To the working class, the working people
and the oppressed
peoples around the world!
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 neoliberal 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
reorganizing 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'etat 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 criminalize 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 program 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,
organizing 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 organizations
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 organization, 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
International
Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations
(ICMLPO)