Speech by cme. Vojtech Filip, Chairman of Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia's Central Committee,

To be delivered on 15^th International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Lisbon 2013

Dear participants of 15^th International Meeting of Communist and Workers' parties, Dear comrade and friend Jeronímo de Sousa,

Dear comrades,

As an introduction, let me convey to all of you as well to all members of your political parties the most sincere comradely greetings, the fervent one in today's times of agonizing capitalist crisis, from both the leadership and the membership of the Communist party of Bohemia & Moravia.

In the same time, I'd like to give our greetings to our friends and comrades from Portuguese Communist Party, with my congratulation for their significant success in recent local election, winning 11 % with 34 seats of mayors in the framework of the third most powerful political group in the country, the Coalition of democratic unity. I am happy to see the number of chancellors to be increased here, in the host city of our 15^th IMCWP, in the beautiful tourist pearl of Lisbon. The power of our movement can grow only if the voters will express their favour towards us by their votes in elections.

Today, I also can say you, with proudness, that the Communist party of Bohemia & Moravia (the KSCM) has been very successful with almost 15 % of voters in recent early election to the Lower House of Czech Republic's Parliament, to be third most powerful political party, with 33 MP seats. By this, our goodwill of very powerful Communist Party within the EU has been confirmed. The work of KSCM's officials, activists and members, but also of the supporters, is signed under this our good result. What is also important it is the fact, that our country maintains in deep crisis, the longest one in our history, when lasting more than one and half year, with Czech economy falling down amongst three the worst working EU economics. In the same time I must note that our potential Czech ally, Czech Soc-Dem Party, has won the election, but less percentage than expected - only with 20 % of votes, eliminating so a possibility to create any Left-wing coalition, and looking for coalition partners from political centre. The Left in Czech Republic wasn’t able to repeat an important success, the demonstration of its power from last January, when Left-wing President, Milos Zeman, was elected into the lead of the country through a joint efforts of all Left-wing parties, the KSCM included. During the Parliamentary election, the KSCM had to struggle heavily against mass-media anti-communist campaign, to oppose new populist political parties to be promoted by Czech mediocracy, of which the ANO political movement of Czech billionaire Andrei Babis managed to persuade more than 18 % of voters, becoming so one of the winners of Czech early election. I must note there in the programmes of the populist parties I had read about building up of a socially fair society as the goal, but when looking for any concrete measures this goal to be fulfilled by, I was finding solely empty phrases. It was shown in this election again, that wide strata of Czech political centre's voters have been still remaining in the captivity of empty ideological slogans by collapsing European neo-liberalism, taking up rather reserved positions towards programmable postulates about social changes of socialism, to be promoted by the KSČM.

By all means, we in the KSČM feel encouraged into next struggles by the fact that we have received now 150000 votes more than in 2010 election. This growing support means that the voters have really found interesting our programmable priorities like the measures to start the economical growth and to decrease the rate of unemployment, to set the progressive taxation, to push through the financial disclosure reports and the law given to the general referenda, to abolish both the Church Restitutions Bill and so-called second pillar of the pension reform. Just now, it is up to the KSCM officials to formulate these priorities even more affectively towards our possible both supporters and future voters.

In this point, I'd like to give our most cordially thanks to all the parties sending us their congratulations to this election result.

Dear comrades,

In the draft of 15^th IMCWP's Final Document, all of us have attempted to define every hot issue of current world, as to be seen by our communist and workers' movement. The KSCM sees no problem to sign this document, maybe except it to be a bit unnecessarily both long and large. In my speech, I'd like to pay more attention to some internationally-political issues as well as to some socio-political phenomena and aspects the current communist and workers' movement is working in.

Above all, my point here is the highest value of the civilization; the issue of both the international peace and the security all around the world. The international development of 2013 shows us clearly that a definitive collapse of the neo-liberal capitalism has come nearer again, although the dying liberal economics strives for it’s the longest possible survival. In the end of last summer, as a consequence of imperialist aggressiveness of the NATO's member states, the whole world came dangerously nearer to some kind of big, all-embracing international war conflict around Syria. It is possible to say that the world finds itself in transitional stage between the peace and the war. Solely the mobilization of all peaceful forces all around the world can stop and reverse this trend, to be so self-crushing for the human civilization. Currently, the communist and workers' movement has its duty to define clearly, who jeopardizes most the international peace - the NATO member states to be headed by the USA, with some US' European allies behaving especially in military way, the Hollande's France the most. Both Russia and the People's Republic of China under the Communist party of China stay just on the opposite side, both performing today as the main guarantors of international both the peace and the security. These two UN Security Council members, together with progressive countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, currently guarantee successful countering of the frontal attack of defenders of fading neo-liberalism on the most important and the most effective tool of the international politics - the modern generally democratic international law. This international law, as it had arisen from mutual competition between the global socialist order and the global capitalist one after the World War II, constitutes currently the most important tool for securing of international both the peace and the security. The countries of the Euro-Atlantic area, to be associated in the NATO under US leadership, strenuously rank with weeds the international law with both the institutions and the categories having no support by the international law, no matter either the written one or the customary one. For example, one of these categories is the principle of responsibility for protection, on the ground of which Libya was destroyed, to be thrown several decades back. Similar scenario was prepared for Syria; however, they met their match there, the imperialist offensive being eliminated for now. It is a great responsibility of the international communist and workers' movement to face successfully to the attacks against the international peace and security, to define and to name clearly who, as well as which country, is the enemy of the peace and the defender of the war, and who is both the protector and the guarantor of the international peace and security.

I presume both our movement and the documents to be passed by us should pay more attention to the danger of ultra-right fascist both the forces' and the parties' rise in some of our countries. My point here is to be able to warn in good time, as well as to proceed against the rise of both the fascism and the ultra-right within our European political space. When seeing an increasing popularity of the extreme right-wing in France, watching the case of murder of Left-wing activist in Greece with the fascist Golden dawn behind, or looking at the persecution of Béla Bisku, a communist of 92 of age and a minister of János Kádár's government, to be intended by Viktor Orbán's allegedly democratic government to punish him for meeting his duties given by the law to maintain the constitutional order after 1956 events, I must to ask myself, if we are able to defend ourselves against fascist tendencies to be spread across the EU. Similarly, we should more resolutely mark and denounce in our documents the tendency to equal the communism with the fascism, to be promoted by some EU political elites, but to be in contradiction with the logic of European history. We must, day by day, to remember to those losers-their-way, those forgers of historical true, that no EU would be created without the victory of the socialist Soviet Union over the fascism. It is a simple historical true.

There in our Final Document, we maybe should pay more attention to the practice of current anti-communism, to which the communist and workers' parties are facing in the countries where these parties had been contemporarily rid of their ruling power after 1989. Both the aggressiveness and the sophistication of the anti-communism escalate, as we witnessed, too, in pre-election campaign in Czech Republic. The KSCM faced not only to the anti-communist ideological manipulation by the mass media, but also to rough campaigns of various anti-community societies as well as of our ideological opponents' activities. Amongst extremely disgusting attempts to disgrace us immediately before the election I must mention the dummies to be hung on the streets with the slogan “I marched against the KSCM”, as it had occurred in some larger city agglomerations. Unfortunately, at current legal culture in Czech Republic, no legal protection is possible from expressions of the ideological vandalism like this. That's why we would welcome more solidarity from the international communist and workers' movement with the struggle of communist and workers' parties from the post-Soviet political area against the fierce anti-communism in these countries.

In the context of the 15^th IMCWP's Final Document, I'd like to pause briefly at the philosophical category of Marxist criterion of the true. Both Marx and Lenin had clearly perceived the unambiguous need to confront permanently every theory with the praxis, enriching it and correct it retroactively just so. Looking at the development in our movement, I have a feeling sometimes like we would be failing to avoid the damnation of global revolutionary movement - splitting of the theory from the praxis. Even I have an oppressive feeling to hear again the cry “The shame to the praxis, if it doesn't agree with our theories…”. However, we must be aware of the fact that we cannot build up the socialism if the majority won't be obtained for its ideas. Neither our theoretical works, nor our the very best programme of revolutionary changes, but just developing of forces of production with its consequences on the running of human society will determine the future development of our civilization. In our ideological weaponry, there is the dialectical historical materialism, witch, in its essence, respects the necessity for both the perpetual changes and the new paths of mankind's development. That's why I am ready to hear our Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban and other comrades how they do overcome the difficulties when building the socialist society. That's why I am also ready to inform you how Czech communists strive after returning into the position of our society's leading force, the position, by the way, to be lost primarily due to our own mistakes. Of course, to reach our programmable goals, the building up the socialism, we must earn the allies. There are many ways of struggles to be mutually dialectically interconnected; amongst others, the resistance against anti-social, anti-people politics, the defence of both the national sovereignty and the democracy, the concrete goals of sovereign economical development of each nation, both the cooperation and the solidarity to resist the trans-national measures, the critics of capitalist integration as to be represented by the European Union etc. In these issues as well as in other ones we can carry on the cooperation, finding our allies there in the left spectre of current European political discourse. To shut ourselves or even to prohibit ourselves any cooperation on the left, it is in total contradiction with the Marxist understanding of the criteria of the true.

On its last, VIII. Congress, the KSCM has reaffirmed its invariable political goal, building up the socially fair society, respecting both the demands and the needs of the 21^st century. The socialist society to be created by us will respect the values of sustainable development, what means to strive for the accordance between the economical and social progress, maintaining the quality of the environment. The social welfare will be conditional on the sustainable development of the society with some certain limits of the material well-being. The socialism the KSCM strives for will be of the internationalist characteristics, of course.

Dear comrades,

On Sunday, November 10, we commemorate the 100 anniversary of comrade Alvaro Cunhal, a great son of Portuguese nation, the revolutionary and the communist, whose all the long and rich both political and artist's life had been connected with the troubled history of 20^th century. In my personal memories, there is a picture of this gray-haired revolutionary with distinctive characteristics, how it was mediated by global media into the socialist Czechoslovakia after the Carnation Revolution from April 1974, to be recorded forever. I wish, from the bottom of my heart, to current European young generation, to get also a possibility to find some inspiring personalities - heroes, like our generation had found in comrade Alvaro Cunhal.

In the end of my address, I'd like to give my thanks to our host, the Portuguese Communist Party, as well as to all the organizers, for an excellent organization of our both important and successful meeting.

Thank you for your attention.