Interview with Dorte Grenaa, chairman of the Workers' Communist Party of
Denmark (APK).
From KP26, December 22, 2001
KP: How do you view the year 2001?
D. Grenaa: A lot of people probably think of September 11 as the really
epoch-making incidence of the year 2001, but in that case, the incidents on
September 11 are the biggest propagandistic excuse for initiating the new terror
war of US imperialism for world hegemony ever presented to the world. Using
the ongoing "War against Terror", reaction has launched an offensive
everywhere, and the events are almost replacing each other faster than we are
able to register them.
In order to be capable of thinking and taking action, it is important to stick
to what is actually happening. The other day on television, I saw a little Brazilian
girl with a big new doll in her hand. The doll was hanging slack from her hand,
and horror and disbelief were very obvious in her face. The Brazilian government
had announced free Christmas presents for the poor people living in one of the
many slum cities of Brazil. Mothers and children were being killed by the tramping
and from the weight of tens of thousands of poor people stretching their hands
to reach the illusion of mercy.
Capitalism means tragedy, crime and death no matter if it shows its face as
cluster bombs being dropped from US warplanes and disguised as packed lunches
to Afghan children, or as Santa Claus.
It is the war and class struggle of the rich against the poor and oppressed.
It is this war that we are seeing on the world scale where US imperialism, being
backed by the whole howling chorus of a war alliance, is pushing forward its
"New World Order" through a war, which according to the US itself
will last for years. It is the war of the rich against the working class and
the poor.
We also see it in the decisions of the recent EU Summit in Laeken, Belgium,
where the monopolies in the EU demanded a 100 percent complete European Union,
a superpower strong enough to claim its "rightful" share of the "New
World Order".
And it is also the war of the rich against the working class that we are seeing
in Denmark with the attacks of the new right-wing government on the general
population.
In the book "Ten Days that Shook the World" by John Reed, there is
a magnificent passage where a shrewd opportunist tries to explain to an armed
worker being on guard at the occupied Winter Palace that the revolution has
to stop as it is just about to be victorious. He uses all the arguments, lies
and tricks that could have made him a star reporter on CNN today. But every
time he gets the same answer from the worker: "I cannot prove that you
are wrong, but I know one single thing - there exist two classes, the working
class and the bourgeoisie."
Which of them who was right, we know by now. And this point, stressing the existence
of two antagonistic classes in capitalist society, still remains the point that
can get to the heart of the matter and bring us clarity of all the things we
see and hear, and, not at least, of what we do.
Right now, everyone is telling the Palestinian Intifada and the Palestinian
people to lay down the stones and obediently walk to the slaughter, while the
Israeli war machine is moving forward. A whole people's struggle, dreams and
hopes of peacefully living in their own country is to be crushed under the slogan:
"Hunt down the terrorists until the last man!"
The rulers can turn everything upside down; war is being presented as humanitarian
work and peacekeeping, oppressed peoples struggling for justice are being labelled
as terrorists, and people working for peace and solidarity are being criminalized.
All this, and a lot more, the rulers can do. But they can never stop class struggle,
the struggle of the oppressed peoples for justice. Only the defeat of the bourgeoisie
and imperialism can put an end to their war, terror and injustice.
And now I want to make an entirely personal comment on the year that is passing.
I am really happy to be a Marxist-Leninist and a member of a party like the
APK that is not being blown away by the sharpened class struggle, but, on the
contrary, is able to confront the new political agenda with concrete proposals
for developing the class struggle.
KP: What will be the political tasks of the APK in 2002?
D. Grenaa: There will be two main tasks, and they are connected with
each other.
We must consistently fight Anders Fogh Rasmussen's right-wing government, while
at the same time combating the illusions about the Social Democratic Party in
order to beat off Fogh Rasmussen's "Programme of the First 100 Days",
which has quickly shown itself as the programme of 100 attacks, as well as to
hinder that a movement against Fogh Rasmussen's neoliberalism becomes harnessed
to the Social Democratic carriage. We must make activities, actions and demonstrations
that promote the building of a struggling movement.
More or less spontaneous initiatives as "Stop the Right-wing Tendency!"
have already seen the light of the day. However, we are aiming at developing
the struggle against the rightist government and the right-wing policy as a
broad and many-sided movement that must develop its own political platform based
on the following main elements:
Stop the competitive biddings and privatisations!
The working class and the great majority will not pay the capitalist crisis!
Defend the living conditions of the working class! Defend the unemployed! Defend
labour rights and organisations!
Fight the Terror Law, extended police control and militarisation!
Fight xenophobia and the tightening of the immigration policy!
No Danish participation in war! Denmark must leave the war coalition!
Stop the EU and the EU constitution - Denmark out of the EU!
The whole idea is to unify the opposition and the forces so that we do not
stand alone with each our anger and indignation as the series of attacks is
coming from the same quarter. We are back to the point that there exist two
classes in capitalist society, the working class and the bourgeoisie. And we
must create the understanding that many groups in society; pupils, pensioners,
unemployed and out-casts, students, anti-EU and anti-war people, and anti-Nazis
and anti-racists, all need each other as well as the unification of our forces
and demands in a dynamic struggling movement with a clear perspective.
Right now, there is a lid of division and self-censorship on many social movements.
In practise, we are narrowly focusing on each our little field. What is the
name of such a policy? It is a Social Democratic five cents' policy that does
not lead to anything. That policy is no good, and it is completely out of step
with the pulse and heart beat of the class struggle. This is why we are saying
that all illusions about the Social Democrats, whether these illusions are being
put forward by themselves or by their small left wing supporting parties, must
be combated. The illusions hinder the development of a struggling movement.
Therefore, they must be eliminated so that the movement can advance.
KP: You said the APK has two main tasks in the coming year. What is the second one?
D. Grenaa: The second and really fundamental task of the APK is to build
the broadest possible popular front against the imperialist war and the offensive
of reaction. We see this whole struggle as a very decisive background to, as
well as part of, the class struggle in Denmark - a struggle focusing on fighting
US imperialism, the Anglo-Israeli war alliance, and the participation of NATO
and the EU in the imperialist war. The war is about getting control of the Middle
East and Central Asia, about controlling the oil in the Persian Gulf and Caucasus.
The first two victims of the war have been Afghanistan and Palestine, and the
peoples living there. The solidarity with the Palestinians is very central in
relation to this. A series of other countries has been pointed out as future
targets of coming wars.
The social struggle, the struggle at the workplaces, and the struggle against
the EU and the war are connected with each other. Behind all this, the economic
world crisis will become further deepened, now as always meaning unemployment,
crisis and war.
We are seeing a whole new peace movement growing, and we will do our best to
make this movement as broad and powerful as possible.
KP: What about the APK itself?
D. Grenaa: Actually, only a year and a half has passed since we founded
the APK. We seem to forget this fact now and then. I believe we have come far.
But on the other hand, we have never been small-minded. With every step we take,
the realisation of the next major goal gets closer. One of the big steps we
have made this year has been the creation of our Internet daily, the Kommunistisk
Politik-Netavisen. It is important that the political assessments of the international
and national class struggle appear on a daily basis and become translated into
action. One can say that we have broken the blockade of the so-called left wing
press and recreated the revolutionary daily press. At this moment we are just
about to end a huge economic campaign having the purpose of collecting 200,000
DKr. for resuming the publishing of books and other materials at the beginning
of the new year, a work that has been suspended for quite some time.
The Party is in a really good state, and we must understand how to benefit from
this. Always, we are too few communists who are members of the communist party.
Therefore, one of the tasks of the year 2002 is to build more party cells, to
make the Party bigger and root our communist work.
In these years, the international communist movement are drawing useful and
important lessons from the ongoing revolutionary struggles in the world, lessons
that we discuss with other parties with mutual benefit.
So, I honestly think it is right to be optimistic on behalf of the APK. The
coming class struggles will demand all what we have. The situation is serious,
but when we connect with the struggling movement as we do, the forces are multiplied.