/ world today news/ Program statement of the General Assembly of the BSP-Sofia for the meeting of the 50th Congress of the BSP on February 11, 2023, adopted at its meeting held on February 7, 2023.
BSP-Sofia City Council
February 7, 2023
“The system is killing us”! This cry is heard more and more often by those deprived of a future, living below the “poverty line”, crushed by the unbearable prices and obligations. Of those who pay the bill for all betrayals. From the great majority of Bulgarian citizens. The system – this is Bulgarian capitalism – is inevitably of a peripheral type; the system that for three decades already in words and with programs is “catching up” to the prosperous, but in practice leads to greater and greater backwardness.
What is required is not “change”, but a revolutionary transformation! We, the Bulgarian socialists, call on all left-wing people to resolutely oppose the system of huge inequalities, ruthless exploitation, alienation and aggression.
Our cause is solidarity and justice, freedom and equality! Our goal is the elimination of all forms of oppression, discrimination, exploitation and social exclusion. For a community not subject to patriarchal and racist postulates, to the logic of capitalist rationalities.
The world today
Capitalism needs a new reading that modernizes the socialist strategy. New economic, political and social processes and phenomena are forming, which require understanding and, above all, targeting the interests of the majority, of the human, of society. Social strata and networks created by new production relations, previously unknown roles of large social groups in the modern socio-economic process appear on the scene.
Modern technologies, the automation of production and the possibilities of globalization have offered humanity a unique historical chance – to consign hard physical labor to history, to eliminate hunger, poverty and epidemics, to deal with diseases that were considered incurable in the past. Capitalist globalization, however, has degenerated into huge inequalities, in the appropriation of profits by a few super-rich countries and individuals, in systemic corruption and ultimately – in the imposition of an exploitative and pernicious “world order”, which today agonizes and is saved by aggression.
Neoliberal capitalism came with the idea of finality – of the “end of history” according to Fukuyama. It revokes basic democratic rights of people in the developed world, achieved through struggle and sacrifice, erases class consciousness and subjugates trade unions completely. A century after the introduction of the 8-hour working day and half a century after the establishment of the 5-day working week, we are once again feeling on our backs the ultra-capitalist exploitation, its unscrupulousness and gluttony. New threats are emerging for humanity, for man, for his biological and social essence. Along with this, countermeasures are growing, the struggle for labor rights and for better working and living conditions is intensifying.
The tax laws, the credit policy, the growing indebtedness of the people to the banks shape heavy dependencies of huge social groups. These policies are fundamentally indistinguishable from medieval orders, subjecting our lives to a mixture of capitalist and feudal forms. The modern ways of privatization, deregulation and “flexible labor markets” have torn apart the social fabric of modern society.
The deliberate breakdown of the collective security system, as well as the socialist and anti-colonial alternatives, caused a series of wars, as well as the tragic conflict in Ukraine. Today’s crisis of the international order is a consequence of the illegal military interventions in the Balkans, in the Middle East and in Central Asia, from the constant aspiration of the “collective West” for complete economic and political dictate.
Europe is shaken by crises, by the failed rapprochement between old and new members, by the growing gap between the ultra-rich one percent and the rest. The crises of the system give birth to monsters – fascism, Nazism, racism, xenophobia. Drastic inequalities and regional conflicts give rise to growing waves of migration, which in turn sharply exacerbate contradictions between and within EU member states. Europe is facing a social and economic impasse.
We are witnessing the destruction of ecosystems indispensable for life on Earth. The imperative of human-nature symbiosis in the world-system is about to be fatally reversed. Today, capitalism is experiencing its deepest historical crisis, opening up a huge space for an objectively maturing revolutionary situation.
Bulgaria after the transition
The transition in Bulgaria started with a request to change the system! But the vast majority of citizens were lied to – the economic and social base created under state socialism was radically dismantled as a result of the “shock therapy” imposed by the right – the liquidation of cooperative agriculture, large industrial enterprises and scientific and cultural institutions.
The change happened. State property was given away and appropriated through false privatization and thieving restitution, without regard for the common good and social justice. State and cooperative property was looted or destroyed.
Instead of operating, many of the businesses given away were sold as scrap for next to nothing by the appointed nouveau riche. Today, this gang is called by some the mutts, by others the oligarchy. They rule us with their avatars in politics, economy, culture, sports, in the information world and in social networks.
Of course, this “new” system could not and cannot create anything but state institutions unfit to serve the people. The parliament is elected by significantly less than half of the voters, the majority are repelled by flawed electoral systems, and the parties have become projects – without ideological essence and management programs, but, at the expense of this – with systematic anti-selection.
Local self-government was subordinated to the principle – the expenses of the municipalities, and the state as much as and when it gave. Before our eyes appear the ugly offspring of “local democracy” – irreplaceable mayors, serf voters, municipal property privatized without a residue, corporately structured municipal councils.
The demographic crisis is the catastrophic result of the imposed social and economic transition model. Despite the adopted strategies and attempts at a new demographic policy, the essential causes of the crisis remain – the growing feeling of the majority of citizens about the lack of prospects for a decent life and elementary social security.
Hopelessness and alienation – natural consequences of the dictates of supranational capital over national interests in the globalized world – impose their heavy imprint today not only in our country. But at the same time the resistance against this dictate is growing, the feeling of patriotism as national self-defense is growing. Patriotism, understood not as patriotism that instills national enmity, aggression and fascism, but on the contrary – as patriotism, integrity, humanism and openness to the world.
The necessary transformation
In response to the overarching systemic crisis of modern capitalism, the pressure for profound transformations in the ways of production, distribution and redistribution of goods. We are witnessing an intensification of trade union battles, civil platforms and left-wing formations for a new affirmation of the welfare state – the indisputable achievement of post-war social democracy, which imposed substantial concessions on capital in favor of working people.
Here, in Bulgaria, the first imperative is the fight for the right to work as a fundamental human right, to a decent wage and insurance in a healthy and safe environment. State and public support is imperative for the establishment of trade unions as decisive factors for fair collective bargaining of wages, working and free time, as well as other conditions for decent work.
Along with a new distribution between wages and profits in favor of labor, it is also imperative a new system of redistribution of personal and corporate income through progressive taxation. New levels of taxation on the same principle should also be introduced in relation to property.
The socialization of the system in our country requires and fundamental changes in key “infrastructures” of modern statehood – so that the poor, the socially excluded, are guaranteed levels of education, health care, social security, cultural life and conditions for sports according to the highest standards in the country.
Proof that such changes are quite possible, are the real social gains in the EU countries with developed cooperative systems, collective bargaining, progressive taxation. And when those in power restrict and take them away, trying to shift the burdens of the crisis onto the people, citizens mobilize for a decisive resistance through mass protests and strikes.
It can and should become a key support for such a mobilization The Constitution as a guarantee for the basic personal and political rights of citizens – of guaranteed equality before the law, of political representation in the National Assembly and municipal councils, of a decent standard of living in a democratic state governed by the rule of law. And it is not the fault of the Basic Law that today our country is the antipode of the project laid down in it.
Such a change will reject the latifundist model of development of Bulgarian agriculturewill stimulate investments in the real economy – in innovative and ecological productions in industry, in the service sector, in the national energy system, in modern transport and communications. A leading priority will be the consistent development of the workforce through a broad qualification system, lifelong learning, guarantees of attractive and profitable work, as well as leisure time through the introduction of part-time work. In many places in Europe and around the world, a four-day work week, an increase in paid leave and other innovations to ease wage labor are also gradually being introduced.
Only in this way can we build the economic basis for a modern, European social and legal state with a large middle class of working, educated and prosperous citizens. Only in this way will citizens’ trust in the state return as a guarantor of their interests for a decent life in a working country, a defender of their personal and civil rights.
Such statehood will be guaranteed by parliament, government and justice, bearers of the will of the sovereign. Such is possible only in a society in which the ideas of solidarity, of the socializing principle prevail in the organization of the country’s political and socio-economic life.
BSP – left, programmatic, democratic, mass, parliamentary
The Bulgarian Socialist Party is obliged to awaken the consciousness and will of the citizens for a complete turnaround towards a solidary society and a working welfare state! In its current form, the BSP, as a result of its “reformation”, is on the periphery of socio-political processes, has turned its back on the mass work among active social groups, among the people of wage labor, far from the necessary power for the success of such a mission. BSP was turned into the antipode of itself and the socialist idea.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party can once again be the political force that really defends and enforces the values and traditions of socialism, of working people, of feminism and gender equality, of the ecological movement and sustainable development, of the protection of human rights, humanism and anti-fascism, of progressive and democratic consciousness both nationally and internationally. For peace and international solidarity – peace is much more than the absence of war. Peace is a condition and guarantor for a dignified life and for the sustainability of our social project.
The BSP can and will be led out of the deep crisis it is in and will once again become the party of the Bulgarian socialists, capable of presenting a convincing alternative to the current situation in Bulgaria. It’s up to us!
02/07/2023
BSP City Council – Sofia
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