Contribution by the Workers’ Party of Ireland to the

European Communist Meeting, Brussels, 7 December 2015

“We strengthen the workers’-people’s struggle against the capitalist barbarity which creates wars, poverty, refugees and immigrants. For the Europe of socialism, peace, social justice.”

Gerry Grainger

Central Executive Committee

Workers’ Party of Ireland

Dear Comrades,

The Workers’ Party of Ireland would like to thank our comrades from the Communist Party of Greece for organising and facilitating this European Communist Meeting. We take this opportunity to express our solidarity with the KKE, with PAME and with the working people of Greece in their mobilisations and struggles. This Meeting provides a valuable opportunity to come together, to exchange opinions and experiences, to consider measures to strengthen our common struggles, to offer our active solidarity and support in those struggles and to reinforce our resolve to oppose the barbarity of capital and imperialist aggression and to build a new society in which power is in the hands of the working class constructing a socialist future.

As we meet the capitalist crisis intensifies. Escalating imperialist aggression and war is a constant and increasing threat to peace, to life, to security, to decent living conditions for millions of people; ruthlessly repressing social progress, advocating death and destruction as a way of life while striving to perpetuate the rule of the monopolies over working people and depriving people of the fundamental political right to determine their lives and their own path to development free from the dictatorship of capital.

The situation in Syria, manipulated by the imperialist powers intent upon foreign intervention, poses a major threat not only to Syria, but also the entire region and the world. The arming of terrorist groups determined to undermine the Syrian state has brought war and terror to Syria and beyond. Today Syria is exposed to a humanitarian catastrophe. As a consequence of this war millions of Syrian citizens have fled their homes and have become internally displaced refugees in neighbouring countries living in miserable conditions requiring food, shelter and medicine. Thousands of people fleeing violence, insecurity and terror attempt a treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to reach Europe. Each year, countless lives are lost on these journeys. The vital infrastructure of the Syrian state and its cultural heritage are being destroyed. Death, suffering and destruction is on a massive scale.

A coalition of ultra-reactionary and obscurantist religious forces; an alliance of anti-democratic, tyrannical and despotic states in the region; Israel and the imperialist powers, have been determined to prepare the way for intervention and the occupation of Syria with a view to destabilising and neutralising Syria, undermining its strategic importance in the region, altering the balance of power in the area and creating a region of weak but compliant, client states. This would strengthen the aggressive and expansionist designs of Israel and guarantee unlimited access by the monopolies to the valuable natural resources of those states and important transport routes. These plans, in turn,conflict with the monopoly interests of other powers including Russia, China and their allies.

Turkey’s support, including arms, funding and refuge, for the Syrian armed opposition is notorious, including permitting ISIS to sell oil through Turkey.  The US has bombed Syria since September 2014 in violation of international law and with limited impact on terrorist groups. The US has been involved in training and arming a military insurgency in Syria, assisted by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others. At the same time the bourgeois media has spearheaded a propaganda campaign to demonize the Syrian state (while ignoring oppression in US allies Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar) and the US has repeatedly used or attempted to use the UN Security Council to sanction Syria and to lay the groundwork for more violence against Syria and the Syrian people.

It is in this context that the United Nations Security Council resolution2249 and the demands for further bombing advanced by the British Prime Minister and others must be viewed. This has nothing to do with defence or action against terror. The only solution which is possible requires full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria. It is for the people of Syria to alone to determine their future, free from external interference. There must be an immediate end to all overt and covert financial, logistical and military assistance to the so-called Free Syrian Army and other armed terrorist opposition groups. There must be no intervention by imperialism against Syria. There must be an end to sanctions against Syria and urgent steps must be taken to facilitate a peaceful and political solution through a comprehensive national dialogue.

We are also conscious of the devastating consequences of the murderous terrorist attacks in France, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Mali, Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere perpetrated by fundamentalist, ultra-reactionary terrorist forces who are the enemies of peace, freedom and social progress and whose actions are objectively in the interests of imperialism.

In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin defined imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism and identified its characteristics.Lenin charted the reality that war is an inevitable and preeminent characteristic of contemporary capitalism. He concluded that the evolution of capitalism into its monopoly phase led to the division of the world by the imperialist powers into colonies and competing spheres of influence. The increasing competition between these powers eventually and inevitably led to conflict rendering war a systemic and inexorable characteristic of monopoly capitalism. It is in this context that the escalating crisis in Syria must be understood. Imperialism condemns us to a state of permanent war.

Exploitation by capitalist forces, globally and nationally, has plunged the workers and poor of many countries into poverty, famine, misery and despair. The crises in Syria, Libya, Iraq and throughout the Middle East caused and manipulated by the imperialist powers and their proxies have created a situation which through conflict and war has forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. It is necessary to put in place immediate comprehensive humanitarian assistance for refugees to ensure that they are protected and  to confront nationalism, racism and xenophobia in the true spirit of solidarity and socialist internationalism while highlighting the role and responsibility of imperialism and the negative interventions of the US, the EU and NATO.

Simultaneously, the global systemic crisis of capitalism continues. Workers have experienced, and continue to experience, a deterioration in living and working conditions. The capitalist crisis, the politics of austerity,the destruction of public education and public health, increases in unemployment in circumstances in which anentire generation has been written out of the official figures, attacks on social security systems, including where a significant number of women have been forced out of the labour market because the cutbacks to services and family supports,  the erosion of workers’ rights, a deterioration in the living conditions of working people, the elimination of social gains and achievements, the growth of nationalism, racism, fascism and xenophobia, attacks on migrant workers and refugees, virulent anti-communism and state repression are a constant reality and represent a threat to workers.

In these circumstances it is the responsibility of the communist and workers’ parties to expose the nature of capitalist barbarity; to make clear that it is capitalism which creates wars, poverty, refugees and migration, to raise consciousness among the working class of these issues and to counteract the irresponsible posturing of the bourgeois parties, the warmongers, the fascist and racist organisations, which manipulate ignorance and myth to create a false climate of fear. It is also necessary to challenge those opportunistic elements which ignore or conceal the real causes and responsibilities for war and its consequences.

There is limited potential for economic and social rights under capitalism. However, even these rights are severely compromised when people cannot meet their fundamental needs. It is our task to defend the hard-won gains and achievements of the working class, to stand with working people in their day-to-day struggles in a manner which exposes the class nature of society, raises class consciousness and consistently articulates in a concrete and understandable way that socialism is the alternative.

Vast numbers of people, mostly young people, have been forced into emigration because of the lack of employment. Thousands have been removed from the unemployment register because they are officially “in training”, when, in reality the majority of these people have either been forced into dubious “work schemes” or unpaid internships.

Many of the jobs that have been created have been part-time, temporary, poorly paid, casualised and offering no long-term job security. The growth in casualisation, bogus self-employment and precarious work severely impacts on women, young workers, and migrant workers.

At a time when workers are confronting these threats big capital is promoting the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently being negotiated between the European Union and the U.S. This treaty represents a new attempt by the monopolies to further intensify exploitation and profiteering by creating an enormous economic area with the free movement of goods and investment, an area covering approximately 40% of world trade, about half of world GDP, and more than 800 million people. Despite the fact that the negotiations have been going on for years, the proposed terms of the Treaty remained a closely-guarded secret.TTIP seeks to intensify and escalate a framework that maximises profits at the expense of the working class, that replaces public provision with private profits, and that strengthens and enhances the power of the monopolies. It is essential that workers across the EU realise what is at stake in the negotiations for TTIP, and that they are mobilised to unequivocally reject it.

We send our solidarity to those communists who are suffering the onslaught of anti-communist aggression and to the communists of Ukraine where the working people of Ukraine have become hostages of the inter-imperialist contradictions of the various imperialist interests.

We also note the United Nations Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Paris. While we welcome any positive development to protect the environment this conferencecannot hope to provide a solution to major environmental concerns within a destructive and political and economic system based on production for profit, exploitation, inequality and environmental degradation.

Capitalism cannot solve the problems created by its mode of production. Its contradictions are inherent and unavoidable. Capitalism is the problem. It can never be the solution.

It is axiomatic for Marxist-Leninists that all history is a history of class struggles. The basic contradiction of all class societies is the private appropriation of social wealth. The historical mission of the working class and the task of the communist party is the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. The struggle to end exploitation, oppression, inequality and injustice requires a transformation, a rupture with capitalism and its institutions and the creation of a society in which free and equal citizens can develop their skills and abilities to their fullest potential – the construction of socialism-communism.

To the workers, those in work and unemployed, to the young, to the older generation, to the sick, the poor, to those seeking refuge we say: We are with you. We will not fail you. Together we are standing against capitalist barbarity for a new society, a brighter future in which socialism is the alternative.