At September 18-21, 2008, the European Social Forum will meet for the fifth time in Malmo, Sweden. Like in the other Social Forums, the search of thousands of people for "another Europe" is continuing also in this one. In the 5th ESF, many topics from social rights to problems of climate and environment, "security" and "peace" policies, equality and freedom, from rights of minorities to the struggle against war and militarism, unemployment and topics like culture, education, right of migration and asylum, racism and discrimination will be discussed. These topics, which will be discussed at the ESF, are problems which the people in every European country are facing. It is necessary and important to discuss these problems. However, while discussing them it is not enough to characterize them, it is also necessary to underline their origin and to struggle in order to abolish them.
The origin of the problems discussed at the ESF is the imperialist capitalist system itself. In this system, the monopolies are growing their capital by taking the surplus-value produced by millions of workers and labourers while unemployment and misery are increasing. While the working class and the labouring peoples are getting poorer, the welfare of the bourgeoisie is growing. When they talk about "security" in this system, when the bourgeoisie speaks of its own security and of "peace", they actually talk of conditions, in which they easily can continue their exploitation.
As one of the competition centres like the USA, Russia, Japan and China, also the imperialist states of the EU are continuing their merciless competition in order to get a bigger piece of the world market. They are threatening those countries, which are not acting according to their interests with war and occupation in order to control the natural reserves of raw materials and the energy transport corridors and to keep away their competitors from these regions. It is a delusion to expect peace and freedom from the imperialist states, which massacre every day children, men, women and elderly people as occupier forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, which provoke the peoples of Africa to commit massacres against each others. After the Balkans and the Middle East, now they are trying to drag the Caucasus/Caspian Sea, which has significant reserves of oil and natural gas and is a corridor of energy transport, into a regional war. The fact that after war in the Caucasus on Southern Ossetia between Georgia and Russia the USA and NATO sent war ships to the Black Sea, the conflicts between the USA and the EU and Russia shows the intention of a regional war of these forces.
As long as imperialism exists, also wars and occupations will exist. In order to fulfil their task to serve the interests of the monopoly capital, the imperialist states will continue with their imperialist aggressions and occupations and to be a danger for another country every day. Imperialism means reaction, war and militarism. Therefore, the struggle against wars, occupations and militarism should also include struggle against imperialism and capitalism. Reformist views, which reduce the struggle against imperialism to a struggle against the US imperialism and not include also the EU imperialists and other imperialist forces, are views which are no alternative to the present system but serve the bourgeoisie. These kinds of opinions and attitudes are aiming at obstructing the working class and the labouring masses to fight against their own imperialist states. It is impossible to carry out an imperialist struggle in Europe without targeting the EU imperialists.
The imperialist capitalist system cannot abolish unemployment, because the source of unemployment is this system. The use of developments and achievements of technology in the production leads to less use of labour-power meanwhile attacks like increasing the working hours; flexitime and lowering of the wages are increasing unemployment. Like all over the world also in Europe, be it although to a different degree, unemployment has become a character of chronic mass unemployment. Unemployment will be overcome in socialism, where production is not made according to the plans of the monopolies for maximum profit, but according to the needs of society and where the participation in the production of everybody is guaranteed and the principle ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his work' will be reality. To expect or claim that unemployment will vanish in capitalism means nothing else but deceiving the masses.
By continuously broadening its borders with new member states, the EU turns Europe into an inaccessible "fortress". The majority of those, who had to leave their countries and tried to come to Europe because of hunger, poverty, national oppression and wars, for which also the EU states are responsible, died on the way to and the borders of Europe. Those, who managed to come to Europe, are exposed to racist and fascist laws and condemned to live isolated from the society in refugee camps. Democratic rights like the right for asylum are practically not effective anymore and refugees are deported every day. The immigrants and refugees are considered as potential guilty and by the division in native-foreigner they divide the working class and try to conflict them. By presenting the migrants as those to blame for unemployment and cuts of rights, they distract the attention from the source of the problems and provoke racism and reactionary attitudes. For this reason, the struggle against racism and discrimination must also include a struggle against the system, which is the source of these problems.
In this system, laws and democracy exist to protect the interests of the monopolies. The fact that the reactionary EU constitution of the institutionalisation and juristic bases of the EU of the monopolies has been rejected by the votes of the people in the countries where it was proposed, like it happened recently in Ireland and that it has been accepted by the governments without asking the people in many countries because it was known that it would be rejected shows that the bourgeois democracy is a false one.
In almost all European countries anti-terror laws have been passed under the pretext of "security" and with them terror is waged against the social opposition and democratic rights, which have been achieved in struggle are abolished. These laws, which also aim at preventing a possible social struggle of the working class and the labourers against the neo-liberal attacks, are targeting the whole social opposition, even if they are applied in some countries today more against the migrants. The fact that the period of detention has been extended to 42 days like in England, that refugees are killed in police stations in Germany, that the society in all European countries is monitored and observed, that trials are opened against revolutionary and progressive oppositional forces based on these laws, that operation take place and trials are opened against revolutionary and communist forces like in Italy, Spain, Turkey and Northern Kurdistan shows for whom the laws and the justice of Europe is.
The alternative of the imperialist capitalist system is socialism. The masses, which come together from different countries with the hope that "another Europe is possible", should fight against imperialism and reaction on the bases of anti-imperialism, revolution and socialism. The reformist and pacifist forces, which are not aiming for revolution and socialism, are presenting "another Europe" or "another world" only as some reforms or some "improvements". What they propose is the continuity of exploitation, plunder, oppression, torture, war and occupation.
It is the united anti-imperialist struggle which will respond to the needs of the working class and the labouring masses of Europe; to achieve the organisational unity of the anti-imperialist struggle at regional and international level. Our party MLCP is fighting in order to develop the international united anti-imperialist struggle and to obtain its unity. While our party MLCP carries out the struggle for revolution and socialism in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan, it also supports the struggle for social liberation of the working class and the labourers and the struggle for national liberation of the oppressed nations at international scale.