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'état 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)
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