Dear comrades,

It is a great honor and pleasure for me to open the Fifth World Conference of ICOR on behalf of the ICC. When I look around me here, it is like a little journey to the revolutionary movement of the world. When these days are over, we will go out into the world strengthened and with great advances in knowledge: what is the significance of Lenin’s teachings today for Marxist-Leninist party building, for assessing the imperialist world system, for our necessary strategy and tactics in the successful struggle for the only prospects for the future, socialism and communism.

I am very happy to be able to welcome here 46 delegates from 30 organizations from 25 countries! You represent a vast store of theoretical knowledge, practical experiences, fighting morale, culture, and often death-defying courage in your work.

New is that we also have invited guests. They represent revolutionary forces outside ICOR who are our indispensable comrades in arms, friends, or also critics.

Last but not least, to this opening ceremony we have also invited delegates of our many brigadists and helpers, without whom this conference could not take place at all. Thanks to all of you!

All of you are the living who have declared war on imperialism in the entire world and fight to open the road to socialism and communism. But we all stand also on the shoulders of the dead, the slain martyrs – on the shoulders of those we hold up as examples. Each organization could name, as example for all of them, a person who died or was murdered in recent years. These persons will now be presented to you by those who will carry the torch forward: our revolutionary youth. I ask you to rise from your seats:

(…)

Dear comrades,

By honoring our deceased we also undertake a commitment: we will continue down the path you took, we will carry on your struggle, and we will not forget you!

Dear comrades,

We can be proud of 14 years of building ICOR and the successful work of the past three years. The imperialist world system is plunging humanity into life-threatening crises that threaten its very existence: a growing tendency towards fascism, the danger of a third world war, and the beginning of a global environmental catastrophe. They present humankind with the historical alternative: decline into imperialist, capitalist barbarism or forward to socialism and communism, despite all difficulties.

The ICOR has given the international revolutionary and working-class movement a clear revolutionary orientation in the process of re-formation and re-orientation. It has held a clear course for over 14 years. It represents a new form of revolutionary organization: based on the relevant ideological-political minimum consensus, to focus on the 80 percent common ground in relation to practical work in the class struggle and in the preparation of the international revolution. At the same time, to develop close cooperation and a relationship of trust, which provides the basis in turn for clarifying the 20 percent differences as well as for achieving unity on new developments. This basic idea is also the recipe for success in the future!

Nevertheless, ICOR faces great tasks and challenges:

• For all its clarity, unity, proletarian culture of debate and attractive joint practice, it is still objectively a relatively small force on a world scale. It still has a lot of work to do before – on the basis of the objective development – a truly influential revolutionary world movement emerges.

• Objectively, in their foundation of scientific socialism the Marxist-Leninist parties of the world are vastly superior to the ruling powers of the world. But as a rule they are still small in relative terms and do not yet have a formative influence on society as a whole. However, only strong, well-steeled parties firmly anchored among the masses can determinedly lead the working class and the broad masses in the coming revolutionary developments to revolutionary change and the construction of socialism and communism.

• Objectively, the imperialist world system is doomed and the future belongs to socialism – this is why more and more people are searching for a social alternative. Those in power try to massively influence this search for a social alternative, which the ICOR organizations are experiencing everywhere, to take it on another course.

It is a central task of the days we spend together here to significantly advance the progress of knowledge for the resolution of these contradictions. To this end, we must discuss even more clearly the revolutionary path and progress in our strategy and tactics, in consciousness-raising, in the struggle for the minds of the masses, learn from each other and reach agreement. Because ultimately we must be clearer, stronger and better organized than our powerful opponents. Only then will we become a force superior to imperialism!

The ICC Report – which all of you have received and studied – renders account mainly for the development of the work of ICOR and the ICC. This introductory speech, on the other hand, is intended to stimulate discussion and the reaching of a common understanding about the economic and political developments in the world. Traditionally it is agreed that the Main Coordinator is responsible for the speech. That is to say, it contains not only the positions on which there is already unity in ICOR, but also, to encourage a controversial discussion, puts up for discussion the personal assessments of the Main Coordinator, qualifying them as such.

Dear comrades,

So what are the economic and political foundations of the ongoing destabilization of the imperialist world system? Karl Marx already identified the over-accumulation of capital as the deepest economic cause of the crises. Put simply, we could say that capitalism produces crises and growing mass misery because there is too much wealth.

The so far deepest and most comprehensive global economic and financial crisis of the capitalist world system lasted from 2008 to 2014. It could only be overcome by international finance capital because the largest monopolies moved their surplus capital to other countries in order to exploit the workers and nature of the whole world for their power and profit. On the basis of the formation of these monopolies, this export of capital and the development of state-monopoly structures in the countries of origin, the already “famed”, highly controversial new imperialist countries of varying weight and character are emerging – in my personal opinion. They enter into fierce competition with the “old” imperialist countries. This uneven development in the imperialist world system is a source of the proliferation of wars and the deepening of crises in the imperialist world system. According to our analysis, after 2014 the next global economic and financial crisis, which continues until today, already emerged in 2018.

In my view, the accurate characterization of the economic and political development in the world and in one’s own country is a key question in order to correctly determine the strategy and tactics, to build the party, to develop the leading role of the working class, and to connect with the workers and the struggling masses all over the world.

Whereas the internationalization of capitalist production that has unfolded since the beginning of this millennium cannot be “undone,” and all international supermonopolies cannot do without it, the international rightward tendency propagates mutual isolation with aggressive chauvinism. Thus, “USA first” or “Europe first” are justifications for gigantic subsidies to the respective monopolies. But these increase the national debt and further inflate the over-accumulation of capital. The enormous destruction of capital necessary to temporarily overcome the crisis has so far been thwarted by the crisis programs in the interests of the monopolies, thus building up new overcapacities in relation to the shrinking markets. A fierce competition has broken out between the various imperialist powers, in which the balance of forces has certainly shifted.

Industrial production in the USA was at 99.4 percent in the first quarter of 2024 as compared to the pre-crisis level in the first quarter of 2018; in the EU it was at 99.1 percent. Japan and Germany are just above 86 percent. By contrast, China was at 126.8 percent of its pre-crisis level in 2023, India at 111.7 percent and Russia at 109.8 percent.1

But even in the powers which I consider to be new imperialist powers, and which are out in front now, the situation is anything but stable.

China itself is beset by signs of crisis. The bloated real estate speculation is threatening to burst; the real estate giant Evergrande is facing liquidation despite billions in state aid. The hopes of many members of the middle strata to own their own homes are being dashed. Youth unemployment of over 20 percent shows the lack of prospects. The class contradictions in China, which, in a grossly misleading manner, still calls itself socialist, are becoming more and more evident there, too.

Because the surplus capital cannot find investment opportunities that promise maximum profit, it goes into speculation and the stock markets. In the last two years, rampant speculation, including in oil and raw materials extraction around the globe, has led to massive inflation, driving the masses into poverty in more and more countries – and, on the other hand, accumulating gigantic wealth among a few top echelons of international finance capital and a growing number of multi-billionaires.

At the end of 2023, global stock market values reached 4.5 times the level of industrial production, which is falling in the crisis. However, the stock market rally with over-accumulated, non-investable capital can also very suddenly, in the entire closely networked financial world, lead to a global stock market crash, shaking the entire global economic system.

Closely interwoven with the global economic and financial crisis are structural crises in the areas of the transition to e-mobility, hydrogen production and digitalization. Today, digitalization is increasingly affecting and networking all areas of production, trade, administration, education, communication, media and society as a whole, worldwide.

The new stage of digitalization, with AI (artificial intelligence) as a hope for the future of the global economy, recently suffered its first cracks from the quake caused by the brief collapse of global digital networking on 19 July. Of course, digital networking also opens up enormous opportunities for progressive and revolutionary movements, which must be exploited. However, misplaced trust in them can have devastating consequences.

The changeover to e-mobility could also be a program for reducing fossil fuel combustion and protecting the natural environment. However, under capitalist auspices, it only increases the battle of annihilation between the monopolies involved and the rivalry between countries. The USA – and the EU as copycat – are imposing huge tariffs to ward off mass imports of e-cars from China. For automotive workers of the world, a wave of job losses and the closure of entire plants are also imminent in “automobile country” Germany.

Together with his predecessor Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden has pumped around three trillion US dollars into the economy. As a result, the USA has in part significantly strengthened its economy in the face of international competition.

The competitive relationship and changed balance of power are also reflected in the shares of the individual imperialists in the 500 dominant international supermonopolies worldwide.

In 2020, China overtook the superpower USA for the first time with 135 monopolies to 122. Meanwhile US imperialism managed to reverse this. In 2023, there were 139 US monopolies compared to China’s 127. These monopolies benefit the most from government crisis programs.

On the other hand, the global national debt in connection with the devastating debt crises of the neo-colonially dependent countries rose to a total of 97 trillion US dollars. This means that the burdens of the crisis are being shifted to the coming years, with dramatic consequences for the masses, including the threat of national bankruptcy.

The only booming industry worldwide is arms production. It rose to 2.4 trillion US dollars in 2023 and thus to 10.5 percent of industrial production.2 The destruction of weapons in imperialist wars is ultimately a state-financed destruction of capital as a bubbling source of profit – paid for with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Dear comrades,

In view solely of this diversity of economic crises – overproduction crises, structural crises, debt crises, stock market crises – the sentence from the Communist Manifesto is highly topical: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote: “And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? … by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.”

Dear comrades,

In ICOR there is great agreement about the fact that imperialism means war. The ICOR resolution for Anti-War Day 2024 thus states:

“The classics of Marxism-Leninism convincingly proved the inevitability of wars under capitalism. Driven by the desire for maximum profit and the export of capital, the imperialist countries that dominate the planet are fighting among themselves for a repartition of the world…, creating the danger of local wars against oppressed countries escalating into a world imperialist war.”

For the further unification within ICOR, but also for the continuing international debate, Lenin’s teachings about the inevitability and even proliferation of imperialist wars are very important. On the fourth anniversary of the October Revolution he declared:

“The question of imperialist wars, of the international policy of finance capital which now dominates the whole world, a policy that must inevitably engender new imperialist wars, that must inevitably cause an extreme intensification of national oppression, pillage, brigandry and the strangulation of weak, backward and small nationalities by a handful of ‘advanced’ powers—that question has been the keystone of all policy in all the countries of the globe since 1914. It is a question of life and death for millions upon millions of people.”3

Today, however, these “inevitable” wars are on a scale that could result in the destruction of the entire human race. In the genocide in Gaza, more than 40,000 people have been brutally murdered so far, around 100,000 injured, and the infrastructure has completely collapsed. There is no functioning hospital, no school, and the destruction of the environment is being deliberately used as a weapon of war. There is not a drop of clean water left and 370,000 homes have been destroyed. Polio, cholera and other diseases are rampant. UNICEF has stated that it will hardly be possible to live healthily or farm in the Gaza Strip in the future. Constant expulsions are wearing down the people there. All this is part of the systematic genocide as the temporary culmination of over 70 years of expulsion, oppression and harassment. A controversy in the ICOR still relates to how the various forces of the Palestinian movement are to be assessed. This refers in particular to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Here the assessment ranges all the way to “fascist” and “not part of the liberation struggle”. Even in the case of a joint assessment as reactionary, the controversy relates to the question whether they should be publicly criticized in this acute situation of the Palestinian liberation struggle though the PFLP, DFLP and other left forces of the armed liberation struggle are collaborating with these religious forces. In our resolution of 1 January 2024 we formulated a minimum consensus: “We fundamentally support the Palestinian resistance, despite our criticism of the political and ideological alternatives of the Islamist forces.” Since then the ICOR adopted further powerful resolutions. The resolution to strengthen the democratic and secular forces in the Palestinian liberation struggle also calls for the construction of a hospital in Gaza after the role model of the ICOR brigades in Kobanê as soon as the war comes to an end. But we should do much more to develop solidarity.

In Sudan, as many as 60,000 refugees have fled refugee camps to escape the war between the RSF militia and the government. New military alliances are being forged: Iran and Saudi Arabia support the government in Sudan, while in Yemen they instrumentalize opposite military alliances. These are also in the focus of Israel’s war on the Palestinians; the USA and Israel have started to fire on the Houthi militias. China and the USA are involved in the battle for spheres of influence in the South China Sea, and China is increasing its military pressure around the Philippines. China and the USA also directly confront each other militarily in Taiwan.

We have never been as close to a Third World War as we are today, given the confrontation between NATO and Ukraine on the one side and Russia on the other. In this confrontation there is constant escalation on both sides. An open, official war between NATO and Russia will lead – and both sides are already making such threats – to a nuclear world war. Here there is some controversy in the ICOR as to whether this European theater of war is not being overrated.

In my opinion, this acute danger of a world war is increased by Russia’s territorial gains in the southeast of Ukraine, the repeated attacks of unclear origin on nuclear power plants, and Ukraine’s attacks on Russian territory, as far as Moscow, using NATO’s long-range weapons. The international revolutionary peace and workers’ movement is urgently needed here, but at the same time it is more divided than ever: In part, Russia is supported in the fight against Ukraine citing as justification Ukraine’s proxy war for NATO and NATO’s systematic provocative eastward expansion against Russia. Others emphasize Ukraine’s right of self-defense against Russia’s war of aggression and reject criticism of the Zelensky government at this time. In our resolutions on this war we have clearly characterized both sides as imperialist-motivated, declared solidarity with the workers and the masses of the people of both countries, proclaimed the demand “workers do not shoot at workers,” and propagated the common struggle for a liberated socialist world.

We also have controversial discussions when it comes to assessing the role of Iran. The positions range from the assessment of a new-imperialist, fascist character to the assessment of an anti-imperialist character because Iran is opposed to the USA and supports the Palestinian liberation struggle. In our resolution of 29 November 2022 on the solidarity campaign with the workers’ and people’s uprising in Iran, we rightly published the controversial positions and called for discussion and clarification. Despite the differences, this resolution also found the following consensus: “A state should grant democratic rights and freedoms to the people and protect them from forced religious dictates. … Down with the Mullah Regime! For a Democratic-Antifascist Revolution in Iran on the Way to Socialism!”

Let us openly address existing differences, discuss them objectively and, if possible, resolve them – or at least bring them to full fruition on the basis of our common ground, proletarian internationalism.

Blatant as these developments are, an anti-imperialist consciousness and clarity about their imperialist opponents is not automatically spreading among the masses. We must continue to raise awareness of the character of imperialist wars and the legitimacy of wars of liberation. Hand in hand with the fascist tendency, the tendency to chauvinism or to social-chauvinism in a progressive guise is also growing – i.e., to fight hand in hand with one’s own bourgeoisie. Lenin teaches us to take a clear stance on the so-called “defense of the fatherland”:

“What, generally speaking, is ‘defence of the fatherland’? Is it a scientific concept relating to economics, politics, etc.? No. It is a much bandied about current expression, sometimes simply a philistine phrase, intended to justify the war. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing!”4

The various shades of bourgeois ideology try again and again to implant in the minds and hearts of the masses justifications for imperialist wars, or the pacifist illusion that the root cause of wars could be eradicated without revolution. Lenin, in contrast, teaches:

“Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished and expropriated the bourgeoisie of the whole world, and not merely of one country, will wars become impossible.”5

Dear comrades!

The international trend towards fascism and rightward development is intensifying and broadening. Nine of the G20 countries currently have fascist, proto-fascist or openly reactionary governments.6 45.7 percent of the world’s population lives there. In India, the fascist Modi government is pushing incitement to the point of state-tolerated fascist pogroms against the Muslim population. In Turkey, courts of the Erdogan regime sentenced progressive and revolutionary politicians, including elected members of parliament, to 42 years in prison for their solidarity with the Kurdish liberation struggle. Argentinian President Milei is pursuing a fascist program with aggressive anti-communism at its core. He denies the climate crisis and calls it a “socialist lie”. Under Netanyahu, in Israel a fascist-imperialist war regime committing genocide against the Palestinians is in place. In the USA, the Republicans have nominated the fascist Donald Trump as their presidential candidate. Fascist parties became the strongest force in six countries in Europe in the European elections in June 2024. In the state elections in Thuringia/Germany on 1 September 2024, a fascist party, the AfD, became the strongest force for the first time in post-war history with 32.9 percent of the vote.

For its intensified imperialist rivalry and preparations for world war, international finance capital needs a reactionary mass base, objects of fear and hatred, and the counter-revolutionary option of fascism. Stalin called fascism “the most fashionable commodity among war-mongering bourgeois politicians.”7

The wave of military coups in Africa, in the Sahel region, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea Conakry, Niger and Gabon, is part of the global trend towards fascism. The Africa Conference at the beginning of May qualified this: “these neo-colonial armies have been set up to suppress the trade union movement and popular struggles.”

The global tendency towards fascism is essentially based on three socio-economic foundations. Firstly, a feudal basis such as the Hindu fascism of the Modi government in India, based on the caste system, or in Saudi Arabia.

The fascist dictatorship in Russia or proto-fascist government methods in China have emerged from formerly social-imperialist countries. They have adopted centralized state-monopoly structures.

Thirdly, there is the development towards fascist governments from bourgeois democracies, as we see in Italy or the USA.

This development is a major challenge to the world’s revolutionaries. At times, feelings of inferiority, panic or skepticism penetrate into the masses. It is undoubtedly also alarming that the fascist tendency also applies to whole sections of the working class and the youth. The masses concerned do not yet see through the character of the fascist parties, which in part cleverly disguise themselves. They need to understand what Georgi Dimitrov, the then General Secretary of the Communist International, made clear: fascism is the dictatorship of “the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital. … It is mediaeval barbarity and bestiality, it is unbridled aggression in relation to other nations.”8

At the same time, in my view today we must speak of the development of a “modern fascism”. In its essence, with its main counter-revolutionary thrust against the revolutionary working-class movement, it is identical to Hitlerite fascism or other previously known most brutal forms of rule of the monopolies. But it presents and disguises itself differently, is more complicated to see through, and develops a tremendous demagogy. Fascists today present themselves as an apparent opposition, as champions of democracy and freedom of opinion, as advocates above all of the social interests of so-called “ordinary people”, although in reality they are the most brutal advocates of imperialism. They portray themselves as critical of the government and partly also of capitalism. Today they can spread their deception millions of times over, e.g. via the internet, especially social media. They pose as the guardians of the interests of the working class. Yet the fascists are the greatest enemies of the working-class movement! The “modern” face of fascism also aims to undermine the awakening environmental awareness in the situation of the beginning global environmental catastrophe. Under the slogan of “climate hysteria”, they fight every environmental protection measure.

What conclusions must the revolutionaries draw?

• I propose to combine the campaign of education about imperialism, decided upon by the Fourth World Conference, with a campaign of education about the character of fascism and the strategy and tactics of the struggle against fascism as a reactionary spawn of imperialism. As Lenin said: “imperialism is indisputably the ‘negation’ of democracy in general, of all democracy….”9

• It is imperative that we continue the course of building the ICOR in interaction with the United Front and building united fronts in our individual countries in the form of strategically oriented, reliable alliances with the working class as leadership. The “new popular front” in France has set an important, albeit debatable, example here. We must at all costs prevent the division of the working class – as in Hitlerite fascism between social democrats and communists – and build and strengthen the anti-fascist united front under the leadership of the working class.

Dear comrades!

The 20 November 2023 call of ICOR for the Environmental Day of Struggle states:

“The destruction of the environment has developed to the beginning of a global environmental catastrophe. The imperialist world system is to blame, so threatening the existence of the working class and the oppressed of the world as well as all non-human living creatures.”

The speed at which this global environmental catastrophe, which has already begun, is developing has taken on dramatic proportions.

Due to the unabated increase in greenhouse gases, especially CO2, to 421.08 ppm, the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere in 2023 rose by almost plus 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times. According to the UN report “Global Resources Outlook 2024”, global resource use has increased three-and-a-half-fold since 1970 from 30 billion tons per year to currently 106 billion tons per year, and is out of control. The extraction and processing of raw materials is responsible for 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 40 percent of air pollution.

The global climate catastrophe is intensifying the self-reinforcing tendencies of further features of the irreversible destruction of the foundations of human life. Increasingly frequent, extensive and persistent heatwaves with up to 45 degrees Celsius in Greece, sometimes over 50 degrees in Iran, and 52.3 degrees in the New Delhi area, pose a direct threat to human life and nature. Yield losses for rice, grain, olives, cocoa or coffee ruin farmers in Asia, southern Europe and West Africa and make entire regions uninhabitable.

The Himalayan glaciers, which feed ten of the world’s major rivers and supply two billion people with water, are melting at an unprecedented rate and could lose 80 percent of their ice by the year 2100. The disruption of the water cycles with floods and dry spells endangers agriculture; a drinking water catastrophe threatens. Due to the melting of all glaciers, the sea level on the coasts of the 900 islands of the Solomons group in the Pacific is rising three times faster than worldwide (7 to 10 millimeters per year). The wells and fields are becoming saline and the islands are sinking into the sea.

Regional environmental disasters are increasing in new quantity and quality. In May 2024 two million people in 447 cities in southern Brazil were affected by meter-high floods for weeks. Due to the doubling of natural disasters, around 26.4 million people had to leave their homes in 2023.

The persistent ozone hole over Antarctica grew in September 2023 to the record size of 26 million square kilometers and is contributing to the sixth mass extinction in history. In the giant cities in Asia, particulate matter levels exceed the limits set by the WHO by as much as 100 times due to private transport. High levels of air pollution in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai cause 8 to 11.5 percent of all deaths.

The list of features of this accelerating global ecological catastrophe is far from complete, and you will have more to report from your countries.

In contrast to this drama in objective reality, environmental awareness is temporarily overshadowed. Whereas an average of 2.3 million people took part in environmental protests every year from 2013 to 2022, this figure was only around 866,000 in 2023, and just under 130,000 this year up to and including June.10 Although this only portrays a snapshot of the situation, the ruling class and its fascist variant in particular are systematically aiming to push the environmental issue into the background in the consciousness of the workers and the masses. The so-called “climate deniers” generally deny that this global environmental catastrophe is human-made and can therefore be changed by humans! They spread panic or play down the drama, which is reflected in the consciousness of the masses, among other things, in that the environmental issue is estimated as less important in view of the acute social problems or the threat of war. The most aggressive denial of the global environmental catastrophe and environmental crisis comes from the worldwide rightward development of governments and the fascist danger this poses. This currently exerts a dangerous effect.

The ICOR must strive to raise the consciousness of the masses about the common root of environmental destruction, fascism and war, and about the identity of the struggle against them. Only a socialist society, in which the paradigms for production and distribution are oriented towards the unity of humankind and nature, can still offer people a future. The problem lies precisely in the fact that irreversible processes have already occurred, but their effects are not yet directly perceptible to the masses. This is also a material basis for the fact that the environmental awareness of the masses has regressed in the face of the immediately burning problems such as poverty, unemployment and wars, as well as under the influence of the rightward development and fascist demagogy.

In my opinion, the environmental issue still plays a subordinate role in the practice of many parties; this does not correspond to the current dimension of the problem. The tireless educational work of the Marxist-Leninists in connection with the struggle to save humankind from the devastating consequences of the global environmental catastrophe has become an indispensable task.

The UN Climate Change Conference COP 29 will take place in Azerbaijan this November and will once again degenerate into a fashion show for the international fossil fuel monopolies. It will further advance the ruthless exploitation of nature by imperialism and give it its blessings. The ICOR should also consider sending a delegation to this conference in order to protest in an appropriate way and make new contacts.

The ICOR resolution on the 2023 Environmental Day of Struggle is highly up-to-date when it states:

“Become active in the streets, in factories and neighborhoods! Protest in front of the centers of those responsible – monopolies, banks and imperialist politics! The revolutionary answer is socialism!”

Let us really observe the 2024 ICOR Environmental Day of Struggle powerfully and collectively on 16 November 2024.

Dear comrades!

The analysis of the crisis-ridden imperialist world system confirms Lenin’s definition of imperialism as dying capitalism, as a declining system characterized by devastating destructive forces. The ICOR shares Lenin’s view that the working class is the leading force in the revolutionary overcoming of this imperialist world system.

Petty-bourgeois and reformist forces deny the revolutionary role of the working class and declare the intellectuals to be the leading force. Postmodernists even speak of the “disappearance of the working class”. In bourgeois statistics, the proportion of workers is decreasing, while a growing sector of “services” is cited. But the majority of these so-called “service providers” – in transport and haulage, in the public sector, in health and education – are in fact workers.

Around 300 to 500 million women and men belong to the stratum that I believe must be described today as the “international industrial proletariat”. This includes the interconnected workforces in the international monopolies and their integrated production networks. They represent today’s advanced mode of production and are the direct counter-pole to solely ruling international finance capital. In my view, they are therefore at the forefront of the international working class. This international working class is and remains the decisive society-changing force in capitalist society.

The evaluation of the workers in the international monopolies is certainly the subject of controversial debate in the revolutionary movement. Due to significantly higher wages and the significantly better working and living conditions they have gained compared with the mass of workers, some organizations even regard them as a labor aristocracy and consider the work among them to be subordinate, difficult or even unfeasible.

In the last two and a half years, powerful mass movements of workers, youth, peasants, women and also the petty-bourgeois intermediate strata have emerged.

The death-defying struggle of the youth in Bangladesh drove out the fascist Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The fearless and successful struggle of hundreds of thousands of young Kenyans brought down part of the IMF dictate and ignited courageous mass struggles in Uganda and Nigeria.

Under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom – Down with the Islamic Republic”, from October to December 2022 a broad popular movement shook the fascist mullah regime in Iran. This was preceded by hundreds of significant workers’ struggles over the years.

Powerful workers’ struggles were organized even under fascist governments or even fascist dictatorships, such as in Turkey. In Argentina, 1.5 million people took part in a general strike. In India, farmers’ struggles are combined with workers’ struggles against the Modi government. In Turkey, textile workers at Özak Tekstil went on strike for trade-union rights. The International Automotive Workers’ Conference in November 2025 is of great importance in this context.

In March and July thousands upon thousands demonstrated in Tunisia for social justice against the dictate of the IMF, for rights and freedoms combined with strikes in various sectors.

Millions fought in France in over a dozen nationwide days of struggle against the reactionary “pension reform” of President Macron, who was ultimately only able to push it through with an emergency decree, for which he paid the penalty in the European elections.

The international youth environmental movement “Fridays for Future” brought millions onto the streets.

The solidarity movement with the Palestinian people and against Israel’s imperialist aggression spans the globe. In fact, it has become the strongest and most extensive movement of international solidarity since the protests against the Vietnam War. Effective and far-reaching were the blockades by dockworkers and sailors against arms shipments to Zionist Israel.

About the role of the international working class for the growth and higher development of this worldwide movement, Lenin wrote: “Any movement of the proletariat, however small, however modest it may be at the start, however slight its occasion, inevitably threatens to outgrow its immediate aims and to develop into a force irreconcilable to the entire old order and destructive of it.”11

From January 2022 to the beginning of August 2024, our analyses documented 1,925 strikes, protests and demonstrations of the working-class movement worldwide. However, we have obtained the following facts mainly from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois press – unfortunately, the ICOR organizations still report far too little about the events in their countries on the website. So you will certainly have a lot to correct, and the country reports will enrich us here enormously. Moreover, bourgeois reporting is often manipulated. In view of imperialist repression and media censorship, the actual number of struggles is certainly much higher and the mutual information and organization of solidarity is a fundamental task of ICOR.

Workers on all continents are fighting for higher wages with their trade unions, but also independently. In August 2022 workers on tea plantations in Bangladesh went on strike for 15 days to demand wage increases. One million workers went on strike in India in February 2023 for the payment of cost-of-living allowances, and in Indonesia in November of the same year for an increase in minimum wages. In February 2024, in Egypt 7,000 mainly female garment workers courageously went on strike for higher wages and protested against inflation of 30 percent.

Miners were at the forefront of these struggles on all continents. Miners in Jordan’s phosphate mines went on strike for ten days in July 2023 for higher wages and successfully enforced a ban on retaliation. This year and last year, miners in Latin America struck for and gained higher wages in the form of a higher profit participation and higher bonuses. The two 24-hour general strikes with millions of participants in January and May 2024 in Argentina against President Milei’s crisis program sent important signals for the development of the struggles into a fight against the government.

Many struggles were linked to demands for improvements in occupational health and safety, such as in March 2024 in Chile, or to clarify the deaths of miners in June 2023 in Mexico. For 23 months, more than 500 coal miners from Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, USA, fought for the reversal of wage cuts imposed in 2016. Their tenacious fight was supported by solidarity across the country and internationally. The fight then continued for the reinstatement of 41 dismissed unionists at the mine.

In September 2023, 13,000 workers successfully took strike action for higher wages at all three major US car manufacturers together, for the first time; the following month, 6,800 colleagues at Stellantis in the US struck for and gained higher wages and benefits.

Around the world, workers in the public sector, administration and healthcare system fought for and gained higher wages, for example in April 2023 in Canada, where 155,000 strikers – a third of all public sector employees – took part.

In July 2024, 30,000 contract workers in the oil and gas industry in Iran showed courage and determination. In a 23-day strike, they fought for and obtained higher wages and pensions and better working conditions.

In India, mass strikes against fascist Modi’s privatization plans took place in 2022 and 2023; in July 2024, tens of thousands of railway workers and postal employees in Sri Lanka went on strike across the country against low wages and job destruction.

In February 2023, half a million went on strike in the UK against the restriction of the right to strike. The workers’ struggles ushered in the end of the Sunak government, and the new Labour government had to promise to reverse the restrictions on the right to strike. In February and March 2024, dockworkers in Finland went on strike for more than 30 days against the crisis program of the new government and also opposed the planned restriction of the right to strike.

Still an exception, but an important signal for the unity of working-class and environmental movements was sent by 30,000 demonstrators in Panama in October 2023. With blockades, to date they have also prevented plans for opencast copper mining by the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals. Of similar significance are the mass protests going on for years against the Rio Tinto company and the European imperialist governments that want to mine lithium in Serbia at the price of brutal environmental destruction.

We are also seeing an upswing in struggles in Germany this year. In spring, over five million anti-fascist-minded people took to the streets against fascist plans for “remigration”, i.e., thousands and thousands of deportations of refugees and migrants. Large strike movements, especially of trade unions, have already involved millions of people and are also strengthening the class viewpoint and determination in the anti-fascist struggles. At the moment, thousands of steelworkers are embarking on fierce struggles against the planned destruction of at least 15,000 jobs and closures of entire plants.

And the very new development is that the closure of entire plants is being discussed at the automotive corporation Volkswagen. The task of the revolutionaries is to coordinate and revolutionize these struggles internationally. The system of rule of international finance capital must be targeted, and the struggles must be developed into a class struggle to overthrow the rule of international monopoly capital with the perspective of a socialist society in which the dictatorship of the proletariat truly enables democracy and the path to communism!

Lenin emphatically pointed out to us that all these struggles must never remain stuck in the framework of economic or political demands of the day. We connect this with showing socialism as the only social perspective.

Lenin said: “The workers should fight for freedom, without even for a minute abandoning the idea of socialism, without ceasing to work for its realisation….”12

Dear comrades!

The militant and proletarian women’s movement worldwide is also a strong force in the anti-imperialist and society-changing struggle. However, it is developing contradictorily and is challenged anew by the tendency towards fascism.

Der ICOR call for International Women’s Day in 2024 was titled: “Women’s consciousness has awakened internationally – for the liberation of women in genuine socialism!” It states: “Women are standing up against wars and crises. … These are important signals in a situation of growing imperialist rivalry and the resulting threat of world war and the accompanying heightened danger of war in many hot spots around the world.”

Israel’s barbaric war has claimed over 40,000 lives so far; 70 percent of the victims in Gaza are women and children. Many young women have put their stamp on the global solidarity movement with Palestine. They are not intimidated by the increasing repression and criminalization of solidarity, as in the USA or Europe. The female guerrilla fighters of YJA Star and HPG continue to resist the occupying forces and the threat to Rojava.13 Southern Kurdistan was bombed over fifty times by the Turkish air force between 27 and 31 August alone. Women activists are eliminated with targeted drone attacks (24 August 2024 Silêmanî, Iraq, two female journalists).14 The ICOR activities in the streets of Northern and Eastern Syria by the revolutionary communist movement (TKS) is strengthening the work for the fraternity of the peoples, especially between the Arabic and Kurdish peoples and show an important potential for the international work.

Proxy wars have always been fought on African soil, increasingly over natural resources. The war in Sudan has been raging since April 2023 and currently displaces the most people worldwide. Russia and Ukraine are each supporting one side with troops and weapons.15 More than 6.7 million women are threatened by gender-based violence there; rape is a weapon of war as we have experienced very strongly in Congo. Record numbers of murders of women worldwide are an expression of the decay of imperialism. Protests against this are developing from Latin America to India, most recently against the murder of an Indian doctor in Kolkata. 50 activists of both sexes, campaigning against mining projects, were murdered in 2019. Fascist regimes are among the first to abolish the right to abortion and clash with the women’s movement. Protest against this grows from the USA to Poland. In response, modern fascists further develop their social-fascist demagogy. In Germany, the fascist AfD party put up posters saying “Women’s freedom is non-negotiable” – in the background you see a woman in a burqa – and seriously pose as defenders of women’s rights. Under the fascist regimes of the mullahs and Taliban, the women of Iran and Afghanistan fight courageously under the most difficult conditions. Where the women’s and working-class movements interpenetrate closely under the leadership of the revolutionaries, they unfold their potential.

The more than four million predominantly female garment workers in Bangladesh are the starting point of the mass movement in Bangladesh that achieved the overthrow of the fascist prime minister: women from religion to revolution, some of them 15-year-olds, defying death, formed almost half of the protest movement, even though it is a Muslim-dominated country.16 The women from these hotspots of the world must come together in the movement of world women. And above all, the movements must recognize that the true liberation of women can never be achieved under feudal, capitalist and imperialist rule. Essentially, however, the women’s movements of the world are oriented towards improving the situation of women, towards equality within the existing system. The bourgeois parties, even the fascists now, brazenly claim that women’s concerns are in best hands with them and try to place themselves at the head of the women’s movement. The demagogy and lie of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feminism must be resolutely countered. At the same time, the special systemic oppression of women due to their gender opens up important opportunities for alliances across all classes and strata. However, a joint movement can only develop its potential in resolute struggle against any claim to leadership by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces. It is exactly right that the ICOR Africa, after its successful cooperation in the Third World Conference of Grassroots Women in Tunis, has expressly made the promotion of the world women’s movement its cause and is promoting the Fourth Conference of African World Women, which is to take place in Congo.

Dear comrades,

What all the mass struggles and insurrection-like conditions of recent years have had in common is that they have not been able to develop a political and revolutionary ferment into an actual revolution and socialist movement. An essential condition for this is that the Marxist-Leninist parties and their cross-border cooperation are still decidedly too weak. As a result of the revisionist betrayal and the destruction of all formerly socialist countries, there is still a deep division and fragmentation of the international movement that sees itself as revolutionary. It is important that we become aware of the different currents.

We cannot overestimate the fact that ICOR today is very united in the main and seeks unity in regard to new phenomena and essential changes in a thorough way.

In contrast, the Solid network “International Meeting of Communists and Workers’ Parties” (IMCWP) is deeply divided. At its first meeting since the start of the war in Ukraine, this was reflected in the adoption of two completely contradictory resolutions. One fully supports Russia, while the other takes a more proletarian-internationalist stance. The revisionist parties like the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) even make themselves outright stooges of Putin.

Within Russia, there is a remarkable development of a unification movement of organizations critical of social-chauvinism, including a split-off of the Russian Communist Workers’ Party (RCWP), as well as part of the Revolutionary Communist Youth League of Russia (Bolsheviks). Here there are certainly still major differences with many ICOR parties over the revisionist betrayal of socialism, but there are also points of contact. In the opinion of many ICOR members, the RCWP also objectively adopts a social-chauvinist standpoint, but is very interested in a thorough ideological-political debate and will send a video contribution to the Lenin Seminar, and a representative living in Germany intends to take part.

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has broken with the RCWP and other parties in Europe and founded a new formation – European Communist Action. This is still an alliance on a revisionist basis and there are fundamental differences with ICOR. The KKE has not yet come down from its high horse, maintains its arrogance towards the ICOR, and also has not reacted to the invitation to the Lenin Seminar. In view of the fascist development in more and more countries, this is an incomprehensible and seriously criticizable attitude.

In ICOR we agree that US imperialism is still the main aggressor in the world, but no one advocates belligerent cooperation with imperialist countries that have long since ceased to be socialist and exploit their own workers.

The International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations recently took place in Quito. It is also an important platform which showed great interest in the Lenin seminar and took a clear position on the war between Russia and Ukraine. I hope that the comrades of MLKP and PCR Argentina, which participated there as far as I know, can tell us a little about it.

The journal Marksist Teori has also organized theoretical seminars in Turkey and Germany for further discussion among the revolutionaries.

As you know, the ILPS unilaterally terminated the cooperation to build the United Front, which we made public and, as decided by the Fourth ICOR World Conference, we then continued to work on without the ILPS. We were also very successful in this.

The Communist Party of the Philippines reports in its publications about strong military pressure and the murder of leading cadres. They have also organized two theoretical seminars in which various ICOR parties participated.

The CPI (Maoist) India published a seminal interview of its spokesperson Amrut on 2 July. According to it, they uphold the protracted people’s war and qualify that they are at present on the strategic defensive. 700,000 armed personnel are brutally and counter-revolutionarily deployed against them (and the number is growing) in combination with carrot-and-stick social programs. There are no liberated areas, but base areas in special guerrilla zones. The aim of Operation Kagaar is therefore to wipe out the leadership of the Maoist movement within three years. The comrades characterize India under Modi as Brahmin-Hindutva fascism / comprador bourgeoisie / feudal fascism, pursuing a pro-imperialist policy more aggressively. But they also see Indian expansionism towards Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

The Kurdish liberation movement is waging a heroic war of defense. Since the agreement between Erdogan, the Iraqi government and the PDK leadership in Erbil in April 2024, the Turkish army has been taking brutal action against the Kurds in northern Iraq. In return for more water passage to the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and economic support, Turkey is being allowed to build two joint military headquarters with the Iraqi military in Baghdad and near Mosul. Two leading guerrilla commanders were murdered. The PKK spokesman, Karasu, reports that Turkey is now attacking not only from the north, but also from the south. We should make efforts to strengthen the ties with ICOR again. The project to rebuild a hospital in Gaza can certainly also benefit from the experiences of the ICOR brigades in Kobane.

All in all, we have a very mobile international situation in which new Marxist-Leninist groupings are also emerging en masse, as in the USA or in China.

Dear comrades!

In the storms of the times the inner unity, the connection with the struggling workers and popular masses, and coordinated organizational work are the guarantees for the growth of ICOR.

“100 years of Lenin – for us, the ICOR organizations, it is an appeal and a self-commitment to optimistic vigour,” we wrote at the beginning of this year in our resolution on the Lenin Year. In no three-year period since its foundation has the ICOR been challenged on all sides as much as in the last few years. The general crisis-proneness of the imperialist world system, the increasing danger in all hot spots of war in the world, and the intensified fascist danger in many countries make for intense and also controversial debates in the revolutionary world movement and its various currents. Every new development must be analyzed, every practical decision of struggle and solidarity must be decided strategically and tactically, every expansion of the alliance potential must be fought for. This is not an automatic process. The ICOR has not sidestepped any question, knowing full well that any unification we achieve today must be fought for hard, but is also an investment in the future. The strongest struggle against the fires of war is currently the solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle against the genocide by the Zionist Israeli government. We must and will resolutely continue to strengthen this movement. For this reason we are devoting a whole special evening to this topic in the course of the next few days.

In all complicated disputes, be it membership applications, resolutions or ICOR projects, it has always been fundamental that the ICOR has adhered to its rules and principles, which ensure a proletarian culture of debate, work on an equal footing, and financial independence. The more complicated the questions become, of course the more controversial the discussion, the more important the high art of the proletarian culture of debate becomes. Personally it is even my opinion that this question – in content and method – will become the key question of this Fifth World Conference. Because the burning issues of the time, the controversial questions, can never be resolved in black or white, but only in a differentiated way. This requires a high degree of mastery of the dialectical method, but also mutual respect and trust, solidarity, and the tightest closing of ranks versus the enemies of ICOR.

In this connection we will surely also have to position ourselves at our conference in regard to the so-called “Polemic” of a few leading comrades of the ICOR party CPI (ML) Red Star. Many of you have already taken a position in this dispute, in which mainly the principles of ICOR, the ICC, the MLPD, and I as Main Coordinator are under attack. You have received the answers of the ICC and MLPD to the “Polemic …” of an ICOR party and surely have been able to study them. We will discuss this issue both objectively and frankly, position ourselves and draw conclusions. Our proletarian culture of debate, which is characterized by firmness of principle and objectivity, is particularly in demand here. I would like to point out once again that each of you can take a look at all the background documents if you wish.

Dear comrades,

In order to be able to take up the challenges of the time across the entire spectrum, the ICOR, our coordination and cooperation, must reach a new quantity and quality – in the cooperation that relates to common processes and tasks in the struggle, and in the coordination of long-term campaigns and building projects.

In his opening statement for the Lenin Seminar, Comrade M.B. Singh from NCP (Mashal), who at the age of 90 is our “president by seniority” so to speak, writes: “We are convinced of it that this great weapon, Lenin's organizational principles left by Lenin would enable us not only to strengthen world communist movement but also to restore the lost socialist system in the world and make it victorious world order.” (NCP (Mashal), M.B. Singh, Lenin and party building, Nepal, 30 August 2024)

This thought is an outstanding guideline for the discussions lying ahead of us. Workers of all countries, unite! Workers of all countries and oppressed peoples, unite! Forward with ICOR, forward to socialism!

Dear comrades,

I thank you for your prolonged attention and hereby declare the 5th World Conference of ICOR opened.