‘‘A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation’’
‘‘It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution’’
‘‘Democracy is indispensable to socialism’’
(Vladimir Ilyich Lenin)
A Future That Works
NO2aTory/Liberal coalition - Vote with your feet for an alternative to a neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state Yes2aLeftFront and a Red/Green Left Alliance
EL-Statement: "No to the falsification of history in Europe!"
ReplyDeleteThe EL denounces the insulting and historically wrong amalgamation, used by multiple European governments, which – in order to discredit them – put communist ideas on the same level with fascist, racist and chauvinist ideas. In Romania, for example, an organisation cannot call itself “communist”, as it would subsequently be considered as a “threat for national security”. In this very moment a law is debated upon regarding the “organisation of public meetings”. It stipulates that those public meetings are forbidden which have “the propagation of totalitarian ideas, such as fascist, communist, racist and chauvinist ideas” as their goal. In the Czech Republic, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia risks suspension or prohibition for reasons which are absolutely illegitimate as well. The EL deems it as unacceptable to compare the struggles being fought by communists – defender of the solidarity of and with the people – with those that have been caused by the worst chauvinist downturns and setbacks of civilization on our continent. It is scandalous – in a moment when populisms are growing again in Europe and when the extreme right has entered into the Greek government with the blessing of the European Union – that the governments thus falsify the history, with the goal of discrediting all forms of alternative thinking against ultraliberalism, the dictatorship of the markets, capitalism and NATO imperialism. The EL supports the organisations concerned by these attacks and will rise up against each and every attempt aimed at criminalising, demonising and treating the European left the same as the extreme right.
Iskrə - Spark
ReplyDeleteEuropean Left Presidium Declaration: Peoples of Europe Unite!
European Semester - the anti-democratic intensification of austerity 01/12/2011
ReplyDelete"Sacrificing rights and social policies for the sake of market confidence is incompatible with democracy," said Greek GUE/NGL MEP Nikos Chountis after today's vote in Parliament on the economic policy coordination European semester.
"The semester is fully in line with the plans of Merkel and Sarkozy on the creation of a fiscal union of the willing on the basis of a more rigorous stability pact. Budgets will be set out in Berlin in a two- or three-speed Europe that separates the strong from the weak that remain in the grip of speculators and markets."
"European countries fear collapse, Europeans are united in their fear of the rapid pace of change within the EU and unfortunately the EU has responded in an increasingly reactionary way, becoming more anti-democratic, and further distancing itself from the vision of an area of solidarity and social justice."
The European semester means that the EU and the euro area will be engaged in the coordination of fiscal policies in line with the ultra-neoliberal stability and growth pact and the Europe 2020 strategy.
"It is essentially a European Directive for the adoption of austerity policies aimed at eliminating the capacity and flexibility for Member States to implement alternative or counter-cyclical policies in favour of redistribution, sustainable development and the provision of decent public services" said Chountis.
Just as there are restrictions on the participation of the European Parliament and national parliaments in the process, the Annual Growth Survey - a key element of the semester - is not subject to normal parliamentary procedure, Parliament has no power to negotiate with the Commission and influence the final text by introducing amendments, indicating an even greater lack of democratic legitimacy in the system.
http://www.guengl.eu/showPage.php?ID=10258&ROOTPAGE=1&LANG=1&GLANG=1
Terry Eagleton to former IMF economist Nouriel Roubini has said ‘‘Karl Marx was right’’ Marx argued that capitalism would eventually destroy itself. The philosopher John Gray says Marx was right in predicting that capitalism would eventually undermine the middle-class lifestyle, thus descending ever more of us (the 99%) into wage slavery. What Marx understood was that that it’s about ‘‘class struggle’’ as we look into the vortex of recession.
ReplyDeleteEach new crisis takes the capitalist system which extracts ‘‘surplus value’’ in the form of profit from the people who actually produce it nearer to its final end. But he also said that there is no limit that capitalism won't cross, no social bond it won't break, and no bounds to its ‘‘ingenuity’’ in making a buck from other peoples' misfortune.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/02/karl-marx-therapy-for-bankers