MESSAGE FROM THE WORKERS PARTY OF IRELAND TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PEOPLES OF SPAIN ON THE
MADRID MEETING ON 17 MAY 2014
Dear Comrades,
The Workers
Party of Ireland sends warm comradely greetings to the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain and to all participants in
the event organised in Madrid on 17 May 2014. The WPI sends its solidarity and support to the PCPE list in the European elections in Spain on
the ground of the Joint Statement signed in January 2014 by the parties which participate in the Initiative of Communist and
Workers Parties to study and elaborate European issues and to coordinate their activity.
The EU
Parliamentary election takes place as the deepening crisis of capitalism and capital’s relentless offensive against
the working class and peoples of Europe continue. The structural and systemic character of this crisis demonstrates the historical limits of the capitalist system. It
is also necessary to make clear to the working class, given the confusion created by opportunist and social democratic forces, the
actual nature and character of the European Union.
The European
Union is and has always been the instrument of European big capital. It is irrevocably committed to imperialist aggression,
interventions and war. In circumstances of inevitable crises arising from the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system,
capital lashes out aggressively as demonstrated by the austerity measures dictated by the EU/IMF/ECB Troika. It attacks the
living conditions of the working class by cutting wages, attacking social protection; health; education; public employment
and the provision of public services, eroding rights in the workplace won through decades of struggle, and dismantling public
services, enhancing the opportunities for profit for the monopolies. Capital exploits the crisis to implement fundamental
changes to labour laws and workers’ rights, advocating intensified market liberalisation together with the implementation
of so-called “structural reform” which subordinates the peoples’
interests and workers’ rights to the overriding priority of “competitiveness”.
The private
ownership of the means of production, private capitalist appropriation and the contradictions of capital formation block the
general development of the productive powers of society. Capitalism is inherently unequal, exploitative, wasteful and fundamentally
undemocratic.
Workers
must resist and fight back. The cause of our problems is the capitalist system itself. Only by replacing the capitalist economic
system with one which serves the interests of the peoples and the working class, can workers and their families have any hope
for a better future. The interests of capital and labour are irreconcilable.
As the
Communist and Workers Parties that participate in the Initiative we have declared: “The EU does not serve the people, the EU serves
the billionaires, the super-rich, the interests of the monopolies, the concentration and centralization of capital, to reinforce
its characteristics as an imperialist economic, political and military bloc of states opposed to the interests of the working
class and popular strata.”
In common with the other parties of the Initiative the Workers
Party of Ireland believes
“in the right of each people to choose in a sovereign way its path
of development, including the right to disengage from the dependencies on the EU and NATO and every other imperialist organization,
to struggle for the socialist development path.”
The WPI wishes the PCPE success in the election and in the work of
the Party.
Weaken the forces that support the EU - Support the communist and workers’
parties by strengthening them.
No to the EU of the monopolies, of capital and war!
For a Europe of people’s prosperity, peace, social justice and
democratic rights, of socialism!
Workers Party of Ireland
May 2014
