August 31, 2023
Dear comrades,
To the Parties of the Initiative of Communist and Workers’ Parties
with this letter, the signatory parties communicate their withdrawal from the Initiative of Communist and Workers’ Parties (INITIATIVE).
This decision does not come suddenly.
The political events that are shocking the world have led to a difference of opinion between the parties. This divergence could have been managed in a more effective way.
We underlined many times that we need forms and methods of international cooperation based on equality, mutual respect, and confidence.
We expressed our conviction that the technology of international coordination, the methods of our international contacts have very immense importance. If we change our methods, we can make a great contribution to the strengthening our parties.
Instead, unfortunately, it was not possible to find suitable places for bilateral or multilateral ideological and political debate that could involve all the participants in order to start a frank and collective discussion, nor methods of mediation between the different points of view.
– The signatory parties to this declaration have tried in the past to suggest even small changes in the joint declarations, but these were flatly rejected not after a collective decision, but by authority of the “technical secretariat.”
The Hungarian Workers’ Party has left the Technical Secretariat as a protest against the negative tendencies.
– Recently the Communist Party (Italy), still part of the Secretariat, was prompted to draft a joint communiqué, it was once again rejected by the “technical secretariat” without any collective debate and with the justification that “the theme had already been dealt with” and therefore the party was relieved of the drafting of that communiqué
1
– Finally, the telematic meeting is convened for September 9. The Communist Party (Italy) responded positively, however complaining about the limited time allowed (10 minutes each) and asking that each party could at least submit a theoretical document in which their positions could be shared with the other participating members. This request has not even been answered. If the place where you can develop a collective debate is limited to 10 minutes each, it means that it is not a theoretical debate that you want to develop but only a pronouncement in favour or against something or someone.
Furthermore, we complain that the Initiative’s activity is limited to the drafting of often liturgical documents, on the recurrences of characteristic events, but it is not a place for collective discussion and elaboration.
We have seen that some parties hold multilateral meetings, and we are pleased with this, but we have been excluded from the debate, which instead needed to be particularly strengthened precisely among the parties that present the greatest political divergence.
All this testifies that the desire of the direction given to the Initiative was not to start a frank and fraternal debate, but to isolate the dissenters.
At this point we consider our experience exhausted.
Communist Party (Italy)
Hungarian Workers’ Party
