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International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties,

Johannesburg 2010

Intervention by the Communist Party of Denmark (DKP)

Henrik Stamer Hedin

Last year in Delhi we spoke of the crisis of capitalism that has now been with us for a couple of years. I want to resume where I was cut short last year.

In Denmark, as elsewhere, the crisis has led to bank crashes, mass sackings, and elimination of jobs in industry, and last year it was announced that the country’s last great shipyard is to be closed down in the space of three years. Official, heavily embellished unemployment numbers have exceeded a hundred thousand. Real numbers are at least double that, by a population of five million, mass unemployment thus being back after a short break.

Nobody seems to have any solution or alternative to this development. The right-wing government certainly has none; the Socialist opposition has none; even the Left has no real viable alternative able to convince the masses. They all talk of growth, of revitalizing growth, of creating conditions for growth. But they have no remedy except more of the same neoliberal medicine that paved the way for the worst economic crisis in generations. Instead they convince themselves that recovery is already under way and that now it is time to tighten our belts, cut down on public spending and raise taxes – which will, of course, only make things worse. The Left knows this, of course, but offers no alternative except asserting that it is not necessary to make savings on people’s needs, on welfare and health, and pointing to other sources of revenue. Taxing big companies and multinationals and oil is a proper thing to do and certainly better than cutting down on public spending, but it is not the alternative to the systemic crisis of capitalism. It does not question the state’s need for money – which, of course, originates from the billions spent on support for near-bankrupt banks.

Not only do the political forces see no alternative: Among the masses too, in the general populace, there is no awareness that an alternative to capitalism and its neoliberal interpretation exists – and if it does, it will have to be an even more savage version of the capitalism we know. In this sense, on this level of subjectivity, it is hard to see a systemic crisis of capitalism, and this goes not only for Denmark, but also for the countries where unrest and uprising have seized the masses – Greece and Ireland, e.g. People may want a different policy, a new government perhaps, but nowhere is the alternative to capitalism as such put on the agenda. Yet we know that the systemic crisis of capitalism is an objective fact, and we know that socialism is the alternative to capitalism. This chasm between subjective and objective truth is our challenge.

The Communist Party of Denmark, at its National Committee plenary of February last year, reacted to this challenge by issuing an appeal “To progressive forces in Denmark”, The crisis calls for activity and alternatives. In this document, the other workers’ parties, the trade unions, and other popular forces are called upon to join in a “common effort” for “new initiatives capable of adding dynamism and renewed life to the task of developing democratic and socialist alternatives to the capitalist structures gone bankrupt”. The appeal was renewed this January and resulted in a joint meeting in April hosted by the Food Workers’ Union and attended by the Communist parties, of which there are 4 in Denmark, all counted, as well as by individuals of the broader Left. Our aim is to set up a joint committee with the purpose of convening some time next year an open conference on the crisis of capitalism and the socialist alternative. It is our hope that in this way we can succeed in getting together a new, broad force critical towards capitalism and capitalist solutions, thus creating a new consensus of the Left and a new agenda of Danish politics.

This initiative, which is still in its infant stage, arises out of the need to put an anti-monopolistic, anti-capitalistic alternative into words convincing to the masses of today with the experience of people of today – not the experience of the October Revolution or of the victorious struggle against fascism, but the experience of the European Counterrevolution. The movement created by us is still much too narrow, and it takes place on a national level. A much wider movement is needed, wider socially and wider politically and wider in the sense that it must be expanded to a regional or even global level. The systemic crisis of capitalism is global; the threats that the masses are facing are basically the same everywhere. A united global struggle is needed. This will be the challenge of tomorrow.