Turkey: Communist Party's Kemal Okuyan reflects on the first anniversary of the July 15th failed coup

A year has passed since the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey. TKP's General Secretary Kemal Okuyan answered to soL's questions on July 15, while the July 15th debate continued uninterrupted throughout the year. 

Below are Kemal Okuyan’s answers in the interview with soL news:

Do you agree with the "controlled coup" argument after a year passed from the coup attempt? In recent days, there has been a lot of supporting news and commentary took place in the world media that supported Kılıçdaroğlu's argument. Do you think the term controlled coup captures the reality well?

No. This means that Erdogan dominated all the critical points of state institutions on July 15, 2016, that he took risks by relying on his dominance and ruled the coup attempt personally after a point; the issue is not that simple.

Cyprus Issue: The KKE warns about the dangerous partition "solution" that is being promoted

Source: inter.kke.gr.

On July 11, 2017 a discussion of the leaders of the political parties was held in the Greek parliament regarding the developments in the Cyprus issue and the outcome of the negotiations in Geneva.

During the discussion, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the CC of KKE, underlined that the Cyprus issue is an international problem of invasion and occupation of the northern part of Cyprus by Turkey. It is a problem that bears the stamp of NATO intervention, of the general imperialist plans for the region.

Solidarity with the striking workers at FIAT factory in Serbia

The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), which is the militant voice of 92 million workers in 126 countries all over the world, stands firmly by the side of the 2.000 workers of the factory of FIAT Chrysler Automobiles, automobile assembly plant in Kragujevac, Serbia, who are on strike since Tuesday 27 June 2017.

The workers have taken strike action against the intensification of work, which increased after numerous workers were dismissed from the factory, while the factory tries to produce a high number of cars per day. Their main demands also include wage increase and transport allowance.

NATO openly glorifies Baltic Nazi-SS collaborators

The murderous, imperialist North Atlantic Treaty Organisation cannot hide its historical links with the Nazis. On 11 July 2017, the official account of NATO on Twitter published an English movie trailer called "Forest brothers. Fight for the Baltics". The tweet of NATO's account was writing: "This is the story of the Forest Brothers who fought the Soviet army for their homelands after WWII."

Microsoft accumulates immense profits, starts layoff of thousands of employees worldwide

The multinational giant Microsoft- despite its immense profits- is laying off more than 3,000 employees, with the cuts falling largely on the company's sales force. The vast majority of layoffs will hit employees located outside the United States, although some will also be in Redmond. Greek Telecommunication & IT Workers Unions has condemned the lay offs:

The Telecommunications & Information Technology Unions of Athens, Thessaloniki, Forthnet and 360 Connect (Vodafone) members of PAME (All-Workers Militant Front) and WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions) condemn the multinational Microsoft, which announced that it will lay-off 3000-4000 from its sales departments.

Greek tourism industry: Unpaid labour, starvation wages and huge profits for the monopoly groups

What lies behind the luxurious and idyllic facade of Greece's tourism industry? The answer is that tourism consists another field for monopolies' profitability, based on unpaid workers, layoffs, unsourced workers, starvation wages, lack of collective agreements etc. 

This is the actual meaning of "economic growth" that the SYRIZA-ANEL government, as well as the New Democracy and the other bourgeois parties, promote. 

Even if thousands of tourists arrive in Greece every day, hundreds of employees work daily to the tourism industry with humiliating salaries and exhausting shifts that last from dawn till dusk. The average - daily room rate on all 4-5-star hotels is equal to the salary of a waiter! In a tourist country like Greece, where 25 million of tourists are expected this summer, hotel workers cannot afford a decent vacation and relaxing period. This is Capitalism.

KKE politburo member G.Marinos in Venezuela: "We must walk on the steps of the October Revolution"

In the 15th Congress of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) which took place between 22 and 25th of June in Caracas, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was represented by its Political Bureau member Giorgos Marinos and Dimitris Karagiannis, member of the international relations section of the CC and journalist in 'Rizospastis'. 

On June 21st, the PCV organised the 2nd International Ideological Seminar with the subject being "The timeliness of Lenin in the 100 years of the Great Socialist Revolution", in which 18 Communist and Workers Parties participated.

What follows is the speech by Giorgos Marinos, reproduced from inter.kke.gr:

KKE: Solidarity with the Communists in Russia

Source: inter.kke.gr.

The MEP of the KKE, Sotiris Zarianopoulos, denounced, with a question to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign and Defense of Policy F. Mogherini, the arrest of two cadres of the Russian Communist Workers' Party, as well as the tabling of law that outlaws meetings of MPs with workers and is aimed against the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

The question of the MEP of the KKE was as follows:

"In recent decades, after the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union, an assault against the democratic and trade union rights of the workers is being observed in a number of countries in Eastern Europe, as well as in Russia. The climax of this assault is both the anti-communist bans in former socialist countries, which are members of the EU, as well as in Ukraine, and also the corresponding restrictions on the activity of the CPs.

Dimitris Koutsoumbas at KNE anti-imperialist camp: "Our future is not capitalism; it is the new world, Socialism!"

KKE GS D. Koutsoumbas addressing young communists in Ioannina.

A large crowd of young communists, members and friends of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE), attended a speech by the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Greece Dimitris Koutsoumbas, yesterday at the city of Ioannina in northern Greece. The speech by the KKE Secretary General marked the closing of the 26th anti-imperialist camp of KNE.

Russia's bourgeois class still trembles at the sight of Stalin: The Moscow State Law Academy incident

Sixty-four years have been passed since the biological death of Joseph Stalin and, still, the bolshevik leader creates nightmares to the bourgeois class. They fear his legacy, his name, even his portraits or plaques which refer to him. 

According to an Agence France-Presse report (which is full of stereotypical anti-communist references to "Stalin's repression"), everything started when the Moscow State Law University last month reinstated a Soviet-era plaque marking a speech delivered there by Stalin in 1924. The plaque had been removed in the 1960s. A former student launched an online petition in order to have the plaque removed, while a defense lawyer called Genri Reznik and professors of another college break their ties with the university in protest. 

DECLARATION OF THE CC OF THE KKE ON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

Declaration of the Central Committee of the KKE on the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution   Source: inter.kke.gr.

The Central Committee of the KKE honours the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. It honours the climactic world-historic event of the 20th century which demonstrated that capitalism is not invincible, that we can construct a superior organization of society, without the exploitation of man by man.

KKE MEP Kostas Papadakis blasts EU's resolution on Cuba as "unacceptable"

In his intervention regarding the "EU-Cuba Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement" at the European Parliament's plenary in Strasbourg, the MEP of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Kostas Papadakis pointed out the following:

"The unacceptable resolution which the EU and the European Parliament promote consists an organised plan of EU monopolies' penetration, formation of reactionary mechanisms and NGOs in Cuba. Both the US embargo, as well as the EU interventions are against the Cuban people.

The EU and her governments of imperialist wars and interventions, of the officially 20 million unemployed people, of the tens of millions who live under the poverty limits, wag the lecturing figure about human rights to the Cuban people who for decades erased unemployment, who expressed the need for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. In a country which, despite sanctions, had achievements which were intangible for the capitalist countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

KKE Gen.Secretary D.Koutsoumbas: "People's struggle against capitalism is what brings hope"

Source: inter.kke.gr.

On July 3 2017, a pre-agenda discussion in Parliament was held at the level of the party leaders on the issue of the economy, at the request of the President of ND, K.Mitsotakis, on the occasion of the recent agreement in the Eurogroup regarding the completion of the second "review" of the Greek economy.

As was expected, the Prime minister A.Tsipras, the President of ND K.Mitsotakis and the leaders of the rest of the bourgeois parties attempted to use confrontational language in order to conceal their strategic convergence around the basic demands of capital, swapping accusations about who "undermines" the aims of capital and who serves them better.

In contrast, the GS of the CC of the KKE, D.Koutsoumpas, noted that the real hope for the working class and people is not to be found in the plans and negotiations of the capitalists. Dimitris Koutsoumpas underscored that the biggest memorandum is the capitalist development path itself. He noted that the fairy tales about "just development" in capitalism, which allegedly benefits both the monopolies and the people, are collapsing every day in the workplaces, where the harsh exploitation of the workers is realized.

PAME: We will not bleed for their profits in peace! We will not become flesh for their weapons in war!

The following text is the introduction speech, on behalf of the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), at the Balkan Anti-Imperialist Trade Union Meeting which was held on June 25th in Thessaloniki, Greece. 

Dear Colleagues,

on behalf of the PAME Executive Secretariat, we welcome you to our today's meeting "With Workers From All Countries For A World Without Exploitation, Wars, Refugees". 

The Grenfell Tower Tragedy: Another crime of Capitalism

“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual…” 

- Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845. 

Karl Marx- Wage, Labour and Capital 1847 (Part I)

Wage, Labour and Capital.

By Karl Marx. 

First Published: April 1849.

Source: From the original 1891 pamphlet via Marxists Internet Archives.

PART I.

INTRODUCTION.

BY FRIEDRICH ENGELS.

This pamphlet first appeared in the form of a series of leading articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, beginning on April 4th, 1849. The text is made up of from lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen's Club of Brussels in 1847. The series was never completed. The promise "to be continued", at the end of the editorial in Number 269 of the newspaper, remained unfulfilled in consequence of the precipitous events of that time: the invasion of Hungary by the Russians [Tsarist troops invaded hungary in 1849 to keep the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty in power], and the uprisings in Dresden, Iserlohn, Elberfeld, the Palatinate, and in Baden [Spontaneous uprisings in Germany in May-July 1849, supporting the Imperial Constituion which were crushed in mid-July], which led to the suppression of the paper on May 19th, 1849. And among the papers left by Marx no manuscript of any continuation of these articles has been found. 

Solidarity with the detained members of the Communist Party of Mexico - ¡Luis y Omar libertad!

Omar Cota (Left) and Louis Bahena.

According to the Communist Party of Mexico, two members of the Party have been detained by local police at the city of Cuernavaca. On Friday, June 30, workers and people in the town of Alpuyeca, in the state of Morelos, demonstrated against the operation of monopoly groups in the area. The local police forces tried to repress the protest. 

In their effort to defend the workers and the demonstrators, two members of the Communist Party of Mexico and the Federation of Young Communists were arrested. 

KKE Europarliament Delegation: Solidarity with the FARC-EP political prisoners in Colombia

The Delegation of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in the European Parliament issued the following statement:

"We express our solidarity with the dozens of FARC-EP fighters and other political prisoners who have launched a hunger strike in Colombia's prisons for their release.

We denounce the Colombian government which while relying on its Agreements to maintain the status of persecution, repression and terrorism, continues to hold thousands of political prisoners imprisoned despite its commitments.

Poland towards fascistization? Parliament passes law envisaging the demolition of Soviet monuments

Members of a Polish neo-fascist group giving
the Nazi salute.

Anti-communist, reactionary hysteria in Poland continues...

According to the Russian news agency TASS, the lower house of Poland’s parliament, the Sejm, voted on Thursday to introduce amendments to the country’s de-communization law, envisaging the demolition of Soviet-era monuments, including memorials in honor of the Red Army. "The law has been passed," the press service of the Sejm confirmed to TASS.

Tsipras' government dismisses 10,000 workers, promotes privatization in garbage collection

Sanitary workers protesting near the Acropolis
in Athens.

Why there are tones of garbage in the streets of Athens and other Greek major cities these days? The answer is because the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government- within the framework of its anti-people, anti-workers policy and following the demands of the EU strategy- moves towards the dismissal of 10,000 sanitary workers, while it promotes the privatization of the garbage collection sector in municipalities. 

Greece's local authority staff union federation POE-OTA launched a protest last week, after a court ruled against the new extension to late 2017 of the short- term contracts of more than 10,000 people working in trash collection in municipalities throughout Greece.

On the dangerous and provocative remarks by New Democracy's Kyriakos Mitsotakis

Adopting the "arguments" of Golden Dawn's neo-Nazis, the president of the centre-right New Democracy (ND) party Kyriakos Mitsotakis made some dangerous and provocative remarks blaming the "Left" as the one responsible for "terrorism" in Greece. 

In an article published on 'politico.eu' under the title "Greece fears revival of far-left violence", Mitsotakis fully adopts the rhetoric of Golden Dawn's fascist thugs: “We are the only country [in Europe] that has domestic terrorism of the extreme left” said Mitsotakis who tried to downgrade the criminal activity of the Nazi Golden Dawn. 

Joseph Stalin is the "most outstanding" world figure according to the Russian people

Despite years of severe anticommunist-antisoviet bourgeois propaganda, a significant number of the Russian people express admiration and respect for the great Bolshevik leader.

Source: Russia Today.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin has once again been named the most oustanding world figure by Russians. Vladimir Putin shared second place with poet Alexander Pushkin. Among non-Russians, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton made the top 20.

Stalin, Putin, Pushkin, and Vladimir Lenin took the top three positions in a Levada Center poll which asked Russians to name the “most outstanding people of all times and peoples.” The poll results were published on Monday.

The poll surveyed 1,600 people in 137 places across Russia and was in free form – respondents weren’t given any suggestions for answers.