Leading the fight-back in Greece

Ioli Gkouma speaking

by New Worker Correspondent

A WIDE spectrum of communists in London last Saturday joined London-based Greek communists in a packed meeting at the Marx Memorial Library to hear Ioli Gkouma speak on behalf of the KKE about her party’s line on the way forward for Greece.

The KKE has been criticised by some for refusing to support the current government led by the democratic left party Syriza, or to join it in a coalition.

Syriza came to power on a popular pledge to renegotiate the extreme austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund but has failed to win any concessions.

Ioli pointed out that Syriza, while claiming to be left-wing, nevertheless supports the EU and is not seeking to remove Greece from either the EU or the Eurozone.

Under these circumstances it is impossible to escape from the austerity regime and to join with Syriza would make the KKE guilty of promoting a lie and deceiving the workers of Greece.

She said the root cause of the problem is capitalism and Greece can only escape through a socialist revolution that will free Greece, not only from EU and IMF oppression but all capitalist oppression.

“We do not want to come out of the EU only to find we have to make trading agreements with Russia or Brazil and still be controlled by capitalist regimes,” she said.

Her talk was followed a long and high level discussion, which included issues like the problem of the threat of the Golden Dawn fascist party and the KKE refusal to be led astray on popular demonstrations in Athens by agents provocateurs into making violent assaults on public buildings.

It also covered the impossibility of implementing any kind of real socialism from with a capitalist state structure and the dangers of trying to do so.