International Meeting, Athens May 1999

Presentation by the Communist Party, USA

Dear Comrades, we bring you the warmest greetings from the
National Committee of the Communist Party USA and from our
National Chairman, Comrade Gus Hall. We express our
greatest appreciation to the Communist Party of Greece for
the work in initiating and organizing this conference.
The world Communist movement has struggled and matured in
the past period. This Conference comes at a very important
moment. The dust has settled and the basis for moving
forward from the setbacks to socialism is greater now than
ever before. There is a higher level of unity and the
possibility of further deepening it.
The globalization of the world capitalist economy, the
world capitalist crisis and the military adventures led by
U.S. imperialism have sharpened the class struggle from
which new levels of Communist and working class unity are
being forged. This Conference itself is a demonstration of
that new and expanding unity. We must find every
opportunity to come together, to meet, to discuss and to
act unitedly.
U.S. imperialism has become bolder and more aggressive. Its
aim is to create a one-nation world state which it would
dominate. In addition to its economic expansionism, they
use military force, with ever-new weapons of mass
destruction, in their quest for world hegemony. U.S.
Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright put it like this:
�If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We
are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further
into the future.�
It is this policy which is the underlying reason for the
U.S. imperialist aggression and bombing in Yugoslavia. The
bombing of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China
has laid bare the now admitted truth that this is a U.S.
imperialist war, directed by the CIA and that NATO is a
thinly veneered cover for this terrorist war against the
people of Yugoslavia. U.S. imperialism seeks to balkanize
the Balkans and exercise its control over all of Europe and
is using NATO to carry out its drive for maximum profits
and for further expansion into the oil and mineral rich
areas of Eastern Europe and Asia. Just days after the
bombing began, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department
proclaimed the United States a European power.
In the United States, as in all countries, there is mass
anger and action against the war. There have been anti-war
actions across the country. Trade unions, peace
organizations, civil rights groups, the churches and
millions of people from all walks of life are expressing
their opposition to the war. This is seen in the vote of
the U.S. Congress against the use of ground troops. It took
5 years to reach this level of response against the war in
Vietnam. Because of the pressure of the American people and
the demonstrations world wide, this came after 5 weeks in
the war against Yugoslavia.
Our Party has been a leading force in these developments.
It continues to struggle to broaden the anti-war movement.
The war is already impacting heavily on the quality of life
of the American people. The billions already spent on the
ware are being taken from the social welfare funds. Hardest
hit are the senior citizens and children. They are being
deprived of the basic necessities of life. The brutality of
U.S. foreign policy is coupled with the brutal domestic
policy against the American working class. There is an
atmosphere that life is cheap. Across the country, police
violence and killing against the people, especially African
Americans and other racially and nationally oppressed
people is rising precipitously.
The joint Statements issued by the Balkan Communist
Parties, the Communist Parties of the NATO countries, the
Communist Parties of the Arab countries, the Communist and
Left Parties of Europe, and all other statements of
Communist Parties have been important factors in building
the anti-war sentiment. It demonstrates the importance of
world Communist unity and action. We should examine the
possibilities of some kind of coordinated Communist-led
action against the war. This is the time to implement the
proposal made last year by the Belarus Communist Party for
a conference for the abolition of NATO.
The globalization of the world economy stems from the drive
for maximum profits of all leading capitalist countries.
However, they are just junior partners to the U.S.
transnational corporations whose power engulfs not only
developing countries but also the rival imperialist
countries. Its penetration is concentrated in basic and
heavy industries and raw materials - in steel, auto, oil
production. U.S. capitalism has gotten so rich by the
extraction of superprofits from privatization and lowering
wages and living standards in the United States and other
countries where they have gained control that they now use
those excess profits through the IMF to make loans to the
countries they have devastated. While U.S. imperialism is
the mortgage holder on all these economies, it has to deal
with the mortgaged economies unable to meet IMF
obligations. This leads to the compounding of the crisis
and conflicts. The presence of U.S. military forces around
the world serves as the guarantor and collector of the debt
for U.S. imperialism.
All trade agreements such as NAFTA, GATT, the proposed MAI,
etc. are geared to deepening the control of the U.S.
transnational corporations. The trade agreements, the easy
quick use of military aggression, the U.S. State Department
declarations of control described earlier make it clear
there is no democracy in the MAI/imperialist process. Their
motto is �live in bondage within or be destroyed�.
The global economy is impacting deeply on the U.S. working
class and people. The export of capital to low wage areas
has served to deindustrialize the economy. In addition,
there is a continuing process of monopoly mergers resulting
in hundreds of thousands of layoffs. Basic industry
closings have resulted in the loss of high-paying union
wage jobs. The greatest job growth in the U.S. is in the
low wage, unskilled service industries. The working class
has been largely denuded of its skills. There is massive
unemployment and underemployment at the same time the
weekly hours of work go up. There are 21 million
unemployed, part-time workers and temporary workers. Forty
three million people have no medical care protection of any
kind. There are 5 million homeless people. Thirty seven
million people are illiterate. One out of every five
children goes to bed hungry. Eighty percent of African
American teenagers are unemployed. The government closes
its eyes to the easy flow of narcotics into the country.
Drugs serve to pacify large numbers of people and remove
them from the struggle.
There have been new positive changes in the trade union
movement. The Cold War leaders who dominated the AFL-CIO
for 40 years were defeated and replaced by progressive,
more militant leaders. Additionally, the new leadership
removed the clauses in the AFL-CIO constitution, which
specifically barred the Communist Party and its members
from leadership positions. The new policies are based on
class struggle trade unionism. Strike solidarity,
organizing the unorganized workers, building election
coalitions between the labor movement and the community are
the cornerstones of the new forward-looking policies.
The trade union movement played the decisive mass role in
the defeat of the ultra-right, pro-fascist forces in the
1998 U.S. elections. They educated and organized millions
of people to come and vote against the ultra-right. The
AFL-CIO is preparing for the year 2000 elections. They will
run 2000 labor candidates. They are speeding up their
coalition building. They are creating a multi-million
dollar fighting fund to further defeat the ultra right and
reverse government policies.
Strike struggles in the United States are sharp and long.
There are strikes in steel, coal, auto, transportation and
many other industries. Workers are fighting to put an end
to union contracts which contained cuts in wages and
benefits and are now fighting for new gains. Only last
Wednesday in New York City, 50,000 workers demonstrated at
Wall Street against privatization, wage cutting, job
export, child labor and all other forms of corporate
plunder of working people.
Our Party and newspaper the People's Weekly World have been
an integral part of all of these struggles. Leaders of the
trade union movement refer to our newspaper as labor's
paper. It has received awards for its strike support
coverage. We have developed a new propaganda vehicle, a
weekly 30-minute television program, Changing America. It
is already showing in more than 20 major cities.
The early 90's were very tumultuous times for the world
Communist movement. During this period we struggled to
maintain the principles of Marxism-Leninism which led to
the stability of our Party. Thousands of new members have
joined our Party in the recent period. This is a reflection
of the change in thought patterns and the decline in
anti-communism. There is a very substantial growth in
anti-monopoly feeling, even a hatred and anger at monopoly
activity and the harm it is causing people. People know
that capitalism cannot solve their problems and the crisis
of everyday living. They know the only aim of the system is
to make profits. Therefore they do not see where they fit
into such a system, what it has to offer them. When they
join the Party, they see themselves joining an organization
that is working to change conditions, to improve life, to
create a more equal society, economically, politically and
socially. They may not yet know what socialism is but they
want to learn about it. Therefore we have placed the
question of education on socialism as the solution to the
crisis of capitalism as the priority task.
We are entering a new century. The struggle lies between
the efforts of U.S. imperialism to control all human
activity and its willingness to resort to war to enforce
its aims and the fightback of the people. This comes into
direct conflict with the aims and aspirations and the main
direction of the class struggle of the working class and
people of the world who seek peace, peaceful construction,
social development and socialism. The 21st century is our
century. It is the century of socialism.