To the militants and visionaries of the KOE, and to the people of Greece
As world banks seek to shatter the lives and resistance of Greece’s people, we send your Third Congress warm greetings from communist revolutionaries in the United States.
We are among the many watching Greece – and the struggle of its people – closely. Your country has become a crackling ground zero for the many colliding contradictions of Europe and the Middle East: It is where the global financial crisis takes an especially extreme and ruthless expression – and where (at the same time) the contagious hopes of Arab Spring have churned up a powerful resistance among the people.
This mix of austerity and resistance is giving rise to the rare potential for a great rupture in politics, society and history itself. And, at the same time, the emergence of your organization, the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), with its organic ties to the politics of this moment, is itself a tremendously positive factor.
We all know that crisis and resistance often don’t lead to liberation. But the arrival of a creative, determined communist force – as a major player on the political stage – creates a very real
possibility that coming events may lead Greek society in a revolutionary and socialist direction.
We share with you a commitment for a new and reconceived communist movement. We see no reason to cling to old formulas – when our work demands a creative spirit. We are excited to see you share our determination to bypass both exhausted orthodoxies and the embrace of electoral logic.
You have established a communist pole within a broad and radicalizing popular movement — which is easy to want, but much harder to do. While most of the Greek left stuck to well-worn channels, your militants dove into the Squares movement and brought into it a revolutionary and internationalist perspective. This has inspired our own practice within the Occupy Wall Street movement.
We have launched our Kasama project in North America with hopes of creating a communist political pole that will be thoughtful and inventive enough to finally learn from our common past and actually connect revolutionary politics with the oppressed people of our present. In some important ways, your Greek conditions are more ripe than our own – and we hope to learn from that advanced experience.
Your victories will not just have an impact on Greece, but may help determine whether a creative and radical communism can blossom in many more places throughout the world. We see ourselves as brothers and sisters walking a common road – and we wish you success in the storm you are about to enter.
By success we mean some specific things:
– First success in crafting a deep connection between organized communists and the most combative and revolutionary parts of the people.
– Second, we wish you success in your attempt to refine a creative programmatic plan for discrediting and isolating the old order.
And finally, we wish you victory in those coming showdowns where socialism may be born out of great daring and deep social antagonism. Capitalist crisis and austerity has proven their system to be cynical, incompetent, hopelessly corrupt, and utterly heartless. Everything opposing that must be skilfully gathered at the other extreme – animated by optimism, courage and profound love for the people. The eyes of the world will be upon you. And the great hopes of the oppressed will ride on your shoulders.
Participants in the Kasama project, USA