Joint statement of Balkan Organisations

Joint statement

TEMPI, NOVI SAND, KOČANI

Capitalist profit kills! Let's unite against capitalism that murders us daily

Trains moving in opposite directions on the same line. Canopy of a newly renovated railway station collapsing. Fire in a nightclub operating illegally. Three foretold crimes committed by the same system. The fundamental character of capitalism is what produces tragedies such as Tempi, Novi Sad, Kočani. The profits of companies like Ferrovie, Hellenic Train or the fuel traders in Tempi, the contractors undertaking public works in Novi Sad, the owners of entertainment and catering businesses in Kocani are the root of evil. Such tragedies happen everywhere in the world, but the explosion of popular anger in the Balkans is linked to the generalized poverty, the total devaluation of the daily life of the social majority.

These tragedies are presented as symptoms of “corruption” and Balkan “backwardness”. Corruption is not a “Balkan phenomenon”. Corruption is the nature of capitalism! It has been estimated that over 1 trillion dollars are paid in bribes worldwide every year. Capitalism without corruption does not exist. Bribery, after all, is institutionalized in the capitalist system. Big international companies provide in their budget a special fund for bribing government officials. The same is done by the colossal companies of the military industry, those that profit by sowing nationalism in regions such as the Balkans. Executives from private sector companies are “appointed” to governments while political leaders, after their term in politics, take on lucrative positions in the business world as a reward.

Many people believe that the EU will be the guarantor of eliminating such phenomena. In reality, Balkan corruption is “small business” when compared to the European Parliament and the EU offices in Strasbourg and Brussels. There is structural corruption in the EU, where about 30,000 lobbyists are officially active, with 7,500 officially accredited in the European Parliament. These, who often alternate between political roles, represent business interests, with a turnover of more than 3 billion per year.

Governments, bourgeois parties and the media also tell us that the Judicial system will punish the guilty. However, the bourgeois judicial system is dependent on governments and capitalists. The judiciary is hated by the people because it is always against the people as a mechanism of repression, ready to legitimize every police and state arbitrariness and ready to cover up every crime of any authority. It is a Judicial system that has legitimized all anti-worker policies, all environmental arbitrariness, privatizations and the sale of public property. Real justice for the people can today be "imposed" by the popular movement. Essentially, real justice can only exist in a society freed from capitalist shackles.

The explosion of corruption and injustice is linked to privatizations, the sale of public property, the flexibility of labor relations, the dissolution of labor rights. As long as profit is a structural element of economic and social organization, the ruthless competition between capitalists will intensify. Governments serve the profitability of capital, instead of meeting the needs of the people. Up close, the majority of the media helps to transform popular anger and indignation into disappointment, to make workers and youth abandon collective actions and resistance to be trapped in the shell of a miserable individualism.The workers and the youth in Greece, Serbia, Macedonia share the same problems, heavy exploitation, unemployment, poverty and insecurity, and their demands are common in the face of these problems. It is time to say who is responsible as a class and not as individuals. It is the pursuit of profit hat drives the capitalist machine.

This system cannot be reformed. It will continue to treat us as slaves, servants, and resources. Capitalism degrades the value of human life all over the world. This system cannot be fixed. What is utopian is the search for “honest” and “clean” political representatives of the rotten capitalist system. If we want to get rid of scandals and corruption once and for all, we must get rid of the capitalist system itself.

No cover-up! Punish the real culprits of the crimes

→Down with the murder governments and every government that follows the same policy

→Fight for safe, public goods that work for the benefit of the people, against the logic of profit and privatization

→Students, workers in Greece, Serbia, Macedonia – shoulder to shoulder in the fight against capitalism and inequality!

• Communist Liberation (Greece)

• Red Initiative (Serbia)

• Socialist Dawn (N. Macedonia)