Greetings from the YCL-LJC of Canada to the 11th Congress of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE). December 19-21, 2014, Athens, Greece.

Delivered by comrade Adrien Welsh, Chair of the YCL-LJC International Commission.

Dear Comrades, members of the presidium, dear delegates,

It is with great pleasure that we greet the 11th Congress of the Communist Youth of Greece being held under the theme “Pioneer youth of KKE – combatively marching for a socialist tomorrow – without crises, wars, and exploitation”.

We believe that this slogan is relevant as it means a lot to the youth, who has nothing to gain from capitalism, but whose interests lay in building a new society based on the collective ownership of the means of production and a planned economy, that is, socialism.

Comrades,

This year marked the 40th anniversary of the April Revolution in Portugal, of the foundation of the Sahrawi anti-imperialist youth organization UJISARIO, and the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of the Military Junta in Greece. On the other hand, it is also the 100th anniversary of the great butchery of WWI which slaughtered close to 40 million people, most of them being young workers and peasants.

While the survivors of this war said “never again”, our conservative government in Canada used this event as a pretext to celebrate militarism and re-write history.

What a shame!

This war took place in the context of the global structural crisis of capitalism, like the one we are living in right now since 2008. Capital, seeking new markets, cheap labour forces and the control over new strategic routes had no choice but to launch a war and strengthen its domination.

The current situation is highly similar to one hundred years ago. This juncture is critical and the dangers of new regional and global wars has to be seriously considered.

As we concluded just one year ago in the final declaration of the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students, “Imperialism continues its aggression with new means, new methods, as well as the traditional methods of wars, occupations and military interventions. The imperialist war machine has never stopped working in order to serve the interests of the monopolies for expansion to the markets of resources and energy routes. In the past few years, militaristic expansion has grown all over the world. The capitalist crisis is worsening the need of monopolies for intensifying the imperialist aggressions and expansions of wars, as it creates realignments in correlation of forces, intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions and competitions.”

The summit of the criminal NATO held in Newport last autumn saw the creation of a Rapid Reaction Force in Eastern Europe starting in 2015, and a new coalition to intervene once again in the Middle-East. As stated by its General Secretary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, “You will see a more visible NATO presence in the East.”

In addition to that, NATO countries agreed to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their military budget, which is guaranteeing militarization.

The deadly Israeli attack against Gaza last summer which murdered more than 2000 Palestinians with more than 10 000 people wounded is just one concrete example among others of the aggressiveness of imperialism.

We could also mention that the conflict in Ukraine, that is, the attacks of the EU and NATO- backed Nazi government that have killed more than 4600 people in the Eastern regions with more than 10 000 injured, plus the displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees. All this is a deliberate plan to isolate Russia and China, two major actors in position to impede the expansion of Western Imperialism in this region.

The recent NATO-led operations in Iraq – the third invasion since 1991 – under the pretext of an Islamic threat posed by Daesh, have no humanitarian roots, as these reactionary groups are funded by key allies of imperialism in the region such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Let’s not forget that the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq led to more than 500 000 deaths. There is no reason for this scenario not to be repeated in 2014. How could such a deadly war be “humanitarian”? In reality, this war too suits the interests of the monopolies: Iraq produces 10% of the world’s oil and has the 5th largest oil reserves. But despite this last point, imperialism’s plan over the whole region is to balkanize all the existing countries in order to subordinate them to its interests.

Syria, Libya, Iraq, and probably soon enough Iran; all these countries that represent an obstacle for imperialism shall be dismantled. This is what the US, Canada, France, Turkey, UK, Germany, Australia and all the Coalition Forces’ mission in the Middle-East is about.

All this worries us and this is why for us, young communists, Canada’s withdrawal from NATO, the armed fist of imperialism, is one of our top priorities.

Comrades,

In our analysis, Canada constitutes a fully imperialist country, with its own interests. Therefore, it participates fully in this belligerent logic, even though it doesn’t necessarily play the leading role.

The Harper Conservative government not only supports the new regime in Kiev, infiltrated by Nazi and fascist elements, but Canada was one of the only three countries, with Ukraine and the US, to have voted against a motion in the UN to condemn nazism and fascism. As a matter of fact, our Prime Minister went as far as funding the creation of a statue in Ottawa commemorating the “victims of communism”. This is an attempt to stand history on its head.

Since the beginning of October, Canada has been fully engaged in the NATO-led coalition in Iraq: 600 soldiers, 3 refuelling planes, 1 transportation plane, and 6 fighter jets were sent for a six months mission. All this in the interests of big tar sands corporations such as Suncrude and Suncor. Moreover, the tragic shooting in Parliament in Ottawa that occurred at the end of October was used as propaganda for Canadian participation in Iraq.

All this, of course, was vehemently denounced by the Young Communists and the Communist Party of Canada while no political party in Parliament had such a clear position. The Liberal and social-democratic parties tried to have a rhetorical opposition to the engagement in Iraq in sight of new elections coming up in 2015. Indeed, how could we believe in their sincerity while they fully supported previous imperialist aggressions in Libya, Mali and Yugoslavia?

We also denounced Harper’s even more pro-Israel position than Obama during this summer’s aggression over Gaza, an aggression that was not even denounced by parties in parliament.

Comrades,

The question now is what to do?

We are here to say that the only way to put an end to all this is by strengthening the fightback in our own country. Imperialism doesn’t exist without capitalism. Fighting the system is the best way to put an end to these wars, imperialist aggressions, national oppression, etc. It is not a coincidence that WWI ended one year after the Great October Socialist Revolution which first tried to build socialism, a system based on mutual respect and international solidarity.

We have come here to ensure you that the Young Communist League – Ligue de la jeunesse communiste will, with unity and militancy, strengthen the fightback in our country.

We are in a context where the action of a strong communist movement is more necessary than ever in order to direct the struggle. Capitalism has shown it cannot provide anything other than war, unemployment, precariousness, environmental destruction, crises, etc.

Last May was the occasion for the YCL-LJC of Canada to hold its 26th Central Convention where delegates from everywhere across the country discussed how, “as the YCL-LJC to give the youth struggle a sense of direction and perspective.” This Convention was held in a hard and difficult moment for the youth which is suffering from austerity in our country: attacks on organized labour, on democratic rights such as the right to unionize and strike, record breaking youth unemployment, as well as ever-higher tuition fees are all challenges that we are facing right now. It has been said that for the first time in our modern history, our generation will live in worse conditions than our parents.

But yet, this doesn’t stop the YCL-LJC from growing and from taking a more and more active part in the struggle. An illustration of this is that our organization keeps growing. We are proud to say that this Convention was the most numerous one since our refounding in 2007 and also marked the first major renewal in leadership since that time.

We should also say that despite the worsening attacks of capital on the youth, important struggles are taking place in Canada which receive full support and participation from the YCL-LJC.

A big movement throughout the country is being formed to defend Canada Post which is now in a process of dismantlement: in an obvious attempt at privatization on the part of Harper Conservative government. Canada is now one of the only countries around the world not providing door-to-door mail delivery. Over the past years, 8000 jobs were lost in this public institution and the jobs of current postal workers are threatened. The current government attacks on this institution are not, as they try and justify it, because of a debt created by Canada Post – which is a direct consequence from a lack of public funding and because of the creation of private subsidies. The attack is aimed at privatization but also because postal workers are amongst the most organized and militant workers in Canada. Therefore, attacking them will have a serious impact over the whole of the labour movement.

Last June saw an important legal victory for Tsilhqot’in First Nation against one of the biggest tar sands oil corporations, Enbridge. The legal has been going on for almost 25 years as the Tsilhqot’in were fighting for their right to self-determination over their ancestral territories, territories which were right in the middle of a pipeline’s path. Finally, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the Nation. Of course, this wasn’t conceded without struggles and pressures from social movements throughout the country. As the Tsilhqot’in outlined, this is a direct consequence of the massive Indigenous movement that emerged in 2012 – 2013 referring to itself as “Idle No More”.

But this was not the end of the story as other pipelines are planned. However, resistance to their construction keeps increasing daily and repression has been, these last few weeks, quite heavy. Actually, one of our Central Executive Committee members was arrested for protesting against these pipelines.

In Québec, the province that saw a 6 months-long general student strike in 2012, important anti-austerity actions are starting to occur and a massive strike of municipal workers is a possibility within the next few months. The newly elected provincial Liberal government – the same one that tried to raise tuition fees by 75% – has engaged in massive austerity measures that include important cuts in education, the centralization of local health services, freezing the wages of public workers and a massive attack on municipal workers’ pension programs (although these workers are paid 11% less than the average workers in the province). The so-called ‘Maple Spring’ which occurred in Québec in 2012, is not over…

Also we should say that this summer was the occasion for an important gathering of the social and labour movements in Ottawa, the People’s Social Forum, which we supported actively as it was an opportunity for us to promote our political program and bring together labour and social movements.

All these examples illustrate how broader sections of the popular classes are revolting against the system. It is among them that we have to promote our political program for a better world without exploitation, crises, wars and unemployment. And this world cannot be achieved in any other way than through building socialism.

Comrades,

We would like to conclude by outlining the tremendous work you, comrades from Greece, are achieving organizing the youth in your country and giving them a clear perspective of a “socialist tomorrow”. We are aware that Greece is certainly one of the countries most ravaged by the power of the monopolies, by the European Union of Capital, by the economic crisis of capitalism – in short, by capitalism itself. Despite these difficult conditions in which you struggle, we know that you will manage to successfully organize the youth in your country and that you play a vanguard role towards the overthrow of capitalism and for the construction of socialism, as was demonstrated by the latest general strike of November 27th.

Finally, we would like to thank you for letting us bring these greetings to the Congress that we hope will be very fruitful and will fulfil the needs of the youth of your country.

Ζιτω η ΚΝΕ και το ΚΚΕ!

Ζιτω ο σοσιαλισμός και ο κομμουνισμός!

Ζιτω ο προλεταριακος διεθνισμος!