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In protest against the EU summit in Helsinki and the policies of the EU governments, a coalition of organisations, the Helsinki 2006 network, called for a demonstration on September 9th under the slogan of "For another Europe".
The slogans were:
- For the right to work – no to neoliberalism
- For the right to public service – no to privatization
- For the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants – no to Fort Europe and racism
- For justice and peace – no to war alliances and war
- For the rights of the environment and the humanity – stop the demolition of the Earth
Behind the network are organisations such as the construction workers' union, a local branches of, respectively, the metal workers' and hotel and restaurant workers' union, Attac, Left youth organisation Vänsterunga, Finnish Communist Party, Communist Youth League, Socialist League (Finnish sister group of British SWP), Marxist Workers' League (Finnish section of the Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International) and more. Since practically all left organisations claim to be internationalists, and Helsinki is only a boat trip away from Stockholm, one could've expected that the Finnish activists would've been joined by some Swedish ditto. But the Swedish left were almost completely absent. Besides the group from Revolution and Arbetarmakt, Swedish section of the League for the Fifth International, the only Swedes visible was a tiny group of libertarians. Our flyer was the only one distributed from any Swedish group. The Swedish language material we had was, as expected, not easily sold, but sales of the English papers – Workers Power, the Anticapitalism pamphlet and Fifth International – were much better.
The demonstration, which went through central Helsinki, finally gathered about 2 000 people. In the beginning of the march, the participants were silent, and there were long gaps between the chants and slogans. The most militant bloc was clearly a group of activists from Burma and Philippines. The almost complete lack of democratic rights in Burma is a natural breeding ground for a more militant position, so their approach was not surprising. As the demonstration advanced further, slogans occurred more often also among the Finnish activists, albeit with room for improvements.
Another demonstration had been called later the same day by a group of anarchists, against the European-Asian summit. The slogan for the demo, which had not been granted permission by the police, was "Smash ASEM". Posters explained that some chaos would be created in Helsinki in solidarity with all peoples fighting in the Third World. Of course, revolutionaries do not oppose disorder or uprisings in the imperialist countries in order to support the semi-colonies. Unfortunately this was not what was about to take place. The ones attracted by the possibility of a heroic battle or who just wanted to see what would happen were presented with one of the most stupid events ever to be seen.
There were no attempts of spreading any kind of politics, no slogans, fliers, signs, and no attempts of organising anything. It was, rather simply, a couple of people gathered on a square, some of them dressed in black. It was unclear whether any plans except the already posted advertisements with images of riots existed, but before slightest attempt of any kind of trouble or disorder had been made, the square was swarmed with a bizarre amount of cops. There were probably as many cops as protesters, or even more, and this even if we count all people on the square, including the elder people who were presumably not so keen on any confrontations, as protesters.
Suddenly, the square was surrounded, and without any action from the protesters, the police decided that no-one could leave. This was pure provocation from the cops, as if they really wanted to pick a fight. This, of course, they could do without any risks whatsoever, as there were at least three well-equipped and trained cops on every anarchist that was prepared to fight. Furthermore, the cops were considerably larger than their opponents.
A couple of attempts were made to break through the police lines. This should not be exaggerated, though, as it was hard to believe that the adventurist Black Bloc anarchists would meet anything but defeat when they unarmed tried to take on the double lines of robocops. The big majority of the people trapped in the square soon got fed up with the silly row, and wanted to leave. But the cops apparently thought otherwise. As beer bottles were emptied, these were thrown at the cop lines. However, isolated bottle projectiles against riot shields are quite an inefficient way of supporting the fighting peoples of the Third World, and few were impressed by these actions.
After a few hours, with the entrance to the Museum of Arts stinking of urine in lack of proper toilet facilities, the cops finally decided to slowly let people go. Everyone had their bags searched. In this situation, a small core of politically unconscious gave an example of how bad things can turn when glorifying of violence meets a total lack of any political understanding. A couple of brats started throwing bottles against the part of the police line were people were allowed to exit. This did not only result in that the exit was closed for a while, but even worse in that several protestors close to the police line were hit in the head by bottles.
On September 10th, the day after the demonstrations, we visited a seminar organized by the Finnish Communist Party. Guests from different organisations in other countries held speeches. As usual at these kinds of events the speakers mostly talked about general issues, and almost no practical points or decisions were made. This is always a bore after a while, but the biggest problem o the day was political.
The Finnish Communist Party, for example, has made some attempts of breaking with its Stalinist heritage – they emphasize on the need for democracy, and openly oppose the Stalinist terror. But the problem with Stalinism lies deeper than that – it affected and destroyed the entire communist program, and any ex-Stalinist organisation willing to return to communist politics must make a real break with its entire history and former policies. One of the most important and also most harmful parts of Stalinism is the constant lapse into different versions of the "two stages theory". The stages theories are older than Stalinism and were significant for Menshevism and other types of reformism. In the tsar's Russia, this lead to that the Mensheviks interpreted the coming revolution as solely a bourgeois one, and that they because of this subordinated workers' politics under bourgeois forces. In 1917 the Bolsheviks made a final break with the non-revolutionary stages theories when they steered the revolution directly to the socialist path. After the death of Lenin, the communist movement increasingly came under the control of the growing Stalinist bureaucracy, and transformed from being means of revolutionary politics into an obstacle to the same. Because of the degeneration of the stages theory, the Chinese revolution of 1927 was defeated, the Spanish revolution of 1936-38 was betrayed and the Iranian revolution of 1979 lead to a bloody defeat.
The stages theory is still around; this was more than visible on the seminar. Socialist and revolutionary demands were almost absent, and demands relating to the working class rare. The organisations at the meeting dreamt of some kind of democratic stage, where all progressive forces would defeat the neoliberal policies and go back to when national parliaments had the power instead of the EU central bank, ECB, where the European Union would be more independent towards the USA, or where the United Nations would be "reconstructed".
The most reformist vision was the one pictured by the representative from German Linkspartei.PDS, who thought the left should act to enlighten all democratic and reform minded parts of the civil community, to encourage them to return to better policies. Consistent communists are naturally for strengthening and defending our democratic rights and for the struggle against neoliberalism and the war mongering capitalists. But to from this draw the conclusion that we should put all revolutionary and anti-capitalist demands on hold for a couple of years, will only give reactionary results.
Time is not right for putting forward working class' demands, targeting the capitalist system and the bourgeois states, we're told. But if this is not the time, with the imperialist epoch in a neoconservative phase, when will it ever be? Dreams of a more democratic stage of capitalism are utopical. All defence of our rights today is linked directly to the class struggle – which, in its conscious form, is communist. This does not exclude co-operation with non-communist forces or even with purely democratic, petit-bourgeois ones, but the communist tactics of the united front do exclude putting away the communist program to make the front partners happy.
Arbetarmakt,
Swedish section of the League for the Fifth International
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