Political statement

Adopted at the 5th Congress of APK –
the Workers’ Communist Party of Denmark

May 17.-19th 2012

The most conspicuous feature in the global situation today is that world capitalism has failed to shake off the crisis which began in the end of 2006 and broke through at full power in 2007 and 2008.

According to the UN-organization ILO, the global unemployment is record high and is expected to be on 202 million people or 6.1 % of the global workforce. In the neoliberal European Union and the eurozone the unemployment is explosive high: in Spain 23.6 %, in Greece 21 %, in Ireland 15 %, in Portugal 14,7 %, and in Bulgaria 12,4 %.
The percentages for youth unemployment are even higher.

The crisis has shaken the so-called new world order – i.e. the global capitalist system – and exposed the pervading lie, that this system can secure prosperity, peace, and a future for the peoples and the big majority.

Therefore we also see a significant recovery in the struggle of the working class, the youth, and the peoples all over the world. New regions enter the global arena.

A revolutionary storm has swept through Tunisia, Egypt, and other Arabic countries and has brought reactionary dictatorships down. The class struggle is also extremely fierce in the countries in the eurozone which have been hardest hit, first and foremost in Southern Europe.

The youth in Greece, Spain, Italy, etc., has massively taken to the streets in militant protest movements. The workers have also moved and show their will to stop the brutal neoliberal attacks. In eight EU-countries governments, who have implemented the policy of cuts of the Union, have been brought down since the outbreak of the crisis.

Crisis medicine without effect

The capitalist world crisis was triggered and was intensified by bloated housing speculation and massive financial speculation without restrictions. But in reality it is a capitalist crisis of overproduction, where the commodity production cannot be sold because of the limited purchasing power of the workers and the masses. The massive stimulus packages to banks hit by the crisis and financial institutions are paid by taxpayer money and have resulted in an extensive indebtedness of the countries.

Furthermore, in EU extensive neoliberal cuts on the public budgets have been dictated.
The picture is the same in all the EU-countries and not only the hardest hit. Massive cuts and layoffs are being implemented in the public sector. The social services are being impaired.
Places for education, schools, institutions, health care, and maintenance of every kind are being cut down. There is being privatized to a large extent, and public values and core areas are being sold out. Pensions and transfer incomes, and all other public economic services, are being cut drastically.

Public employees are being dictated wage cuts in one form or another, while the working time and the pace of work are increased. A whole series of “labour market reforms” and other ”reforms” – which are synonymous with deterioration for the big majority – are being implemented in order to ensure that the workers work longer, daily, every week, and in the whole life. And those, who cannot live up to the capitalist demands to the labour power by 110 % and fall out from the labour market are being punished hard with a life on or under the poverty line and strongly impaired quality of life.

In other words it is the workers, the youth, and the general population, who have paid for the crisis, while the big capital and the monopolies have grown bigger and stronger under the crisis and secured the profits.
Cuts, layoffs, and decreasing real wages on a massive scale, as it is seen in EU and the euro countries have not secured an overcoming of the crisis. On the contrary EU is in a new recession in the middle of 2012. The bank packages didn’t mean that the crisis was overcome and a new growth began. Also this capitalist medicine failed.

Nor is the other capitalist method for renewed growth and to overcome the crisis, to get the wheels turning by loans and indebtedness, a real way out of the capitalist crises.
That is because capitalism is unable to prevent its cyclical crises to break out or to overcome them positively and actively. The present economic crisis has passed over into a prolonged depression without imminent prospects for recovery. According to ILO the mass unemployment will continue to grow year for year, up to over 210 millions in 2016. Only thereafter a possible growth in work places is predicted.

Against all this the working people are strengthening their common struggle against the capital under slogans like ”We will not pay for your crisis! Let the rich pay the crisis!”.
The workers as well as the young, the unemployed, the pensioners, and other people on transfer incomes – the big majority in the people – unite themselves increasingly in the struggle against the neoliberal policy of cuts, austerity on the social parts of the public budgets, the labour market- and retirement”reforms” and the demands for increased labour time or real reduction in wages.

The expectations to the existing capitalist institutions and forums – G20, G8 EU, and IMF, etc. – and to the capitalist governments and parliaments of different orientation become still smaller, as the crisis continues apparently without an end in sight, and the promises of the capitalist politicians and rulers about renewed prosperity show to be empty words.
Therefore the workers and the young seek toward new solutions, new paths to another and better future.

Besides passing the burdens of the crisis on the working and broad masses, the capitalism and imperialism in crisis seek other reactionary ways out of the crisis – partly through war and aggression against other countries and peoples, partly through increased militarization of the societies, “terror laws”, and intensified surveillance and repression against the peoples, and also by encouraging the spread of fascism, Nazism, neo-Nazism, and right-wing extremism of all kinds.

Prescription 2: War

”The new world order” has meant a period with permanent wars. After the Gulf war of USA and the West in 1991 and the war of USA and NATO against Serbia in 1999 the 21. century has so far been characterized by continuous wars instigated by USA and with the imperialist military alliance NATO as key player.

After the 11. September 2001 came the Afghanistan war which has not ended yet and where the occupying powers must face a defeat. After the war against Iraq in 2003, which also effectively has been a defeat for the imperialist war coalition, followed the war against Libya in 2011 which has brought an unconcealed coalition between the West and fundamentalist Islamism to light and established a lawless society ruled by imperialist agents, militias, clans, and sharia-supporters.

Imperialism is setting the stage for a repetition of the scenario from Libya in Syria – and to a war of aggression against Iran.
The imperialist plans and the military aggression in the Middle East, which supports the role and policy of Israel in the region, is a main obstacle for peace, stability, and social prosperity for the peoples and for a just solution for the Palestinian people.

The aggressive military alliance of USA and the West, NATO, which has evolved into a global war power, continues its aggressions in the Middle East and Asia and expands the military presence in Africa. No corner of the world is left in peace from the increased militarization and armament which reflect the growing contradictions between the old imperialist powers, USA and NATO, and new ones like China and Russia, etc. Even the Arctic is now involved.

The anti-war movement developed as a real global mass movement at the start of the so-called ”war on terror”, especially against the war in Iraq. The movement turns itself against the present wars and occupations and demands, that all foreign troops immediately are pulled out of the occupied countries, that new wars of aggression are nipped in the bud, and that the aggressive military pact NATO is dissolved, and it demands that the responsible war criminals are brought to justice.

Prescription 3: Police states and intervention against political protests

The military aggression is followed by a militarization of the civil society in the belligerent countries unprecedented since the start of ”The Cold War”. The imperialist wars create a caste of ”veterans”, who are raised in a spirit of military aggression and neo-colonialism, and who will get a prominent place in social life as national “heroes”. War propaganda and indoctrination with justifications of wars of aggressions are filling the medias and the dominating film- and TV-industry. Opposition to war is fenced in and submitted to hate.
At the same time plans are being laid for use of military against civil unrest at least in all the imperialist countries, in all NATO-countries.

The imperialist countries are on the way to evolve into police states. The massive surveillance of the citizens on the internet and in the private and public sphere surpasses in some areas the Orwellian fantasies. At the same time there has been implemented a comprehensive ”terror legislation” and laws following it, which have particular focus on taking action against and suffocate the political protest, as it has been seen in connection with the “lout package” (Note 1) and the mass arrests under the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

Being able to intervene against political protests with all means becomes particularly significant for the ruling class in a situation, where they unconcealed depose elected politicians and put the preferred of the big capital in power as political figurehead, as it was seen in Greece and Italy in 2011, when the heads of government were replaced.
The contempt for democratic institutions is paired with the will to crack down on democratic and popular protests and against civil disobedience of every kind.

The protest against the police state development, the militarization of social life, the undermining of democracy, the terror-laws, and the measures against freedom of speech, such as the ACTA-law, against the criminalization of the political protest and persecution of political activism is also a global tendency and a part of the common struggle of the working people in all countries.

Prescription 4: Nazi terror and right-wing extremism

It is in no way by coincidence that right-wing extremist tendencies of all kinds is spreading and is disseminated in such an unstable crisis situation for the capitalist system and its ruling class.
The strengthening of right-wing extremism, national conservatism, neo-Nazism, and revival and rehabilitation of fascism and Nazism, including its top figures, is a conscious policy from the side of the rulers.

The dissemination of the right-wing extremist and fascist policy and ideology is ensured by the fact that no action is taken against Nazi and racist activity and propaganda, even though it is criminal according to the UN and national legislations. The fascists have full freedom of speech and use it fully on the internet and in numerous other contexts, where the official medias act as microphone holders.

In such a climate and on such a background Nazi terrorists arise like the Norwegian, A.B. Breivik, who carried out a bomb attack against the Norwegian government and a massacre on a social democratic youth camp, the Swedish sniper Peter Mangs who terrorised immigrant neighbourhoods in Malmö, and the Nazi cell in Germany which in agreement with German police- and intelligence officers conducted the so-called ”kebab killings” on immigrant shops.

The police, prosecutors, medical authorities, and the medias try to picture the systematic Nazi terror that takes place in many countries and has immigrants, and left-wingers, and revolutionaries as its goal, as ”lone wolves” and/or mentally disturbed persons that act on their own with personal motives.
But those brutal Nazi terrorists are a direct result of the ideology and policy of the ruling class, raised and developed by its propaganda.

Although it is obvious that the fascist, Nazi, and right-wing extreme terrorism and its hate crimes are barbaric, is targeting innocent people, and claims many lives, police, intelligence services, and the bourgeois medias try to picture right-wing terror and “left-extremist” terror as the same – and moreover to proclaim left-extreme “terror” as the greatest threat and danger.

Among the methods of the bourgeoisie to revive Nazism is also to equate Nazism and communism. This is, among other things, expressed in rehabilitations of Nazi bigwigs, and on the other hand in humiliation and vituperation of the anti-Nazi resistance struggle and the antifascist resistance fighters.
The present Nazi mass murderers are granted full freedom to propagate in the medias and to build up crowds of supporters from the prison cells. And they are only the tip of the iceberg.
In their shadow, and virtually unchallenged, are arson attacks on refugee- and asylum centres and immigrant shops, assault on immigrants and on left-wingers in the thousands.
There is an upcoming race war and war of extermination against communists, revolutionaries, left-wingers, and even social democrats on the programme – today as yesterday.

Over the whole world the struggle against the right-wing extreme parties and movements, that grow and become stronger in many countries, is an integral part of the struggle against crisis, war, and reaction. Therefore a ban against fascist, Nazi, and racist organizations, activities, and propaganda is demanded.

 

The youth and the workers seek new paths

The crisis also means a fall in the real wage for the working class as a whole, and impaired conditions for the majority of the people. On a global scale billions of people must fight hard to not go to bed hungry.
All the grim consequences of the mass poverty are the reality of the day for a big part of the Earth’s population.

At the same time the social unrest grows everywhere. Protests, demonstrations, actions, and strikes become more frequent all over the globe. The report of the ILO for 2012 tells that in 2011 the social unrest grew in 57 out of 106 countries in comparison with the previous year.
The tendency is especially powerful in Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The economic crisis is taking place simultaneously with the development of other global crises. The climate- and energy crisis represent serious dangers for the peoples and their future. The global warming and other man-made disasters affect not in the least the poorest countries and the poorest peoples hard.

At the same time the nuclear disaster, whose consequences are global and far from having been overcome, at the Fukushima plant in Japan has once again emphasized that nuclear power is a technology that brings death with it and should be scrapped along with the nuclear weapons. The transition to renewable energy is globally an urgent task that capitalism cannot solve.

The mass unemployment is a phenomenon that affects all countries, the whole capitalist world, and the outlook for the present generation of young people is grim.
The young people in the developed imperialist countries cannot count on obtaining the same standard of life and work as the parental generation, but will be worse off educationally, in regards to employment, and economically.

The young people have over the whole world taken the lead on the barricades in protest and revolt against the capitalist crisis and its consequences, while the working class as a whole increasingly has embarked on mass protests, demonstrations, and political strikes – and particularly extensive in the countries which have been hit hardest by the crisis.

The socalled “Arab Spring” – the revolts of the arab peoples beginning in Tunesia – mobilized extensively a generation of young people that could not get a job although many of them had completed educations at the university. In Spain with the extreme high proportion of young unemployed (over half of the young generation doesn’t have jobs) the young people have asserted themselves with initiatives like the M15-movement, which has manifested itself with actions over the whole country and has distanced itself from the parliamentary alternatives in the form of the “socialists” and the openly bourgeois.

Also in the hard-hit Greece, in Italy, Portugal, and many other countries the youth has staged massive protests.
It is significant, that the working class now really also have started to stir. In Greece, Italy, Spain, and many other countries extensive protests and a series of general strikes have been carried out that not only are directed against a single or more cuts and austerity demands, but have a pronounced political character and turns against the incumbent government, whether it is openly bourgeois or social-democratic/”socialist”, and against EU and the dictates of EU.
In the case of Greece the protests are directed against the ”troika” consisting of EU, the European Central Bank – ECB, and the International Monetary Fund – IMF, whose demands about barbarically impaired living conditions are being dictated on the Greek people.

The hopes, which in Europe for some were attached to EU and Euroland, lie in ruins.
The European Union has irrevocably exposed itself as the project of the monopolies and not the project of the peoples, of peace, or of social prosperity, or however the advertisements have sounded.
The political parties and forces, who supported and are integrated in ”the European project” are also hit by the sharpened economic and political crisis of EU. Since the outbreak of the crisis eight heads of government in EU-countries have been voted out of their office because they had implemented the neo-liberal policy of cuts which the big majority turns massively against.

It also means that the differences between the governmental parties of one or another orientation are not of great importance in practice. Both “socialists”/social-democrats and openly bourgeois governments conduct the same economic policy at the detriment of the big majority.
The undeclared but actually existing two-party system of ”socialists” and bourgeois in the EU-countries has failed – just like the two-party system of Republicans and Democrats in USA who take turns in having power and conducts basically the same wars, the same austerity knives and the same policy.

The trust in the EU-parties of any shade is rapidly declining. At the same time the workers demand that their unions take steps to fight the policy of cuts. Those are often linked to the ”socialist” parties through ETUC, the European Trade Union Confederation, which has had to sharpen the criticisms of the policy of EU and e.g. rejects the Finance Pact, the latest treaty which has not yet entered into force but binds the national economies to the neoliberal economic policy.

The most significant tendency is the tendency to breaking with both parliamentary blocs and the attempt to build up independent class- and combat organizations and movements as tools for the struggle of the big majority against the reactionary crisis policy. It is movements like M15, the “Occupy”-movements, and other popular organizations and initiatives, the effort to win the leadership of the unions and make them into combat organizations, and similar steps to organize the mass struggle and make it more effective.

At the parliamentary level new steps are also taken to build up a third and progressive option in relative to the two EU-alternatives. It has happened with considerable success e.g. with Syriza in Greece, the left-wing coalition that became the next largest party of the country, or in France with Front de Gauche (the Left front). This effort can also be traced everywhere.
The struggle against the Finance Pact and the euro, which is a fundamental folly, and the struggle against the EU of the monopolies, that tries to become an imperialistic world power, is a common struggle for all the workers and peoples of Europe. It doesn’t just direct itself against individual aspects of the European Union but seeks to detach the individual countries from the euro and the treaties and step out of the EU. It aims towards the dissolution of EU as an imperialist political and economic union and as a state formation with own institutions, own currency, fiscal policy, etc.

Denmark in crisis, war, and European Union

The Thorning-government (2), which replaced ten years VKO-rule (3), is almost a textbook example that the EU-policy is the same, whether it can be called blue or red.
None of the blocks tell the voters which policy they in fact intend to implement, but stresses popular cases to win the elections. After that the dictate policy of EU is on the menu.

Neither VKO nor SRSF (4) has been or is able to lift Denmark out of the crisis although they both have promised it again and again. “Out of the crisis” and ”assurance of the future of the welfare” has been the mantra while the crisis was deepened, people lost their jobs, and many had to leave their home – and virtually all have experienced fall in the real wage, increase of prices, increased taxes and fees, and a significantly tighter economy.

The Thorning-government was elected in the expectation of – and it promised – a completely different policy than VKO. It soon became evident, that Thorning continued Anders Fogh’s (5) “activist” foreign policy as faithful client of USA and NATO and in the front row, while Denmark try to be the teacher’s pet in EU, as Thorning-Schmidt demonstrated it under the Danish presidency.

The crisis solutions of EU and the euro is now as before to take from the general public through extensive social cuts and give to banks, speculators, and a greedy finance capital.

Therefore the government (and VK) will also not let the Finance Pact be put to a referendum, although a big majority of the Danes wants it.
The declared policy of Thorning is to “overcome the crisis” and “preserve the welfare” by making the Danes work more.

This means to increase the supply of labour power and thus increase the pressure on the working people and the competition for the workplaces with the purpose of lowering the wages. An extended working time should be the alternative to the policy of cuts of VK.
It has proven to be a supplement to it. The workers and the youth get to pay not once, but many times.

In practical policy the SRSF-government has implemented classical EU–policy of cuts and continued the “reforms” of VK. At the same time it has increased taxes and fees, has dictated reduction in real wages under the collective agreements, and is now conducting the tripartite negotiations (6) in order to make the Danes work more and longer. Two days off seem to be at the stake of being involved together with other deteriorations.

The social-democratic union leadership is standing before a serious smacking from the members. It has revealed itself as a tool for the Thorning-government and EU and not as the spokespersons of the members.

The policy of cuts of the ”red” and blue blocs is being justified as necessary to secure the welfare against respectively ”the elder burden” and ”shortage on labour power”. Both are myths. The early retirement (7) was axed, the unemployment benefit is cut to two years and the time for regaining the unemployment benefit has been doubled, and we must all work more, everything with the argument, that there will be a shortage of labour power (”hands”) in a few years because there will be fewer Danes in the working age and more go on retirement.

The figures which both VKO and SRSF have drew upon are, however, incorrect: In 2020 there will be more and not less people on the labour market, the latest statistic shows. Thus a part of the justifications for the reactionary and anti-labour 2020-plan of the government has fell down on the floor.
This will not get it withdrawn. However there are enough funds to stop the cuts.

Billions can be released for welfare by stopping the wars and the milliarization and pulling Denmark out of NATO, stop the euro-attachment and end the membership of EU, and increase the taxation of the rich.

Neither the policy of the blue- or ”red” bloc works, and also in Denmark an endeavour to find new ways and build up new alternatives has started.

The revolution is back on the agenda

The arab revolts with the popular risings in Tunisia and Egypt in the beginning of 2011, who drove respectively the Ben Ali-, and the Mubarak dictatorship away, was an expression of a popular reaction to the capitalist crisis and the political oppression which in the Arab countries is administrated by the pro-imperialist, oppressive regimes and dictators, who are best friends with USA and EU.

These popular risings directed a blow against the imperialist and racist propaganda which present the Arab peoples as backward, primitive, and Islamist. They turned against economic and political oppression and demanded political, democratic, and economic reforms. And they demonstrated that the revolution is a question, that hasn’t been taken of the historical agenda, but is still relevant in the form of democratic, anti-imperialist, and socialist revolutions.

The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt encouraged and gave inspiration to a new upsurge in the youth’s and workers’ movement and efforts in the other Arabic countries, in Southern Europe, and the rest of Europe and in many other regions.
The revolution has been placed on the agenda. On all continents.

The imperialism acted fast against the Arab people’s revolutions. It was sought to hijack them and the democratic processes in Tunisia and Egypt, where a US-backed military regime remained in power. In the political processes imperialism and the Arabic reaction (with Saudi-Arabia and the other kingdoms and emirates in front) support Islamic parties and forces in order to counter the progress from secular, progressive, and revolutionary forces.
In other countries like Bahrain the uprising was crushed by military power.

In Libya NATO went into a war alliance with Islamists and prevented that the Libyan people took their destiny in their own hands. But nevertheless the revolutionary endeavour continues in all the Arabic countries to be a driving force that threatens the pro-western regimes and the autocratic kings with demise. In EU and the European countries it is a socialist revolution that is on the agenda and is prepared.

A revolution with the working class as the main force at the head for an alliance with all progressive forces and layers and led by the Marxist-Leninist communist party in alliance with other revolutionary and progressive parties and forces – with the perspective of creating a socialist society with the working class at the head.
That means to expropriate the ruling class and build up a system without crises and wars, without oppression and exploitation, without discrimination and racial hatred, with equal rights and dignity of all the members of society.

Copenhagen, May 19th 2012

Notes

1. ”Lømmelpakken”, a law package created before the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, december 2009.
Preventive detention was raised from max 6 hours to 12 hours. The punishment for preventing the police doing its job was raised from a fine to 40 days prison. If there was a “gross disturbance of peace and order” on the place, it would be an aggrevating circumstance, when the punishment will be handed out.

2. Helle Thorning-Schmidt is the incumbent social-democratic prime minister of Denmark.

3.

V: Venstre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venstre_%28Denmark%29

K: Konservative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_People%27s_Party_%28Denmark%29

O: Dansk Folkeparti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_People%27s_Party

The openly bourgeois parties Venstre and Konservative was in government 2001-2011 (the prime ministers were from Venstre), and the populist and nationalist Dansk Folkeparti was a supporter.

4.

SRSF: The present government

S : Socialdemokraterne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democrats_%28Denmark%29

R: Radikale Venstre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Social_Liberal_Party

SF: Socialistisk Folkeparti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_People%27s_Party_%28Denmark%29

All those three parties participate in the Helle Thorning-Schmidt government

5. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (from Venstre) was prime minister of Denmark 2001-2009. He is now general secretary of NATO.

6. They were between labour unions, employers’ organizations, and government. They collapsed in June 2012 after the Danish Union of Metalworkers refused to give up on holidays and leave days.

7. Efterløn (literally: afterwage) – a form of early retirement, formerly possible from 60 yrs, but now gradually raised. The general retirement age at present is 65 years, but is gradually raised. For those born after January 1st 1959 it will be 67 years.