Communist Party of Belgium

Belgium : strengthen class consciousness, organise precariousworkers and build an anti-capitalist, antifascist, anti-imperialist front for socialism and peace

what is the Current situation in Belgium?

Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 10,000 people have died in Belgium. Our country thus has one of the highest coronavirus death rates in relation to the number of people infected (120,000) and the population of the country. These figures reveal the criminal management of the health crisis by the Belgian government, which throughout the last few months has shown its class interests and has not defended the population.

Since the federal elections of May 2019 until 30 September 2020, Belgium no longer had a fullfledged government. It was an illegitimate minority government in current affairs that ruled the country while parties ranging from social democrats to Flemish nationalists, conservatives, greens and liberals negotiated a coalition government agreement in what is a recomposition of the bourgeoisie.It is clear that whatever the exact composition of the government, the parties in power will be unable to respond to the health, social and economic crisis, or to meet the needs of the working class. They will even continue the anti-popular and anti-worker policies of previous governments, trying to make us pay for the crisis. The crisis is presented as a consequence of the pandemic. However, the pandemic has in fact initially masked and above all accelerated and amplified the effects of the crisis of inherent and recurrent overproduction within the capitalist system.

In March, the current affairs government of Sophie Wilmès (MR) was given special powers by parliament to manage the health crisis. Yet it was the same Sophie Wilmès who in 2017, as budget minister, cut public hospital services in the name of (EU) austerity policies in the wake of decades of attacks on social security and public services, including privatisations (GATS, WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services) and chronic underfunding. Public services provide access to basic needs for a large part of the population. Their undermining has resulted in people no longer being able to access health care. Some workers have also been forced to make difficult and inhumane choices (care, rent, food...) because of restricted livelihood opportunities.It is the very right to health that is under attack, while public services and public hospitals have proven their necessity and effectiveness during the crisis, thanks to frontline workers. That is why they must never enter into concepts of profitability.

The scandals linked to the management of the health crisis are not limited to attacks on the public hospital. They also revealed the anarchic nature

of production under capitalism, the lack of planning to meet needs, with a view to permanent risk, and the country’s dependence on the external market: in particular, it was very quickly learned that the federal government’s strategic reserve of 6 million masks had been destroyed and not renewed a few months before the pandemic by Health Minister Maggie de Block, a liberal doctor who initially overlooked the seriousness and danger of the virus.

After inconsistent measures, the government finally decided to apply containment that did not affect everyone equally. The military-industrial complex was spared, and as a sign of the deepening inter-imperialist contradictions, the gigantic military exercise “defender europe 20” brought tens of thousands of soldiers to the borders of Russia, passing through the ports of Zeebrugge in Belgium, exposing us to the danger of a new conflict. The confinement also revealed the precarious living conditions of many working families and the working class. The class opposition between the working and better-off classes continued to be expressed even after the deconfinement during the summer, when measures restricted de facto access to the sea to young people in the working class neighbourhoods of the capital so as not to disturb the bourgeoisie (after the events in Blankenberge).

Yet the government tried to make us believe that we were all, bosses and workers, in the same boat and called for a national union which we directly denounced and fought. From the outset it was clear that this government only served the interests of capital on several axes : ‣ to bail out the shareholders’ coffers. Liberal Minister De Croo, who will become the new Prime Minister, quickly found 50 billion to supposedly “support economic activity”. ‣ to favour the conditions for the increase of our exploitation, by opposing workers, by allowing more hours of student contract, by attacking the guaranteed wage, by allowing more recourse to teleworking. This is an instrument used by the employers to isolate workers from their trade union representation and colleagues, to break the distinction between private and professional life with 24-hour availability and thus increase the workload, to establish surveillance. To this must be added the costs to the worker of equipment not provided by the employer (office equipment, internet connection, ergonomic chairs, etc.). We also know that the unemployment system is also under threat in order to put more pressure on workers and force them to accept any job with poor working conditions. ‣ repression and control, with a reduction of the possibility of demonstrations, which is still in force.During the confinement, the fines for the gatherings were dissuasive and several gatherings, including leafleting or during the 1st of May, were dispersed by the more than muscular intervention of the police and in September the health care demonstration was blocked and surrounded During the confinement, the fines for the gatherings were dissuasive and several gatherings, including leafleting or during the 1st of May, were dispersed by the more than muscular intervention of the police and in September the large health care demonstration was blocked and surrounded.

Finally, while the big companies were making huge profits (for example in the food distributor sector at Colruyt), the employers used the crisis to throw out thousands of workers, often on precarious contracts, and redundancy plans multiplied (Brantano, Avery Dennison, Sodexo, Brussels Airlines...). And the restricted activity linked to confinement has seen the salaries of many workers reduced by 30 to 40% and this at constant cost (rents).

However, the crisis has revealed to the masses 1) that it is the workers who create the wealth; 2) the degradation of working conditions and social and human contacts; degradation linked to management. This has resulted in an increase in class consciousness, i.e. points where we can anchor our struggle. Workers are more receptive and more determined. Tough struggles have been waged in food distributor sector to keep social conquests, at AB-Inbev for the respect of basic health protection, or in health care: workers turned their backs on the Prime Minister during her hypocritical visit to a hospital, and several demonstrations were organised.

what are the tasks and role of the Communist party in the Conditions of the pandemiC and the Crisis of the Capitalist system?

The first task of a vanguard party is to work among the masses without opportunism and to strengthen the class consciousness of the workers. To this end, the theses of our 36th congress held in 2018 and 2019 gave us an action and ideological framework by returning to the principles of our party’s founding congress and turning our backs on years of reformism (since the Vilvoorde Congress in 1954). We know that our task is arduous in the anti-communist context and we organise our action along three axes.

Firstly, support for class trade unionism, militant actions and workers’ demands for the recovery of

10 the gifts made to the bosses and of all our social conquests over the last 50 years and the beginning of the general crisis of capitalism. Among our watchwords is the demand for the creation of a single national public and integrated health service that meets the needs of the population. Finally, the relaying of the positions of the World Federation of Trade Unions by our members in their grassroots trade union organisations is also a means of orienting the struggle, notably against the European recovery plan of 750 billion euros which aims to bail out the coffers of the banks, shareholders and monopolies and for which the bourgeois parties will make us pay for the crisis. Secondly, internationalism and work among immigrant and exiled workers and support for their struggles in their countries of origin, especially our Chilean comrades. We never detach our action from the principles of proletarian internationalism because our struggles are identical, against the same exploiters.

Finally, this organizing work as well as the first axis are part of the third and main axis of our action, namely the struggle to end capitalist barbarism and for a new society, socialism, through the construction of a united front at the base of all workers, trade unionists and students, with a focus on precarious workers (the unemployed, health care workers and platform workers) and clear watchwords : a classagainst-class, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, antifascist front for socialism and peace. All these notions cannot be dissociated.