In this year of the 20th anniversary of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations, its plenary session, held in Turkey, took on a special significance. The big meeting organized by the EMEP Party of Turkey, on Sunday, November 30, was the highlight of the activities that took place all this year around the Conference and its journal, “Unity and Struggle.” Events took place in Latin America, especially in Ecuador, where our sister party is a founding member of the Conference and which hosted the first meeting in Quito. In several countries, the parties organized the distribution of the issue of the journal dedicated to this anniversary. In Istanbul, several thousand people participated with revolutionary enthusiasm in the meeting organized in a large hall, under the sign of the Conference and internationalism.
A conference in tune with the revolutionary processes
“Twenty years ago, there were 14 of our Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations who met in Ecuador, and now the Conference has 24 members.” This quantitative strengthening, emphasized at the conclusion by the Coordinating Committee, is the result of a great political, ideological and organizational work to defend and propagate Marxism-Leninism, to gain new forces in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe.
The Conference has been strengthened by new members who bring their experience of the revolutionary struggle, their work to organize and lead the working class and popular masses. This is especially the case for the organizations from India and Pakistan, which are participating in a session for the first time. They expanded our field of knowledge about the reality of the struggle of the working class in these countries and the important ideological struggle they are waging against Maoist and revisionist currents, which have a real presence in their countries. These comrades stressed the contribution provided by the journal Unity and Struggle, which they translate and distribute.
In this session, we also had the possibility of discussing the direct experience of several parties involved in the fight to lead the revolutionary process, especially that of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Volta and that of the comrades of the Tunisian Workers’ Party, which in the last parliamentary and presidential elections focused on the needs and proposals of the revolutionary pole.
We also emphasize the contributions of the Party of Labor of Turkey (EMEP), which is waging the fight in a country and region where the aggressions of the imperialist powers are concentrated and where the resistance of the peoples is developing against these wars and against the reactionary forces, such as the Islamic State and other groups trying to impose their reactionary views and practices. As the final resolution of the Conference stated: “organizations such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which are developing in this context, are instruments of the international bourgeoisie and imperialism. Imperialism and finance capital support reaction, especially ones that advocate medieval ‘values’.”
We must also recognize the contributions of the Latin American parties fighting in countries whose governments, in the eyes of much of public opinion, pass for being revolutionary, that claim to be “socialist.” This is particularly the case in Ecuador, where our sister party and the revolutionary organizations are the target of attacks by the government of Correa. This ranges from the illegalization of parties such as the MPD [Democratic Popular Movement] and unions that it does not control. “The workers’ and trade union movement have been leading the restructuring of the workers’ and popular movement,” organizing the resistance and struggles of the workers, who see that billions in public money are going into the great works, “so that the profits of the banks rates reach 27%!” while at the same time, poverty is increasing, even though the government is paying $50 a month to two million people.
“Our Conference will make a leap in the coming years”
The Conference closed with this perspective. It is based on the quantitative and qualitative strengthening, in connection with the deepening of the crisis of the imperialist capitalist system and the rise of workers’ and popular resistance that are taking place everywhere, obviously with different breadth and depth.
Our party was acknowledged in the evaluation by a comrade member of the Coordinating Committee, that “there is not a revolutionary situation on the world scale, but there are weak links in the imperialist chain. One of them is Burkina Faso and we are fortunate to have a Marxist-Leninist party in that country. There are other regions where there are weak links where we do not exist. We must ask ourselves this question: how can we intervene in these processes?”
This obviously requires the work of each party and organization to strengthen itself in its own country. But the Conference has shown that its progress, as an organized force, united on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, is helpful in the work of entrenching the parties in the reality of the class struggle, nationally and internationally. To develop together the work of solidarity with the revolutionary processes in which the Marxist-Leninist parties are fighting to the end, is to aid these parties and peoples. This aids each and all of us in the fight against this system of exploitation, oppression, poverty and wars, for the revolution and socialism.
The Espresso Stalinist 