The national bourgeoisie earlier fought for national states, there they played controll over the domestic market as a basic economic foundation for their power. Imperialism has turned the national state, with its laws and regulations, into a hindrance for the expansion of the international capital.

In most of the countries the national bourgeoisie plays a smaller and smaller role. When the bourgeoisie

plays the national tune today, it is to promote national schauvinism legitimizing hegemonism and suppression of national minorities within their own state borders.

Imperialism not only leads to exploitation and national suppression of peoples and nations in the so-called Third World. The bourgeoisie linked up with the different imperialist states, are also having a mortal combat on dominance in the imperialist countries themselves. The biggest amount of commodities and finances are concentrated here. This leads to that we even in smaller imperialist states finds many resemblances with the neocolonialism which we see today unfolding in earlier, traditional colonial states; controll over natural resources and economy, smaller states incorporated in the military- and security spheres of the big powers and developing of servile political regimes.

The national oppression of today only takes new forms. We are experiencing that the oppression gets harder and that the struggle for national sovereignty becomes a very sentral part of the antiimperialist struggle in all parts of the world.

Today the defensores of the nation is the working class and the toiling masses, in their defence of tradeunion rights, juridical rights and, not least, democratic rights. Today it is even more reason to say that the struggle for national souvereignty is an integrated part of the proletarian, socialist revolution, than it was then Lenin formulated this thesis more than 80 years ago.

The leading imperialist powers are medling into conflicts between states and are striving to raise etnic and religious based struggle within existing states. They are playing on national and etnic contradictions in a classical splitt and rule-strategy. As we are fighting for the right of nations to form their states, inclusive the rights of secession from multinational states, communists then also have to struggle to minimise the contradictions between states and nations.

The struggle for national souvereignty and international solidarity within each separate nation is the only thing that can secure that the peoples in every nations could decide by their own their economic and social system. That does not not mean there is an aim that every nations should create their own states. In the world today there hardly are any national state in the sense that everybody living inside its borders have the same etnic background. If existing states are divided into new national states, these also becomes multinational and have to take care of the national rights of their minorities. If not, imperialism will utilize this in their splitt- and rule-game.

The dissolution of former Yugoslavia illustrates this. Even if the rights for self determination for bosnians, croatians and albanians are incontestable, there were no goal to split up a state there the different nations were so strongly mixed up that you had to go into a cell-splitting all the way down to the small villages to obtain a dissolution based on national grounds. It would have been better to try to solve the misrule within the framework of the federation, in place of reactionary and chauvinistic currents playing off their misdoings against others to secure their own narrow interests. At the same time, the dissolution of former Yogoslavia gave the imperialist powers within the EU a free way forward. Something to think about then the EU are working at erecting a multinational EU-state, and at the same time were very eager in dissolving the former Yugoslavia in the name of defending national souvereignty.

We can not leave «the national issue» to the bourgeoisie, because they are utilizing the national and etnic contradictions for their own advantage. The national struggle is an independent and important struggle for the working class and all exploited and oppressed classes and groups. This struggle is an important presupposition for, and part of, the revolutionary struggle for socialism and communism. Socialist revolutions and developing a world wide communist system presupposes free national states, which can cooperate equaly with each others, for the benefit of all, and starting the dismantling of the national states.

Te collaps of the Sviet Union lead to the USA beeing the total dominating imperialist power. National liberation movements no longer could play on contradictions between the two superpowers. The USA

is using this strenght to lead a common, intensified attack from the capitalist class all over the world against the vast majority of the people in all countries. The global institutions erected after the 2nd World War, The World Bank, the Monetary Fund and the GATT/WTO, have been important tools for this policy. The USA-dominans makes the situation in this phase, as themselves call the New World Order, in special difficult for the antiimperialist forces.

Most likely the USA will be able to retain this position for some time. Even if we allready today observes that the general features of imperialism, with uneven developement of the strenght of the competing imperialist forces, leads new rivals to the foreground, like the big powers in the EU-project and Japan. A crash in the world economy also could accelerate a change in the balance of strenght beteen the imperialist big powers.

The EU was created under the patronage of the USA, within the Euroepean bastion against their rival the Soviet Union. The free trade area also benefitted american mulitnationals. Even the plans of an Inner Market, pushed forward by the big European enterprises through their organ European round Table (ERT), was applauded by the USA.

The basis for the developement of the contradictions between the EU-project and the USA we find in the new framework created by the ending of the «cold war» and the establishing of Germany as a normalized state. At the same time, the building of the economic union by, according to the economic laws are pushing forward a political and military union.

Still the EU is in its embryotic phase of beeing a real political-military agent. The prosess is also fragile, because of its many internal differences and contradictions. The struggle of power inside the project are still going to sharpen. At the same time the USA is still an important «European power» and will strenghten both internal tensions and competing with the EU in its efforts to push eastward its sphere of influence, both in Europe and in Asia. Most likely the EU-project will splinter in the process of developing the new main imperialist blocks standing against each others within maybe 10-15 years.

But anyway the bourgeoisie in Europe is developing new policies for their increased exploitation. Policies are being developed that will undermine the legal possibilities for the struggle of the working class and the peoples of Europe. This prosess presupposes an undermining of the nation-states and subjecting them to supra-national state forms. The multinationals are developing EU into a prison of nations, under the hegemony of the strongest imperialist states in the EU. Even if the smaller states, as also the «outside EU»-state Norway, also are developing their own imperialist activities.

The EU institutions are being strengthened with these aims, and the largest imperialist powers will strengthen their positions. It's becoming increasingly clear that a strategy to struggle within the EU system is increasingly difficult. The only way to go forward is to raise the struggle to withdraw from EU and to cooperate in a struggle to have the EU dissolved. For a non-member like Norway this means getting out of the suffocating grip of the European Economic Area.

The AKP considers that a socialist strategy must involve the liberation of the nations of Europe from supra-national state forms like the EU. A future socialist Europe must build on multilateral agreements based on voluntariness on the part of all nations.

EU is the present expression of capitalist development in Europe today. This have consequences for the classtruggle, for the struggle for social and democratic rights in the different states too. It is an important condition for the struggle to keep outside the EU, or be able to get out for those who unfortunately are inside.

Seen from Norway, it is easier to secure trade union rights within a country with 4,5 million people than inside a supra-national structure of 200 millions there the capital is well organized. It is easier to defend the rights for the norwegian language in the whole community then this is the main language of the state, than it would be as a «costly» minority-language. It is easier to put political pressure on the norwegian government in a political case, than to press the big powers in the EU. National souvereignty of Norway is that norwegian authorities have a possibility to decide and that norwegian laws can be followed. Not in an absolut manner, but in a way you can influence through classtruggle in your own country. National souvereignty is not only the right to vote for a parliament, it is more about how much the parliament has «the right» to decide.

Dissolving EU is not the same as cruching capitalism in itself, but changing the framework for the class-struggle. We do not look upon the struggle against the EU as a direct maching up for the socialist revolution. but as a struggle giving us better conditions in the allround struggle against the capital and gaining strenght for a future socialist revolution. At this stage, the question of national souvereignty is the crucial one. This is the «bottom-line» of the front-policy of AKP in the struggle against the EU.

In Norway we uphold the paroles: No to EU membership, Norway out of the Western European Union, No to the Schengen Agreement and Norway out of the European Economic Area.. Whether people are socialists or not is subordinate in this context. But the struggle against the EU are developing the anticapitalist counciusness among peoples.

The program of the front «No to theEU» has many of this elements. «No to rhe EU» is the most important organisation of the people of Norway and the working class of Norway for the maintenance of national souvereignty and international solidarity.

In pratice it has shown up that this is the most succeessfull line in the struggle against the EU in other parts of Europe too. Norway has managed to stay outside. Denmark has twice put obstacles for the EU-process and avoided to be completly swallowed up. Also Sweden ,there the reistance front is organised on a similar base, has maneged to avoid a full integration. Both of this countries therefor have a solid starting plattform to get out of the EU-prison at a futeure cross-road!

In Irland the National Plattform is also built in the same manner and is in a position to overturn the whole Nice-treaty, if they manage to win in the referendum before this summer. Similar resistance-organising we can find in Malta, in one of the countries applying for membership having a referendum probably in 2002.. Also in the Baltic countries they are building «No-movements» after the «nordic modell».

In most of the EU-countries, however, the political parties are dominating the EU-debate. That may be one of the reasons explaining the differences in strategy for the struggle. But the geography or different starting points should not be the desicive element. The basement should be the political analyses and strategy and tactics followed from this. The parole «Germany out of the EU» might in the german political landscape be utilized by those going for an arbitrary «Grosse Deutschland». (Depending on the balance of the political forces in Germany). In the same way «Belgium out of the EU» might be ammunition for the reactionary Vlaams Blok working for a separated Vlandern?

But irrespective from what national state you are fighting the EU-project, the struggle should be based on the perspective of dissolving the EU and that the conditions for the classtruggle will be betetr inside the present national states. This also goes in countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece and the applicant Turkey. Even if the EU-membership of the first three of these countries also had some positive elements in the first phase, since they became mambers in a periode of consolidating the passage from fascistoide dictatorships to bourgeoisie democratic dictatorships, and that the EU also can be used for a similar transformation of the turkish class-state.

The European Anti-Maastricht Alliance (TEAM) is the constellation on European level reflecting the front policy we are applying in the nordic countries. This is the inter-european cooperation which will have the biggest importance to develope to topple the EU-project; through the resistance forces this can mobilize at the homebase in each countries!

In Norway the bourgeoisie media continually claim that national independence is no longer possible, and that we must submit to supra-national constructions. The same goes for the bourgeoisie parties, the most important being the Labour Party. This ideology has its twin in the Trotskyite movements that claim that it cannot be socialism in one country alone. Pressure is developed against the idea that socialism can and must be built in each individual country within an international setting based on

voluntary cooperation between the states. Giving up the policy of fighting for national sovereignty and socialism in one country fits very well with the interests of the multinationals that are in the lead building the European Union.

The idea that socialism cannot be built in one country is a defeatist idea. It stops the working class from developing tactics to achieve just this. We are of course aware that the working class in Norway cannot hold on to power alone over a longer period, as the imperialist forces would be overwhelming. But our goal is to establish socialism in Norway, and we expect the international working class in all nations to struggle to achieve socialism in their respective nation-states.