Proletarian comrades: It is necessary to organize and fight -- May Day statements from around the world

On International Workers' Day, May 1st, we look at excerpts from statements of Communist and Workers' parties from around the world.

From Mexico, Ireland, Austria, Canada, Greece, India, Spain and a joint statement by 39 parties let working class internationalism and solidarity be reflected and strengthened. 

Workers of All Countries Unite!

Socialism or Barbarism: Salute of the Communist Party of Mexico to the working class for May Day

The owners of capital say they support workers: Bullshit! And those parasites know it. Your money alone, saved, does not make a profit. Salaried work is essential to increase profits.

Essential is the oil worker, the electrician, the industrial worker, the construction worker, the stevedore or the courier. Essential is the miner, the education and health worker, the dispatcher. Essential are migrant workers, working women, young workers. Essential is the proletariat, and the bourgeoisie is superfluous: while nothing moves without the strength of the worker, while profit is not created without the exploitation of wage labor, the bourgeoisie is superfluous, because factories, industry can function without it.

And on top of that they ask us for more sacrifices, to bow our heads to the measures that the bourgeoisie and its administrative board take against us. With the fiction of national unity they want to subdue us, so that we tighten our belts more, that we do not protest, that we do not rebel.

Proletarian comrades:

It is necessary to organize and fight. The Communist Party of Mexico, a party of the working class, ready to fight in all conditions, calls on you to raise your fist, keep it up for the new battles that are coming, to face the aggressive measures that the capitalists are preparing against us. Capitalism is in the process of a new and deep economic crisis of overproduction and over-accumulation, the coming times will be of more struggle. We call for strengthening with a class orientation the unions and accentuating the worker-employer conflict, the class against class clash, to face the wave of dismissals that is already underway, the rising cost of living, etc. Above all we call on you to conquer the new world of workers' power and socialism-communism.

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

May Day message, Eugene McCartan, General Secretary, Communist Party of Ireland

The capitalist system is in crisis and is headed into a global depression as hundreds of millions of workers have been sacked, leaving many without any means to support themselves and their families, while at the same time a handful of individuals own more wealth than half the world’s population. This injustice can no longer be tolerated.

As never before, workers must organise to defend and advance our own interests. We cannot go on with “business as usual.” There must be no going back to “normal.” The political establishment, their ideas and institutions are bankrupt. We also know from experience that the ruling classes here in Ireland and around the world will attempt to make us pay a heavy price for the growing and deepening structural crisis of this failing capitalist system. We need to resist them at every stage and at every opportunity.

The time has long past for patching up this inhuman and decaying system. It is time for real. radical change—time to end the destruction of our planet and the impoverishment of itspeople, time to end the capitalists’ booms and busts, time to end global imperialist wars. It is now time for the interests of workers, peasants, the poor and oppressed to come first and a time for unity between women, men and youth, regardless of colour, religion, nationality, or sexual orientation. It’s time for workers’ interests to be first and foremost in economic and political decision-making and to end once and for all the exploitation of man by man.

Workers of all countries, unite!

We have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win!

Party of Labour of Austria, Labour Day 2020

The government, instead of funding the public health system, is taking billions to subsidise capitalist companies and corporations - in fact, on a particularly large scale at present. The working class -whether in employment, part time or unemployed - must continue, and even more so, to live on alms. Those who remain working all the time despite the crisis - in supermarkets, for example - are massively strained and notoriously badly paid. Ridiculous "bonus payments", hypocritical expressions of gratitude by politicians and public applause will not change this. Even the health protection of working people is obviously of no value to the government and capital, because in many industrial companies or in the construction industry work must continue as usual. Disease is a class issue under capitalism. The fact that unemployment figures are exploding and reaching an all-time high cannot be prevented given precarious work model - nor should it: it exists to support the capitalist entrepreneurs, not the workers.

The government knows very well why it must support capital. Because with and after the epidemic comes the economic crisis - on a scale never seen before. As a regularity of the fundamentally flawed capitalist economic cycle, the crisis would have been inevitable anyway, but the epidemic and its accompanying conditions are accelerating and exacerbating the development. Of course, the government and capital will try to shift the burden of the crisis back onto the working class. There will be new "austerity agendas", which will once again affect the social system, pensions, education and - of course - health care. There will be wage losses and the destruction of jobs. For capital, this is just a purification process. For the working class, it means increased insecurity of existence, unemployment, the risk of poverty. The government will lie to us again, it will argue that it was about general necessities and that we must now stick together. In reality, the capitalist losses will be socialised again - on the back of the working class - just as all profits are privatised in times of favourable economic conditions.

Capitalists and workers have no common interests, either in or outside the crisis. The workers can always work, even without a capitalist owner, but the capitalist cannot exist without exploiting human labour. Therefore, it is obvious what would actually save expenses: economizing the capitalist, because he does not work, but consumes and rakes in most of the wealth produced by the workers; he is useless, unproductive and parasitic in society. The workers do not need him. They may just as well - and better - be themselves joint social owners of the means of production, of factories and plants, of machines and tools, of land. With the difference that they would then be free from exploitation and would no longer have to feed the capitalists and unproductive rich. The money for their profits and luxury life would be available for better things. The workers as owners would have the financial and material resources and the political decision-making power to achieve prosperity for all through fair wages, adequate housing, secure pensions, sufficient leisure time and a comprehensive health system. And they would be able to eliminate future crises from economic life through planned production and distribution based on actual needs. Such a system is called socialism.

Message of the CC of the KKE (Greece) on Workers’ May Day

The only path for the working people to not pay for the crisis is the road of struggle and workers’ power.

The coronavirus will be cured and the pandemic will end, just as others did in the past. Capitalism, however, is incurable and will continue to torture humankind, with poverty, unemployment, wars, the destruction of the environment, until the peoples decide to lead the way in the developments.

Today’s system can only be overthrown and replaced by a superior social system, socialism – communism, where social ownership of the means of production with workers’ power, scientific central planning for the satisfaction of people’s needs, workers’ control of all the administrative organs and participation in all the organs of power, from the bottom to the top, can lead to prosperity for the people, to peace and the progress of humankind.

Workers’ May Day symbolizes the invincible battle against the class enemy. This is the precious legacy of our time.  With this weapon in our hands and in our thoughts, we honor Workers’ May Day, the dead workers of Chicago in 1886, the tobacco workers of Thessaloniki  in ‘36, the 200 executed communists in Kaisariani May 1st 1944, all those who remain unflinching in the class struggle, all those who were sacrificed for a society without exploitation of man by man.

We continue on this path, for the satisfaction of all of the modern social – popular needs.

PROLETARIAT OF THE WORLD UNITE!

MAY DAY 2020: MASS STRUGGLE FOR A PEOPLE’S RECOVERY- Communist Party of Canada

The labour and people’s movements must not accept the corporate prescription for recovery, which will include permanent mass unemployment, falling wages and living standards and more austerity to pay for the corporate bailouts today.  The corporate prescription could also very well include militarism and war as a way for corporations to recover their profits.   This was how the capitalist countries pulled themselves out previous depressions – and the Great Depression, with massive profits in war production.  We are seeing a further rise of ultra-right and fascist ideologies, nationalism, and chauvinism, which were on the march even before this crisis.  This has happened before, when capitalist countries pulled themselves out of the Great Depression with massive profits in war production.

The labour and people’s movements must build a powerful united struggle for a people’s recovery based on full employment policies, rising wages and living standards, and expanded social programs and public services.  Spending on NATO and militarism should be redirected to civilian spending, to fight the pandemic with all of the resources we can muster, and to build a strong and expanded healthcare system that includes long-term care, pharmacare, dental, vision and mental health care.  These funds should be used for free quality post-secondary education, for free quality public childcare, for good jobs and higher wages, pension and living standards for all.  We need to build an economy based on sustainable manufacturing and renewable energy, action on climate change and environmental justice.  We need peace and an end to racism, exploitation, and oppression.  We need to unite for fundamental social change.  For socialism.

The coming depression, and the pandemic that triggered it, changes everything.  Seven million unemployed and counting changes everything. 

The labour and peoples’ movements are at a crossroads:  people before profit.  Or profit before people. 

We’re all in this together, but we won’t all get through this, without a mass struggle led by labour and its allies for a people’s recovery. 

This May Day, it’s the unity of the labour movement in the fight to defend workers’ jobs and living standards, and oppose imperialist wars and catastrophic climate change, that will make all the difference.

Communist Party of the Workers of Spain, 1st of May Manifesto

The Government, the capitalist parties and the employers wants us behind the interests of the Spanish bourgeoisie with discipline for the future to come. They want us to defend the interests of the employers instead of fighting for our own interests.

Our answer is absolutely NO. Our answer is that a country where the primary interests are the ones of those who produce all the social wealth with their job – and not their exploiters’ – can and must be built.

Therefore, in this 1st of May, we openly say that the PCTE wants to build a country for the working class.

This new country will not be built by itself. This new country will not be born if there is no organized and rising struggle against capitalists and their governments. This new country will not be born if there are not millions of workers who want to put an end to the exploitation and who, recognizing themselves as the only essential class, want to take over their own future.

The struggles that the class will wage in the immediate future will be decisive.

Communist Party of Iindia General Secretary D, Raja Writes to Party Cadres on the Occasion of May Day

Marx and Engels in Communist Manifesto pointed out that “…the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…”. They also pointed out that “…every class struggle is political struggle”.

The world capitalism is sick and sinking into further deep crisis. Instead of spending on public health, education and social infrastructure, there is competitive spending on military and war equipment. The report released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reveals that  India is third biggest military spender, first and second being the US and China. This raises the question of alternative in the interest of peace and development of the world. Socialism is the only alternative. But there is lure for fascism and neo-fascism. This trend is encouraged by the corporate capitalists.

This situation demands that working people will have to emerge as a force which can bring a real change. As the Manifesto makes the clarion call that “let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win”.

On this May Day, while saluting the working people for their revolutionary historic role, the CPI hails this May Day to renew our pledge to fight for Socialism, a society free from exploitation, injustice and all forms of discriminations.

Statement of Communist and Workers' Parties On the occasion of the first of May the International Labor Day - Signed by 39 parties

Millions of workers have lost their jobs, and labor rights are abolished, thousands of workers, especially the elderly are at risk of losing their lives, and health systems are powerless in the face of this epidemic, the world economy is in big crisis, while the capitalist governments helps the large monopolistic capitalist firms by giving trillions dollars to their companies to protect Capitalism systems, and leaves millions who are suffering from poverty, unemployment and marginalization

The new global crisis is not a result of Covid19 epidemic. We as the Communist and Workers' parties estimate that this crisis is the result of the insurmountable contradictions of the exploitative system, while the emergence of Covid19 epidemic emphasizes the class character of the anti-popular policy of bourgeois governments and Capitalist market economy which neglected policies that serve health and the environment and scientific research.

In this new situation we fight as communist and labor parties in our countries against dictatorships, the extreme right, the new fascism and in general capitalist regimes that exploit the working class and other popular strata. We are fighting against the imperialist plans and interventions of the USA, NATO, the EU and their allies. At the same time, we are fighting together for socialism which will establish real development, which will serve the people's needs and the cause of peace, will abolish the exploitation of man by man.

Capitalism is not the end of history, and the communist and workers' parties seek to coordinate the international struggle to overthrow it.

The struggle for peace, workers' rights, saving the environment, public health protection, ending of poverty and unemployment needs workers' power, Socialism, and the joint struggle of the Communist and Workers' parties, of the working class and the peoples.

The first day of May the International Labor Day remains to motive our fight for socialism which is the bright future of humanity.

"It is becoming more and more evident that Socialism is the alternative" - Statements from India

Image from mass Left Front rally 2019

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation, Revolutionary Socialist Party and the All India Forward Bloc released a joint statement today calling for the government of India to "Attend to People’s Concerns on a War-Footing".

In it they note that the situation for many millions of people in the country is becoming increasingly desperate:

Scores of people have lost their sources of livelihood. The exodus of migrant workers from urban centres has shown the degree of unsettling of people’s livelihood that this sudden lockdown announcement caused. There is an urgent need to stop the growth of widespread hunger and malnutrition. The COVID-19 pandemic feeds on such conditions of the people. The promised Rs. 5000 to all Jandhan, BPL and unorganized workers must be transferred immediately. The central government must provide 35kgs per family to all migrant workers and poor, with or without ration cards, from the 7.5 crore of stock of food-grains, all across the country. Proper health care facilities for the migrant workers and others who have travelled from various parts must be put in place. Effective and hygienic quarantine facilities must be established in all parts of the country. Police brutalities on migrant workers must be put an end to and strict action must be taken against those who gave such orders.  

The statement also calls for immediate provision of food to the needy in urban areas, help for state governments, large scale testing for Covid-19 and for the government to intervene to end the stigmatization and even criminalization of victims of the pandemic as well as fighting fake news and rumours. "The central government should urgently intervene to ensure that this fight against COVID-19 is a fight in which all of us are united and determined to defeat it."

Of major concern are:

During the lockdown increasing reports are now appearing of growing shortages of essential commodities and medicines. There is no clarity on the movement of trucks carrying essential goods across the states. This must be set right immediately and all essential requirements of the people must be met.
There is a growing genuine complaint from the health workers who are courageously discharging their duties, of the lack of personal protective equipment and medicines. They must be provided immediately.  Equipments like Ventilators must be acquired urgently on priority. These must be augmented by the central government urgently.

On Thursday,  March 2  D. Raja, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, released a statement  that ends:

Humanity in fact is confronting a health disaster of gigantic proportions. The Corona pandemic has been infecting and affecting people of every nation from Asia (China) to America and from Europe to Africa.
The worst hit is the poor and working people in every country. This pandemic has exposed the inherent character and cruelty of the Capitalist social order.
The capitalism at its neo-liberal stage now has led to an unprecedented inequality and injustice. Housing, health care, education and employment are not guaranteed as fundamental rights of the people. Neo- liberalism has been promoting consumerism and individualism ruthlessly.  It has been destroying the social consciousness of human beings to have concern for the fellow human beings. Private property and profit cannot uphold the ideal values such as  ‘we and ‘’ours’.
The corona pandemic has raised many fundamental long term questions about the alternatives before the humanity and immediate issues to tackle the current crisis. Socialization of health care, housing, education and means of production has become a fundamental question in the present context...
...It is becoming more and more evident that Socialism is the alternative. It is the future and hope.

You can read the full statement at: http://www.solidnet.org/article/CP-of-India-FIGHT-AGAINST-CORONA/ 

 

90th anniversary of the formation of the Communist Party of El Salvador

Translated from the Spanish statement of the PCS.

It was Sunday, March 30, 1930, on the shore of Lake Ilopango, 15 km from the city ​​of San Salvador that a group of 25 to 30 workers, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters with two teachers among them (according to Miguel Mármol, who was one of the founders), made the historic decision to found the Communist Party of El Salvador, inspired by the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the aspirations of the working class for a better world.

That young party began a revolutionary struggle under the administration of the President Pío Romero Bosque, who had a liberal but also repressive vision. This was in the midst of the great world economic recession at that time, which had started in 1929 and hit the working class and the peasantry hard. This situation caused a serious famine among the impoverished people and especially the peasant masses. In addition to all of this there was the coup d'état of December 2, 1931 by General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, overthrowing President Arturo Araujo.

In this economic and political context, the PCS worked intensively to organize the working class of the city and the countryside. In 1931 it organized for rebellion and participated in the mayoral elections in December of that year and January 1932. Those elections were a grotesque mockery of the working people and the mayors of the parties supporting the dictatorship were appointed.

The PCS was involved in preparing the rebellion that began on January 22, 1932. 30,000 workers, peasants and indigenous people were killed in this rebellion that also saw the shootings of Farabundo Martí and the students Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata on February 1, 1932.

The Communist Party was decimated and forced to work underground. It resurfaced in 1944 with the fall of General Hernández Martínez and continued its heroic struggle until 1995, when it was dissolved by the Ninth Party congress. In view of  changing circumstances and the historical necessity of its existence, the PCS was re-founded on March 27, 2005.

57 Communist and Workers' parties demand "Immediate measures to protect the health and rights of the peoples"

Update: As of April 3 a total of 80 parties have now signed the statement. 

In a joint statement released today 57 Communist and Workers' parties released a set of joint demands that need to be realized to protect workers and people internationally during the capitalist coronavirus crisis. These include calls for strengthening public health systems, ending criminal imperialist sanctions and redirecting public funds from military interventions and exercises to fighting the crisis.

In the preamble the statement notes:

The pre-existing slowdown in world economy is now being...reinforced by the spread of the coronavirus and increasing the risk of a new crisis in the coming period. In spite of the propaganda about "unity", governments in the service of the big capital  focus their financial measures on the support of monopoly groups and will once again seek to throw the burden of the crisis on the workers and the other popular strata. The workers and the peoples cannot and must not pay again!

The statement also salutes "the countries that develop solidarity actions with the most affected countries, such as the sending of protective materials and health professionals from countries such as China, Cuba and Russia, actions that are in stark contrast to the absence of the European Union."

The demands it outlines are:

• Immediate strengthening of public health systems by state funding, recruitment of full-time medical and nursing staff with full labor rights. Meeting all the needs of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and the infrastructure needed for the full functioning of public healthcare and research services.

• Immediate provision of all necessary means of protection (masks, gloves, antiseptics, etc.) by the state to the people free of charge and fight against profiteering. Provision of all protection measures to all healthcare personnel  giving this battle at the hospitals with sacrifices and at their own cost.

• Protection of the income and rights of the working-popular strata. To put a brake on the unaccountability of capital that under the guise of the CoVID-19 epidemic proceeds to massive redundancies and tries to (further) trample over wage rights, working time, leave from work, and other labor rights. Immediate action to protect workers in the workplace.

• No to any curtailment of the democratic rights of the peoples under the pretext of the coronavirus.

• End all sanctions and measures of economic exclusion, which in this situation are even more unjust and criminal and make the life of the peoples in the countries they turn against to even more difficult. To take all necessary measures to protect the health and life of (all) peoples.

• We say no to imperialist interventions and military exercises, such as those of NATO, and demand that public resources be redirected to support the needs of the peoples, such as the financing of public health and social security systems.

The statement was initiated by the Communist Party of Greece was signed by parties including the Communist Parties of Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Ireland, India, Malta, Poland, Portugal and 47 others.

To read the full statement and see the full list of endorsers go to: https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Dozens-of-Communist-and-Workers-Parties-demand-immediate-measures-to-protect-the-health-and-rights-of-the-peoples/

International Communist and workers' parties rally against rightist persecution in Poland and Europe

Screenshot from rally in the Netherlands

Communist and workers' parties held rallies and issued statements internationally this week in support of their comrades in the Polish Communist Party. The increasingly reactionary Polish PiS government is attempting to criminalize communist and anti-capitalist speech and thought in conjunction with pushing a revisionist historical view of the Holocaust.

As part of a broader offensive by governments across Europe -- but most especially in Eastern Europe -- the Polish government has adopted an ultra-nationalist line that tries to minimize and deny any Polish collaboration with the Holocaust and that, by equating Nazism and communism, seeks to erase the central role played by the USSR and the Red Army in the liberation of Poland and other countries.

This is tied to a dangerous resurgence of racism, antisemitism and ultra-nationalism with WWII Nazi collaborators being celebrated as national heroes in countries like Latvia and Ukraine.

Along with Ukraine and others, the Polish government is trying to ban communist symbols and parties. Now the Polish government is attempting to retry communist journalists for the party newspaper Brzask on what amount to sedition charges despite these journalists having been acquitted in their first trial.

With the trial of the journalists having started again on March 3, Monday, March 2 saw solidarity actions in their defense and support.

The Netherlands:

Members of the New Communist Party of the Netherlands and the Communist Youth Movement of the Netherlands rallied at the Polish embassy in The Hague.

A statement they released noted the role the European Union had played in facilitating far right narratives with its passage of a disgraceful "anti-totalitarian" resolution in 2019 that framed Communism and Nazism as somehow flip sides of the same coin.

...the EU whitewashes far-right and fascist forces with this policy. In this resolution we find a whole lot of antifascist and antiracist rhetoric, racism and xenophobia are supposedly condemned. But that is pure rhetoric and hypocrisy, as amongst the supporters and even initiators of this resolution we find many extreme right-wing parties who glorify Nazi collaborators. Think for example of the ruling parties in many eastern European countries, including Poland, where the persecution of communists is paired with the glorification of Nazi collaborators. The Resolution is also supported by just about every far-right party in the EU, that spread racism and more or less openly take fascist positions. For example the resolution was supported by the Dutch Forum voor Democratie, but also the French ‘Rassemblement National’, the Italian ‘Lega Nord’, the ‘Freedomsparty of Austria’, the ‘Danish People’s party’, ‘Freedom and Direct Democracy’ (Czech), ‘Greek Solution’ and a number of other reactionary parties. For those far-right parties it is not a problem to sign a resolution in which Nazism is condemned, as they now spread their racist and other far-right views under other symbols than the swastika. Fascism is only condemned formally and not substantively, in the appearance it had in the time around the second world war. Current appearances of fascism are given free rein.
For us it is not odd that the EU acts in this way. It is after all an imperialist alliance of capitalist countries, which means that it serves the interests of the monopolies. The EU-legislation advances the destruction of all social achievements, demolition and privatisation of the social security system, healthcare; the promotion of flex work; education is hollowed out with EU-guidelines and made more and more expensive. People have to work more and harder for less, whilst big business makes massive profits over the backs of the working class. The underlying goal, in Poland and the entire EU, is the stopping of a real resistance, to stop the people from fighting for a true alternative. That’s why they try to hinder every attempt to rebuild the workers movement and try to ban communist parties. 

Belgium:

At a rally in front of the Polish embassy Julien Hannotte Morais, political secretary of the Communist Party of Belgium said:

This new trial in Poland aims to rewrite and erase from collective consciousness the history of popular Poland. By attacking the editors of Brzask in this way, the prosecutor attacks not only the Polish comrades but the entire world's workers and the communist movement.

Serbia:

After a rally in Belgrade the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia released a statement that noted of the anti-communist laws in Poland:

Similar anti-communist persecution, convictions and bans against CPs have also been imposed in other EU member states, with the open support of the EU which has elevated anticommunism into being its official ideology, something that goes hand in hand with the intensification of the anti-people onslaught. Now there is enough evidence so that everyone can understand what the EU's declarations about the "values of freedom and democracy" really mean.

Austria:

In a speech in front of the Polish embassy Tibor Zenker, Chairman of the Party of Labour of Austria (PdA) said:

The defamation of socialism, the communist movement and the Soviet Union are the real goal of the rulers, no matter which bourgeois party is the government. The despicable totalitarianism doctrine, which wants to equate fascism and socialism, has taken a crude form: the liberation of Poland by the Red Army of the USSR was a continuation of foreign rule and the creation of the People's Republic of Poland was a crime against the Polish people. According to the Polish government, anyone who claims otherwise belongs before the courts and in prison. Of course, this primarily affects the Polish Communist Party (KPP)  and its activities, which is why some of its newspaper editors are now to be tried again. But more: it is now about the criminalizing of socialist ideas, the Marxist worldview and the revolutionary labor movement. Capitalism, chauvinistic nationalism and radical Catholicism, which form a holy trinity in Poland, are to be perpetuated, making any progressive, emancipatory, or even anti-capitalist movement impossible. That is why the KPP must disappear from the scene before it can achieve decisive educational success among the population. It is being prosecuted by criminal means that show the hypocrisy of bourgeois rule of law, freedom of the press and freedom of expression, and last year’s anti-communist law amendment serves simply to ban the KPP as an organization, the Marxist worldview and the revolutionary labor movement.
But the truth cannot be forbidden. The struggle for peace, international friendship, women's rights and social progress cannot be forbidden. Scientific socialism cannot be forbidden. To be sure, the Communist movement can be forced into illegality - it would not be the first time in history - and that is why we extend unreservedly our internationalist solidarity to our Polish comrades. But we have no doubt that the truth, the revolutionary working class and socialism will win in Poland too.

Spain:

In a statement after their solidarity rally in Madrid the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain noted:

The ideology that seeks the liberation of the working class cannot be equated to the ideology which clearly defends the system of capitalist exploitation the most. 

Philippines:

In a letter addressed to the Polish government the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930, the Philippine Communist Party) wrote:

Communist leadership in the anti-fascist national liberation struggles is also true in your country and region, but unfortunately, blind anti-communism in some politically-backward parts of Europe leads to senseless attempts at the revision of history. Revanchist attempts at destroying history by removing monuments, street names and symbols associated with communism and the labor movement –- and replacing them with those of the fascist period –- will have no lasting effect. Your government cannot overturn history : it was the fascists, and not the communists, who created hell in Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Brzezinka (Birkenau), Chelmno, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sorbibor and many other death camps in your country where millions of Polish, Soviet and other peoples were systematically and mercilessly exterminated.
Warsaw became the most devastated city in Europe during WW-II –- and Manila became known as the “Warsaw of the East” –- due to fascist and militarist attacks, and not because of the communists. Even a review of the western film, “Schindler's List”, would confirm that the tormentors at Krakow-Plaszow and other concentration camps in your country were nazis, and not communists. And lest we forget, it was the Soviet Red Army which liberated Poland and many other countries (including the northern parts of China and Korea) from the fascist and militarist jackboots.

United Kingdom:

The Young Communist League protested at the Polish embassy in London. Their London chair Amy Field said:

This dangerous trend in Poland and other European countries is on the rise, including in Britain where the Communist Party of Britain was labelled an extremist organisation, this is a slippery slope to criminalising legitimate opposition to a capitalist system that is taking away our livelihoods and now our hard-won democratic rights.

Chile:

The Communist Party of Chile released a statement reading in part:

An ideological element led by sectors of the Polish and European right is to try to link the ideology and actions of Nazism with communism, trying to adapt history to the interests of Polish and international capital.
However, history is stubborn. It is impossible to hide that Poland was liberated by the Soviet Army and that thousands of Soviet and Polish communists gave their lives in this fight. It was the Red Army who liberated the Auschwitz death camp 75 years ago and several others built in the territory of Poland.
The Nazi beast today is resurrected in Europe, including Poland, with the anti-communist and anti-Semitic flag on top. They would like a new Holocaust.

Massive Communist Party rally around and on the Colosseum, Rome, 1945 -- Daily LIFT #132

Massive Communist Party rally around and on the Colosseum, Rome, 1945 -- Daily LIFT #132

"I am going to remain loyal to my class, the working class, the builders of the future." - Annie Buller, Union Organizer and Communist leader, b. December 9, 1895

Buller addresses the miners in Estevan

"I am not guilty of this charge. I have said before and I say again that it is not Annie Buller who is on trial here. It is the capitalist class which stands in the prisoner's dock. No one realizes more than I do the forces against us are very great. But gentlemen of the jury, regardless of the outcome of the trial. I am going to remain loyal to my class, the working class, the builders of the future." - Annie Buller, Union Organizer and Communist leader, b. December 9, 1895

Union and communist militant Annie Buller was born December 9, 1895 in Ukraine. Her family moved to Montreal when she was a child and there she became active in the anti-war movement during WWI. In 1922 she joined the Worker's Party of Canada which was later renamed the Communist Party of Canada.

Buller was an organizer with several unions including the Toronto Dressmaker's Union as well as with miners in Nova Scotia and in western Canada. 

In September, 1931 Buller was in Estevan, Saskatchewan to help organize a coal miner strike. On September 29 the RCMP opened fire on a crowd of miners who were marching in the town. They murdered three of them and wounded many more. 

Despite the fact that they were victims of police violence it was organizers like Buller who faced charges for "incitement". Buller ended up being jailed for a year. 

Buller continued her organizing and Communist political work after her release and until her death in Toronto in 1973.

To read one of her accounts of the Estevan strike and massacre see: In Memory of the Estevan Massacre, September 29, 1931 w. Song of the Estevan Miners

NDP Election Disaster, Canadian Foreign Policy Hypocrisy & more -- October and November on The Left Chapter in review

October and November saw 113 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter.

These included new installments in our always popular vintage photography posts like Soviet Moscow 1985 - 18 Streetscapes and Postcards and War Monuments and Sights of Soviet Kiev 1975 -- 16 Vintage Photographs. There were several posts related to socialist history like The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic 1987: Photos, Culture, Economy, History & more -- Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union Series and Demand Freedom for Disappeared Prisoners in Chile!, World Peace Council 1977. 


After the shocking racist and imperialist backed coup in Bolivia we followed events with regular daily updates on our post "It’s called a coup" -- News, Videos, Statements and Developments about Bolivia. We posted Stop backing a corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Haitian president -- Open Letter and looked at "We have been enslaved in a modernized form" -- Nigerian workers allege widespread abuses by Shell in new video. 

We also looked at the launch of a new political party in "Far to the left of the NDP, far greener than the Greens" -- New leftist party launched in BC.

And thanks to the issue being in the news again as well as a mention in an article on Blog TO, our piece from February, The "fare evasion" narrative on the TTC is a total fraud. Here's why., had enough hits that it would have been near the top of this list had it been from the period.

Thanks very much to all our readers and contributors.

If you have an article, editorial, analysis, recipe or story you would like to contribute there are details on how to do so on our Submissions page as well as at the end of this post.

Without any further ado, here are the top six posts, in terms of hits, from October and November:

1) The election results in Toronto tell a story the NDP does not want to hear

The NDP's Toronto federal election results really put the lie to a number of the narratives their partisans and organizers are trying to spin.

Read more. 

2) The NDP's election disaster shows again the need for something new on the left

Apparently the masses didn't get the memo.


Despite all the assurances and social media posts of NDP partisans, and despite the surprising number of left activists who decided to jump onto a bandwagon to nowhere, Jagmeet Singh and the NDP not only did not surge they ended up with their worst result in 15 years wiping away all the gains of the Layton years that were supposed to deliver them to the Promised Land of power.

Read more.

3) Voting Communist, Tactical Voting and Conscientious Abstention -- Leftist Strategy in the 2019 Election

With less than a week to go until election day in Canada, anti-capitalist leftists are in the challenging position yet again that no anti-capitalist candidate -- either an independent or affiliated to a political party -- is going to get elected next Monday.

Read more.

4) Canadian hypocrisy and double standards in South and Central America on full display


Canada's total hypocrisy and double standards in South and Central America are on full display, again, after the profoundly cynical Trudeau government and Global Affairs Canada stated on Tuesday that they would not recognize the Bolivian election results.

Read more.

(Related: Canada and Freeland's rhetoric about a "rules-based international order" is bullshit and the US just proved it again)

5) Canada’s NDP Looks Like the US’s GOP: Voter Disenfranchisement in the Parkdale-High Park Riding

By Brandy Baker

The west Toronto riding of Parkdale-High Park is one of the last places working people and the poor can access affordable housing in this very expensive city. Think of Parkdale-High Park in the shape of an L. The vertical line is High Park, where whiter, wealthier residents live. Queen West is the horizontal line at the bottom. This is the main commercial street of Parkdale. Grungier, poorer, and more diverse. A Tibetan community lives and works here. Some have shops along the always busy street. Some work at the Ontario Food Terminal a couple of miles out; the workers at the food terminal unionized over a year ago after dealing with racist harassment. Crossing Queen West is Jameson, a small street lined with apartment complexes and public housing that connect the parallel streets of Queen and King, where more of the poor and immigrants live.

Read more.

(Related: NDP Post-Election Wrap Up: Parkdale/High Park)

6) No, the NDP losing over 600,000 votes and 20 seats is not a "victory"

Sometimes, in life and politics, you can forgive folks for indulging in positive thinking even when it is totally out-of-touch with reality. In many cases this is relatively harmless.

But not when the partisans of a party that holds much of the Canadian left seemingly prisoner to its electoral ambitions try to sell a truly disastrous defeat to people as a "victory" of some kind.

Read more.

Our top food related post was: Slow Cooker Curried Lamb Shoulder Chops w. Garlic & Onion

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, event or petition, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

See also: The Greens, NDP Nomination Debacles, Jagmeet Singh & more -- August and September on The Left Chapter in review

The World Communist Movement: Yesterday and Today, 1983

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

Leaflet: The World Communist Movement: Yesterday and Today, 1983

Published by the Soviet English language magazine Socialism: Theory and Practice in 1983 this is an interesting overview of the size, state and demographics of the international Communist movement at the time.

By 1982 the number of Communist parties worldwide had grown from 1 in 1917 to 95 and the number of members of these parties had grown from approximately 400,000 to over 77 million.

In addition to a breakdown of the numbers of members of individual parties and in various global regions there are also numbers related to the class composition of these parties as well as the number of women members and other stats.

(Click on scans to enlarge)

Coalitions, Rewriting Constitutional History, NDP Spike or Surge and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Six

This is the sixth and last of our weekly election round-ups of developments -- as well as the inane, bizarre, humorous and unusually facile -- in the great show that is mainstream bourgeois politics during the election of 2019.


The fifth was: NDP Spikes, Bloc Surges, May and Scheer Stall -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Five

See also our The Left Chapter election editorial from this week with endorsements: Voting Communist, Tactical Voting and Conscientious Abstention -- Leftist Strategy in the 2019 Election

To coalition or not to coalition? 

The NDP, its leadership and its partisans, love to tell us over and again that there really is no difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives. Except, that is, when it comes to minority parliaments and coalition time, because then they seem to know full well that there is a difference.

With the polls indicating that a minority parliament is very likely, and with Jagmeet Singh and the NDP in a position to possibly hold the balance of power, both Singh and Justin Trudeau have been musing in various ways about hitching their parliamentary futures together to provide sunshine, lollipops and "progressive" government.

Needless to say, Andrew Scheer is unimpressed.

Looking to rally the troops Scheer has been warning that an NDP-Liberal coalition would be far more interesting and radical than I can assure you it actually would be. He has also been trying to rewrite parliamentary history and tradition to claim that the party with the most seats gets to try to form a government when this is not the case as anyone who ever took a public school civics course knows. The former Prime Minister of the previous House gets the first attempt to govern.

But even this absurdity does not go far enough for Scheer in trying to de-legitimize how the Canadian parliament works. The Conservatives are also suggesting in fundraising emails that if the NDP and Liberals governed together despite Scheer winning more seats it would amount to a de facto coup.

Seriously.

Of course, this is total idiocy. A minority parliament is the "democratic will of Canadians" in the parliamentary/electoral sense. Presumably Scheer is looking for something to get the base all angry about when the Governor General turns to Trudeau first in the event no one gets a majority.

Could it be that Scheer wants a distraction? 

It seems Andrew Scheer is doing his best to make the argument for strategic voting Trudeau wants. Another part of the reason the Conservatives want to cast doubt on the legitimacy of any NDP - Liberal collaboration is that they really have no natural partners to work with in a minority situation. They will either have to hope to govern bill by bill or come to rest on the backing of the Bloc Quebecois in many cases should the Bloc do as well Monday as it seems it might.

Is there an NDP "surge"?

There is no doubt that a combination of the Trudeau brownface scandal, a mediocre Liberal campaign and poor Green campaign, and a better outing by Singh than many anticipated led to a spike in support for the NDP in the wake of the debates. The party went from as low as 12 - 13% going in to around 18 - 19% now. This has likely staved off what looked like a possible annihilation election for them.

Keen to boost the "surging Singh" narrative various reactionaries like the Toronto Sun's reprehensible Tarek Fatah, the vile Brian Lilley and Lorrie Goldstein, and the conservative "pollster" Nick Kouvalis  penned articles suddenly pushing the NDP for rather obvious strategic reasons. Rather shamefully a number of NDP partisans online shared these.

But is the surge real? Insofar as it lifted the party back to being a player in the election again, yes. But it does seem to have stalled now and neither the Liberals nor the Bloc are collapsing as in 2011 so it would not appear any kind of Orange Crush is coming.

Election night will show to what extent their campaign turned the tide.

Jordan Boswell should be dumped by the NDP

Love me I'm a Liberal 

Other notable articles:

Disgraceful dog-whistling: Conservative Candidate Warns Voters Trudeau Might Name Jagmeet Singh His ‘Foreign’ Affairs Minister

Four Green nominees in Quebec made Islamophobic comments, party says

The biggest winner in Canada's election is the military

Dude, where’s my bus? How the election failed public transit

Group looks to help anti-abortion advocates get jobs working for new MPs

NDP targets Greens with misleading claims

10 Questions for Andrew Taylor – Communist

Federal Election 2019: Toronto-Danforth candidate Ivan Byard, Communist Party, answers our questions

Voting Communist, Tactical Voting and Conscientious Abstention -- Leftist Strategy in the 2019 Election

With less than a week to go until election day in Canada, anti-capitalist leftists are in the challenging position yet again that no anti-capitalist candidate -- either an independent or affiliated to a political party -- is going to get elected next Monday.

While there are partisans, and perhaps even a candidate or two, of the NDP who claim it is anti-capitalist this cannot be taken at all seriously given the party's program and history both in office provincially and opposition federally.

Keeping these limitations in mind we need to take a look at what strategy and tactics left socialists and communists can and should adopt, in our opinion, depending on factors such as where they live and what they are trying to accomplish by their involvement in the electoral process.

Vote Communist in 31 ridings and other individual endorsements

In the 31 ridings in this election that do have a Communist Party of Canada candidate they deserve our vote and support. The Communists and their leader Elizabeth Rowley have run an excellent, principled campaign on a comprehensive, irrefutably anti-capitalist platform. We have looked at this before in the posts "People & Nature Before Profit!" -- Communist Party releases its federal election platform leaflet and "The problem is capitalism. The solution is socialism." -- Communist Party campaign launches in Toronto.

Voting Communist sends a clear, direct message to the mainstream "progressive" parties rejecting their bankrupt platforms that do not go nearly far enough in tackling fundamental issues facing us such as grotesque levels of inequality and the threat posed by the climate emergency.

If you are in a riding with an independent or non-Communist party candidate who is also running on an explicitly anti-capitalist platform we would advocate a vote for them as well.

There are also a handful of individual candidates for the mainstream parties with a compelling enough narrative to deserve consideration.

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (NDP) running in Nunavut would add an exciting and necessary voice to parliament. Sending Rudy Turtle (NDP), Chief of the Ontario Grassy Narrows First Nation, to Ottawa from Kenora would be a call for politicians to move beyond the hollow rhetoric of reconciliation and towards actually doing something to deal with the ongoing, brutal consequences of government colonialism, racism and indifference towards Indigenous peoples. Early on in this campaign the bullies at B'nai Brith tried to get the NDP to dump Miranda Gallo, who is running in Saint-Laurent, due to her activism on behalf of Palestinians. Electing her would be a rejection of the new McCarthyism that some have sought to impose around Israeli Apartheid.

Strategic and tactical voting versus conscientious abstention

What to do in ridings where there is no Communist or anti-capitalist candidate?

While the Liberals certainly always try to scare you into it, there is no serious leftist case to be made for strategic voting for Trudeau to stop the Conservatives. The Liberal party is a profoundly cynical, ugly, imperialist Bay St party that, while better than the Conservatives in many important and significant ways, is totally undeserving of support. The Trudeau government has reflected this cynicism while in power. There can be no greater symbol of why Trudeau and his government must be rejected entirely than the odious twin pillars of it, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister of Finance Bill Morneau. In no riding in the country should the Liberal get a left vote.

Tactical voting for the Greens or New Democrats in ridings where they have a chance of defeating the Conservative candidate specifically (as opposed to each other or the Liberal) is something to consider.

However, outside of practical riding by riding concerns about stopping Scheer neither of these parties deserves actual support from a leftist perspective and voting for them is an implicit indication of some type of support.

 The Greens and the NDP are not that different from each other in any real sense, their platforms are deeply and profoundly flawed and hypocritical to such an extent that you can count on their partisans to distort them to make them appear better, and neither party is opposed to either capitalism or the global western imperialist order in any meaningful way at all. In an age of desperate inequality, unrestrained western interventionism and an existential environmental threat posed by global capitalism, this is not a minor point.

Those on the left who still insist that somehow we must support the NDP due to its "historic" ties to labour or the working-class are engaging in a fiction that may once have had some meaning but is more and more silly and out-of-touch with objective circumstances now with each passing year.

In fact it is both depressing and informative that so many on the left have found one excuse or another to feign enthusiasm for Jagmeet Singh and his lackluster campaign that has benefited only by comparison with the tired Trudeau and the even more lackluster campaign this time out by Elizabeth May.

Any objective look would show that advocating for the NDP or pretending its platform is somehow "leftist" is simply getting on board with another dead end like those in 2015, 2011, 2008, 2006, 2004 and on and on and on.

The party has tried, rather unconvincingly, to slightly mimic the tone of Bernie Sanders (himself a deeply flawed candidate) and the NDP has proven record of never doing what it says it is going to when or if it wins anything. It is worth remembering how the party shifted dramatically rightward under Jack Layton -- an allegedly "leftist" leader -- especially after "winning" opposition.

Ironically, despite the supposed NDP partisan contempt of the Liberals and insistence that they are no different from the Conservatives, the main goal of the NDP now seems to be to win enough seats to make a deal with Trudeau!

In a riding where the Greens or the NDP have no chance of winning or where the Conservatives pose no threat why reward their liberalism, inherent imperialism and fundamental embrace of capitalism? What will this achieve in advancing the cause of working people and socialism? Nothing.

In fact, leftists continuing to waste their energies on the NDP (or now the Greens) despite decades of evidence in and out of power that this is a totally bankrupt dead end can only be seen as tremendously futile and counter-productive. A kind of crutch and excuse to which many return that prevents the emergence of a serious mass anti-capitalist alternative.

And just because the Liberals are genuinely awful and the Greens are only aspiring to be as milquetoast as the NDP has been does not make Andrea Horwath disciple Singh anymore interesting or "leftist".

In a riding where there is no Communist or anti-capitalist candidate, where the Greens or NDP have no chance, where it is a Liberal - Conservative race or where the Conservatives pose no threat we would suggest considering a conscientious, principled abstention and rejection of the sham of mainstream politics by either staying home or by spoiling your ballot.

Duplessis Must Go! The LPP's Call to Action, May 1959

Duplessis Must Go! The LPP's Call to Action, May 1959

Leftist Leaflet Project 

An interesting leaflet from the Communist Party (known as the Labor Progressive Party at the time) in the lead up to the historic Quebec election in 1960 that actually did see the defeat of Maurice Duplessis'  Union Nationale and the beginnings of the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. This came in the wake of his death in 1959.

Notable quotes include:

The LPP is the only political party in Canada which forthrightly recognizes the existence of French Canada as a nation within a bi-national state, and demands for it full economic and political equality, the right to self-determination, which Marxists see as the basic right of all nations. 

and the tragically relevant:

Whom, then, does anti-communism serve?
It has always been used to cloak the manoeuvers of warmongers and fascists.   

 (Click on scans to enlarge)

 When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource. 

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page: Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets  (which is still being updated with past posts).

If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com