Dear comrades,
First of all I extend you greetings from the Communist Front of Italy, on whose behalf I would also like to thank the Communist Party of Greece for hosting our meeting.
The EU, net of its bodies’ propaganda, is not a political union or a federal state, but an imperialist interstate alliance, established exclusively in the interest of monopolies through the conscious and voluntary handover by each national bourgeoisie of the member states of certain State functions and powers to a supranational entity, with the aim of optimizing the functioning of the common market, the circulation of capital and the stability of the common currency.
The EU also has the role of regulating competition between the member countries’ monopolies and of strengthening, politically and organizationally, the competitiveness of European monopolies in relation to international competitors in order to increase their collective capacity to penetrate international markets, with the aim of increasing their market shares, and their control over natural, energy and human resources, trade routes, data and political-strategic spheres of influence.
Finally, with respect to the proletariat, the EU is a tool for strengthening bourgeois power as a whole, capitalist exploitation and the extraction of surplus value, an instrument complementary to the national state, which still remains the main form of political-juridical organization of capital, also with regard to the strengthening of coercion and repression of the class struggle.
The EU was not created by the peoples nor does it serve their interests. On the contrary, it is an expression of the alliance of the European bourgeoisie against the working class and the popular classes of each country. The warmongering attitude, the anti-popular and anti-worker directives of the EU bodies aim to favor the profits of the monopolies, worsen the life of the proletariat and restrict the rights of the workers, confirming the reactionary nature of the EU as a union of capital against the popular masses.
Precisely because the defense of the interests of national capital is still mainly delegated to the national state, competition between monopolies translates into competition between states even within imperialist unions and alliances. Although the EU makes great efforts to limit the most blatant aspects of competition through regulations that set the criteria for dividing up shares of the common market, this contradictory aspect remains the main factor of instability within it as well as in all other imperialist alliances and capitalist free trade areas, since the member states are allies and competitors at the same time. This is evident, for example, if we consider the relations between the USA and the EU, which absolutely cannot be defined as colonial or semi-colonial. It is rather a relationship of strong economic interdependence, born and developed in the post-war period thanks to the Marshall Plan and the role of the USA as the “midwife” in the process of unification of European markets as the outlet for the enormous post-war American production surpluses, which has determined and continues to determine forms of strong political and military dependence of European countries on the USA, to which the task of defending the interests of Western capital as a whole has since then been delegated, both on a political and military level. These are the deep historical reasons for relations that, at times, seem to be contrary to the immediate interests of European capitalism. In order to preserve this relationship and their own strategic interests in the US market, the dominant sectors of European capital have chosen to follow the Biden administration on the path of war, military and economic, against Russia, in an adventurist gamble, according to which the initial, “limited” sacrifice in terms of higher energy costs would have insured the achievement of long-term strategic goals after an “easy” victory over Russia. It was a gamble, based on superficial, blundering and megalomaniacal assessments, which turned out to be a losing one and which, together with the sanctioning madness and the costly supplies of weapons and funds to Ukraine, has aggravated an already ongoing crisis, leading it to recession and introducing also into the European imperialist countries the reality of energy poverty, with very serious consequences for the proletariat.
While the EU ban on oil and gas supplies from Russia has been irrelevant for the latter’s economy, for the first time since at least 3 decades it has allowed access to the European market for hydrocarbons from the USA, resulting in huge profits for US energy exports but an unsustainable increase in costs for European economies. This has led to their serious weakening and a loss of their weight, even political, within the pyramidal worldwide imperialist system with the consequence of a general and drastic worsening of the living conditions of the European proletariat. Furthermore, despite the now evident military defeat of its Ukrainian allies and the entire anti-Russian coalition, the US also makes huge profits from the supply of new weapons to replace those delivered by EU countries to Ukraine. The resulting heavy costs weigh on the budgets of the EU states, contributing to making it even weaker and more dependent on the USA and forcing it to sink into war economy. Under the enlightening guidance of both the helmeted Eurovalkyrie Von der Leyen and the apprentice butcher Mark Rutte, the newly appointed NATO secretary, the usual recipe is being prepared: funding the continuation of war with drastic cuts in healthcare, pensions, social services and the satisfaction of the vital needs of the proletariat. In a word, even more deaths on the battlefields, even more impoverishment for the proletarians and the popular strata.
With the Trump-Musk administration, these contradictions between “allies” are bound to worsen and multiply, for example with the imposition of duties on commodities from the EU, even higher than those on Chinese goods. Furthermore, the new approach of the Trump presidency to the Ukrainian issue aims to dump the entire cost of the war on European allies to free up resources to be allocated to the competition with China in the Indo-Pacific area, while still using the EU and NATO to continue to counter Russia in Europe, but at the expense of the EU itself. The USA, however, do not give up demanding from the beggar Nazi Zelensky the restitution in the form of rare earths of almost double the amount of what was lavished on Ukraine, not generously but in lend lease, by the previous Biden administration. The EU is obviously not invited to this banquet.
In this approach there is no real will to stop the conflict in favor of the peoples involved, from Russia to Ukraine, to Europe, but only the intent to insure the US further strategic advantages over the EU. This Trump administration’s tactic for consolidating US hegemony in Europe puts the EU leadership in an extremely critical position. After having gone too far in making warmongering declarations of unconditional support for the Ukrainian fascist regime, they now are forced by their overseas ally to choose whether to abandon the Kiev regime to its sad fate, or otherwise try to continue supporting a lost cause without actually having the financial means and military capacity, not even at the price of unsustainable sacrifices that the proletariat and the peoples of Europe are no longer willing to accept. All this with the further, deserved humiliation of being excluded from the negotiating table.
In addition to the disagreements over the attitude towards Russia and the continuation of the war, still other contradictions between the US and the EU are ripening, for example those concerning Trump’s expansionist claims on Greenland, currently under Danish jurisdiction, rich in important mineral resources that climate change and the ice melting have made accessible. Greenland is also an important strategic stronghold for the control over the Arctic, always with a view to containing Russia. Propagandistic and provocative Trump’s statements aside, there is even talk of sending Danish and other EU troops to Greenland to counter any possible use of military force by the US. The hypothesis of a clash between “allies” in NATO is not that remote and adds to the existing tensions between two other NATO “allies”, Greece and Turkey, in relation to sovereignty over the Aegean islands, the issue of the occupation of Northern Cyprus and the exploitation of natural gas fields in the Cyprus EEZ, in which Italy’s hydrocarbons monopoly ENI also has relevant interests. Nor should other internal conflicts within the US-EU-NATO imperialist bloc be underestimated, such as, for example, those between the US and Turkey in relation to the future setup of Syria and Palestine, or the divergences between the US and the EU in relation to the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the Israeli crimes.
In essence, on the economic level, the US is trying to cushion the impact of the general capitalist crisis, from which the worldwide imperialist system has been unable to emerge since 2008, at the expense of its allies-competitors, not only European. The apparent American disengagement from the Ukrainian conflict is nothing more than an operation to rationalize costs based on a change in strategic priorities: improving the relationship with Russia to counter China.
Communists in Europe must be able to turn the contradictions within the Euro-Atlantic bloc between the US and the EU to their advantage and use the current relative weakness of the EU to accelerate the exit of our respective countries from this imperialist union which has now had its day. We must reject with the utmost firmness the positions of those who consider what is happening as a problem of mere subjective ineptitude and bungling of the EU leadership -that anyway exist-, and call on the popular masses to take sides on positions of “European patriotism”, “for a more incisive role of the EU”, or even worse, “for the creation of a European army”. Let us say it clearly: these contradictions are objective and unavoidable due to the very nature of the alliances between capitalist countries. The only way to overcome them is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and bourgeois power to establish the proletarian dictatorship and start the construction of socialism-communism. We consider the struggle to exit the EU to be central to the communist strategy, keeping in mind that this is a necessary but not sufficient condition to move forward to socialism-communism, if it does not come with the seizure of political power by the working class. This consideration is the qualifying point that distinguishes us from the right and “left” sovereignists who, without taking into account the negative experience of Brexit, see in the sole exit from the EU the solution to any problem that afflicts the proletariat.
This path of struggle must be articulated in tactical and strategic goals, interconnected with each other, which we identify as follows:
- preventing further involvement of the EU as a whole and our respective countries in the ongoing imperialist wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere in the world;
- the immediate termination of all supplies of weapons and financial support to the fascist regime in Kiev;
- the immediate termination of all arms supplies and all economic and cultural relations with the criminal and genocidal state of Israel;
- lifting sanctions against Russia, as their only effect is to seriously affect the workers and the peoples of all the involved countries;
- countering as decisively as possible the cancellation of democratic and labor union rights, the authoritarian tendencies and repressive turns implemented by the EU in order to impose anti-worker measures and war economy, as well as the anti-communism and history distortion that are its ideological grounds;
- the struggle to withdraw from NATO, for the closure of all NATO and foreign military bases on our territories, for the return of war missions abroad and of all military and civilian staff, employed in NATO’s imperialist wars;
the struggle to exit the EU, to overthrow capitalism and establish workers’ power, for socialism-communism.
