People's Democracy

Message from the Communist Party of Ukraine

DEAR Comrades,

On behalf of Central Committee of Communist Party of Ukraine we express you sincere wishes for all participants of the 20th congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

We wish all participants of the congress reach an agreed, mutual understanding and adopt decisions for further successful development of the inter-party cooperation.

Successes to all your undertakings, solidarity and all best wishes for all Indian communists for peace, wellness and prosperity.

--- Igon V Alekseyev, second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine                        

Message from the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA)

TO the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to your 20th party congress, to the members of your party, and to the working class of India:

The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) sends its heartfelt greetings and best wishes to you on the occasion of your 20th party congress, assembled in the city of Kozhikode, in Kerala.

We are very much aware of the long history of struggle which has joined the working classes in our two countries, going back a century or more, to the historic Mumbai textile worker strikes in your country and the struggle for the 8 hour day that culminated in the Haymarket incident in ours. Our two parties also have a history of solidarity in struggle, from the founding of our party in 1919 and yours in 1925. For all these years, we have learned from each other’s experience, and supported each other’s struggles, and we are delighted that this tradition of solidarity and friendship continues in our own times. We have followed, also, the struggles of the Indian working class and masses, in which your party has played and continues to play such an important role. In particular, the massive strike last month, which saw such a splendid united front of all your trade union federations, is a beacon of hope for the working class worldwide. Here in the USA, we see many new advances in the trade union struggle, with a special focus on beating back the efforts by reactionary politicians to use the current national and world economic and financial crisis to break the backs of labour unions representing government workers especially. In the states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and others, an unprecedented level of working class mobilisation is thwarting such plans.

As you know, the position of the Left in US labour unions was severely damaged in the period of anti-communist repression, loosely called “McCarthyism” that began after the end of the Second World War. It has taken a long time and a hard fight to reverse the damage, but today we see both of our major union federations plus independent unions taking strong, progressive positions on issues of international solidarity and war. Very much worth mention is the solidarity given by US unions to the struggle of independent, democratic and Left-led unions in Mexico against capital’s attempts to destroy them. This portends great things for working class solidarity worldwide in the future.

We also are gratified to see the movement in the United States that started as “Occupy Wall Street” and now has branched out into hundreds of cities and towns, identifying itself as a struggle of “the 99 percent against the one percent.” We have found that the many encampments of “occupy” are very open to messages of socialism and also of international solidarity with struggles in the rest of the world. We are strongly supportive of this movement, and proud to be involved in it along with other sections of the Left.

The year of 2012 in the United States is an election year. The president, a third of the 100 members of the Senate and all 435 members of the House of Representatives have to be elected, plus state and local officials in some regions. We consider the 2008 elections, in which Barack Obama was elected president and the Democrats took away numerous legislative seats from the Republicans, to have been a major advance, not least because of the importance of electing an African-American president in a country in which racism has always been used to divide the working class, suppress the Left and labour and maintain reactionary politicians in the saddle. At that time, the Republican Party Candidate, John McCain, had taken an extremely belligerent and militaristic attitude, swearing he would stay 100 years in Iraq for example. Although we have not been satisfied with Obama in everything, we note that the current crop of potential Republican Party presidential candidates are exceptionally and dangerously reactionary, and would represent a major step backward not only for us but for the world if any of them should be elected. So we are working hard to prevent this from happening. They would certainly go on the attack against the labour unions, as well as appointing judges who would be, to the say the least, unfriendly to the rights of working people.

Worldwide, the financial and economic crisis is threatening the very foundations of the capitalist system based on neo-liberalism, globalisation based on the drive for corporate profits, union busting, deregulation, privatisation, suppression of workers’ and the people’s right to organise as well as their wages and working conditions, the decimation of essential public services, and new wars and threats of war. Our science teaches us that the capitalist system is discredited and must and will be discarded. Only united action based on a people’s alternative can get rid of this rotten and dangerous system. Today, the workers and masses around the world are at the point of perceiving such an alternative within their reach.

The current upsurges of popular resistance, in our country, in yours and worldwide, is most heartening. Here we are actively engaged in the trade union movement, the anti-war movement and the movement against the offensive of monopoly capital and the right. We are active every day in the struggle to preserve the right to vote, to protect our health care system, to beat back efforts to destroy women’s reproductive choice and the rights of sexual minorities, the right to join a union and fight for better wages and working conditions and to defeat racial and religious bigotry and the persecution of immigrants. We also struggle for peace, for a nuclear free world, for the protection of the environment including by means of a transition toward clean and renewable sources of energy. We oppose foreign wars, including those carried out via NATO, and fight fort a new, peaceful and respectful relationship of our country with the nations of the world. We call for an end to the US aggression and blockade against Cuba, and for the full freedom of the Cuban Five.

Our task is made difficult by the hegemonic control of the US ruling class over the press and media. A recent ruling by the US Supreme Court, which declared corporations to be “persons” with the constitutional right of freedom of speech, has opened the floodgates of corrupt corporate financing of electoral candidates. We are therefore exploring methods of using new developments in online communication and social media to overcome these new and old obstacles.

The fight against racism and McCarthyism continues also. We recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birthday of our late African-American comrade and party chairman, Henry Winston, who was blinded in prison where he had been incarcerated for being a communist, and also for his fight against racism and for socialism. All his life he had struggled against the main dangers to humanity, which he identified as racism, economic exploitation and militarism.

We salute the fight of your party and its allies in India against class and caste oppression as being the same struggle as that of Henry Winston, Martin Luther King Jr and so many others worldwide.

We stand with you in solidarity in your struggle against the globalisation of exploitation, against war and against profiteering.

We hope your 20th party congress is an occasion of joy and triumph.

Long live socialism! 

Long live the Communist Party of India (Marxist)!

Message from the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia

ON behalf of the Central Committee of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia express to you the most cordial revolutionary congratulations on the full success of the congress of your party.

We highly appreciate that you have struggled against aggressive and dominative manoeuvres of imperialists, to defend world peace and develop socialism.

We are confident the work of the congress will be successful in mapping a way forward through the very challenging times confronting the people of the world, with threats mounting from a global capitalist economic crisis and increasingly reckless and aggressive US-led imperialism.

We are convinced that the friendly relations between us will be further developed, supporting each other in the international arena under the ideal of independence against imperialism, peace and friendship.

Hoping great success in your works!

Long live working class internationalism!

Militant greetings!

--- Batric Mijovic, first secretary of the NKPJ