European Conference of internationalist forces
The Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International (CRFI) and RedMed are jointly organizing a conference of internationalist revolutionary forces of European countries to meet in Athens, Greece on 9-10 June 2013. The aim is to close ranks among forces fighting against austerity in the different countries of Europe, to determine a common policy against that of the Troyka and the capitalist governments of the countries in question, to organize campaigns and work together in the future, as well as establishing links with the world outside of Europe, in particular the Mediterranean basin. The conference will be held immediately after the Alter Summit to be held in the same city on 7-8 June 2013, in which our forces will be intervening as well. All forces and persons who are determined to fight the assault of the capitalist class and defeat it are welcome to share their ideas with us at the conference.
Appeal
Join us at the International Conference on “Europe in crisis - for an internationalist revolutionary alternative”, in Athens, Greece, in the hall of the National Union of Journalists (ESHEA), Akadimias and Voukourestiou Str. June 9-10, 2013
Down with the dictatorship of the Troika EU/ECB/IMF!
For the abolition of the debt to the international usurers!
Nationalize the banks and all the factories that close or fire workers, under workers control, without compensation to the big capitalists!
Stop the social catastrophe of unemployment, jobs for all!
Down with racism and all forms of discrimination! Smash fascism!
Hands off immigrants! Equal rights for all workers!
Down with the governments of Merkel, Letta, Samaras, Rajoy, Coelho, Anastasiades and all capitalist governmentsof exploitation and oppression!
For workers’ governments and workers’ power!
Down with the imperialist European Union of mass unemployment, “austerity” and social cannibalism, the prison of peoples!
Forward for the United Socialist States of Europe!
After six years of an unprecedented world capitalist crisis, there is no way out in sight from the impasse of a bankrupt social system, which threatens to bury the popular masses under its ruins.
Europe has become the epicenter of the global crisis. Greece was only the weakest “link” of the European chain; now it is not solely the “link” but the “chain” itself that has been broken. The bankruptcy and social devastation in Greece shows the present or the near future of all other countries.
It is an acute expression of the situation evolving, in different tempos, all over the European South, from Italy to the Iberian Peninsula, hitting now beyond the periphery, the “core” countries like France, threatening even the apparently “powerful” Germany.
Even in the official statistics the figures demonstrate a social catastrophe on the Old Continent superior of that of the Great Depression in the US.
The unemployment rate in Greece has reached 32 per cent and for youth between 18 to 24 years more than 62 per sent. In Spain it has reached the all time record of 27 per cent, and for those under 25 years old an astounding 57.2 per cent. Portugal’s unemployment rate is today about 17 percent, while two years ago it was 12 per cent. In France it surged to 10. 6 per cent, and in the eurozone as a whole reached an all-time record of 12 per cent.
These infernal statistics that everyday become worse reflects a pale image of reality if we take into account the gigantic army of precarious and immigrant labor without rights.
Europe today is a Continent of deprived masses without a job or working under precarious, semi-slave labor conditions, without a home (40.000 evictions in Spain from repossessed indebted homes, and in Athens, Greece about 25 thousand homeless), with continuous cuts in wages, pensions, social rights, with collapsing education and health services – in short, a Continent of misery. The capitalists, their governments and politicians, had promised a European Union as a paradise of “prosperity and liberty” and they have condemned us into a hell of eternal “austerity”, and social slavery imposed by State oppression, more and more assisted by fascist gangs like the “Golden Dawn” in Greece or Jobbik in Hungary.
The non-stop measures of social cannibalism imposed by Brussels, Berlin and the IMF have produced unimaginable sufferings for the peoples but not the slightest solution to the crisis, not a way out from the systemic impasse. On the contrary, they are worsening all the aspects of the crisis- economic, fiscal, sovereign debt, banking and political - demonstrating that what we face is not just a cyclical or conjunctural crisis limited in time, but the historical bankruptcy both of the entire “EU Project” and of the entire social system based on capitalist exploitation itself.
Reality demolishes claims that the situation has been stabilized and the eurozone crisis has receded, after Draghi’s and the ECB’s declarations in summer 2012 that they will do “whatever it takes to save the euro”; on the contrary, the Cyprus debacle in March 2013 and the “bail-in of the depositors” made crystal clear that the crisis is here and worsening. Elections in Italy have proved both the bankruptcy of the existing bourgeois political systems as well as the undeniable fact that “austerity” programs have reached their political limits, and are unsustainable. Nevertheless, all the governments all over Europe continue on the same course of social catastrophe.
At the same time, the EU imperialists are trying not only to impose the burden of the crisis on the shoulders of the European popular masses but also to export their crisis abroad: in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia, as well as in the Middle East after the revolutionary popular awakening of the Arab Spring.
The implications of the capitalist crisis are global, and our answer to the dangers should be global and decisive as well.
We urgently need a real, revolutionary, internationalist alternative!
In December 2012, at a meeting in Athens, the EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party) of Greece, the Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori of Italy, the Devrimci Isci Partisi-DIP (Revolutionary Workers Party) of Turkey, the Partido Obrero of Argentina, and the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International (CRFI) took the initiative to launch a campaign for a Special International Conference dedicated to the crisis in Europe. The Conference is open to all class struggle and liberation forces, coming from different traditions, being aware that we need urgently to coordinate and unify our actions on the European and international levels, for a radical, internationalist, workers, and socialist alternative.
Already organizations, social movements, and independent fighters from all of Europe-West and East, South and North, the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America will participate in this important event.
WE CALL the fighting workers and popular organizations and collectivities in Europe, and internationally, involved in social struggles, particularly their vanguards, as well to as the forces of the revolutionary Left to join us at thisInternational Conference on the crisis in Europe, and its global implications: for an internationalist alternative and a socialist way out to discuss an Emergency Program to resist and defeat the social catastrophe and a plan of common actions unchecked by and free from the “usual” bureaucratic apparatuses of control, and the building of an urgently needed new revolutionary leadership.
We need to discuss and decide urgently a plan of common actions and campaigns. We propose the following axes for consideration:
· to fight back the international usurers, the dictatorship of the “markets”, of the banks and financial capital, by the cancellation of ALL the public debt that robs and crashes the lives of millions, and by the expropriation of the banks under workers’ control
· All the “austerity” plans of social cannibalism imposed by the EU, the ECB, the IMF and the capitalist governments have to be stopped immediately. The capitalist have to pay for the crisis of their system of exploitation, not the exploited! We have to fight to restore wages, pensions, and social rights of the working people according to the social needs, not for the profits of the few.
· Against mass unemployment, we call to fight to forbid sackings, for distribution of the working hours among all workers. Public works of infrastructure, which are anyway vital and urgently needed, have to be developed to create new jobs. The barons of big industry always blackmail workers to accept more wage cuts and redundancies threatening them with the specter of having to close down or “de-localize” their factories abroad; our answer should be to occupy all factories that close or fire massively, to expropriate them, without compensation, making them to function again under workers control and workers management.
· For a resolute struggle against fascism, racism and discrimination against women, against sexual orientation, against all minorities! Defend the immigrants and all the communities of the oppressed! Equal rights for all workers, independently of color, ethnic origin or religion! The workers and popular movements have to organize Workers’ Defense Guards against the fascist gangs and State repression.
· For the dismantlement of the bourgeois State apparatus of repression, of NATO and all imperialist military bases and alliances- full solidarity to all anti-imperialist struggles of oppressed nations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America!
· For all immediate vital demands of the working class and popular masses, our battle cry should be: Down with all capitalist governments! For workers governments and workers power! Down with the European Union of the imperialists! For the United Socialist States of Europe!
EEK( Greece)
PCL( Italy)
DIP (Turkey)
MWL (Finland)
PO( Argentina)
CRFI
Balkan Socialist Centre ‘Christian Rakovsky”
The web site RedMed
May 2013
Contact the Organizing Committee by E-mail:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Phones: (+30) 6938630696, (+30) 6937 217789
