Within a framework of fraternity and revolutionary camaraderie the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations has met in Europe. This meeting, held in the beginning of November, discussed the development of the economic crisis of the capitalist system and the international situation and concluded by defining some tasks that the Marxist-Leninists commit ourselves to work towards in our respective countries.
The economic crisis of the capitalist-imperialist system is of a general character, it is the result of the nature of this current system and historically it cannot be resolved if we do not put an end to the system that has engendered it and if in its place we do not build the society of the workers: socialism.
Despite what the bourgeois analysts and economists claim, that the crisis has touched bottom and that we are seeing a process of economic recovery, the respective indicators show that it is continuing, it is continuing with greater intensity in the more developed capitalist economies, but also in the dependent countries. In the one and the other, the workers and peoples are its main victims.
The proposals that the bourgeoisie is applying in each of the countries to overcome the crisis have as common elements to place its effects on the backs of the workers and peoples; to carry out plans that combine neo-liberal measures with protectionist and interventionist ones that have led some to believe in the return of Keynesianism. They all seek to defend large capital and its owners, the large financial and industrial groups.
Tens of thousands of workers are today enlarging the ranks of the unemployed, many peasants have had to abandon their lands in search of bread, at best finding themselves in underemployment and migration, poverty and despair. The workers are not the ones who caused the crisis and must not pay for its consequences. Let the ones who are responsible, the imperialist powers, the owners of the banks and industries, the owners of capital, pay for it!
Hunger is on display in various parts of the world while the imperialist powers are destroying the economies of the dependent countries, pillaging their natural resources, speculating in the prices of food and raw materials and causing backwardness and stagnation.
Today young people face more acute problems than in the past; the difficulties in finding a job as well as continuing their studies are greater. Everywhere the number of those without shelter, of men and women who have the streets and squares of the cities as their homes, is increasing.
In the imperialist countries, the Governments are promoting actions and laws to increase xenophobia and criminalize immigrants, such as in the Decree of Shame adopted by the European Parliament. We demand the right of immigrants to work where they now live and together with the proletariat of these countries we shout: They work here, they live here, they will stay here!
The fascistisation and the establishment of police states are among the measures taken by finance capital to confront the crisis, to ensure their economic and political rule, and to confront the discontent of the workers and peoples.
In the context of the crisis the imperialist powers are looking to settle accounts, thus exacerbating the inter-imperialist confrontation and increasing the danger of war. In fact, the presence of their military troops in various regions of the world shows their goal of conquering new markets, of provoking a new redistribution of the world. We the peoples will not pay for or take part in these wars!
The unbridled pursuit of enrichment of the international bourgeoisie, the aim of the monopolies to rule the market and the world, have led to the destruction of the environment and now they are playing with finding measures of environmental protection. The solutions of the ‘eco-neoliberals’ to confront this problem are a farce; we support the popular mobilisations that denounce those really responsible for the environmental crisis and raise alternative proposals that challenge capitalism as the one directly responsible for this evil.
The discontent of workers and the peoples confronted with the effects of the crisis is increasing and is taking the form of mass mobilisation. Their banners are waving with greater force every day in all continents and we Marxist-Leninists are taking part in those battles, inviting the workers to struggle to put an end to the world of capital.
Together with them we are fighting to put an end to mass redundancies and to the flexibilisation of labour, which results in part-time work; to reduce the working day and be given two rest days each week without reducing wages; to establish a decent minimum wage for all sectors or to be guaranteed income to cover the basic needs of the unemployed; to respect and promote collective bargaining and to ensure the implementation of their rights, particularly the right to work; that public services reach the poor and not be privatised, that provide free health care and education, that the undocumented workers can work where they live.
We raise these demands to confront the effects of the crisis of the system, but it is necessary to insist that only the social revolution of the proletariat will put an end to this endemic evil of capitalism. Those who argue that it is possible to deal with the crisis and protect the rights of workers by better regulating labour relations or democratising international relations are lying! They are trying to protect the interests of business, industrial and financial groups.
Capitalism is experiencing a great crisis, this is true. The most serious and most acute known to mankind in these last eighty years; however, capitalism will not fall by itself, it still has chances to recover. But the strength of the workers and peoples is greater if we join forces to overthrow it.
We Marxist-Leninists are committed to bring about the victory of the social revolution of the proletariat; to successfully complete this task we are working to unite all those social and political sectors interested in fighting against political and social domination and oppression, in winning freedom and independence. History will be our witness that we can do it.
November 2009
En Marcha #1466
(Report)
The International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations met for four days in November 2009 in a European country. Sixteen parties participated in the meeting and, due to certain logistical problems, some parties and organisations were not able to participate. After the hosting party greeted the participants, the Conference began. As the first item on its agenda, the Coordinating Committee reported its activities from the previous year to the Conference and submitted a proposal on the international situation and the recent world crisis. The participants analysed and discussed the proposal in detail. The participating organisations emphasised that it is needed, with consideration to the concrete situation in their own countries, to carry out revolutionary work and agitation especially among the working class.
The delegate from the Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) gave a brief talk on the 1979 anti-imperialist and democratic revolution in Iran, on the short period of democratic atmosphere that came about after the revolution, on the growth of the organisation despite the splits that had taken place in the organisation two years earlier, on the growth of the other political and economic organisations of the masses, on the repression of democratic freedoms by the regime of the Islamic Republic and its allies the Tudeh Party and Fadaian Majority, on the stagnation of the movement and the destruction of the revolutionary organisations, on the need for the struggle to bring about a democratic atmosphere, on the necessity of democracy for the working class movement, and on the ties between the communists and working class when democracy is established.
Our delegate explained that:
The recent presidential election in Iran was rigged, the elections in the Islamic Republic have always been sham and were based on lies and deception, and the two factions of the Islamic Republic are fighting against each other for domination. But the struggle of the Iranian people is a just struggle with democratic demands and has nothing to do with inter-government fighting over the result of June 12, 2009 elections in Iran. An intense struggle has been waged to seize the leadership of the movement. The recent struggle of the masses is the expression of the 30-year suppressed demands of the people. The masses use every opportunity to express their opposition to the rule of the Islamic Republic.
Our delegate also explained that, in the absence of a strong and influential communist party, the reactionary imperialist-Zionist forces try to issue inaccurate slogans and demands in order to direct the movement of the people on a deviated path and finally seize its leadership. We stressed that the communists should participate in and support the democratic movement in Iran.
Our Party also pointed out that democratic struggle is an inseparable part of anti-imperialist struggle and that, due to the suppression of the democratic movement of the masses, the fascist and theocratic regime of the Islamic Republic has to ally itself sooner or later with the imperialists in order to preserve its ruling power.
The Conference passed several resolutions to support the struggle of the masses and the working class around the world.
At the conclusion of its work, the Conference made some decisions and set some tasks for the fraternal parties to work toward in their respective countries and elected a new Coordinating Committee. The Conference decided to hold a youth camp in a country where fraternal comrades can provide substantial support.
The Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist) invited the participating Parties and Organisations to visit the camps and liberated zones under their control and to see the advances made in Colombia.
The Conference passed the following resolution unanimously to support the democratic struggles of the Iranian people.
We express our support for the just demands and struggles of the Iranian people to establish a democratic Iran. We believe that only the Iranian people have the right to overthrow the regime of the dictatorship in Iran.
Considering the lies and rumours that are fabricated against the interests of the Iranian people and considering the aggressive and warmongering policies of the imperialist to divide the world, we are opposed to the imperialists’ and Zionists’ interference in and conspiracies against Iran. Also, we condemn the torture, rape, and killing of the protestors in Iran by the barbaric and violent apparatus of the regime of the Islamic Republic.
We are of the opinion that the democratic struggles of the Iranian people are inseparable parts of their anti-imperialist struggles. The regimes that do not respect the masses and repress the democratic demands of their people will have to appeal to the imperialist forces sooner or later.
Long Live the Struggle of the Iranian People to Achieve their Democratic Rights!
Long Live the Struggle of the Iranian Working Class to establish a Socialist Iran!
Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil
ICMLPO:
November is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the bourgeoisie is carrying on its umpteenth attack on communism and the working class, peppered with the stalest historical falsifications.
It has been 20 years in which the ruling class has tried to divert the aspirations for change of the working class and peoples with demagogic promises of a .new world order’ and lies about the ‘end of socialism,’ to prevent any attempt at resistance, revolt, discussion of or doubt in the capitalist system.
As a result of the events of 1989, the imperialist propagandists announced the end of history, that ideologies were finished, obsolete (except obviously those of the bourgeoisie), that the revolution is a thing of the past, and that therefore there is only one direction for humanity: the one based on private property of the means of social production.
Since then, together with presenting the developments in Eastern Europe as the ‘defeat of communism,’ they have imposed the neo-liberal policy, the ‘right to interference,’ ‘preventive wars’ for the reconquest of the world by the U.S. imperialists. The bourgeoisie has strengthened its offensive against the working class and popular masses to increase their exploitation and the looting of the peoples by imperialism.
The revisionists and social-democrats are currently divided between those who cover themselves with ashes and those who alter and distort the facts that led to the fall of the Wall. In recent years many of them have shifted further to the right, showing their ideological and political weakness, and others have gone directly over to the enemy camp. Others advocate that it is no longer time for revolution, that one must go along with the rules imposed by the bourgeoisie, or must limit oneself to reforms, and they condemn the communist and revolutionary forces who oppose the situation that has been created and are reorganising and retaking the road of struggle.
The communists know that the fall of the Berlin Wall has not meant the collapse of proletarian socialism; it has been the final stage of a process of destruction of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of capitalist restoration by the revisionism that began in the 1950s and 1960s in the USSR and in most countries of the East. The collapse of the so-called ‘real socialism’ has meant the collapse of a superstructure which did not correspond to the existing relations of production, but because of its external features in ‘socialist’ theory it has helped to sow confusion, leading to an ebb and the loss of positions of the working class.
The fall of the Wall does not overturn the validity of Marxism-Leninism as a revolutionary theory, but has completed the parabola of the revisionist ideology in Eastern Europe. It has not resolved the principal contradictions of our time but has led to their worsening, as evidenced by today’s reality.
What have we actually seen in the last 20 years?
Instead of overcoming the economic, social and political obstacles that hold back the emancipation of mankind, we have seen even higher walls raised against the exploited and oppressed.
Walls that separate the financial oligarchy, which lives in luxury and wastefulness, from the great masses of men and women who create all wealth with their labour, without benefitting from it because they are forced to suffer the yoke of intense exploitation, unemployment, precariousness and poverty, only receiving charity from the bourgeois governments.
Walls between a handful of imperialist powers and the dependent countries subjected to brutal looting of their resources, forced into underdevelopment and condemned to hunger.
Walls represented by obscurantism, ignorance, religious oppression and bourgeois cosmopolitanism, which serve to keep the workers submissive and ignorant.
Walls such as the one raised against migrants between the U.S. and Mexico, in Europe, in the Mediterranean, or the one built by Zionism in Palestine, the one maintained by imperialism in the Korean peninsula and many others.
What has been the result after two decades of promises thrown to the four winds by the ruling class?
They promised ‘economic growth,’ but we have seen the unprecedented extension of parasitism and speculation, economic and financial crises that are more and more frequent and deeper, up to the present one, the most serious and destructive crisis of the last 80 years, which is the manifestation of all the problems accumulated previously.
They guaranteed ‘freedom and democracy’, but these hypocritical words were soon transformed into the enhanced dictatorship of a group of imperialist countries and financial monopolies, into an even fiercer neo-colonial domination to which hundreds of dependent countries and nations are subjected, into coups d’état such as the ones that took place recently in Honduras and in Africa, into the suppression of the rights of the workers and of democratic liberties in many countries, into police states that are increasingly authoritarian and fascist.
They promised a ‘world of peace,’ but the imperialist powers, headed by the U.S., have re-enforced their arsenals and military apparatus, they have unleashed a succession of wars of aggression and acts of real terrorism that have cut down hundreds of thousands of victims, and they have intensified the rivalries between the imperialist countries and monopoly groups for a new division of raw materials, of markets and spheres of influence, thus increasing the risk of a new world conflict.
They spoke of ‘protection of the environment,’ but we see that the search for maximum profit has devastated the ecosystem and made evident that capitalism, with its desire for pillage, is incompatible with the very existence of humankind.
And what about the situation of the countries of East European who have ‘returned to freedom’? Starvation wages, mass unemployment, the elimination of social gains, economic catastrophe, increased mortality, crime, prostitution, most servile subordination to the interests of Western imperialism or, in the case of Russia, affirmation of the most reactionary chauvinism in order to assert the same imperialist interests. Is it to be wondered if in these countries today there is a growing ‘nostalgia for socialism,’ that is for a social system superior to capitalism, which made great achievements in spite of the continuous imperialist aggression, until revisionism undermined it from within and then caused it to collapse?
In these 20 years the working class, the working people and the majority of the peoples have not surrendered in spite of the blows they have suffered, they have not accepted wage slavery and imperialist oppression in silence. The ebb in the class struggle has gradually given way to a greater resistance and a new rise in the political and social struggle, which is expressed in different ways in different countries. In particular in the last decade we have seen an important process of renewal of the struggles, significant advances of the workers and peoples, despite the increasing aggressiveness of the bourgeoisie.
History did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall; on the contrary there has been an evident acceleration. The struggle of the social classes, which is the motive force for the achievement of communism, is advancing together with the communist and international workers movement. The protagonists of the struggle for social transformation are arising and are prepared for battle! This also concerns the bourgeoisie which, twenty years after the proclaimed ‘death of communism,’ has to exorcise it continuously, to denigrate and criminalise its ghost, in order to prevent the proletariat from recovering its revolutionary theory.
All this shows that the alleged superiority and invincibility of capitalism is a lie, that the reasons for the revolution and socialism continue to be as present and valid as ever.
Today we are in an international situation that is very different from that of 1989. The bourgeoisie is in a disastrous economic crisis as a result of the laws of capitalism, and it does not have answers for the needs and aspirations of the workers and peoples. It is more vulnerable than before, and there are many weak links in the chain of its rule.
The current crisis of relative overproduction, interrelated with the general crisis of the imperialist-capitalist system, will last for a long time, revealing to the masses the true face of the bourgeoisie: a class which has long ago exhausted its historic role, but which is still calling on the workers and peoples to make the ‘necessary sacrifices’ to ensure its survival and privileges.
While the governments are taking huge sums of money from the public treasury to serve the capitalist monopolies and the banks, unemployment is constantly growing, wages, pensions and social services are being dismantled, and therefore the workers are falling into misery and hunger. The offensive of the capitalists is taking ever sharper forms, the bourgeoisie and their governments are launching their attack against the political and economic gains achieved at the cost of hard struggles. Fascism is advancing in many countries, promoted by the most reactionary groups of financial capital. New robbers’ wars are being prepared.
This situation shows the incompatibility of interests between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and places before the working class and the working masses the urgent need to form a united front of struggle against the capitalist offensive, political reaction and imperialist aggression.
The main obstacle that today is hindering the formation of the united front is the policy of class collaboration followed by the social democratic parties and the yellow unions, the real social props of the bourgeoisie. They promise the masses a ‘reformism’ already put out of use by the inexorable laws of capitalism, they put a break on and divide the workers’ and trade union movement, they divert it towards parliamentary cretinism and they open the doors to the reactionary forces.
To remove this obstacle, to fight effectively, the workers need to unite in order to intransigently defend their economic and political interests, advancing a concrete programme of action against the bourgeoisie: against layoffs, the decline in wages, cuts in social spending, so that the consequences of the crisis fall on the bosses, the rich, the parasites. They must intensify the fight against the capitalist offensive in the factories, the countryside and the streets, organising a broad international counter-offensive, so that the proletariat and peoples will not be sacrificed for the economic interests of the capitalists!
At the same time, the communists and revolutionaries must unite all the genuinely democratic, progressive and left-wing forces, to give impetus to the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle, to encourage the trend towards change that is developing in the world, particularly in Latin America and Asia, to develop solidarity between the peoples.
The parties and organisations of the ICMLPO, together with the political and social forces that support the present call, put forward to the masses the problem of the revolutionary solution to the crisis of capitalism. Faced with the measures taken by the bourgeois governments, with the illusions sown by those who propose to ‘regulate’ a social order in decomposition, the communists state that the evils of imperialism have no cure, that the only solution to the general crisis of capitalism is proletarian socialism, a planned society of the producers.
Therefore, while we take part and in and support the increasingly acute forms of struggle under the blows of the crisis, while we cooperate in their organisation, pointing out that the workers must refuse to bear the consequences of the crisis, we say that the situation will get worse if the proletariat and peoples fail to accumulate forces to respond to the attack and to fight to overturn the dictatorship of the exploiting classes, for a new and higher social order.
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the socialist revolution has once again become a problem that must be solved by the consolidation and the formation of strong communist parties that raise the banner of Marxism-Leninism, the flag of the October Soviet Revolution, the flag of the world proletarian revolution!
October 2009
ICMLPO:
The member organisations of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations repudiate the coup d’état carried out by militarism and the Honduran oligarchy against the government of José Manuel Zelaya. This action, which was known by and had the support of the U.S. government, is not only an attempt to put a brake on the democratic process that had begun in that Central American country; it is also a test and a warning of what the reactionary forces are willing to do to halt and reverse the victories won by the peoples of Latin America, which have resulted in the formation of progressive and democratic governments in various countries in the region.
The development in that continent of a democratic, progressive and left-wing trend, which has blocked the way and in some cases pushed aside the neo-liberal forces, worries imperialism and the local bourgeoisies which are conspiring against the political process underway. In April of 2002 they tried unsuccessfully to put an end to the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; in 2007 a first coup attempt by the Bolivian oligarchy against the Government of Evo Morales was denounced. In both cases, the direct involvement of the United States Embassy was condemned.
U.S. imperialism, which has looked at the Americas as its back yard, now has great difficulties in developing its policy in the region. The formation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was prevented by the struggle of the workers and the people; the proposal for integration and solidarity through the Bolivarian Alternative for the America (ALBA) is receiving the sympathy of the peoples. The resolution adopted at the 39th session of the Organization of American States (OAS), which returned to Cuba its place in that Organisation, shows the changes that have taken place in the relation of forces in the American subcontinent.
The developments in Honduras show that social and national liberation can only move forward under the leadership of the workers and are only achieved by the overthrow of the power of the capitalists and the domination of imperialism by the revolution and socialism. As revolutionaries we support any struggle and any democratic and progressive process, but we warn that it is wrong to feed illusions that change is possible by way of reforms.
The ICMLPO expresses its solidarity with the workers and people of Honduras, who have taken to the streets and countryside to repudiate this coup d’état, demanding the return to office of President Manuel Zelaya. The Honduran workers will understand along the way the need to link the struggle for democracy with the objective of the revolutionary transformation of society. In that fight they have our full support.
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