Comrades:

We live in times of great instability and uncertainty.

The international situation has worsened substantially. The escalation of confrontation and war by imperialism spreads throughout the world. International tensions are rising to very dangerous levels and the threat of a global conflict of catastrophic proportions is growing.

And the question is obvious: how did it come to this?

The answer lies in the nature and functioning of the dominant system – capitalism – which every day proves to be at the heart of Humanity's problems, violently revealing its exploitative, oppressive, aggressive and predatory nature.

The developments in the international situation, on the economic, social, political, demographic, environmental and cultural levels, confirm not just capitalism’s commitment to war and confrontation, but also its unreconcilable contradictions and its historical limits. They highlight a structural crisis that is expressed on the most varied levels.

Capitalism is increasingly an outdated, backward, inhumane, violent and anti-democratic system. Not only is it incapable of responding to the problems, needs and basic rights of the workers and peoples, as it generates these same problems, it deepens inequalities and injustice and it drives Humanity into a situation that may jeopardize its very existence.

There is nothing modern, civilized or democratic about capitalism.

A system that dooms hundreds of millions of workers to unemployment, or even to conditions of true slavery, is not modern.

A system in which 30 billionaires have wealth equivalent to that of nearly 4 billion people is not democratic.

A system that starves 800 million people to death while spending billions of euros a year on weapons and in which people like Mark Rutte, NATO's Secretary General, proclaim with impunity that they want to transfer resources from healthcare and pensions to the industry of death, is not civilised.

A system that forces the displacement or drives tens of millions of people into refugee status, is not modern.

No, comrades. Capitalism has nothing of modernity or of the future. Everything about it is anachronistic and regressive.

This is evident when remarkable advances in science and technology, with enormous potential, are used to intensify exploitation, to concentrate capital, and to attack fundamental freedoms and rights.

It is evident when capitalism, which is chiefly responsible for the worsening environmental problems, uses them to reinvent profit strategies, with decisions and manipulations that have nothing ecological about them, but just increase the contradiction between the capitalist mode of production and the need to preserve the environment and its resources.

And it is also evident when the economic and social situation deteriorates in the main imperialist powers. When one witnesses a rapid discredit of the bourgeois liberal political system; cultural regression; the spread of obscurantism, racism and xenophobia; growing repression; and the growth of reactionary and fascist projects and forces.

That is why events like the election of Trump or other sinister figures are not missteps. They are steps in the path of a system!

The truth is that the dominant system lives in crisis, even revealing serious difficulties in relaunching cycles of accumulation and in preserving imperialist domination over the chains of production, value and supply.

This is a very evident reality in the ongoing process of global realignment of forces.

It is a complex process that does not allow anti-dialectical simplifications: neither those that reduce it to mere inter-imperialist competition, or those that ignore the class nature of the socio-economic and political systems of the countries involved.

But it is a process that is objectively depriving the main imperialist powers of room for manoeuvre and is opening up prospects for change in economic, trade and geopolitical relations – namely with China's economic, social and technological advances, its assertion at the international level and its goal of building socialism.

Comrades,

The historical process is going through troubled times. The disquiet of the ruling classes and of the main imperialist powers, their insecurity in the face of the ongoing changes and the opposition of the workers and peoples is what lies at the root of the very violent offensive that is being unleashed by imperialism.

Capitalism acts like a wounded beast and knows no bounds in its offensive and in its reaction to change.

We see the advance of fascism, war propaganda and the imposition of the arms race.

We see the open attack on democracy, the sovereignty of states and the United Nations’ Charter.

We see the institutionalized lying and ideological manipulation on a mass scale via the media or social networks.

And we see, every day, the military conflicts that materialize a strategy of confrontation and imperialist war, which extends to the whole world, from Latin America to Eastern Europe, from Africa to the Middle East, from the Arctic to the Far East, where provocations against China continue.

This strategy knows no bounds and targets all those who give signs of the slightest resistance to imperialism’s so-called “rules-based New World Order”. They use everything and no longer even bother to disguise their hypocrisy, their cynicism and their crimes.

Anything goes: from successive attempts at coups d'État whenever democracy does not give them the necessary results, to the promotion of war and terrorism, the open defence of militarism and hatred, and the economic wars at the expense of the peoples.

They no longer bother to hide that they want to fuel the war in Ukraine to the limit, even if that means bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Every day their masks fall off, when they conceal the genocide in Palestine and support Netanyahu’s fascist regime

They beat their chest when talking about international law, only to give and sell their weapons to the most bloodthirsty and fundamentalist gangs of terrorists, now rebranded as liberators in Syria.

No comrades, if they expected us to be silent in the face of such enormous crimes and lies, they are mistaken. Here in this Party, there is no place for fear. There is truth and courage to say that they are the criminals, that they are the ones who do not respect sovereignty, principles and democracy and that they are the ones who trample on the value of human life.

Here we say to anyone who will listen: war and fascism are the offspring of imperialism!

It is in this way that they try now, as they have tried in the past, to preserve their power. And it is in this way that they try to remove from the prospects of the peoples the need and the possibility to overcome capitalism.

Do they want us to believe in the idea of an all-powerful imperialism that crushes all resistance? They are deceiving themselves!

Times can be difficult and complex. But there is real potential for developing the struggle for progressive and revolutionary transformations.

Because, comrades, their offensive is not a sign of strength or of the vigour of imperialism. On the contrary, it is a sign of its weakness, of its insecurity and decay, and of the narrowing of capitalism's social base of support.

They know, as we know, that the outcome is undecided and that in the most diverse forms, in every continent, acquiring innumerable expressions, the class struggle is more alive than ever.

All over the world the Peoples resist and fight, and are capable of imposing defeats on imperialism.

And they know more. They know that no matter how many lies, violence and slander they throw around, the Portuguese Communists, as well as the many millions of other human beings who around the world are fighting for the project of a new society, will never lower the banners of peace, cooperation and progress, and will never - but never - cease to be on the side of the peoples who resist and fight, such as the people of Cuba, or the people of Palestine.

We say to them: you can count on the courage, the truth and the determination of the Portuguese Communist Party.

It is certain that the historical process of emancipatory struggle is irregular, made up of advances and retreats. But it is also certain that history does not stop, that the world changes every day, that capitalism has never been, is not, and will not be, the end of History, and that it is the struggle of peoples that builds and will build a better future for Humanity.

And that is where the PCP’s strength lies! The truth, comrades, courageous as our Party is courageous, is that this future, the future of the Peoples, belongs to Socialism!

Long Live the struggle of the workers and Peoples!

Long live the XXII Congress!

Long live JCP!

Long live the Portuguese Communist Party!