KOMINTERN: PART TWO

vol. 3, no. 8, October 1-15, 2010

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

You will find below the link to L'Humanité in English, a selection of articles from the daily communist paper published in Paris (France).

WE ALL CAN DO SOMETHING

Everybody should read Northstar Compass. It is the magazine of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People. Yes, Soviet people; and it is published, especially now in the years 2000. Recently, there was a striking document written by the Socialist Party of Bangladesh.

Their first stand: “the conduction of powerful political struggle who will be able to bring back the confidence of common people towards revolution, people and Marxism-Leninism, and will be able to fulfill the aspirations of mass emancipation of millions of martyrs”. This last word is too strong, mind you; let’s see how it is even more relevant today!
(Photo General Consulate of Cuba in Montréal: the future of their homeland and abroad, the young pioneers)

They deal with the need “to fight out individualism”; they stress too that “we are still in the era of imperialism described by Lenin”, providing examples: “in Britain, industry, health and service sector which developed on government’s initiatives were privatized, which means that British government commenced privatization. In the United States there is no such scope of privatization since even military sector in U.S. was also under corporate capital”. They point out that the “bourgeois” media want the workers to swallow all these setbacks, like gullible children and even... demand more. They don’t refer only to rich nations. For instance, they affirm that “the annual income of only one corporate organization like General Motors exceeds the total income level of a country like Bangladesh”.

These same rich countries contribute to the development of their agriculture. “The total amount of subsidy equalize more than the defence expenditure of many countries.” But they react promptly to any opposition. “They attempted to destroy Cuba, the source of anti-imperialist struggle of Latin America; there is ceaseless attempt from U.S. to assassinate Fidel even.”

As they say, “this has brought into light the acute depression prevailing in the society.”
Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice, the masterpiece of Shakespeare, would be more than at ease with this statement: capitalism, “side by side increased the periphery of usury”; and “loan driven economy was created”.

We are living in a planned economy of unemployment, poverty and competition; the so-called “market economy”, or the “bubble economy”. But, “all these phenomena demonstrate the vulnerability of imperialist-capitalist economy”.

The plain truth? In USA alone, “70 million people are living below poverty level; 13, 7 million in the month of April of 2009” became unemployed.
(Photo: McDonald's, the fast-food empire of low-waged young workers)

The answer

Edward A. Drummond, a US communist writer, in a recent writing, confesses sadly that: “Prompt Press, a printing press that has traditionally printed the Party’s newspaper and pamphlets, is on its way out. The Party (Communist Party USA, Ed.) Archives were given away for free four years ago to a wealthy private university. There has been no Party candidacy for any public office in perhaps 15 years. There are no bookstores. There are few or no pamphlets.

There are no mass public meetings –even by today’s modest definition of “mass”- and no attempt to organize them. There is no mass distribution of the Party paper. There is no industrial concentration policy.” Drummond adds up that: “Moreover, in tailing Obama, the CPUSA is ignoring its own 2005 Program, which states: ‘U.S. capitalism is presently in the monopoly capitalist, imperialist stage of development, and in the transnational monopoly phase of that stage. Once the most reactionary ultra-right transnationals, who dominate political life today, receive a major defeat, it will be both necessary and possible to take on the transnationals as a whole; it will be possible to move on to the anti-monopoly stage of struggle.”

The Cuban Five

On the other hand, you have the courageous Cuban Five – jailed in USA- and actually serving heavy sentences on false charges, fighting with determination the indifference and silence surrounding them in North America. Antonio Guerrero, -one of them -, poet and close friend wrote to us saying: “Finally, on May 3rd, I was transferred from the penitentiary to a medium-security prison. The travel was short. [...] The change is great. [...] Another big impression has been the almost total absence of that tension that exists in penitentiary life. I can see that prisoners here are more quiet and polite, and the noise is low. Of course, it is still a prison, but everybody tries to avoid any incident and to maintain a good conduct.” The Five have been scattered in different prisons practically from Day One and ever since more than 11 years after.

Antonio’s poetry calls upon us: “So much encouragement, faithful friend! You give me your faith and your song to answer each enemy blow.”

They have friends all around the world, be it in Canada, in Lebanon, in Spain or in France to name just a few. President Obama must free them and restore their dignity; he has the power to do so.

In February 2010, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, The Guardian, published a letter to Obama which states: “ Each year the majority of UN member states has supported Cuba against the blockade and each year the vote has increased in Cuba’s favour, clearly indicating that public opinion is growing worldwide for an end to your genocidal policy. “ It was signed by the president of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society, Joan Coxsedge.

Towards a new Komintern?

In April 2010, The New Worker, weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain, underlined in its editorial: “The real answer for workers is to fight back and to do this effectively we must join together, recognize that the ruling class is our enemy and fight in the short term to keep the Tories out. And then to force Labour to deliver better policies for the working class so that we can live decent, relaxed and enjoyable lives. But in the long-term we must fight together to get rid of the whole rotten capitalist system and replace it with socialism.”

This is not an impossible dream. Already in 1935, 18 years after the Russian revolution, the great American singer, Paul Roberson, went to Soviet Union. The Daily Worker, at that time, collected his impressions and words: “He has deliberately and for a long time been laying plans and preparing to move to the U.S.S.R. as the most suitable center for the important work of artistic innovation which he has in mind, and because he had decided on the basis of much evidence that it is a place where a man may do such work with greatest freedom and facility. He said in his interview that he is more than satisfied that the Soviet Union is just such a place.”

In the meanwhile, we may follow the people’s and workers struggles, for instance in Greece; we don’t know the outcome yet, we may conclude with the Socialist Party of Bangladesh: “Communist parties of different countries in the world, at sub-regional, regional and international level should conduct regular criticism-self criticism to eliminate the differences in opinion by ideological struggle and to develop monolithic communist international.” Komintern is the contraction of two words: Communist and International. The communists from the People’s Republic of Bangladesh share this viewpoint with many communists around the world. The Communist Party of Greece notes that we need “to speed up the processes of forming and shaping a communist pole, a distinct, in other words, presence of communist and workers parties, of communist forces that actively work in the direction of a united revolutionary strategy of the international communist movement”. It is now a must, many US and Canadian communists fight for it.
(Photo SolidNet: demonstration organized by the militant trade-union movement PAME in Greece, 2010)

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English

Pour la Komintern now!: http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com/