(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Expanding on their tradition of proletarian internationalism, some 80 Communist and Workers' Parties will gather Nov. 21-23 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for their tenth annual meeting since the late 1990s. The meetings were initially hosted by the Greek Communist Party in Athens, before moving to Portugal and then to Belorussia last year.

     The Communist Party of Canada will be represented in Sao Paulo by Kimball Cariou, editor of People's Voice and a member of the party's Central Executive Committee.

     The Sao Paulo meeting was called by a Working Group which includes the Workers Party of Belgium, Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, Communist Party of Cuba, Communist Party of Greece, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Workers Party (Ireland), Party of the Italian Communists, Lebanese Communist Party, People's Party of Panama, Portuguese Communist Party, Communist Party of the Russian Federation, South African Communist Party, Communist Party of Spain, Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain, Syrian Communist Party, and Communist Party of Ukraine.

     A statement from the Working Group says that this year's topic will be: "New phenomena in the international framework. Worsening national, social, environmental and interimperialist contradictions and problems. The struggle for peace, democracy, sovereignty, progress and socialism and unity of action of Communist and Workers' Parties."

     The Sao Paulo meeting is the first of these conferences to be held in Latin America, which has become the scene of growing revolutionary upsurges in recent years. Just as significant, it will be the first international communist meeting held since the latest financial crisis began to rock the global capitalist system to its very core.

     During the Working Group's meeting earlier this year, particular attention was given to the growing instability of the capitalism system, which results in sharper exploitation of workers. The Working Group also discussed the increasingly militarist aspect of imperialism's offensive, its intense ideological campaign against socialism, and the attack on fundamental rights and freedoms.

     All these topics will be on the agenda when the parties meet in Sao Paulo. They will be hosted by the PCdoB, which earned deep respect for its struggle against the brutal military dictatorship which seized power in Brazil in 1964. The PCdoB was one of the original forces in the broad coalition which eventually won the election of Workers' Party candidate Lula da Silva as President in 2002. In the 2006 elections, the Brazilian Communists elected 13 candidates to the 513-member Chamber of Deputies and one to the Senate.