Athens Meeting 18-20 November 2005, Contribution of CP of
Norway
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From: SolidNet, Tuesday, November 29, 2005
http://www.nkp.no , mailto:nkp@nkp.no
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International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties
"Current Trends In Capitalism: Economic, Social And
Political Impact. The Communists' Alternative"
Athens, 18-20 November, 2005

Speech delivered by Svend Haakon Jacobsen
vice-chairman of the PB of the CC of The Communist Party of
Norway

Comrades,

Many thanks to KKE The Communist Party of Greece for taking
the responsibility and great effort to organize this
important meeting every year. CPN find it of utmost
importance and inspiration for our common fight against
imperialism on the international level, as well as our
fight on the national level.

CPN is small, but we are determined to build a strong party
based on marxism-leninism. Because of small resorces the
written contributions we receive from the bigger and more
resourceful parties like KKE, Portuguese CP, CP of Cuba,
CPB and others, are valuable to us. We study and discuss
your contributions. We share your views on most of the
topics.

We found CP of Greece, Contribution of KKE at the
international Conference in Istanbul, 1 October 2005 on the
topic: "Developments within the imperialist system; The New
Dynamics in the Anti-Imperialist Struggle", most
interesting and clearifying. Experiences from the
classfight i Norway gives us reason to draw many of the
same conclusions that you do. We also agree with you that
in the present situation the disussions must be held about
creating a communist pole, i.e. a distinctive presence of
communist parties on an international level.

CPN`s most important task is to recruit youth, educate
them, and organize them to take active part in the
political campaigns. Due to ideological differencies, and
weakness in our youth organization, it has to be
reorganized to fulfill its important task.

CPN has members in most branches of the trade unions. We
are active, but small in numbers. The biggest union is
Fagforbundet (sisterorganization of the british Unison)
which in Norway is the union for community, hospital,
health and social workers with 300 000 members.

This union is the best organized, and use much resources in
the fight for welfare and rights in the local communities.
They fight privatization vigorously, and confront the
neoliberal policies on a broad scale. They have studied
health or shall we say lack of health care in the USA, and
in Britain, and know what they do not want. Fagforbundet
has had strong influence in the central organization of the
trade unions in Norway, LO.

We have recently; 11th and 12th of September held elections
to the norwegian parlament Stortinget in Norway.

The former right wing government of the Conservative and
the Christian Democratic Parties governed with the support
of the neoliberal Fremskrittspartiet (Party of progress).
In their 4 year periode many neoliberal policies were set
into practice. Most of the trade unions were fighting these
measures, even if many of them were originally initiated or
supported by the norwegian social democratic party
Arbeiderpartiet.

Both members of Arbeiderpartiet, Socialist Left Party, CPN
and Red Alliance had been fitghting hard together in
Fagforbundet to develop a united front against all the
neoliberal policies. On this ground the leadership of
Fagforbundet managed to turn the social democratic
leadership of LO to the left on many important issues. They
worked together to influence the "green party" Centerparty
(peasants party) to come to terms with the trade unions,
together with Socialist Left Party, and the social
democratic Arbeiderpartiet was forced by the trade unions
to go to the left on many important issues. And for the
first time these three parties formed a united alternative
for a majority government that was aiming to stop and turn
back many of the neoliberal harsch measures against the
working class i Norway. To give you an idea, I will refer
our statement after the elections:

Declaration from PB of the C.C. of the Communist Party of
Norway (NKP) concerning the result of the elections in
Norway 11. 12. of September.

The result of the elections show that broad strata of the
people have reacted on the market liberal right wing
policies of the government. They therefore have strong
expectations to the coming "red-green" government in
relation to: the reintroduction of workers rights in the
Labour Law, the pull back of privatization, defence of
salary by illness, strengthening of the communal economy,
improvement in social security by invalidity and
unemployment, a considerable cut in the payments that
patients have to pay, a strengthened public school and
stricter demands to the eventual establishment of private
schools, a redistribution of the fish resources to the
coastal population and a strengthening and activization of
the district policy, to reintroduce a political ruling of
the hospitals, active measures to reduce the unemployment
and to establish new workplaces for the unemployed, a more
independent foreign policy.

Now it becomes important that The National Organization of
Trade Unions (LO) and the most advanced sections of the
trade union movement and other popular organizations take
steps to make sure that the expectations are turned into
reality. The Communist Party of Norway (NKP) will actively
support this work; for in a longer perspective NKP means
that only a struggle which breaks fundamentally with modern
capitalism, will secure and develop the welfare of the
people.

The huge progress in votes for Fremskrittspartiet ("The
Party of Progress", a right wing populist party) opens up
for cooperation with other political parties, foremost with
H�yre (The Conservative Party). This shows that
Fremskrittspartiet is about to reach acceptance in
Norwegian politics, a scaring development.

NKP's election result was by far satisfying, but taking in
consideration under which conditions the party had to
participate in the electoral campaign ( having to collect
500 subscriptions in each county), where NKP was excluded
from all nation wide media, allegations on the radio in the
stately owned broadcasting corporation that the party was
not campaigning, and even did not exist any more, and a
complete public focusing on the government issue, the
result in the eleven counties where we participated, was
only insignificantly different from what NKP achieved in
2001. In three of the eleven counties The Communist Party
won more votes.

The "red-green" government is not progressive in the fight
against imperialism, they subordinate themselves, also
Socialist Left Party to Nato, the building and using of a
large bataljon of rapid deployment force, in Norway called
The Telemark Brigade. They have been in Iraq more or less
as "social workers" if you believe the leading News papers
and TV-channels

Socialist Left Party is loosing its identity, which
originally was to fight NATO and War. They supported the
bombing of Yugoslavia, and accept military adventures in
Afghanistan. They should withdraw from Iraq if they won the
elections. Now they accept to keep norwegian military
personell in Iraq, if they are working as NATO-personell,
and they agreed to send 3-4 military warplanes ready for
combat to Afghanistan, to protect the norwegian personnel.

CPN started wery early, already in 1960 to fight what
should become the EU. We have done an important job in the
trade unions and together with the Centerparty in the
districts with the fishermen and the peasants.

We won the referendum in 1972, and also the next try by the
social democrats, conservatives and big business was
stopped by our win in 1994. It is very important to convey
the anti-imperialist, working class National and democratic
perspective to this fight. None of the other groups in the
alliance against the EU understand and advocates clearly
this perspective, even if young members of the Centerparty
have developed a deeper understanding from the norwegian
negotiations in the WTO. After the result of the referendum
in France and Holland, the polls of support for EU in
Norway has deminished. Today approximately 60% of the
norwegian people say they are against membership in the EU,
and only apr. 40% are for. The new government

say they will not seek for membership in EU in this period,
as the social democrats are for, and especially the
Centerparty is against.

It is an important task for CPN to fight the EU openly
ideologically as the European imperialist center. Workers
with affiliations to the social democratic parties
Arbeiderpartiet and Socialist Left Party need to understand
these questions, if we shall move forward in our fight for
socialism in Europe. They also must learn to understand,
that social dumping of salaries by cheap polish and other
east-european workers coming to our country, is a planned
development. They give no aid to the new member states, let
the unemployed travel around to seek work and dump
salaries, to give more profits and weaker trade unions.

Communist Party of Portugal good achievements in the
elections, proves that our fight on marxist-leninist ground
is right, and also possible to win even under very
difficult conditions. We are very happy for your success in
Portugal, and we are eager to follow, study and learn from
your good work and results.

CPN has fought hard within the trade unions to stop the
neo-liberal policy of reducing pensions. Both LO and
Fagforbundet had a very clear position against the cuts,
but the social democratic Arbeiderpartiet managed to get
the leadership in the Trade Unions to accept of the
necessity to reduce pensions. They won the vote of the
LO-congress by 190 to 120, and came to terms with the
former government before the elections, and thus managed to
keep this very important issue outside of the election
debate. But the result will bring a reduction in the
pensions by 20 to 50%, as they say all have to work till
the age of 67 or 70 to obtain pensions like we today obtain
from the age of 62.

In Norway today most people leave work at the age of 60,
and the working conditions and unemployment will not be any
better, so they will not be able to work longer, and may
loose as much as 50% of the pensions they receive today.

CPN has the priority, besides building our party, to fight
for a pension for everyone to live from. The Centerparty
who is fighting the EU supported the cuts in pensions,
which is a clear policy of the EU of reducing public
expenditure. They are guided by their borsjoise economic
thinking, even if they largely share our common view on the
EU. Ideologic fight in this field is essential.

CPN is working actively in the solidarity for CUBA in
Norway. We acknowledge Cubas huge contributions in almost
every field possible.

Cubas clear ideological stand, and defense for the
revolution is of utmost importance and inspiration for all
of us. Bush administration is openly planning to overthrow
the revolution in Cuba. We therefore find it important to
be aware and strengthen our international support for Cuba
everywhere today.

We salute Chavez Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, the
successful World Youth Festival in Caracas, and the great
win in the elections of Communist Party of Uruguay together
with other progressive forces.

The aggressive imperialist policies, with military
interventions underline the need for closer cooperations of
all the marxist-leninist communist and workers parties, in
alliance with other anti-imperialist forces.

We must actively fight the occupation of Iraq, and try to
support ICP in their difficult fight against the
occupation, and for the working class.

We must fight together against the imperialist
destabilization policy in Lebanon, the imperialist
aggression against the Palestinians, Syria, Iran, The
Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Aserbajdsjan, etc.

We should cooperate and act together, and learn to make our
moves, when the situations are favourable and the
imperialists are week, and cooperate in preparation for
collective understanding and defensive actions when
necessary.

We thank you for conveying your interesting contributions
to our common cause.

Thank you.