Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum
When the World Anti-Imperialist Platform (the Platform) was founded, three major goals were stipulated. These were: the strengthening of the anti-imperialist struggle, the strengthening of the ideological struggle within the anti-imperialist and communist movements, and the strengthening of the world’s communist forces. These are the most important goals according with the essential character of the Platform, and they are closely related.
Since its establishment in Paris, France in October 2022, the Platform has devoted its energies to these three major goals by holding international conferences and by organizing demonstrations and rallies alongside its other activities – in Belgrade, Serbia in December 2022; in Caracas, Venezuela in March 2023; and in Gwangju and Seoul, South Korea in May 2023.
The first goal of the Platform is to promote the anti-imperialist struggle
This is the most important goal of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform. Strengthening the world anti-imperialist struggle means strengthening such struggles in one’s own domestic country as well as coordinating with other anti-imperialist struggles around the world. The anti-imperialist struggle of each country and the corresponding anti-imperialist struggle on a worldwide level are in a dialectical relationship between the individual and the general.
‘Anti-imperialism’ means opposing the forces of imperialism. In this sense, ‘opposing’ means not only opposing the imperialists’ policy, but also the existence of the imperialist system itself. It means fighting until all traces of imperialism are eliminated. And ‘opposing’ does not only mean the negation of the physical existence of imperialism but also the affirmation of the existence of an opposite to imperialism – a commitment to socialism.
This is not antifascism; it is anti-imperialism. In the second world war, the anti-fascist forces won victory by forming anti-fascist fronts on a global scale. Today, when the third world war is imminent, the front that must be organized globally is an anti-imperialist one, although this does not preclude the formation of anti-fascist fronts in particular countries or regions. It is worth remembering that fascism during the second world war was just one variant of imperialism, a way to maintain the dominance of the imperialist ruling classes over their domestic populations during a period of intense class struggle. The fascism that we see in the world today, by contrast, is exported by the imperialists to their puppet states in the oppressed and colonized countries that are subordinate to imperialism.
In the current conditions, imperialism is the main target of our attack, while fascism is an auxiliary target.
Various forms of struggle must be combined. We need to always pay attention to the combination of political struggle and economic struggle; legal struggle and semi-legal struggle; large-scale struggle and small and medium-scale struggle; focused struggle and decentralized struggle; daily struggle and struggle at particular opportunities; spearheading struggle and mass struggle.
The second goal of the Platform is to intensify ideological warfare
The targets of ideological warfare are revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism. Revisionism denies the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism, opportunism sells out the long-term interests of the revolution to the short-term interests of all or a few and commits Right and “Left” errors, while sectarianism divides our ranks. Revisionism is an ideological problem, opportunism is a matter of political line, and sectarianism is an organizational problem. Revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism are closely interrelated as three aspects of the same entity. They are all effects of the capitalist class’s pressure on the struggle of the working class, and tend towards bringing about a split in the ranks of socialism, thus neutralizing us as a major force in world politics.
Today, the main focus of the Platform’s ideological warfare is the sectarian opportunism of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). The leadership of the KKE has fallen into the trap of revisionism, since it expelled the sincere revolutionary general secretary Nikos Zachariadis and his revolutionary comrades from the party in 1957 under the influence of Nikita Khrushchev, the ringleader of modern revisionism. In recent times, the KKE has caused confusion and division within the communist ranks inside or outside its own country, engaging in severe Right and “Left” opportunism and sectarianism.
‘Solidnet’, the authoritative solidarity network in the international communist movement, has virtually finished its life as it has failed to fulfill its periodic, political and organizational duty owing to the sectarian opportunism of its principal organizer, the KKE. This is comparable to the failure of the Second International to fulfill its role because of the opportunism of Karl Kautsky and others, and its end with the first world war.
Will the KKE’s theory of the ‘imperialist pyramid’ surpass in infamy Kautsky’s theory of ‘Ultra-imperialism’? Just as Kautsky drew on English bourgeois economist JA Hobson’s ideas about ‘Inter-imperialism’, so the KKE’s pyramid theory is tainted by petty-bourgeois theories, including Trotskyism, defining all capitalist countries as having some level of imperialist development and stating that “every capitalist country in the world without exception, constitute the imperialist pyramid”. (‘On Imperialism – The Imperialist Pyramid’ by Aleka Papariga, 2013)
The KKE has had the temerity to revise the very title of Lenin’s epoch-defining work ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ of 1916. In the history of revisionism, it is rare to find such an audacious case of revising even the title of a book. In this sense, Lenin’s foresight in emphasizing the importance of ‘stage’ in the title shines through. Like this, the ‘Imperialist pyramid’ theory denies ‘stages’ and thus denies any tactics in the revolutionary movement.
It is no coincidence that the KKE, as Trotsky also did, denounces the Comintern’s tactic of organizing an international united front against fascism, denies the revolutionary nature and existence of national-liberation struggles in the oppressed world, and committed left-opportunist errors during the popular uprising in its own country in the early 2010s.
It no longer surprises anyone that Dimitris Koutsoúmbas, the general secretary of the KKE, in an interview with the mainstream media in May, likened Russia’s special military operation to NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia. The war in Ukraine has brought to the fore the ideological problems of the KKE. It is the nature of such opportunism as that of the KKE’s leadership to betray Leninism while quoting Lenin’s words; to recycle the words and justifications of the Nato imperialists while claiming to be against imperialism; and to immerse itself in Eurocommunism while condemning it.
The problem is that the leadership of the KKE, as revisionists and opportunists have historically done, incites other parties to follow the same path of revisionism and opportunism, and if they refuse, it intervenes in them organizationally to break them up. These criminal acts, which have taken place countless times, from Spain a few years ago to Argentina this year, objectively confirm that the KKE is the leading international sectarian force dividing the international communist movement today.
The Platform fights not against the KKE itself but against the revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism of its leadership. The leadership of KKE opposes Leninism while referring to Leninism, opposes revolution while referring to revolution, and opposes anti-imperialism while referring to anti-imperialism. Thus the ideological warfare against the revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism of the KKE’s leadership ends with an accurate description of Leninism, revolution and anti-imperialism. In this sense, the recent decision by the congress of the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB-CPB) is very encouraging.
The third goal of the Platform is to consolidate the international communist forces
The reason we talk about consolidating not the communist parties but the communist forces is that the communist powers at present are not only organized in parties but also in other types of political organization.
As we know, after the 1990s, communist forces everywhere went through some very hard times. The prerequisite of the principle that there should be only one communist party in any given country is that the traditional communist party in each country should follow a correct revolutionary line and should play its historic role with consistency and dedication. But in reality, many parties did not do so. In the present conditions, it is an inescapable reality that militant communists in many countries have had to create alternative political organizations outside of the traditional party formation in order to conduct revolutionary activities.
In the global anti-imperialist struggle, not only communist but also many non-communist forces from oppressed countries can join together under the banner of anti-imperialism. In this sense, to strengthen the world anti-imperialist struggle means creating a united front, with communists in the lead. Strengthening the forces of international communism in this united front context is like strengthening the revolutionary forces in any one country. It guarantees a better and more resolute leadership for the whole struggle. Strengthening the international communist forces in such a context is like strengthening the party in a domestic context.
Just as the relationship of a party and a united front can be compared to the relationship of the vanguard and the transmission belts in one country, so the international communist forces and the world anti-imperialist forces have to build the relationship of the locomotive and the rail cars of this struggle ‘train’ on a global scale, metaphorically speaking. In other words, the international communist forces must further develop their role within the world anti-imperialist movement as a vanguard that can put forward the correct line and powerfully organize and mobilize the people. While the anti-imperialist struggle targets maximum force against the primary enemy, the communist movement aims to build a vanguard for the masses’ struggles, not only against imperialism, but for socialism, which is the only real solution to the problems facing humanity.
The international communist forces achieved great advances in the period of the great turn. The First International was formed after the February Revolution of 1848, the Second International after the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Third International after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The first world war was the decisive trigger in exposing the rottenness of the Second International, which had been steadily misled by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky after the death of Friedrich Engels. After the victory of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the Third International was built. During the period of the second world war, the Third International was dissolved for the reasons that the subjective forces of the revolution in each country had strengthened, and in order to facilitate the inclusion of the USA and Great Britain into the world anti-imperialist front.
With the victory of the world antifascist front in the second world war, the international socialist camp was greatly enlarged, spreading across eastern Europe and east Asia, while national-liberation movements in the oppressed world gained unstoppable momentum.
During the second world war, the ‘world antifascist front strategy’ of Josef Stalin and Georgi Dimitrov was the most important stratagem leading to the victory of the antifascist forces, isolating the fascist camp and preventing the world’s imperialists from devouring the socialist USSR together.
Nowadays, the world anti-imperialist front that has been formed by the socialist DPRK and China with capitalist Russia and other countries should be regarded in a similar light as the world united front against fascism that the socialist Soviet Union created with the imperialist USA and Britain – as a force capable of smashing the main enemy and unleashing a new wave of revolutions in the world as the imperialist system falls ever deeper into crisis and fails to re-invigorate itself through new conquests in war.
In 2022, the Ukrainian war escalated in eastern Europe. When war spreads to South Korea and Taiwan, it will be indisputable that the third world war has arrived. This world war, which has undoubtedly been provoked by the imperialist side, will bring about another period of great transition following the victory of the war of liberation in east Asia, decisively hastening the doom of the imperialist forces, and moving the world into a period of great upsurge.
The anti-imperialist struggle, ideological warfare and the communist forces are interconnected
The anti-imperialist struggle is our practice, ideological warfare is our theory, and the communist forces are our organization. Anti-imperialist struggle and ideological warfare have the relationship of practice to theory, while ideological warfare and the communist forces have the relationship of theory to organization. The communist forces and the anti-imperialist struggle have the relationship of organization to practice.
In the present day, anti-imperialism is justice and pro-imperialism is injustice. History demands of us that the just anti-imperialist front and the just anti-imperialist war must be victorious. The proletariat and people of the world must be united under the banner of anti-imperialism and advance towards the final victory of socialist revolution.
In this serious moment, when the full outbreak of the third world war is imminent, the Platform will do its utmost to accomplish its sacred three-point goals of strengthening the anti-imperialist struggle, strengthening the ideological struggle, and strengthening the international forces of communism.
