Contribution of NKPJ: « The attacks on the democratic rights and freedoms in the world capitalist crisis. Strategies and actions in response »
Dear comrades,
Let me greet, on behalf of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the brotherly Communist Parties attending this meeting, thank its organizers and wish all the participants a fruitful work.
The importance of this meeting arises from the further deepening of the crisis of capitalism, the full-scale attack of capital, the intensification of imperialist aggressiveness and the intensification of the inter-imperialist contradictions.
The present capitalistic world crisis began in 2007-08 and has yet not ended. It is the deepest and most profound crisis the world has seen since the 1930s, and it has proven that the capitalistic system is incapable of defeating its inherent contradictions and securing stable prosperity. That can only happen with a different social and economic system: socialism.
Uneven, unbalanced development is the absolute law of capitalist development.
As long as the capitalist system exists, the ruling class – the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class – and its state and governments also try to pass the burdens from the crisis on the workers and the general public.
It has happened with the massive support to the banks and the speculators, who triggered the crisis, including the bank packages. It happens through massive cuts on the public budgets – on pensions and other benefits, poorer schools and daycare centers, etc. – and through falling real wage and longer work time, including higher retirement age.
However, this neo-liberal prescription doesn’t help to overcome the crisis and create new and lasting growth. It puts the wheels to a halt, while the rich become richer and the general public poorer.
Austerity measures never seen before, except in times of war or crisis as deep as 1929, have been imposed on the indebted countries. The result of these measures has been to impoverish the people, destroy the economy and reduce the internal market and foreign trade. These austerity plans have been applied (despite the opposition and struggle of the working class and peoples) under the control of the creditor imperialist powers, the international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and European Union, and above all with the support of the collaborator monopoly bourgeoisie and its representatives, these enemies of the people.
The picture is the same in the EU, in USA, and in the whole world. All places more or less dramatic neol-iberal cuts and deteriorations are being implemented.
The army of unemployed is growing on the world level, especially in countries in total-debt crisis, in the countries in which the economy is declining, stagnating or is in crisis. In Greece and Spain, unemployment has reached 25%. In these countries, unemployment among the youths, including college graduates, reached 50%. In the Euro zone in the second quarter of 2012, the level of unemployment reached 11.2%, according to official figures. In countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, where manufacturing has fallen from 9.6% to 7.5% in the first quarter of last year (2012), the number of unemployed continues to grow. In South Africa, the most developed country on the continent, the unemployment rate exceeds 25%.
Stalin says: It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
Now a period of sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions is beginning, which economic-financial and political-military interventions will multiply. It is increasingly important to fight against such intervention, to develop the united fight of the workers and peoples, in both the advanced and backward countries.
As the case of Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Libya show, the imperialist interventions that have had the support of the liberal “defenders” of freedom and democracy, of the pseudo-socialist parties that emerged from the former revisionist parties, have resulted in increased military budgets at the expense of the workers, in the destruction of the productive forces of those countries, in many disasters, the impoverishment and decline in all social aspects. The aspiration of the peoples for the right to sovereignty and national independence, democracy and freedom has never been the concern of the occupiers. Their objective was to further prolong their system maintained by the defeat inflicted on the working class in the middle of the last century, a defeat that guaranteed their super-profits, the expansion of their spheres of influence and the weakening of their rivals. The imperialist powers, which are using all means to achieve this goal, do not lack in demagoguery and low maneuvers to disorient the people’s anger.
Linked to the evolution of the world economy, the period that is beginning will be one of further degradation of the living and working conditions for the workers and peoples, a period of intense economic and political attacks, of discontent, anger and militancy among workers, as well as sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions and conflicts. We must draw lessons and conclusions from the recent developments and the historical experience of the working class and peoples; we must advance, renewing our work and reorganizing our parties.
For our effort to be effective we must create a basis so as to achieve a higher level in the collective examination of the developments, to contribute to the strengthening of the ideological- political and mass struggle of the communist parties in the world, to take the appropriate steps that will lead to the strengthening of the communist movement in a revolutionary direction.
We daily note the need to reinforce the work in the working class, in order to recruit new forces in the trade union movement and to establish trade unions in which the class oriented forces will play a leading role.
Marx’s thought is one of the concrete forms of the communist critique of capitalism and one of the concrete historical forms of the fight for a communist society. The historical continuity of the idea of communism must not be sought only in theory, but, above all, in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against capitalism. Marx’s view that the “correct theory is the consciousness of a world-changing practice” means that the link connecting us to Marx and other fighters for a communist society is an uncompromising fight against capitalism, and not citations from Marx’s works. The fight against capitalism and for a communist society represents the basis of the historical continuity of the idea of communism.
Thanks!
For NKPJ
Marijan Kubik
Responsible for Intrenatinal relations
