Opening Speech by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of AKEL, Stefanos Stefanou at the Conference in honor of the October Revolution

 

“The Left in the Modern World”

4 November 2023

“Revolutions are the engine of history”. Just like the great bourgeois Revolutions – both the American and French – the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 remains a universal historical milestone in the course of humanity. As a socialist revolution, however, it is not just an important historical event. It is a universal symbol that illuminates the struggle for liberation from class injustice and the exploitation of people. For the dawn of a world that is truly and fundamentally humane, just and peaceful.

This year we commemorate the anniversary of the Revolution in a different way: with today’s conference and with distinguished friends and academics as keynote speakers, with whom we will discuss aspects of the timely and crucial issue of the Left’s role in the contemporary world. We believe that the October Revolution anniversary offers an opportunity not only for a historical review and reaffirmation of our belief in the vision of socialism, but also for a discussion and reflection on how the Left acts and engages in political struggle within the context of capitalism and especially in the contemporary world.

The answer to this crucial question makes a correct analysis of the substance, decisions and phenomena of the contemporary world imperative. Marxism provides the most effective scientific class socio-economic tool to do this. In attempting to outline the contemporary capitalist world, I would point out five crucial facts:

• First. The contradiction between capital and labour has not only not been abolished, but has deepened, even though the form of labour and production is changing rapidly. There is not a single statistic that does not point to the chaotic inequalities existing in each country, but also between countries and regions across the world, at a time when the wealth being produced across the world is constantly increasing. Capitalism is continues to be based on the exploitation of the two principal sources of this wealth: human labour and the natural environment. In the case of the environment, the exploitation and destruction is assuming such a character that it now threatens the very existence of the planet.
• Second. The world is experiencing an unprecedented intensification of militarisation and antagonisms, behind which, of course, we always find

geopolitical plans, economic and energy interests and military-industrial complexes.

The bloody massacre that is being committed right next to us in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine are not the only hotbeds of war. From the Caucasus to Africa and from the Middle East to South-East Asia, conflicts and explosive tensions make up the mosaic of a planet that is literally at boiling point.

• Third. Since the 1980’s of the last century, when neoliberalism prevailed, the functioning of bourgeois democracy has regressed. This also happened because democracy and its important institutions were put under the suffocating pressure of the impunity of the market and private interests almost completely prevailed over social interest. The way things are developing, I consider it is no exaggeration to argue that the capitalism that gave birth to bourgeois democracy is not only restricting it now, but indeed undermining its perspective.
• Fourth. In the field of controlling people’s consciousness’s, the effectiveness of the methods employed for imposing restrictions on thought has been strengthened sharply despite the fact that the explosion in communication technologies has widened the arena of expression. Fear is used to suspend reason, populism to replace rationalism, conspiracy theories to abolish political thought. The modern world is destroying optimism and the hope for improving and changing it. Disillusionment with the possibility of changing the situation reinforces the alienation that the system produces and regenerates, together with passivity and abstention from political engagement and electoral processes.
• Fifth. A sign of the times is the rise of the far right and fascism in Europe and around the world. As the most reactionary version of the system, it is openly hostile to democratic freedoms, human rights and social achievements. It would not be an exaggeration to say that by analogy we are living today what humanity lived through in the period between the two world wars. When fascism, by tapping into populism, racism, anti-communism, nationalism and having the tolerance or even the support of a section of big capital and the establishment, managed to come to power in Germany, using the tools, processes and institutions of [bourgeois] democracy.

At the same time, we are confronted with new phenomena. With the development of Artificial Intelligence and, in general, with the unimaginable scientific and technological progress, humanity is already at one of the most critical crossroads in its course. These achievements recorded by science are unleashing possibilities and perspectives for humanity that were unimaginable up until yesterday.

But just as a knife can become a life-saving scalpel in the hands of a surgeon or a murderous weapon in the hands of a killer, so the unimaginable new possibilities of science and technology also pose dangers for the future of workers, human rights, democracy and bioethics.

For example, where consequences will robotisation have in industrial production?

To a reduction in working time and the freeing of working people from arduous and dangerous manual labour?

Or to the mass and sudden unemployment of millions of people?

How many problems that have plagued people since the beginning of time can be solved by biotechnology in medicine, for example, and how many dangers will the use of new technologies in the war and arms industry or in surveillance systems targeting citizens pose?

The question, therefore, in whose hands will the new wonders of science be and how they will be used is becoming one of the critical issues of our modern world. Consequently, all this must be a field for articulating a discourse and an arena of action by the Left, which by its very nature and position must not simply be relevant, but also pioneering in the field of technology and science, and more specifically, in how the progress and well-being of societies is served. This must be the measure and the criterion.

All this points to the great arenas of activity and priorities where the Left internationally can – and must – meet and join forces with the whole people of labour and progress. Namely:

• Assertions for the working people and for the quality of work.
• Actions to save the environment and the planet.
• Combating inequalities both within societies and more broadly across the world.
• Investing in science and technology in ways that serve society.
• Defending and further deepening democracy, human rights, civil liberties, transparency and accountability.
• Defending peace, international law and cooperation between states and peoples against all those forces whose policies trigger wars, conflicts and bloodshed.

At the same time, however, the systemic root cause of the great wounds afflicting the modern world is clear and visible. For peace is not only the absence of war, but also the absence of the root causes of war. Environmental protection is not only the need to pursue good ecological practices, but primarily the protection of nature from a system based on anarchic and greedy development, based on the commercialisation of everything, based on the pursuit of profit as an end in itself and at any price. Anti-fascism is not only the struggle against an inhumane ideology, but also the struggle against the economic policies that lead people to it.

For all these reasons, the vision of socialism in the face of the deadlocks of capitalism is not only not abandoned but – for us – it is what identifies and expresses the Left as a force for social change. We are fully aware that in times of the system’s ideological domination, even daring to dream of an alternative and just world is attacked and treated with irony or is denounced as being some outdated utopia.

It is the responsibility of the Left to defend its vision. Which, among other things, means ridding it of the distortions, misconceptions and crimes of the past that creeped into existing socialism and ultimately affronted Marxist ideology and the socialist vision. We must evaluate the experience of existing socialism, both positive and negative, dialectically in order to redefine the vision. It was Marx himself, after all, who stated that revolutions ought to be constantly criticising themselves.

AKEL, as it is well known, gave its own content to this vision by outlining “Our Own Concept of Socialism”. A concept based on two main pillars: the democratic election and rotation of power through free and fair elections and the evolutionary path towards a socialist society with diversity in forms of social property. This concept is not static and, as we decided at our last Party Congress, we will update it by drawing on the profound socio-political developments that have taken place since then and on the experiences of the Left internationally. Of course, I hasten to underline that the great visions of the Cypriot Left are visions for all Cyprus and all Cypriots.

That is precisely why AKEL has for decades now determined that the solution of the Cyprus problem – the termination of the occupation and the reunification of our homeland and people – is what will enable the continuation of the history of waging common class struggles, which was violently and bloodily interrupted by the imperialist interventions, nationalisms, the Turkish invasion and ongoing occupation.

Comrades and friends,

AKEL throughout its historical course has not been and is not just a Party with a vision for tomorrow. It has not been and is not a party that limits itself to issuing denunciations about today. On the contrary, AKEL has shaped its identity and managed to become a leading force in our country precisely because it serves its vision for tomorrow with demands and proposals for today, for the present, for the modern daily needs of the people of labor, of young people, of vulnerable groups.

Because it is linked to all the great achievements that have improved the living and working conditions of the working people of Cyprus.

With dynamic growth based on a strong economy.

With major breakthroughs in education, health and social security.

With the prosperity and quality of life of local communities in Municipalities and Local Communities where AKEL was at the helm.

Because AKEL has and needs – and in this we invest even more strength and effort – to elaborate proposals, realistic and progressive, to make the lives of the many tangibly better today, within the existing system.

Proposals of a class and social nature, which serve the overwhelming majority of society, makes a living lives from the toil of its own labour – whatever form it takes – and not at the expense of others.

Proposals and policies for every section of the economy, society, the state, institutions, individual rights and ecology. For transparency, accountability and justice.

That is what we have done and that is what we shall continue to do, in fact we will do it more methodically and effectively. By doing so, we give substance to the Left as a force for progress, as a springboard for moving history forward. At the same time, it is in this way that the Left wins the war of people’s minds and hearts. For if people’s minds are not won, the subjective factor is transformed from a force for progress into a force for conservatism and regression.

Returning to the anniversary, I feel the need to underline that for us the legacy of the October Revolution is not some souvenir of a charming past. Marxism-Leninism is neither quotations, nor some metaphysical dogma. It is first and foremost an inspiration for the vision of a radically and qualitatively better world, to which the struggle for its realisation is worthy of life’s dedication and sacrifices, large and small.

But it is also an inspiration in boldness and dialectics in theory and in practice, without which the Revolution of 1917 that shook the world would never have been realized.

Boldness and dialectics for the forging and building of alliances between forces and people who, even if they do not agree on everything, cooperate and march together in the struggles to make the world a better place, since they share fundamental concerns and goals.

An imperative prerequisite for the success of these noble struggles is to acknowledge your mistakes and weaknesses before the people and to have the determination to correct them.

To reject dogmatism and opportunism in thought, in decisions, in action.

To distinguish between the acceptable, necessary compromises required at any given time and the unacceptable ones.

To speak in a language and with such substance that society understands you and not just your inner party circle.

In short, to manage to make ideas a material force in real life, a force that can change things. And to do this, our ideas need to become the property of the working people, of the people in general.

The constitutional changes proposed by the Central Committee of AKEL and being discussed these days among the party membership are distinguished by this spirit. They preserve and harmoniously link the ideology, character and vision of the Party, precisely because we believe in them, with the content that we give them in our times and in our country. At the same time, we are boldly bringing changes to the structures, functioning and procedures of the Party in order to open it even more to the working people of Cyprus. To make it more effective and productive, more open and democratic, constantly renewed and outward-looking.

This process – profoundly democratic and collective – is not only not a departure from our Party’s character and ideology, but it is a demand of our ideology.

Comrades and friends,

The Great October Socialist Revolution will be the subject of debate and analysis for decades, perhaps even centuries to come, because it changed the course of history as only revolutions can. For working people around the world, however, it is much more than that. It was, is and will be the assault on the sky for a society that is solidly democratic, solidly just and solidly humane.  And as such it was and will remain an unquenched flame on the horizon of human history that manages to burn from 1917 into the 21st century.