The workers’ dream is possible

Happy anniversary and congratulations to the 100 year-old class struggle! Happy anniversary and congratulations communists, and the Party! 

Comrade: You are needed today to say out loud what we’re not allowed to say in the market dictatorship.  Daring, brave and beloved comrade you are equal to the task. It is not super human. The workers’ dream is human dimensional. Our task, the workers’ revolution, is in our image and is the spice of life. It smells good. It fits well with the Earth. We fall in love with it. The workers’ revolution corresponds to us, to our rights and needs. 

Capitalism is based on transnational violence in which workers are coldly calculated as instruments for profit-making. And the class war shows that us workers are fit for cannon fodder. In the market dictatorship there is neither the space nor the need for participatory democracy 

Comrades, 

Today in many areas we have to look beyond the impossible. We must look beyond the ‘activation model’, beyond privatisation, beyond the militarism that posits other nations as enemies. We must puncture patriarchy and adaptation to the market economy. We must overcome hopeless misanthropy, depression, and disappointment.  

I would argue that today from a working-class perspective too we are living in an unbearable situation. The leaders of the trade union movement have almost without exception conformed to the management logic of the political elite. We workers have nothing to lose but our rotten leaders. We workers can have no other purpose than to take back the power that is rightfully ours as workers.   

The cuts made by the Sipilä government resemble the politics of a state of emergency. In recent years we have been forced to bear witness concretely to how neo-liberalism slashes social security and local services, and tramples on worker’s rights. Citizen participation has been cut back, including by cutting the anyway paltry funding of peace organisations. Patriarchy commands minorities to be silent, and women to work in male-dominated sectors on less pay and to get back in the kitchen at home doing unpaid work. 

Imperialist wars, climate change, and famine are forcing people from the homes to become refugees and to head for Europe. At the same time racism and fascism are rearing up, as if on cue. The competitive society has come off the rails and socially excluded young men go around wearing Finnish lions shirts, hurl insults at foreigners and people in a similar situation as them who look different, and pick up on the new and old menacing nationalist feeling. 

To the extent that I have listened to and met people on the streets, I’d say that you come across fewer nowadays who believe that capitalism will alleviate our greatest problems, such as unemployment, poverty, climate change, terrorism, wars, and hunger. 

For over a billion people, hunger and extreme climate conditions – heat-waves, floods and tsunamis – show that radical changes are needed, and urgently. 

The challenge we face is global. Replacing capitalism with the establishment of a different society and form of development is more crucial than ever. Communist Party of China has new Marxist policy and initiative of world dialog with the political parties. Communist Party of Finland is part of the dialogue and participates in thematic meetings. CPF is inspired of the new initiatives of the CPC. We must support and act in solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other concretely socialist and left social actors. For us it is both natural and essential to strengthen our support for the struggle for self-determination and statehood by the Palestinian people and the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara.  

For peace  

We can’t tackle the problems of employment and the contradictions of capital with weapons. The main contradiction is the subjugation of work to the diktat of capital. We will get through this battle when we workers start to be aware of our own special place in this common mass struggle. 

The workers’ demands for peace, work and basic security are the bare minimum for starting to build social peace and stability. The demand for peace is always a radical demand.  Mirjam Vire-Tuominen – the general secretary of the Finnish Peace Committee (1949 – 1975), MP for the Finnish People’s Democratic League (1970 – 1979) and general secretary of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (1978 – 1987) – put a draft bill before Parliament in 1973 for a Peace Act that would make waging war illegal.  I propose that the draft bill be actively re-launched afresh. 100 years offers a good perspective for peace work.  

Today, we have our work cut out for us – we must wage a struggle so that we are not in the same situation as during the 1918 war, the Class War, and where the voice of the working class was not listened to, not taken seriously, and where society only meant the prerogative of the rich. We cannot submit to the logic of capitalism and the dictatorship of its markets.  

Comrades,  

We are building a society free of exploitation and oppression. This is a wonderfully feasible job. The success of a red mass front requires joint action that is free and mindful of one another, of people who love the world, unprejudiced – it is about pluralism, the systematic development of the most productive forces, and the highest level of labour productivity. Our goal is socialism and communism – a better world calls for broad, participatory democracy, workers’ self-governance, of working-men and working-women, the rights of minorities to their own culture, gender equality, for feminism. Our success requires t a vibrant civil society and the spiritual and moral development of us all. 

The comrades of 100 years ago were wise and set a magnificent challenge and clear task 

This must embrace the aspiration of the works and communism for justice, equality, and sharing. This is the feminist dream of the equal rights of the sexes to development. This is the environmental demand to change the state of our planet for the good of all. It embraces the vision of a global culture in which all minorities are entitled to their own culture. We workers, citizens, and all people must realise the common determination to decide on our own and our common issues locally and globally. 

Long live the class struggle! 

Long live international solidarity! 

Long live the Party!