FOLLOWING A HIGHLY successful gathering last year, Communist and Workers' parties met May 21-23 in Athens for a conference on the theme "The capitalist crisis, globalization and the response of the labour movement." Some 55 parties from 46 countries took part; others were unable to attend due to urgent developments in their own countries.

Almost all parties denounced NATO's war of aggression against Yugoslavia and demanded a peaceful, negotiated settlement to the crisis. A special "Anti-war Appeal," signed by most of those present, demanded an immediate stop to NATO's "criminal bombing." The Appeal called for a solution under the framework of the United Nations to "guarantee the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and the inviolability of its borders, as well as the autonomy for the Kosovo area and full rights for all minorities living there." The Appeal condemned the new strategic doctrine of NATO, and called for the "dissolution of this aggressive organization."

Communist Party of Greece (KKE) General Secretary Aleka Paparigha sounded an urgent warning in her opening remarks: "With NATO's new action doctrine, and its implementation in practice in Yugoslavia, the entire system of international security that was created after two world wars is in a state of crisis."

Paparigha also spoke of the leading role of US imperialism, but noted that this should not be "an excuse to lighten the burden of responsibility on the other imperialist forces... In Greece and elsewhere, an effort is being made to portray the participation of the EU in this war as an example of weakness and not as a conscious class choice. All the evidence demonstrates that the inroads made against the workers' gains have a more general class character; this does not arise exclusively from the hegemony of the US but also from the needs of the capitalist system. Likewise, it should not be forgotten that the disintegration of Yugoslavia started from a European initiative, bearing the seal of Germany..."

Kenny Coyle, International Secretary for the Communist Party of Britain, reminded delegates of the class character of NATO's intentions in Yugoslavia: "The pretext for the start of the war, Belgrade's refusal to sign the Rambouillet Accord, contained demands for the wholesale privatization of parts of the Yugoslav economy. Chapter 4A,1 of the accord insists `the economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles' and chapter 4B,6 gives the European Commission the mandate to ensure this is carried out."

Delegations from other NATO and non-NATO countries in Europe were particularly critical of the collusion in this aggression of the European political leadership, composed mostly of social democratic-led governments.

But in a frank comment, German Communist Party delegate and well-known Marxist theoretician, Dr. Robert Steigerwald, said "we are criticizing the social-democratic leaders; but are we allowed to be silent concerning the fact that in two NATO states, members of communist organizations are sitting in the governments and that these organizations don't play a consequential role?" This was a direct reference to the French Communists, part of a Socialist-led coalition government, and to the Party of Italian Communists, which last year broke away from the Communist Refoundation Party and joined the "Olive Tree" social democratic alliance.

"In my opinion," Steigerwald continued, "all this must have certain consequences for our policy of alliance of the working class and broad alliances. We should not say good-bye to this policy, but rather correct distortions which have crept into some interpretations of this policy... We have to respect the teachings of the 7th World Congress of the Comintern."

Globalization: A rose by any other name

Peter Symon, General Secretary of the CP of Australia summed up the view of most parties with the concise statement: "We see globalization as colonialism by another name. It is the domination of the economies of all countries by the transnational corporations. Globalization as dictated by the TNCs, means the destruction of even bourgeois democratic practices in nation states. And now, we can see that TNC globalization means aggression and war..."

Many delegates noted the growing volatility of global capitalism, and the inability of ruling circles to control events. The world crisis in 1997-1998 showed that in conditions of domination by finance capital and the gigantic TNCs, these crises are becoming deeper and more frequent, with destructive effects on the living standards of the working people.

The Tudeh (People's) Party of Iran representative referred to the famous comment by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto that "modern bourgeois society is like a sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers he has called up... This is certainly the case with globalization; it will be up to the forces of peace and progress to intervene and offer an alternative vision for the world."

In a thoughtful and penetrating paper, Carlos Aboim Inglez from the Portuguese Communist Party noted that "although each of these cases has its specific traits, the present crisis flows from ... at least two fundamental aspects: latent and persistent chronic over-production; and a growing hypertrophy and instability in the financial sphere, which is increasingly speculative, rentier and parasitic."

Inglez continued: "It is essential to underline the enormous mass of financial capital which is parasitising the productive sphere. This phenomenon began to grow in the late 1970s, but its cancerous growth sped up during the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1980 and 1992, the annual average growth rate of financial assets was 2.6 times larger (6%) than the Gross Fixed Capital Formation (2.3%), which is essential for productive growth... The hypertrophy of the financial sphere - which is increasingly becoming merely rentier or speculative, and even dealing with an enormous mass of `fictitious capital' - is nonetheless draining a large chunk of the wealth created by the productive sector and imposing its own criteria upon it, essentially that of obtaining maximum profitability in the shortest possible time span. This causes permanent instability and uncertainty in the economy and generates successive devastating monetary and equity crashes.

"Striving to preserve, extend and reinforce the reign of the major transnational corporations ... the governors of Big Business, namely the G-7, and their technical servants of supranational institutions, are already seeking some timid regulatory palliatives. But, above all, they insist on the same `remedies' which are exacerbating the real root cause of the `disease' - namely, the limits of capitalist relations of production themselves."

Thomas Gounet, from the Workers' Party of Belgium, exposed the fundamentally anti-democratic essence of capitalist globalization. "IMF gave a credit of $10.3 billion to Russia just before the elections, following the French and German governments which had already largely lent to Moscow. In South Korea, in December 1997, also at the time of the presidential elections, the IMF made the three best placed candidates sign a letter accepting the conditions for a credit of $57 billion dollars. Who is, in these conditions, the real president of South Korea? Today the world financial oligarchy... determines the main economic direction of most of the countries of the third world and dependent nations...."

Lee Dlugin, International Secretary for the Communist Party USA, added in this regard: "All trade agreements such as NAFTA, GATT, the proposed MAI, etc. are geared to deepening the control of the U.S. transnational corporations. The trade agreements, the easy quick use of military aggression, the U.S. State Department declarations of control make it clear there is no democracy in the MAI/imperialist process."

A decisive arena of struggle against capitalist globalization is in the realm of ideology. KKE leader Aleka Paparigha summed up the ideological assault by capitalism:

"The fashioning of the term `globalization' into a myth with mystic overtones has been accompanied by the promotion of a system of concepts... [which] have the characteristics of a one-way street, of an irrevocable decision. In this way an effort is made not only to limit or debase any resistance to their choices, but also to make it virtually inconceivable for peoples and movements, countries and regions to seek alternative forms of cooperation on the basis of mutual interest. An effort is being made to eliminate from the orientations of the labour movement even the thought of the prospect of socialism on a national level or for a group of countries.

"We consider it our duty," she continued, "to show the peoples that the imperialist associations, international and regional, whether loosely or tightly organized, are forms of capitalist integration; that they serve the vested interests of big capital and consequently are subject to the laws of the class struggle."

Betty Carlsson, Chair of the Communist Party in Denmark, spoke about the political and ideological crisis which globalization has brought on in the ranks of social democracy "The New World order is demolishing all the advances achieved by the working class during the century, and yet the social democrats and `socialists' are going along with all this.... are calling for a market economy `with a human face,' as they say. But the fact is, the market economy has no human face."

The need for fresh initiatives and joint action by Communist Parties on the regional and global levels, and by all progressive and anti-imperialist left forces was highlighted.

Several concrete proposals were approved in principle, including the establishment of a rapid information centre called "SolidNet" for Communist and Workers' parties, with e-mail and website services, and also the publication of an international bulletin three times a year carrying reports and documents for parties around the world.

There was broad agreement that another international meeting should be held soon to deal with the whole issue of security and the growing imperialist threat to peace.

Lee Dlugin of the CPUSA summed up the mood of resistance and confidence that permeated the conference. "We are entering a new century. The struggle lies between the efforts of U.S. imperialism to control all human activity and its willingness to resort to war to enforce its aims, and the fightback of the people. U.S. imperialism comes into direct conflict with the aims and aspirations and main direction of the class struggle of the working class and people of the world who seek peace, peaceful construction, social development and socialism. The 21st century is our century. It is the century of socialism."