Tuesday, May 9, 2017

European Communist Parties honored the Great Antifascist Peoples Victory in Berlin - Speech by the KKE Politburo Member Giorgos Marinos

An important internationalist event was organized by the European Communist Initiative in Berlin on Sunday 7/5, with as its theme: «May 9, 72 years after the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples: we are inspired and continue the struggle against the distortion of history by the EU-capital. For the overthrow of the rotten capitalist system that creates crises, wars, fascism.”

The event was supported by the Party Organization of the KKE in Germany and Party Organization of the CP of Turkey in Germany. The programme of the event included interventions from the representatives of the CPs that participate in the “Initiative” and a concert with songs of the Red Army and other revolutionary songs.
The following 15 Parties participated in the eventPole of Communist Revival in France, Communist Revolutionary Party of France, Communist Party of Greece, Workers’ Party of Ireland, Communist Party, Italy, Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain, Socialist Workers Party of Croatia, Belarusian Communist Party of Workers-Section of the CPSU, Communist Party of Norway, Hungarian Workers’ Party, Communist Party of Poland, Russian Communist Workers’ Party, Communist Party of Sweden, Communist Party of Turkey

A representative of the German CP also attended the event.

Below is the speech by the representative of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and member of its Political Bureau, Giorgos Marinos:
Dear comrades,
From here, from Berlin, we salute the Victory of the Peoples against the fascist, imperialist monster in the 2nd World War, with the Soviet Union and the heroic Red Army as the protagonists.

The great country of socialism, the Soviet Union and the Red Army had the strength to repel the Nazi assault, to overcome the intrigues of US and British imperialism and contribute decisively to the victory of the peoples, liberating a large part of Europe, raising the red flag over the Reichstag, in the heart of Berlin on 30 April, leading to the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 9 of 1945.

It paid a heavy price for the victory. 20 million dead,10 million wounded and enormous material damage, in a war that cost the lives of 50 million people.

We honour the militant men and women who gave their lives, the thousands of martyrs of Dachau, Buchenwald and the other fascist concentration camps. We bow to the heroism of comrade Ernst Thalmann who was murdered in August 1944 by the Nazis.

We honour the liberation movements in every country, the struggle of the National Liberation Front (EAM) and the People’s Army (ELAS) in Greece.

The Communist and Workers Parties, and amongst them the KKE, acquired in very harsh conditions a leading role and emerged as the organizers, guides and heart and soul of the struggle of the peoples.

We are inspired and we intensify our struggles for the just cause of the working class, for socialism, we denounce anti-communism, we respond decisively to the anti-communist mechanisms of the European Union and the bourgeois governments, to every kind of bourgeois and opportunist historical revisionist, the dangerous organizations that equate communism with the fascist monster.

Whatever they do, they cannot diminish the role of the communists, of the class struggle, of the Soviet Union, of socialism in social progress. They cannot conceal that fascism is the child of capitalism and the struggle against it is consistent when it aims to abolish its root cause.

Comrades, 

The 2nd World War, just as the First (1914-1918), was born from the womb of the capitalist system and was a result of the sharpening of the inter-imperialist contradictions and antagonisms for the redivision of the world, the control of the markets. This has historically marked the exploitative system which is guilty of hundreds of other local and regional wars.

The quest for profits and the inter-imperialist competition over the natural resources and the energy pipelines are to be found behind the imperialist wars that are under way today in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine. The interests of the monopolies are to be found behind the flashpoints in many regions of the planet and the danger of a more general military conflict.

The USA, NATO, the EU are ruthless enemies of the peoples.

At the NATO Summit on the 25th of May in Brussels, new, very dangerous plans will be set in motion. The inter-capitalist competition with Russia and China is sharpening. Concern is not enough. The task of the communists is to reinforce the struggle against imperialist war, the emancipation of the working class by the bourgeois classes in every country and the preparation of the peoples with the direction of concentrating forces to eradicate the causes of imperialist wars and interventions.

War is the continuation of the anti-people political line with military means, is defined by the interests and goals of the bourgeois classes. The character of war in our era is imperialist. The revolutionary war to abolish the exploitation of man by man is just.

With the interests of the working class and popular strata as its criteria, the struggle for the defense of the borders, territorial integrity, is a part of the struggle for the overthrow of capital, of capitalism that creates wars, crises, poverty, unemployment, refugees.

Comrades,

Many heroic events are a source of inspiration of communists in order to strengthen the antimonopoly-anticapitalist struggle but the Great October Socialist Revolution, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, stands out.

The historic mission of the working class was realized in the October Revolution. The great strength of the class struggle was highlighted as the motor force of social development and the importance and decisive character of the vanguard role of the communist party for the victory of the revolution and socialist construction was demonstrated.

The October Socialist Revolution demonstrated that the exploitative capitalist system is not invincible, that the working class with its allies can construct a society without the exploitation of man by man, that socialism can eradicate unemployment and safeguard the right to work for all, to increase free time, to provide free, high quality education, health, sports, culture, to satisfy the people’s needs and to activate the people’s strength in the construction of the new society.

The counterrevolutions have painful consequences for the peoples.

The temporary defeat teaches us how dangerous the opportunist deviations and violations of the laws of socialist construction. The political power of the working class, the socialization of the means of production, central scientific planning and workers’-social control are absolute prerequisites for the construction of the new society.

The class struggle continues, historical progress does not stop.

Capitalism is in its highest, final stage. It has decayed and the character of our era expresses the necessity of the passage from the exploitative system to a superior system, socialism-communism, on the basis of the irrefutable conclusion that the material preconditions have matured for the new socialist organization of production and society.

The intermediate, the transitional stages, the so-called left governments operate within the framework of capitalism and perpetuate the power of the monopolies, the exploitation of the working class. Capitalism cannot be humanized.

Comrades,

The European Communist Initiative has spread its wings. Last year it organized the Anti-NATO event in Warsaw, this year we in Berlin we honour the Anti-fascist victory of the peoples and the forces of the “Communist Initiative” will take part in the mobilizations against the NATO Summit in Brussels. We combine these important events with the stable annual meetings, the regular and precise interventions on the problems of the workers and youth, more general serious political issues, supporting, developing, the ideological struggle against the bourgeois classes, the exploitative capitalist system, the EU, the inter-state imperialist union in Europe.

We will continue with this experience to fight against the difficulties, to contribute more to the development of the class struggle, to weaken opportunism, strengthening the efforts for the unity and revolutionary regroupment of the communist movement, the struggle for socialism.