Intervention at the 20^th International Meeting of Communist an Workers’ Parties

by Uli Brockmeyer, member of the Executive Committee of KPL 

Dear comrades, 

Allow me to transmit the greetings on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Luxembourg and each of its members to you, the delegates of our sister parties, who gathered here in Athens, the city where 20 years ago our Greek comrades took the initiative for a new beginning of cooperation of the communists of the world, in the interest of our common struggle for socialism.

I would like to take this opportunity to speak to you about a concrete form of cooperation, which we regard as one of the results of that meeting 20 years ago.

Around 13 years ago, the Workers’ Party of Belgium, the German Communist Party, the Communist Party of Luxembourg and the New Communist Party of the Netherlands took a decision on a closer co-operation of our four parties. Since then a new framework of co-operation has been developed which is not a new communist International, not an organisation with statutes and rules of procedure, but a frame for the exchange of information, experience and opinion, a place for consulting recent developments and evaluations of the current situation in our countries, in Europe and in the world.

Our opinions and evaluations are not always the same, sometimes we had different points of view on political issues, like for example about the so-called European Left Party. But even existing disagreements have never been a reason for interrupting our co-operation or banning a party from our framework. This is because we have the same understanding about – in our view – the most important points:

. on the basic question of the tasks and the work of communist parties,

. on the understanding of the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin,

. on proletarian internationalism,

. on the positive as well as the negative experiences in the construction of socialist societies in the Soviet Union and in the other socialist countries of Europe,

. and mainly in our common aim: to work for the abolition of exploitation of men by men and create the conditions for the construction of a new society, that in our common point of view can only be socialism.

Today, we can look back at a big number of results, but the most important is the permanent exchange of opinions and of experiences. We know that none of our parties would be strong enough to do all this alone. United we became much stronger.

On the occasion of our annual conference this spring in Luxembourg, we discussed current problems of the development of our parties, as well as for example the health system and the housing situation in our countries and the possibilities of the struggle to improve them. For our party, KPL, this was at the same time a valuable opportunity to exchange views on concrete demands, which later became part of our electoral programme for the national elections last October.

In our electoral campaign, we have included a big number of demands and proposals with the aim to improve the living conditions of the Luxembourg people, mainly of the workers, the unemployed, the youth and the pensioners. Concrete demands are made to increase the minimum wages, the pensions, expenses for housing and for health, to improve the education system and the public transport – all this under the existing conditions of the capitalist society. At the same time we explained openly to the people, that these can be only partial measures, because for a decisive change and an effective improvement of the living conditions of the vast majority of the people we have to change the relations of property of the most important means of production.

One of the important points in our electoral programme was the question of peace. We are of the opinion that the danger of a new war is the biggest danger our world is faced today. The member countries of NATO and of the European Union are heavily increasing their military expenditures. The military budget of Luxembourg is much higher than in the darkest times of the Cold War. Our country is purchasing a military air transporter, military helicopters and vehicles, Luxembourg maintains a military satellite and participates in the formation of new NATO contingents near the borders of Russia.

For these reasons we demand to stop the purchase and the use of all this military equipment, to return the soldiers from foreign territories and to reform the Luxembourg army into a non-military formation. We demand to sign the United Nations Organisations’ contract on the ban of all nuclear weapons and to declare Luxembourg a nuclear weapon free zone. We demand the retreat of Luxembourg from NATO and the dissolution of that pact of war. And we insist on our demand of a complete worldwide disarmament and the ban of all nuclear weapons, no matter which country is in the possession of those weapons.

Unfortunately, the results of the elections turned out not very positive for our party. We could not reach our main aim to be represented in the national parliament again after more than 20 years. But I can promise that our party will not give up. We will continue to fight for our ideals, the ideals that unite us with all of the parties present here in this meeting.

We will continue to discuss and to evaluate our activities with our comrades in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, with the aim to even closer exchange our opinions and experiences and to improve our political actions.

The KPL remains on its position, that this kind of regional and international co-operation is urgently needed on a broader level, based on common points of view in all basic issues. We are ready to work for this – together with all of you.

Allow me to express our gratitude to our Greek comrades for organising again this important international meeting, and to extend our greetings and congratulations to KKE on the occasion of the 100^th anniversary of its foundation.