The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (The Czech Republic) and the Communist Party of Slovakia jointly hosted a conference of (mainly European) Communist and left parties in Prague on May 11-12. We reproduce here the paper presented by Serge V. Nicotine, Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and an unofficial summary (prepared by Erwin Marquit) of the paper presented by Peter Cohen, Central Committee member of the Swedish Communist Party.

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Sergej V. Nikitin from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF)

Dear Comrades,

Allow me to greet you most cordially on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is like your own party living now through the period of evaluating its achievements as well as errors, mistakes, defeats and retreats. However, the political life we have lived through, allows us to look to our future with a good deal of optimism. The motto "Towards the Socialism" is now on the agenda as never before.

In its evaluation of the present day situation the CPRF bases itself on the conviction that "the main dispute between capitalism and socialism is historically not over".

Capitalism represents such a type of society where material and spiritual values and production are subjected to the market laws of drawing maximum profits and accumulating capital to enormous dimensions.

Everything is being turned to commodity. The one and only measure of everything is money. This is what defines the nature of capitalism which puts production on the first place, basing itself on global exploitation of man by man, as well as that of natural resources, without taking into consideration social losses and disadvantages and devastating consequences for the life of future generations and the environment.

This is not only our communist evaluation. The same conclusion was arrived at by the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Develop-ment, held in 1992. This conclusion, which has been silenced by the right wing propaganda since that time, reads as follows: "The bourgeois form of social life has approached the limits of its possibilities." The most ardent apologists of capitalism have come to the conclusion that the capitalist form of production is not only hindered by its internal contradictions, but also by natural limitations.

In our opinion, there are two possible ways of overcoming this dramatic situation and they are defined by polarized different class interests.

The first one is oriented at the limitation or even halting of the growth of the world economy, through the conservation of the structure of production, distribution and consumption. It is destined to the keep the division of the mankind into the "golden billion" and the exploited peripheries. And what is now going on in the former Soviet Union and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe testifies to it very clearly.

The second way out of such situation foresees the constant growth of the well-being of the whole population of our planet, with absolutely necessary preservation of the global environmental balance on the basis of qualitative changes in the means of production, forms of production and consumption, humanitarian re-orientation of scientific and technological processes. This way is being called "reliable and stable development".

We are convinced that for Russia the best choice which to the utmost corresponds to its interests, is the optimal socialist development, in the process of which socialism as a mass movement and social system will catch the second breath. Up till recently, the nature has been more or less considered as everlasting and inexhaustible basis of labour. Nowadays, labour should become the basis for the preservation and reproduction of environment.

In socioeconomic terms, technological progress coincides with the process of consolidation of collective labour. Collectivization of labour is the main material basis of socialism, which historically is an absolute necessity.

In the process of scientific and technological progress the industrial and agricultural working class is being changed qualitatively and structurally. The vast part of engineers and technicians are becoming an integral part of it. And in this renewed community of working people the CPRF finds its major social basis.

We believe that the future of Russia can be built only on the firm foundation of its creative traditions and historical heritage. Complicated interconnections of geopolitical, national and economic circumstances have made Russia a pillar of cultural and moral traditions, the major values of which are the following:

• - collectivism
• - patriotism, the closest relationship between personality, society and state
• - aspiration to the implementation of the highest and noblest ideals of the truth, goodwill and honesty
• - equality of all citizens, regardless of any national, ethnic, religious and other differences.

The Soviet Union as a state and social system was a unique common community.

The main efforts of internal and external destroyers were directed to the discrediting of the whole period of the country's development. Despite all the efforts of the falsifiers to distort the history, the Great Socialist October Revolution was the only real chance Russia had as a nation and as a state. However, the necessity to fulfil the tasks which had not been solved by the capitalist Russia had put its imprint on the Soviet state and its social system.

In a historically very short time, the industrialization of the country was completed, which in capitalist countries took entire epoch. For the sake of industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture was carried out in an extremely short period. Practically all the possibilities for rapid mobilization of economy were used.

The victory in the Great Patriotic War, successful rebuilding of national economy proved to the world the historical necessity of this way of development for our country. But we had no other choice. Such a character of development was connected with extreme centralization and state control in many spheres of social life. Unfortunately, this method was taken as the only possible one.

At the same time one of the major principles of socialism "from everybody according to his abilities, to everyone according to the results of his labour" was considerably damaged.

Since the broad circles of working people were deprived of the possibility to really handle and use the results of their labour, they could not feel to be the owners or co-owners of common wealth. All this lead to indifference, passivity, reliance on someone else.

The crisis which hit the Soviet society was also the result of the crisis of the Party, which had been the ruling party for decades.

Underestimation of semi-bourgeois influence, power and ideological monopoly, "party arrogance" of certain party leaders considerably damaged the prestige of the CPSU. The gap between the ruling top leaders and the party members and working people was getting wider and wider. The result is what we have been witnessing in recent years.

However, the forces of socialism have not been broken down. Russia can and must come out of the crisis. Historical experience shows that it is possible, if the working people realize their national and state interests.

For realizing this, it is necessary:

• - To use legal methods to deprive the anti-popular regime of state power
• - To preserve state integrity of Russia
• - To consolidate political and economic independence
• - To secure social peace
• - To suppress criminality
• - To find ways out of economic crisis.

The Party envisages three political stages to reach its goals and aims by peaceful means:

• 1st stage-- Formation of the government of national salvation and the stabilization of national economy, with preservation of different sectors of national economy.
• 2nd stage-- After securing relative political and economic stability in governing the state, Soviets, workers and municipal self-governing bodies, the re-establishing of destroyed national economy (the period of re-establishment).
• 3rd stage-- The completion of the formation of socialist relationship corresponding to the demand and requirements of optimal socialist development with domination of social forms of ownership of means of production, at the same time preserving other forms of ownership.

The minimum program adopted at the 3rd CPRF Congress envisages certain urgent measures for the realization of the strategy, goals and aims of the Party:

1. Remaining in opposition to the present regime

• - to adopt a package of laws on electoral system, guaranteeing free choice (fulfilled)
• - to put an end to national conflicts
• - to denounce the Belovezsk Agreements (fulfilled)
• - not to allow private ownership of land
• - to adopt a law on employment and unemployment, to guarantee minimum living standard, to adopt a new constitution

  2. After coming to power:

  • - to establish government responsible to representative authority
  • - to re-establish Soviets and other bodies of people's power
  • - to change the economic course
  • - to re-establish social guarantees for work, medical care, housing
  • - to suppress criminality
  • - to set up state monopoly on foreign trade

  Our Party is doing everything possible to secure the victory at the forthcoming presidential elections of the candidate of the people's patriotic forces, G. A. Zyuganov. The victory in the elections is the guarantee of the return of Russia to the road of socialism.

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  Peter Cohen from the Swedish Communist Party

  During the 19th century, the potential for expansion of the capitalist economy was widely thought to be unlimited. Even after the First World War, when monopolies were already highly developed and a number of glaring contradictions were apparent, bourgeois economists generally assumed that a high level of demand for investment capital would continue to fuel the expansion of the system indefinitely.

  However, during the 20th century there has been a steady and highly significant shift in the relation between the supply of investment capital and the demand for it within the capitalist production system. In general, the supply of accumulated capital has exceeded demand, and this has been a prime cause of persistent stagnation in the economy.

  Demand for investment capital in this century has been in balance with or exceeded supply only during the First and Second World Wars, when large volumes of investment capital were absorbed by military production, and during a relatively short period between the end of the Second World War and the early 1970s.

  This latter period was also marked by two wars, in Korea and Vietnam. In addition, demand was generated during this period by the need for postwar reconstruction in Western Europe, by the development of new industries, particularly in electronics, and by the growth of the public sector.

  It should be emphasized that the achievements of the socialist economies and the struggles waged by Communist parties in Western Europe exerted great pressure on both the ruling class and the social democrats.

  The social democrats were forced to respond to this pressure at the same time that they performed one of their main objective tasks--preserving the structure of capitalist production relations. In the decades following the second world war; this situation resulted in a number of important reforms that benefited the working class, enlarged the public sector and helped to avoid an intensification of class conflict. At the same time, the social democrats made great efforts to show the ruling class that these reforms also served the long-term interests of the capitalists.

  The recirculation through the public sector of a portion of the surplus value produced by the working class was thus seen as acceptable by many, if not all, of the capitalists in Western Europe. But this presupposed that the gains from increased worker productivity could actually be realized in the form of continuously higher sales volume, i.e., that the capitalist system would enter a state of sustained expansion.

  The short postwar boom came to an end in the early 1970s, however, as the basic contradictions within monopoly capitalism asserted themselves with greater force than ever. The most dramatic symptom was a drop of about 50% in growth rates throughout the OECD countries, as measured in Gross Domestic Product. The capitalist system returned to the stagnation that it had previously shown, and this stagnation has persisted ever since.

  It is rooted to a great extent in the very accumulation of capital that the owners of the system are engaged in, since this accumulation is a continuous restraint on the purchasing power of the mass of the population. The system experienced several recessions in the 1970s and 1980s. It then entered a deep depression at the start of the 1990s, and the downward spiral is continuing.

  Various attempts have been made by the capitalist class to counteract the trend to stagnation. These have included an expansion of credit on an unprecedented scale, starting in the early 1970s. Credit was extended not only to households in Western Europe and North America, but also to governments and privately owned companies in underdeveloped countries.

  The motive was of course to generate demand. The logic of the system inhibits the distribution of more surplus value to wage earners in the form of wages. Providing them with credit was seen as a means of increasing consumer consumption, which would create a demand for more productive capacity, and this in turn would create demand for investment capital. Providing credits to underdeveloped countries was also supposed to create a demand for Western industrial goods, among other things, which would also create more demand for investment capital.

  Debt is the dialectical equivalent of credit. Brazil is an interesting example of the results of credit and debt expansion. By 1980, Brazil was so deeply in debt that it would have had to increase its exports by about 100% in a single year in order to earn enough to pay interest and amortization over the subsequent 12 months.

  Another counteractive measure has taken the form of a consistent attack on the public sector in the West.

  In Sweden, the Employers' Federation launched a massive propaganda campaign in the late 1970s which has continued with undiminished intensity ever since. One of the main goals of this campaign is to convince the working population of Sweden that taxes should be reduced and public sector expenditure should be devoted solely to functions and investments that benefit private industry.

  The rapid growth of operations in the Western financial sector is another sign of continued stagnation. As a result of the continuous imbalance between the supply of accumulated capital and the volume of profitable investment opportunities in industry, including the so-called service industry, more and more capital has been directed toward speculative activities. Speculation has continued on a gigantic scale, as about US$1.8 trillion are traded daily in the money markets alone.

  As stagnation deepened, Western companies also intensified their efforts to increase productivity. In the core countries of the OECD [the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development includes all the industrialized capitalist countries and Mexico], this has involved steady increases in the level of automation and continuous improvement of control systems. In the peripheral countries, it has involved drastically intensified exploitation of labour power.

  The combination of persistent stagnation with high and rising productivity has led to the worst economic crisis to date for Western capitalism. In Sweden, at least 25% of the population between 17 and 65 years of age are officially outside what is known as the labour market. The statistics are also manipulated for obvious political reasons. According to the Economist, a decidedly right-wing business magazine, the government of Great Britain changed the method for reporting unemployment 29 times during the 1980s. Not surprisingly, all but one of these changes resulted in a lower number of unemployed being reported.

  The capitalist crisis has accentuated many ideological and political contradictions throughout Western Europe. One of the most important manifestations of these contradictions is the deep and growing split between the working class and the leadership of social democratic labour unions and political parties.

  The split is rooted in the so-called reform policy which the social democrats advocated for many years. This reform policy was transformed into an open acceptance of capitalist production relations, together with active participation in the so-called Cold War against socialism. In many parts of the world, this war was not very cold. As the general crisis has prolonged itself, the space for political manoeuvre by the social democrats has steadily contracted, and their defense of the interest of the capitalist class has become steadily more open. Over the past 25 years, for example, the social democrats in Sweden have moved further and further to the right. In common with their counterparts in the rest of Western Europe, their political programs are now largely indistinguishable from the parties that directly represent the capitalist class.

  Garan Persson, prime minister of Sweden and chairman of the Social Democratic Party, recently made an extraordinary statement at the annual meeting of the Swedish Federation of Industries. He told the assembled capitalists that sound Swedish public finances depend on wage restraint, and that the Swedish unions are the world's strongest and best organized.

  According to Persson, these unions want to raise wages. This means, he said, that they must be combated by the world's strongest and best organized employer organization if the Swedish economy is to return to health. Thirty years ago, such a statement from a Swedish Social Democratic prime minister would have been literally inconceivable. It symbolizes the total abandonment by the Social Democrats of any pretence that they represent the interests of the working class.

  The main problem for the social democrats and the capitalist class is that stagnation shows no sign of abating. The need for new investment in industry, relative to the amount of capital available, has probably never been so low. War and military production, which earlier in this century generated demand for investment capital, can no longer fulfil that function on a sufficient scale. One reason is that the pool of surplus accumulated capital is too late; in addition, the working class and even large portions of the middle class in both Western Europe and North America will not accept a prolonged war that involves casualties to themselves.

  It has also been shown that high levels of spending on military production are not enough to offset stagnation. The enormous increase in military spending in the US during the Reagan administration did not generate real growth. Spending on military production provides profits for capitalists, but it does not create enough new demand for investment relative to the total volume of accumulated capital, partly because capacity is already very large and partly because military production is already highly automated.

  In the light of the above, it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the split between the working class and the leaders of social democratic parties and trade unions will continue to grow at a rapid rate.

  In this situation, it seems to me that the continued existence of the capitalist system is possible only on the basis of comprehensive population manage-ment in the form of a higher stage of fascism for which the European Union is the framework.

  The EU eliminates the vestiges of parliamentary bourgeois democracy, ensures close strategic and administrative links between monopoly capital and a pan-European government, establishes a highly centralized structure for implementation and supervision of financial policy, and promotes the interests of Western European monopoly capital on the international scene. It aims to establish a pan-European labour market that is thoroughly and adamantly regulated in the interests of capital, and to ensure a favourable business climate by force of arms.

  But the split between the working class and the social democratic leadership shows that the working class rejects policies that are not in its interest, even if this rejection is sometimes intuitive or confused, and does not grow out of conscious appraisal of the capitalist system. Over the past few years, the working class of Western Europe has shown in many different ways, from elections to street demonstrations, that it is opposed to policies which promote the interests of the capitalist class.

  In its essentials, the capitalist system has not changed since the Communist Manifesto was first published almost 150 years ago. And the position of the Swedish Communist Party is still the same as it was when the party was founded in 1921. There is no such thing as capitalism with a human face. The working class in Sweden, in the rest of Western Europe, in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the rest of the world have two alternatives available, and only two: socialism, or barbarism.