THE INITIATIVE OF COMMUNIST AND WORKERS PARTIES OF EUROPE

Contribution of comrade Marijan Kubik, memmber of the CC of NKPJ responsible for international relations

Dear comrades,

Let me greet, on behalf of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the brotherly Communist Parties attending this meeting, to thank to its organizers and wish to the all participants a fruitful work.

The EU did not result in the integration of various nations as the powerful official EU bureaucracy insists. Rather, it has unified capital against the people. The EU and all its institutions and instruments are fully subservient to the aggressive interests of the international financial capital.

The European Stability Mechanism – ESM was created in order to implement the dictates which will result in even greater impoverishment of broad strata of society. As the brainchild of the Trio, ESM aims to make rich countries even wealthier. In fact, all are obliged to contribute to ESM, but investments are made where it is judged that the risks are the lowest and where the greatest credit worthiness can be ensured. At present that means the strongest economic power within the EU, Germany.

None of the policies advanced by the Trio has as its goal the improvement of living standards nor the creation of conditions most conducive to social development and economic growth. The practical solutions imposed by the Trio will never offer solutions to economic and social problems. The Trio do not concede to the nations of the EU the slightest possibility of choice to freely decide about their domestic political system. Everything must be subordinated to the EU bureaucracy and the IMF.

The gradual turning over of the economies of European countries to large-scale capital markets has led to a situation where these economies have become subject to the speculative interests of a small circle who make all the decisions about production of common goods, resources distribution, and the concentration of profits. The financial oligarchy regulates both the euro and the loans, destroys social rights, and has led to a situation where workers in the developed countries are obliged to compete with those in Asia and Africa, who are paid twenty times less and who have no union protection.

Let us recall what happened in the USSR. Thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev and the Perestroika, IMF managed to destroy the biggest socialist country by imposing budget cuts, i.e. the so-called shock therapy. After the application of IMF measures, which were supposed to “assist” the USSR in the period of transition, the level of poverty increased from 1,5% to 49% in only three years. This fact is pointed out by Western politicians when they claim that “socialism is a failed and inefficient system, as reflected by the poverty into which it has plunged millions of Soviet citizens”. This argument conveniently overlooks the fact massive poverty was caused by the application of measures which constitute the essence of neoliberal capitalism. Twenty years later, the same kind of shock therapy is being applied to the Euro zone and with identical results.

Control over the EU economies was assumed by financial oligarchs who converted parliaments into mere executive organs for their plans and goals. The decisions of narrow interest groups, taken behind closed doors, are implemented without a murmur and the victim of this process is, of course, the people, which must pay for the consequences of these political machinations.

The population of Europe are brain washed to believe that working class struggle is a thing of the distant past, a topic mentioned only by “neo-bolsheviks,” while in reality that remains the only true solution and the sole alternative. Eurobarometer surveys show that the nations reject this kind of Europe and that the system has, therefore, lost its democratic legitimacy. It is time that the pro-capitalist leadership of EU accepts defeat and step down from the historical scene. Some might argue that in theory the European project can still be brought back to the correct path if the collective consciousness of the disenfranchised masses throughout the continent were awakened. This assumes that the capitalists would be willing to renounce the power they now possess in favor of the popular masses. But it has never happened in history that the exploiting class voluntarily gave up its power and privileges.

As far as the “social state” is concerned, the official EU ideology, as well as the various socialist, social-democratic and some so-called communist parties, claim that it is the result of a “compromise” between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Indeed, the “social state” is one of the forms of class domination of the bourgeoisie over the workers. It lacks a humanistic inspiration and constitutes the political response of the bourgeoisie to the deepening crisis of capitalism and the revolutionary potential of the workers’ movement in the most developed capitalist states. Its purpose is to establish conditions of “tolerable exploitation” of workers by capitalists, which means an amelioration of their existential condition, thus preempting the class struggle of the workers and ensuring the stable development of capitalism. In essence, the “social state” is a legal foem of plunder of workers who, by means of the tax system imposed by the capitalist state, are obliged to finance themselves the “social contributions” designed to help them survive capitalism’s existential crisis without protest. At the same time, the “social state” is a means of undermining the class consciousness of workers and their involvement, by means of consumerism, in the value system of the “middle class”, which is one of the pillars of capitalism. In the end, the “social state” enables the survival of capitalism.

We must be aware of the fact that there are millions in the European Union and its proximity who did not simply “wait out” the crisis. They keep suffering. This tragic situation cannot go on forever and it is natural that sooner or later, in the North or in the South, large-scale unrest against the system will break out. Officials are not debating how to prevent that, if it can be prevented, but about how many new armored vehicles to acquire, how much tear gas, shock producing grenades, and other mass control implements.

We need to criticize, but to take self-criticism as well. The world communist movement has been for almost three decades in a profound ideological, organizational and material crisis. We are facing the situation of many communist parties which crossed the boarder lines of revisionism and the opportunism. They have rejected class-struggle and took the other way of conducting so called social dialogue with the governing class. Workers marches and strikes are replaced with comfortable chairs of the representatives and offices. However “Despite any difficulties and temporary failures or counterrevlutionary waves – final victory of proletariat is inevitable“ ( V. I. Lenin) since „workers will inevitably on the one wonderful day take political power in their hands“ (Karl Marx). And this is possible to be done only with permanent, class-aware struggle. Without the fight, there is no victory. On the last battlefield of the history two death enemies remained: the capitalism and the mankind. Capitalism had a long time ago began totalitarian war against mankind. The word goes about the need that the mankind starts the common war against the capitalism, which means the use of all forms of fight in order to bring destoying of the capitalism.

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.

Despite immense obstacles, we believe in the strenghth of unity of the workers class and keep the trust in the ability to fight for a new, free world – the world of the socialism.

True changes without daily and class-orientated fight cannot be possible. It is only the unity of the working class and working people against the unity of the capital! With solidarity and the unity to the fight! As Engels spoke:„Great changes do not happen with some transient triumph, but the permanent action of huge masses, complete classes.“

A new socialistic Europe of people will replace an old Europe of the bourgeoisie. This is the fight between freedom and against the slavery, the fight of the social equity against old privileges, and the victory of new ideas over the old order. As commandor Fidel says „with those who trust that the different world is possible, we will fight and come to the victory.“

Thanks!