New Left Current

The New Left Current (Νέο Αριστερό Ρεύμα για την Κομμουνιστική Απελευθέρωση; Neo Aristero Revma, NAR) is a communist political party in Greece, formed in 1990 mainly by former members of the youth organization of the Communist Party of Greece.

Background
In 1989, following the June and November general legislative elections in Greece, after which no party obtained the necessary majority to be able to form a government, the New Democracy and Synaspismos parties agreed to form a coalition government led by New Democracy's Tzannis Tzannetakis, as prime minister.

The Synaspismos party was an electoral alliance between the Communist Party of Greece, aka KKE, and the Greek Left party. The coalition government's stated, primary objective was to deal with the Koskotas scandal, ostensibly linked to PASOK's leadership. The decision of the KKE to enter into a government with the liberal-conservative party of New Democracy was met with objections by many of its members, with the strongest ones coming from the party's youth organization.

The dissidents held the majority in the Youth organization's leadership council and, from November 1989 onward, held a series of meetings and assemblies throughout the country against the "electoral coalition with the Right." The Communist Youth's Secretary General Yannis Grapsas, asked whether he will follow the party's directives, states publicly "I will certainly not obey," the first time that such a disagreement from the Youth leader is revealed in public. In response, KKE expels the dissidents from the Youth organization, along with a significant number of the organization's members.

At the same time, prominent members of the Communist Party itself, such as Kostas Kappos, leave KKE.

Establishment
Following a December 1989 country-wide meeting of sympathizers, a tentative platform is put into circulation, titled "Proposal for a dialogue: For a new prospect of the Left in 1990's Greece," that clearly aims at establishing a new organization.

On 10 and 11 February 1990, the 1st All-Greece Assembly of the New Left Current is held in the facilities of the Athens Polytechnic, in which some four hundred elected representatives from across the country participate, vote on the party's political platform, and elect the Co-ordination Committee.

The Communist Party denounces NAR as "opportunists" and "social democrats", accusing the new party that, in demanding the "re-nationalization of privatized public enterprises," supports the delusion of state capitalism. Other voices of the Left, accuse NAR of promoting the notion of "managing the capitalist system" rather than replacing it with socialism, and, also, of "smearing KKE."

Ideology
Αs related by Political Committee member Dimitris Desyllas, the New Left Current supports the collaboration within the movement of the "fighting Left" for the implementation of a radical, anti-capitalist program. NAR's political objectives are denoted as capitalism's overthrow and the establishment of a workers' democracy in a communist regime. The basic tenets of such a regime would be the end of private, capitalist ownership of the means of production in ever "basic" sector of the economy, control of production by workers' councils, and freedom of expression in society.

Τhe New Left Current supports the notion that capitalism has evolved beyond what Lenin denoted as its uppermost, ultimate stage, that of imperialism, into a "totalitarian capitalism," a state of affairs that could not have been foreseen at the time, according to NAR's position, since "inter-state totalities," such as the European Union, did not yet exist.

Elections: alliances and votes
Soon after its inception, the New Left Current has entered into co-operations and alliances, permanent or tactical/electoral, with other formations of the left.

In 1990, NAR participated in the general election as "New Left Current - People's Opposition" (Νέο Αριστερό Ρεύμα - Λαϊκή Αντιπολίτευση) and received 14,365 votes or 0,22% of the total. Ex-KKE Central Committee member Kostas Kappos was a prominent figure in the party's electoral campaign. In 1993, NAR joined the Left Struggle political coalition, along with the Revolutionary Communist Movement of Greece), the Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist), and the Workers' Revolutionary Party. The Struggle received 8,160 votes in 1993 and 10,443 votes in the 1996 general elections, or 0.11% and 0.21% respectively of the total. In December 1990, Kappos left NAR and, though he never officially returned to the Communist Party, he would declare he'd never left the KKE.

In 1999, NAR, the Revolutionary Communist Movement of Greece, and the Workers Revolutionary Party, along with other, smaller formations of the left, allied themselves as the Radical Left Front. Some ten years after, in 2009, the New Left Current participates in the broader coalition of ANTARSYA.

Various former NAR members became prominent figures in the Syriza party, some of them becoming ministers in the Suriza government as well, such as Nadia Valavani, Nikos Kotzias, Pavlos Polakis, and others. Foundational NAR member Kostas Kappos, one of the most heavily tortured prisoners of the 1967-74 dictatorial regime, enjoyed the respect of the Greek left's whole ideological spectrum, as shown by the expressions of mourning upon his 2005 death, such as the KKE obituary.

Youth League
The New Left Current's youth organization, the Youth of Communist Liberation (Νεολαία Κομμουνιστική Απελευθέρωση or nKA), participates in the United Independent Left Movement, a coalition of left-wing student formations, and is active in the country's educational institutions.

By the 2010s, nKA has come to define itself as "politically autonomous."