Contribution of the Communist Workers Party - For Peace and Socialism (Finland)

Dear comrades,

Ever since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, the Treaty of Rome and finally upon the Treaty of Maastricht, European Union has been the most crucial tool of European capital and imperialism. As a bourgeois power structure, it has helped European financial and manufacturing capital to concentrate further, allowing it to grow, find new markets in the oppressed nations and to compete with american hegemony.

However, European capitalist alliance has been somewhat weak, submissive to american hegemony and even unable to challenge the rising hegemony of China. When Lenin talked about temporary alliances between old European powers in a 1915 issue of Sotsial-Demokrat, his description was startlingly close to contemporary European Union: "In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America, who   have been badly done out of their share by the present partition of colonies... Compared with the United States of America, Europe as a whole denotes economic stagnation."

Uneven economic and political development being an absolute law of capitalism, it is obvious for even a casual observer that EU, despite being objectively an advanced capitalist economy, it is still a wavering entity, built on exploiting even its own member states. Massive protests during the past decade and constant bickering and contradictions between member states are all clear evidence of this.

Despite what the apologists of imperialism claim, the EU is not a harmonious community of friendly states, inside it there is a clear hierarchy. The leading EU countries exploit the weaker ones, and most EU countries are militarily subordinated to NATO, despite EU's plans to create its own armed forces. Inside the EU, as a capitalist association, there can be no friendship among states, but only competition and rivalry with temporary alliances to unite against other competitors or to exploit weaker countries. This basic nature of the EU cannot be reformed.

Our party, the Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism, has always boycotted the elections to the europarliament elections, and we continue to do so. In this sense we seem to  have a different position than most parties in the European Communist Action, who wish to participate in the EU elections.

Our party's political demand since Finland joined the EU has been that Finland must not merely seek to improve the EU via participation, but to leave the EU as quickly as possible. To leave the EU, it is not necessary to have even a single member in the EU parliament.

As marxists we of course strive to conquer power and build socialism. As marxists we recognize that this cannot be done through the bourgeois parliament. As all the comrades here know, Lenin's instruction was to use bourgeois parliaments as platforms for spreading socialist propaganda, and to fight for the interests of the working class.

As the EU parliament is not a national parliament, it is not possible for the working class of Finland to have any significant power over it in practically any situation. We also don't see it as an effective platform for propaganda, because it is even more distant to the Finnish people than our national parliament. Only a small minority of the population votes in the EU elections, despite the large sums the government spends in advertisements, trying to induce the people to participate in these elections. Majority of Finnish working class is entirely alienated from this disconnected political entity that might as well exist on Mars.

Lenin said that no matter how hypocritical and deceptive, the bourgeois parliament as a stage has not been passed, as long as the people still believe in it. However, the Finnish people don't particularly believe in the EU parliament and the capitalists, or the revisionist or reformist parties, have been unable to change that.

The capitalists of course do not promote the EU parliament due to only the love of parlimentarism, but in order to promote the credibility and legitimacy of the imperialist EU itself. For these reasons we for our part work to undermine the credibility and popularity of the EU in our country, and seek to further lower the already low election participation. In this we are in agreement with the broad masses.

In conclusion, European Union is a tool for bourgeoisie, not for proletariat. Being against EU is not reactionary nationalism and supporting it is certainly not proletarian internationalism, like the pseudo-internationalist reformists in our country claim.

Down with imperialist blocs, down with the EU!
Socialism and true sovereignty for the peoples!

Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism
Foreign Affairs Bureau