Contribution of Communist Front (Italy)

Dear comrades,

First of all, I would like to extend a warm greeting from the militants of the Communist Front of Italy to the sister parties participating in this meeting, for whose organization we thank the Communist Party of Turkey. 

The whole history of capitalism is a history of exploitation, crimes, violence, wars, and at times genocides — from the process of primitive accumulation to slavery, from colonialism to fascist barbarism and the two world wars. The progressive role that capitalism played insofar as it fostered the development of the productive forces is now completely exhausted, and capitalism, in its terminal imperialist stage, has become an obstacle to the development of the productive forces — if not an outright factor in their destruction. This contradiction between productive forces and relations of production is the triggering cause of the ongoing economic crises and the increasingly widespread wars. The crisis of absolute overaccumulation of capital, from which the capitalist world is unable to come out — despite brief phases of weak economic recovery — affects all countries to a greater or lesser extent, even those with more dynamic economies, in the form of slowed growth and rising inflation. Stagflation is becoming a long-term trend, with a real risk that in the EU stagnation may degenerate into recession. In fact, the center of global wealth production has irreversibly shifted from the Western Euro-Atlantic axis to the Eastern Euro- Asian one. The decline of the world order dominated by US-led Euro-Atlantic capitalism is mirrored by the rise of newly-emerged capitalist powers, which are demanding a new partition of the world under the slogan of
“multipolarity.” The combined effect of the general crisis of capitalism and the changes in economic and political balance of power is intensifying interimperialist competition even within the blocs into which capitalist states tend to polarize, resulting in a fierce struggle for hegemony within the worldwide capitalist system, or at least for a better position in the imperialist pyramid. Economic and political domination through monopolistic control of raw materials, energy sources, markets, trade routes, and communications, is the root cause of all current armed conflicts, whether ongoing or in progress.

The Second World War concluded in Asia with a heinous war crime committed by the United States through the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were entirely unnecessary from a military standpoint. The USA is the only nuclear power whose military doctrine explicitly includes the systematic bombing of civilian targets and the so-called "first strike" nuclear policy. From 1950 to the present, the USA, either alone or with NATO allies or other imperialist coalitions, has directly intervened by attacking and sometimes invading 17 sovereign states, in some cases occupying them for up to 20 years (Vietnam and Afghanistan). The subversive interference in the internal affairs of other sovereign states carried out by the USA and NATO, from 1953 to the present, has led to bloody coups and regime changes in 10 countries, installing the worst reactionary and fascist dictatorships, from Latin America to Africa, Asia, Ukraine, and Israel. Recently, US military aggression has extended to Iran, Yemen, and Venezuela, but their policy of bullying is exercised erga omnes, also involving threats and blackmail against their allies. In Eastern Europe, after the failure of the attempt to bring about a regime change in Belarus, subversive interference by the EU and NATO has shifted to the internal affairs of Moldova, Georgia, and the Central Asian republics, paving the way for dangerous Ukrainian-type scenarios.

Founded in 1949 under the pretext of protecting the 'Western democracies' from a nonexistent Soviet threat, NATO paradoxically did not undertake any operational missions throughout the Cold War. Instead, it primarily served as a deterrent to possible revolutionary developments in Western Europe through Stand-Behind structures aimed at countering the workers' and communist movements. The first operational mission dates back to 1990-1991, in support of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, when the process of dissolution of the USSR was already well underway. From that moment on, NATO, having survived the disappearance of its supposed enemy — the USSR and the Warsaw Pact — dropped its mask as a defensive alliance and revealed its true offensive role as the armed wing of Euro-Atlantic capitalism, operating worldwide even outside the institutional boundaries established by the North Atlantic Treaty, alongside the USA in their bandit-like military operations.

Since the dissolution of the USSR, the acts of aggression against sovereign states, guilty of not complying with the imperialist plans of the USA-EU-NATO bloc, have intensified compared to the previous period. Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria have all suffered the Euro-Atlantic imperialist intervention, with direct attacks that have left behind death and destruction, disintegration of the state and sovereignty, civil wars and terrorism, destroyed economies, misery, and destabilized situations that foreshadow further future conflicts. Moreover, the goal of "exporting Western democratic values" has been missed almost everywhere, with the exception of
Yugoslavia which was fragmented according to the imperialist plans, after years of civil wars deliberately fueled and used as a pretext for intervening and bombing industrial and civilian targets.

The imperialist war in Ukraine is the plastic result of the harshening competition between capitalist powers in the broader context of the general crisis of capitalism. Since the fall of Soviet power in 1991, Ukraine has become a battleground between the US, European, and pro-Western Ukrainian bourgeoisie on the one side, and the Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian bourgeoisie on the other, for control of the country's natural, agricultural, and industrial resources. However, the armed escalation is the result of NATO and EU expansion eastward and their plan to co-opt Ukraine into both imperialist alliances to turn it into a well-armed spearhead pointed at Russia, as well as the Euro-Atlantic subversive interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs which led to the pro-Western coup of 2014. It was well known and obvious that all this would be unacceptable for capitalist Russia. The USA, NATO, and the EU, in their attempt to preserve the global supremacy of the US-led Euro-Atlantic bloc, have sparked the armed conflict with Russia, sending the Ukrainian people to slaughter in the context of their broader confrontation with the emerging capitalist powers, namely China and the other BRICS countries, thus becoming responsible for a massacre that risks degenerating into a clash between nuclear powers.

The EU has aligned itself with the warmongering anti-Russian stance of the Biden administration by virtue of the strong ties of interdependence between both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, established since the end of the Second World War. This choice was driven by the substantial interests that the dominant sectors of European capital have in the US market in terms of trade and financial exchange volume, as well as the fact that historically European capitalism has delegated to the USA through NATO the military protection of its economic interests. These same capital sectors have nurtured the delusional dream of defeating Russia through US military power and participating in the plundering of Ukraine's natural, agricultural, industrial, and human resources, and eventually in the future, of Russia's ones, once it is defeated and dismembered. The political leadership of the EU, as inept as it is reactionary and warmongering, far from the people and reality, solely concerned with perpetuating its own power, placed its bets on these insane fantasies and has dramatically lost, not only the military war but also the economic one, waged through no fewer than 19 sanction packages, which, like a boomerang, are having severe repercussions on the already precarious economies of the EU countries, further worsening the conditions of the working class and the peoples of Europe.

The new Trump administration has tacitly acknowledged that the attempt to subdue Russia militarily and economically—using the fascist Ukrainian regime to continue waging an unwinnable war—has essentially failed.

That said, the Republican administration has not abandoned the long-term strategic goal of weakening Russia.

Those who see Trump as a 'peace-maker' are mistaken. For the crisis-ridden United States, the top priority is countering China, which is challenging its position as the world’s leading capitalist economy. This has altered the US tactical approach regarding the war in Ukraine and its relations with the European allies. The USA is not interested in peace, but in profiting from the war—shifting the costs onto its NATO and EU allies. By Trump’s own admission, the USA is making enormous profits from arms sales, paid for by NATO and EU countries both to supply the Ukrainian puppet regime and replenish their own depleted arsenals. The US position was clearly stated
by the special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who called on NATO to "raise the risk level" and increasingly challenge Russia, arguing that Putin's threats are merely empty and will not be followed by facts.

The warmongering anti-Russian stance of the EU leadership and the majority of European governments, aligned with continuing the war at all costs, reveals their awareness that any direct agreement between Russia and the USA to end the war in Ukraine would marginalize the EU, leaving its monopolies with only the crumbs of the Ukrainian market, resources, and the post-war reconstruction business, on which the EU has long nurtured ambitious fantasies. In the name of this mirage, the EU is tailspinning into a spiral of sanctions that have little impact on the Russian economy, while aggravating stagflation in the EU member states, with the risk of pushing them into recession. Moreover, the bandit-like proposals to confiscate the frozen Russian assets held in European and US
financial institutions—amounting to about half of Russia’s total foreign exchange reserves—to allocate them to military aid for the fascist regime in Kiev, besides being legally unlawful, are making several states transfer significant shares of their foreign exchange reserves from US and EU financial institutions to other countries deemed more 'secure,' such as the UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China.

To further fuel the Euro-Atlantic war machine, the European Commission has approved the Rearm EU plan, rebranded as Readiness EU, which adds to the commitment of all NATO member countries, with the exception of Spain, to increase their contribution to the alliance up to 5% of their GDP. During the negotiations on import duties, handled in the usual demented way by Von der Leyen and her team, the USA managed to obtain from the EU a commitment that a significant portion of the 800 billion euro allocated to the rearmament plan will be spent on the purchase of US weapons. This unprecedented rearmament plan is expected to be deficit-financed, partly through the issuance of Eurobonds and the remainder through contributions from member states' budgets, notwithstanding the Stability Pact. This will obviously lead to further significant cuts in public spending on social security, welfare, essential services, healthcare, education, culture, social housing, etc. —expenditure items for which no exemption is permitted from the constraints provided for by the Stability Pact.

In relation to the economic war, the USA is pressuring the EU to bring forward the total embargo on Russian hydrocarbons and impose heavy duties on goods from China and India as long as they continue to import Russian oil and gas. Their goal is not to put an end to the Ukrainian war, but to consolidate and expand sales of US oil and liquid natural gas in the European market. Von der Leyen bowed to this US demand also, committing the EU to increase imports of hydrocarbons from the USA, despite their prices being up to five times higher than those charged by Russia. The inflationary impact on energy prices, transportation, and goods in general is easy to predict.

It will further compress domestic demand, with a decline in exports made less competitive due to rising domestic prices, with a negative impact on production and employment, and the unfortunate prospect that stagnation may degenerate into recession. Schematically, this is the main expected effect of the economic war waged against Russia through sanctions. Given the current balance of forces between capital and wage labor, it is also to be expected that the recovery of competitiveness will be pursued by employers by freezing wage dynamics, and by states through cuts in social spending, worsening pension reforms, and increased tax pressure. Summing up, in
order to gain US support for the continuation of the war against Russia, the EU and Great Britain are ready to make their peoples pay any price for fulfilling the demands of their American ally. 

The war economy that the EU and NATO are trying to impose on us by their insane rearmament plans leads to a radical deterioration of the living and working conditions of the proletariat and the popular masses. Moreover, it increases the likelihood that they will be thrown as cannon fodder on the battlefields of increasingly frequent wars, which are not 'clashes of civilizations' or conflicts 'between democracies and dictatorships,' but imperialist wars for the domination and profit of a handful of capitalists. The shameful complicity of the USA, EU and NATO with the Israeli criminal and fascist state in the genocide of the Palestinian people is also driven by the profit prospects associated with the exploitation of the resources of the Palestinian EEZ in the waters of the Gaza Strip, and the construction of and control over the pipelines, planned in alternative to naval transit in the Gulf, the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal.

War economy also entails restrictions on political freedoms and labor union rights that are already underway.

Unwelcome news censorship, disinformation that distorts or makes up facts, and contemporary history falsification are the result of the centralization of capital in the hands of a few dominant groups in the information sector. By undermining the right to information, the dominant class of the Euro-Atlantic bloc seeks to instill in public opinion both the idea of the necessity and righteousness of the war against Russia, identified as the absolute evil, and the normalization of bloodshed in order to psychologically prepare the masses for war. If this fails to guarantee social obedience, the ruling class resorts to police repression and legal persecution, criminalizing protest, dissent, and above all, class struggle. Fighting for peace against imperialist war has become a crime that the bourgeois governments of the EU and NATO member states prosecute with extreme rigor, using any pretext.

We the communists must fight with all our energy and by all means to counter these processes and stop the EU and NATO war machine. In the face of these developments, communists must promote and mobilize a broad popular movement, with the working class at its center, capable of opposing with determination the Euro-Atlantic imperialist plans and renewing the struggle for peace with fresh energy. A movement that communists must lead in an anti-capitalist direction, spreading the awareness that war is inherent to the nature of capitalism and that a just and lasting peace can only be achieved by overthrowing it. A movement that courageously fights against the involvement of our countries in the wars of capital, against the establishment of a war economy regime, for the exit
of our countries from the EU and NATO, and any other imperialist organization.

In Italy, as in many other countries, in solidarity with the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people and against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, there have been many mass demonstrations, which communists have either initiated or contributed significantly to organizing. It is now necessary to consolidate and expand the massive popular participation, transforming the emotional outburst sparked by the horror of the Israeli crimes against humanity into a conscious effort of permanent mobilization against any war plan of the Euro-Atlantic imperialist bloc, as it is our main enemy and represents the true threat to the proletariat and the peoples of our countries. As Lenin taught us, to defeat it, we must be able to exploit the contradictions between states and imperialist blocs and actively work for the political and military defeat, first and foremost, of imperialism and the bourgeoisie of our own countries.

The forms of struggle also matter. Demonstrations, even mass ones, are no longer sufficient on their own, as they are purely testimonial moments that influence the course of events only insofar as they cause material damage to the ruling class or, in our political systems, threaten their electoral consensus. The role of the working class in the fight against imperialist war is fundamental and absolutely indispensable, as it has the ability to concretely stop war production and logistics. The experience of Italian and European dock workers, who block shipments of arms in transit to Israel or Ukraine, must be extended and generalized. Strikes of two or four hours are not enough. Strikes are needed that cause serious damage to the interests of capital to the extent of paralyzing the entire country. In this
regard, we believe that the communist and workers' parties which are part of the European Communist Action can and must play a stimulating role towards the labor unions in their respective countries, promoting the temporal and territorial coordination of workers' mobilizations against war in collaboration with the World Peace Council. Not to mention the need of autonomous coordinated initiatives by the European Communist Action and its members parties, eventually organized simultaneously in all our countries. It is an arduous and risky path, because we will have to face intimidation and repression, but it is our duty to take it to block imperialist plans through a powerful workers' and popular resistance.

LET'S BOYCOTT REARMAMENT AND IMPERIALIST WAR!
OUT OF NATO AND THE EU!
PEACE AMONG THE OPPRESSED, WAR ON THE OPPRESSORS!