Dear Comrades, on behalf of the Socialist Workers’ Party and on my own behalf, I greet all participants in the conference and I thank the organizers, the People’s Democracy Party, for organizing this important event and for the invitation.
As we all know, imperialism was an inevitable consequence of capitalism and as such, it never went away. A new cold war was on the horizon even before the conflict in Ukraine erupted. In order to keep its hegemony, the USA and its allies are doing anything in their power and will escalate violence if necessary. The escalation of the conflict in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of a new world war. In order to keep its hegemony, the USA is doing everything in its power to prolong the war as much as possible in order to weaken the Russian Federation because a strong Russian Federation is a threat to the uni-polar world with the USA as its only superpower. The current situation in Ukraine will define the world of tomorrow and we need to pay close attention to it.
What happened and is still happening in Ukraine is not an isolated incident but a continuation of attacks by the USA and its allies on Russian Federation but Russian Federation is not the only target of imperial core. This keeps happening in every country every time they try to go against the interests of the imperialist countries. It happened in Ukraine but in the near future if the conflict escalates new fronts could open elsewhere in the world such as in Korea or Taiwan and after that conflict could engulf the whole world. In order to keep its domination capital needs to dominate every corner of the globe, and for capitalists from an imperialist core, that means squashing opposition everywhere whether it is other capitalists or working class. That is why many countries that oppose US domination like Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, Iran, Cuba, etc. while having different class characteristics and different types of governments have common interests in fighting for the multi-polar world.
The question is now: Does the working class have a stake in this fight? Is a multi-polar world preferable to a uni-polar world? We, the Socialist Workers’ Party of Croatia, say yes to both of these questions. While it could seem easy to classify the Russian Federation as imperialist and this as an inter-imperialist war, even if we accept this assertion, it’s not so important to the answer to those questions. Fights between capitalist countries only weaken the global capitalist system and expose its cracks even more. In this situation we believe that it could be much easier to rally the working class and break away from the capitalist system. In the end, conflicts happen whether we want them or not. The only thing we can control is how we adapt to the situation and how we react to it.
What are the working class and communist parties to do? We are of the opinion that it’s time for all communist parties to make sure that their members are well informed in a timely manner about what is happening locally but also globally. It’s of the utmost importance that communists have proper information so they can formulate a proper political line and act accordingly.
For this to be possible, it’s important that communist parties share information between each other, and that is why these types of events are not only important but necessary for strengthening ties and solidarity between the parties. In order for our actions to be effective, the information that guides those actions needs to be correct, and this is not possible if we rely only on information shared by media companies.
Also, now it’s more important than ever to take an anti-war stance. To further push the anti-war message, we need to be open-minded and enter into tactical alliances with all like-minded organizations to organize protests and information campaigns to counter the pro-war narrative pushed by the pro-imperialist bourgeois media. Only with a well-informed and well-organized working class do we have a chance to stop the destruction caused by imperialism.
