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11^th International conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties

20 – 22 November, 2009, New Delhi, India

Speech by Ali Ruckert,

President of the Communist Party of Luxembourg,

Dear Comrades,

For the first time since decades the total number of employees in Luxembourg has been reduced in 2009, and the official unemployment rate has been growing up to 7.1 per cent. Many industrial plants have introduced short-time work, the number of bankruptcies is growing and the capitalists are systematically trying to reduce commencing wages, to impede salary increase, and to reverse any kind of social achievements generations of workers had fought for.

The Luxembourg government is delaying since 2006 the automatic adaptation of wages and salaries to the price development, and it continues its policy of re-distribution from the bottom up. The spending capacity is going down, and already 14 per cent of the population is living under the risk of poverty. The public debt will increase up to 19.8 per cent of the GNP by the end of 2010, and the workers’ chamber, an organ of so-called workers’ participation, has found out that the ratio of wages within the surplus value is decreasing since several years.

There is no doubt: The workers are about to pay for the crises they are not responsible for.

Despite those facts at the parliamentary election on June 7 this year we witnessed that those political parties who are in favour of capitalism, that those politicians who have supported the neo-liberal concepts during the last years and implemented them in our country, have again gained more than 95 per cent of the votes.

The Communist Party of Luxembourg, which for the first time after 15 years was running with own candidates in each and every district of the country, could increase its votes by 35 percent up to a final result of 1.5 per cent, but this was unfortunately not sufficient to gain a seat in the national parliament.

Those political parties, who are supporters of the capitalist system did not become weaker, and the coalition of the Christian-Social Peoples’ Party and the Social-Democratic Party will continue to rule the country for another five years. The reason for that is among others, that the government had saved the two biggest banks with billions of Euros, and by this way it had also saved several thousand jobs. The government distributed some financial gifts to the voters just weeks before the election, and adopted public investments to support small and middle size enterprises. Those measures leading to a cutting of social rights, health insurance and pensions have been delayed for the after election period.

Despite of all negative effects the capitalist crises did not reach the majority of the working people yet, and still many people think that the crises will not be as bad as expected. They see their jobs in danger, but they hope the crisis is passing by, they are ducking their heads and take over simple solutions of right wing populists, that means they blame foreigners and working immigrants for their situation, for the fact that they have lost their working place and have now to live under the risk of poverty.

But there are also long term effects we should not underestimate.

First of all the political consciousness of the working class is much lower today then it was during the last decades – even if some of the workers are changing their relation towards capitalist system and start thinking different. Nevertheless in the view of the big majority of working people capitalism is still offering a sufficient comfortable material basis, so that they do not see any reason to seek for another economic order.

As communists we have to offer them a realistic alternative concept. This is urgently needed so that the majority of the working class that is objectively interested in abolishing capitalism find it attractive to vote for a communist alternative and to actively work for a real change.

The defeat of the socialist system, which was of strategic importance and brought big losses to each and every communist party and to the entire communist movement, has still very serious effects on the European continent. Anti-Communism brain wash is omnipresent, not only in the propagandistic campaigns we are witnessing during the last weeks in the context of the anniversary of the so-called »downfall of the Berlin wall«, but also in the existing social structures, in schools and in bourgeois mass media.

Despite the fact that several of our parties are already active in this direction – until today we are urgently missing a basic common analysis by the communist movement on the reasons for the defeat of socialism, an evaluation of the experiences and achievements, but also of the weaknesses and the deficits, as well as an analysis of the contradictions appeared during the construction of the socialist society, that was to replace capitalism. We think that after 20 years we have to strengthen our common efforts in this direction.

We do urgently need such a concept, when we want to meet the global challenges, when the capitalist crisis will be deepening in the forthcoming years and the search for alternatives will be growing.

Because it will be the most important precondition on our way to find a common view on the criteria and the character of a socialist alternative, on the development of productive forces and of the markets under socialist conditions, on different regulation of economy, on effective socialist planning, on forms of social property, on the construction of institutional and juridical mechanisms of exercising power, as well as on the safeguarding of decision making by the working class in the economy and the society.

In the process of working out this concept, we have to respect national peculiarities as well as the existence of different states of development in different countries.

The precondition for all this will be that all communist and workers’ parties which are adherent to the unique theory of Marx, Engels and Lenin, to proletarian internationalism and to the goal of a socialist society see the necessity of a global and structural form of co-operation. Such a common structure is necessary since many years, but it will only be possible if the communist parties undertake concrete steps to create such a structure of permanent character, so that we become able to find concrete issues to the problems we are confronted with and to debate on common actions.

Thank you very much for your attention.