Contribution of German CP [En]

Dear comrades,

first of all I would like to convey DKP’s gratitude towards the organizers of this meeting, the Communist Party of Vietnam! We suppose that all of us are glad to meet in an Asian country, and even more that we do so in a country which is on the road to socialism.

(I)

In the last meeting in Istanbul our party spoke about the refugee crisis and its reasons. After the first „refugees welcome“ politics of chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015, the Government now is facing hard defeats in regional elections. The right-wing xenophobic party „Alternative for Germany“ (AfD) is growing strongly in voters’ preference and has achieved about 15 percent in those elections. AfD defames refugees who flee hunger and misery as lower-rung refugees, or “economic refugees”. This party, which is open to fascist groups who are supporting AfD, uses the dominating media campaign successfully to obtain its election victories. Although they can count “only” with every sixth vote of the German electorate, they can celebrate that now nearly their complete party programme is put into practice by the Government who fears to loose even more voters. Germany yet declared some African countries with repressive Governments as secure states, and the German Government now is characterizing even countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan or Egypt as allegedly “safe states”, in order to avoid that persons who come from there could stay as refugees in Germany. This also means that Syrians who flee the war in their country can be deported to those states which they have crossed before.

We totally reject the cooperation treaty between the European Union and Turkey which serves as a natural barrier for those human beings who flee war and misery and prefer to go through Turkey instead of risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea. This cooperation with the Turkish Government means that they do not speak about the repression in that country because they handed over an excellent tool: Turkey can always decide to end this well paid treaty and let hundreds of thousands of refugees pass their boarders to Greece.

The ongoing refugee crisis has logical reasons. Some of them we have to find in the US-imperialism, but in the last years there are more factors to be considered. After the end of the German Democratic Republic, Germany now is going to carry out an own imperialist role. One of the results of that process is that the European Union is now under the economic and political leadership of the German imperialism. Now there is no war in the Middle East without or the military or political and logistic support of the German government. We state that the Middle East region is actually facing the most dangerous chapter in its history. The imperialist forces want to create their „New Middle East“ project, with the attempt to divide and to destroy Iran, Iraq and Syria and the declared aim to create new states under their control. They are cooperating with Saudi-Arabia, Turkey or the Gulf monarchies, regardless of their support to forces like the „Islamic State“. We should be aware of the danger of an upcoming war between Saudi-Arabia and Iran who now are fighting for the predominance in the region by supporting different forces in the wars in Yemen and Syria. Our first task is the defence of the integrity of Syria and Iraq as states. We have to defend the sovereignty and the no-interference which are declared in the United Nations treaties! By the way, the only foreign force who is acting in the Syrian conflict with the consent of the Syrian Government is the Russian Federation.

On the other hand, Germany supports the right wing government of Ukraine which came to power by the coup d’etat in 2014. The aggressive politics against the Russian Federation - who is continually blamed by the main media in Germany to be the reason of the Ukrainian conflict - show the interest of Germany to be a bigger player in the international affairs. Our party analysed this new role of German imperialism, in its 21st congress in november 2015, shortly after the last IMCWP meeting. Our conclusion is to continue our antimilitarist and antifascist work in the peace movement, with the aim to stop more war attempts, and finally to stop the aggressive politics of German and US-imperialism which is designed to look for oil and other ressources and, of course, greater influence areas.

Regarding the EU, our position is that it is correct to go on fighting for political achievements, but not to believe in a general reformability of the EU. Generally spoken, reforms have a double character as we all know: on the one hand they can improve some living conditions of the people, but on the other hand just those victories could make the people believe in the „good sides“ of the capitalist system.

So it is important to sharpen the class consciousness of the exploited. This means to show them that reforms never can be sufficient, because of their limited. Regarding the reformability of the European Union we state that Europe needs a new cooperation including all European states, without the dominance of some imperialist countries which is the case of the EU. Europe does not need a European Union as a capitalist construction guided by imperialist ideas and practice. The EU never could play an active role for a world with equal possibilities for the people – this is only achievable with socialist principles.

(II)

To be more offensive and aggressive in foreign politics, always means to act similar in the internal affairs. Regarding the relationship between capital and work, the mere numbers can bluff. Germany managed to go through the crisis quite unharmed. Now Germany has the lowest unemployment rate since decades. But the people pay it with low incomes, compared with the high labour productivity in Germany. A lot of people will have completely unsufficient retirement pensions. The start of the legal pension age was increased from 65 to 67 years by the socialdemocratic-green Government twelve years ago - now it is discussed once again. Instead of considering the high productivity and making the capitalists pay for the pensioners, the pension age shall be raised to 69 or 70 years in the next twenty years.

The German Communist Party has recently released a so called „programme of immediate demands“. It contains demands against curtailing of social and democratic rights, investment in public property, new jobs, improvement of social benefits, taxation of the rich. And in that programme we explain that our „refugee welcome“ isn’t merely humanitarian, but it means that we will fight together with them, for equal rights for all working class people.

The experience with the socialdemocratic-green coalition (1998 – 2005) makes us believe that a new coalition of those parties in 2017 - because of their unsufficient electoral results then including the Left Party who openly promotes that „Red-Red-Green“-coalition – will neither stop the capitalist offensive in Germany nor the imperialist role of German outside. Beside our will to make our Communist Party stronger as an independent party, this is another reason that the DKP will present own candidates to the parliamentary elections in one year.

(III)

The German CP continues to work for peace and socialism on national and international level. In the last period we could strengthen our relationship specially with some parties in eastern Europe, like those from Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic or some from the former Yugoslavia. It is important to support them in their struggle against party bans or every type of persecution.

We sent a representative of our Central Committee to the upcoming Peoples’ Republics in eastern Ukraine to get direct information and demonstrate solidarity. On the other hand, we invited a representative of the Central Committee of the CP of Ukraine to Germany where we had a manifestation and a political meeting on the ban of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), sixty years ago. At the same time, we could evidence our solidarity with the CP of Ukraine which is facing such attempts to ban their party, by the right-wing Ukrainian Government.

At the same time, we continue with our annual 4-party-conferences with the Workers’ Party of Belgium, the Communist Party of Luxemburg and the New Communist Party of the Netherlands, since 2006. The next meeting in april in Germany will discuss the role of imperialist Germany in the European Union. It serves to sharpen our understanding of Germany’s third attempt to dominate Europe and to challenge the unipolar leadership of the United States.

We consider the 4-party-conferences as a political success. From our point of view, it would be useful for the communist movement in general to start with regional cooperation groups. Independent from differences on some issues, for all Communist and Workers’ Parties do exist a lot of common opinions. And although the analysis maintains correct that the CPs and WPs in capitalist countries have to fight first of all against their „own bourgeoisie“, the globalization sometimes brought very similar problems in neighbouring countries that require a common answer of the working classes in those countries.

On the functioning of our international meetings: as DKP we consider that it would be useful if the inviting parties would not have to cover all the lodging expenses. In case of parties with less economic possibilities – like our one – there is no chance to organize a meeting considering the costs. Perhaps we could think about a change in that procedure.

Thank you for your attention!