Translated "Avante!" article by Angelo Alves, Member of the PCP Political Committee and of the International Department
In the current edition, the Avante published the final statement of the 13º International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, which took place in Athens, Greece, from the 9th to 11th December last. This important document greatly reveals what unites the communist and workers’ parties and was the outcome of a real and deep discussion among parties which intervene in different conditions and sometimes indeed very different ones. And that is their greatest value: starting from differentiated points of view and achieving a convergent vision on what is the essential, in order to carry on and strengthen the workers and the peoples, communists and other progressive forces struggle, all over the world.
The Meeting, far from exhausting, and even answering, the need to deepen the discussion of many the issues presented before the communist and revolutionary movement, reflects well the very complex and demanding situation the workers and peoples are living. It becomes more evident that the challenges placed upon the communists struggle are huge.
The possibility to identify a line within the Meeting’s discussion, certainly is the deepening of the capitalism structural crisis, the synchronism of its expressions and the imperialism offensive, which intensifies along with the crisis deepening.
No area in the globe, nor in any country, is protected against the capitalism deepening crisis consequences. Through the deep recession impact waves, which affects the capitalism triad; through the crisis effects which are deepening at the raw materials, energetic and food levels; through the dangers resulting from the inter-imperialist contradictions fast deepening , or - and this was highlighted - through the imperialism violent ,offensive at the anti-social, anti-democratic and militarist levels which characterizes, as always happened, the system’s reaction to its own crisis.
Many were the surveys on the dangerous attacks towards the social, labour and union workers’ rights, namely coming from the capitalist centres, as well as an imperialism strategy which, holding real and growing dangers towards freedom, democratic rights and sovereignty, aims to concentrate more and more the political and economic power - marking the reactionary character of the dominant classes’ practised power - holding back the workers’ struggle, practising despicable persecutions against all those who offer resistance to the imperialist offensive - as the clamorous anti-communism case, in its different expressions in several continents - or try to subdue or threaten by force , countries which do not accept to kneel before the USA, the European Union and NATO diktats, as Syria and Iran.
Through the international meeting, witnesses of a world in profound change were also present. A process which involves, on one hand, powers as the USA’s decline and the European capitalist integration profound crisis, and on the other, the assertion of the so-called emergent economies and the pursuit of Latin America’s progressive and sovereign processes, which objectively represent advances within the anti-imperialist struggle.
One of the central ideas one might underline from our participation in this International Meeting is that the world is extremely dangerous, instable and unjust. But, simultaneously, it was possible to state the workers and peoples ’struggle intensification, the communists more important role within that struggle and a growing liaison unto masses. And this factor is fundamental within a framework of abrupt intensifying of the classes struggle so that the largest social alliances might be built, go forward in the right definition of the revolutionary struggle stages and so, go ahead along the path of the construction of socialism.
