Statement of the PCP on the anti-communist draft resolution for debate at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly The Portuguese Communist Party’s Central Committee
Politburo

23rd January 2006

1. The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly will vote on January 25th a draft resolution with the title “Need for the international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes”. This is a new a very serious step of the anti-communist offensive, that the PCP, as from now, unequivocally condemns and rejects, while alerting all democrats on the fascist-oriented character of this operation.

2. This draft resolution pursues the objectives, namely of criminalising what it calls “totalitarian communism” and aims at linking communism to an endless list of crimes and to the consideration that its “criminal character” is in the very nature of communism and its ideology, marxims-leninism. Under that light, it intends to condemn all the past and present action of the communists and aims at taking measures that may prevent the future action of those forces that, as the text declares, are “still” communist, and also to condemn those countries that continue to declare their option for socialism. It intends to intensify a process of threat and blackmail against communist parties and other left-wing forces in order to abjure their objectives and ideals, threatening them with illegalisation.

3. The framework of this fascist-oriented draft resolution is the attempt to compare communism with nazism – thus seeking, on the one hand, to whitewash nazi-fascism and on the other to make people forget that fascism and nazi-fascism are forms of state organisation used by capitalism (that will always be used whenever capitalism needs themit and is able to do it) to ensure domination and exploitation of workers and peoples; furthermore it also pretends to hide that anti-fascism and anti-capitalism are in the very essence of the communists action and struggle, a liberation struggle for which millions of communists gave their lives. Contrary to what is declared by those who choose the counter-revolutionary review of the history of revolutions, the October Revolution and the undertaking of building a new society, are the major event of our times, the most relevant stage in the path of human emancipation from all forms of domination and oppression.

4. The grounds for this draft resolution concretely mean to try and build a retroactive legitimation of all exclusions, persecutions and violences imposed in the past and still today on millions of communists. In our country’s particular situation – where the PCP was and is the number one reference in the struggle against fascism, for democracy, for freedom, for human rights and for national independence – it is an unbelievable falsification and indignity. It concretely means to try to justify the oppressor and condemn the oppressed, to justify the torturer and condemn the tortured, to justify the murderer and condemn the murdered ones, to justify fascist repression and condemn all its victims, to justify fascism and condemn all of those who resisted against it.

5. The threats and dangers included in this draft resolution are enormous. It defines a doctrine - anti-communist which, as history shows, is always anti-democratic – and a political, institutional and ideological action programme. Such a programme, combined with the many measures of serious restriction of freedoms that are being adopted internationally, is being developed under the pretext of the so-called “war on terrorism” and would lead to a brutal qualitative and quantitative step in the repression against workers and the people at large but also against political parties, trade unions and other organisations committed with the defence of freedoms.

6. This draft resolution is inseparable from the present context of the deepening of the crisis of capitalism and its contradictions, of the gigantic scale of problems it generates or is incapable of solving, of the fact itself that military adventures far from solving contradictions are in fact deepening them. It is this crisis context that helps understand its fascist-oriented character, its aim of criminalising, making illegal and suppressing not just the action of the communists but of all democrats who oppose capitalist domination and exploitation, and its intention of persecuting and suppressing all of those who, in one way or another, resist and struggle in an organised way.

7. But this draft resolution is also a clear sign of weakness. In its wording it is obvious the fear that ideas like “equality and social justice” might maintain their power of attraction, the fear that communist parties and left-wing forces may recover their influence, especially those that, in the former socialist countries, are regaining the support of the populations and especially of the youth, victimised by capitalism’s mafia-type reinstatement.

8. The PCP declares its outright condemnation of this draft resolution which we classify as openly anti-democratic, anti-communist and fascist-oriented and thus unacceptable to any democratic and progressive force. Even if it not adopted, the draft resolution is already, in itself, shameful for the international institutions that drafted it. And it should be repudiated not only by the Council of Europe but also by a vast movement of democratic opinion – exposing and condemning its contents and objectives – that may develop nationally and internationally.

9. Regardless of the draft resolution’s final outcome, the PCP would like to declare now that today as in the days of fascism, no condemnation of the ideal and reasons for its existence will be able to shake the deep belief in the justice of our cause nor the profound conviction that the future does not belong to those who oppress and exploit, but to those who fight on behalf of workers and peoples; it does not belong to those who have declared the end of history, thinking that they will stop it with violent and repressive blows, but to those who resist, organise and struggle, to those who make history go forward. It doesn’t belong to capitalism, it belongs to socialism and to communism.