Proclamation of the Revolutionary Unification for the Greek elections
Introduction
The May 21// June 25 elections are taking place in unprecedented conditions of crisis and war. We are already experiencing the consequences of the ignition of the front between the “collective West” and Russia with its allies in Ukraine, with the frightening rise in the cost of living as a result of the imposition of economic sanctions on the export of fuel and other raw materials. Greece is increasingly involved in the war, with every government reinforcing our subservience and dependence on Euro-Atlanticism, selling off state property and infrastructure, sacrificing the needs of the Greek people on the altar of imperialist war, NATO armaments and EU/IMF memorandum dictates.
The primary task of the communists, socialist and anti-imperialist forces is the realization of the pernicious dangers of the present phase of the Third World War (WWIII) and the formation and upgrading of the anti-imperialist movement. We must stress that the dominant contradiction of capitalism of our time is that between imperialism, the imperialist pole of NATO under the leadership of the USA and the majority of humanity suffering under the neo-colonial yoke of imperialist exploitation and oppression.
The international situation
The Third World War, which has been going on for some years now, taking different forms, is intensifying more and more. The world imperialist system, which is in a deep structural-systemic economic crisis, is attempting to resolve its unresolved contradictions by war and destruction, seeking new sources of profit in armaments and in the desperate attempt to subjugate the countries which oppose imperialist domination, setting strict limits to its extensive development.
The effort to remove these limits includes the creation of proxy armies of the Euro-Atlantic imperialist axis in key points of the world. This project includes financing and training neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine in the war against Russia, arming and using Kosovo as a strike force against Serbia, Taiwan and South Korea against China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, respectively. Their aim is to eliminate the integrity, sovereignty and independence of these countries, with their people and natural resources at the mercy of predatory imperialist aggression and overexploitation, to rescue the world monopolies by completing the dismemberment and predatory reintegration into the world capitalist system of all countries that emerged from early socialist revolutions and anti-colonial – anti-imperialist and national liberation movements.
But we must consider the fact that any further escalation of the confrontation between nuclear powers endangers even the very existence of humanity on the planet, through the doctrine of ensuring mutual destruction. The side that has been promoting the nuclear confrontation from the beginning is US imperialism. The other countries have been pushed into developing similar destructive capabilities in defence of their independence and their very existence. The US is the only country that has used these weapons against a battered adversary (Japan), knowing that it was not under the threat of a retaliatory strike.
The only way to ensure the survival of humanity is the complete destruction of the global exploitative capitalist imperialist system of production. In this effort, the whole of the progressive forces of humanity must stand firmly on the side of those who are fighting the Euro-Atlantic axis, which is turning Nazism-fascism into a striking force once again, regardless of location and socio-economic system. This is also the objective that the World Anti-Imperialist Platform is carrying out with its formation and movements, as well as the establishment in our country of the Anti-Imperialist Coordination for the Defeat of NATO
In particular for the electoral context
As a rule, in election periods political debates increase: political parties attempt to convince about their programmes and the working people look for the programme that seems preferable for serving their interests. Especially after entering the era of memoranda, the main criterion for the overwhelming majority of the Greek people is which party, which government will not allow further impoverishment. However, in Greece in 2023, after 15 years of economic crisis, memoranda, the rise of fascism and the imposition of the doctrine that there is no prospect outside the EU and NATO, the differences between the dominant political programmes are practically non-existent. The convergence of programmatic positions between the main contenders for power is so striking that we are witnessing ‘football-like’ transfers of cadres from one party to another, together with a grotesque attempt to find substantial differences between their programmes. We can see that FROM THE TOTAL OF THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE PRESENT ELECTIONS, there is no question whatsoever of the UNIVOCAL CONDEMNATION OF THE “RUSSIAN, CHINESE, etc. AGGRESSION” AND RALLYING WITH THE EURO-ATLANTIC AXIS, the dismantling of national sovereignty through submission to the EU and IMF’s memorandum dictates and the country’s attachment to the NATO aggressive arm. This consensus constitutes the essence of the current impasse of bourgeois parliamentarism, an organic element of which is obviously that version of regimentation that is marketed under the mask of “anti-imperialism of equal distances”.
The struggling people, the people that believed and still believes that another society is necessary and possible, has for years been in an intense search for a “leftist/revolutionary/anti-capitalist/communist” political body that authentically calls for “resistance/ disobedience”, that aims at “rupture/ subversion”. However, this is the first election in which we can diagnose the regime erosion of all political forces of this orientation participating in the elections. On the most critical issue of the international situation, none of the political candidates is unequivocally declaring that they are seeking the “defeat of the NATO-EU axis”. On the contrary, the parties and organisations of the Left either a) doctrinally disclaim to investigate the modern stage of imperialism, the rapid changes in the balance of power in favour of the pole headed by China, the countries of early socialism, anti-imperialism and their allies, the economic, political and cultural weakening/retreat of the US-led imperialist pole, the recent revolutions and counter-revolutions, or b) they slip into an unballasted revisionism, collectively renouncing the acquis of revolutionary theory as “obsolete”, by invoking new phenomena.
Already from the beginning of the economic crisis, the ‘crisis of political representation’ is expressed through two distinct but interrelated processes: (a) the creation of a “political vacuum” with the collapse of the establishment parties, which recent historical experience has shown can be exploited by sections of the demagogic (even fascist) far right or the demagogic Euro-Nato “Left”; and (b) the emergence of a spontaneous popular movement of unprecedented massiveness and militancy seeking political expression.
A fundamental characteristic of this crisis is the following contradiction: despite the fact that (according to all the relevant surveys) the majority of the Greek people are animated by clear anti-imperialist and anti-American sentiments, THERE IS CURRENTLY NO FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH IN THE CENTRAL POLITICAL SCENE CAPABLE OF ORGANIZING AND EXPRESSING THESE POPULAR SENTIMENTS IDEOLOGICALLY, PRACTICALLY, ORGANIZATIONALLY, FRONTALLY IN A REVOLUTIONARY DIRECTION. This situation constitutes a strategic victory for the Euro-Atlantic bourgeois regime and its allies, the opportunist-revisionist forces that are acting in the interests of imperialism within the movement. This situation fuels the rot of the whole regime and successive disappointments – frustrations – that have led a critical mass of people away from politics. This contradiction is most vividly expressed in these elections, which makes them the most indifferent and irrelevant elections in the recent history of the country.
In the new, particularly acute international conditions, a socio-politically active but electorally “awkward” (or even inactive) section of Greek society is expanding. This ‘crisis of political representation’ cannot be covered by opportunistic electoral gimmicks (by resorting to the ‘lesser evil’ approach) as long as the conditions that gave rise to it are exacerbating it. The only way to positively solve this problem is that of the activation and militant maturation of the workers and the people, the formation of an open, mass and militant anti-imperialist, anti-fascist front, which will broaden and deepen their radicalisation in a revolutionary direction, with the role of the communists leading the way.
What should we do?
The communists have always sought in their tactical planning to participate in elections and in the bourgeois parliament without any illusions about a “peaceful parliamentary road to socialism” and renunciation of the cause of the revolution. The communists in their tactics make use of all forms of struggle, including the parliamentary one, for the needs of their revolutionary propaganda, of exposing the bourgeoisie and its political personnel and of creating conditions for achieving their strategic goal.
With the above in mind, we call on the people who are anxious about international developments not to be seduced by neo-fascist far-right elements who, playing the card of “pro-Russianism”, pretend to be anti-NATO while they are nothing but loyal guardians of the dependent Euro-Atlantic regime. We call on the comrades and brothers is arms who share our concern about the state of the movement in our country and internationally to actively participate in the movements of the Anti-Imperialist Coordination for the Defeat of NATO instead of supporting the adventurism of a pacifist “left” and modern opportunism. We, in this electoral impasse, vote “no”. Our class-based, anti-imperialist invalid ballot paper does not aim at an attitude of withdrawal and distancing from the common cause, but at a dynamic counter-attack for the formation of a real anti-fascist-anti-imperialist front in our country and internationally.
A historical cycle of the movement is closing rapidly and irreversibly with the rapid escalation of the Third World War. The necessary self-criticism of the movement, far from electoral illusions of “management” or from being trapped in barren “rearguard battles”, will also be the starting point of its gradual upgrading into a social, political and cultural subject, corresponding to the times. The escalation of the frontal struggle, in turn, is what will organically contribute to the maturation of the conditions for the communist forces corresponding to the era.
Defeat to the US-led Euro-Atlantic axis!