Friday, May 9, 2008

Greetings to the Communist Workers' Party of Finland 18th Party Congress

Comrade Hannu Harju, delegates, guests and members of the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland;


Greetings and success in your deliberations during your 18th Party Congress. Your deliberations will be important contributions to the communist and working class movements around the world.


Your Party Congress comes during the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 160th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. Without the active leadership from Communist Parties the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights will remain mere words on a piece of paper which will never materialize under capitalism; socialism will be required for full implementation.


Your Party Congress comes at a time when a great deal of disorientation and unclear thinking detached from the struggles of working people for a better world still remains within the Communist and working class movements which has become fertile ground for revisionism to fester, grow and spread.


The imperialists have had temporary successes to one degree or another in overturning socialist revolutions from the Soviet Union to trying to undermine socialism in China.


The imperialists responded to the democratic aspirations and the struggles for justice, human dignity and socialism on the part of the Finnish people and the working class by drenching the revolution in blood using the most bestial, repressive and undemocratic methods ninety years ago--- murdering tens of thousands, and forcing many tens of thousands more Finns to flee their homeland lest they be beaten, imprisoned, hacked to death or shot before firing squads by the agents of the feudal lords and the rising capitalist class and their international backers with the Wall Street coupon clippers always at the helm of reaction in orchestrating this repression and terror.


Among the “red” Finns who fled the repression in their homeland were those who became organizers of the powerful industrial unions in mining, forestry, auto and steel in North America.


We have found great strength and inspiration and support from among the “red” Finns of the Iron Ranges of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan in our current struggles to organize casino workers, and in the struggles to end the war in Iraq and for socialized health care.


Gus Hall, the former Chair of the Communist Party USA, came from a family of “red” Finns on the Mesaba Iron Range in Minnesota.


Gus Hall led the Communist Party USA in the struggles for peace and socialism and was a relentless battler against revisionism, and against all forms of national, racial and ethnic chauvinism. Gus Hall was North America’s most well known Finnish-American and true son of our working class; Hall kept the Communist Party USA on a straight and steady course of working class internationalism in solidarity with the heroic Soviet peoples who blazed the path for the great accomplishments the working class made under socialism.


The imperialists drenched the Finnish revolution in blood in order to thwart the aspirations of the people for socialism; in the Soviet Union these imperialists tried time and again to halt, through armed intervention and fascist war and economic blockade and sabotage, the forward march of working people in peacefully and cooperatively building socialism--- resulting in tens of millions dead, leaving millions more to live in misery as millions starved as the capitalist “philanthropists” looked on with glee and delight; then the imperialists used the threat of nuclear annihilation against socialism, and the peoples of the former first successful socialist revolution fought back each and every attempt to destroy their progress in building a prosperous country for working people--- agriculture was successfully collectivized to feed a hungry nation as a huge, powerful industrial base owned by the people was built up to provide--- for the first time in human history--- for the general welfare of all the people.


Because of weak, muddle-headed and confused leaders who gave in to revisionism, and others, like Gorbachov, who sold out the Soviet people--- working people of the former Soviet Union are now being subjected to a most vicious form of gangster capitalism as punishment for having had the courage to stand up to the imperialist beast. Finnish people know only too well how imperialism punishes the working class and farmers for having the courage to stand up to feudal lords and the capitalist masters.


The imperialists have never missed an opportunity in distorting Finland’s history; to spread the most outrageous slanders about socialism using the most disgusting and malicious lies concocted to distort and twist history with regards to the so-called “Winter War” where the capitalist sooth-sayers turn history on its head and turn Hitler’s fascist henchmen and butchers into heroes while revolutionary workers fighting for human dignity are demonized.
Finnish Communists, almost alone, have struggled to tell the truth to the world regarding this big-lie.


Your Party, the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland, carries on in the great, best and important traditions of the progressive Finnish people… from the heroines and heroes of the epic Kalevala, to Minna Canth the great advocate of women’s rights, to A. B. Mäkelä the heroic Finnish Communist and Marxist theoretician who after being forced from Finland by the reactionary feudal lords led the efforts to establish Sointula--- a cooperative community in British Columbia, Canada, to the great Marxist teacher, heroic Communist and true internationalist--- Otto Ville Kuusinen.


The revisionists have given up on building Communist Party Clubs among the working class in their communities and places of employment; these Clubs are fundamental to all progressive advance and social change because they are the “think-tanks” and “action centers” of the working class and progressive movements for peace and social and economic justice; the Communist Party Clubs are basic and fundamental to establishing working class power.


The so-called “non-Marxist socialists” and the anti-Leninist “Communists” have abandoned the Marxist-Leninist method of building Communist Party Clubs essential and fundamental to fighting for needed reforms and the day-to-day needs of working people as the working class struggles for--- and to attain and hold on to--- working class political power. Grassroots and rank-and-file working class activism though these Communist Party Clubs has always been, and always will be, the key to building strong and powerful Communist Parties capable of leading the working class in the struggle against capital--- locally, nationally and internationally. Through these Communist Party Clubs we seek to educate, organize and bring the working class into united, militant action against capital… it is with this in mind that we extend warm, Comradely greetings in the class struggle to the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland as you deliberate at your important 18th Party Congress.


The struggle against revisionism is an integral part of the struggle for socialism and international working class solidarity and unity!


The future belongs to the working peoples of the world who will find peace, justice, dignity, freedom and happiness through socialism!


Long live the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland!


All power to the working class!


For international working class solidarity in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism!


On behalf of the Minnesota/North Dakota District of the Communist Party USA and the Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council;


Yours in the struggle,


Alan L. Maki

Secretary-Treasurer,

Minnesota/North Dakota District, Communist Party USA


Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council


Representing over two-hundred thousand casino workers struggling for union recognition in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa... presently employed in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws.


Cc: Rita Polewski, District Organizer, Minnesota/North Dakota District, CPUSA

Jeff Sippila, Chair, Iron Range Club, CPUSA

Dean Gunderson, Chair, St. Paul Club, CPUSA

Gus Hall Action Club, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Sam Webb, Chair, CPUSA

Maggie Bird, President, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council (sent by U.S. mail)

David Bednarczuk, Mesaba Cooperative Park; Hibbing, Minnesota

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota USA 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog, a voice for rank-and-file working class activism:

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