May 1st 2010 – For Work, Peace – Genuine Socialism !

In October 2008 the deepest world economic and financial crisis in the history of capitalism broke out, threatening the existence of hundreds of millions of people in the entire world. Families, women, all of life gets under pressure. In Germany hundreds of thousands of agency workers and workers with fixed-term contracts were laid off. Millions of employees had to accept wage losses as a result of short-time work. However, a massive annihilation of jobs and social achievements, as well as plant closures were postponed for the time being.

The unimaginable sum of 27 trillion US-dollars was raised by the governments of the biggest capitalist countries (G20) in order to dampen the effects of the crisis with subsidies, short-time work and rescue programs. One seventieth of this sum would suffice in order to eliminate hunger in the world lastingly.

The ruling powers could not care less! What they care about most is how capitalism can survive and how they can maintain their own power. What they fear is a revolutionary development among the masses with strikes, overthrow of governments and uprisings, and this fear dictates their actions. They lie, maintaining that the masses should be able to cope with the effects of the crisis.

The comprehensive results for the masses of people are actually still to come. Not only in Greece does the record-high debt of the state budget lead to an acute threat of state bankruptcy. Cities, towns and social insurance systems are facing financial disaster. For the Berlin government it’s perfectly clear: the masses of people must pay the bill - and that for many generations.

In the German automotive industry alone, company managers plan to annihilate 240 000 jobs. Betting is continuing on the stock market because capitalism can’t function without speculation anymore. The decadence of capitalism is only too evident!

The Merkel/Westerwelle government wants to lengthen the operating term of nuclear power plants to 60 years, intensify the war in Afghanistan, destroy the social insurance systems and democratic rights – all to the benefit of the capitalists.

In Greece, Portugal and other European countries, the workers and the masses of people have already taken up the struggle against the burdens of the crisis. In Germany the political climate is also changing:

In the cities of Sindelfingen and Bremen thousands of Daimler workers staged an independent strike in defence of their jobs and against the destruction of the region and for the future of the youth!

In the spring, tens of thousands marched successfully in opposition to fascist demonstrations in Dresden, in the Ruhr area and in other cities.

A determined struggle for the defence and improvement of the living and working conditions and for political rights and liberties is justified and all too necessary. However – don’t we have to go further than that?

Repeated economic crises within ever shorter periods of time, environmental crisis, food crisis, crisis of the state finances, crisis of the bourgeois family system, chronic political crisis – capitalism experiences a general and chronic proneness to crisis and destabilisation. The bourgeois parties and some people in the Left Party are competing to become the best crisis managers. Is that the future that awaits our children and grandchildren ?

Today, with an internationally organized production, it would be no problem to put an end to hunger, poverty and environmental destruction. According to the UN, 12 billion people could be fed. The time is ripe for genuine socialism. A society in which the workers and the masses - those who create the values - determine how production and distribution are organized for the benefit of the entire society. A society of solidarity, in which the human being and not profits are at the center. There will be no place for parasites and exploiters who live from the labor of other people. In the entire world, new forces and forms of union against imperialist exploitation and oppression – for international socialist revolution are developing.

The MLPD has drawn fundamental conclusions in order to prevent that the betrayal of socialism, as it took place in the 1950’s in the Soviet Union and the GDR, can happen again. In a socialist society the mode of thinking of the leading functionaries in the party, economy and state must be subject to control. This will prevent that new exploiters and oppressors can emerge. The MLPD has also drawn conclusions to prevent that its cadres do their work based on petty-bourgeois and individualist motives, and instead, in selfless commitment and in solidarity for the future.

Of course, this can and must be discussed. But one thing is clear: capitalism endangers the survival of mankind – and this in the foreseeable future. Whoever wants a socialist future must now strengthen the revolutionary party MLPD.

For work, peace – genuine socialism!

Come out on May 1st!

May 1^st is the international day of struggle of the working class. In the entire world the workers demonstrate and go on strike for their demands and, more and more, for a fundamental alternative to capitalism. Take part in the May 1^st demonstrations of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). Come to the celebrations of the MLPD. The MLPD upholds the following demands:

• For the shortening of working hours. For the 30-hour workweek with full wage compensation!

• For a full and legal right to strike in all matters!

• For a determined struggle for higher wages and salaries!

• Obligatory 10 percent quota of trainees in big industry! Give regular and unlimited jobs to young people completing training in a company according to their vocational training!

• Down with Hartz IV! For a legal minimum hourly wage of 10 euros !

• For the liberation of women!

• For the immediate withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan!

• Save the environment from the monopolies’ greed for profit!

• For genuine socialism – strengthen the revolutionary working-class party MLPD!

www.mlpd.de