Marxists from 15 countries meet in Serpa, Portugal, say: Capitalism endangers human civilization

By John Catalinotto

Serpa, Portugal

Now a laid-back town of 5,000 in Portugal’s Alentejo agricultural region, Serpa was established by the Roman Empire. Later it was ruled by the Moors as part of the Islamic civilization before it became part of the Portuguese nation. In Portugal’s fascist period Serpa, as well as the entire Alentejo, was a center of resistance led by the underground Portuguese Communist Party and a stronghold of the agricultural working class. Since Portugal’s 1974 democratic revolution, Serpa and the surrounding municipality have been administered by a PCP-led coalition.

This history and the local leadership of Municipal Council President Joao Rocha made Serpa an excellent location for an international conference of communist militants and Marxist thinkers. They met October 30 to November 1 to discuss the dangers that imperialism holds for human civilization -- and the possible means to counteract this threat.

It was the third in a series of international meetings in Serpa entitled “Civilization or Barbarism: Challenges of Today’s World.” Others were held in 2004 and 2007. It was the first since much of the world’s capitalist economy went into a downward spiral in 2008. Its organizers were Vertice magazine and the website http://odiario.info, whose editors include Filipe Diniz, José Paulo Gascão, Rui Namorado Rosa and Miguel Urbano Rodrigues, a writer and political analyst who provided the key political inspiration behind the three Serpa meetings.

One vital invitee was forced to cancel this time, but her letter underlining the sometimes tragic choices one must make moved the audience to an ovation. Heroic Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, currently under attack by the repressive regime in her country, was attending the funeral of former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner in Buenos Aires.

A choice for humanity

Many participants believed the real choice humanity faces is between increased misery and wars on one side and the struggle for a socialist future on the other. The capitalist collapse and persistent decline for the working class make this choice ever more urgent.

Contributing to the conference were dozens of Marxists, journalists and militants from 15 countries, mostly from Europe and Latin America, with some representatives from North America and the Middle East. The largest group of contributors was from Portugal itself. The participants included those more oriented toward an academic examination of historical data and contemporary society, along with communist activists on the front lines of the class struggle.

Some, like James Petras, a well-known political analyst and professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, focused on the depth of the crisis in the capitalist system and the persistent rightist policies of the ruling classes in the imperialist countries, “which are reversing decades of social welfare and subjecting labor, natural resources and the wealth of nations to raw exploitation, pillage and plunder.” Petras also said that the U.S. was waging wars that brought no gain in exploitation but degenerated into raw destruction.

In his comments, Urbano brought out regarding the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that “despite having invested more than a trillion dollars in them, these disgraceful wars are also lost wars.” His conclusion regarding capitalism and imperialism was that “not being capable of take a more human shape, the system had to be erased from the earth.”

Leila Ghanem, a key organizer of the January 2009 conference in Beirut that gathered anti-imperialists from around the world -- including the secular left and some of the Muslim-based organizations that had developed social programs and were engaged in mass organizing as well as anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist struggle -- warned of the current imperialist propaganda campaign to demonize Iran. She called on the anti-war forces, including those in the United States, to struggle to prevent a war against the Iranian people.

Ghanem, reaching out to the left in the imperialist countries, also made the important point that the role of the mass organizations Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine is not necessarily determined by their religious ideology, but develops under the influence of the mass social struggle in those regions as they resist the Israeli settler-state and imperialism.

Despite the breadth of opinion, participants agreed in a final declaration that this is not just a cyclical capitalist crisis, but it is “social, financial, economic, military, energy, cultural and environmental;” that “capitalism, with its precipitous increase in aggression, has become an absolutely regressive factor for human civilization;” and that “Marxism-Leninism remains the most precious intellectual weapon in the hands of the workers and peoples who resist and advance the struggle.”

The declaration also expressed solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela and with the “the progressive governments of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador;” saluted the resistance struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as that of the Palestinians; and warned of the threats against Iran as well as from the U.S. Fourth Fleet in Latin America. It also hailed the workers’ struggles in Europe and the anti-war activities of people in the U.S.

Marcos Domich, editor of the Latin American quarterly, Marxismo Militante, and former general secretary of the Communist Party of Bolivia, gave a sensitive analysis of the unfolding struggle in his country, and the relationship between the Indigenous movement, social democracy and the revolutionary workers’ movement.

As he had done in 2004 and 2007, Cape Verde-born historian Carlos Lopes Pereira added to his appreciation of the work of African Marxist Amilcar Cabral and the oppressive role of Portuguese colonialism in Africa.

Among the many interesting contributions was an analysis by a leader of the organization Corriente Roja in the Spanish State, Angeles Maestro, who is also a medical doctor. Maestro’s paper, entitled, “Capitalist Crisis: Social war in the body of the working class” analyzed the impact of the capitalist crisis on health care, mortality and morbidity rates. Anabela Fino, an editor of the weekly PCP newspaper Avante, contributed a paper on the perversion of the corporate media and the situation for working journalists.

Impact of current class struggle

Though the conference didn’t aim to evaluate the most current events, these had an impact. In Portugal an upcoming NATO summit on Nov. 19-21 brought home the increased militarization of the imperialist world -- and will be the target of a demonstration set for Nov. 20. Then on Nov. 24 the Portuguese workers will hold yet another general strike, in an attempt to stop the onslaught of the European capitalists to slash every gain workers have made since the 1974 revolution overthrew fascism.

The splendid struggle of the French workers to defend their retirement rights, the contradictory impact of the election of a successor of Lula in Brazil, the imminent electoral setback for the Democratic Party in the U.S., the recent attempted coup in Ecuador, the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, along with the rampant unemployment in Europe and the U.S., were part of many private discussions as well as those at the podium. The conference was facilitated by Caterina Almeida and the entire logistical team at Serpa through their excellent organization.

Carolus Wimmer, secretary of international relations of the Communist Party of Venezuela, reflected the worldwide struggle when he put his prepared talk aside to respond to some of the earlier analysis. U.S. imperialism was a dangerous enemy, he agreed, and not the “paper tiger” he had railed against in his youth, but he and his fellow fighters were determined to fight and to win. He pointed out that when Spanish “civilization” first showed itself in the new world, it brought genocide, slavery and plunder to the supposedly “less civilized” peoples. He then discussed the attempt of Latin American and Caribbean countries to join their interests through a regional organization called CELAC and thus better confront imperialism.

“The struggles in the first decade of the 21st century show,” Wimmer concluded, “that there is a way out of the dichotomy of Civilization and Barbarism, through unity with solidarity, cooperation and complementary contributions of the peoples, and through the construction of socialism.”

Catalinotto, who often represents the International Action Center at conferences abroad, presented a paper entitled “Amid capitalist collapse and imperialist war: The challenge of reviving Marxism in the center of the empire.” His paper and perhaps 45 others will be available at odiario.info in their original language and Portuguese.