The introductory speech was given by the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas. Kostas Papadakis, member of the CC and MEP of the KKE, opened the event and Lefteris Nikolaou – Alavanos, MEP of the KKE, gave the closing speech. Giorgos Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE, and Eliseos Vagenas, member of the CC and head of the International Relations Section of the KKE, also attended the meeting.
After the event, the MEPs of the KKE issued a statement in which they noted, among other things, that “the event took place despite the provocative and reprehensible attempt of some far-right MEPs from the so-called "Patriots for Europe" (Le Pen - Orbán) and "European Conservatives - Reformists" (Meloni etc.), who, in a letter to the President of the European Parliament, Mrs. Metsola, asked for the event organized by the MEPs of the KKE to be banned.
The extreme right-wing MEPs have employed the unhistorical and reactionary theory of two extremes and the equation of the fascist monster with communism, in an unacceptable and dangerous anti-communist attempt to abolish freedom of speech and expression, even for elected MEPs, reminiscent of dark ages condemned by the peoples.
The provocative move to ban the event of Communist Parties, which goes against democratic freedoms and the rights of the peoples of Europe, has failed, anti-communism has been thwarted."
The full speech of the General Secretary of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, at the event is as follows:
D. Koutsoumbas: The overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism–communism remain the only way out for the peoples of Europe
Dear comrades,
On behalf of the CC of the KKE, I would like to extend to you a warm welcome to the works of the European Communist Meeting, organized by the KKE’s MEPs here in Brussels, in the building of the European Parliament. This event is part of the numerous activities that the KKE carried out in 2024 in honour of the great revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the leader of the October Socialist Revolution, as this year marks the centenary of his death.
Our event here is at the same time a resounding response to the wave of anti-communism and anti-Sovietism systematically promoted by the bourgeois media and governments as well as the EU. The EU has made the unacceptable equation of fascism and communism and the unhistorical identification of today’s capitalist Russia with the Soviet Union its dogma, and casts a net of anti-communist persecution, falsification and distortion of history and destruction of anti-fascist monuments over the entire continent.
The KKE has condemned this development and expresses its solidarity with the communists who face persecution, bans and restrictions on their activities in various European countries. We will continue to struggle against the misinformation of the peoples and the falsification of history, without idealizing the facts, studying not only the achievements of socialism, but also the weaknesses, mistakes and deviations, thus drawing valuable conclusions for the future.
Such useful conclusions can be drawn from Lenin’s work “On the slogan for a United States of Europe”, which is still relevant today, against the background of the intensification of class exploitation and the imperialist wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, with the involvement of the imperialist EU.
Lenin’s remarks in the conditions of the early 20th century retain their relevance in the 21st century. It is a work that we believe should be studied by the communists, the revolutionaries and the people of good will, not only in Europe but around the world, as various transnational capitalist unions of states, such as BRICS, are being formed in different corners of the world today.
If we study Lenin in a creative spirit, through the prism of the changes that have taken place in the world, we can examine the inter-state agreements, the old and new capitalist alliances that seek to “bring order” to “international security”, international trade and the export of capital, without, of course, negating the laws of capitalism.
No matter how many changes have taken place since the publication of this particular work, they have not altered the essence, the main laws of the capitalist economy: production with the incentive of surplus value, profit, competition and unevenness, anarchy in production, injustice in distribution.
“Under capitalism, the even economic growth of individual economies or individual states is impossible. Under capitalism, there are no other means of restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium than crises in industry and wars in politics”, Lenin wrote.
Who is in a position to refute Lenin’s assessment today, when the uneven capitalist growth is giving rise to new powerful capitalist forces, sharpening the confrontation between the USA and China for supremacy in the international imperialist system and intensifying the conflict between the Euro-Atlantic axis and the Eurasian one which is under formation?
Who is not aware of the ticking time bomb that the international capitalist economy is sitting on, i.e. the over-accumulation of capital that cannot find a way to be invested at a satisfactory profit? They have tried the green transition and digital transformation and the old formula of war, to which Lenin refers, but the impasses of the system continue.
Capitalist crises and wars are in the DNA of capitalism. A number of indicators of the international economy prove that the crisis is born out of the normal functioning of the capitalist system.
The EU economy is already in recession. See also the ballooning debt of the US state, which has already crossed the “red line” of the statutory debt ceiling and continues to rise, or the real estate crisis in capitalist China, etc.
Imperialist interventions and wars provide a profitable outlet for the over-accumulated capital. The profits of the US war industry and other major arms producers after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the Middle East are proof of this.
It is no coincidence that the so-called war economy and the escalation of the war are now the top priority for NATO, the EU and the other imperialist centres.
In particular, on the basis of the Draghi report, the EU plans to allocate 500 billion euros to the war industry, while on the basis of the Ninisto report, it earmarks 20% of its budget for the war economy. The EU is thus drawing a dangerous connection between its war plans and civil protection, promoting the “psychological preparation” of peoples “to live in conditions of danger and instability” and advising them to prepare a three-day emergency food supply.
In addition, the vast destruction caused by the imperialist war is a bonanza for profitable investments in the destroyed areas. The USA, the EU and Russia have already launched special investment programmes for the “reconstruction” of Ukraine.
Dear comrades,
D. Trump’s victory in the US elections has fuelled talk of the imminent “prevalence of peace”, at least on the Ukrainian front. “Temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states”, wrote Lenin, but at the same time he stressed that they in no way negated the struggle for the division of colonies, as at that time three quarters of the world were colonies.
Today, however, this position is still valid, since in place of the struggle for the division of colonies, there is the struggle for the division of raw materials, energy, transport routes for commodities, geopolitical footholds and market shares. As Lenin stressed, “Under capitalism, however, no other basis and no other principle of division are possible except force (...) To advocate a ‘just’ division of income on such a basis is […] sheer petit-bourgeois narrow-mindedness, stupid philistinism. No division can be effected otherwise than in ‘proportion to strength’, and strength changes with the course of economic development (…) There is and there can be no other way of testing the real might of a capitalist state than by war. War does not contradict the fundamentals of private property —on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome of those fundamentals”.
Today, it is necessary that both the communist movement in Europe and the people do not forget Lenin’s words, to evaluate them through the lens of current international developments and to reject opportunist perceptions that prevailed after the 20th Congress of the CPSU among the ranks of the international communist movement that promoted erroneous approaches. Such approaches were the ones that divided imperialists into hawks and doves, into warmongering and pro-peace, implying that there could be such a thing as pro-peace imperialism, a withdrawal of the imperialists from the violent, military means that, as Lenin stressed, are a continuation of the policy of the previous period.
Unfortunately, even in the ranks of the international communist movement, especially after the imperialist Second World War, such erroneous perceptions dominated, on the basis of which Communist Parties assessed that we could supposedly tame the war plans of the capitalists with the so-called European security system!
Today, some forces are rehashing similar views about the formation of a “new security architecture”, a NATO “without military plans and offensive weapons systems on its territories”, a “pro-peace EU”, a “peaceful multipolar world”, etc. as a way to resolve the military conflict in Europe.
All these views have no relation to reality and are disorientating for the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle, as they try to promote the perception that imperialism could renounce the means of war. It is as if we were asking a predatory, carnivorous jungle animal to transform itself into a herbivore and even a pet.
The truth is that NATO and the EU, like any capitalist transnational union, have a deeply reactionary character. They cannot become pro-people, they will continue to act against the workers’–peoples’ rights and against the peoples.
Lenin’s position that “a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary” is vindicated. The EU is a transnational imperialist economic, political and military union of the monopolies, contrary to the interests of the working class and other popular strata.
It cannot be fixed with sticking-plaster solutions! Just as capitalism cannot be humanized! Because the EU was not created by the peoples nor does it serve their interests. On the contrary!
The EU is not and cannot become pro-people. Its aims are the concentration and centralization of capital, imperialist wars and interventions, the promotion of the strategy to maximize the degree of exploitation of the working class, leading to poverty, misery, high prices, energy poverty, refugees, brutal repression, profiling and anti-communism. The scandals in the corrupt lobbies of the European Parliament confirm its reactionary character as a union of capital at the expense of the people.
The resolutions/war ultimatums, the anti-people regulations and anti-labour directives are aimed at serving the profitability of the monopolies and crushing the lives and rights of the workers.
Today, the EU is trying to take the lead in anti-people policies and wars. This is true regardless of the outcome of the competition among the bourgeois classes of its member states for greater military independence of the EU or for greater attachment to the NATO chariot, which has flared up since the election of Trump.
In order to serve the dominant interests of the bourgeois classes of Europe, the EU, together with the USA, has been involved in the war in Ukraine, on the side of that part of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, which, using fascist forces, proceeded in 2014 to a political overthrow against the constitution.
For similar interests the EU supports the occupying state of Israel, which is massacring the heroic people of Palestine. From this podium in the European Parliament, we once again express our full solidarity with the Palestinian people and unite our voices with the mass workers’ and people's demonstrations all over the world in defence of their just struggle to throw off the Israeli occupation.
Dear comrades,
After the Ukrainian attack deep into the territory of the Russian Federation with US and UK-made long-range weapons and the subsequent change of Russia’s nuclear doctrine and Putin’s statements, it is more than obvious that the danger of a generalization of the imperialist war, with the use of even nuclear weapons, is growing.
Even if a temporary compromise is reached, no one can mitigate inter-imperialist competition ranging from trade and technology to military armaments. And this is true from the Arctic to Africa and the Indo-Pacific Ocean, including space.
In addition to the massacre of the peoples, the dismemberment of countries, the financial burden on the peoples and the armies of uprooted, the imperialist wars and interventions of the EU and the imperialist allied bourgeois governments cause even greater destruction of the environment, for which they pretend to care in their “green” declarations.
The KKE together with other Communist and Workers’ parties in Europe reject all the pretexts used on both sides and shed a light on the real causes of the imperialist wars.
We intensify our struggle against the involvement of our countries in them.
We struggle for the closure of the US-NATO bases in Greece and elsewhere, for the removal of nuclear weapons from Europe.
We express our solidarity with the peoples of Ukraine and Russia, who lived in peace and thrived together in the years of socialism and are now shedding their blood for big capitalist interests.
We oppose the increasing militarization of the EU through the promotion of its so-called Strategic Autonomy, which poses great risks to the peoples, the creation of military formations, such as PESCO and the EU army, and missions such as “Aspides” in the Red Sea.
We mount a front against fascism and all forms of racism, against discrimination based on religion, colour, sex or sexual orientation and we reject the phony “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” used by bourgeois and opportunist political forces to entrap workers’ and people’s forces in the bourgeois management, detaching fascism from the capitalist system that gives rise to it and uses it when necessary.
Dear comrades,
The increase in the exploitation of workers, the intensification of flexible and exhausting work with inhuman working hours that provoke accidents at the workplaces, work without rights and Collective Labour Agreements, the escalation of employer intimidation, low wages combined with high prices and heavy taxation of the popular strata and wars, have led the peoples of Europe to take to the streets of struggle.
Ten days ago, on 20 November, the roads and squares across Greece were filled with workers in strike, causing an earthquake with the slogan: “Money for wages - health - education, out of the slaughterhouses of war!”.
Thanks to the militant action of trade unions, such as that of the dockers of Piraeus, a cargo full of ammunition destined for Israel was prevented from reaching its destination, as was the transport of NATO weapons and ammunition destined for the war in Ukraine in other Greek cities.
We continue to struggle against the anti-people policy of the New Democracy government and the other parties of the system, against NATO and the EU of capital, class exploitation, monopolies and war!
For the disengagement of Greece from the imperialist slaughterhouse, the imperialist plans and alliances, with the people masters in our land.
For a Europe of the prosperity of the peoples, peace, social justice, socialism!
We walk down our common path of class revolutionary struggle until the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism–communism!
Because the road opened and the ice broken in October 1917 by the communists under Lenin’s leadership is still the only way out for the peoples of our countries.
inter.kke.gr
