This weekend the first congress of the “European Left Party” (ELP) will be held in Athens.
According to the preconditions of the European Union the “European Party” has to guarantee that its basic documents as well as its activities will correspond to “the basic aims of the EU,” otherwise the Party can be dissolved by the European Parliament. The member organizations of ELP are quite different socialist, social democratic, Trotskyism and ecological groups as well as some communist parties.
The framework and the way of activities of this “European Party” are clearly identified by the institutions of the European Union, and it is financed by the EU. This gives the explanation why the ELP is not striving for the creation of a socialist society.
The aims of this Party are actually the “transformation of capitalism” and “to overcome the capitalist logic,” without putting in question the private ownership of the means of production or even the class character of the capitalist state (as well as of the EU) — basic issues that from the very beginning form the borderline between communists and social democrats.
We cannot ignore the disrespect and sometimes even open hostility towards the former socialist societies in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe in the 20th century, as well as the attempts by the ELP to depreciate the role of the communist parties when they strived for mobilizing the working class against the capitalist system of exploitation. At the same time we cannot ignore that parts of the ELP go on to defame the communist parties to be “satellites of joscow” and “Stalinists” — a way of propaganda that is also used by the bourgeois, anti-communist forces.
It is significant that the ELP on the one hand is claiming to bring together the left forces of Europe, but on the other hand some of its members are such communist parties, that during recent years undertook everything to prevent a real co-operation or even a further unity of communist parties on European level. Actually the ELP is segregating communist parties from several countries and prefers to co-operate with “left wing” forces who are openly fighting against the existing communist parties in their countries — as it is the case for example in Greece, in Luxembourg and in Portugal.
With regard to all these facts the Communist Party of Luxembourg (KPL) took the decision, not to participate as full member or in observer status in that “European Party.”
Together with communists from different other European countries, the KPL will go on striving to further develop the co-operation and the unity of action of those communist parties who are based on Marxist positions and who are seriously working for overcoming capitalism and for a socialist perspective.
Therefore it is only subsequent that the KPL will actively participate in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties to take place in Athens from 18 till 20 November 2005.
Ali Ruckert
President of KPL
