José Reinaldo Carvalho*

Nowadays, humankind undergoes an intensive offensive by imperialism, especially the United States’, which affects the workers’ rights and the sovereignty of nations. A conservative wave is in progress along with a counter-revolutionary cycle – an offensive led by the United States to impose its supremacy – that has destroyed the social and democratic achievements reached in the 20th Century. These achievements are the results of the revolutionary fights and of the socialist system’s existence in many countries for decades. Under that offensive the progressive values and advanced ideas retrocede while all sorts of reactionary and counter-revolutionary conceptions prevail. It is the darkest and the most dangerous moment in modern history, full of threats to civilization and to the very survival of humankind.

The capitalist system’s impasses are intense and irremovable. The economic policies imposed by financial capital generated monstrous social situations, enabling the existence of an unsustainable economic model condemned to fail. The spoliation of the poor countries by the imperialists increases, the super exploitation of the working class intensifies, the class offensive proceeds, which consists in cutting social rights. No cosmetic reform within the capitalism’s scope appears to be able to offer perspectives of progressive development through the national society and social justice’s recovery. Neoliberalism has caused irreversible damage to the peoples and workers that can only be overcome with revolutionary ruptures and with the transition to the Socialism.

In the political field, peoples face a violent process of militarization, authoritarian trends, attacks to the democratic rights and mainly the North-American imperialism domination strategy that consists in imposing its power through the occupation of countries, in the political and military intervention, in preventive and pro-active wars under the excuse of fighting against “terrorism” and the “axis of evil”. The North-American imperialism has established the military aggression, the intimidation and the State terrorism as the preferential methods to the exercise of its hegemony, ignoring the International Law, demeaning the United Nations and other multilateral organizations and making impracticable the conflicts solution by diplomatic ways.

Expressing the essence of its imperialist nature and manifesting the trends emanating from the deepest strata of the capitalist system and of the decadent American society, the ultra-conservative administration of George W. Bush outlined the strategy of imposing the United States’ supremacy on the world by means of its immense military power and by declaring war to all peoples and nations that constitute obstacles to the fulfillment of their designs. That is the position adopted by imperialism in a framework of aggravating contradictions in the capitalist system. That is his response to the evidences of decline in their economic hegemony. Imperialism, by declaring infinite war, cannot find “solutions” to its economic and social problems elsewhere but in war, giving clear signs that the beginning of its end is being announced.

In the congress debate of Brazilian communists we realize, with realism and revolutionary optimism, that the exercise of the imperialist power and the manifestations of the Capitalism’s systemic crisis originate counter-trends and stimulate the peoples and workers’ resistance. The peoples all over the world resist and fight for peace, for national independence and against the spoliation and the exploitation created by the capitalist system and its new-liberal policies. Communists must not be blind by the functional ideological smuggling of the imperialism’s offensive. It is in season to designate as “catastrophist” every intense diagnosis about the capitalism’s crisis and as “volunteerism” the confirmation that the only way left to the proletariat and to the peoples is the revolutionary accumulation of forces aiming the rupture with the ruling system. Usually these kinds of attacks cover a defensive posture that is the antithesis of revolutionary tactics and serve as shield to pragmatism, which consists in a justification to adapt itself to the narrow limits of the possibility searching ways of co-existing with the new-liberal order. We communists need to creatively apply to the theoretical materials of the dialectical and historical materialism in order to find solutions to the tragic historical impasse that the humanity lives nowadays. And above all we must work in awakening the peoples about the need to fight against the brutal policies imposed by the capitalist-imperialist system or they will succumb to Barbarity by the manifestation of the most violent of the social diseases or by the environmental devastation or even by the wars.

The idea that there is no alternative to neoliberalism and to the rule of imperialism is false. Far from being a realist conclusion, it is an equivocal understanding of reality, a capitulating adaptation to a very unfavorable correlation of forces and to a political situation that is excessively difficult to revolutionary forces. In fact, the creator of that concept is the president of the United States, George Bush, who has declared that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, a single and sustainable model to national success appeared – that of freedom, democracy and free initiative, according to his words. And that any country that rejects that route and model would be condemned to failure and considered a member of the so-called axis of evil. We also had believers and heralds of the single model. Former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso even called the capitalist globalization the “new renaissance”. The Brazilian people repelled him.

Aware of the difficulties, of the dimensions of the challenges and of the new responsibilities as a force of the transforming national and social struggle, the Brazilian communists, being sure that they share the same opinion and feeling with the world’s revolutionary trends, dare to proclaim in this tribune the 11th Congress of PCdoB: imperialism is not invincible and will be defeated! We are corroborated by the Iraqi resistance, the heroic struggle of Palestinians, the tenacious resistance in Cuba, the democratic and patriotic struggles all over Latin America, the advances in the Bolivarian Revolution, the movement for peace, the social struggle of workers against the neoliberal policies. To the peoples, the alternative is to fight, to open paths, to resist, and to accumulate forces. It is never to capitulate. And we communists have the duty to unfold perspectives, elaborate fair orientations and affirmations and to adopt correct strategic and methodological procedures in the long-term organization of the new anti-imperialist struggle and of the renewed strategy of struggle for socialism.

Internationalist activity

It is in this contradictory landscape that the internationalist dimension of our activity assumes an outstanding position in the complex of political and ideological, masses’ and organizing work. Keeping the Brazilian people’s fights for its national and social liberation as its main reference, PCdoB understands that nowadays the internationalist force recovers its strength and importance. The worldwide offensive of imperialism and bourgeoisie against the national sovereignty, the democracy and the workers and peoples’ rights impose to the progressive and revolutionary forces a coordinated action, which will be translated into different forms of cooperation and efforts coordination. Objectively the imperialism’s coordinated and globalized action will be opposed to the peoples’ actions. The simultaneous journeys for peace, the Social Forum, the continental campaigns for demands that surpass the national borders, dialectically coordinated with each people’s national fights and with the working class’ fights in national scopes will constitute even more the highlight of our activity and of our movement.

Correlatively, new forms of cooperation, of efforts coordination and of organization will arise and we will need to support these new forms after examining each of them. Besides a different range of masses’ movements and organizations in an international scope, we need to concentrate our attention in the international areas of cooperation between parties and political movements.

In this aspect we need to emphasize that the main compromise of PCdoB is with the re-launching and the strengthening of the communist parties and of their unity. That is why our Party participates in the “Meeting of Working and Communist Parties” that takes place every year since 1.998 in Athens, Greece. The eightieth version of this meeting, which organization was in charge of a task force that included PCdoB will happen next November having as central theme the current tendencies of capitalism and its reflections in the communists’ political and alternative lives. This meeting represents the biggest initiative of multilateral character aiming to join the communist parties since the overthrow of the socialist field in the beginning of the 1.990s. This meeting also counts with 70 to 80 Communist parties including the ones that are presently in power. It is still valid our Party’s valuation that the conditions to the creation of organic instances of the communist movement or even the conditions to the constitution of a well-structured communist pole have not matured yet. But with no doubt, the Meetings in Athens constitute a significant step in the direction of strengthening the communist stream in the world.

We also appraise, by participating actively, the meeting of Communist Parties of Latin America and Europe that happens since 2001 in South America. Of smaller dimensions, this meeting is also of great utility to strengthen the cooperation between all Communist Parties.

According to the wide policy of our Party and to the right conception that is necessary to create systems of flexible alliances and of wide spectrum to fight the imperialism, the participation in forums of multiparty fronts and of social and political movements characters is one of the most important aspects of our internationalist activity. Thus, our Party has been an active force at the Forum of São Paulo, which consists in a Left and Center-Left wings articulation, created by an initiative of the Brazilian PT (Workers’ Party) in 1.990. In its 12th edition, the Forum of São Paulo has consolidated itself despite many moments of impasses resulted from some relationship difficulties between the revolutionary and reformist forces. Without giving up its revolutionary principles, our Party acts in this scope with a union’ spirit fighting for the consolidation of the anti-imperialist character of the Forum of São Paulo. In the same way, we take part in the Bolivarian Congress of Peoples, an initiative of the Movement of the Fifth Republic of Venezuela where parties and social and political movements are gathered.

The candescent themes

The PCdoB’s internationalist activity does not happen aside life. It is inherently related to the big social and political coalitions in progress in Brazil, in the region and also in the world. In large scale, this activity consists in clearing ways to the national liberation fight and to the Socialism in the contemporary world’s new conditions. Also consists in formulating, in cooperation with other communist and progressive parties and in accordance with our general policy, the order words and the tactical proceedings to the concentration of revolutionary forces and in participating actively in the extensive and combative masses’ actions with an anti-imperialist character.

Considering that the imperialism put the war and the countries occupations in the center of its domination’s strategy, the first issue of the Party’s internationalist activity became the fight for peace and against the imperialist war. It is a matter of revolutionary label with a popular, patriotic and class character because it faces the struggle against the great capitalist powers’ political essence, mainly the United States’. It is a label that due to its wideness and its accordance to the progressive humanity aspirations it is able to join and to mobilize millions of people.

The fight for peace is inherently related to the active solidarity to the peoples and countries attacked by the imperialism. The heroic resistance of the Iraqi and Afghan peoples, the first victims of the preventive wars of the Bush Administration, must deserve a decisive support by all communists. Moreover, the Palestine people have our solidarity and support in their fight against the Zionist-imperialist occupation and in the creation of their national State.

The internationalist activity of the Communist Party of Brazil is mainly directed to strengthen the progressive trends in progress in Latin America and the fight for the peoples and countries integration with a sovereign and anti-imperialist character. In this way, the Party joins the initiatives of the progressive governments in the region beginning with the Brazilian government of President Lula, which have pushed a variety of integration processes, all of them alternative and in opposition to FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas)– an annexationist and new-colonialist plan that continue to be rejected by the Latin American peoples and that deserve a strong and multifaceted opposition of our Party and of the other Brazilian progressive forces. In the burning Latin American political landscape, the internationalist activity of our Party must continue to give support and solidarity to the Socialist Cuba, to the Bolivarian Venezuela and to all the fight processes with a liberating character. We must fight against the Colombia Plan and any interventionist endeavor of the United States. Thus, it is necessary to strengthen the vigilance considering the proposal announced at the OAS (Organization of American States) of creating mechanisms to control the democracy and the dangerous concessions of the Paraguayan government under the USA’s military pressure. This proposal was condemned by the majority of countries that takes part in this organization.

In the present world the contradictions between the sovereign nations and the imperialist system increase. And this originates a progressive trend that consists in the fight for the consolidation of the developing countries national sovereignty, which is translated into a great number of international events including in the economic, commercial and diplomatic terrains and which our Party valorizes as an important front of fighting. In this way, we see our presence in the Brazilian government’s coalition as a positive factor because it puts into practice an affirmative foreign policy centered in the defense of Brazil’s national sovereignty and of all developing countries’.

In the global landscape of the peoples’ fight, the existence of socialist countries has a positive influence. The PCdoB internationalist activity has as one of its most important aspects the solidarity with these countries and with the communist parties that conduct in peculiar and adverse conditions these different processes of transition and of construction of the new society.

In the guise of a balance

The internationalist activity of our party has shown to be an inseparable part of the Party’s general political work. The adopted political guideline was that of the 10th Congress, with the hues and peculiarities of each concrete situation.

The policy of war of the United States’ imperialism received the most energetic condemnation. We had the understanding to identify in the struggle for peace, against the imperialist war and all its aggressive and interventionist policies the great banner that is able to mobilize broad popular masses and political forces. We transmit that understanding to all multilateral forums in which we participate, we guide the militants and our area of influence to actively participate in mobilizations and campaigns for peace. We offer active solidarity to attacked peoples. PCdoB was an energetic force to denounce the wars waged against Afghanistan and Iraq, the occupation of Palestine by the Israeli Zionist state, the siege and blockade to socialist Cuba, the recurring coup attempts against the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and the United States’ intervention in the Colombian conflict. A highlight in the application of that orientation was the creation of Cebrapaz, a unitary and mass organization focused in the struggle for peace and international solidarity. The development of Cebrapaz is outstanding with the formation of representations in states, the organization of campaigns, the intervention in the World Social Forum and the participation in significant international events.

PCdoB has also made efforts to fight neocolonialist policies and plans in Latin America, especially those that affect the continent and national sovereignty in our country. We have not hesitated for a moment in conducting, along with other forces, the struggle against the FTAA, participating in popular mobilizations, in international meetings, in parties and social movements. Likewise, we have participated in other campaigns being developed in Latin America against the presence of United States’ bases, against the spoliation of foreign capital by means of indebtedness, against the unequal trade and protectionism of wealthy countries and for the integration of countries and peoples and of the Latin American continent.

The period since the 10th Congress was fruitful in deepening and consolidating PCdoB’s bilateral and multilateral relations with communist parties from all parts of the world by means of delegations and exchanges, of participation in the multilateral Congresses and Forums mentioned previously. PCdoB is a renowned and respected force among fraternal parties.

One of the greatest patrimonies of the Party in the international field are the successes achieved in the single front work, in the exercise of a policy of alliances, which is expressed by our participation in party forums and social movement forums, in which we have acted as a force that contributes to the unity of the anti-imperialist force. That way, we have also obtained prestige and influence in the international scene among democratic, progressive, patriotic and left-wing forces in general.

As part of the Party’s general political activity, PCdoB’s internationalist activity stood out in the field of theoretical and political formulation and elaboration, which resulted in the elaboration of guidelines, the update of the Party’s orientation regarding the international area and the adoption of orientations to the work of internationalist solidarity. That aspect of the activity of the Secretary of International Relations has an important meaning of ideological education and communist formation, being directly related to the struggle to defend the Party’s identity. Among other results of that effort we can mention a political and ideological contribution carried out within the scope of understanding the reality in all its aspects – political, economic, social and cultural ones. According to our limitations and very modest conditions and possibilities, we have taken significant steps in the interpretation of phenomena related to capitalism’s chronic and systemic crisis, to imperialism’s political and structural crisis – especially the United States’ imperialism –, to its long historical decline. Likewise, the Party has made advances in understanding the international political framework and the present correlation of forces in the anti-imperialist struggle for socialism.

Internationalism and patriotism

The internationalism and the patriotism are essential traces of our Party’s policy, ideology and practical activity. Since the Communist Manifesto when Marx and Engels launched the cry “Working men of all countries, unite!” the internationalism is a distinctive trace of the Communist Party’s identity and character. The factor that objectively creates the necessity of the proletariat being internationalist is the identity of class interests resulted from the capitalist exploitation in a global scale. And this is highlighted at the present time, imperialist and of a transnational and globalized capitalism when the ruling classes exercise their power through global policies aiming the extinction of the countries’ national borders and imposing policies of global reach through supranational mechanisms.

At this stage of the capitalist system’s development, the local ruling classes progressively abandon the national interests attaching their destiny to imperialism and to its internationalized economic system. Nothing sounds more false than the promises of love to the country spoken by the theorists and executors of the new-liberal policies and which only increase the deformities of the national development in the field of the dependent capitalism. Thus, the class policy of the national ruling class together with the imperialism is a policy of degradation, weakness and exposure of the national sovereignty.

In such conditions, the people’s and working class fight is even more identified with the national interests. Against the economic and political power centralized in the hands of the pro-imperialist forces, this fight becomes at the same time a class and a national fight. It is a fight of huge dimensions that has the imperialism as target, a powerful enemy with the progressive trends in not favorable conditions in terms of balance of power and that requires from the leading forces – the Communist Party and other revolutionary sectors – the practical and theoretical ability to formulate and execute a wide alliance policy able to gather and to assemble all the intermediate forces of the society, including the extremely nationalist and patriotic trends in a wide national, democratic and popular front to defend the national sovereignty in terms of the fight for a new society.

(*) National Vice-President and International Relations Secretary of the Central Committee of PCdoB