People's Democracy

XVII PCP CONGRESS ASSERTS

It Is A Time Of Revolutionary Potential

Sitaram Yechury 

Yechury meeting with the legendary leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, Alvaro Cunhal 

during the 15th Party Congress of the PCP (File photo)

THE 17th Congress of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) has made a rich analysis of the current international situation. Noting that the Congress is being held at a time of fierce all out imperialist offensive, the Political Thesis adopted by the Congress concludes that we are living through a time of great retreats and danger of historic regression but also of strong resistance and revolutionary potential.

World capitalism is not merely incapable of solving the major problems facing humanity but on the contrary is contributing to the exacerbation of misery and heighten exploitation. The Political Thesis notes:

Capitalist globalisation's tragic consequences are there for all to see. The world has become more unfair, less democratic, more dangerous and unsafe. There is heightened exploitation, militarism and wars, an all-out attack against basic rights, freedoms and safeguards, an attempt to criminalise resistance to aggression. Meanwhile, the struggle and resistance of progressive forces, workers and peoples is asserting itself and becoming more diverse. The class struggle of the working class and working people is intensifying. Peoples are confronting imperialist aggression with greater determination. In spite of its socially and politically heterogeneous nature, the "anti-globalisation movement" against neo-liberalism and war is objectively anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.

INEQUALITIES IN GLOBALISED WORLD

The report points out the glaring inequalities that have mounted in this phase of capitalist globalisation. The number of people living below the poverty line has grown in most developing countries with 1.1 billion living on less than $1 a day. At the same time the combined wealth of the world’s 50 biggest billionaires is equal to the combined GDP of all Sub Saharan African Countries where 688 million people struggle for survival. Current UN figures put the number of hunger deaths at 36 million per year i.e. nearly 3 million people die due to starvation every month. Over thirty thousand children die everyday from avoidable causes in the developing countries. Over 10 per cent of the world’s children between the ages of 10 to 14 are exploited as child labour and over 2 million are forced into the sex industry.

Even in the developed capitalist world the conditions of the working people have sharply deteriorated. The unemployed people in the OECD countries are today in excess of 50 million, unprecedented in the post Second World War period. Only 25 per cent of the world’s population holds 85 per cent of its resources. The domination of international finance capital in this phase of globalisation is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the financial assets stand at about 300 per cent of each country’s GDP. It is this huge bubble that is leading the present phase of globalisation. The concentration and centralisation of capital continues to grow rapidly with multinational corporations controlling over two-thirds of world’s production as well as trade.

The report notes that under these circumstances all the four major world contradictions are intensifying. Though the PCP does not deal with these contradictions as we do, but in terms of content they have analysed the movement of these contradictions noting the process of intensification.

DRIVE OF IMPERIALISM

Simultaneously, with intensifying economic exploitation the current international situation also highlights the political and military hegemonic drive of imperialism.

Three years after September 11, it has become obvious that the so-called war on terrorism is essentially just a political and ideological disguise for imperialism's strategic goal of world domination. The problem of terrorism - historically contrary to workers' and peoples' interests - is a real one, and needs to be consistently fought. But the "war on terrorism" waged by the US and its allies - using methods of veritable State terrorism - only nourishes and extends it, rather than reducing and isolating it. Terrorism can be fought essentially by attacking its social-economic and ideological roots - exploitation, poverty, growing social inequalities and injustice, national oppression and plunder, cultural and religious persecution - not by flouting International Law, systematically attacking rights, freedoms and safeguards, and with that excuse fostering racism and war.

Stating that it is only through the strengthening of the global anti-imperialist struggle can this offensive be met, the PCP emphasises that nothing can replace this struggle in each country. In the present phase of globalistaion, the defence of national sovereignty continues to be an essential factor of resistance against imperialist globalisation. Hence, the struggle for socialism individually in each country and as the alternative to global capitalism stands out more sharply and starkly.

Confronting the inhumane reality of capitalism, socialism is more and more clearly the choice that today stands before humankind. However, the resolution notes the objective realities before the international communist movement.

OBJECTIVE REALITIES

The international situation's development is very obviously highlighting the need to strengthen communist parties, to enhance their internationalist cooperation and solidarity, to convincingly and confidently assert the goal of building a socialist society, the need to counter old and new lines of attack against revolutionary parties' ideological and organisational foundations. Overcoming the major weaknesses that currently exist and building up strong communist parties is essential for the struggle’s success.

There are very diverse problems and obstacles on the road to a resurgence of the international communist and revolutionary movement. Overcoming them requires steadfastness of principles, creative responses to new realities, revolutionary tenacity. Among these difficulties and obstacles are: imperialism's global offensive, with its fierce attacks on democratic rights, freedoms and safeguards, and its criminalisation of all forces that resist it; the de-structuring and instability of social relations, with their profound effects on class forces' line-up and composition and on the formation of class consciousness; and also the objective and subjective repercussions of the USSR’s dismemberment and of socialism's defeats in Europe.

The weakening of communist parties left the road open to a resurgence of beliefs and practices with petty-bourgeois, radical-reformist, anarchist-leaning and anti-communist roots. Major parties continue to suffer from the emergence of strong trends that want communist parties to give up their identity and abandon their constituent elements (revolutionary theory, class nature, organisational form, and socialism as the goal) and want to dilute the parties into ambiguous "left-wing" projects.

The complex struggle to strengthen communist parties and assert them as an irreplaceable tool of resistance and alternative, implies an ability to bond with the working class, the working people, the people as a whole, to spearhead their struggles, to formulate a clear prospect of change and revolution. At the same time, it implies systematic criticism of opportunist and capitulationist views, and particularly of utopian pre-Marxist and neo-Bernsteinian theories that ignore, negate or counter the class struggle and the historic achievements of Marxist-Leninist thought and practice. And it implies also criticism of sectarian and dogmatic stances. For a party to be communist, it is not enough to just call itself communist.

The aggressiveness of big capital and imperialism – together with their narrowing social support base – makes it particularly necessary to extend cooperation and solidarity among communist parties and all other revolutionary and Left-wing anti-capitalist forces. It is very urgent to overcome existing shortcomings in this respect. Otherwise, widespread discontentment and protests against neo-liberal and warmongering policies may well be frustrated or be ensnared by some variant of reformism with structural ties to the capitalist exploitation system's reproduction - such as for example, social-democracy.

To stop the race to the abyss, to end wars of aggression and systematic interference in peoples’ internal affairs, to solve the major international conflicts and problems to overcome the most striking social injustices and inequalities – it is essential to effect thorough-going progressive and revolutionary changes directed against big business’s power and property system, and at challenging its exploitation and reproduction mechanisms.

Such changes – which address the need to resolve capitalism’s central contradiction, between the social nature of production and the private appropriation of its produce – have long since been inherent in the system’s contradictions and limitations, and intrinsic to the new historical epoch heralded in by the October Revolution. The big problem is that the maturing of objective material conditions currently underway is not matched by the subjective conditions.   

Socialism’s defeats broke the balance of forces in imperialism’s favour, gave capitalism a new lease on life, had repercussions in weakening communist parties and other revolutionary forces, have negatively influenced the masses’ confidence and fighting spirit. With the immense economic, military, and ideological power it still wields, imperialism has temporarily regained the initiative and is on the offensive, in spite of the crisis that is rotting it inside.

REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL

The time is still one of resistance and gathering strength. But it is also a time of real revolutionary potential. Policies of exploitation, oppression and war are encountering growing resistance and struggle everywhere. Battles are underway whose outcome will greatly influence the worldwide balance and line-up of forces. As in other periods of historical transition, great difficulties and dangers coexist with great potential for advancing the struggle and expanding the revolutionary forces. 

It is this long and arduous struggle that every communist party will have to wage on the basis of the concrete realities that exist in each one of the countries. Reflecting the optimism based on concrete objective analysis of the current situation, the report concludes as follows:

Being steadfast in our principles and convictions, and consciously incorporating the struggle for immediate goals into the wider goal of thorough-going anti-capitalist change - which implies a constant and strong rejection of unprincipled pragmatism and of opportunist adaptation to the system's logic – these are of the utmost importance to fully materialise the revolutionary potential that the current dangerous situation bears within it, and to bring about socialism's resurgence as the alternative to capitalism. Yes, another world is possible - and necessary. A socialist world!

Quoting Bertold Brecht the outgoing general secretary of the PCP Comrade Carlos Carvalhas summed up the mood of the Congress:

Do not accept what is a matter of habit as a natural thing, because in times of bloody disorder, or organised confusion, of conscientious arbitrariness, of dehumanised humanity, nothing should seem natural and nothing should seem impossible to change….