Destroy the EU: Elections no, Revolution yes!
Beginning on the 23rd of May the elections of the European Union are going to take place, lasting until the 26th. Preparing for a couple of months, the propaganda of the bourgeois parties is now fully on the way, with their poster, slogans and campaigns about the greatness (or not-so greatness) of the EU. However, an eye catching similarity in between the countries of the EU is not only the common propaganda for the EU Elections, but also the deep rejection of the masses, who – venting their anger – commence everywhere to destroy and trash electoral materials in great numbers. Revolutionaries in different countries – such as Sweden for example – have already started to develop their own boycott campaigns against the EU. Now a joint declaration of several Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and Organizations follows suit, kicking off a joint campaign to boycott the elections with common posters, slogans, declarations, etc.
In the following, we document the declaration, some posters and the poster layout files provided by the comrades of New Epoch Media:
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Elections no, Revolution yes!
From the 23rd to the 26th of May, 27 European countries members of the European Union will hold elections for the European Parliament. These so-called “European elections” are a joke, since the European Parliament is a travesty of bourgeois democracy. It is a Parliament that decides nothing, and that just serves to fund handsomely the more than 700 members of parliament who sit there playing make believe democracy.
This truth is well understood by the masses in the countries of the European Union, since during the 2014 elections, nearly 56% abstained. This shows that the majority of the masses understand that this election is only smoke and mirrors, like the others in capitalist regime.
The revisionists have chauvinist and liquidationist tendencies that encourage them to participate in these elections, even though the reality shows that the masses reject them totally. The role of the communists, of the Maoists today, is on the contrary to correctly apply the mass line and accentuate the correct ideas in the masses, and not to convince them to go to the ballot box.
This is why the Communists of Europe call for a boycott of the European elections, which are just a smokescreen for all the peoples of Europe. The communists must go to the masses during this “campaign”, and propagate the correct idea of the boycott. In this way, the abstention shown everywhere in Europe in 2014 can become an active boycott movement and raise the consciousness and combativeness of the masses.
We unite under the slogan “Elections no, Revolution yes!”, Which breaks the conciliatory tendencies and argues that only the revolution following the strategy of Protracted People’s War, led by the Communist Parties, can allow us to have power for the working class and the masses, in the form of proletarian dictatorship and not an election. Acknowledging the uneven development of proletarian revolution, we also strongly reject the revisionist theories such as a “European revolution” which tries to implement liberal ideas into the revolutionary movement and therefore liquidates the struggle for destroying the EU.
We join our efforts in Europe under the motto “Boycott the European elections!” to cut clearly with all liquidationist lines that do not analyze what the European Union is and submit to the order of the imperialists.
Destroy the EU, an alliance of the imperialists!
The EU is an alliance that has a class character, like all subjects in the class society in which we live. The latest conception of a “European Union” of the capitalists was born in the midst of the cold war, to extend the internal market to Europe and to react to the heroic victory of the Soviet Union and the partisans of Europe on the Nazis. The EU was created after the war in the 1957 Treaty of Rome between six imperialist countries in Western Europe: the French State, the FRG, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. It is therefore above all an alliance between imperialists.
The successive “enlargements” of the EU are also the result of the nature of this alliance: imperialist powers from Northern, Southern and Central Europe, such as Sweden and Austria, entered the EU in during the 1970-80-90 decades, with some oppressed countries like Greece. Finally, in the 2000s, with the fall of the revisionist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as with the imperialist aggression and war on Yugoslavia 1999, the imperialist powers at the head of the European Union were able to extend their domination to this region. Today, the EU’s enlargement negotiations are aimed in particular at the oppressed peoples and nations of the Balkans.
The imperialist states at the origin of this project have a dual relationship to the EU: they defend it ardently when it allows them to advance the pawns of their own imperialism in Europe and in the world, and they reject it when their imperialist interests are thwarted by the constraints of the alliance. This is the case for example of British imperialism, where the bourgeoisie is in contradiction on the “Brexit”. Besides that, the so called “Brexit” plainly shows the attempt made by the bourgeoisie to channel the rebellion, resulting from the deep rejection of the masses in the various countries against the EU alliance, into the parliamentary system by presenting some electoral choice. European identitarians, on the other hand, fantasize a Europe based on religious and cultural criteria, and serve only as useful idiots for the most reactionary fringes of financial capital in Europe.
The general crisis of imperialism today touches the brunt of alliances like the European Union. The so-called “Eurosceptic” voices rise, and testify to the inner contradiction of the bourgeoisie on this subject. With each passing day, accumulating scandals like the almost colonial management of the crisis of imperialism in Greece, the imperialist powers of Europe who lead the EU reveal their true nature and that of their project.
These imperialist powers, the oldest in the world, born with the development of capitalism in Europe, oppress people all over the world. The European Union serves as a relay in Europe for them, especially to oppress the peoples of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, who serve as cheap labor. As such, the imperialists within the EU profit from the exploitation of the semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries where they apply any means possible to subdue the rebellious peoples and serve their interests. Poverty, massacres, an increasing fascization and arming of the states as well as oppression of millions are the result. Through the construction of military bases, investments into weapon manufactures and active arms deals, particularly German imperialism, in direct coordination with the Turkish government, tries to quell the struggles of the peoples. And not only is the reactionarization promoted in the oppressed countries, also in the imperialist countries attempts are made to silence revolutionaries such as from Turkey. Communists denounce the imperialist alliance nature of the European Union. We adopt the slogan “Destroy the EU, an alliance of the imperialists!” to show the reality of this project of the imperialists powers of Europe.
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Our boycott of the European elections, since it highlights the nature of the imperialist alliance our enemies have formed with the EU, must always put proletarian internationalism at the forefront.
Lenin brilliantly explained that the “United States of Europe” of the capitalists, which was the name given to the European project at the time, would be only like an agreement for the division of the colonies. The EU is nothing but a permanent conflict of power between the great imperialist powers, which only ends in rupture when the balance of power changes, as Brexit shows.
The proletariat is an international class, which capitalist development in Europe has particularly prepared for the political direction of society. In the face of the European Union, which only serves as an organization for the imperialist reaction, whether for the “United States of Europe” or a so-called “Europe of nations”, we advance the line of the proletariat.
We unite under the correct slogan of Marx and Engels “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” which they expressed just before the People’s Spring of 1848 in Europe, where the proletariat emerged for the first time as a politically independent and revolutionary class on a continental level.
Facing the imperialist enemies in their tactical alliance of the EU, we must adopt a clear class line: denunciation of our own imperialism, for communists organized in States of this type, resolute support for the oppressed peoples of Europe and the world that the imperialists of Europe are plundering, and fierce struggle until the victory against the Union of the imperialists, for the proletarians of all the countries to unite!
Boycott the European elections!
Elections no, revolution yes!
Destroy the EU, an alliance of the imperialists!
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Peru People’s Movement
Communist Party of Turkey / Marxist-Leninist
Committee Red Flag, FRG
Committees for the Foundation of the (Maoist) Communist Party of Austria
Maoist Communist Party, French State
Tjen Folket – Communist League, Norway
Red Flag Collective, Finland
Committee for Construction of the Communist Party (maoist) Galicia (Spanish State)
 |  |
 |  |
Escrito por cazi