A Thanksgiving Letter to Our Wealthiest 1% Americans

A Thanksgiving Letter to Our Wealthiest 1% Americans

November 27, 2017 by jackrasmus

Ryan Bennett, Chair of the Lakeshore Community Labor Council in Muskegon, reports that his council has endorsed HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, national single payer legislation.

“We believe that the only long term solution to affordable health care in this country is single payer.  Our members are tired of seeing our already dwindling take home pay eaten up by unsustainable increases in health care costs,” said Bennett.  The labor council represents multiple unions along Michigan’s west coast.

The Lakeshore Community Labor Council is the 155^th council in the nation to endorse HR 676 and the 6^th one in the state of Michigan to do so.

The resolution passed by the Lakeshore Community Labor Council is reprinted below:

Union Resolution in Support of HR 676,

National Single Payer Legislation,

Expanded and Improved Medicare for All

Although capable of great medicine, America’s health care system is in deep trouble.  In spite of efforts to regulate the insurance industry, for-profit health insurance companies are finding ways to skirt the law.   The Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, made it possible for some of the uninsured to find coverage, but did not resolve the problem that health insurance companies are pricing care beyond our means.

Unions have battled to achieve the highest standards of health care for members and their families, and those gains have lifted up health benefits for all workers, even those who have no union.  All of these achievements are now under constant attack as costs rise and employers seek to shift those costs to workers.  Union multiemployer health plans are struggling under the unfair advantages allowed to non-union companies.  Rising co-pays and deductibles make it more difficult for those who have insurance to get the care they need.  The upcoming excise tax will make things worse.

Employers seek to drop health benefits for early retirees, for spouses, for part timers.  Some corporations use bankruptcy laws to shirk their contractual health care obligations.  The rising cost of health insurance is blocking progress in wages and other areas.

Insurance companies rather than patients are deciding what doctors we can see and what hospitals we can use.  Drug company profits soar as, so far, congress has not used the power of bulk purchasing to bring down the prices.  The US spends double per capita what other industrialized nations spend, yet ranks far below in life expectancy and infant mortality.

We deserve better.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Firefighters don’t ask us to pay before they save our families from burning houses.  They just proceed to do the right thing.  Health care is just as important as fire protection.  Lives are at stake and all of us should have the best care that this wealthy nation has the ability to provide.  Our tax dollars subsidize the research, the medical schools, and the hospitals.  Unions led the way in other industrialized countries to assure universal coverage with good care through a form of single payer.  We can do it too.

Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) has introduced HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.  HR 676 will establish a single payer health care system by expanding a greatly improved Medicare to cover everyone. It will restore our right to choose our physicians and free us from insurance company interference in medical decisions.  It will free our health care from corporate control.

HR 676 will cover everyone for all necessary medical care including dental, prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care, chiropractic, eyeglasses, hearing aides, other medical devices and long term care.

HR 676 will end deductibles and co-payments.

HR 676 will save hundreds of billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and by using our purchasing power to rein in the drug companies.  The transition to national health insurance would apply the savings from administration and profits to expanded and improved coverage for all.

By standing up for all working people and leading the effort to win healthcare for all, we will affirm labor’s rightful role as a leader in the fight for social justice.  Bold action by our unions can rally the nation to pass HR 676.

Resolved:

That Lakeshore Community Labor Council wholeheartedly endorses Congressman Conyers’ bill HR 676, “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All,” a single payer health care program.

That LCLC will work with other unions and community groups to build a groundswell of popular support and action for single payer universal health care and HR 676 until we make what is morally right for our nation into what is also politically possible.

That LCLC will send a copy of this resolution to Congressman Conyers, to all members of the U.S. House and Senate, to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, and to the news media.

That LCLC will take other actions to mobilize our members and our community at the grassroots to encourage other members of the House to sign on as co-sponsors of HR 676 and to encourage Senators to introduce a companion bill in the Senate.

_______________________

Issued by:

Kay Tillow, Coordinator

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551

Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org
https://www.facebook.com/unionsforsinglepayer

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare to everyone residing in the U. S. Patients will
choose their own physicians and hospitals.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental (including oral surgery,
periodontics, endodontics), mental health, home health, physical therapy,
rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care and correction,
hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable medical
equipment, palliative care, podiatric care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 634 union organizations including 155 Central
Labor Councils/Area Labor Federations and 44 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT,
OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX,
IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI, MT, NE, NJ, NY, NV, MA,
RI, NH, ID).

The list of union endorsers.
The sample endorsement resolution.

11/27/2017

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/27/1718939/-Muskegon-Labor-Council-endorses-HR-676-national-single-payer-legislation?_=2017-11-27T20:06:35.765-08:00

Zimbabwe: After Mugabe, Looking Back

AfricaFocus Bulletin November 27, 2017 (171127) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Additional articles worth noting

MacDonald Dzirutwe, Joe Brock, Ed Cropley, “Special Report: ‘Treacherous shenanigans’ – The inside story of Mugabe’s downfall,” Reuters, Nov. 26, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y6wwd2hy Reuters has pieced together the events leading up to Mugabe’s removal, showing that the army’s action was the culmination of months of planning that stretched from Harare to Johannesburg to Beijing.

Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika, “From Zimbabwe: The Best Books of the Mugabe Years,” Nov. 21, 2017 http://www.ozy.com – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/yaeuvdmf

Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, but Zimbabwe’s novelists have always shone a light on the truths — both complex and contradictory — of this nation. Mugabe himself embodies complexities and contradictions: He was a liberation hero and the first president of Zimbabwe who presided over a country that initially thrived, but at the same time there was a dark underbelly to his rule in the ’80s and ’90s. Then came the period of the 2000s when he led a country that was clearly in decline. These 10 books trace this arc of the Mugabe era.

Petina Gappah, “Mugabe and me: A personal history of growing up in Zimbabwe,” BBC, Nov. 25, 2017 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42109616

By the end of the academic year, I had studied constitutional law, and learned, through case law on illegal detentions, that all the time I had been gulping down books as a child in the library, a state of emergency had been in place in Matabeleland, and that region had been the theatre of mass killings by the army’s Fifth Brigade.

By the time I came face to face with Mugabe at my own graduation four years later, I was no longer a believer. Gone was the hero worship, but still left was deep and conflicted respect. As the Dean read out my achievements and I knelt before him to be capped, I looked into the face of my president. In that voice, the voice I had first heard in our township house when Zimbabwe was just a dream, Mugabe said to me, “Congratulations, well done.”

The last 17 years saw me count myself among his opponents as he waged another war, this time against the country he had promised.

We could not count all the bodies after that terrible war of liberation, but those that we could, we gave funeral rites and buried in places of honour. But how do you count the bodies of those who died in the war Mugabe waged against his own people?

Zimbabwe’s Political Watershed: A Tale of Failed Transitions

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Linked-In Pulse, Nov. 18, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y9482jja

President Robert Mugabe, once the celebrated hero of Zimbabwe’s protracted liberation struggle who descended into an irascible octogenarian dictator, seems to have finally met his rendezvous with history. On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 the army overthrew him. He was placed under house arrest together with his much-reviled wife, notoriously known as ‘Gucci Grace’ or ‘DisGrace’. It has been an unusually slow motion and sanitized coup, homage to the unpopularity of coups in an increasingly democratic Africa. But it also underscores the fact that President Mugabe’s ouster arose out of an internecine struggle for power among the ruling elite. This suggests the limits of fundamental change in the immediate post-Mugabe era for the longsuffering masses of Zimbabwe.

…

Zimbabwe protesters on November 18, the Saturday before Robert Mugabe resigned. Credit: http://www.groundup.org.za

The Mugabe era began with so much promise in 1980 after a bloody liberation struggle that lasted almost two decades. It ended 37 years later in almost unimaginable ignominy, leaving behind a trail of economic mismanagement, widespread impoverishment, and millions of emigrants, not to mention the intangible but no less palpable wounds of national trauma, humiliation, and disillusionment. Much of the commentary in the African and international media has largely focused on the epic failures of the president and the outrageous foibles of his avaricious and ambitious wife. Specifically, they concentrate on the spectacular mistake President Mugabe made in firing his once close and loyal confidant Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, in an apparent bid to prepare his wife as his successor.

There can be little doubt the president and his wife finally overreached and sealed their fate by unleashing forces that they could no longer control. But the dramatic moment we are witnessing in Zimbabwe is rooted in a longer and far more complex history that transcends the fatal flaws of the president, his wife, and the country’s other leaders, however critical their respective roles maybe. It can be argued the current conjuncture in Zimbabwe represents the confluence of three failed transitions. The first was the problematic transition from the liberation struggle to a developmental post-colonial state arising out of the country’s decolonization in the era of neo-liberalism. The second was the challenge of shifting from an authoritarian to a pluralistic order when the winds of democratization, for the ‘second independence’, began blowing across the continent. The third concerns the management of inter-generational contestations for power in anticipation of the postMugabe era.

…

But unlike many countries that got their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, Zimbabwe attained its independence during a period characterised by global economic crisis and the ascendancy of neo-liberalism. The first severely limited primary commodity and export driven economic growth enjoyed by many of the newly independent countries in the 1960s, while the second entailed the ‘rolling back’ of the state that severely curtailed the developmentalist ambitions of the new government. To be sure, in the early post-independence years Zimbabwe’s record of achievement in the provision of social services especially education and health care was very impressive. But it was unsustainable following the imposition of structural adjustment programs, which, as in much of Africa, took a heavy toll on the economy particularly social services and formal and public sector employment. In fact, the austerities of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) galvanized the increasingly pauperised urban middle classes and the rural masses still awaiting their fruits of Uhuru into the wave of protests and agitation that crystallized into struggles for democratization, for the ‘second independence.’

…

By the late 1990s the comrades in power could no longer fool their beloved masses in the rural areas, the restive armies of unemployed educated youths in the cities, and the workers flexing their industrial muscles and discovering a new political voice through mushrooming civil society organizations and the MDC.

…

By the end of the 1990s both rural and urban discontent were growing. Indeed, the rural areas bore the brunt of economic decline engendered by the draconian regime of structural adjusment imposed with missionary zeal by the gendarmes of global capitalism—the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This was compounded by political terror as the increasingly besieged regime sought to shore up its dwindling legitimacy and tattered revolutionary credentials by tightening its grip on the peasantry, its symbolic and substantive basis of power. The costs of the economic crisis, as manifested in food shortages and the politicization of food relief efforts, finally broke the proverbial patient backs of the peasantry.

Connecting the two, the peasantry and the working classes, the rural and the urban areas, and the country’s other spatial and social divides, including the ethnicized divisions between the old political geographies of Mashonaland and Matabeleland, which the Mugabe regime had manipulated to weaken the opposition and maintain its iron grip on power, was the draconian ‘Operation Murambatsvina,’ officially translated as ‘Operation Clean Up,’ but literally translated as ‘getting rid of the filth,’ through which the government sought to drain the cities including Harare, the capital, of political opposition. The operation was launched in 2005 and affected more than two million people. The bulk of the MDC’s parliamentary seats from previous elections were located in the cities.

This criminal evacuation program, which was widely condemned within Zimbabwe and internationally including by the United Nations, led to the destruction of the informal sector in the cities and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people many of whom flocked to the increasingly destitute rural areas. This not only exacerbated rural poverty, but also helped dissolve some of the social and political boundaries, both real and imagined, between the rural and urban areas and dwellers, which raised national consciousness and reinforced opposition to the former liberation heroes turned into predators in power.

…

The violence and polarisation became even more evident in the election of March 2008. Preliminary indications were that the MDC was poised for victory both in the parliamentary and presidential elections. The government unleashed massive intimidation against the opposition and their supporters and perpetrated voter fraud, which provoked widespread condemnation at home and abroad. Both SADC and the United Nations tried to intervene. It took more than a month before the final results were declared after being doctored to prevent a run-off—the winner needed more than 50% for outright victory. Finally, on May 2 the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced that the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had received 47.9% of the vote, trailed by President Mugabe who received 43.2%, and the rest went to minor candidates. For the Parliamentary elections the MDC secured 100 seats and the breakaway MDC-Mutambara 10 seats, while the ruling ZANU-PF garnered 99 seats. In the Senate ZANU-PF claimed 57 seats, MDC 24, and MDC-Mutambara 12.

Despite international condemnation and interventions, violence and intimidation against the opposition continued, which saw dozens of people killed. The MDC decided to withdraw from the second round of presidential elections scheduled for June 27, 2008. President Mugabe won 85.51% of the vote in a much-reduced turnout placed at 42.37%. He was sworn in immediately after the results were announced. The regional bloc and the African Union called for Government of National Unity (GNU) between ZANU-PF and the MDC, which was eventually formed in early 2009 under which Morgan Tsvangirai became Prime Minister. It was a bloated government with two deputy vicepresidents, two deputy prime ministers, 31 ministers, 8 ministers of state, 20 deputy ministers, and 9 provincial governors.

The oversize government was not matched by its efficacy, let alone were the political divisions overcome. Indeed, as with most marriages of convenience, it was a fragile, acrimonious, and temporary union that crumbled several years later. To be sure, under the GNU, the economy recovered from the economic crisis of the 2000s that was characterized by endemic shortages of goods, hyperinflation measured in the trillions, the collapse of educational institutions and health facilities, massive unemployment, and migrations of an estimated 3-5 million to South Africa and other neighbouring countries as well as Europe and North America.

…

The political respite that came with the containment of the MDC proved short-lived. Assured of its political dominance, ZANU-PF turned inward, and intra-party contestations over the post-Mugabe era heated up. As in many other dictatorships in post-colonial Africa, openly discussing the president’s fraility and demise were taboo. But everyone knew the old man was on his last legs as evidence mounted of his growing physical and mental infirmity. Predictably, the struggle centered on the position of the Vice-Presidency in which intra-Shona ethnic, generational, and gender cleavages reared their ugly heads. Ideology had long ceased to be a factor notwhitstanding invocations of tired socialist rhetoric and empty obeisance to protecting and promoting the ‘revolution.’

In recent years the intra-ZANU conflict has centered on the war veterans’ and postlibration generations coalesced around two key protagonists. On the one hand is the 75-year old Vice President, Mr. Mnangwaga, the cunning and ruthless ‘Crocodile’ infamous for orchestrating the Matabeleland massacres of 1983. On the other is the Generation 40 faction of post-liberation apparatchiks and looters beholden to the President’s wife, the combative 52 year old Ms. Grace Mugabe, who had since acquired an insatiable hunger for power beyond her earlier shopping addiction. Both sought the ouster of Ms. Joice Mujuru, a renowned war veteran in her own right, as Vice President, which happened in December 2014. Soon after Ms. Mujuru was expelled from ZANU-PF. Mr. Mnangwagwa and Ms. Mugabe fell into openly bitter jostling for power within ZANU-PF and for the president’s ear. The latter enjoyed the upper hand of marital intimacy and the support of the G40, while the former had the support of the war veterans and most crucially the military.

The reckoning came following the ouster of Mr. Mnangwagwa as Vice President on November 8, 2017. For the military and political elite that had accumulated vast wealth in an increasingly impoverished country and enjoyed political power for decades the prospects of Ms. Mugabe and the G40 supplanting them was anathema. They struck back on November 15. The hapless President quickly discovered that the weary population was not on his side as it marched in the streets of Harare with ecstacy not seen since independence. Even his party seemed more interested in protecting its hold on power and economic interests than in protecting him. Party branches passed no confidence votes in him and an emergency meeting was called to formally remove him as party leader. As with many dictators power oozed out of the once beloved and longdreaded President’s hands like air out of a deflated balloon.

…

The immediate trigger of President Mugabe’s fall came from the regime’s failure to manage the transition from the nation’s octogenarian founder to a successor and new political dispensation. The fratricidal conflict in ZANU-PF between the two generations means that the struggle for Zimbabwe’s future, the country of my birth whose struggles for liberation I cherish and whose bright future I yearn for, means the post-Mugabe era will be a troubled one. The vicious struggle between the two factions is less about charting a more productive future for the country, and more about safeguarding their ill-gotten wealth built on the carcasses of deepening poverty for millions of workers and peasants, not to mention the immiseration of significant sections of the middle classes. In short, both factions have profiteered from President Mugabe’s political repression and economic plunder.

Read full article at http://tinyurl.com/y9482jja

Op-Ed: Beware ‘Crocodile’ Mnangagwa – Zanu-PF is not renewing, it is a snake shedding its old skin

Leon Mighti

Daily Maverick, 21 Nov 2017

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y9h6k982

Those who believe Robert Mugabe should be punished for crimes against humanity and stand trial, I agree with you. If you believe that then you must believe the same for the number one henchman, Emmerson Mnangagwa. We cannot have a fresh start without a full account from Mugabe and Mnangagwa about what they did, who they did it with, and why they did it.

Let me share my Zim story with you.

When my mother fell pregnant at the age of 19, the first thing she did was buy life assurance. She didn’t want her only son to suffer in case something happened to her. So, she went to Old Mutual and got the best life assurance package they had. I sometimes see those adverts in the morning and think of it. Pay such and such at 20 and get R3-million if something happens.

My mother never thought that she would only live to be 29. She passed away so suddenly. There was a big fight for custody and perhaps even because of that life assurance policy. When it was all over we were well into the post-2000 Zimbabwe. That funeral policy ended up being worth less than the amount of taxi fare it cost to travel to the bank.

My mother worked all those years for nothing. Think about that for a second if you are a person who pays life assurance today. Politics can mess up your bank balance and wipe away a lifetime of sweat and tears. That’s how I was personally affected by the Mugabe era.

When I, like millions of others, ran away to try to pursue my dreams elsewhere. I had nothing. I struggled to pay for my fees at Wits. I was homeless for years and watched my peers graduate and buy cars while I stood selling earphones on the university library steps.

I left Zim back then because I had nothing, I wanted to be somebody and have something like the boys in my classes at CBC. I left Zim coz of the poverty I was tired of breathing every day. I left Zim because I wanted to be a doctor so badly but I didn’t have a chance in Zim (my marks were good but not good enough) at the one medical school that was present at the time. Only 200 could make it in and there was no graduate entry programme.

When my father died he was a plumber for the national railway services, the NRZ. He was a foreman and was damned good at what he did. One of my uncles (his cousin) loved to mock him for being a handyman but he loved that job and the dignity it offered him to provide for his family.

When he passed away he died a pauper. He was making less than R500 a month – when the government chose to pay. …

My father did his best to give me the best education; he gave me an education he could never afford. I went to Marist Brothers in Dete, and I was always one of the people who had to explain my fees situation. My trunk was never full, and Kudzai Mucheriwa is my witness. But my Dad did the best he could. I even went to CBC in Bulawayo and my stepmother hated it, she complained daily. I will never forget what my father said to her, “If we have to eat amacimbi (mopane worms) daily till he finishes school, we will eat amacimbi daily.”

He would do piece jobs for pennies in the many months that government did not pay. My father died still walking to work coz he could not afford to catch a taxi. From Northend to the NRZ close to the factories, in Bulawayo. If you know that area, imagine a qualified technical graduate, top of his class, a man who once managed city of Bulawayo water systems, a foreman for years. Walking to work.

Under Mugabe my father watched his dreams and efforts to create something of value for his family melt away. He tried to get into another country like so many others did to escape that suffocating poverty but it caught up with him…

I tell you those true personal stories to preface this next sentence.

I hate Robert Mugabe.

I haven’t shared how one of my grandmothers told me horror stories about some of what happened to her friends and family during Gugurahundi (the notorious massacres). She used to cringe when she saw that mass murderer on TV speaking as if he was God’s gift to Africa and Zimbabwe.

I hate Robert Mugabe.

I hate him so much I have obsessed over him, studying him, studying his rise to power and how he was able to destroy so many lives. How could one man do this. It was at that point that I realised he was NEVER ACTING ALONE.

I know that he did not do what he did alone. He had some people co-starring with him in this movie of Evil that we have all been watching since 1979. Joshua Nkomo warned people back then not to vote for an Idi Amin. He meant Mugabe, he had seen enough to make the conclusion; they say character is prologue.

So today I want to caution against dancing in the streets for the next Idi Amin whose governmental and leadership CV is as horrific as that of Mugabe, the number one disciple of Mugabe for 41 years. The co-star of the Robert Mugabe show.

Mr Emmerson (Crocodile by reputation) Mnangagwa.

If I hate Mugabe, I must also hate this man; there is no Mugabe without Mnangagwa. Two sides of the proverbial coin.

…

So having said all of this we have to truly consider if this is a #Freshstart for Zimbabwe?

Those who believe Mugabe should be punished for crimes against humanity and stand trial, I agree with you. If you believe that then you must believe the same for the number one henchman Mnangagwa. We cannot have a fresh start without a full account from Mugabe and Mnangagwa about what they did, who they did it with, why they did it. Until those people in those “affected” areas are made whole. Until they receive justice and closure. It was not a moment of madness as Mugabe and Mnangagwa have said on record, it was an intentional, calculated mass execution on ethnic grounds of innocent civilians. To put it in perspective, 30,000 lives were lost in the fight for independence, and just three years after getting it more than 20,000 people never lived to see it because Mugabe and Mnangagwa had to settle a tribal score with Mzilikazi and Lobengula.

For those who believe that Mugabe must account for all the farms that ended up belonging to his wife and not the people, Mnangagwa must account for the same corruption, he owns many farms too, and so do many military generals. The economic and social crimes that they see all of a sudden, both the Lacoste faction and the G40 faction committed those crimes against the dowry of Chimurenga that is not theirs to self-appropriate. Mnangagwa must explain what happened to the 15-billion. Is this what he used to pay the army for its loyalty? Those are blood diamonds, for sure.

For those who say Mugabe has been rigging elections, has been suppressing rights of the people to movement, to free speech, to fair trial. To all those people I say you are absolutely right. Mugabe did all those things, and he did them with Mnangagwa. Who helped Mugabe arrest journalists and activists, where is Dzamara? Mnangagwa must tell us where they buried him.

…

Read full article at http://tinyurl.com/y9h6k982

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Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Dimitris Koutsoumbas: “Socialism in the 20th century proved its superiority in comparison with capitalism”

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/11/dimitris-koutsoumbas-socialism-in-20th.html

The Secretary General of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, delivered the central speech during the KKE’s political and cultural event for the 100 years since the Great October Socialist Revolution that took place on Sunday 26th November in Athens / Source: inter.kke.gr. 

In his speech, the SG of the CC of KKE noted that “The October Revolution is neither an accident of history, nor a Bolshevik coup d’etat, as the capitalists declare and write, nor immature and early, as all kinds of apostates and oportunists-adventurists declare and write”  and added that “The October Revolution has been the climactic world-historic event of the 20th century that sounded the start of the era when the working class would become the protagonist of the developments and would push forward the wheel of history, taking over the power and organizing the new socialist-communist relations of production, reforming the whole society. (…) The October Revolution gave impulse to the international revolutionary movement and filled with optimism the struggle of the peoples around the world, accelerated the process for the founding of a series of communist parties. Our Party, is a product of the revolutionary flame of October. In a few days we will welcome year 2018, year of climax for the celebration of the 100 years of the honored and heroic Communist Party of Greece.”

D. Koutsoumbas underlined that “The Bolsheviks won because they worked with patience, with audacity, primarily because they worked with a plan of political, organizational and military preparation for the revolt in conditions of revolutionary situation” and added: “We hold up high the flag of revolutionary struggle. In our 20th Congress we placed the marker even higher, we put the urgent duty of consolidating the KKE. A strong KKE so that our party becomes able, as a party of social overthrow, to succeed in his historical vanguard role, utilizing and deepening the contradictions and antitheses of the capitalist system with the class struggle. A Party able to lead the struggle of the working class and of the whole people, for the regroupment of the trade-union movement, for the forward push of the social alliance in an antimonopoly – anticapitalist direction, against imperialist war, for the working class power.” 

The SG of the CC of KKE underlined that “The working class has proved that it can, it has the ability and possibility, as the only truly revolutionary class, to bring about its historical mission, to lead the cosmogonia of the building of socialism-communism. Our eyes, our mind and our way of thinking, are not blurred by the counter-revolution and the overthrows that took place. That is why, today, our priority is the regroupment of the working class movement from the situation of recession that is in today, that today more and more workers realize who is the real enemy and where their struggle should be directed to. (…) No struggle gains class orientation, stability and endurance, when the worker adopts the aims of the capital, of the national and international bourgeoisie for “bigger competitiveness” as his own. (…)

 

In order for the working class to assert the power, it must form its own social alliance with the poor peasants, the oppressed strata of the city. With the struggle of the Bolsheviks, it became possible, that the poor peasantry ally with the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. That alliance came up victorious, the alliance of all the oppressed with which the soldiers sided, the sons of the people that where serving in the war.

 

This experience confirms that the hope, the alternative are not to be found in the summit agreements but in the alliance of all the oppressed, in the movement, where all can meet together and walk towards the road of clash in order to really ascend to power.

 

The experience of October has confirmed that the working class due to its place in capitalist production is objectively the only revolutionary class, the builder of the socialist-communist society and consequently the leading force in relation to the rest of the popular forces.

 

Only the working class movement can assume complete revolutionary characteristics, can transform in a revolutionary movement.

 

Our proposal of the social alliance corresponds to the effort that the popular strata, through the struggle, as potential allies of the working class, and their respective movements, to be pulled more or less actively in the revolutionary struggle, or to become neutralized.

 

The Social Alliance that the KKE is proposing, in anticapitalist-antimonopoly direction, has to do with social forces, namely, the working class, the salaried employees of the public sector, the self-employed professionals, small craftsmen, small tradesmen, scientists, self-employed farmers.”

 

D.Koutsoumbas in his speech made reference to the imperialist interventions and wars that are breaking out today and maintained that: “October practically confirmed that the struggle for the exit of the imperialist war is inextricably connected with the struggle for worker’s power, and this strategy of the Bolsheviks was confirmed 100 years ago. That is the experience that we want to discuss, particularly today that the contradictions, the antagonisms, among powerful forces of the international capitalist establishment passes through our region: the Balkans, the Aegean Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. In the focus of the antagonism there are the routes of transport of energy and commodities between monopoly groups of powerful imperialist states, regarding which will prevail in the share that is already developing in our country. We have already told that the Greek bourgeois class, through the SYRIZA-ANEL government, is claiming share, selling the new dangerous “great idea”, of the so-called “geostrategical upgrading of the country” in the context of NATO. We warn: It is only an upgrade of the geostrategical implication of the Greek ruling class in wars and interventions in the area, in missions of Greek troops out of the national borders, in upgrading the US death-dealing bases, including the ones that host nuclear weapons. And this is what the SYRIZA-ANEL government sold during the recent visit of Tsipras in the USA, apart from praises for Trump.”

 

The SG of the CC called “our people to not take position “under foreign banners”, to not shed its blood for foreign interests.” and added: “In the case of a more direct participation of Greece in an imperialist war, the working class should chart its own struggle along with the popular strata and their movement, in order to defend the territorial integrity of the country and in order for the people to win against the bourgeois power of exploitation and of wars or of the so-called peace with the peoples’ at gun-point.”

 

D. Koutsoumbas highlighted the achievements of socialism and made extensive reference to them undelining that “Socialism in the 20th century proved its superiority in comparison with capitalism, the immense advantages that provides for the work and the life of the workers. The Soviet Union and the international socialist system comprised the only true counter-weight to imperialist aggression.” Talking about the advantages of socialism he noted that “All the economic tools come under the service of the people. The mineral wealth, the infrastructure and machinery of industry, energy, telecommunications, transports, commerce, land, industrialized agricultural and livestock production become social property. The natural wealth producing resources become social property, the commerce becomes state-owned. With these tools the new power can plan centrally its economy, galvanize the development of the sectors of economy, of the peripheries. That is exactly why it can absorb all the unemployed, can guarantee the right to work. To abolish economic activity in health-care and prevention, to develop an exclusively free and public system of health-care-prevention, to develop people’s culture and sports. In can develop agricultural production next to the socialized sector of economy, organizing firstly a transitional form of productive cooperatives, provide the people with enough healthy food products and provide industry with raw materials. It can shape the conditions to expunge the causes of women’s inequality and support the relations between the two genders with complete infrastructures, their willingness to form a family, without any economic motive, protecting motherhood, the children, the elderly. The workers’ power, disentangling our country form the shackles of EU and NATO, will intend to develop interstate relations with mutual benefit, among Greece and other countries, particularly with countries that their level of development, the nature of their problems and of their immediate interests can guarantee such a beneficial cooperation. The working class of Greece is not alone. It has and will have the workers of the whole world at its side. Our slogan is “Proletarians of all countries, Unite!”

 

The SG of the CC of the KKE, expressing the steadfast conviction of the Communists of Greece noted that “The era of socialist revolutions is ahead of us. The dashing entry of the working class and popular forces in the revolutionary struggle will sweep away sooner or later capitalist barbarism, imperialism aggressiveness. October illuminates the struggle of the peoples, socialism is a necessity of our times”.

Αναρτήθηκε από In Defense of Communism

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Communist Party of Turkey (TKP): Tayyip Erdogan and his government must resign immediately!

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/11/communist-party-of-turkey-tkp-tayyip.html

The Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) has released a statement calling on Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan to resign immediately following the reports showing the engagement of family members of Erdogan in the transaction of millions of dollars to a foreign company via offshore bank accounts in the Isle of Man, soL international reports.

The statement came on late November 28 just after Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) chair Kemal KılıçdaroÄŸlu showed some documents during a parliamentary speech, accusing Erdogan’s family of getting involved in the transaction of millions of dollars to a foreign company via offshore bank accounts in the tax haven Isle of Man.

TKP: ‘RESIGN IMMEDIATELY!’

 

“We know for years what ErdoÄŸan and his family have done within the triangle of religion-money-politics. Not only Erdogan and his family, but also almost all the leading cadres of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have become skilled in converting politics and religion to money,” the TKP statement reads.

Indicating that ErdoÄŸan, his family and the government are all involved in tax evasion, bribery and corruption, the TKP statement continues, “Everyone knows that the allegations are true. ‘Lies, false documents,’ screams the palace [of Erdogan], the government and the pro-government media,” adding that it was the government which sent many people behind the bars through false documents.

As the TKP statement goes on, Erdogan’s palace, government and media argue that they are facing an international operation, thus calling on everyone to defend ErdoÄŸan against this “anti-Turkey plot”.

“It is true that Erdogan has been the target of an international operation for some time. That is why secret tape recordings, documents are revealed. That is why a coup was attempted on July 15. Among the imperialists, some either attempt to control ErdoÄŸan and his team, whom they supported and used for many years, more tightly or to throw them away,” the TKP statement puts forth.

‘ERDOÄžAN MUST PAY THE PRICE OF HIS CRIMES’

 

The statement underlines that Erdogan must pay the price of his crimes himself since he attacked the people with Islamism, privatizations and the plunder of national resources with the support of local and foreign monopolies, the European Union and the U.S.

The TKP says that the imperialist operation does not absolve Erdogan’s AKP government, but shows that the people must get rid of the AKP party as immediate as possible. “Turkey under the rule of ErdoÄŸan and the AKP is open to all kinds of operation, blackmailing, traps. Because there are many crimes, all of which have been documented,” the statement underlines.

Calling on the people to stand against Erdogan, his local and foreign capitalist accomplices and the imperialist countries at the same time, the TKP statement concludes:

“ErdoÄŸan and the government, resign!

Down with imperialism!

No to NATO and the European Union!”

Αναρτήθηκε από In Defense of Communism