In December, documents were released asserting two radically different political perspectives.
They could not be more different.
On December 4, under the President of the United States’ Seal, the White House published the administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, expressing the government's current evaluation of the global challenges facing it.
The next day, December 5, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) publicly announced its forthcoming 22nd Congress, followed by the publication of its Theses of the Central Committee-- the product of long preparatory discussions by the KKE’s members-- constituting an assessment of the state of the world and the Party’s approach to it.
A comparison of the two documents presents a violent clash of class outlooks.
The US National Security Strategy
The US ruling class-- in its current incarnation-- intends to maintain or re-establish US economic domination and grease the wheels for US corporations to succeed internationally. In this regard, the Trump administration is no different than earlier administrations, except-- perhaps-- being more transparent in this goal.
More specifically, extracting policy from the section on the Western Hemisphere, the strategy includes:
Militarizing the seas and the oceans. Previous administrations portrayed military force as an instrument of guaranteeing free “access” to trade. This administration, under the “America First” ideology explicitly uses military force to promote US economic success, foregoing the charade of promoting free trade for all.
Accessing strategic resources. In the document’s laundered language, the goal is “to identify strategic points and resources… with a view to their protection and joint development with regional partners.” More candidly, US policy makers in this administration project power to privilege US corporations in resource-rich countries like Bolivia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Making it hard for other countries to compete. “The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.” The strategy endorsed by the document uses economic leverage to deny success to others.
Helping US corporations to dominate. “[W]e will reform our own system to expedite approvals and licensing—again, to make ourselves the partner of first choice. The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by [other] countries…” Specifically and adamantly, “[e]very U.S. Government official that interacts with… countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.”
Accepting that “[t]he United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses.” Of course, this policy only reiterates what every US administration for more than a hundred years has sought since the intervention in Cuba and the Philippines: a free hand for US economic exploitation.
While these goals are extracted from Trump’s new Monroe Doctrine for the Western Hemisphere, they are barely disguised as policy for the rest of the world. However, they represent considerable continuity with the foreign policy of earlier administrations, though shorn of any pretense to global fairness.
Commentators have been surprised with the Trump administration’s focus on the Western Hemisphere over the often-bitter hostility towards the People’s Republic of China. Surely, that simply acknowledges the formidable economic and military power of the PRC. US policy makers of Trump’s world have been forced to recognize that-- no matter how much they would like otherwise-- the US is in no position to bully the PRC. Therefore, they accept that they can only adjust or modify their economic relationship. Competing with the PRC-- the US’s most formidable rival-- consists, instead, in bullying those who do business with their rival.
The administration is explicit on how to “compete” for the allegiance of their Chinese rivals’ economic collaborators: “China’s state-led and state-backed companies excel in building physical and digital infrastructure, and China has recycled perhaps $1.3 trillion of its trade surpluses into loans to its trading partners. America and its allies have not yet formulated, much less executed, a joint plan for the so-called ‘Global South,’ but together possess tremendous resources. Europe, Japan, South Korea, and others hold net foreign assets of $7 trillion. International financial institutions, including the multilateral development banks, possess combined assets of $1.5 trillion. While mission creep has undermined some of these institutions’ effectiveness, this administration is dedicated to using its leadership position to implement reforms that ensure they serve American interests.” [my emphasis] Thus, the document reveals the carrot to the US stick.
Almost in passing, by merely observing the European Union’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the Trump administration demonstrates that it considers the EU to be another rival, albeit a rival retaining some important historical ties-- neither a protectorate, nor currently a competitor of great concern.
The US National Security Strategy paper offers the latest insight into the thinking now directing the still-greatest power in the imperialist system. It is a blue print for the security of US business interests and not of the security and well-being of the people.
The KKE Theses of the Central Committee
How does the Greek Communist Party view the current state of the world?
The KKE is one of the few Marxist organizations relatively untarnished by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It conceded little to the mass retreat from Leninist principles. It refused to flirt with the widespread ideological marriage of markets and socialism. It held fast to the centrality of class in the analysis of the contemporary world. Where much of today’s left rails against an ever-changing, seemingly unrelated basket of grievances, the KKE defends the classical Marxist understanding that the central, determinative contradiction remains the contradiction between capital and labor, nationally and internationally.
Certainly, that should make Greek Communist thinking of interest to all those who question the strategic aims of the leaders of the most powerful state in the capitalist system.
KKE sees a class-divided world moving toward relative and absolute impoverishment of working people, long-term unemployment, and an unfavorable balance of power between capital and labor. Technological innovation is skewed dramatically in support of the interests of capital. Pursuit of profit continues to dangerously degrade the environment.
As a result of the weakness of labor in confronting capital, the capitalist system is suffering from an overaccumulation of capital. Hyper-exploitation has produced a mass of capital, seeking-- with greater and greater difficulty-- to find (safe) profitable investment opportunities (one might well view the orgy of investment in AI as an attempt to create such an opportunity).
KKE understands the recessionary pressures experienced in Europe, Japan, and Asia as the effects of this crisis of the return on investment. Efforts to manage this crisis-- Keynesian or otherwise-- have failed. Specifically, the liberal project of green technology (e.g., the Green New Deal) and the Central Bank project (e.g., interest-rate manipulation, qualitative easing) were unsuccessful in restoring a solid foundation for the rate of profit.
Further, the capitalist powers have invested in the war economy, both in response to inter-imperialist contradictions and to absorb capital.
Militarism serves to destroy and devalue capital through the never-ending conflicts arising from imperialist rivalries. They caution that this military buildup increases sharply the risk of even larger wars, possibly world wars.
The KKE stresses competition between existing nations-- great powers, alliances, and emerging blocs--- fueling the existing wars, flashpoints, and severe clashes endangering our world. They contend that:
The USA, which still holds the leading position, is trying to halt the shift in the balance of power in China’s favour. International financial institutions have already downgraded the US credit rating. This trend is reflected in the decline of the US share and the significant increase of China’s share in Gross World Product (global GDP) between 2000 and 2025, in the significant difference in growth rates between the USA and China, the large US trade deficit in bilateral trade with China and the EU, and the sharp rise in US public debt.
Within the global imperialist system, both the PRC and Russia present challenges to US hegemony, and US nationalist, protectionist policies are also “... sharpening contradictions within the Euro-Atlantic camp and causing a deterioration in relations between the USA and the EU, Canada and Australia. They are exacerbating intra-bourgeois contradictions within the USA, which are also reflected in developments within the bourgeois political system. They are increasing the likelihood of the decline of the dollar as an international currency. They have a negative impact on international trade and reinforce the downward trend in the international capitalist economy.”
Of the major powers, the KKE sees the European Union as losing ground “relative to the USA and China”, which is feeding the existing turn to the right in many Eurozone countries.
The war in Ukraine is the result of today’s Great Power rivalries-- it is an imperialist war. The KKE asserts:
In the three-and-a-half years of this war, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives, mainly young people of the working class and the poor popular strata. Approximately twenty-five million people have fled their homes. Homes and public infrastructure have been destroyed on a massive scale. Amidst the ruins, capitalist states and monopolies are competing for the “reconstruction” of Ukraine, viewing it as an “investment opportunity.” This will cost hundreds of billions of euros, a burden that the people will be made to bear… The outbreak of contradictions and realignments within imperialist alliances as imperialist conflict and competition unfold is neither paradoxical nor unprecedented, but a typical feature of imperialist wars. It can lead to former adversaries becoming allies, and former allies becoming adversaries.
Similarly, the KKE views the war in the Middle East as an imperialist war:
The Israeli war machine supported by the USA and the EU, launched a massive operation in the Gaza Strip, using the Hamas attack as a pretext. This operation resulted in the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of innocent people, including unarmed civilians, young children, women and elderly people….The imperialist nature of the war in the Middle East and the bourgeois character of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority do not invalidate the just struggle of the Palestinian people and other peoples in the region, who resist and fight against foreign occupation and other imperialist plans. Through this struggle, they can create the conditions necessary to free themselves once and for all from the system of exploitation and war.
For those who may be interested, the current assessment bears remarkable consistency and continuity with the Theses for the 20th Congress developed nearly a decade ago.
Serious-minded people seeking an understanding of the perilous, contentious, and confusing world in which we are living should welcome the revealing contrast between the two perspectives outlined here. One outlook only recognizes the interests of a minority of advantage-seeking, privileged individuals and soulless corporations, while the other recognizes the common fate and pressing needs of the majority of the world’s people who are found within a well-defined social class.
One doesn’t have to agree with all of the conclusions shared by the Greek Communists, but one must acknowledge that they are drawn from an effort to create a world far distant from the one arrogantly defended in the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Moreover, the KKE unabashedly supports a class line-- on the working peoples’ side of the barricades. It argues that exploitation is the crucial social relation that decides whether employment, equality, living standards, health care, education, security, or peace are won or lost. Moreover, KKE unequivocally sides with the exploited.
Finding our way free from the Trumpian world and those conditions that produced it will require a clear and deep analysis. The KKE Theses provide a solid foundation of both clarity and depth.
Greg Godels
1 comment:
You note that the Communist Party of Greece "refused to flirt with the widespread ideological marriage of markets and socialism."
Now that one-third of adults under age 30 have a favorable view of communism (Cato poll, May 15, 2025), the leaders of DSA scramble to look like more than reformists. One of them, Jacobin magnate Bhaskar Sunkara, insists, “If we don’t talk about socialism after capitalism, no one else will.” (Jacobin, Nov. 24, 2025)) What he really means, of course, is that communists will talk about socialism after capitalism.
Central planning in order to allocate overall investment is crucial to a socialism that is on the communist path. This horrifies Sunkara, and he outlines DSA socialism in an undeclared ideological campaign against it: “In a market socialist system, you need public banks that can support worker-controlled firms and provide them with startup capital. And they’re doing that on the same basis as a bank would under capitalism — they are trying to give money to firms that they believe will be profitable and will pay back their loans.” (Response to Ben Burgis, Nov. 16, 2025)
Profits, groups of workers competing with each other for those profits … this is socialism?! The experience of worker-controlled firms like Mondragon in Spain shows that they polarize workers into a few new bosses and the rest who are exploited just as capitalists exploited them. Yugoslavia tried market socialism after it broke from the Soviet Union, only to see provincial rivalries escalate to nationalist civil war.
Post a Comment