Dear comrades!
We the representatives of The Communist Party of Norway will use this opportunity to express our gratefulness to the Communist Party of Portugal for taking the responsibility and great effort to organise this important meeting.
On this occasion we will only address a few of the many important issues and challenges concerning the topic of this meeting.
In the fight against EUs Bolkestein Servicedirective leading trade unionists understand the serious threat the directive constitutes for the future existence of the trade union movement, and they claim that The Norwegian “red/green” Government veto the Bolkesteindirective. The leadership of The Social Democratic Party supports the EU and do not want an open fight in this question. The communists have activated the debate, in the last weeks unanimous votes was won for the veto claim in the two largest districts of LO (Trade Union Central). This is a good arena for clarifying ideological differences between Communists support of, and Social Democrats undermining of the trade unions, and support of European imperialism.
We will stress that the foremost importance of the communist party is its ability to deliver a scientific foundation for the struggle of the progressive forces. Only a party based on the Leninist principles of democratic centralism and armed with the principles of scientific socialism can mount the struggle necessary to isolate the anti-democratic monopolists and finally bring the capitalist system to an end. Democratic centralism is of course in itself an indispensable consequence of Marx´ and Engels´, development of the humans struggle for social progress and socialism in to science. So correctly understood and further developed by Lenin. We believe that underestimating the importance of democratic centralism will lead to grave errors as it has done in the past.
As we have expressed on an earlier meeting, our anti-monopolistic strategy is developed through the practice of The World Communist Movement in its struggle for the interest of the working class over a long period of time. Our experience in the fight against fascism has a special importance for this development. We had to pay a high price for the left deviation of that time and the correction of this error under the famous leader of Comintern Georgi Dimitrov marks a leap in our thinking about building alliances in the class struggle.
The destruction of USSR and the socialist world system has altered important preconditions for our strategy. In spite of this, it is our profound belief that the core of the anti-monopolistic strategy is still valid, but we have to address what consequences the altered situation gives. We are still in the beginning of such a process.
The crises in monopoly capitalism mount more severe overt aggressive tendencies, no longer constrained by the might of Soviet Union, as seen in the Middle East and Iraq, and also seen in the attacks on the peoples judicial and democratic rights under the pretext of fight against terrorism.
The people of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan daily feel the aggression of the imperialists, through a brutal occupation of these countries. Not forgetting the brutal in discrepant killing of Lebanese civilian by Israeli bombs. Other countries like Cuba, D.P.R. of Korea, Iran and Venezuela feels the breath of the imperialist forces every day.
We deeply regret that our comrades in the WP of Korea felt that they had no other choice than to start developing they own atomic bomb. It was a timely reminder comrade Vladimir Nikitin gave us her in Lisbon at the Meeting of European Communist and left-wing forces in March when he gave the CPRFs assessment of the anti-imperialist forces of the world. But we have to add, that there are some limitation. Not all of these forces are perceived as reliable in the defence of socialism. In our view the Korean situation illustrates this limitation.
The lasting effects of the impact of the splitting in the communist movement in the 6o-ies and the 70-ies are still felt in Norway, still making disillusions and great ideological confusions. The ultra leftist in the “Workers Communist Party” moved from criticising the communist parties and the USSR for right wing deviations, to define the communists as the new fascist and the USSR as a fascist and imperialist state and a greater danger to the world pace than any other forces. To perform these distortions of the reality they also have distorted Marxism-Leninism, substituted scientific socialism by voluntarism, moralism and other forms of subjectivism – by the philosophical idealism wrapt in Marxist-Leninist slogans. In Norway this “leftist” movement happened to be one of the biggest and most influential movements of its kind in Europe and accordingly also one of the most destructive. Splitting the left forces and supporting the wrong movements around the world, time after time as supporting the enemies of Yugoslavia, Supporting Taliban in Afghanistan and so on. They also started spying on members of CP of Norway, and today they still cling to their “analyses” of the USSR!
We will ones again stress that it is very important that we early on can manage to stand up against leftist deviations that so easy spark of support for the reactionary by the middle class. We have to deprive the monopolists their public support with all means. We can manage this without falling victim of serious rightist deviation like the Social Democrats only if we are armed with the thought of scientific socialism. This can hardly be overestimated.
We realise that the road to socialism will vary. Transition from capitalism to socialism can take both peaceful and non-peaceful forms. As late comrade Suslov expressed it in a Report to the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1964: “No matter what form the transition from capitalism to socialism takes, however, it is possible only through socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in this or that form. In each individual country the real possibility of the peaceful or non-peaceful means of transition to socialism is determined by the concrete historical conditions.” He adds an important remark: “…the working class must possess all forms and means of revolutionary struggle without exception and must be prepared for the most rapid an unexpected replacement of some forms by others and use them in accordance with the concrete situation.”
We stand firmly on Marx, Engels and Lenin's ideological basis, and we will never subordinate ourselves to other interests than those of the working class and the other oppressed.
Thank you!
Knut Hartmann Olsen
Secretary of the Politburo of the Central Committee of CP of Norway