Commemorative meeting of the 150th Anniversary of the Manifesto
of the Communist Party
Statement by Carlos Carvalhas, PCP's General Secretary
We gather here, today, at the Vitoria Party Centre, in this act to evoke the
Communist Manifesto, in an act to evoke the works of Marx and Engels. It is
only a simple initiative, but meaningful to all of us. We do this with our eyes
set in the future and in the combats that we have ahead of us, at this turn
of the century.
150 years have gone by and only seldom has a text had such an audience, so much
analysis and passion, so much hatred and detraction. A century and a half of
revolutionary storms, of radical changes, of civilisation’s thrust, but also
of democratic upsets and social regression. Marx did not leave us a recipe or
a ready-to-wear. What he left us was a “guide for action” and essential tools
and concepts so that we understand the reality surrounding us, the world we
live in, the course of mankind. He who was considered, in all fairness, the
heir of the best creations of German classical philosophy, English political
economy and French utopian socialism knew how to dive deep in the reality of
his own time and critically re-elaborate what had been achieved until then.
He committed all his efforts to find an answer to a complex task which he formulated
in a clear and simple manner “philosophers have only interpreted the world in
different ways: the question is, however, how to transform it”. We know how
he linked the creation of the new society to a larger development of productive
forces, to individual freedom and to democracy, aiming at liberating man from
all types of exploitation and oppression, that is, to envisage the setting up
of the social and political conditions which would allow for the materialisation
of the well-known formula “the free development of each as a condition for the
free development of all” .
The Communist Manifesto started a true revolution in the history of social thinking,
revealing history’s materialist conception, the mechanisms of capitalist production,
capital’s exploitation of labour, surplus value formation and appropriation.
The flags raised by Marx were grabbed by great figures, namely first of all
by Engels, and still during Engel’s life, by Vladimir llitch Lenine, who led,
with the Bolschevik Party, the first triumphant socialist revolution, the Great
October Revolution which radically changed the world’s social and political
context, gave birth to the first experience of building socialism giving a powerful
thrust to the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, democratic and socialist emancipation
and liberation movements.
With courage, we face the facts of history
While evoking, here and now, the Communist Manifesto’s 150 years, we do not
pretend to ignore the shady pages or periods, that is, the errors, perversions,
failures, tragedies as well as the “followism” and silences which are also a
trace in the communists’ historical path and which brought so much anguish,
perplexity, unrest and difficulties to our struggle in the whole world.
No, we face up to those facts with truth and courage however hard they may be,
as we have already demonstrated, namely with our assessments at the l3th Extraordinary
Congress.
And we take as a profound commitment of our thinking and of our action, reflecting
and acting, more and better, for the enrichment of a communist project which
meets the demands of our country and the challenges of our present time, strongly
demarcated from everything that has cast shadows over our ideas’ capacity of
attraction, firmly anchored in our own history and combat of the last 77 years,
strongly supported by an inseparable political compromise binding freedom and
democracy with a project of real social change, abolition of the exploitation
of man by man and the overcoming of capitalism.
But, at the same time we refuse and will continue to refuse that some want to
put on our shoulders direct or indirect responsibilities which, in accuracy,
we do not have, nor do we see any reason to assume.
We refuse and will continue to refuse that those who defend capitalism (who
obviously do not take up responsibility for the crimes committed by the system
they defend) try to show themselves as the court of history where unacceptably
they judge and incriminate the communist ideas and the communists themselves.
We refuse and will continue to refuse the attempt to redirect and limit the
whole of the communists’ imaginary, asset and project simply to some concrete
experiences of building socialism forgetting that in that imaginary, asset and
project one has to include the struggles of millions of men and women and dozens
of communist parties who, with generous action throughout this century, the
enormous price paid in sacrifices and blood in their resistance against fascism
gave a priceless contribution to the cause of freedom and are behind many of
civilisation’s advances and of the most relevant social and politic gains.
We equally refuse and will continue to refuse that, concerning the experiences
of building socialism the events of the 9O’s may be used as a sort of historical
erasure, unfairly trying to bury all that was newly and hopefully built, the
many changes operated, the generosity, work and effort of millions of men and
women, to build a new life and new horizons of happiness for human beings.
To consider real life
In the enrichment of our project the exercise of power by the communists at
all levels in the Party and in the State is another major topical question together
with the role of the market and of different forms of ownership.
The Manifesto underlines that the cornerstone of the new socio-economic system
is the social ownership of the means of production. Those who utilised the masses’
impatience wanted to do it overnight and made that objective an absolute value.
Later came the system’s shortcomings, the contempt for social ownership and
the fact that the transformation of the “mine”, of what is private ownership,
into “ours”, into social, is a long and complex process.
The revolution in the production relations cannot be limited to the collective
appropriation of the main means of production and distribution and it does not
put an end, only by itself, to the negative traits accumulated over the centuries.
But if this is a reality, it is equally a fact that without the collective appropriation
of the fundamental and strategic enterprises, any form of governing on the left
and any “model” of socialism as beautiful and attractive as its clothing may
be, would in practice be dead and could only continue to exist in the imagination
of its creators. This question is as true today as it was in Marx’s days.
Before the uncertainties, the accumulation of serious problems and the disappearance
of real socialism in Eastern Europe, the calls for a return to Marx are being
renewed. And they are quite necessary.
Not to “improve Marx” or to spend our time with his quotations, in the narrow
view of those who see themselves as the faithful interpreters of the Coran,
about what “Marx really said” nor to reject posterior developments and creative
contributions, elaborated by his continuators under the conditions of their
own times. To do this, would be seeing Marxism as a museum piece, as some have
already declared.
The Manifesto underlines that “the communist’s theoretical proposals are in
no way based upon ideas or principles which were invented by this or that “improver”
of the world. They are just the general expressions of the effective relations
of an existing class struggle, of an historic movement which runs before our
very eyes”.
The founder of the Soviet State equally underlined: “[...] it is necessary to
assimilate the irrefutable truth that a Marxist must consider real life, reality’s
accurate facts and not continue to stick to yesterday’s theory, which, just
like any other theory, in the best of cases, only indicates what is essential
and general, only coming near to apprehend life’s complexity.
Marx’s topicalitv
Therefore, yes to a return to Marx, reaping all posterior developments and the
best that mankind produces, working humbly and with perseverance in a new effort
of theoretical and political creativity, trying to grasp reality and continuing
the struggle, in the framework of the social, political, technological and cultural
changes which define the outlines of our society for the 21st century.
That is also why, we, the Portuguese communists, project socialism with the
deepening of democracy in all of its aspects, with the gains of the 25th of
April, including and developing the essential economic, social, political and
cultural elements of the advanced democracy we propose to the Portuguese people,
while conceiving political democracy as having an intrinsic value in itself.
Dear Friends,
The Manifesto’s topicality is also found in what it projects and still in the
reality that it talks about and assesses, which, in its more essential and structuring
traits, can still be found today.
Those who, from the height of their privileges glorify the “triumph of capitalism”
and the “triumph of neo-liberalism” and who identify market with democracy,
cannot erase the perpetuation, although under newly altered historic forms,
of the relations of exploitation and domination, nor can they erase the reality
of the aggravation of inequalities in our planet, including its existence in
the more developed countries.
The European Union itself, which is part of the Planet’s 20% of the population
which holds 80% of the world income, has 50 million poor people and 20 million
unemployed!
Capitalism continues to produce those who are excluded from social progress
namely the youngsters, the women and the immigrants as well as the concentration
of fabulous wealth ...
The new world oligarchies of finance, of the media and IT, arrogantly and self-sufficiently
proclaim their rule and the virtues of the “new world order”.
But the moles of history do not give up and continue to labour in the context
of the possibilities and necessity of building other societies.
In actual fact, inequalities are growing and problems are mounting. The privatisation
of the whole of the economy is nowadays the dogma of all well-behaved neo-liberals,
polarising wealth and thus increasing the unemployment figures. The social stratification
in the whole planet continues to polarise, with the assets of the 358 richest
people in the world amounting to the equivalent of the poorest 45% of the world’s
population, that is, 2.3 billion people!
And all of this in a framework in which, never as today, the development of
productive forces would enable solving mankind’s secular problems. Instead,
what we are witnessing is social regression and the forceful return of the old
social scourges which existed in the beginning of the century: mass unemployment,
child labour, labour without rights, growing and accelerated poverty.
Its also due to this that the working class, the workers, the peoples and the
“damned of the earth”, from Chiapas and East Timor, from Palestine and the Third
World, from the developed countries, resist and fight, although in a complex
and difficult context.
The road showed by Marx and Engels faces difficult obstacles, given today’s
balance of forces. But as we declare in our programme, in the assessment of
the perspectives for the social and political evolution of today’s world, it
is indispensable to consider that, while capitalism was formed and established
as the dominant system in a process lasting several centuries, socialism started
in the 2Oth century and only knew its first historic surges during some decades.
The Manifesto naturally bears the traces of its own time, but we are convinced
that, given its style, vigour and topicality, it will be read by today’s youngsters
with pleasure and surprise. There, they will find an incitement to reject fatalism
and to audacious thinking and action. To read or re-read the Manifesto is still
the best way of evoking it. On our part, as stated in the declaration of the
14-15 February PCP’s Central Committee meeting, the PCP, certain as it is of
the strength, grandeur and vitality of its values and ideals, open to life and
to the future, engaged in asserting, enriching and projecting its identity and
its project of democracy and socialism for Portugal, will do everything to continue
honouring and fulfilling even further its national and internationalist responsibilities
as a great force of freedom, democracy and social progress serving the workers,
the people and the country.
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