We continue our analysis of the Greek elections of last week with a look at the critical role of the leadership of the Greek CP.
The electoral results of the Greek
Communist Party (KKE) reveal objectively a serious political failure.
Its result of 8.48% (26 MPs) is an increase of its electoral strength by
a mere 0.94%, in a situation where hundreds of thousands of workers and
youth were moving to the left. While SYRIZA won 800,000 votes, the
Communist Party won only 18,823 votes.
The
reason for this disappointing result is due to the persistent refusal
of the party leadership to offer the prospect of a visible solution of
power, an alternative government, to the masses. They did all this with
the excuse of the "immaturity of the conditions" and the “need for a
strong opposition”.
The KKE leadership has used all kinds of tricks in their attempt to
separate government and authority, identifying any left government with
the authority of capital. Rather than accepting SYRIZA’s call for unity
and combining this with the presentation of the correct revolutionary
programme that a left government should implement – thus behaving as the
supposedly "orthodox" communists they claim to be – they refused even
to enter into discussions on such unity. Instead they referred to an
abstract "people’s power" to be established at some unknown moment in
the future.
The working masses thus had to choose in the elections between two
kinds of Left. There was the Communist Party, who presented all
struggles for a left government in this parliament as outdated and
pointless. And there was SYRIZA, that with the slogan for a left
government offered a real concrete perspective of an alternative
government – albeit with an unclear, contradictory and insufficient
programme.
Faced with this choice, the masses eventually, instead of passivity
and fatalism, preferred political hope. Thus the tactics of the
Communist Party leadership in practice proved to be the greatest
obstacle to the development of the electoral strength of the party.
It was the working class in particular that condemned the tactics of
the Communist Party leadership in a visible manner in the big working
class areas and in the municipalities of Athens and Piraeus. Thus, while
nationwide the party gained a slight increase, in the second
constituency of Athens they lost 1.2%, in the second constituency of
Piraeus they lost 0.59% and indicatively in the municipality of Nea
Ionia (a massive working class borough of Athens) they lost 1.7%, in the
municipality of Peristeri 0.5% and in the Municipality of Perama 0.8%.
The electoral results showed that if there had been a Communist
Party-SYRIZA electoral alliance, the formation of a coalition government
of the Left would have been entirely possible. And if we consider that
such an alliance would have attracted far more votes than simply the
sume of the wto parties standing separately.
The sectarian approach of the leadership of the Communist Party
towards the call for a government of the Left had three devastating
consequences. Because of this, a historic opportunity for a government
that could uproot capitalism has been missed. It has disappointed the
base of the Communist Party and has prevented any further increase of
the influence of the party among the wider masses. It also has given an
excuse to the SYRIZA leadership to seek allies in the right-wing
Democratic Left or, even in despair, in the direction of the Independent
Greeks, fundamentally altering the revolutionary characteristics of a
left government.
The poor results of the Communist Party are a further strong
confirmation of the urgent need for policy change. The rank and file
activists of the party and the Communist Youth should demand that the
party return to the road of genuine Leninism, that it put forward the
demand for a workers’ government, a government of the Left on a
socialist programme, following the tactic of the United Workers’ Front.
