Dear Comrades,

Next year we are going to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Lenin made enormous work to prepare theoretically the revolution. He also described the first possible measures the new socialist country should do after victory. Beside Lenin’s „The State and Revolution” his work “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe” belongs to the most important works which are more actual now than any time in the last decades.

Comrades,

European capitalism is in crisis. Some of the capitalist forces try to solve it by establishing stronger cooperation between the American and European monopolies. It is the TTIP and the CETA. Other capitalist forces see the future in a more centralized European Union led by the German and French capital. The third group of capitalist forces, first of all the Eastern Europeans, dream about a national way and demand much more rights and influence in the European affairs.
The main aim of all these efforts is to save capitalism, to prevent any social earthquakes, any uprisals of the working masses which can undermine capitalism. Lenin wrote speaking about the slogan of the European United States:
“Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe.”
Comrades,
We should see that capitalism cannot solve its actual crisis. It tries to use the method of war. We should tell the European people that the new US troops in Eastern Europe, the idea of the common European army and the establishing of special European forces serve only one aim: to strengthen the positions of capitalism in Europe.
Lenin wrote: „There is and there can be no other way of testing the real might of a capitalist state than by war. War does not contradict the fundamentals of private property—on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome of those fundamentals. Under capitalism the smooth economic growth of individual enterprises or individual states is impossible. Under capitalism, there are no other means of restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium than crises in industry and wars in politics.”
Comrades,
Reform or revolution? This is the classical question of the workers’ movement. One of them or both of them? What was the opinion of Lenin?
“Political changes of a truly democratic nature, and especially political revolutions, can under no circumstances whatsoever either obscure or weaken the slogan of a socialist revolution. On the contrary, they always bring it closer, extend its basis, and draw new sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the semi-proletarian masses into the socialist struggle. On the other hand, political revolutions are inevitable in the course of the socialist revolution, which should not be regarded as a single act, but as a period of turbulent political and economic upheavals, the most intense class struggle, civil war, revolutions, and counter-revolutions.”
Now in many countries the capital tries to use so called reforms to prevent social revolutions. The whole history of Syriza in Greece confirms it fully. It there is no “left solution”, capital can use some forces of the conservative camp. It is the case of Hungary where the conservative government manipulates the people by using left slogans, raising minimal salaries and by other popular measures. We know that all these measure are provisional and finally the working people will pay for them.
Comrades,
In Lenin’s article we find the following very important statement: “Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism.” What can we see now?
The Eastern European countries, the four Visegrad-countries – Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – are awakening and looking for themselves a new place in the capitalist Europe. The conflict between the Western European and Eastern European capital was inevitable. The political war around the migration-issue is one of the expressions of this conflict.
We live in fragile situation. We cannot exclude even the most radical changes. Imagine just some possibilities!
What will happen if a war begins in Europe?
What will happen if the EU pushes through its idea on relocation and resettlement of migrants?
What will happen if the TTIP will be not only a distant threat but a close reality?
What will happen if the EU collapses?
What will happen if any other factor radically changes the political situation in Eastern Europe?
We are convinced: the communist movement should be prepared for the moment when class conflicts are strengthened and the fight against capitalism turns into a face-to-face class war.
We should agree on the main point: our aim is not to manage capitalism. Our aim is not to save capitalism but to overthrow capitalism. That’s why we are communists.
We should see the difference between modernization of our policy, language, methods and the reformist reorientation of our movement. We need modernization but we are against reformism.
The article of Lenin “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe” helps us to understand and to answers many actual issues of European capitalism and to defeat reformist and opportunist forces.