On the 12 October in the Czech republic the capitalist state declared that they would ban the Communist Union of Youth (KSM). The KSM is the youth organization of the Czech and Moravian Communist Party (KSCM), a party which received over 12.8% of the votes in the 2006 elections. This ban had already been threatened for some time. The reasons cited for this repression speak volumes about the class character of the bourgeois state machine.
Already during the preparations for the ban the fact that the KSM identifies itself with the teachings of Marx, Engel and Lenin and publicly proclaims the necessity of a socialist revolution was cited as the reason for this action. Now the Ministry of the Interior as the result of a reply submitted by the KSM, has written that the ban is being carried out because the KSM program refers to the necessity for replacing private ownership of the means of production with social ownership! This ban is nothing less than bourgeois suppression of freedom of expression and especially the suppression of socialist ideas. Protest against this, and international solidarity with the KSM, is not only a basic obligation for all democratic and socialist-minded persons it is also an urgent necessity for all progressive forces in the European Union, which the Czech Republic has been s member of since May 1 2004.
If the bourgeois state machine gets away with repression against communists in the Czech Republic it could serve as an example to other member countries of the EU, including Austria. If the bourgeois state can now forbid organizations, merely because they include in their programme the abolition of capitalist ownership of the means of production, this could affect all left organizations including the Socialist Party of Austria’s youth organisation the Socialist Youth. Repression against the KSM must be seen in the context of a general worldwide dismantling of democratic rights by the imperialist countries taking place at the moment under the disguise of the “War against Terror”.
The recent attacks on the comrades of the MLKP in Turkey as well as against political prisoners, against the F-type-prisoners, the abduction and detention of muslims who defend themselves, the suppression of Islamist organizations by the CIA, the extension and advance of “the surveillance state” – all these are infallible signs, that the imperialism is trying to offset its own crisis and reverse its decline by means of wars and intensified suppression. Against this background, Lenin’s words 90 years ago have renewed relevance:
“The political superstructure of this new economy of monopoly capitalism (imperialism is monopoly capitalism) is the change from democracy to political reaction. (…) Both in foreign and its policy at home imperialism strives towards violations of democracy, towards reaction. (Lenin: A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism)
And, indeed, could one sum up better the essence of the imperialist crusade, the urge for the subordination of the entire globe to the dictates of the capitalist corporations and generals? So too, the views of the co-founder of scientific socialism on the State prove themselves valid:
“ In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.” (Friedrich Engels: Introduction to “the Civil war in France (1891)”
A sentence which on top of the ones above should impress themselves on those who are still one quarter Marxists within the KPÖ (Austrian Communist Party) and the SJ (Socialist Youth). They believe that you can carry out a policy in the interests of the wage earners and youth through a change in the balance of parliamentary forces in Austria and the EU. In flat contradiction to this the naked suppression of a communist organization because on its socialist ideas alone underlines once again the correctness of Lenin’s insistence on the character of bourgeois democracy – that its is only a cover for the dictatorship of the ruling class:
“ In explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilization, bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system, all Socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels namely, that the most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists."
(Lenin: Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and Dictatorship of the Proletariat)
In the present situation worldwide protests against the ban of the KSM and international solidarity with the Czech comrades are essential. Thus ArbeiterInnen Standpunkt fully supports the solidarity rally and demonstration initiated by KI, KJÖ and KSV on Tuesday, 24th October 2006 at 18.00 o’clock in front of the Czech Embassy in Vienna, Penzinger Street 11-13, 1140 Vienna.