11 IMCWP: Intervention of KKE

International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties

New Delhi, November 20-22, 2009

Communist Party of Greece

SPEECH OF GIORGOS MARINOS, MEMBER OF THE PB OF THE CC OF KKE

We would like to thank the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India for hosting and organizing the Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties. The fact that the International Meeting takes place in Asia for the first time is a very significant step. Amongst others, it underlines our solidarity with the peoples in the region that increasingly become the target of the imperialist plans and rivalries as well as our solidarity with  the struggle of the communist parties that often face extremely difficult conditions, persecutions, discriminations, assassinations.

The examination of the developments regarding the capitalist crisis will enrich our experience and it will contribute to the development of the communists’ struggle.  Communists study the capitalist crisis, its causes and its consequences, the conditions it creates for the development of the ideological, political and mass struggle. Nevertheless, the concentration of our attention on the capitalist crisis should not distract us from the capitalist development of the previous period in which the factors that led to the crisis developed. Furthermore, the working people must treat the capitalist development in a unified way in all the stages of the economic cycle and draw conclusions as well.

Capitalism is not dangerous only in the phase of the crisis, the economic recession. It is dangerous as a whole. Because in all its stages it is characterized by the exploitation of the labour force, by the surplus value which is created by the unpaid labour, by the drive for capitalist profit which is the life and soul of the capitalist system.

Even in conditions of economic rise, of expansion of the production and increase of the wealth produced by the workers, it is the big capital that appropriates the fruits of this development, increasing its profit and its power. The profits of magnates, bankers, ship-owners as well as other sectors of plutocracy, the strengthening of the monopoly capital are immense.

On the contrary, workers face the increase of unemployment, the freezing of salaries and pensions, the increase of the retirement age, the downgrade of the right to education, healthcare, welfare, sports, culture, as well as the heavy consequences from the privatizations and the liberation of fields and sectors of the economy.

These tendencies do not apply merely to the capitalist countries that hold an intermediate or subordinate position in the capitalist pyramid. They also apply to the US, to the EU as an interstate imperialist organisation; they apply in the capitalist world as a whole.

On this ground developed the preconditions of the crisis. Therefore, the communist parties must struggle in order to highlight the real causes of the crisis and reveal the fake allegations of social democracy and opportunism that use many pretexts in order to safeguard capitalism and conceal its irreconcilable contradictions.

There can be no retreat; the ideological-political struggle must intensify.

We must respond resolutely to the allegations of the bourgeois and opportunist forces, especially to that of the European Left Party and the party “die Linke” that play a leading role in the attempt to promote the capital’s positions in the working class. We must respond to the new wave of anticommunism unfolding on the occasion of the 20 years of the counterrevolution with the full supported of liberal, social democratic and opportunist forces.

First: the allegation that the crisis has been caused exclusively by the neo-liberal management conceals the truth, it exonerates capitalism from its responsibilities and whitewashes social democracy. Capitalism suffers crises since 19th century. With its transition to the imperialist stage crises took on a systemic character.

All forms of management have been tested in order to prevent and avoid crises: the reinforcement of the state commercial activity and the stimulation of the demand according to the new Keynesian recipes; likewise the neoliberal recipes but also the mixtures of social democrat and neoliberal policies. However, the laws of capitalism insist. Economic crises of overproduction manifested themselves in all periods, irrespective of the form of management.

The capitalist restructurings initiated after the crisis of 1973 and spread in the 1990s have not occurred by accident. Their goal was to deal with the problems concerning the reproduction of capital and the slowdown of the capitalist development. These changes meet the internal need of the system for a bigger centralization and profit making of the capital through the liberation of markets, the free movement of capital, goods, services and workforce. But even this management has lost its dynamics; it led to an economic crisis.

Second: the characterization of the crisis as a financial one and the theory of casino-capitalism conceal the real causes of the crisis. Furthermore, they have been refuted by the developments as the crisis has already embraced all spheres of economy.
The history of the crises has proved that they can initially manifest themselves in the financial system but their root is the over-accumulation of capital that takes place in the sphere of production.

The bad loans granted by banks and other financial companies in the US have served a specific need: to provide a profitable way out to over-accumulated capital that included the surplus value created by the exploitation of labour force, by the unpaid labour in the production; to provide a way out to over-accumulated capital and continue the expanded reproduction overcoming the problems regarding the purchasing power of the workers’ families by means of lending for home purchasing or the satisfaction of other needs.

The analysis of these complicated issues regarding the reproduction of social capital requires the comprehensive examination of the relationship between industrial, commercial and bank capital, taking into account that in the era of imperialism, even more so nowadays, the merging of industrial with bank capital, the formation of financial capital has taken on huge dimensions.

The real cause of the crisis is the intensification of the main contradiction of capitalism, the contradiction between the social character of production and the capitalist appropriation of its results due to the fact that the means of production are under capitalist ownership. The goal of capitalism is the profit and not the satisfaction of the people’s needs.

These elements prevail in the exploitative system; they constitute the basis of the anarchic, uneven development; the basis of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall which is caused by the increase of the organic composition of capital; the basis of the contradiction between production and consumption. These factors lead to the disfunctions in the reproduction of social capital, to “outbreaks”, and crises of overproduction.

We struggle so that the people realise the real causes of the crisis and we devote all our forces to the organisation of the struggle of the working class and the popular strata against the capitalist aggressiveness and the anti-peoples policy that supports the capital and tries to place the burden of the crisis on the peoples’ shoulders. People should draw conclusions. Trillions of dollars have been allocated for the reinforcement of bankers, magnates and other capitalists strengthening the offensive on workers’ and peoples’ forces, the effort to make them pay for the capitalist crisis. This course is followed both in the US and the EU as well as in other capitalist countries, both by neoliberal and social democrat parties. The decision of the G20 is also at the same direction. Their contradictions reflect the rivalries between the monopoly interests they serve.

Capitalist powers fear the crisis of capital over-accumulation overproduction that embraces the US, the EU, Russia, Japan, Latin America causing a slowdown in the economy of China and India. In order to mislead the people they use several contrived theories; they promote false expectations in order to check the social reactions and hinder the development of class struggle.

The social democratic forces, the Socialist International and its cadres play a leading role in this effort.

First: they present the control of the capital’s movement as a way out, they talk about the democratization of the World Bank and the European Central Bank. However, it has been proved that nothing can prevent the sharpening of the capitalist contradictions and that no measure can change the nature of the bank system which is a tool of capitalism. Second: they promote the nationalization of certain banks or other capitalist enterprises as a way out. This position is deceptive because even in that case the criterion of profit remains on the ground of a liberated market that breeds competition and aggressiveness against the peoples.

Third: they are worried about the increase of unemployment and as a solution they promote the increase of the development rates combined with the so-called “green development”. They are actually fooling the peoples. Capitalist development has never managed to ensure the right to work for all the people, and it won’t do so.

The source of the evil is the fact that the means of production are in the hands of the capitalists, that profit is the criterion for the development and that in any case the system is characterized by the anarchy  in production and the uneven development between various fields and sectors of the economy as well as geographical areas.

This fact underlines that in capitalism workers can never be before profits; it reveals how misleading the allegations about the “rationalized”, “human” capitalism and the regulation of the market are. Communists must refute resolutely these illusions about the management of the capitalist system and encounter the difficulties in the organisation and the development of the class struggle, clarifying that there is no common interest between the capital and the working class, neither in the phase of the crisis nor in the phase of the revival of the capitalist development.

Capitalists and their parties promote new anti-people’s measures in the name of the climate changes, concealing the fact that they constitute the result of the exploitation of the natural resources by the capital with the aim to make profit. Energy, water, forests, wastes, agricultural production, are privatized and accumulated in the hands of a few multinational corporations, now also in the name of the environment. Similar measures are promoted, to a larger or lesser extent, in all capitalist countries irrespective of the degree of capitalist development.

Furthermore, the protection of the environment is also used as a pretext for imperialist interventions. Multinational monopolies, through the powerful imperialist powers, above all the USA and the EU, promote anti-people’s interstate agreements in the framework of the WTO and the Doha round of negotiations with the less developed capitalist countries. Thus they set goals e.g. for biofuels, that destroy vast forest areas, they promote the genetically modified food and other measures as well, striking an even bigger blow on the workers’ income and the poor and medium sized peasantry.

“Green economy”, promoted mainly by the EU, constitutes a way out for the over-accumulation of capital and the safeguarding of monopolies profits by means of intensifying the exploitation of workers and natural resources; not only it does not solve the problem of the climate changes but on the contrary, it intensifies it. Climate and environmental problems cannot be dealt with as detached from the ownership over the concentrated means of production and the issue of political power.

Comrades,

Social concession, class collaboration is one of the most insidious and dangerous tools for the manipulation of the working class and its disarmament. We are thus obliged to strengthen the ideological front and struggle against such positions, which in most cases are expressed  not only by neoliberal or social democratic parties but also by parties that present themselves as “left”, namely opportunist parties. These parties try to build relationships with communist parties and exert influence on their ranks, their ideology and their policy.

Some of these so-called “left” parties do not only promote positions that serve capitalism but they also resort to open anticommunism, they slander socialism the history of the communist movement.

The effort of the communist movement for the unity of the working class should not be based on its relationship with the so-called “left” opportunist parties; it should depend on its ability to convince, to rally and mobilise working and popular forces against monopolies and imperialism against their open or covert supports.

KKE believes that the clarification of this crucial issue will give an impetus to the struggle of the communist movement; it will strengthen its independent action and the recruitment of new forces in the labour movement. This issue is particularly important for the change of the correlation of forces and the effectiveness of the struggle under the conditions of the crisis but also for the future.

Furthermore we would like to stress the following:

This intense ideological-political struggle requires a bigger effort to tackle with the developments according to the Marxist-Leninist analysis. It also requires the strengthening of the international meetings of communist and workers parties in this direction. Only in that way can the international meetings fulfil their role, respond to the complicated duties of the communists and meet the expectation of the working people.
In Greece we experience the difficulties of a hard battle characterised by the aggressiveness of the EU and the social democratic government. Under the conditions of the crisis the enforcement of the capitalist restructuring is accelerated, the effort to impose the so called “flexicurity” and the flexible forms of employment in general intensifies, the policy of dismantling the social security rights continues, healthcare, welfare education are being further privatised while salaries and pensions freeze. All means are used to reduce the price of the labour force, to increase the degree of exploitation and the capitalist profit-making.  

Under these conditions KKE increases its efforts for the class unity of the working class and the social alliance with the peasantry and the other oppressed popular strata. It insists on the organisation of the working class in the workplaces and the trade unions; it supports PAME, the class-oriented pole in the trade union movement that struggles against the forces of yellow trade unionism and fights hard battles for the rights of the working class.

The strengthening and the effectiveness of the struggle of the class-pole of the movement require its orientation against the efforts to place the burden of the crisis on people’s shoulders; likewise the promotion of demands that meet the people’s needs (full-stable employment, substantial increases in wages and pensions, exclusively free, public healthcare, welfare education system etc).

The trade unions that struggle through the ranks of PAME have achieved significant results. Through strikes, demonstrations, occupations and other forms of struggle they rescind dismissals; they force the employers to reinstate dismissed workers; they sign collective labour contracts that provide increases exceeding the incomes policy; they intercept the attacks against immigrants.

KKE along with the class oriented movement confront these difficulties and are particularly demanding regarding the strengthening of the ideological, political, mass struggle for the liberation of working-popular forces from the influence of the bourgeois policy and ideology, reformism.

In our opinion, communist parties must combine the efforts for the strengthening of the class oriented movement at national level with the strengthening of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) which makes a significant progress in its reconstruction.

We should be in a state of alertness. Capitalist crisis intensifies the intra-imperialist contradictions in a period when significant reshufflings take place, when the  share of the US and China in the GWP reduce, the EU reinforces its presence and China, Russia, India and Brazil are strengthened.

Working people should not have any illusions about the so-called “multipolar world”, about the slogans of social democracy about the “democratisation of the UN” or the “new architecture of the international relations”. These slogans only intend to humanize capitalism. In fact there has never been a “unipolar world”! Intra imperialist contradictions have always existed. Nevertheless, in the past they were mitigated due to the need to confront the USSR and the other socialist countries.

Nowadays, we witness a new intensification of the intra-imperialist contradictions as well as the pursuit of several rising imperialist forces and alliances to play an upgraded role in the international affairs which is described through the model of the “multi polar world“.

In fact imperialism is characterised by the drive for markets and natural resources. Communists have assumed great responsibilities as regards the enlightenment and mobilisation of the peoples against imperialist wars and interventions, against the imperialist occupation, as well as against all imperialist organisations and centres irrespective of their “colour”, their name or the region where they are formed in.

The conflicts inside but also between the imperialist organisation such as the WTO should not trap the working people in demands for a better or a more “fair” management of the capitalist system. The agreements concluded there reflect the correlation of forces and it is an illusion to believe that they can become fairer.

Communists do not struggle for a better position of their country in the world capitalist market or a better management of capitalism but for the overthrow of capitalism and the socialist construction!

The working people both in developed capitalist countries and in countries with medium and lower rate of capitalist development should respond with a unified common front against imperialists, against the efforts to divide the peoples irrespective any class criteria in “South and North” in “rich and poor” countries.

Communists must respond to these pseudo-divisions with the elaboration of a common strategy against imperialism, with an even more distinctive unity at global level that will be forged in our coordinated struggles at national, regional and global level in cooperation with other anti-imperialist forces.

The historical slogan of the Communist Manifest “proletarians of all countries, unite!” is still relevant.

The distance between capitalists and the working class increases both in the so called “developing” and “developed” countries. The social contradictions sharpen due to the overall attack launched by the big capital after the overthrow of the socialist system in Europe on the rights and the gains of the workers around the world.

Historical experience has proved that the communist movement strengthens to the extent that it is firmly dedicated to the line of anti-imperialist anti-monopoly struggle and to its strategic goal, namely to the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism that is socialism, the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. In the modern era, era of transition from capitalism to socialism the struggle should not aim at bourgeois democratic transformations but at the socialist power that will overthrow the power of monopolies and solve problems of economic backwardness, dependence etc.

The enemies of socialism and the various anticommunists, who celebrated a few days ago the fall of Berlin Wall and the overthrow of socialism, cannot stop the course of history, no matter what they do.

Socialism has had a great historical contribution. In a few years it solved problems that capitalism has not managed to solve throughout centuries. It established the right to work, to free healthcare and education, it developed sports and culture for the people, it abolished the exploitation of man by man, it showed the supremacy of socialism over capitalism.

The Soviet Union has been a key factor in the victory over fascism having lost 20 million of its people in the battle.

We study the shortfalls the mistakes the opportunist deviations that led to the overthrow of socialism; we draw lessons. Socialism of the new century constitutes an integral continuation of the heritage and the lessons of socialism of the 20^th century.

Socialism is more relevant and necessary, the intensification of the main contradiction, unemployment, poverty, exploitation and the capitalist crisis show its historical limits.

The way to the satisfaction of the peoples needs passes through the workers’ power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the socialisation of the means of production and land, the central planning and the workers’ control.

This is the beacon that lights our path.