Speech of Giorgos Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE, at the meeting of the CP of the Peoples of Spain on the EU

Speech of Giorgos Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE, at the meeting of the CP of the Peoples of Spain on the EU

Dear comrades,

We thank the CP of the Peoples of Spain and our comrades from the other parties. We greatly appreciate the organization of today’s meeting and we will try to contribute to the discussion regarding the EU with the positions and experience of the KKE.

The KKE argues that the European Union is an interstate imperialist alliance which has as its criterion the interests of the European monopolies, European big capital, the increase of its profitability and the reinforcement of its competitiveness, from the increase of the level of exploitation of the working class, the abolition of labour rights, the deterioration of the lives of the peoples.

It is an inter-state imperialist union which paves the way for the free activity of the capital at a national, regional and international level. For the expansion of the business activities of the big economic consortia, for the acquisition of new markets and spheres of influence in order to loot the natural resources.

Whatever the mechanisms of manipulation do, they cannot conceal that the European Union at this moment has 30 million unemployed and a similar number of under-employed, undermines the future of the youth, condemns more than 127 million people to extreme poverty.

The European Union has taken part in the imperialist wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya together with the USA and NATO, and now it is playing a leading role in the intervention and threats against Syria and Iran, using wretched pretexts, while the truth is that they seek to acquire new markets, to secure sources of natural gas and oil.

This is the European Union, the union of anti-communism which is attempting to blacken the historic contribution of the communists in the struggle for social progress, which slanders the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union to the defeat of fascism in the 2^nd World War and is trying to anti-historically equate communism, the real opponent of capital and capitalism, with fascism which is the creature of the system and servant of capital.

The last 20 years are very instructive for the peoples.

First, at beginning of the 1990s the bases for the promotion of the free movement of capital, commodities, services and labour were laid, the well-known capitalist restructuring which abolish fundamental labour, social-social security rights and impose barbaric anti-worker measures. The strategy of Maastricht, “Lisbon” and the “EU 2020” serve in a planned way the increase of the competitiveness and profitability of the monopoly economic consortia with the aim of satisfying the contemporary needs of capital, which in the conditions of the capitalist crisis escalates the offensive in order to further reduce the price of labour power, the intensity of the level of exploitation of the working class.

Second, a basic goal of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the concentration of land and production in the hands of the few, so that capitalist relations in agricultural production are expanded and strengthened, so that large capitalist cultivations with a high level of competitiveness are formed. This policy was demonstrated to be disastrous for small and also for many medium farmers. Traditional cultivations were reduced, live-stock farming suffered, Greece was engulfed by imported agricultural products, the trade deficit increased.

Third, through the so-called place of “Freedom, Security, Justice” the EU edifice , the political power of the monopolies, the capitalist system are being gradually buttressed.

Repression and authoritarianism and the working class-people’s struggles are being incriminated and criminalised, harsh measures are being taken against the immigrants, an entire mechanism for the surveillance and persecution of the workers is being created.

Fourth, the “Common Security and Defence Policy” is being used as a tool of the EU for the political-military intervention all over the world, to control and exploit new markets for the monopolies, to acquire new positions in the inter-imperialist competition.

Fifth, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which today includes 17 states and a common currency, the Euro, lent impetus to the capitalist integration, but sharpened inter-imperialist contradictions. The needs of the system for monetary stability were used and are being used for the imposition of harsh anti-people measures. In reality, despite the steps that have been taken in the direction of capitalist integration, the European Union, as union of states with a different level of development, faces serious problems due to capitalist unevenness and this was expressed intensely during the capitalist crisis. The bourgeois themselves and the apologists of capitalism and the EU are worrying about the future of the Eurozone, the course of the inter-imperialist contradictions and competition, and the strengthening of centrifugal tendencies.

The laws of capitalism are implacable. The sharpening of the basic contradiction between the social character of production and capitalist appropriation of its results, led to the crisis of capital over-accumulation and not a debt crisis or crisis of neo-liberalism as the social-democratic and opportunist parties claim.

Today, four years after the outbreak of the crisis, the problem has returned to the Eurozone which suffered a new recession and a new reduction of its production and economy in 2012.

In these conditions, capital needs greater profitability.

The so-called “European Economic Governance” that is to say the framework of the economic and fiscal anti-people measures, which in addition constitutes the supervision of the member-states by the EU staff and the conscious concession of sovereign rights by the bourgeois classes and their representatives.

The “European Stability Mechanism” which was created to deal with instances of controlled bankruptcy, as in the case of Greece, operates along the same lines. While the discussion and confrontation is in full swing over the two important anti-people options regarding: Firstly, the “Multi-annual Financial Framework 2014-2020” concerning which serious inter-imperialist contradictions are being expressed between Germany and France and between Germany and Great Britain. And, secondly, regarding the recent proposal of the Commission for the “Deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union” for the protection of the Eurozone.

In conclusion, we can say that the aggressiveness of the EU is not limited to the one or the other policy. The basic problem is that this capitalist union was created to serve the needs of big capital and the strategy of the predatory alliance is being formed and brought up to date on the basis of this goal. So the suitable anti-people policies are being implemented. For this reason, we answer the bourgeois parties and opportunist forces decisively and enlighten the people that the EU is an inter-state union of capital will become continually more reactionary.

We underline this, exposing the role of the European Left Party (ELP) which is a party that emerged from the bowels of the EU, implements its strategy and apologises for this imperialist union.

The KKE is a continual confrontation with the EU, its activity is linked to many important and working class and people’s mobilizations which acquired over the course of time continually more radical goals of struggle.

At the sharp-end of these goals is the struggle for the disengagement of Greece from the EU (as well as NATO) and the unilateral cancellation of the debt, with working class power and the socialization of the concentrated means of production.

This is of particular importance. This is because disengagement from the imperialist organizations is connected to the socialist development path, taking into account that only through this path can a country develop based on the satisfaction of the people’s needs and seek to create mutually beneficial relations with other states and peoples.

The KKE argues that people’s problems cannot be solved and the people’s needs cannot be satisfied even if a country withdraws from the EU, Eurozone and Euro because it will continue to follow the capitalist development path. The regime of the exploitation of man by man will be perpetuated. The dominance of capital will remain. The pre-conditions for the outbreak of the capitalist crisis and participation in imperialist wars will be maintained.

For this reason we consider it necessary to intensify the efforts to strengthen the anti-monopoly, anti-capitalist struggle and rally wider working class and popular forces, to form a strong people’s alliance with the working class as its vanguard force in the direction of overthrowing the capitalist barbarity and disengaging form the imperialist unions.

December 2012