Comrades of the Lebanese Communist Party

We greet the 43rd anniversary of the beginning of the Lebanese National Resistance Front, we convey to you the revolutionary greetings of the cadres, members and friends of the KKE, who are following the developments in your country and the region with great attention and stand in solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon, and all the peoples suffering from imperialism.

Comrades,

We know very well that the Lebanese communists have historically made a special and honorable contribution to the social and national-liberation struggles in Lebanon against the logic of defeatism and fatalism. They were the pioneers of the establishment of the Lebanese National Resistance Front. The words recorded in its founding declaration, after the occupation of Beirut by the Israeli occupying army on 16/9/1982, are characteristic :

“Sons of heroic Beirut,

Sons of our great Lebanese people in the South, in the Mountains, in the Bekaa and in the North, oh brave patriotic fighters!

The Israeli enemy, who has been waging his brutal war against Lebanon for more than 104 days, begins today to desecrate the pure, national land of Beirut, which has resisted heroically throughout this period and has given lessons of heroism in Chalde, in the museum, the southern suburb and all its entrances, which she will never forget.”

We also know that the Lebanese National Resistance Front bore a significant burden of the armed struggle and carried out more than a thousand operations against the Israeli occupation forces and their agents. Between September 1982 and April 1985, it liberated 2,600 square kilometers of land (out of a total of 3,450 occupied), while the Israeli occupation forces acknowledged the loss of 386 soldiers. The Front had 187 martyrs, including seven female fighters[1].

You must know, comrades, that our Party, in its 107 years of existence and action, was faced with similar conditions and had to organize the armed struggle of the Greek people twice, initially against the triple occupation of the territories of Greece by fascist Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, in the period 1941-1944 and then in the period 1946-1949 against the bourgeoisie and the imperialist military intervention of Britain and the USA in Greece.

Our Party, despite unprecedented persecutions, prisons and exiles, bans, torture, executions, was then the soul, the blood donor and the leader of the heroic struggle of the National Liberation Front, of its armed wing – the Greek People's Liberation Army, and later of the Democratic Army of Greece. Thousands of its members, who with their weapons in hand and their heroic action and sacrifice, wrote some of the most golden pages of its History, contributed to the victorious outcome of the war both against the Nazi-fascist imperialist "Axis", as well as against the Anglo-American imperialists and the armed forces of the bourgeoisie of our country.

Comrades, our Party studies its History, as well as the History of the International Communist Movement, in order to draw useful conclusions for its struggle today. After all, we know very well what Lenin said, that war is the continuation of politics by other, violent means and in today's capitalist world no people can be sure that war will not cross the "threshold" of their own country.

The question arises: why, while our country was liberated in 1944, thanks to the magnificent victories of the Soviet Union, the Red Army, as well as the irreplaceable contribution of the armed resistance - anti-fascist - liberation movement and their organizations, led by the KKE, was it not possible to break the shackles of capitalist slavery?

Why, despite the magnificent mass armed resistance movement and the fact that during the period of liberation, in October 1944, conditions of a revolutionary situation were formed in Greece, that is, conditions of a collapse of bourgeois power with a generalized economic, political crisis, ultimately the workers' - people's movement was unable to win?

Today we estimate that this happened because our Party did not manage to develop consciously and planned the armed national-liberation-anti-fascist struggle into a socialist revolution and was trapped in the line of national unity and the formation of a government of anti-fascist forces. Our Party, under the influence of the more general elaborations of the Comintern, was then unable to overcome the erroneous – in our opinion, logic of “stages towards socialism”. And if there is a short conclusion that is worth mentioning here in code, it is that the Communist Party must be “all conditions” and chart its own strategy in conflict with every section of the bourgeoisie, for the overthrow of its power and the construction of socialism.

Comrades,

Our party, in the context of the process of restoring its revolutionary character, has overcome the harmful logic of “stages”, which characterized the strategy of the communist movement in previous decades and is maintained in the programs of many communist parties.

Thus, today the communists in Greece are achieving significant victories in the reconstruction of the workers’ – people’s movement, daily linking the broader workers’ – people’s struggles against exploitation, with the struggles of popular forces against the policy that supports monopolies, with the aim of contributing to the formation of the social alliance of the working class, other popular forces, farmers and the self-employed, which will target the capitalist system of exploitation and imperialist wars as a whole.

This is why we believe that the path we must take is not that of “leftist” governments, but of the social alliance of the working class with the other popular strata and of the ideological-political and mass struggle against monopolies and capitalism, for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, so as to create the conditions for the elimination of the causes that give rise to capitalist exploitation, economic crises and imperialist wars. What is required is not just a simple change of government, but a revolutionary overthrow, which will lead to workers’ power and the socialization of the means of production, with central scientific planning of the economy, outside the imperialist unions of NATO, the EU, and where the people of the country themselves will be the master.

Our party is at the forefront of the mobilizations against the American and NATO bases, against the strategic cooperation of Greece with the USA, France, Israel and other international alliances of the bourgeoisie.

We stand firmly in solidarity with the Palestinian people, the Lebanese and all the peoples who are experiencing the consequences of the aggression of Israel and its allies. With mass struggles we condemn the occupation imposed by the murderous state of Israel on the Palestinian territories, we demand an end to the occupation and an independent Palestinian state. Withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories of Lebanon and Syria.

Communists, together with the workers, block NATO shipments of weapons and ammunition, which are being sent to Israel and to the imperialist war in Ukraine, where two peoples, the Ukrainian and the Russian, are bleeding, who for 7 decades worked together building socialism and are now killing each other for the interests of the capitalists.

We enlighten the people about the danger of the imperialist war becoming generalised, due to the struggle for primacy in the world imperialist system, and by intensifying the struggle with NATO, the USA, the EU, we also highlight the bourgeois character of the competing forces, we fight against choosing an imperialist and we emphasize that the way out in our era, the era of imperialism, the way out of capitalist barbarity both in times of “peace” and war, is found only in the struggle against monopolies and capitalism, in the struggle for socialism!

With these thoughts we wish you strength and success in your struggles!

[1]     https://assafirarabi.com/ar/17203/2017/09/14/35-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%8B-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%AC%D9%85%D9%91%D9%88%D9%84/