Déclaration finale de la Xe Rencontre des organisations de jeunesse communiste européennes

Publié le 16 Février 2014

Final statement of the 10th Meeting of European Communist Youth Organizations (MECYO)

During 15^th and 16^th February 2014 the 10^th Meeting of European Communist Youth Organizations took place in Madrid under the slogan “Capitalist Crisis, struggles of the youth, role of the Communist Youth Organizations”. As participating organizations we state that:

The situation of the youth of the working class and the popular strata in our countries is strongly marked by the current context of the capitalist crisis of overproduction and over-accumulation that capitalist system goes through. Its origin is the result of the development of its own inherent contradictions in capitalism, and not of the bad management that various political and economic bourgeois agents do at an international level.

The development of capitalist crisis in Europe is having a devastating impact on the lives of the youth.

Under capitalism, the youth of the working class and the popular strata is a particularly vulnerable and exploited sector that suffers, not only during the crisis phase but also during large cycles of accumulation and economic expansion, the worse social and working conditions, they are in the cross-hair of the attack of the capital.

With the crisis, capitalism deepens its parasitic nature, and through the activity of the monopolies to increase their rate of profit, raises the level of insecurity and exploitation among young people to unbearable levels, thus denying them the possibility of building a future.

It is reaffirmed that capitalism cannot resolve the social problems and satisfy the needs of the workers and of the new generations; on the contrary, capitalism tries to escape from its incurable contradictions, loading the burdens of the crisis on the workers, the peoples, intensifying the exploitation, the poverty, the unemployment, the dangers for new imperialist wars.

The oligarchy seeks to regain the levels of their rate of profit in the environment of the crisis destroying productive forces and condemning millions of workers into unemployment; for example older workers are increasingly replaced by a significant number of youth employed under special conditions of maximum exploitation. On the whole, the capitalist crisis is utilized in order to increase the attack to the rights and conquests of the working class, in order to put into practice the common strategy of the monopolies against the working class and the popular strata, against the youth.

This ensures that the monopolies and capitalist governments in Europe use the millions of unemployed or underemployed young people, as a spearhead against the rest of the working class and popular strata, and the rights that they had conquered as a result of the conjunction of two factors: years of intense workers' struggle and the existence until the 90s of the European socialist countries led by the USSR. The socialist countries were a strengthening factor to the worker's and people's struggle on one hand, and worked a pressure factor in the capitalist countries.

Youth in European countries are facing a very high rate of unemployment, and in many countries it is reaching over 50% of the young population at working age levels. This generates for the European bourgeoisie an "industrial reserve army" of millions of people. Thus, the need and desperation of young people and the large excess of labor force is exploited by the bourgeoisie to further worsen working conditions, precarious forms of hiring and lower salaries. A clear example is the Plan of Youth Guarantee that has been decided by the EU with the agreement of all the capitalist governments, social-democrat and new-liberals, and which will be used in countries with high rates of youth unemployment. Even worse is the situation suffered by the young women of the working class, used as cheaper and more exploitable labor resource. For equal work, they still received less salary and in more precarious conditions.

We call to the young workers, to the young unemployed to reject this and other plans for the exploitation of the youth, to not conform with the bread crumbles given to them, to stand at the side of the rest of the working class and organize in every place of work, to strengthen the class-oriented trade-unions and struggle for their rights in stable and permanent work with rights.

European Union, as an imperialist interstate alliance, together with the bourgeois governments of each country, legislates for the monopolies with the aim of reducing the labor force through many reforms, laws and directives. That is the objective for the existence, the class nature of the EU and other imperialist unions. It reaffirms that the youth of the working and popular strata have nothing to wait on the unions of the capital, that these unions cannon be reformed in favor of the peoples. On the contrary: we have all interests to struggle against them.

At the same time, the battle is fought in the ideological field when the bourgeois power uses terms like "competitiveness", " youth employment plans", "training contracts" or the exaltation of the concept of "flexibility" to justify and legitimize in the conscience of the youth the worsening of labor and social conditions among the youth and the entire working class.

This same phenomenon is reflected in education, another key area where youth sections of the society are involved. The European oligarchy, through multiple laws, treaties and reforms (in the EU the creation of the "Bologna Process" or "University Strategy 2015") is trying to direct education towards reactionary reforms that exclude the children of the popular strata and focus on meeting the current needs of the enterprises.

At the same time, thousand youths of working and popular families are doomed in many countries to opt for emigration. Young workers look to sell their labor force abroad having the illusion that they will have access to a future that capitalism in their host country has denied them. This phenomenon is back with a similar wave of migration that, until late 80s of 20^th century, forced thousands of young Europeans to migrate to more industrialized countries of Europe in search of a job. Today, the next generations of those immigrants have to go abroad again to survive, which shows us that capitalism as a mode of continuously regenerates the same and bigger dead-ends for the working class and its children.

The youth in all the countries can draw conclusion on the meaning of the “freedom of movement” that the champions of the EU were professing when they were voting for the Maastricht treaty and the following measures: freedom for the capital to exploit them wherever and whenever its needs dictate it. In all the countries of Europe the youth needs to fight for our modern rights and against the causes that create exploitation, unemployment, immigration.

The youth must reject all those that work for the best interests of the monopolies and try to divide the working class in young and old, in immigrants and nationals, against all those that poison the youth’s conscience with racist and fascist venom.

The Communist Youth Organizations that participate in this European meeting fight to organize the youth for the confrontation with the plans of the EU and the bourgeois governments, as well as the oligarchies in other European countries. We support and organize youth mass struggle with class character and fight against opportunistic and defeatist positions who call the youth and the whole working class to a ”reconciliation" with the class enemy within the system.

At the same time, we must lead a strong ideological offensive to expose the lies and anti-Communist laws that in recent years they have been passed and aimed at separating the popular sectors from the revolutionary organizations, those that truly represent their objective interests.

We are concerned of the fascist phenomena in various countries of Europe. Fascism is born and used by the capitalist system. It is presented with an anti-systemic façade in order to entrap the consciousness of the youth when in reality it is the iron hand of the capitalists in order to crush the working class movement and the peoples’ struggles. The communist have the duty to expose the true character of fascism and struggle so that the organized mass movement can deal with it.

As Communist Youth Organizations, along with the Communist Parties, we should be the vanguard of the mass struggle, raising their level of consciousness, organize struggles and guiding objectives. Young Communists should aspire to lead the youth of the working class and the popular strata in the struggles to defend and expand our rights, to contribute in the development of our reinvindicative movement for new achievements of the workers, the people and the youth with the objective of the accumulation of forces for socialism, for the construction of a system without exploitation which is the future of humankind

From the plenary of the 10^th European Meeting of Communist Youths, the organizations which participate in it, want to express our full solidarity with the workers and popular struggles waged by peoples of Europe against the dictatorship of the monopolies.

We call upon the youth to strengthen its struggle for its modern needs, for stable job with rights, for public and free education, healthcare, social-security, for the access to culture.

We demand the abolition of all anti-Communist laws, as well as the reactionary approaches that compare the experience of building socialism in the twentieth century with the Nazi-fascism, that is an official ideology of the EU. The contribution of the socialist construction in the 20^th century to humankind, the supremacy of socialism cannot be erased.

We call on the youth to organize and fight for their rights, against Imperialism, to construct a society that will make the expectations of the youth for peace, solidarity, work with rights into reality, where the working class will abolish the exploitation of man by man, will take control of the political and economic power, will construct Socialism.

Madrid 16 February 2014

Communist Youth of Austria

COMAC Belgium

KSM Czech Republic

EDON Cyprus

Jeunes Communistes France

SDAJ Germany

Communist Youth of Greece

Baloldali Front Hungary

FGCI Italy

UngKom Norway

JCP Portugal