“100th Anniversary of the Founding of the International Communist. The Fight for Peace and Socialism Continues!”
Contribution of the PCTE in the 21th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties
Izmir, Turkey, October 2019
The 100th anniversary of the founding of the Comintern is a crucial fact for the International Communist Movement. Many of the parties that are here today were born as national sections of the Communist International. Others, such as ours, were born some time later, but still are willing to highlight the importance of the Comintern and believe that it is important to pay tribute to it in these times, when the anti-communist persecution is hardening at the same time that the attempt to equate Communism and Nazi-Fascism is strengthening.
As we have said many times before, we are convinced that it is essential for the contemporary International Communist Movement not only to claim against every manipulation, but also mainly to extract political-ideological conclusions in order to keep advancing, even more steadfastly, towards revolution and towards the building of Socialism-Communism.
That is why, among other tasks, we are currently undertaking the study of the Communist Movement’s History in Spain, where a significant role was played by the Comintern from which it was not only born the Communist Party – as Spanish Section of the International Communist – with its later Bolshevization, but also the glorious International Brigades.
Internationalism is one of the highest values the working class and ourselves count with, and as a consequence so do all the Communist and Workers’ Parties in the world. Humbly and not willing to minimize even a bit all the important fights and examples of internationalism that we can find in the 20th century, the Communists from PCTE believe that one of the most beautiful and enlightening examples of proletarian internationalism was the presence of the International Brigades in the National Revolutionary War developed in Spain between 1936 and 1939.
The Brigades played quite an important role in our war that, soon afterwards, continued in the battlefields of World War II. It has been asserted, very truthfully, that the battle against Fascism in Spain was the first battle of the peoples against Nazi-Fascism. The support received by the working class and the Spanish people, mainly because of the International Communist and its sections’ actions and because of the Soviet Union, turned later to be an important force in the battlefields of World War II and contributed as well to the strengthening of the anti-fascist battle in those countries were the confrontation did not escalate to the international level. Also, the Spanish exile, in which thousands of Communist members took part, contributed to the development of Communist and Workers’ Parties in the countries that received them. It was therefore proven in practice the Marxist principle that states that the revolution is national in form, but not in content. The fight was carried out with the conscience of belonging to the same international working class.
The International Communist therefore played a determinant role in the anti-fascist struggle that can be clearly seen in the Spanish example: those were days when proletarian internationalism took shape in the bodies of tens of thousands of comrades from 52 countries who, armed with the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and under the leadership of the International Communist, became soldiers of the same international working class. That is why in PCTE, not only in this contribution but also in our daily work, wants to pay tribute to the men and women from the International Brigades and to all those who contributed in one way or another to their enrollment, to help them travel, those who were part of the underground system in charge of the fake documents, those who helped by sending food, clothes, weapons and ammunition…The volunteers for freedom are still part of our ranks, always with us in every struggle for the interests of the working class, helping us forward. We will not allow their name being wiped out of History. To all of them, honor and glory. Also our most sincere and eternal gratitude to the Communist and Workers’ Parties that enrolled those fighters to help our country.
But the role of the International Communist in Spain was not limited to the creation of the International Brigades. The International played a decisive role in the creation, development and bolshevization of the Communist Party in our country, which played a leading role in the anti-fascist struggle. Cadres from the International worked on the ground, acted as organizers and leaders, helped making a correct analysis of the situation and overcoming the mistakes. Many of the Communist cadres that played a significant role in both the political and the military struggle, were educated in the International School in Moscow. The International became, therefore, an organizational center of huge importance.
As we remembered back in April, when we presented the PCTE publicly, the Communist Party was born in Spain under the influence of the October Revolution but, above all, and we proudly state it, the Spanish Communists are sons and daughters of the International, the result of the necessary and mandatory split from social-democracy that happened in the beginning of the 20th century due to the shameful support the parties in the II International were giving to “their” bourgeoisie, to “their” landlords, to “their” imperialists against the workers from the other countries.
The International was for its international sections an irreplaceable direction center. Most of the Communist Parties were created, developed and matured thanks to its existence, its ability to foresee the main developments of class struggle in a global scale and in each country, preparing and moving the forces of the working class, splitting positions, opening the way towards the defeat of Nazi-Fascism and the consolidation of the workers’ power in the Soviet Union and the rest of Socialist countries.
The legacy of the International Communist has acquired a huge importance nowadays, when the inter-Imperialist contradictions are hardening and the threat of a general war is becoming more possible, while at the same time the importance of splitting with social-democracy is being proven – once again – a necessary task.
The crisis Capitalism plunged into from 2008 to 2014 was overcome through a massive destruction of productive forces that kicked millions of Spanish workers into unemployment. The exploitation of the working class increased dramatically, life and labor conditions worsened. Labor, social and civil rights went backwards. It was the working class and the people who paid the capitalist crisis.
Today’s available data confirms that a new crisis is coming, and with it more strengthening of the class struggle and new attacks from the bourgeoisie against the workers’ majority. The bourgeoisie will pretend again to face the crisis by attacking the already deteriorated life and labor conditions of the working class.
The instability and strengthening of class struggle that is coming will be characterized as well by the fact that the new social-democracy, which in Spain has based its whole strategy on entering the government after the failed elections in April, in spite of its promises, its only will was to manage Capitalism and try to guarantee the rule of capitalists in alliance with the old social-democracy of PSOE.
In spite of the promises that were made, labor and life conditions of our people have not been changed at all. The commitment to the EU and NATO has been kept, as have been kept the anti-workers’ measures that were passed through the labor reforms in 2010 and 2012.
After the motion of no coincidence against Mariano Rajoy was passed in June 2018, our Party warned the workers and the ensemble of the people not to trust even a little bit in PSOE. We launched the slogan: “Not a minute for break to the new capitalist Government!”. We also warned about the false illusions about the possibility of a progressist Government being formed. History has confirmed, time after time, that it is not possible to manage capitalism for the benefit of the people, that there is no way out for the working class within capitalism.
This is why the working class must stop believing in democratic-bourgeois illusions. There will be no improvements without a tough workers’ and people’s fight. The paths that social-democracy is showing to us are a dead-end maze.
A new crisis will break out and the bourgeoisie and its State will answer by intensifying the exploitation, together with an increase of the repression against the workers’ and people’s movement. To face this situation, the working class must achieve its ideological, political and organizational independence.
We must strengthen the communist field, in which PCTE tries to act with all the responsibility the present moment demands. The workers’ and people’s movement needs a strong Communist Party, capable of orienting and unifying all the people’s struggles around a program that represents the immediate and future interests of the working class and the broad majority of the people. A Party completely independent from the bourgeoisie and its State, an organization of the whole working class.
From these keys, the PCTE will take part in the repetition of the forthcoming General Elections aiming to denounce the plans of the employers and the political parties that represent them; aiming to unveil the illusions social-democracy is seeding; aiming to gather working-class forces in the communist field and regroup the people’s movement with an anti-capitalist perspective.
The Socialist-Communist Spain we want to build will not become real all of a sudden. It will be the result of a process to accumulate workers’ and people’s forces, organized to fight for their immediate needs, which can only be definitively and completely fulfilled by seizing power from capitalist through the overthrow of the capitalist system and the building of Socialism-Communism.
Conclusion
For the fight for peace and Socialism to go on fully, our Party considers it is crucial the study of the experience of the International, the collective study of its many Congresses, of its internal debates, of the thesis that were proven in practice and of those that were not.
This theorical effort, that we consider a duty of every Communist Party, is decisive in the overcome of the crisis the International Communist Movement is still going through. It is urgent for us to, through a scientific debate, be able to get conclusions of our own history and, together with the teachings of the current practice, be able to define the unified strategy the international working class needs. In this path, the role of the Communist and Workers’ Parties is as important and irreplaceable as the need to keep developing higher levels of collaboration.
Workers of the world, unite!