Comrade Eftychis Bitsakis passed away on Tuesday, 19/8/2025, after being hospitalized in an Athens hospital.

We bid farewell to a great man, communist, scientist and philosopher, who with his attitude and enormous work marked the communist movement in Greece, from the Nazi Occupation period to the present day, especially in moments of necessary revolutionary search and rupture.

We were left fewer, we became poorer: the global scientific community, the Marxist intelligentsia, his family, the left, his organization, the Communist Liberation. Comrade Eftychis, however, made us all richer with his great theoretical and written work, his stories, his interventions, his struggles.

He lived to be 98 years old, born in December 1927 in the village of Kandanos in Chania, Crete. A pioneering and restless spirit, he joined the EPON/ United Panhellenic Organization of Youth, Resistance Movement in 1943 at the age of 16 to fight against the fascist occupation. He was sentenced to death at the age of 19 and when his sentence was commuted to 18 years in prison, he remained a prisoner until 1955. He was imprisoned  in Chania, Athens, Syros and exiled to the prison-island of Gyaros.

After his return from exile, he was charged as a member of the KKE/Communist Party with various duties. In the Student Organization of the EDA/United  Democratic Left [legal political expression of the outlawed KKE] of Athens as its Secretary from 1956-1958, in the newspaper Avgi, in the Executive Committee of the EDA, in charge of the theoretical journal Contemporary Topics. After receiving his degree, in 1958, he worked in a private pharmaceutical company. With the lack of a “Certificate of social and political beliefs”  [communists were barred from the public sector jobs and universities in Greece unless they signed this certificate] to be able to continue his research and teaching work, in 1965 he decided to leave for France for doctoral studies and teaching. The dictatorship in Greece found him abroad where he developed intense anti-junta activity. He was a member of the Central Committee of the KKE from 1968-1973. He returned to Greece in 1976. He then contributed to the publication of the theoretical journal Scientific Thought.

He left the KKE in 1989 and joined the NAR/New Left Current. He was elected to the Political Committee of the NARin 1990. He contributed to the publication of Dialectics for a long time and from 1992 as editor of the quarterly theoretical journal Utopia.

He joined the new organization, Communist Liberation, upon its formation in 2025, anticipating, as he himself stated, “Based on the positive and negative experience of the Greek and global communist movement, we need to move into a new period of creative elaborations and development of Marxist theory, with the active contribution of all of us. Because the fullness of life today can only be realized through conscious participation in practice to overcome class slavery and the alienation that it entails.“

He studied Chemistry at the University of Athens, Theoretical Physics and Philosophy in Paris. His work in all fields is rich, especially in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Also in Ontology, Epistemology, Philosophy, Anthropology.

He spoke English and French. He taught  Mathematics at the University of Paris Sud, and Philosophy of Sciences at the University of Paris VIII. After his return to Greece he  was elected professor of Philosophy at the University of Ioannina. He participated in many international scientific and philosophical conferences.

Dozens of his books have been published, several have been originally published in foreign languages, while many have been translated into the main European languages. We distinguish the philosophical and political books that influenced the thinking and political choices of the radical, anti-capitalist, communist left.

He wrote his first book, “Physics and Philosophy” in 1965 under the pseudonym Kostas Politis, which he republished under the title “Being and Becoming” This was followed by: “Theory and Practice,” “The Evergreen Tree of Knowledge,” “The Roads of Dialectics,” “The Evolution of the Theories,” “Matter and Mind,” “From the Fire to the Pulpit,” and “Human Nature.“

“Rupture or Integration“, published in 1989, during that critical period of cosmogenic changes, marked by the shock and eventual collapse of the countries of the so-called existing socialism and in Greece by the entry of the KKE into the bourgeois governments with the right wing New Democracy party  and the “national-unity” with ND-PASOK(Social Democrats). A book that contributed to the great break that was made at that time for the rupture of thousands of fighters from the line of governmentism and integration. As Eftychis noted in the preface, “Rupture does not mean a series of ruptures with capitalism within the framework of capitalism. It means a leap, a revolutionary transformation that will be the ripe fruit of struggles that will escalate… Which left? First of all, communist, and with it an ever-growing alliance of a strategic nature, the entire left, renewed, revolutionary, at the height of the great dangers and great hopes of our era.“

He contributed decisively to the critical approach of the countries of the so-called existing socialism and to the necessary redefinition of our criteria for socialism with his book “A Spectre is Haunting“. Bitsakis’s view is consistent that the creative development of Marxism presupposes the highlighting and interpretation of its distortions, a specific position on the failure of “existing socialism”

He did not stop his writing work for a minute, and in fact, in November 2024, his last book, “For a Secular Ethics,” was published.

With his works, he contributed decisively to opening the horizons of all of us, marking the knowledge, consciousness and choices of the new generation and the older ones.

Eftychis stood on this journey a heretic, radical, constantly organized communist with views that he defended with stubbornness and persistence, with disagreements that he formulated with political culture and openly. Multifaceted, pioneering, demanding. Creative and restless spirit. Demanding for revolutionary theory, as he often said “there is no revolutionary action without theory“, the development of Marxism and dialectical materialism, especially addressing young communists and militants.

We did not experience Eftychis only through his books, his work, his political  action, refusing submission and compromise. We also got to know him and experienced him through his personal life, which reflected his life choices. His entire attitude to life reflected the example of the communist intellectual. He loved nature and opposed the plundering of the environment (indicative also in this book of his Storms of Progress). He refused the car and liked walking, which contributed to his strong nature, despite his physical strain from the years of prison and exile.

In recent years, he described himself as a farmer, he liked to stay often in his village in Crete with its fields and trees, although his permanent residence was in Vyronas [a working class Athenian suburb]. And in this neighborhood he knew its problems. He participated from the beginning (since 1994) in the formation of the Left Intervention of Vyronas [a collective, participating in municipal local elections]  by signing its founding declaration. He liked cinema, theater, music.

Eftychis has international recognition from scientists and Marxists.  He left behind a huge work that is priceless and we as Communist Liberation will continuously utilize it and a great void that we will give all our strength to fill.

Immortal.

COMMUNIST LIBERATION