On the basis of our world view and our constitutional principles, the Communist Party is the Party of the working class, its conscious and organized ideological and political vanguard, its supreme form of organization. It is a revolutionary organization of like-minded volunteers and fights for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of the socialist–communist society, in which all exploitation of man by man and all forms of private ownership of the means of production will be abolished and a higher standard of living and rights for the people, equality of opportunities and rights, all-round social progress will be guaranteed.

Its strategic goal is the conquest of revolutionary workers’ power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, for socialist construction. The Party is fully aware that socialist construction will be the task of the working class, at the head of all those who suffer from capital’s power, and of its substantial participation both in the struggle to win it, and in the process of safeguarding and consolidating it.

The working class, which is the vehicle of socialist change and leads the struggle to overthrow capitalism, is striving not only for its own liberation, but for the liberation of all working people.

For these reasons, it is a historical necessity for the CP to exist in every country and to grow stronger in the society in which it operates.  In order to win its fight against daily oppression of capital and to end the exploitation of man by man, the working class needs its own independent political organization, a revolutionary Party capable of guiding its struggle for its vital interests and the construction of a new higher society, the socialist–communist one.

The organization, functioning and activity of the CP to realize these noble aims is guided by the world view of Marxism–Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The CP is inspired by the first attempt in history at workers’ power, the Paris Commune (1871), and even more so by the first victorious Socialist Revolution in Russia in October 1917. It draws lessons from the positive and negative experiences of socialist construction in the 20th century, above all in the USSR. It grasps the lesson that the class struggle continues until all sources of social inequality and all forms of private ownership of the means of production are abolished. The CP is guided by the lessons of the class struggles in its country, by the heroic struggles of previous generations of revolutionaries.

The CP studies the socio-economic and political developments in the country, in the continent in which it operates and in the world as a whole, based on its world view and with the aim of developing it. It can and must formulate its programme, strategy and tactics on this basis.

The transition from the capitalist society, which is going through a deep crisis, to a socialist society presupposes the conquest of political power by the working class, the socialization of the concentrated means of production, the creation of producer cooperatives in agriculture, the central scientific planning of social production and services and the workers’ control, which will liberate the creative activity of the workers and the youth. 

In the conditions of its country, each CP struggles with all its might to make the working class and the popular strata aware of this need. In this framework, it exhausts every opportunity in its daily struggles to defend the lives of the working people, their economic, political, trade union and cultural rights and freedoms.

In this struggle, it seeks the unity of the working class, regardless of speciality, educational level, nationality, cultural and linguistic traditions, religion, sex and sexual orientation. It seeks the alliance of the working class with the poor farmers and self-employed urban middle classes, in a people’s anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist alliance of struggle for a radical way out of the impasses of the system.

The organizational structure and operation of a CP are determined by its aims and its revolutionary character. Its fundamental principle is democratic centralism. The consistent application of democratic centralism, in all its aspects, is necessary for the ideological, political and organizational unity of the Party and a necessary condition for it to achieve its goals.

Each CP is based on the principle of proletarian internationalism. It bases its internationalism on the common interests of the working class, on the common necessity and goal of socialism–communism in every capitalist country. It educates its members in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, international solidarity and cooperation with the working people all over the world. It fulfils its internationalist obligations consistently and participates in the struggle for the regroupment, for the ideological and strategic unity and the strengthening of the international communist movement. The CP struggles against all manifestations of fascism, nationalism, chauvinism and racism, and identifies patriotism with the class struggle.

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The statutory formulation of the above, timeless positions on the role of a Communist Party, does not automatically guarantee the Party the role of organizer and leader of the popular struggle for workers’ power in the 21st century. This must be understood as a question to be fought out in practice every day. The CP must be fully and constantly, more quickly and more effectively, brought into line with its revolutionary programme and statutes in order to be a truly “all-weather party”.

Therefore, it is useful not only to repeat some general, universal principles for the Party, but also to deepen our thinking and our policy more and more by studying both the successes in achieving our goals and the failures, delays and omissions in the functioning, guidance and building of the Party.

The view of the Communist Party of Greece differs from the erroneous and harmful notion that after the introduction of the revolutionary theory in the workers’ – communist movement, this theory is now complete and the matter is closed. 

We do not agree with the view that the theory was formulated by Marx and Engels in the middle of the 19th century, it was further elaborated by Lenin in the beginning of the 20th century and in the first years of the USSR, and now the matter is closed, that everything is clear. 

Among consistent Marxists–Leninists, among communists, there can be no notion that revolutionary theory is something static, carved in stone, like some kind of a revolutionary gospel. 

Precisely because, the very object of study of the theory, namely life and its evolution in all its forms, is progressing and evolving. 

The same is true of theory, which aims at the generalized interpretation and identification of the scientific laws that govern natural and social life.

The theory of revolutionary policy is developed by studying the experience of the class struggle and turning the conclusions into the guiding thread of revolutionary action in practice. 

This is a crucial condition for maintaining and strengthening the revolutionary character of a CP. Of course, agnosticism and eclecticism do not characterize us, and in no way do we succumb to the revision or denial of the fundamental positions of the communist world view. 

Precisely for this reason, we firmly believe —and this is confirmed by all the historical experience of the international communist movement— that the way for a CP to be effectively and correctly guided from the Marxist–Leninist world view is only by developing it. 

While revolutionary action advances, theory cannot remain static, based on the elaborations of a century or two ago. The Marxist–Leninist worldview is not a sterile reproduction of quotations from Marx–Engels–Lenin or other prominent communist leaders over time. 

If our world view is not translated into an everyday ability to judge and act on reality, then sooner or later the revolutionary characteristics of political action will be altered to the point where they are permanently transformed. 

Throughout the last 30 years of its reconstruction, after the world-historic overthrows and the temporary historical setback, the KKE has tried to adhere to this Leninist doctrine as the apple of its eye. 

Of course, we are careful to avoid complacency and the narcissist notion that we have done or are doing everything perfectly and flawlessly, without weaknesses, shortcomings or mistakes. 

However, this is exactly where our efforts are directed: the further study and development of our theory, based on new scientific and technological discoveries, the current reality of the capitalist world, the elaboration of our strategy and the historical experience of the Greek and international labour, revolutionary and communist movement, such as: 

- The history essays, the elaboration of our revolutionary strategy in the 21st century and the elaboration of a new programme at the 19th Congress in 2013.

- The assessment and conclusions from the socialist construction in the 20th century, focusing on the construction in the Soviet Union and the causes that led to the overthrow and dissolution of the socialist system in the USSR and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as described in the resolutions of the 18th Congress (2009) which were further developed in the subsequent Congresses, namely the 19th (2013), the 20th (2017) and the 21st (2021).

- A series of elaborations of collective organs of the Party and Sections of the Central Committee on current issues of concern to our people and to all the peoples of Europe. 

- We should highlight the important and vanguard contribution of the KKE to the international communist movement and the movement of the peoples of the EU regarding the development of the EU and its character in the 21st century, especially after the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the Economic and Monetary Union and others. The KKE is based on and guided by Lenin’s ideas formulated in his work “On the United States of Europe”, not simply adhering to them but developing them under the new, contemporary conditions, based on the new data, which gives us an advantage and makes us more confident to fight today’s battles in the EU.

***

The study of history and the class struggle confirm a general fundamental conclusion: The struggle for power is objective when the class in power, in the specific historical context, represents a historically obsolete socio-economic formation, while the class claiming power is the driving force of a new, higher socio-economic formation.

History has shown that in class societies the class conflicts are always violent, precisely because the very concept and nature of power and its exercise entail imposition and violence. Radical changes in the character of power can only come about through revolutions, i.e. the movement of masses, under the leadership of the emerging class in each phase, and under the guidance of its party, its political representatives. 

This has been the case with all the bourgeois revolutions and the workers’–people’s revolutions. Before the bourgeois revolutions, the radical changes were also brought about by wars, with the invasion and military superiority of peoples–tribes that possessed more developed means of production.

In the struggle for power, as well as during the development and prevalence of the new social relations, progress is not linear and upward, but there are several zigzags, leaps and setbacks.

Being fully aware of all the above, at the same time we must not forget the greatest lesson and achievement of the October Revolution. That the emerging force, the working class with its revolutionary movement can play the leading role in the cause of social progress, in the transition from the old mode of production and organization of society, the capitalist one, to the new, the communist one.

And this is what happened in October 1917 in Russia. In a very short period of time, centuries of backwardness and pre-capitalist vestiges were swept away. The achievements in Soviet Russia and later in the USSR were attained under conditions of imperialist interventions, permanent threats by the imperialist centres and the undermining of production. 

Nevertheless, they gave great advances. But in any case, the experience of socialist construction indicates the trend for the rapid development of society as a whole, the amazing increase in the level of social prosperity. However, it cannot show us what it would really be like today, when science, knowledge, technology, labour potential and productivity have objectively reached even higher levels. In general, the bourgeois criticism of the history of the USSR conceals that it constituted the first historical steps of the immature stage of communist society.

The younger generations in particular need to be aware of this, so that they do not easily fall into the trap of deliberate distortion that is promoted with a “scientific” camouflage. Of course, the various historical researches who serve capitalism today know that the upsurge of the labour movement all over the world had a solid basis, namely the impact that the achievements of the Soviet Union have had for decades.

Nevertheless, we communists know that our duty is not to conceal the weaknesses of our movement, but to openly criticize them in order to get rid of them once and for all. For that reason, there is no room for verbalisms, big words and mere applause. We should focus on the essential presentation of views that will contribute to the correct assessment of the past as well as to the clear definition of the present in order to be able to make a leap into the future.

The victory of Socialism —as the first, immature phase of communism— over capitalism has shown that the working class, as the only truly revolutionary class, has the historic duty to carry out to the end its basic tasks:

- To overthrow and crush the exploiters, i.e. the ruling bourgeois class, which is their main economic and political representative. To stifle their resistance and thwart their attempts to reinstate the yoke of capital and wage slavery.

- To attract and lead under the revolutionary vanguard of the Communist Party, not only the industrial proletariat as a whole or its vast majority, but the entire mass of the working people and those exploited by capital and the monopolies. To enlighten, organize and educate them, through the process of a harsh struggle and class conflict against the exploiters.

- At the same time it must neutralize and render harmless the inevitable oscillations of middle strata, of the small-proprietors in agriculture, trade, crafts and services of various scientific fields, as well as of state officials, that is to say, sections which are numerous in all countries, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between bourgeois power and labour power.

- The success of the victory against capitalism requires a proper relationship between the party that leads the revolutionary change, the Communist Party, and the revolutionary class, the working class, as well as with the working masses and the exploited people as a whole. Only the Communist Party can lead the masses in the most decisive struggle against capitalism in its final stage, i.e. imperialism, provided that it is the true vanguard of the working class, that its members are committed communists, forged and educated in class revolutionary struggle, and that it succeeds in becoming part of the life of the working class and consequently of the exploited masses as a whole and in winning the trust of the working class and the people.

- Only the guidance of this Party enables the proletariat to release the power of its revolutionary assault, to eliminate the resistance of the labour aristocracy, which is bought off by the bourgeoisie, as well as of the corrupt and compromised reformist, opportunist trade unionists and achieve victory. Only the workers and the other popular strata who are liberated from capitalist slavery can develop at the utmost their initiatives and activities through their new institutions which emerge from the revolutionary process, as they were organized for the first time in history in the working class power in the soviets in Russia. Only in that way can they achieve the participation in government , which they are deprived of during the bourgeois power, despite the illusions fostered regarding their participation. The working class, participating in the organs of state power from the bottom up, is actually learning through its own experience how to build socialism, how to develop a new voluntary social discipline. It forms, for the first time in history, a union of free people, a union of workers in a new society, in a society without the exploitation of man by man.

- The conquest of political power by the proletariat does not entail the end of class struggle against the bourgeois class. On the contrary, it renders this struggle “extremely broad, sharpened, relentless” as Lenin noted. In this framework, we should pay particular attention on the following assessment, which all of us have confirmed in practice: any inconsistency or generally any ideological–political weakness in revealing the revisionist, opportunist, reformist forces may significantly increase the danger of the overthrow of working class power by the bourgeois class that will utilize these forces for the counterrevolution as has happened many times in history.

- In order for our course to be truly victorious, all CPs must elaborate a revolutionary strategy in their countries and this attempt must embrace the international communist movement. The experience of the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, in this direction, enriched with the experience from all socialist revolutions, with the experience of the revolutionary movement in each respective country must serve as a beacon in this process. The fact that this experience was not assimilated and did not prevail thereafter and that the character of the revolution was determined on the basis of other mistaken criteria requires our serious reflection.

- Today, in conditions of a general setback, of a negative correlation of forces at an international level and in each region separately, each communist party has the duty to intensify the preparation of the working class, on a daily basis with hard ideological–political work and class-oriented activity for the revolutionary upsurge to come. Because, our era continues to be an era of transition from capitalism to socialism. The era of capitalism’s overthrow was inaugurated by the October Revolution 1917 that paved the way and marked the beginning of socialist revolutions. For that reason, we consider timely the words of Lenin that the start was made and the proletarians of which nation will complete this process is not important. For that reason, we do not fall back, we do not retreat; we are deeply convinced that we have to carry through this task.

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At this particular moment in time, it is imperative that we all realize exactly what phase we are in as we enter the last year of the first quarter of the 21st century. We have the duty to inspect our forces and assess the degree of readiness of each Communist Party in its country in the course of the imperialist war internationally, with more than fifty active hotbeds of war in different parts of the world, as well as the possibility of a more direct and generalized form of involvement of each country in the imperialist wars in Ukraine and in the wider Middle East. All the contradictions are sharpening, traditional alliances are being rearranged and new ones are being created.

Today, Greece’s military, economic and political involvement in the conflict that is taking place between the Euro-Atlantic axis on the one hand and the Eurasian axis under formation on the other hand in the territory of Ukraine is an undeniable fact. The same applies to the large-scale war in the Middle East, with the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, the advance of the jihadists in Syria with the support and participation of the Israeli, Turkish and US military forces, Israel’s attacks in Lebanon, on Iranian territory, in Yemen, etc. All in all, the KKE believes that the aggressive involvement of the Greek bourgeoisie, the bourgeois state and its governments, with the consent of the other bourgeois parties, has increased on all these fronts and has taken different forms.

At the same time, there is a raging rivalry between the USA and China for supremacy in the imperialist system, a key element of which today is the ruthless trade war by means of tariffs etc. under the new Trump administration in the USA. Τhe possibility of an international capitalist crisis due to the huge over-accumulation of capital is growing, which substantiates the view that the imperialist war will escalate and new fronts will open in the coming years in the Arctic and the Americas, based on Trump’s recent statements about Greenland, Panama, Canada, but also in the China Sea, etc. States are rapidly increasing their military armaments, the EU is transforming its economy into a war economy, even warning member states to stockpile food in warehouses and prepare shelters, and encouraging their peoples to maintain survival kits with enough supplies to last at least 72 hours in case of war emergencies, unforeseen natural disasters, etc.

All in all, the conditions in which our peoples are living are conditions of sharpening of all the contradictions of the system, intensification of the inter-imperialist competition and aggravation of all their problems. These conditions are a fertile ground to dispute the dominant policy as a whole, to shake the “credibility” and “stability” of the bourgeois political system in every country, at a time when the imperialist war is escalating. Objectively, all this can lead to a mass mobilization of the people, including the possibility of uprisings and a revolutionary situation in some countries or groups of countries. At the same time, we must also prepare ourselves for possible conditions of a new retreat and attack against our movement. Therefore, we must prepare today, under non-revolutionary conditions, to lay the foundations for tomorrow in an all-round way.

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The capacity and preparation of a Communist Party concerns both the corresponding strategic programmatic readiness and the current policy and activity under contemporary conditions. A crucial question is the combination of the Party's revolutionary programme with daily revolutionary action, in all fields of struggle, in every level of the political guidance work. 

After all, the basic Leninist teaching is that even in a non-revolutionary situation, such as the present, we can and must carry out preparatory revolutionary work of enlightenment with a view to the future. It may not yet be the signal for an attack, but under no circumstances can we give up the systematic work, the guidance of the movement, the struggle to cut the workers and the people off once and for all from all bourgeois forces, liberal or social-democratic, and from opportunism, so that they escalate their demands, their struggles, their strikes, their demonstrations and rallies. This means that we should guide the revolutionary movement in all aspects. Because, based on Bolshevik experience, a successful uprising requires a long, skillful and persistent preparation that costs great sacrifices.

Therefore, such an organization and continuous reorganization of the work of the vanguard, the daily work of the Party, is necessary. We must be able to work effectively among the millions of workers in the private and public sectors, the poor farmers, the urban self-employed (tradesmen, craftsmen, scientists), the women and the youth of working class families who suffer from the capitalist system, wars, exploitation and oppression, that is, from all that they will not escape unless the capitalists are overthrown and workers’ power is established. We should explain this in concrete terms, in a simple and comprehensible manner to the broad masses, to the millions of people in each country. We should discuss and promote the characteristics of the new, socialist society that we are planning and trying to build, and try to educate and prepare vanguard workers’–people’s forces to gain experience in the hard conflicts of the class struggle.

The Communist Party at all levels should be continuously and creatively involved in the struggles of the working class. It must have a direct relationship with the labour movement and the broader mass movement of the natural allies of the working class. It must increasingly develop into a Party capable of leading the class struggles ideologically and politically, taking all the necessary measures to fulfil its historic mission, i.e. to lead the struggle of the working class, to promote the anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly social alliance, in the struggle for the conquest of workers’ power.

It needs to achieve the most consistent revolutionary attitude of the organized forces of the Party and its Youth, as well as of a circle of influence around the party, as a precondition for its ideological and political strengthening among the working people and for party building. Each Party Organization should become a vehicle for the realization of this task in order to successfully face the pressures to limit the Party’s activity to parliamentary and trade union activity within the system.

Today there is a great deal of experience in leading individual struggles. Today, we need to become more capable of specializing–adapting our work, and combining it with the ability to unite the seedbeds of struggle and that develop from below and dispute the dominant policy as a whole, so that the unified anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly current is formed on a more solid basis. Above all, we must ensure that this is firmly consolidated in every city and region, focusing on the monopoly groups, the food, medicine and metal factories, the manufacturing industry, shopping centres, hospitals, power generating plants, telecommunications, transport, the toiling people in the cities, the poor farmers, the youth gathering in places such as schools, universities, cultural or sports centres, etc.

We need to study the line of rallying forces and forming demands in the movement, with concrete elaboration, on a class scientific basis and specialization, in order to get in touch with more workers and their families and increase our influence on them. 

This planned and effective political guidance work must be expressed, among other things, in the continuous elaboration of the plan, based on the experience gained, but also in connection with the programme of the Party, its directions in the socialist economy, in the superstructure and the conditions for the conquest of power. Only in this way, will the current of people joining forces with the Communist Party take on a mass character and become increasingly stable and dominant, assimilating our communist ideas and aims.

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A crucial question for the promotion and consolidation of all the above is the ideological–theoretical work that is done within the party at all levels. 

In the 21st century, we have to confront entrenched notions about the development of theoretical work, communist education and study; about the way of working, the use of the internet, alienation, the diminished importance of personal contact and the abandonment of daily communist study. All this tends to be replaced by work without a plan, superficial propaganda and sloganeering, to which the bourgeois parliamentary electoral processes objectively draw us to a large extent.

The party forces need to continuously educate themselves and assimilate the theoretical and ideological elaborations of the party, such as the programme, the assessments of the Socialist construction in the previous century, the historical experience of each country and of the International Communist Movement, and the positions on all contemporary social problems. Certainly, the basic prerequisite for their assimilation is a basic Marxist education. In order to build trust in the communist class struggle in the long term, it is necessary to withstand the difficulties of the struggle, the stagnation in a generally negative correlation of forces, bourgeois interpretations of social developments and new scientific and technological achievements, which mark a partial contradictory movement forward in a socio-political system suffering from reactionary setbacks. In recent years, we have also encountered issues related to the role of women in modern society, gender theories, the philosophical–sociological debate on the limits, applications and regulations of AI, and many others.

There are too many issues that are massively promoted in the bourgeois societies we live in. As the years go by, the widespread political thinking based on bourgeois parliamentarianism, the attitude towards trade unionism based on class collaboration and the intervention of the bourgeois state that tries to unite different class interests, certainly have an impact on the collectivity, the general resistance to bourgeois norms cultivated by the personality-cult parties. 

Since the last decade of the 20th century and the beginning of the new century, we have found ourselves in an unfavourable international and regional environment. Of course, we have done nothing but dive into deep waters and force ourselves to swim, and we are proud to have arrived where we are today.

But we can still take bolder steps in party building, in key sectors of the economy. We must pay special attention to the revolutionary education of the younger generation, to their preparation to ideologically steel themselves, to the increase of ideological, educational and cultural work.

The KKE struggles for a socialist Greece, which will build its relations in the Balkans, in the south-eastern Mediterranean, in Europe, in the whole world, on the basis of the mutual benefit of the peoples, of the solidarity of the workers and the people, and not on the basis of competition, the spheres of influence, the interests and the ‘divide and rule’ concept of the capitalists, their states and alliances. 

This path of the KKE is incompatible with all versions of today's policies; it is incompatible with the EU and NATO. In order to become a reality and create the conditions for stable and sustainable achievements, this path requires a continuous, planned, carefully studied and always decisive confrontation with the institutions and parties of capital, both in Greece and at the European level. 

The study of the Greek and European political reality, of the bourgeois parties, (neo-liberal, social democratic, populist far-right and opportunist) and their entire course and presence, especially in the last 15 years (when we have witnessed an alternation of deep economic crisis with unstable economic recovery, new imperialist wars, the pandemic, natural disasters, intensification of monopoly competition and so on), proves the correctness of the KKE's categorical refusal to support, participate in or show tolerance to any kind of capitalist management of both the ruling party or parties and those in opposition, which are essentially in line with the main strategic decisions and alliances of capital. It also proved the correctness of the Party’s decision to stand firmly and resolutely against all of them, on a militant class opposition basis, first and foremost within the workers’ and broader people’s movement, but also within the institutions of the bourgeois state, where it participates through the electoral processes (parliamentary, European, municipal and regional).

This is a hard struggle that is being waged in Greece, but at the same time it goes beyond its borders. The KKE tries and seeks to coordinate with the social and political forces (workers’ and communist forces) of other European countries and even more widely, to coordinate with every stirring of action that develops in the Balkans, in the Middle East, in the countries of the Mediterranean basin, as well as in other continents. 

The basis of the revolutionary action of every CP is its own country. Moreover, Lenin’s theory of the weak link is perfectly valid. No one knows in which country this link will be broken. Every CP, including ours, must be ready in its own country. Frictions and ruptures occur in the bourgeois system. An uprising movement of the masses, a revolutionary situation can be created at an unforeseen time. Moreover, the conquest of power in a country or a group of countries will objectively contribute to the development of the international revolutionary workers' movement, to the coordination of the class struggle at a regional and international level. 

Of course, the KKE is aware that the class struggle for the revolutionary seizure of power in Greece is a complex issue that will become more difficult the longer a discernible ideological, political and organizational regroupment of the international communist movement is delayed. The KKE has no illusions that Greece can be a haven of workers’ power and socialist prosperity, in a Europe dominated by the EU, the monopolies, memoranda laws and measures, imperialist armaments, interventions and wars. At the same time, however, the KKE is also well aware that things do not remain static. Uprisings and a revolutionary situation in one, two or more countries would signal shocks of a more general nature in the region, on the European continent and elsewhere. 

The KKE is also aware of what all this means and implies for the peoples, their present and their future, and even the depth and intensity of the contradictions that lead to the weakening of this imperialist edifice. There is an objective basis for the workers’–people’s power, ultimately the power of all peoples, to sweep all this away, to overcome the difficulties and to take matters into its own hands. The working class will be awakened. Therefore, the international dimension of the struggle, the unification of the efforts at the European level, against the EU, NATO and the imperialist war, for the disengagement and the effective dismantling of all these transnational capitalist alliances, is necessary and vital today, more than ever before.

Proletarian internationalism is a necessary condition for the successful and upward course of the Party, based on its strategic objectives, for the regroupment of the ICM. From this point of view, the Party must make a more substantial contribution to the co-ordination and co-operation of forces on a revolutionary basis, identifying more concretely, as far as possible, the main and necessary conditions for this. For this task, it should take initiatives to discuss the framework and the conditions of cooperation through bilateral and multilateral contacts and discussions, and to strengthen the possibilities formed in each specific country, giving priority to the capitalist states where our Party and the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) have strong and relatively large organizations.

***

The KKE, like other CPs, was founded and developed under the influence of the October Socialist Revolution. The existence and continuous strengthening of the CP is an indispensable condition for opening the way to the only victorious perspective for the working class and our people.

Of course, it is not enough just to repeat in general terms the need to strengthen the Party, its importance and its role. We must all work tirelessly and daily towards this goal. 

Besides, the very economic and political developments in Greece, in Europe and all over the world help us to open up a discussion on the Party’s Programme, the strategy for the overthrow of capitalism, the impasses of the capitalist system and the power of the class struggle. These developments also help us nurture our values and ideals which, despite the negative correlation of forces, fill us with optimism regarding the success of our goal - the working class seizing power and building socialism–communism.

They contribute to placing the need for an ideologically, politically and organizationally strong KKE, rooted in the industrial and other workplaces, in the sectors, in the working class as a whole, in the working class and popular neighbourhoods, and the youth, at the centre of the debate, especially with the candidates for recruitment to the party. 

The need for a Party with the strength and the united will to act firmly and unwaveringly so that the working class can confront and ultimately defeat a powerful and organized opponent, the bourgeoisie, the state and its mechanisms, its imperialist alliances, its parties. The maturation of hundreds, even thousands of workers who can become Party members requires not only time, but above all the persistent, multifaceted, combined mass ideological, political and organizational intervention, including the intervention in the mass movement, and the planned escalating intervention to change the correlation of forces and to form class, political and cultural criteria for the need to strengthen the KKE in the struggle for revolutionary overthrow.

This question includes the individualized, concrete work for the awareness of more vanguard workers of the need for organized recruitment to the Party. 

Because collective work, the subjection of the individual to the collective aims, unified political guidance and action, the conscious implementation of collective decisions, conscious discipline, and comradely criticism and self-criticism, are elements that ensure the ability to carry out the class struggle effectively. And it is through this participation and action that perseverance in a struggle with difficulties arising from the negative correlation of forces and the period of the counter-revolution is achieved. 

This question also requires revolutionary preparation and readiness for decisive confrontations at upturns in the class struggle, when “It changes in an hour, that happens not in seven years”.

***

In this direction, it is of great value to open the debate on fundamental and timely conclusions on the organization of the class struggle and the need for the working class and the popular strata to come to the fore, to recognize the root cause of the problems and the real opponent they are facing, i.e. the capitalist system and its power.

To highlight the character and role of the Party of a New Type in the present conditions, i.e. the importance of the existence of a revolutionary organization whose function, formation and direction of action are determined by the fundamental political objective of the working class, as expressed in our statutory principles.

To promote the great positive experience of the construction of socialism in the 20th century, which, despite its weaknesses and setbacks, was a step forward for humanity. It shows how workers’ power, the socialization of the means of production and central planning can today give an enormous impetus to the satisfaction of the contemporary needs of the workers and the people, and how socialism can be the answer to the needs of the 21st century. 

This is particularly relevant today, in the era of the 4th industrial revolution and Artificial Intelligence, which open up new paths for humanity, but in the hands of the capitalists can lead to its destruction, since “capitalism is the greatest virus”. 

The full liberation of the productive forces, in a system where the criterion is not the increase of the rate of profit, a system that prioritizes the well-being of all workers with respect for the environment, will be redemptive. Under socialism, the use of AI, like every scientific invention and achievement, with central scientific planning and at the same time workers’ control, will be for the benefit of the workers, of all humanity.

In this respect, the KKE is at the forefront of the struggle, having formulated a contemporary revolutionary strategy and is constantly trying to expand its militant ties with the working class, the popular sections of the urban middle strata, the farmers and the youth.

In the face of an increasingly barbaric and unjust world, hope lies only in the struggle of the working class and the peoples to overthrow of this system.

No matter how great our sacrifices, we will ultimately emerge victorious!