On an article published August 28, “Syriza, pseudo-left maneuver ahead of Greek elections,” a reader posted a comment asking the WSWS to explain its differences with the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). Below we post a reply. The original comment can be found here.

You wish to know our differences with the KKE? They encompass the entire history of the struggle waged by the Fourth International against the Stalinist betrayal of the October Revolution and the cause of world socialism.

The KKE is a national Stalinist party, whose history is steeped in the counter-revolutionary crimes of the Soviet bureaucracy. It supported the extermination of revolutionists by the Stalinist regime, and organized the killings of Trotskyists within Greece. Its loyal implementation of the policies of the Soviet bureaucracy ensured the defeat of the working class in the Greek civil war.

Throughout the post-war period, the policies of the Communist Party were subordinated to the foreign policy of the Kremlin bureaucracy. It thus contributed decisively to the political conditions that ensured the success of the right-wing coup of 1967 and, following the collapse of the junta, the re-stabilization of bourgeois political rule in Greece. The KKE endorsed and participated in bourgeois governments, with both New Democracy and Pasok.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in Russia and Eastern Europe deprived the KKE, like other nationalist Stalinist organizations, of material resources upon which it had previously depended. Moreover, without the backing of the USSR, it was less attractive to sections of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. Its squabbles, devoid of any principled content, with Syriza and other pseudo-left formations reflect the efforts of the KKE bureaucrats to retain their organizational control over sections of the working class, particularly within the trade unions.

The KKE continues to sing the praises of Stalin and his henchmen. This is a small matter for middle class left-liberals. But for Marxists, the evaluation of a party is determined through an examination of its history. A political organization that identifies itself with the bestial crimes of Stalinism is an enemy of the working class within Greece and internationally.

In determining the nature of the Greek Communist Party, the KKE’s hypocritical criticism of Tsipras is far less important than its filthy praise of Stalin.