http://www.kp-l.org , mailto:kpl@zlv.lu

Speech of Ali Ruckert, President of the Communist Party of Luxembourg,

at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties

Johannesburg, 3 to 5 December, 2010

Dear comrades,

Luxembourg is not an island, and the recipes of the ruling class for solving the capitalist financial and economic crisis are not differing from those in other EU countries.

As in the other countries, our government is striving to continue the redistribution of capital from the bottom up, that has began in the past years, not regarding the shortage of public finances. For this reason it decided to postpone or even not to start at all the construction of several schools, of sports and cultural institutions. Additionally the government adopted a huge austerity package, which comes into effect from January 1 ^st. The only dossier of the state budget, which they spare out from the austerity measures, are the military expenditures. Even in Luxembourg the military budget is now much higher than in the worst times of the Cold War.

The austerity package is composed of the increase of several taxes and the reduction of social achievements, as well as a considerable increase of the fees for health insurance and for medical services. Additionally they intend to freeze the salaries for those working in public services and to reduce these salaries for beginners.

We know that all these recipes are coinciding with those in the other member states of the European Union and especially the members of the Euro Zone. Their main aim is securing the stability of the Euro, the currency which was introduced ten years ago especially in the interest of the big capital.

The main consequence of all the austerity measures will be also in Luxembourg a reduction of the real incomes and of the real purchase power of large sectors of the people.

Initially the trade unions had announced that they would organize resistance against the intentions that the working people will be forced to pay for a crisis they are not guilty for. Nevertheless the unions gave their adoption to the austerity package of the government. Now they are just discussing about some detailed measures, without challenging the entire package.

At the same time the government is promising financial compensation for the higher expenditures of the capitalists (entrepreneurs) for the automatic increase of the minimum wages which come into effect by law in the next year as well as for the automatic adjustment of wages to the inflation. But on the other hand it is well known that Luxembourg is one of the countries with the lowest capital taxes and with the highest exploitation rates.

The main reason for the weak resistance against dismissals and social destruction is the fact, that the wrong ideology of so called »social partnership« is deeply rooted in the minds of the leading people of the trade unions, but as well in the minds of most working people. The working class of Luxembourg consists mainly from Portuguese immigrants as well as from French, German and Belgium cross-border workers. The political consciousness of the working class is as low as never before and the working class is split into groups with different culture and language. Until now, the negative effects of the crisis did not change this situation significantly.

The Communist Party of Luxembourg is the only political force in our country to resist all social destruction and to organize a broad campaign against the austerity package of the government. There is nobody but the communists who is in the position to explain the reasons and the background of the capitalist crisis and of the policy of the ruling class.

But our party is still suffering from the defeat of socialist construction in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. The KPL is not able to react to all challenges, its militants are organized just in certain parts of the country, it does not have a sufficient number of members, it is boycotted by the bourgeois mass media and does not have the financial means for carrying out a broad campaign throughout the country. Most of the trade unions which are bound to the ideology of »social partnership« and do not want to know anything about class struggle, do not even accept the KPL as a discussion partner, since our party is not well positioned in the unions and we do not have any representatives in the national parliament.

Nevertheless the KPL succeeded to double the number of votes at the parliamentary elections last year, and it reached about 4 per cent of the votes in Esch and Differdingen, the second and the third biggest cities. The party is growing slowly but permanently, there is an increasing number of trade unionists and other people who support our campaigns, and we can also count with a slowly growing number of subscriptions to our daily newspaper.

Our most important tasks for the forthcoming period are the development of an effective propaganda work and the combination of the struggle against unemployment, poverty, exploitation and social destruction with the struggle against the capitalist system, for a complete change of the property situation of the means of production and for a socialist perspective.

In the coming year we will celebrate the 90 ^th anniversary of the foundation of our party, which took place the 2 ^nd of January 1921. And in the month of October there will be communal elections in our country. We are going to establish open candidate lists of the KPL in the most important towns, with two thirds of the population of Luxembourg. Both the 90 ^th anniversary of the KPL and our active participation in the elections will give us the opportunity to strengthen our party and to propagate our communist proposals for the future of Luxembourg.

With the aim to be more effective in our political work we are striving for the further development of our international relations. First of all we will strengthen the co-operation with the communist parties of our neighboring countries, the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB), the German Communist Party (DKP) and the New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN). This quadrilateral framework of co-operation has already lead to several common actions.

At the same time, we are of the opinion that it is urgently necessary to further develop the worldwide international co-operation of all communist and workers’ parties which are working on the basis of the theory of Marxism-Leninism and are acting for the construction of a socialist society to replace the capitalist system of exploitation.

The main aim of such co-operation should be the permanent exchange of opinions and experiences of the everyday struggle of our parties. It is necessary to inform our members about the consequences of the capitalist crisis in other countries and about the struggle of the communists against them. The information about strikes in Portugal, election results in Greece or mass manifestations in France will help to encourage our members and the readers of our newspaper to participate in actions in our own country.

We are convinced that the abolition of capitalism in one single country in Europe is not possible. We have to combine our efforts to struggle against the capitalist state as well as against the international capitalist structures like the NATO and the European Union. And we must also combine the propaganda for a socialist perspective. In this context, the KPL considers it necessary to study the reasons for the defeat of the socialist construction in the Soviet Union and in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. This important task of study and analyses must include the experiences of our comrades in all the previous socialist countries. This is one of the most important ways to prepare ourselves for the political tasks of the future.

As in all the previous International Meetings, we would like to repeat our appeal to combine all our efforts for the construction of a structured international framework of co-operation of the communist and workers’ parties.