In the conditions of the deepest ever crisis of the global capitalist system, and the consequent drive towards world war, one question urgently faces us: what is the task of the international communist movement – the only force capable of acting in the real interests of wider humanity?
The primary contradictions in our world today remain what they were a century ago: a) the contradiction between the workers and the capitalists; b) the contradiction between the imperialist exploiting nations and the oppressed nations; c) the contradictions amongst the imperialist powers themselves; and d) the contradiction between the imperialist nations and the block of socialist and independent anti-imperialist countries.
Understanding these interconnecting contradictions allows us to answer humanity’s most pressing problem: where can we find the forces that must be brought for a successful struggle against imperialist domination and war?
The ongoing war drive by NATO is highlighting all these contradictions. In particular, it is accentuating and accelerating the formation of a de facto pole of resistance, centred around the block of socialist and anti-imperialist countries.
For some western ‘leftists’, players of bourgeois parliamentary games, the idea of anti-imperialism is merely a rhetorical flourish, to be used and dropped at will and defined only by the vaguest and most unscientific of criteria. But for billions of our fellow human beings, this struggle is no mere posturing, but a matter of life or death.
As we witness the rapid escalation of military operations, it is clear that we will be unable properly to grasp the character of this war, and of the forces that are waging it, without first understanding the context in which it is being waged.
Meanwhile, the prevailing fashion for ‘reinventing’ or ‘updating’ Lenin’s essential definition of imperialism has been steadily eating away at our movement’s theoretical foundations, creating a serious inability to explain what is happening in the world – and thereby threatening humanity’s prospects of organising for the defeat of the aggressive imperialist powers.
This theoretical struggle is not an abstract or isolated question, but one that strikes at the very heart of our movement and its practical ability to lead the working people in their struggle for liberation.
The USA, which since 1945 has been the undisputed world-dominating imperialist superpower, is today seeing its global dominance severely shaken, under the combined forces of the deepening world crisis of overproduction and the rising assertiveness of the anti-imperialist camp, led by People’s China, both of which are threatening its profits and its hegemony. This is the context in which the imperialists will go to any lengths to try to save their decaying system and hold on to their ruling position in the world; their ability to control and loot at will.
For those of us on the other side of this equation, understanding who are the friends and who are the enemies of the people in their struggle against imperialism is key to directing our policy and forging our alliances.
Imperialism is not an insult or a swear word, to be used arbitrarily or on a whim. Lenin defined the global system as well as the internal characteristics of imperialist economies according to carefully worked-out and very specific economic criteria. In particular, he emphasised the degree to which finance capital has become dominant in the economic life of an imperialist country, and the extent to which an imperialist (monopoly capitalist) ruling class relies on the export of capital to provide it with super profits.
FROM THE HORSE’S Mouth: Statistics studied by finance capitalists in the City of London:
SHOW SLIDE:
“Russia has twice the land mass with less than half people and only one twelfth the economic size of the USA.
The USA is much more indebted than Russia but that is a function of low interest rates, reserve currency status and access to international markets.
Investment flows are multiple times higher in the USA than Russia, as cost of capital is lower and erosion of capital via inflation is less.
However Russia keeps its ‘superpower’ status thanks to its Soviet military legacy.”
We are in need of a manifesto for the crisis of capitalism – a way out of this downward spiral of poverty and war for the workers of the world, which requires the formation of a militant anti-imperialist front.
To this end, we will contribute our analysis of the situation as seen by our party, the CPGB-ML.
The whole world finds itself in a situation of economic chaos. Living standards for working people are falling precipitously almost everywhere. Countries such as Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Ghana are already bankrupt and unable to purchase even the most basic essentials needed by their populations – medicine, food and energy especially.
In Britain, things are also very bad. Prices have gone through the roof, while wages are in no way keeping up with inflation. The government is cutting expenditure on public services in order to reduce its borrowing requirements, while simultaneously increasing taxation on workers. At the same time, it is spending outrageous amounts on armaments, on supporting war in Ukraine against Russia, and on various military provocations around the globe. And it refuses to impose a wealth tax on the multi-billionaires (i.e., the monopolist bourgeoisie of the world), who are actually still enriching themselves to the tune of several billions a year while the workers are systematically pushed lower and lower into poverty and destitution.
Capitalism IS NOT fit for purpose. Despite the human ability to produce more and more with less and less effort, the vast majority of people are seeing a drastic fall in their living standards, all because the capitalist mode of production has a fundamental design fault – which periodically causes it to stall simply because it has produced infinitely more than people (and governments on their behalf) can afford to buy.
In these periods of crisis, people go hungry because they have produced too much, the markets are flooded, and the capitalists can’t make a profit, so living standards plunge as the capitalists try to rescue themselves at the expense of the working masses.
This is why the leading imperialist countries are driven to war, to try to secure advantages they can no longer hope to gain by peaceful means. War and destruction when profit is not guaranteed, is the logic of capitalism.
This is why the USA, with the backing of the European imperialist countries through the NATO alliance, has been threatening Russia in order to be able to dominate and destroy it, moving vast amounts of weaponry into Ukraine and nurturing a fascist movement in the country to use against Russian interests. And that is why Russia has been fighting back.
The bill for all the armaments and weaponry being supplied by Britain to the Ukrainian fascist regime is being paid by the British taxpayer, while the billionaire owners of the armaments industry get ever richer.
Similar aggressive moves are being made by NATO against China, moving us ever closer to a conflagration over Taiwan that will again cost a fortune in treasure and in lives.
Meanwhile, as imperialism suffers setbacks on the military and propaganda front, the economic war it has initiated with its sanctions against Russia is also backfiring badly.
Washington is desperate to drag Europe into line behind plans to sabotage Russia’s economy. But whilst Germany and some others have been shrill in their dutiful reversion to Cold War rhetoric, this cannot conceal a deep and growing reluctance to match that rhetoric with the wholesale adoption of measures that evidently end up damaging European economic interests more seriously than those of Russia.
There is a good chance that Anglo-American efforts to keep Europe in line in an economic war against Russia could fail, exposing both the splits between the USA and Europe and those within Europe itself.
The economies of the Baltic countries are at risk. So vociferous in their rhetoric against Russia, such countries will begin to find endless subservience to the west a less attractive prospect if the price to be paid is that some of their most profitable industries, which are 90 percent dependent on Russia, will be shut down.
Meanwhile, Russia could actually benefit, taking the opportunity to undo some of the terrible economic damage that was done during the time of the imperialist comprador Yeltsin. What is happening now is a gradual decoupling of Russia’s economy from the economies of the west. This gives rise for a lot of possibilities for Russian workers to expose the contradictions of capitalism and to put pressure on their bourgeoisie with more radical demands of planning the economy according to people’s needs and independence, rather than for profit and dependence.
The aggression against Russia and China, both of which are in possession of very advanced weaponry that they have independently developed, in both cases purely for the purpose of defending themselves against NATO expansionist ambition rather than for purposes of aggression against anyone at all, risks plunging the world into a third world war.
Such a war will not leave North America and Europe unscathed. Indeed, it runs a very real risk of the kind of damage being inflicted on our cities, towns and infrastructure that North America and Europe have unleashed on defenceless countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Congo, etc.
Once we understand that the real cause of the problem is the unavoidability of ever worsening economic crises and war for as long as capitalism continues to be the economic system that dominates the world, then the solution begins to be obvious.
When it is further understood that this economic system remains in use despite its lethal flaws because there is a tiny minority of billionaires in the world who benefit from it, whose private wealth and control over the world’s means of production and financial system provide them with the leverage to dictate terms to governments, be they ‘democratically’ elected or not, we cannot but realise that this tiny minority of people has to be dispossessed and overthrown.
Only by getting rid of the capitalist system can we replace it with a system of rational planning, deploying society’s vast and advanced productive forces to meet the needs of the people who do the producing.
Because of the vast wealth at their command, this tiny minority of billionaires have at their disposal a massive propaganda machine (media, educational institutions of every kind, etc.), as well as armies of bureaucrats and government officials. It is no easy task to dislodge them in order to establish public ownership of the means of production and central planning of production for the benefit of the producers to replace the blind turmoil of the market.
The resistance unleashed by the billionaire class (the bourgeoisie) is massive, cruel, unprincipled and inhuman. Like a lethally wounded beast before it dies, it can cause unimaginable pain in order to take everyone down with it, and it cares not a jot for the suffering it inflicts in its desperate bid to survive and stay on top.
Nevertheless, it is the destiny of the working class – that is, everybody who depends for a decent livelihood on getting and keeping a job – to overcome the violence of the state machine wielded by and on behalf of the super-rich and to set up their own working-class, proletarian, state to ensure that an economic system is installed to replace capitalism.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the working-class movement can only be described as being in a sorry mess, stacked up with people who have actually given up on proletarian revolution. They realise that the major problems in the world are caused by the persistent reign of capitalism, but they feel totally helpless to do anything other than beg the capitalists to be a little kinder, and they pass on that helplessness to the working-class people at large.
What the communist movement needs is revitalisation. Once we understand that the defeats we have suffered have all resulted from departures from Marxism-Leninism, we can regain confidence in our ultimate destination – a society where a centralised planned economy has replaced capitalism, and where production is not for profit but for the maximum satisfaction of the needs of the masses.
We must remember what Marx taught us: that workers should not be demanding merely higher wages, but an end to the wages system itself. We must also recall that workers in the imperialist countries should be working for the defeat of their own ruling classes when they wage war for profit and attack other nations for dominance.
We workers in Britain, for example, must sabotage the British aggressive war machine and demand that NATO gets out of Ukraine and stops trying to destroy Russia and China. We must teach our fellow workers to stand in solidarity with those under attack, and to understand that we face a common enemy – the imperialist ruling class.
Given the vicious blows that the imperialists are preparing to deliver to the living standards of the masses, as well as their war preparations for World War 3 against Russia and China, we must take the necessary steps to strengthen the global anti-imperialist movement and create a united world front.
We must spread the understanding that workers have the power to overturn the rule of the 0.1% if only they can learn to unite and use it.
Our correct position can offer workers around the world confidence in the victory of the working people over the interests of big capital; a victory in defence of the most basic human right – the right to live! We express our appreciation for the solidarity, courage and the desire to tell the truth about this war, protecting the interests of the working people!
Whether the war crimes are committed against Gaza by zionist thugs, or committed against Lugansk by Ukrainian fascist thugs, or committed against Syria by Isis thugs, it is the same grisly spectre that skulks behind in the shadows. It is imperialism. An imperialism tormented by its own insoluble contradictions, whose interests are being served by its proxies on the ground.
It is only the overthrow of imperialism which can end these horrors for good.
Let us step forward to help make history!
Since the beginning of the war in Donbass, our party has been saying: Victory to the liberation fighters of Donetsk and Lugansk!
Today we say: Down with Nato-backed terror! Victory to the anti-imperialist resistance!
Our correct position can offer workers around the world confidence in the victory of the working people over the interests of big capital; a victory in defence of the most basic human right – the right to live! We express our appreciation for the solidarity, courage and the desire to tell the truth about this war, protecting the interests of the working people!
Whether the war crimes are committed against Gaza by Zionist thugs, or committed against Lugansk by Ukrainian fascist thugs, or committed against Syria by Isis thugs, it is the same grisly spectre that skulks behind in the shadows. It is imperialism. An imperialism tormented by its own insoluble contradictions, whose interests are being served by its proxies on the ground.
It is only the overthrow of imperialism which can end these horrors for good.
Let us step forward to help make history!
Since the beginning of the war in Donbass, our party has been saying: Victory to the liberation fighters of Donetsk and Lugansk!
Today we say: Down with NATO-backed terror! Victory to the anti-imperialist resistance!
