Every Communist Party which remains fixed on its mission and resolutely focussed on its central task to prepare and organise the working class and to guide its struggle for the fulfilment of its historic mission, is obliged to guide the working class on the basis of the fundamental principle of scientific socialism: “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”.
It is obliged to unrelentingly and consistently defend this principled position from every form of undermining. It must defend this by struggling continuously for the continual correlation between theory and practice.
The history of the revolutionary and labour movements teaches us that neither willpower nor declarations are sufficient to safeguard and secure a revolutionary struggle-line and the existence of the party as a revolutionary vanguard.
There is a necessity not only for secure theoretical foundations but also for the continuous enrichment of theory through the study of the developments, with a heightened class criterion, the study of the strategy of the opponent, the generalization of experience, as well as the open ideological front against every revisionist attempt. Ideological struggle should reach the level of an open break with the current of revisionism and opportunism within its ranks.
Without the break with the leaders of the 2nd International, Bolshevism would not have been victorious in the Russian labour movement nor would the October Revolution have triumphed. Today, without the defeat of opportunism in the communist movement of every country and at an international level, there can be neither regroupment nor the creation of the conditions for victory. The labour movement will be condemned to act as the tail of the bourgeois class in every country.
The KKE has a wealth of experience. It has paid a high price for retreats concerning matters of principle, the neglect of its theoretical training and level. Many efforts and tough battles were needed to heal the wounds, to restore its communist character and to elaborate its strategy in the contemporary conditions.
The experience of the KKE, as well as of other parties, which have a consistent stance in relation to Marxist-Leninist theory and proletarian internationalism, is not a national peculiarity or specificity.
No party can, for example, lend dynamism and perspective to the class struggle, where the central issue is the struggle for power, if it does not have clear views on the working class, its role, its development, the complex process for the development of class consciousness and its movement and finally the preconditions which are necessary for the fulfilment of its historic mission.
Maybe its is not true, that certain parties especially in developed capitalist countries lost their bearings, their proletarian and revolutionary character, because they adopted bourgeois anti-scientific theories concerning the working class and its role? Theories and practices which questioned or even denied its vanguard social role? The line of diffusing the labour movement into various social forums proved to be very damaging.
It is also true that the working class has developed not only quantitatively but qualitatively, as the basic productive force. The operation of the law of expanded capitalist reproduction and accumulation objectively creates the material conditions for the numerical development and concentration of the working class. The expanded reproduction of the labour force is an integral part of the overall movement of capital. The changes in the sectors of the economy, the internal immigration from the countryside to the urban centres through the destruction of thousands of farms, the closure of small and medium businesses, immigration, and the natural increase of the population are the basic factors which feed the expanded reproduction of labour power. In the final analysis the capitalist mode of production reproduces the working class on an even larger scale- the class which owns no means of production while it is the source of profitability through the unpaid part of its labour. This is the motivation of capitalist production, the safeguarding of the largest possible amount of surplus value and not the satisfaction of the social needs.
The interpretation of the new phenomena which are related to the composition of the working class, its role, etc, can lead to mistaken theoretical and political conclusions if they are not based on the theory of scientific socialism and the theory of class struggle.
Some basic starting points, which are matters of principle, for the scientific approach are the following:
1. The working class is the driving force of social production, concentrated industry and from this flows its leading role in the passage from capitalism to socialism, the lower level of communism.
The bourgeois class has become reactionary because it resists the social ownership of the concentrated means of production-the only ownership relation which suits the deepening of the social character of labour and production. It has passed into the historical position of feudalism when it was defending the freezing of productive potential within the limits of feudal ownership.
The objective position of the two classes, the working class and the bourgeois class in capitalist society is what defines our era as the era of the passage from capitalism to socialism. The working class is the last exploited class in the history of social systems and bearer of the new relations of production – the communist relations of production. The working class is the only class which has developed in contrast to all the other classes which are in decline and its historic mission is the abolition of private ownership, classes, and the exploitation of man by man. There is no other social force that can fulfil this role.
This is the fundamental theoretical position for every CP, capable of explaining the phenomena in the development of the working class. Phenomena such as: The expansion of the waged relation between capital and labour in the commoditised fields of health, welfare education, social security, tourism etc. The rise in the educational level of the working class in general, even of sections in manufacturing, construction and mining. The expansion of the working class in sections of salaried scientists because of the further concentration in industries where there used to be a large number of self-employed (lawyers, accountants, engineers etc).
A result of the abovementioned development is on the one hand the increase in the size of the working class and on the other the deepening of its internal stratification. Thus the section of the working class which is in manufacturing is reduced in relation to the whole class. This decrease is used by bourgeois theories to claim that the working class is in the process of shrinking, a view which is often adopted by opportunist forces, when denying the historic role of the working class for social progress.
2. The historic role of the working class as a revolutionary class can only be fulfilled through its organization as a class for itself, so that it acquires a consciousness of its mission, something which requires the existence of an independent revolutionary party which expresses its general interests and will lead its struggle so that the working class becomes the gravedigger of capitalism. This organization of the class struggle, with this content and goal, is not formed spontaneously but through the creation of the ideological-political organized vanguard of the working class in the communist party.
3. A defining theoretical issue for every CP is the understanding of contemporary capitalism as imperialism, the final stage of capitalism. Its objective base is large-scale capitalist ownership which takes the form of the collective capitalist, the union of capitalists in companies. In this way strong monopolies were formed in industry, trade, banks and these were interconnected, there were created imperialist unions such as the EU, and generalised imperialist wars took place for the distribution and redistribution of markets.
It is very important to stress that the KKE was not trapped in the opportunist view, which is harmful to the movement, that the formation of the EU was a historically inevitable development, that he had progressive elements. The developments have vindicated its assessment that the EU was a union of monopolies and nothing more and that its dissolution is a crucial link in the struggle for socialism-communism.
It was not trapped by theories which say that “globalized capitalism” has been released from its contradictions. Uneven development is manifesting itself with particular intensity.
In imperialism the export of capital prevailed for direct investments, speculation around the export of financial capital has taken on massive dimensions (massive speculation on the buying and selling of state bonds in the form of contracts- stakes etc). The contradiction between capital and labour has sharpened as we can see that today the working class and people’s income is being reduced even in the recovery phase of reproduction after the crisis ( as in some countries in the Eurozone, in the USA and elsewhere).
In this way, old phenomena inherent in the capitalist mode of production, such as the periodic economic crises of overproduction of capital, acquired depth and synchronization, which we experienced in 1929 and throughout the 1930’s, and also in the first decade of the 21st century. These deep crises of over-accumulated capital have taken the form of financial or stock-exchange crises, on the basis of which the competition and contradictions between the sections of capital have intensified, between capitalists states, inside imperialist centres like the Eurozone and also between imperialist centres and inside wider imperialist unions such as the World Bank and the IMF. Opportunism attaches itself to one or the other side of the inter-bourgeois and inter-imperialist contradictions, concealing the capitalist nature of the crisis and the way out which is in the interests of the working class-popular majority.
It is a fundamental issue for the ideological and political struggle of the working class, and for its party to highlight that the capitalist system has lost its dynamism and passed into the phase of decline, that it is a system which is sinking into parasitism, it is rotting but it impedes the passage to socialism-communism. To highlight that for this reason there can be no passage from capitalism to socialism with the structures and functions of capitalist power, through the parliamentary process. It is a process of successive conflicts, ruptures, overthrows, both peaceful and bloody through many different phases. Everything will be judged by the level of organization, decisiveness, heroism, self-sacrifice and alliances of the working class, something which demands a powerful vanguard, a communist party, with the correct strategy.
It flows from the character of the era that the communist party must have a strategy and tactics which will have at the centre of its struggle the liberation of the working class from bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology and its organization so as to crush with its strength the class violence of the monopolies’ power.
4. In order to forge the right strategy and tactics, for the victory of the working class, for the formation for an organizational policy and an alliance policy, one of the basic pre-conditions is the definition of the driving forces of the revolution. According to Lenin “….” [1]
The starting point is Lenin’s definition of class which summarizes and further elaborates the positions of Marx and Engels on class: “Large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy” [2]
Based on this theoretical principle, every CP must objectively assess the social forces which are found in between the two basic classes, to distinguish those intermediate strata whose long-term prospects objectively bring them closer to the working class from those which are more stably reproduced together with the capitalist class. With its political line, the CP must express the need to secure a living standard and cultural level for the popular sections of the intermediate strata of the city and the countryside.
5. The bourgeois class in its struggle for the preservation of its power and its interests, private ownership and the regime of wage slavery, continually modernises the bourgeois state and its mechanisms, reorganises its alliances, and adjusts its tactics in relation to the labour movement. Of course it is constantly attacking revolutionary ideology and practice while it supports opportunism in every country, because it serves the subjugation of the working class to its interests under the umbrella of the national interest, chiefly through the buying off of sections of the working class, the well-known labour aristocracy in each country, a vehicle not only for the division and fragmentation of the labour movement, but also a propagandist for the conciliation with the bourgeois class. Consequently, the struggle against opportunism, the struggle against entrapment in parliamentarism and reformism, the struggle against the participation of CPs in governmental formations within capitalism is a condition for its class emancipation.
6. Internationalism in practice and in the most difficult circumstances. The national peculiarities do not negate the united international duty of the working class, its united interests.
“There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is—working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s owncountry, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception… The thing is not to “proclaim” internationalism, but to be able to be an internationalist in deed, even when times are most trying.” [3]
The KKE guided by these principles has made serious efforts to analyse more deeply contemporary developments and changes in internationalised capitalism, the experience from the class struggle, to study the experience of the party itself and on this basis elaborated its strategy for the regroupment and counterattack of the labour movement.
Based on this political line and in the complex conditions which are determined by the economic crisis and the counterrevolutions, the KKE struggles to pave the way for revolutionary changes. And in this light it assesses its contribution to the international revolutionary movement.