreplaceable tools in the hands of workers' power.
The widespread counter-revolutionary overthrows of the last 30 years do not change the nature of our era. We are living in an era in which the transition from capitalism to socialism is a necessity, since the material pre-conditions for the socialist organisation of production and society are mature. Despite this, a lack of readiness on the part of the subjective factor has been observed in many cases; this factor was and remains entrapped to a significant extent.
The character of the revolution is not determined by the balance of forces. In the era of imperialism, the revolution will be socialist. The strategy of intermediate and transitional stages, as well as bourgeois conceptions of socialism that equate it with Keynesian policies of a “mixed economy” or multiple forms of ownership—such as state-owned, capitalist, small-scale commercial, etc.— have become the vehicle of the counter-revolution over the last 35 years, perpetuating the dominance of monopolies and the exploitation of man by man.
We would particularly like to highlight the following: 80 years after the end of the Second Imperialist World War, the danger of a full-scale imperialist Third World War is drawing ever closer.
Uneven development, as an absolute law of capitalism, is driving shifts in the balance of power between capitalist states and imperialist alliances, intra-imperialist rivalries are intensifying, imperialist axes are being shaken and reshaped, and contradictions within capitalist states are becoming more acute.
The principal factor fuelling and intensifying imperialist competition and conflicts at the international level is the decline of US economic power alongside China’s rise, as well as the growing contradictions both among NATO and EU member states and within them. Opposing the Euro-Atlantic alliance as it has developed to date is the Eurasian alliance under formation, with China, poised to assume the leading position in the international capitalist economy, and Russia, which remains the second most powerful military force
Fierce imperialist competition for the control of markets, wealth-producing sources and energy and commodity transport routes is evident everywhere. This competition has sparked two imperialist wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, with fronts that tend to converge, in which many of the world’s capitalist states are involved in one way or another.
The new US National Security Strategy reflects and adapts the immediate priorities of American imperialism; it highlights the objectives and dangerous plans being implemented by American monopolies on the American continent, in the arena of the great confrontation with China.
Against the backdrop of the long-standing imperialist blockade of Cuba, the Trump administration has introduced a series of new measures in an attempt to suffocate the Cuban people, particularly through the energy blockade it has imposed.
Furthermore, a few months ago, Venezuela became the target of a US military imperialist intervention, aimed at facilitating the penetration of American economic groups, with the complicity of part of the state apparatus and key figures within the social-democratic government, as recent developments have shown.
In the Middle East, the US promoting its plan to reshape the region in its own interests, and to establish Israel as a key “player”. The Palestinian people are being sacrificed for the benefit of imperialist plans for a “New Middle East” and the new Indian trade route, IMEC, which is intended to counter the Chinese “Silk Road”. Following the razing of Gaza and amidst the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, the US and Israel are pushing ahead with a plan to turn the Gaza Strip into a protectorate.
The promotion of the monopolistic interests of the US, Israel and the EU is the motive behind the military imperialist offensive launched on 28 February 2026 against Iran, a major capitalist country, which is aligning itself with the emerging Eurasian bloc. The military attack by the US and Israel against Iran, which has the Iranian people as its victims, serves the US “living space” strategy, aimed at maintaining its leading position in the global imperialist system, with serious consequences for the capitalist market in the production and transport of oil and natural gas (particularly through the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz), for which the peoples are paying dearly. So far, the US imperialists, together with Israel, have not achieved their stated objectives; the Iranian people are resisting, while a dangerous military escalation is underway amidst the talks.
In practice, it is becoming clear that ceasefires and settlements within the framework of imperialist “peace” – with a gun to the peoples’ heads – are fragile and temporary, paving the way for new phases of imperialist wars.
The KKE, together with dozens of other Communist Parties, has highlighted the imperialist nature of the war in Ukraine on both sides of the conflict. It noted that the people of Ukraine are paying the price for the rivalries and interventions of NATO and the EU – which support the Zelenskyy government – with capitalist Russia. It highlighted the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes of all the forces involved, rejecting their pretexts and refuting the anti-communist and anti-Soviet distortion of history to which both sides are indulging. It emphasised the necessity of the peoples’ joint struggle and criticised Greece’s multifaceted involvement in the war, for which the New Democracy government and all the bourgeois parties are responsible, as they support the strategy of upgrading the position of the Greek bourgeoisie and defend NATO and the EU.
European states within the Euro-Atlantic alliance have formed the so-called “Alliance of the Willing”, in an attempt to get a share of the spoils, to intervene on behalf of their own monopolies, and to participate in “security guarantees”; the debate on the EU’s “strategic autonomy” is intensifying, and hundreds of billions of euros are being channelled into the arms industry.
In these circumstances, capitalists and the bourgeois political parties are exploiting far-right, fascist forces as a “bogeyman” to bolster the so-called “superiority” of bourgeois democracy, which has crushed workers’ and people’s rights under all liberal and social-democratic governments. Indeed, amidst preparations for war, such forces are even more useful to the system in sowing the poison of racism and nationalism amongst workers and the people, so that the main culprit remains intact: the dominant anti-popular policy, the EU of capital and war, the capitalist system itself. Only a revitalised workers’ and people’s movement, the class struggle, and the fight against the causes that fuel these reactionary currents can provide a response to the far right, as well as to the usual, bankrupt, fake polarities that are being set up.
All bourgeois classes are taking sides in this bloodbath to promote their own interests. The Greek bourgeoisie has involved our country in the war, making it both a perpetrator of attacks on other peoples and a target of reprisals; at the same time, its aims are in direct conflict with those of the Turkish bourgeoisie. Agreements and alliances are being reshuffled, a prime example being the ‘Mecca Agreement’ between Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the conflict-ridden Middle East. This new agreement also entails a further intensification of tensions, given the rivalry between Israel and Turkey, the claims of the Turkey’s bourgeoisie in the Aegean and the negative developments looming on the Cyprus issue.
The KKE has defined its position and orientation of action regarding the imperialist war in its programme. We will not be placed under a false flag, but the Party will lead the workers’ and popular struggle in all its forms, so that the people, united in a workers’ and people’s front, may secure freedom and a way out of the capitalist system, which, as long as it prevails, brings war and “peace” with a gun to the peoples’ head. This strategic direction places great demands on the Party; it is linked to the overall enhancement of the Party’s ideological and political capacity to live up to its revolutionary character in all circumstances. It requires decisive and well-founded intervention in the ideological and political struggle that is unfolding and will intensify in the coming period.
The working class and its allied popular forces have no interest in aligning themselves with one imperialist camp or another, nor in choosing between one camp of thieves and another. The central task for the working class in our country, as well as for the other allied popular strata, is not to be ensnared by various pretexts and illusions associated with the imperialist camp, namely the EU–NATO camp in which the Greek bourgeois state participates. Rather, it is to break free from imperialist plans, to foster scepticism and distrust towards the bourgeois government and the state, and to struggle for disengagement from NATO, the EU, and all imperialist alliances and and to reinforce the understanding that there are no common national interests between workers and capitalists, even in times of war.
The joint statement by the KKE and the TKP is of great significance; it states, in particular:
“...These rivalries have nothing to do with the working class and the peoples of Greece and Turkey! Theworkers are not in the same boat with capital!!
The Communist Parties of Greece and Turkey are addressing the working class and other sections of the people, because now is the time to strengthen the joint struggle of the two peoples against the plans of the bourgeoisie and imperialist alliances.
The Communist Parties of Greece and Turkey appeal to the working class and other popular strata, for it is now essential to strengthen the joint struggle of the two peoples against the plans of the bourgeoisie and the imperialist alliances.
We demand that the will of the two neighbouring peoples be respected – their desire and demand to live in peace – and through their joint struggle they can become leading forces, paving the way for the overthrow of the system of exploitation and war, and for a new socialist society.”
With this statement in hand, thousands of members of the KKE and the KNE are currently carrying out a broad informational campaign in major workplaces, in working-class neighbourhoods and amongst the youth, to highlight the way forward and the common struggle of the two Communist Parties.
No sacrifices for the capitalists’ profits and wars. Under this slogan, tens of thousands marched in the rally organised by the Labour Centres, trade unions, federations, farmers’ organisations and other mass organisations two weeks ago in Thessaloniki.
In this vein, the new international day of action by dockworkers is also gaining momentum, spreading to and exceeding 45 ports, with the active participation of communist dockworkers at the port of Piraeus, which may spread to other workplaces.
And so we shall continue; we shall devote all our strength to ensuring that, in a world ablaze, the avant-guard, independent struggle of the working class and the people – with the KKE at the forefront – is victorious.
