Lisbon Meeting 10-12 November 2006, Contribution of CP of
Norway
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From: Portuguese Communist Party, Monday, November 13, 2006
http://www.nkp.no , mailto:nkp@nkp.no
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Contribution of the Communist Party of Norway
Sexta, 10 Novembro 2006

Dear comrades!

We the representatives of The Communist Party of Norway
will use this opportunity to express our gratefulness to
the Communist Party of Portugal for taking the
responsibility and great effort to organise this important
meeting.

On this occasion we will only address a few of the many
important issues and challenges concerning the topic of
this meeting.

In the fight against EUs Bolkestein Servicedirective
leading trade unionists understand the serious threat the
directive constitutes for the future existence of the trade
union movement, and they claim that The Norwegian
"red/green" Government veto the Bolkesteindirective. The
leadership of The Social Democratic Party supports the EU
and do not want an open fight in this question. The
communists have activated the debate, in the last weeks
unanimous votes was won for the veto claim in the two
largest districts of LO (Trade Union Central). This is a
good arena for clarifying ideological differences between
Communists support of, and Social Democrats undermining of
the trade unions, and support of European imperialism.

We will stress that the foremost importance of the
communist party is its ability to deliver a scientific
foundation for the struggle of the progressive forces. Only
a party based on the Leninist principles of democratic
centralism and armed with the principles of scientific
socialism can mount the struggle necessary to isolate the
anti-democratic monopolists and finally bring the
capitalist system to an end. Democratic centralism is of
course in itself an indispensable consequence of Marx� and
Engels�, development of the humans struggle for social
progress and socialism in to science. So correctly
understood and further developed by Lenin. We believe that
underestimating the importance of democratic centralism
will lead to grave errors as it has done in the past.

As we have expressed on an earlier meeting, our
anti-monopolistic strategy is developed through the
practice of The World Communist Movement in its struggle
for the interest of the working class over a long period of
time. Our experience in the fight against fascism has a
special importance for this development. We had to pay a
high price for the left deviation of that time and the
correction of this error under the famous leader of
Comintern Georgi Dimitrov marks a leap in our thinking
about building alliances in the class struggle.

The destruction of USSR and the socialist world system has
altered important preconditions for our strategy. In spite
of this, it is our profound belief that the core of the
anti-monopolistic strategy is still valid, but we have to
address what consequences the altered situation gives. We
are still in the beginning of such a process.

The crises in monopoly capitalism mount more severe overt
aggressive tendencies, no longer constrained by the might
of Soviet Union, as seen in the Middle East and Iraq, and
also seen in the attacks on the peoples judicial and
democratic rights under the pretext of fight against
terrorism.

The people of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan daily feel
the aggression of the imperialists, through a brutal
occupation of these countries. Not forgetting the brutal in
discrepant killing of Lebanese civilian by Israeli bombs.
Other countries like Cuba, D.P.R. of Korea, Iran and
Venezuela feels the breath of the imperialist forces every
day.

We deeply regret that our comrades in the WP of Korea felt
that they had no other choice than to start developing they
own atomic bomb. It was a timely reminder comrade Vladimir
Nikitin gave us her in Lisbon at the Meeting of European
Communist and left-wing forces in March when he gave the
CPRFs assessment of the anti-imperialist forces of the
world. But we have to add, that there are some limitation.
Not all of these forces are perceived as reliable in the
defence of socialism. In our view the Korean situation
illustrates this limitation.

The lasting effects of the impact of the splitting in the
communist movement in the 6o-ies and the 70-ies are still
felt in Norway, still making disillusions and great
ideological confusions. The ultra leftist in the "Workers
Communist Party" moved from criticising the communist
parties and the USSR for right wing deviations, to define
the communists as the new fascist and the USSR as a fascist
and imperialist state and a greater danger to the world
pace than any other forces. To perform these distortions of
the reality they also have distorted Marxism-Leninism,
substituted scientific socialism by voluntarism, moralism
and other forms of subjectivism by the philosophical
idealism wrapt in Marxist-Leninist slogans. In Norway this
"leftist" movement happened to be one of the biggest and
most influential movements of its kind in Europe and
accordingly also one of the most destructive. Splitting the
left forces and supporting the wrong movements around the
world, time after time as supporting the enemies of
Yugoslavia, Supporting Taliban in Afghanistan and so on.
They also started spying on members of CP of Norway, and
today they still cling to their "analyses" of the USSR!

We will ones again stress that it is very important that we
early on can manage to stand up against leftist deviations
that so easy spark of support for the reactionary by the
middle class. We have to deprive the monopolists their
public support with all means. We can manage this without
falling victim of serious rightist deviation like the
Social Democrats only if we are armed with the thought of
scientific socialism. This can hardly be overestimated.

We realise that the road to socialism will vary. Transition
from capitalism to socialism can take both peaceful and
non-peaceful forms. As late comrade Suslov expressed it in
a Report to the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of
the CPSU in 1964: "No matter what form the transition from
capitalism to socialism takes, however, it is possible only
through socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the
proletariat in this or that form. In each individual
country the real possibility of the peaceful or
non-peaceful means of transition to socialism is determined
by the concrete historical conditions." He adds an
important remark: "the working class must possess all forms
and means of revolutionary struggle without exception and
must be prepared for the most rapid an unexpected
replacement of some forms by others and use them in
accordance with the concrete situation."

We stand firmly on Marx, Engels and Lenin's ideological
basis, and we will never subordinate ourselves to other
interests than those of the working class and the other
oppressed.

Thank you!

Knut Hartmann Olsen
Secretary of the Politburo of the Central Committee of CP
of Norway