Dimitris Koutsoumbas speaks at the foundation of European Communist Action -- image via sceenshot
On Saturday, November 18, delegates from twelve European Communist and Workers' Parties came together in Athens, Greece to found European Communist Action.
The parties present were the Labour Party of Austria (PdA), Communist Revolutionary Party of France (PCRF), Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Swiss Communist Party, Workers' Party of Ireland, Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE), Communist Front of Italy, New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN), Union of Communists of Ukraine, Communist Party of Sweden (SKP), Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) and the Communist Workers' Party of Finland.
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoumbas gave the introductory speech at the meeting in which he stated: "We have come together in the struggle against NATO and the EU, in the conflict with capital and its power, with the anti-popular policy of the liberal and social-democratic governments and parties, which are the pillars of bourgeois management."
Koutsoumbas also outlined why the KKE felt the European Communist Initiative split and ended after 10 years of activity.
The speech also expressed the unwaivering support of all parties present of the "just struggle of the Palestinian people."
We demand an end to the Israeli occupation of the territories of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, which is causing suffering to the Israeli people and to all the peoples of the region and could lead to a generalized military conflict at any moment, under conditions of fierce imperialist competition.
We express our solidarity with the peoples and the communists struggling in the land of Palestine, with our comrades of the Communist Party of Israel and other militants who are confronting the dangerous policy of the Israeli state and the reactionary Netanyahu government.
We defend the right of the Palestinian people to have their own homeland, an independent Palestinian state, on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside Israel. We demand the return of refugees to their homes and the release of political prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
The speech included the formation's Founding Declaration:
We support the principles of scientific socialism and are united by the vision of a society without the exploitation of man by man, poverty, social injustice and imperialist wars.
We consider that our era is the era of revolutionary passage from capitalism to socialism. Based on this, we reject any support for or participation in bourgeois governments, struggling against both liberal and social democratic parties, against all kinds of bourgeois governments that serve the interests of the monopolies. We have steadfast loyalty to the revolutionary path for which millions of militants around the world have given their lives.
Our Parties assess that imperialism is not just an aggressive policy. It is monopoly capitalism, capitalism in its most reactionary era, that is, in its highest stage. It is essentially inherent in stagnation, in the great gap between the productive potential and the meeting of the contemporary needs of the workers, due to class exploitation, the contradictions between the monopolies and the bourgeois states that lead to imperialist wars.
The Parties participating in the European Communist Action recognize the timeliness and necessity of socialism–communism as the only alternative for the peoples and defend the contribution of the October Socialist Revolution and the first socialist state, the USSR. At the same time, they study the causes of its overthrow as regards the issues of the economy, the political superstructure and the strategy of the International Communist Movement.
We stress that socialism is governed by principles and scientific laws, i.e. workers’ power, the socialization of the means of production, and central scientific planning. Based on this, positions such as that a market socialism can be built by maintaining capitalist enterprises and mechanisms, by maintaining wage labour by owners of means of production and land, by treating labour power as a commodity and by capital’s exploitation of wage labour are rejected.
Our Parties seek to establish strong ties with the working class and the popular strata, to get better positioned and occupy a leading role in the class struggle, so that together we can act in a line of rupture with the system of capitalism and its managers of all kinds.
We consider that the EU is capital’s choice. The EU promotes measures in favour of the monopolies, the concentration and centralization of capital; it is strengthening its characteristics as an imperialist economic, political and military bloc opposed to the interests of the working class, the popular strata; it intensifies armaments, authoritarianism, state repression, limiting sovereign rights. It is our assessment that the European Union is the European imperialist centre, supports aggressive plans against the peoples, and is aligned with the USA and NATO. It has militarism as a structural element. We will try to highlight these aspects, which are shared by a large part of the Greek people, in the upcoming European Parliament elections to be held in June 2024, strengthening our party even more.
We consider that there is another development path for the peoples. The perspective of another Europe, the prosperity of the peoples, social progress, democratic rights, equal cooperation, peace, and socialism are highlighted through the workers’ struggles.
We believe in the right of every people to choose their own sovereign path of development, including the right to disengage from the EU and NATO. We struggle against capitalist exploitation, for the construction of socialism.
We consider that the ideological, political and organizational regroupment of the International Communist Movement cannot be realized without an unwavering struggle against any kind of bourgeois management of the exploitative system, liberal or social-democratic; without a struggle against opportunism, which expresses the influence of bourgeois ideology on the labour movement. It cannot be realized without opposition, resistance and disobedience to the capitalist reactionary edifice of the EU and all the anti-popular directions of the European Commission.
We oppose both nationalism and cosmopolitanism of capital, racism and fascism. We reject the false “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” used by bourgeois and opportunist political forces to entrap workers’–people’s forces into bourgeois management, detaching fascism from the capitalist system that gives rise to it and uses it when needed.
We struggle with all our might for the meeting of the contemporary workers’– people’s needs, through the regroupment and strengthening of the labour–trade union movement and the other popular movements, in a direction of struggle against the monopolies, capitalism, the EU and NATO.
In the framework of the European Communist Action and through the bilateral relations between the Communist and Workers’ Parties that are part of its ranks, we will strengthen the exchange of experience from the activity in the labour–trade union movement and in other popular movements, in the movement for equality and emancipation of women, in order to make the developing struggles more effective and to strengthen the ties of the Parties with workers’–people’s forces.
The European Communist Action will seek joint action with other Communist and Workers’ Parties in Europe concerning workers’–people’s problems, issues of anti-communism and internationalist solidarity, against imperialist wars and interventions. It will seek to strengthen relations with Communist and Workers’ Parties on all continents with which there is a ideological–political common reference point.