EL Founding Manifesto (2004)
New hope is springing up in Europe
A new vision is inspiring growing numbers of Europeans
and uniting them to join in great mobilisations to resist the imposition of a capitalist one-way street that is an attempt to trap humanity in a new social and cultural regression. The condition of peoples, social subjects and individuals is marked by insecurity, uncertainty and precariousness. A new resistance against capitalist exploitation is strongly emerging. There is a new option for a change crisscrossing the lives of men and women who are more and more affected by the disasters produced by the capitalist globalization policies.
The new forms of power on a
worldwide scale bring about a crisis of nation states, of the alliance systems and post-World War II world orders. The theory of permanent war, as presently depicted in the Bush doctrine, the vortex of terrorist violence that war is nourishing cause inequalities to grow and spaces of democracy to be reduced.
For us, Europe is, within
international politics, a space for the rebirth of struggles for another society. The achievement of peace and the transformation of the present capitalist society will be the scope of this undertaking. We strive for a society, which transgresses the capitalist and patriarchal logic. Our aim is human emancipation, liberation of men and women from any form of oppression, exploitation and exclusion.
We refer to the values and traditions
of socialism, communism and the labour movement, of feminism, the feminist movement and gender equality, of the environmental movement and sustainable development, of peace and international solidarity, of human rights, humanism and antifascism, of progressive and liberal thinking, both nationally and internationally.
We understand the role and
the task of the Political Left in Europe as a contribution to form a broad social and political alliance for a radical policy change by developing concrete alternatives and proposals for that necessary transformation of the present capitalist societies. In that we see our responsibility and ability to address all those who are taking action for a more equitable society as a condition for a self-determined life of their own. We want to establish left wing politics lastingly as an independent, self-confident political project contributing to the implementation of solidarity and democratic, social and ecological alternatives.
For that reason the European Union
as well as the whole European continent are becoming an increasing important space for alternative politics – besides the traditional political level of nation-states, regions and the municipalities and not being separated from world developments.
Therefore we see the worldwide
range of the “alter-mondialiste-movement”, its growing exchange, mutual cooperation as well as its influence within and on the traditional social, labour, feminist, environmentalist and democratic movements in terms of a new participation in the conflict for a change. All these movements confront the “private space” of the strong world powers with a “public space” inhabited by different subjects who want to reclaim fundamental rights: peace, democracy, social justice, freedom, gender equality and respect for nature. The political Left is part of them. This gives a new resource for a policy of transformation.
In the different European countries
extraordinary cultural and political experience and social struggles marked the original character of the European social model. We look to these political and cultural roots and not to the market values which today define it, in particular through the Maastricht treaty policies and the decisions of the European Central Bank.
In Europe, in each of our countries,
the people are suffering from the policies of globalized capitalism implemented by governments in the interest of big capital and lobbies, which undermine solidarity and social gains won by great struggles. There is a general attack on pension systems, the dismantlement and privatization of social security, the submission of public services and such essential sectors as health, education, culture and common goods like water and other natural resources to market rules, casualization and deregulation of the labour market. There is an accentuation of anti-Trade Union repression and a policy of criminalization of immigration.
Everything is commodified.
From labour to the whole life cycle. In present Europe unemployment, precariousness, outward militarization, as demonstrated in the Balkan wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, and inward militarization through repressive and liberticidal laws against those who oppose neoliberal policies, are growing. This process is alienating growing sectors of society from politics and producing wars between the poor, resurging of populism, racism and anti-Semitism.
