Contribution of the Communist Party of Mexico to the joint meeting with the Communist Party of Greece, Communist Party of Turkey and Communist Party of the Workers of Spain. Athens, July 2022.

 

Comrade Dimitris Koutsumbas, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, Comrade Kemal Okuyam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey Comrade Astor García, General Secretary of the Communist Workers’ Party of Spain,

Receive the fraternal greeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Mexico, extended to the delegations that accompany you, which we ask you to send to the Central Committees of your Parties.

We thank the Communist Party of Greece for the initiative, it is a significant step in a common direction: the struggle for a unified revolutionary strategy that allows to get the international communist movement out of the crisis in which it finds itself, evident in turns such as the present where the antagonisms in the imperialist system are sharpened and the generalization of war is tangible.

Let’s get directly into the theme.

The events in Kazakhstan at the beginning of the year, as well as the Russian military intervention in Ukraine have manifested the different positions that exist in the international communist movement, the deep problems, the crisis that has not been able to be overcome.

In Kazakhstan, where a workers’ rebellion took place, legitimized by the deterioration of living conditions due to the anti-worker and anti-popular measures of a government that emerged from the counterrevolution of the 90s, Russian troops and the Collective Security Treaty Organization intervened to quell the uprising and restore order. Under the argument that it was a “color revolution”, an attempt at destabilization by the US, several communist parties spoke in favor of Russian military intervention and repression of the workers’ movement and the worker-popular uprising, without taking into account that
among the participants was the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, a sister party that is part of the International Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties. The counterpart was that also several CPs, including those present, clearly sympathized with the proletariat against the government by defining the class nature of the Kazakh state, and placing ourselves on the side that corresponds to us in the capital/labor conflict.

A few weeks later, on February 24, the Russian military intervention in Ukraine took place with the euphemism of Special Military Operation, which is unacceptable. The argument, by President Putin, is based on the slander of Soviet power and socialist construction, and the vindication of Great-Russian chauvinism. An ideological framework that corresponds to the economic basis of the conflict. This is a step towards open confrontation with the US and the European Union and not only with Russia, but with its main ally, capitalist China. It is a step ahead of the tensions and conflicts that have been accumulating, of the antagonisms that are irretrievably presented in imperialism. Gone is certainly the neo-Kautskyism of supra-imperialism presented as globalization, or a perpetual phase of peaceful development of capitalist relations. The fierce competition of the monopolies as in the period of the second decade and the fourth decade of the twentieth century gives way to the outcome of a war, imperialist as the first and the second. Also, in the international communist movement there are several positions around a question that is clearer than water, and that is the class character of this conflict, of this war.

The dispute over markets, labor, trade routes, natural resources have been presenting accommodations and rearrangements to the definition of two blocs of capitalist countries that dispute the best position within the imperialist chain. After years of commercial, diplomatic conflicts, of sanctions, of maneuvers today they are sharpening. The United States, the European Union, and NATO as a military alliance of both, have had an uninterrupted aggressive character against the peoples. Crimes in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, make their character evident.

In the case of China and Russia they have tried to mask themselves as “anti-imperialist” and with the banner of multipolarity, and even in the case of China as a country where a socialism with specific characteristics is built. But appreciating its economy the conclusion is unequivocal: in both countries capitalist relations predominate, the exploitation of wage labor that is privately appropriated by the bourgeoisie and monopolies, in China with high rates of extraction of surplus value. If one studies the process of capital export the conclusion is more evident, in Africa and Latin America, Chinese capital is growing at the expense of the working class and the peoples, and that is also a focus of tension with the EU and the US, and in the case of Russia with the military industry and Gazprom, dominant monopolies in the field of energy and military industry in the world economy.
This hasty recounting yields the conclusion that both sides in conflict are two groups of imperialist sharks in fierce dispute.

This war, in which the first sacrificed are the peoples and the working class of Ukraine and Russia, and which in the face of its possible generalization can drag the workers and peoples of the world, mainly the young generation, to the slaughterhouse, to death. There is flammable material accumulated in several zones and there is unsolvable competition.

There is also a political realignment. States that are involved on both sides, sanctions, militarization, increased military budgets, involvement. But in addition to the barbarity of war, there are immediate side effects on peoples, such as the rising cost of living, hunger and misery. Among workers in Mexico, there is an escalation in food prices and in general basic products. The inflation of these months is 7%, and to put it graphically, the cost of the sack of flour went from the moment before the start of the war from $ 440.00 to $ 850.00 at this time giving consequently an increase of almost double the price of bread and pasta, giving a sudden devaluation of the salary and increasing the pauperization. We are certain that the working class of all countries is hit hard.

Comrades:

The statement we jointly promoted before the international communist movement shows the reflections of communist parties that are based on the revolutionary positions of Marxism- Leninism. It is a firm principled position that with agility contributed to curbing an alignment around a wrong dichotomy, with one pole or another of imperialism. Why is also the case, such as the Spanish Eurocommunism that despite declaring otherwise participates with ministers of an active government in NATO initiatives, or in Chile, where the same situation occurs in favor of Zelensky; others who claim the role of the UN and a significant percentage in the name of the “anti-imperialist” and “anti-fascist” struggle actively supporting Russia. In both positions stands what Lenin called an alien flag, an opportunist position with much similarity to the social democracy in decomposition in the period of the First World War.

And also, a process of ideological degradation of parties, which on the eve seemed to have a revolutionary position, although confusions, which today turns out, were not minor. The background is the ideological misrepresentation around one of the most important theoretical developments which is the question of imperialism. Leninist theory on this important subject
cannot be reduced to Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, when Lenin himself referred to in all his written production between 1914-1917; nor can it be reduced to one of the features enunciated, but has to start from the essential that is the qualitative change from a capitalism of free markets to the capitalism of monopolies, not as a characteristic of a group of countries, but as a general feature of the mode of production.

That is to say, the whole capitalist world is in the phase of imperialism, a different question is the place that each country occupies in the imperialist chain. But absolutizing some of the features it is maintained that imperialism is only the group of capitalist countries, the great powers, as if the category imperialism were only a way to rename the empire or empires, avoiding an inseparable thesis that is unequal development. A dogmatic image of the theory of imperialism that eludes that the former dependent countries today occupy positions among the 20 main countries of imperialism, for example China, India, Mexico or Brazil. To think that imperialism is a group of superpowers is to place oneself in the field of geopolitics and not in that of Marxism-Leninism and the critique of political economy that focuses on pointing out the highest and ultimate phase of capitalism.

But let us express our indignation when we hear in some CPs the following argument to support Russia: it is only capitalist and not imperialist! which is a clear renunciation of the reason of being of communists established since 1848, or worse, even worse! “Yes, Russia is an imperialist country, but we are fighting fascism.” Both arguments have an opportunistic basis, and are a manifestation of the point of ideological and political degradation existing in various communist and workers’ parties. Such a manifestation has several roots but its point of convergence is the strategy of stageism, from which derives the alliance with social democracy and the bourgeoisie, participation in bourgeois governments, parliamentarism and ministerialism. We therefore reiterate our appreciation that our Joint Declaration on the Beginning of imperialist War rightly charts the way for the communists and the working class at the present moment, that is the independent struggle of either of the two poles of imperialism.

The parties gathered here have consistently agreed on the objective of contributing to the elaboration of a unified revolutionary strategy for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism-communism, which we also consider the way for the regroupment of the communist movement. We are committed to that goal.

It seems to us that collectively we can get to the bottom of some debates that have already gone on too long, one of them is fascism and the issue of the popular front, because such a turn in the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, almost 90 years ago introduced that strategy that opens the door to opportunist deviation. And pleae Please Let us us know if you think we are exaggerating. We think it is a matrix of stageism, Browderism, Eurocommunism and contemporary reformism.
The scientific and class-based study of these questions is a necessity.

Our coordination will bear valuable fruit for proletarian internationalism in the worker-trade union field,
in the work of the communist youth, in the struggle for the emancipation of women, in theoretical elaboration, in the struggle against opportunism. We would place special emphasis on the issue of the common formation of the leadership cadres of our Communist Parties, not the question of basic training but the higher formation of cadres.

It is an important step in which we fully commit ourselves.

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