KSČM

I. Introduction - characteristics of current developments

Current State of the Society

The current developments in the world community, especially within the Euro-Atlantic civilisation, the Czech Republic included, are marked by deep crisis. It is a social and economic crisis, thus also a political one. Following international patterns, in the territory of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, there has been a rule of the Market without qualifications, recklessly promoted by neo-liberalism since November 1989 up to now.

Under the baton of this ideology of so-called new freedom for everything, which means then also for the roughest manifestation of market mechanism's abuse, almost everything has been gradually both questioned and devalued. First, the very equality amongst people was virtually removed by giving preference to private ownership, and by gradually cutting social rights, breaking the working conditions for the organization of society. Immediately after, the permanent undermining of public services and of the environment in many territories has worsened the level of living, culture and face-to-face relations. Public interests all have been - and they still are being - ignored in favour of private interests by a smaller and smaller group of transnationals' owners. Common hallmarks of these policies are the privatisation of profits, with losses to be borne on the shoulders of the vast majority of citizens. The neoliberal theory treats the social debt to be made in this way only through dull cuts, the majority's living standards to be reduced and purchasing power to be limited, altogether deepening the crisis. The bank profits increase, while people have become poorer, and more and more of them are falling into misery. There, in a globalized world, the Czech Republic is not an exception. The famines with tens thousands dying, more and more aggressive wars for raw materials and resources, and finally social and racial riots in most developed countries, the consequences also concerning us.

However, a significant change has occurred here in Czech society. More and more citizens have become conscious of the fact that the current government coalition has no intention of fulfilling its pre-election promises about crushing corruption. Moreover, under the pretext of budget responsibility, they are one-sidedly focused on the paying of the debt by working people, who hadn't caused the crisis. Nevertheless, it is not the citizens, who are on a blame for the increasing debts; it is all the governments since 1992, as just they have allowed such a huge level of both corruption and misappropriation of public property. All of this has occurred during living conditions of the majority getting worse, while the people causing the debt, regardless of being government coalitions' politicians or their rich sponsors - many of them gaining vast parts of their properties during either wild Czech privatisation or public orders to be manipulated at the expense of others - are not forced to pay anything. However, the civil society is waking up to being able to express their dissatisfaction spontaneously and openly. The government's work in itself as well also of its respective members already calls not only governmental power into question, but does so as for the political system itself. The measures for limiting both democracy and citizens' free speech have been carried, the actions of the authorities in criminal proceedings is openly influenced in favour of either members or supporters of right-wing parties, the security of citizens is not guaranteed. The Czech Republic participates in military actions which are not in the interests of its citizens. The budget measures harm low and middle-income groups of citizens, while the richest are continuously favoured. The liquidation of Czech agriculture continues; there are further steps prepared to increase our country's dependence on foreign globalized capital, the keepers of which having no relation towards our people's needs. Unfortunately, it makes possible, for some pressure groups, to conquer the remaining public property, regional hospitals included. That's the situation!

The change is imperative

Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), as a rigorous opposition and as the power rejecting anti-people measures, tries untiringly to explain to the citizens the danger flowing from the situation as well as its own proposals for solution. It is also the guarantee for further left developments, believing in solidarity.

Thus, there is an inalienable historical role of the KSČM also today. That's why the right-wing doesn't hesitate to use all its possibilities to foster another wave of anticommunism and it has attempted to undermine our party's work, its external activities and its impact on non-organized voters of the left or on the supporters of left-wing solutions. Just so, the right-wing wishes to prevent a creation of a natural alliance on the left, in attempt to keep itself in power. How the current coalition shows, it is possible within our election system, a winning party to be eliminated from governmental participation by backstage negotiations. Of course, amongst a number of citizens, it immediately arouses the distrust into their own possibility to influence the development, the decline of interest to participate in elections as well as the deepest disillusionment about democracy itself as the form of society's organization. The KSČM has to defend itself by all legislative means and by its activity as well as to win allies being both willing and able to defend democracy and freedom of rallying and speech, to be up-to-now guaranteed by the Charter of fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Nevertheless, the KSČM is actually the only parliamentary party strictly observing the constitution, committing no violation of it.

The KSČM has initiated a formation of the movement called “Alliance of Work and Solidarity” (SP&S, or the SPaS in Czech) as the platform of wide cooperation. There is a number of political and social groups participating in. It doesn't mean, however, any barrier to be built up towards other left or centre-left groups, the social democrats included. The SP&S offers the cooperation to everyone to care for. The KSČM will continue to help actively in its further work and it will do its best this form of cooperation to become wide movement, which can find the paths towards other possibilities of cooperation being not utilized up-till-now. Moreover, the KSČM will further fully support Trade Unions and of the organizations of the disabled or the aged in their efforts to stop the anti-social aims of our coalition government.

To meet these tasks, the KSČM also needs to focus on the improvement of internal party work. To recruit more new members, to work better with the branches and to make sure that every member is getting the information needed about the party's work. Moreover, to take into account gradually imperative changes in the organization, which can help to make the membership more active as well as to bring connections with non-partisan supporters. To ensure that the party's officials on every level run their organisational units not from the secretariat rooms, but instead spend most of their time amongst the people in municipalities, amongst party members, to work together with the chancellors and deputies to be elected from the KSČM's lists of candidates. To pay attention there would be just the people on the lists of candidates to be in perspective, having indisputable trust of the voters, being well known from their job, complying with the KSČM programme and to win more people for it if possible, as they can strengthen the KSČM ranks. As the objective press to be therefore close to the party concerned, the Halo Noviny daily above all, there is a need to ensure their influence to be wider, to persuade people to read it, who wish to be informed from the left point of view. That's why the Halo Noviny mast not be only the “party's gazette”, but to be the real organizer and informer instead, to get comprehensive information and service to each of its readers as well as to every reader gained in the future.

The distrust into current institutions of so-called parliamentary democracy exists not only within the KSČM, but also in large parts of the society as a whole. It's given not by the very nature of democracy, but by both the “clientelism” and the distortions to be brought into the system with the basic rules of society running (as the equality, the solidarity, the work, all of them being the criteria of values) don't be respected. The deformations to be brought by the financial oligarchy through its influence on the work of otherwise democratic institutions, when unelected owners and managers of the transnationals as well as by in the same way out-of-supervision media “editors” keeping more influence than elected politicians to be changeable by election at least, are no longer sustainable.

II. Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia's Main tasks between VIII. and IX. Congress

• To defeat the government of Premier Nečas, to cause a new election, and to establish a government respecting interests of the majority of the citizens;

   

• To stop “restitutions” of church properties, to be made by Nečas' government (to realize the settlements resulting only from property claims which are really proved);

   

• To conceive a state's comprehensive anti-corruption programme, to pass the Property Declaration Act and other laws to strengthen the control over public property management;

   

• To increase the courts' efficiency, to make judicial proceedings more accessible for the citizens;

   

• To strengthen democracy through the bill given to public referendum and to make politicians to be removable;

   

• To develop economic policies which could stimulate economic growth of all forms of ownership instead of absurd cuts;

   

• To support creating of new job opportunities, to defend social rights and people's securities;

   

• To consolidate employees' position in the relation to the Labour Code amendment;

   

• To reach country's long-term energy security through reasonable prices' resources;

   

• To encourage agriculture, to strengthen the country's self-sufficiency in food supply;

   

• To stop pension reforms being disadvantageous for majority of citizens, to sustain through-line pension system to be guaranteed by the state for ensuring the needs of both the aged and the disabled, to finish the practice of increasing the pension age;

   

• To secure free medical care in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms; to finish further privatisation as well as dismantling of both the hospitals and medical facilities;

   

• To help the young marriages, especially families with children;

   

• To secure/preserve free studying on the universities, with no school fees or registration ones, to secure the social bursary as well as the benefits for people in need;

   

• To exclude both one-sided, biased influence-making on school children and the discrimination of children or teachers for ideological, regional, racial, ethnic or other reasons;

   

• To protect the tenants, to construct social housing as well as the housing for young marriages through the assistance of the state, the self-governments and the cooperatives;

   

• To practise fair, in solidarity and sensible tax policies, progressive taxing of both the individuals and the legal entities, and to establish the payment ceiling for public managers;

   

• To create the conditions needed for security troops' work, to strengthen their professional training and to ensure the barriers against both the public prosecutors and the judges to be politicized;

   

• To sustain permanent peace, to strengthen state's sovereignty, to practise mutually beneficial cooperation of states and nations, with no participation in military pacts and groups.

   

III. Programme Priorities for the KSČM's work in the Parliament, in both municipal and regional representations for the period between VIII. and IX. Congress

Effective barriers against both the corruption and property's misappropriation, and strengthening of citizens' security.

1. To implement measures for really effective struggle against the corruption, against all forms of organized crime and their penetrating into economical, political and state structures as well as into bodies being elected on all levels, and against abuse of authority. To propose once again the Financial Disclosure Reports Act as well as the laws given to the control order and to the financial auditing in public administrative.

    

2. To promote legislative adjustments to specify that all the contracts to be made by state, regions, cities or villages shouldn't come into effect before their publishing via internet.

    

3. To demand both political and juridical responsibility of the officials for their performance in state administration, self-governments and in the enterprises with state share.

    

4. To support all the measures focused on improving civil security, citizens' protection of health, lives and properties. To cancel immediately the intention to fire numbers of policemen and firemen.

    

Strengthening of democracy

5. To force really working constitutional law about general referendum, without any excessive restrictions to be proposed by Mr. Nečas' government; to simplify calling local and regional referenda.

    

6. To propose legal adjustments to promote proportional representation in representative bodies as well as in the Parliament, to strengthen competences of the representatives at the expense of the town councils, the constitutional change towards one-chamber Parliament of Czech Republic.

    

7. To propose, under clearly given conditions, the possibility of an independent court decision about an MP's mandate to be taken away in the case of his considerable departure from the election programme of the political entity he had been elected for.

    

Citizens' social rights protection

8. To end the weakening of the solidarity pension system guaranteed and continuously funded by the state, based on the principle of inter-generational and income solidarity. To stop increasing the pension age.

    

9. To abolish both the ceiling and groundless exceptions as for the social insurance payments.

    

10. To valorize regularly both the pensions and the benefits for families in need.

     

11. To initiate the law to guarantee the very first job.

     

12. To preserve state subsidies for both saving in building and mortgages.

     

13. To face the vigorous growth of poverty. To enforce especially the Social Housing Act.

     

14. To reject school fees of any kind, to improve didactic documents, to support industrial schools; to initiate changes in education funding, improving its both the effectiveness and the quality.

     

15. To force the medical care to be secured on the base of public health insurance, with special emphasis on both its accessibility and its quality. To support a transfer of medical care focus into the prophylactic medicine.

     

16. To abolish fully financial participation of the patients, all the so-called “regulatory fees” included, and to abolish the health insurance payment ceiling.

     

The conditions for economic growth

17. To support necessary public sector in the economy - through gradually purchasing the shares in select strategic companies, and new creating of these shares through state's establishing activities of both the state and public administration.

     

18. To initiate and to promote the formulation of strategic aims of economical and social developments as well as planning of basic directions of state economical politics.

     

19. To obstacle an foreign capital to be favoured as well as to fight against siphoning the profit to be made in Czech republic off abroad, for better chances of Czech investments and producers as well as for increasing of budget incomes.

     

20. To implement progressive taxation according to the income levels (three tax brackets) and to stop transfer of tax burden towards indirect taxes, as to be falling on low-income citizens most heavily.

     

21. To promote two-bracket taxation for juridical persons.

     

22. To enforce the juridical adjustment to enable the state, the regions and the municipalities to guide both the development and the structure of industrial production. To propose and to promote the proposal of industrial production's restructuring to be worked out, towards more diversity of both production and services.

     

23. To promote the competitiveness of tiny and small business, to appreciate properly its importance for regional developments.

     

24. To support energy independence of Czech Republic through using nuclear energy above all, with the coal to be a strategic raw material, and also by using local and regional energy resources. To promote larger using of joint electricity and heating production, of renewable energy resources and of renewable raw materials. To promote environmentally considerate ways to gain energy, and to promote energy consumption in both the production and the use to go lower in all the areas of social living. To increase the contribution of waste sorting and recycling.

     

25. To promote environmentally acceptable forms of farming, the active role of farmers in landscape protection, protection and renewal of water resources and of both agricultural and forest land funds as irretrievable natural resources. To promote food security to be guaranteed by the state.

     

26. To support investment into transport with an emphasis on the railway public transport to be integrated into larger common, multi-sort wholes.

     

27. To support enforcing of more effective taxation of bank centers, without any other burden on the clients.

     

28. To initiate creating of Czech National Commercial Bank or Czech Commercial Bank to be working with state participation, free of charge, its deposits being evaluated with guarantee, with bearable interest rates as for the credits being provided by.

     

National interests' protection

29. To strive after changing current relations and ties between Czech Republic and the EU, and after equal conditions for both old and new EU members.

     

30. On the EU ground, in cooperation with European Left factions, to strive after restricting of European bureaucracy and after boosting of democratic decision-making between EU member states as well as within the framework of European Commission.

     

31. To support an effort towards unification of Left forces' advancement in the European continent to enforce social changes with socialist characteristics.

     

32. To make every attempt for Czech troops to be withdrawn from the areas without any relation to our defence, being even out of UN interests. To enforce the participation of within military part of the NATO to be suspended.

     

IV. Deepening of KSČM work in public sector and within the party

a) KSČM's tasks within civil sector

• To deepen medial and informative activities, and to use more effective forms of influence on civic society.

   

• To support Trade Unions, civil associations, democratic activities and initiatives, especially the project of the “Alliance of Work and Solidarity” (SP&S).

   

• To increase considerably an effort to reach an unified progress of civil associations and initiatives in defending the rights of non-privileged strata against the system of exploitation and unearned profits. To join together experiences and work's new forms and methods.

   

• In cooperation with the Coordinating Centre of Patriotic Organisations as well as with other progressive groups, to act principally against wars, terrorism, fascism and neo-fascism, against violation of human rights and for the peace all around the world.

   

• To defend itself actively, also via legislative ways, against anticommunism and to defend the legitimacy and the progressiveness of socialist idea. To condemn criminality of current capitalism.

   

• In larger extend, to participate in civil initiatives to support the environment and to influence radically environmental thinking of the society.

   

• To create jointly both economical and intellectual conditions for continuous dialogue with young generation.

   

• To create conditions to consolidate the patriotism, to protect and to promote Czech language itself as well as the Czech culture.

   

• To support and to initiate active working of KSČM members within the civil society.

   

• To support all efforts for independent reporting as well as for independent, free internet, to prevent restricting of free access to information.

   

b) Main tasks within the area of party's internal living

• To ensure the information channels, both the printed ones and the internet ones included, being friendly to the party, to be spread out so as to be explaining the party's politics as well as widely left views to the largest possible circle of readers;

   

• To consider and to implement the most useful possible system of party branches' work, in extend from the centre to the grass roots and party stewards;

   

• Permanently be giving increased care to the work amongst the youth;

   

• To deepen the cooperation with the public representatives to be elected via KSČM ballots, also through the form of regular political training, preparing specialized materials to be needed for them, and with their help to enlarge party's think-tanks as well as to use and to popularize their experiences. Use more the think-tanks work, giving them just the tasks in relation with the party's work or with negotiations within representatives' boards from the municipalities to the parliament;

   

• Pay increased care to the candidates in every kind of elections, and avoid preferring of so-called “historical merits” to anything of personal abilities, knowledge of both interests and needs of residents, perspectiveness, participation of both youth and women. In accordance with that, to re-evaluate the present system of primary election, and to implement the system also amongst the party supporters;

   

• to ensure a sophisticated system of working with new members of the party.

   

V. KSČM's long-term goal - socially fair society

Our long-term goal, for which we create the prerequisites by fulfilling of immediate tasks, it is building of fairer social order - socialism, where people would be paid according to the work to be made by them, everything to occur in favour of the society. The wealth will not be the decisive standard for social ranging. During more than 160 years after the vision of Marx, Engels and others following, from V. I. Lenin to current representatives of the communist movement, the world has changed though, but the communism as well as it’s the first stage - socialism, however, have still been actual and human goals of mankind. It will only be a bit different from the imaginations of 19^th century. It concerns the paths to reach it as well. That's why the Congress endorses the convening of an independent theoretical conference, which should facilitate the further running of the process for creating of fundamental materials about a possible path towards socialism; in the same time it would prepare the document called “Socialism as the basis for current society”. The papers to be worked out as yet would be the basic materials to prepare the documents. Given to the needs and interest, friendly communist and radically left parties should participate on working out these materials as well. The KSČM doesn't lay claim to work out any document to be generally accepted, it however holds the view that just the Czechoslovak road to socialism as proclaimed during the very first post-war years could be done, and it is still possible to continue some of its basic parts.

The precondition is to work out the analysis of the development in our country, and, if possible, also in the countries following socialist paths in post-war period; especially the analysis of both the mistakes and the shortcomings causing the collapse of the very first attempt for socialism in Europe.

Te conference being mentioned should be held in the interval between VIII. and IX. Congress, the IX. Congress to be based on it. For this purpose, the Congress proposes to create the think-tank for immediately collecting documents, preparing analysis and theoretical papers, which should become the basis for conference's proceedings. In the same time, the Congress imposes a task on the party leadership to discuss this aim also with cooperated left-wing parties abroad.

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To be passed by VIII. Congress of Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

May 19 and 20, 2012, Liberec