Athens Meeting 8-10 October 2004, Contribution of CP of
Bohemia & Moravia
-------------------------------------------------
From: SolidNet, Thursday, October 14, 2004
http://www.kscm.cz , mailto:leftnews@kscm.cz
==================================================

International Meeting Communist and Workers' Parties

"Resistance to Imperialist Aggressiveness. Fronts of
Struggle and Alternatives"
8 10 October 2004, Athens

Contribution of Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia

Dear comrades,

First of all: sincere thanks to our Greek hosts for their
hospitality, and the way their Secretary General opened our
meeting. I would completely second her sincerely, not as a
pure compliment to a sympatetic woman.

Fraternal greetings from the Communist Party of Bohemia and
Moravia! We are trying to further cultivate that almost a
"miracle" as a party, which has given up neither its
Communist identity, nor its continuity with the historic
contribution of our ancestors to the national and social
emancipation, we have not been cornered, or even
marginalized as a weak faction. Its new persuasive evidence
came through the recent elections to the European
Parliament our party succeeded to collect twice more votes
- and three times more mandates -, compared with the Czech
Social Democracy; and even more votes, than all the three
parties of the "pink-right-wing" governmental coalition.

The VIth Party Congress, held several months ago, confirmed
our orientation, which had generated such our position. Its
main document is purposefully called "Hope for the Czech
Republic" in order to voice the clear-cut readiness to
boost our political initiative in a way, reacting to the
key frustrations and endangered rights of a growing
majority of our people. Among other key resolutions, one
should refer at least to the ones called "Right and Justice
in International Relations", "Jobs to All", as well as the
one addressed to the younger generation, and also initiated
and mostly formulated by its delegates on the Congress:
Also a comprehensive declaration was approved, related to
falsifications of the German fascist occupation and the
results of WW II. We strive to do our best for further
substantial improving our capacity to use a growing
discontent of most of our people, in order to covert it
into yet bigger public shift to the left. A noisy
"frustration", expressed on the results of the Congress by
the "democratic" media and our political rivals, is perhaps
the most evident proof of how they should be evaluated.

Now several remarks to the agenda of our meeting. Fifteen
years since the political earthquakes in eastern Europe is
a sufficient time, to prove their real meaning. What had
been announced as a "victory over Communist nomenklatura",
turned its class substance against the vital interests of
most our people. It issued, however, also a clear verdict
in one long-term dispute whether socialism is, or on the
contrary cannot be, "isolated" from the overall class
struggle. Simultaneously, the core Marxist paradigm got its
proof in an unprecendently crystal-clear shape : prior to
the "postcommunist transformation", some could still see in
a wage an "advanced payment", and in a profit - a "fair
reward for enterpreneurs� risk"; during the 90s, however,
all the collectively owned results of collective work
dropped to a private possession overnight generating a
cleptocratic "elite", capable to get rich solely and
exclusively from the results of the socialism, slandered
before as a "disaster of devastation".

Neither the "victory of the West in the cold war" lead to
any "end of history". It got, on the contrary, a start-up
of a frontal class revenge worldwide. The aim is to restore
not the stage at the late 40s, but that one much deeper
back to the past. The biggest regain of the positions ever,
which the global capital had once already lost, has though
in a different concrete historic conditons -, an appetite
to reinstall such a space for a class arrogance, attainable
when the workers� movement and other democratic forces had
been fixing only the first barriers of their
self-protection.

This could but further deepen the old and open a number of
new conflicts, which the global capital has been entering
with the vital interests of unprecedently wide and
heteregenous spectrum. Unprecendently low, for many
decades, seems to be also the "self-defense capability" of
those affected and endangered. Ever higher "visibility" -
and even very original, inspiring slogans and forms of
protests - we see on one hand; but a struggle focused only
on a number of manifestations, implications, and
repercussions, but not the real class substance beyond, on
the other hand. The bigger is this weakpoint, the more can
those most frustrated link their ultimate hopes with
creatures like Osama or Saddam, who were initially
installed and massively supported in their terrorism
against progressive forces, to be nowadays converted into a
hypocritical alibi for "preventive wars", and all the other
cynical plans and adventures.

All of this is, at the last instance, proportional to
dramatic weakening our own, Marxist initiative. The
Orwellian "rewritting of history" is its important, but
definitely not an exclusive source. Since still too many
people, who know they would never get "winners", cannot
find a real, understandable, viable alternative in our own
positions. Our international dialogue both reflects, and
affects the problem. I guess we can agree, that it is
substantially lagging beyond the urgent needs and even
beyond the communication and coordination among the key
centers of global capital, and within its key "political
colors". Their differing positions reflect objective
conflicts often very significant among real interests,
and not only subjective perceptions, which by definitin
can�t be our case.

Our dialogue is insufficient not only in its intensity but
mainly in its capability to focus on the key agenda. Let me
provoke all of us with at least some of those hindrances,
which seem to cause it, too :

- The more some feel a need to fight against
"nostalgy", "ostalgy", and
similar Don Quijote�s "windmills", the more they
unintentionally shift
themselves the debate back to the past though blaming
for it Don
Quijote�s "windmills".

The more they re-open the issue, what wrong was done in the
past, the more this debate "floats on a surface" of empty
notions. They contribute literally nothing to that "science
and art" of Marxist politics, we urgently need to
cultivate. The less they add also to comprehending those
crossroads, and historic alternatives, which were really
available, and not only dreamed-off; all those torturing
dilemmas, which the Marxist left will be inevitably
confronted with again, once people get a chance and courage
to take power from those, who "privatize" it for the
moment.

Only a fool would intend to replicate mistakes once already
done. How to prevent them to be repeated unintentionally,
is surely a legitimate theme. The more some, however,
promise "totally different" scenarios, the less responses
they contain on the core questions : Is liquidating the
exploitation of the people a part of them ? If so, how
would it be achieved ? And how it would be protected ? So
reliably, that people would not regard it as a "moral
hazard" an adventure of being pushed into a real clash, on
one hand, and on the other hand leaving its results a
matter of a never-ending gambling ?

Or a bit more generally : The more loudly it�s used to be
underlined, how our debate should be open and free, the
less we do succeed to focus it on the core issues of our
strategy and tactics, enjoying a fair competition of its
original visions; the more attention we sometimes pay to a
"core agenda" smuggled by our joint rivals.

The more it�s stressed, how the debate should be prevented
from dogmatism and doctrinary blindness, the less
pragmatic outcomes we succeed to reach, what and how should
we do jointly how a unity of our actions could be
structured and what should be its program.

And last, but not least : The higher the frequency of
glossy democratic rhetorics, the poorer its concrete
follow-up efficient scenarios, how to tear the issue of
democracy from its improper holders; how take our powerful
initiative in raising and fighting, for what democracy is
really about. How to overcome by this the weak points of
the existing anti-war, alter-globalist, social and other
protests and movements. How to multiply our position and
influence in them in order to build a democratic
opposition alliance, broad and strong enough to halt the
recent tectonic break-through in the class equilibrium
worldwide, and to revert it as soon as possible.

A huge chance to move out from the carried-forward
deadlocks, which should definitely not be missed, is soon
coming in the mission embodied in the 60th anniversary of a
victory over fascism. It will remind that chapter of our
joint legacy, which our rivals succeeded to slander and
falsify perhaps less than anything else. 60 years ago,
there was culminating the biggest break-through in boosting
our positions since establishing the Communist movement.
This historic chapter is, moreover, free from any serious
disputes inside our ranks. Neither defeating and
unconditional capitulation of Hitler and his satellites,
nor the democratic political outcomes of the WW II were
automatically "booked" if not the merits of our parties
and international movement, all these issues would surely
assume a totally different shape. How our ancestors did
succeed, this is perhaps the most valuable "laboratory
protocol", we have in common. The more precious it gets
now, since demonstrating a real "science and art" of a
Marxist initiative, capable to force the opponents to
concessions, they would never make otherwise. Ever more
valuable it gets vis-�-vis today�s challenges, analogical
to those 60 years ago and around more, than we do admit it
time to time.

It is an urgent challenge to all of us; only by a
collective search we would comply with it. Shouldn't it
consist in our new initiatives both against the explosion
of terrorism, and the expansion of its "fertile land" in a
context of how the Hitlerite terrorist machinery originated
and could grow so rapidly, both due to a massive "social
exclusion", and cynical calculations of bourgeois
democrats, that somebody else will do the dirty job instead
of them ? How to utilize the best all the logical ties
among the massive attack on the international law, fixed in
the U.N. Charter and political results of WW II and the
undeniable merits of our ancestors in achieving them ? How
to act in defending as many as possible elements of what is
euphemized as a "welfare state" by reminding also its true
origins in the post-war democratic offensive, our movement
was the most dynamic subject of ?

We'll surely find a number of other similar inspirations.
Shouldn't we draw them this time together more, than we
have been succeeding for many years? With a joint aim to
use just this opportunity as a new ground for our much
deeper dialogue and much more productive cooperation? To
come even to a certain joint platform, a sort of a "minimum
program" of all of us ? A platform concrete in itself, but
open for further update both "to the width" and "to the
depth" ? A platform of our own guidelines offered, however,
with a good faith also to broad non-Communist leftist,
democratic forces ?

From the side of my party, this would enjoy much more than
"Platonic sympathies" only. These days, we are intensively
discussing a tentative concept of a broad international
event, to be held in Prague at the days close to the
anniversary. As soon as it gets a needed shape, it will be
addressed also for your own consideration and remarks. All
of us can but benefit, if the coming anniversary would be
used for more than a homage to all, who deserve it but for
getting all of us closer together, so that we multiply our
joint power, as well as positions of each of us at home.

Let me wish ourselves, that also this meeting will move us
further in the same direction.