Contribution of the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain [En.]
Dear Comrades,
The strategic project of the EU, called "Europe 2020", provides that from January 2011, draft budgets and reform programs for each member state have to be analyzed and validated by the Union on the basis of compliance with the targets set by the EU to overcome the crisis, which are:
-The redevelopment of the public finances.
-The proper functioning of the financial system.
With this statement it is clear that once the European oligarchy has marked the strategy to overcome the crisis by making the working class and popular sector pay its consequences, there will be no law nor legislation able to stop or become an obstacle for achieving the goal of that plan, which is no other than starting a new process of accumulation of capital after a traumatic process of destruction of productive forces and concentration of capital.
The so-called “Euro Plus Agreement” adopted at the Summit of the Council on March 24, 2011, is a clear example of this and places again all labour, social and civil rights achieved by the working class after many decades of struggle in the "reformist" bull's-eye of the oligarchy.
This is their strategy, as evidenced by the NATO military attack on Libya, and to carry it out they do not only not discard violence, but they are well aware of the use of violence, including war. Durao Barroso alreadey warned about this in the summer of 2010 when he threatened the peoples of Europe with military dictatorships if their struggle precluded the development and implementation of the adjustment programs.
In clear words, our class enemy is doing his homework with maximum speed and audacity, and the working class in general remains expecting and patiently accepting the lesser evil, in the absence of a communist European policy that settles a line of action for the social majority.
In this situation of structural crisis of capitalism is when the vanguard organizations must take steps to define a strategy to trace the course of political action and organization of the working class, the youth and the popular sectors, with the same audacity as our class enemy.
Without forgetting at any time the need to start building a pole for the international communist coordination, this strategy unequivocally demands that today, the communist and workers' parties of the member states of the EU take concrete steps to articulate a communist coordination which, through a common analysis and a common agenda, expands the horizons of the struggle of our class, allowing our class to change, once and for all, the subjectivity of defeat in which it is installed by one of victory and confidence in its forces, based on the belief that revolutionary change leding to a socialist society is possible.
This proposal would be a historic turn in the European communist movement, with the difficulty of having to step over a recent history too used to position the goal of the revolutionary crisis as something far away in time and typical of other countries and, consequently, something that has been away from the daily political program with which we have addressed our class over the years.
As a result of this renunciation to offer workers the chance to fight in the concrete arena for Socialism and Communism, as something real and possible from which to confront the dictatorship of the class that is hidden by the bourgeois state and its laws, today we find that we have to break, within our own class, the hegemony of reformist illusions on the possibility to find a solution to our problems by deepening in the democratic and social character of the capitalist system.
The PCPE proposes to the participants in this meeting to take concrete steps in this regard. We would like to propose you that, in this moment, the parties gathered here can start working on a document that clearly characterizes the imperialist nature of the European Union and its structures, that explains the key elements that make the European Union, from its origin and its nature, a tool of big capital and monopolies against the workers and peoples and that, finally, proposes a common minimum program of struggle of the communist and workers' parties of the EU member states. The experience gained in developing the joint document signed by 21 communist and workers' parties with the occasion of the European elections in 2009 can surely serve as a basis.
Here lies, in our opinion, the core of the battle of ideas where the communist organizations should be settled, both in our direct intervention with the working class and in our work at the various mass fronts and, particularly, in the trade-unions. Fighting against the illusions of reformism, the sticking point of scientific socialism from its origins, is more relevant today than ever.
The transvestism of the European Left Party and its members goes so far as to place, without any shame, as the central agreement of its 3rd Congress in December 2010, “the creation (within the EU) of a social fund for social development”. The “holy alliance” between the reformist left of the EL Party, the European Trade Union Confederation and the parties of the European Socialist Party for the management of the capitalist crisis has the goal to move the working class away from the awareness of where its problems are and where to direct its struggle. Nowadays, if we speak about those who manage capitalism on behalf of the working class said, we can clearly say, as Lassalle did in the past, that “my enemy is not who deserves more punishment, but who, saying to be my representative, and having the task of defending my rights, sells them and betrays them”.
Comrades, here is the decision to be taken by each of the European Communist and Workers' Parties:
-To push decisively towards the articulation of a communist coordination pole that becomes a reference of radical opposition to the policies developed by the EU and of denounce of the oligarchic and imperialist nature of th EU, or
-To stay in the permanent undefinition towards the reformist left, opening channels of possible legitimization of its collaborationist policies among the communist organizations.
Using a bold historical parallelism, in Europe today we find on one hand some parties like those who constitute the European Socialist Party and the European Left Party who are the 2nd International and, on the other hand, some parties who, with our program for Socialism and our decisive intervention against the policies of the European oligarchy, want to raise the 3rd International. As it happened with the crisis caused by the War of 1914 and the support of social-democracy to the respective national bourgeoisies then, that is the only space that exists. The Vienna International or “2 ½ International” failed and eventually integrated into the 2nd International. In this moment, those who, for various reasons, do not push and support the communist coordination among the EU member states, will eventually find themselves ideologically and organizationally integrated in the very collaboratorative and treacherous International of the European Socialists and the EL Party.
Now is the time to regain the prestige of the communist militancy and the communist proposal within the working class with a crystal clear speech in which we offer to the working men and women Socialism as the solution of their problems and where there is no space for any reformist proposal based on the deception of the interclassism of the bourgeois national state or the EU.
From the modesty of our organizational reality, but from the force of a membership really into the class struggle and increasingly identified as communist by the most conscious sectors of the working class, the PCPE makes this urgent appeal to all parties present at this meeting so that, without further delay, we set in motion the comprehensive response to the aggression of the oligarchy that the workers of Europe are expecting from us.
The strategic project of the EU, called "Europe 2020", provides that from January 2011, draft budgets and reform programs for each member state have to be analyzed and validated by the Union on the basis of compliance with the targets set by the EU to overcome the crisis, which are:
-The redevelopment of the public finances.
-The proper functioning of the financial system.
With this statement it is clear that once the European oligarchy has marked the strategy to overcome the crisis by making the working class and popular sector pay its consequences, there will be no law nor legislation able to stop or become an obstacle for achieving the goal of that plan, which is no other than starting a new process of accumulation of capital after a traumatic process of destruction of productive forces and concentration of capital.
The so-called “Euro Plus Agreement” adopted at the Summit of the Council on March 24, 2011, is a clear example of this and places again all labour, social and civil rights achieved by the working class after many decades of struggle in the "reformist" bull's-eye of the oligarchy.
This is their strategy, as evidenced by the NATO military attack on Libya, and to carry it out they do not only not discard violence, but they are well aware of the use of violence, including war. Durao Barroso alreadey warned about this in the summer of 2010 when he threatened the peoples of Europe with military dictatorships if their struggle precluded the development and implementation of the adjustment programs.
In clear words, our class enemy is doing his homework with maximum speed and audacity, and the working class in general remains expecting and patiently accepting the lesser evil, in the absence of a communist European policy that settles a line of action for the social majority.
In this situation of structural crisis of capitalism is when the vanguard organizations must take steps to define a strategy to trace the course of political action and organization of the working class, the youth and the popular sectors, with the same audacity as our class enemy.
Without forgetting at any time the need to start building a pole for the international communist coordination, this strategy unequivocally demands that today, the communist and workers' parties of the member states of the EU take concrete steps to articulate a communist coordination which, through a common analysis and a common agenda, expands the horizons of the struggle of our class, allowing our class to change, once and for all, the subjectivity of defeat in which it is installed by one of victory and confidence in its forces, based on the belief that revolutionary change leding to a socialist society is possible.
This proposal would be a historic turn in the European communist movement, with the difficulty of having to step over a recent history too used to position the goal of the revolutionary crisis as something far away in time and typical of other countries and, consequently, something that has been away from the daily political program with which we have addressed our class over the years.
As a result of this renunciation to offer workers the chance to fight in the concrete arena for Socialism and Communism, as something real and possible from which to confront the dictatorship of the class that is hidden by the bourgeois state and its laws, today we find that we have to break, within our own class, the hegemony of reformist illusions on the possibility to find a solution to our problems by deepening in the democratic and social character of the capitalist system.
The PCPE proposes to the participants in this meeting to take concrete steps in this regard. We would like to propose you that, in this moment, the parties gathered here can start working on a document that clearly characterizes the imperialist nature of the European Union and its structures, that explains the key elements that make the European Union, from its origin and its nature, a tool of big capital and monopolies against the workers and peoples and that, finally, proposes a common minimum program of struggle of the communist and workers' parties of the EU member states. The experience gained in developing the joint document signed by 21 communist and workers' parties with the occasion of the European elections in 2009 can surely serve as a basis.
Here lies, in our opinion, the core of the battle of ideas where the communist organizations should be settled, both in our direct intervention with the working class and in our work at the various mass fronts and, particularly, in the trade-unions. Fighting against the illusions of reformism, the sticking point of scientific socialism from its origins, is more relevant today than ever.
The transvestism of the European Left Party and its members goes so far as to place, without any shame, as the central agreement of its 3rd Congress in December 2010, “the creation (within the EU) of a social fund for social development”. The “holy alliance” between the reformist left of the EL Party, the European Trade Union Confederation and the parties of the European Socialist Party for the management of the capitalist crisis has the goal to move the working class away from the awareness of where its problems are and where to direct its struggle. Nowadays, if we speak about those who manage capitalism on behalf of the working class said, we can clearly say, as Lassalle did in the past, that “my enemy is not who deserves more punishment, but who, saying to be my representative, and having the task of defending my rights, sells them and betrays them”.
Comrades, here is the decision to be taken by each of the European Communist and Workers' Parties:
-To push decisively towards the articulation of a communist coordination pole that becomes a reference of radical opposition to the policies developed by the EU and of denounce of the oligarchic and imperialist nature of th EU, or
-To stay in the permanent undefinition towards the reformist left, opening channels of possible legitimization of its collaborationist policies among the communist organizations.
Using a bold historical parallelism, in Europe today we find on one hand some parties like those who constitute the European Socialist Party and the European Left Party who are the 2nd International and, on the other hand, some parties who, with our program for Socialism and our decisive intervention against the policies of the European oligarchy, want to raise the 3rd International. As it happened with the crisis caused by the War of 1914 and the support of social-democracy to the respective national bourgeoisies then, that is the only space that exists. The Vienna International or “2 ½ International” failed and eventually integrated into the 2nd International. In this moment, those who, for various reasons, do not push and support the communist coordination among the EU member states, will eventually find themselves ideologically and organizationally integrated in the very collaboratorative and treacherous International of the European Socialists and the EL Party.
Now is the time to regain the prestige of the communist militancy and the communist proposal within the working class with a crystal clear speech in which we offer to the working men and women Socialism as the solution of their problems and where there is no space for any reformist proposal based on the deception of the interclassism of the bourgeois national state or the EU.
From the modesty of our organizational reality, but from the force of a membership really into the class struggle and increasingly identified as communist by the most conscious sectors of the working class, the PCPE makes this urgent appeal to all parties present at this meeting so that, without further delay, we set in motion the comprehensive response to the aggression of the oligarchy that the workers of Europe are expecting from us.
e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr