The Meeting of European Communist and Workers’ Parties on “The EU of imperialist wars, capitalist exploitation and anti-communism and Lenin’s timely work on the Slogan for a United States of Europe” was held in Brussels on December 2, attended by 19 Communist and Workers’ Parties from 18 different European countries. The meeting opened with an introduction General Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Dimitris Koutsoumpas, available in English here, and closed with a speech by Lefteris Nikolaou – Alavanos, KKE MEP. The meeting also suffered an attempt to prevent it from being held by the European right: according to the statement issued by KKE MEPs, “the event took place despite the provocative and reprehensible attempt of some far-right MEPs from the so-called ‘Patriots for Europe’ (Le Pen – Orbán) and ‘European Conservatives – Reformists’ (Meloni etc.), who, in a letter to the President of the European Parliament, Mrs. Metsola, asked for the event organized by the MEPs of the KKE to be banned.
The extreme right-wing MEPs have employed the unhistorical and reactionary theory of two extremes and the equation of the fascist monster with communism, in an unacceptable and dangerous anti-communist attempt to abolish freedom of speech and expression, even for elected MEPs, reminiscent of dark ages condemned by the peoples.
The provocative move to ban the event of Communist Parties, which goes against democratic freedoms and the rights of the peoples of Europe, has failed, anti-communism has been thwarted.”
Below is the contribution to the Meeting by the Communist Front (Italy). Enjoy reading.
Dear comrades,
First of all, on behalf of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and all the militants of the Communist Front of Italy, let us greet all the participants Parties and once more thank the Communist Party of Greece for having organized this Meeting of the European Communist and Workers Parties, finally resumed after its suspension due to the pandemic.
The EU is not a political union, but just a customs-financial-monetary interstate imperialist union. Political aspects are developed by the EU institutions only if they are relevant for improving the functionality of the common market, the free circulation of capital, and the stability of the common currency. This is due to the capitalist economy being still national-State-based, as it is demonstrated, for example, by the comparison of the data on added value and profit produced by parent companies and their foreign subsidiaries and affiliates, excluding the impact of internal trading. Since the defense of the interest of national capital is still entrusted to the national State, market competition between economic entities and monopolies results in competition between states inside the imperialist unions and alliances themselves.
This factor of inner instability shows the contradictory nature of imperialist alliances whose members are allied and competitors at the same time, and confirms Lenin’s affirmation on the temporary nature of any interstate alliance or treaty under capitalism, therefore their impossibility in the long term. Generalized competition, private property and production anarchy that characterize capitalism bring about conflicts and centrifugal tendencies, disguised under nationalist or even regionalist pretexts, within any imperialist union, alliance or bloc, as well as within individual countries with a federal system. Today, generally, these tendencies have a reactionary character as they are the initiative of sectors of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as it happened in the EU, for example, with Brexit or the attempt of secession in Catalonia.
Again in Lenin’s article “On the slogan of the United States of Europe”, in addition to the impossibility of long-lasting unions between capitalist States, their reactionary character is highlighted. The function of such interstate unions is double.
On the one hand they serve the purpose of “organizing a reaction to delay the more rapid development” of their international competitors, as Lenin wrote. The confrontation between the US-led Euro-Atlantic bloc and the BRICS for leadership in the capitalist world is an evident manifestation of the nature of such imperialist alliances, that were formed not to satisfy the needs of their own peoples, but to maximize the profits of their financial oligarchies by hindering the development of other countries and blocs.
On the other hand, in the era of the proletarian revolution, the political function of the EU as an interstate alliance of capitalists is aimed at “together crush socialism in Europe” in Lenin’s words. The bourgeois States, as the political expression of the national capitalist monopolies, competing among themselves find their unity not only in the confrontation with other imperialist blocs, but overall in the class conflict with the proletariat and its vanguard, the Communist and Workers Parties. The outlawing of the Communist Parties, the bans on communist symbols, ideology and activity are applied in several EU countries. In general police repression and legal persecution of communists and labor union activists are increasing all over the EU, through the adoption of laws that criminalize the class struggle, social discontent and political dissent, restrict the right to strike and the other workers’ rights. Falsification of history, disparagement of the Soviet Union and the communists in tune with the infamous resolution of the European Parliament that equates Communism and Nazism, have become the official ideology in support of the EU anti-workers reactionary policies.
Throughout the EU authoritarianism, social and political freedoms restriction and repression are increasing in order to foster policies that favor capital to the detriment of wage labor. What did the proletariat receive from the EU of monopolies? Reductions in actual wages, salaries and pensions, in regard to which Italy stands out as the worst country in Europe and the OECD, raising the retirement age, possibility of extending working hours from 40 to 48 hours per week established by EC directive, unemployment, job insecurity, cuts in public spending on healthcare, education, housing, and other essential public services privatized and today only provided for a fee, etc.. The life and work conditions of the working class and the proletarians are dramatically worsening, and capitalist exploitation is increasing in various ways, finding its legal basis in the anti-workers EU directives and regulations.
Notwithstanding the high price that the proletariat of the EU countries has so far paid for the currency stability and competitiveness of European monopolies, that is for the profits of the European financial oligarchy, the EU and ECB anti-popular policies of austerity, budgetary strictness, and fight against inflation are proving incapable of lifting the European economy out of the crisis of absolute over-accumulation of capital in which it has been struggling for decades.
The imperialist war in Ukraine, in which the EU is strongly engaged alongside the USA and NATO in supporting the fascist regime of Zelensky against capitalist Russia, is namely the attempt of capital to find a way out of this crisis of over-accumulation through the destruction of a part of itself. The military and economic support for the puppet regime in Kiev diverts huge resources from satisfying the essential needs of the popular masses of Europe and only serves to cynically prolong a lost war at the cost of further human lives. The cost of war and the disastrous effect of anti-Russian sanctions which, like a boomerang, damage the European economy more than the Russian one contribute to worsening the life of the European popular masses. As things stand, the only one to have benefited from the EU’s involvement in this conflict is US big capital, which has managed to economically weaken its ally-competitor, the EU, and make huge profits both by accessing the European oil and gas market and by selling weapons to replenish European military arsenals, which have been emptied to support the Ukrainian regime. The costs of imperialist war and the warlike policies of the EU are paid by the proletarians and the popular strata through the surge in prices for electric power, natural gas and all essential and mass-consumption commodities, as a consequence of both market speculation and war economy in which we have been drawn.
It is important for us to understand that what is at stake in this war is not only the control of Ukraine’s market and human and material resources, but the world strategic balance and set-up. Either the old declining imperialist world set-up dominated by the US-led Euro-Atlantic bloc and the dollar will survive, or a new emerging imperialist world set-up will prevail in which other powers, economically more dynamic, will play a hegemonic role. The slogan of “multipolarity” put forward by China, Russia and the BRICS hides their claim for a new division of the world and the establishment of new spheres of influence. All the conflicts and wars underway today, from Ukraine to the Middle East, from Africa to the Indo-Pacific area, can be traced back to this struggle between the great powers and their allies for supremacy in the capitalist world. “Multipolarity” under capitalism is far from being a factor of peace and justice. As Lenin explained, in conditions of private property on the means of production and anarchy of production, any division of wealth can take place only “by force”.
“War is not a contradiction to the foundations of private property, but a direct and inevitable development of these foundations. … Under capitalism, the uniform growth of the economic development of individual economies and individual states is impossible. Under capitalism, means of restoring, from time to time, disturbed equilibrium other than crises in industry, wars in politics, are impossible”. (V.I. Lenin, “On the slogan of the United States of Europe”, Complete Works, v. 26, p. 353, ed. Politicheskaya Literatura, Moscow)
The EU alignment with US positions even to the apparent detriment of its own immediate interests cannot be explained only by the ineptitude of this European leadership that is the worst ever, nor by the sovereignist theory of Europe as an American colony. First of all, we should never forget that the interests of the EU are not the interests of European proletarians and peoples, but those of the dominant sectors of European financial capitalism. Western European economy after World War 2 developed thanks to powerful injections of US capitals and investments, from the Marshall Plan on. The idea of unifying the European market was conceived and funded by the US in the frame of the European Recovery Program and its technical body, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, in order to create a commercial outlet for its oversized industry by fostering foreign demand and avoiding an over-production crisis. US imperialism is the natural father of the early European integration institutions. This has given rise to objective links of dependence and interdependence between US and European capital, far more significant and extensive than those existing between EU and Russian capital. In essence, the dominant sectors of European capitalism support American foreign policy because the US has historically been entrusted with the task of collective defender of Western capitalism and any misalignment would entail costs for the majority of European capitalists much higher than those caused by the rupture with Russia, due to the different extent of economic, trade and financial relations in place.
In this sense, the conflict with Russia is the result both of the historically given geostrategical positioning of the EU and the autonomous assessment of costs&benefits by the European dominant classes. This explains why the EU leadership is often more royalist than the king in its warlike commitment to continuing bloodshed in Ukraine in line with the US strategy against Russia and also the EU hypocritical complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people perpetrated by the US-supported criminal fascist government of the Zionist state of Israel.
In a scenario of escalating imperialist war, communists cannot and must not support any of the fighting bourgeois states. Faithful to the Leninist teaching on imperialist war, we reject the “campist” positions of those who side with this or that imperialist power. We stand alongside the proletarians from the countries directly or indirectly involved in the war and call them to turn their weapons not against their class brothers, but against their exploiters, being aware that the essential duty of every communist is to fight primarily for the defeat of the bourgeoisie of his own country.
The EU means imperialist wars, capitalist exploitation, worsening of living and working condition of the proletariat. We harshly criticize and reject the opportunist positions of the Party of European Left, which argue that the EU can be “improved” and oriented in favor of the working class and the people. Being the imperialist union of bourgeois states and capitalist monopolies, the EU cannot be changed, but only dismembered and destroyed. We, the communist and workers parties, should intensify our struggle against its plans and policies, for the withdrawal of our countries from it, from NATO and the other imperialist organizations. At the meantime, we should reject both right and left sovereignist positions. The first ones are aimed at restoring the previous bourgeois national sovereignty, as if the withdrawal from the EU alone were enough to improve the conditions of the working class and the popular strata. The second ones foreground the exit from the EU as a prerequisite for the transformation of society, in an opportunistic gradualist conception that splits the revolutionary process into successive stages, whereby the primary goal instead of the socialist revolution becomes the “liberation” of the country from its alleged status of “colony” of foreign powers. Conversely, the communists, based on recent history and the experience of Brexit, are aware that the withdrawal from the EU alone does not improve the condition of the working class and it is not enough to progress towards socialism. In our view, the exit from the EU cannot be separated from the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois dictatorship and the seizure of power by the proletariat. Socialist revolution is and will remain the primary goal of communists in our era and cannot be diluted in intermediate stages or moved to an indeterminate time.
Dear comrades, let us enhance the international coordination and cooperation between communist and workers parties in order to oppose the imperialist plans and the reactionary anti-communist and anti-workers policies of the EU! Let us strengthen our ties with the working class in order to foster the overthrow of capitalism, establish proletarian dictatorship and build socialism-communism and free humankind from exploitation, misery and war!
LONG LIVE THE PROLETARIAN SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!
PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
