Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum, World Anti-imperialist Platform organizer
International Theoretical Conference on Imperialism and War organized by NDF on 14-15 October 2023 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The current situation is, in short, World War 3. World War 3 began with the escalation of the war in Ukraine in February 2022. As of October 2023, the probabilities of the spread of war throughout Eastern Europe and of the outbreak of war in East Asia are very high, and a new war has already broken out in the Middle East (West Asia). In other words, World War 3 has started in Eastern Europe and spread through the Middle East to East Asia.
World War 1 was an inter-imperialist war, World War 2 was a global anti-fascist war, and World War 3 is a global anti-imperialist war. World War 2 initially unfolded as an inter-imperialist war but changed phase when the Soviet Union formed a world anti-fascist front with some imperialist countries. World War 1 resulted in the emergence of the first socialist country, and World War 2 led to the emergence of a worldwide socialist camp.
Lenin accomplished the historic feat of socialist revolution by winning the Russian Revolution. This was based on the lessons of the Paris Commune with the scientific conviction that the weakest link in the chain of imperialism would be broken first as a result of the struggle between imperialist countries for colonies to seize super profits from them, enabled by the uneven development of capitalism in the stage of monopoly capitalism. In this process, Lenin’s struggle against the revisionism of Bernstein and Kautsky in the Second International is a great example of an ideological struggle that goes down in the history of the world revolution.
As with the right-opportunist tendency of Bernstein and Kautsky, Trotsky’s leftist opportunism posed another challenge to the international communist movement. The criterion of truth is practice. The great victory of Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country and the world anti-fascist front, which inherited and innovated Lenin’s theory of the victory of socialism in one country, dealt a fatal blow to Trotskyism, just as Lenin had struck a fatal blow to Kautskyism.
We note today that the absurd “imperialist pyramid” theory, which was given by the leadership of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in the early 2000’s and elaborated in 2013 by the former General Secretary of KKE Aleka Papariga, is no different in essence from Kautsky’s “Ultra-imperiali sm” and that the KKE leadership’s denial of any united front and overuse of ultra-revolutionary slogans have surpassed Trotsky’s leftist opportunism. “Imperialist Pyramid” defines every capitalist country as imperialist without exception and defines one country ascapitalist as longas it has a market and trade. According to this bizarre ‘theory“, Iran, Venezuela, Rwanda, Mozambique, and even Cuba and North Korea are imperialist countries. We are also outraged that the KKE leadership is trying to impose its revisionist and opportunist line on other parties, and when it fails, it splits them up, such as the Communist Party of People’s of Spain, the Communist Party of Italy, the Communist Party of Bolivia, the Communist Party of Argentina, etc. The de facto organizer of SolidNet, a long-standing meeting of the Communist and the Workers’ Party of the world, has raised this pseudo-theory and has led splits of the international communist movement in the wake of the war in Ukraine so that SolidNet is now completely divided into pro-KKE and anti-KKE forces, and its life is at stake. In addition, the leadership of the KKE recently unilaterally dissolved the European Communist Initiative, a long-standing coalition of European communist parties, once again drawing fierce criticism from within the international communist movement.
In the past, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev decided on a revisionist line. The following year, staunch communists who opposed it, including Zachariadis, the general secretary of the KKE, were expelled from the KKE under the direction of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From then on, the KKE leadership went down a thoroughly revisionist path, consistently supporting Gorbachev’s “reform” policies. The historical roots of revisionism, opportunism, and sectarianism in the leadership of the KKE go back to the Khrushchev era when Zachariadis was expelled. The KKE under Zachariadis, which was at the height of the national liberation struggle and class liberation struggle and fought Khrushchev’s revisionism to the death, should never be confused with the KKE under revisionists, opportunists and sectarians, as they are essentially different.
Russia is a capitalist country that has a socialist legacy. In Russia, the financial oligarchs cannot control politics and the economy, and its resources are exported, and capital flows in from abroad. Gas and electricity are supplied to people cheaply by the policy of voluntary deviation. We have to keep in mind that Russia was essentially a colony of Western imperialism during the 1990s and early 2000s.
Based on the historical experience of the multiple invasions of Moscow, a capital city surrounded by plains, Russia established the policy of defensive expansionism in the military field, with the Carpathians, Caucasus, and Ural Mountains as the borders. In accordance with the strategy of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “the Grand Chessboard” the Western imperialist forces formed the anti-Russian front, encircling the Carpathians Mountains and connecting France-Germany-Poland-Ukraine and staging “color revolutions” around Russia, including Belarus, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. The most successful case was the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014. It is no longer a secret that the US and NATO set up, trained and armed the neo-Nazi forces including the Azov battalion in order to succeed an invasion of Donbass and to push into Russia. Russia, which was at risk of being torn apart like “another Yugoslavia,” had no choice but to conduct the war in Ukraine against NATO and its stooge fascist forces.
It is true that China is a socialist country, with the formulation of socialism with Chinese characteristics. “Belt and Road Initiative” is a part of defensive expansionism in economic field to break through an imperialist forces’ economic blockade against China. The Chinese Communist Party leads its country, and the major means of production are nationalized. The nature of the “Belt and Road Initiative” policy is to break through the imperialist forces’ economic blockade policy against China. China doesn’t thoroughly stand fast to the classical principle of socialism like North Korea, but it doesn’t reject the principle of socialism itself. It is important to distinguish between what is true and what is false, between matters of principle and flexibility, strategy and tactics. In the end, it is the only practice that silences all debate.
Suppose Taiwan separates and becomes independent. In that case, dominoes of secession will follow in Hong Kong, Xizang (Tibet), Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. These are cunning schemes pursued relentlessly by the imperialist allies, including the US, to dismantle Chinese socialism, like the strategy of “the Grand Chessboard.” While the US decisively promotes the separation and independence of Taiwan, the reasons the US declares “the new Washington Consensus” and jumps the gun, saying “de-risking” is a deceptive scheme to blame China for the war in Taiwan. China must not permit the secession of Taiwan. The US has created this situation by strengthening the U.S.-Taiwan diplomatic relations, by pushing the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan and the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen’s trip to the US. Like trains running towards each other, collisions are inevitable.
Socialism is socialism, and capitalism is capitalism. Socialism is a society in which the working people, including the working class, own the government and the means of production, and is led by a revolutionary party of the working class. In contrast, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, the eve of socialism. Calling all capitalism imperialism, or even calling socialism imperialism, is today not just a theoretical error but the most severe practical error of all. It leads to the decisive error of characterizing the ongoing war in Ukraine as an inter-imperialist war and the impending war in Taiwan as an inter-imperialist war. Some communist camps are making the fatal mistake of struggling against Russia and China rather than NATO, the US, and imperialists, and defining the force behind the struggle as the target of the struggle and the allies as the enemy. It, in turn, supports US and European imperialism and NATO, and is an act to benefit the enemy against the anti-imperialist forces fighting against these imperialist forces. To say the least, even if you don’t have a scientific view of imperialism and confuse expansionism with imperialism, the main enemy and main target of the people, including the working class, in the current world revolution is the US imperialism and NATO, a coalition of the US and European imperialist invasion forces. It is an obvious error to put US imperialism and China on the same level, NATO and Russia on the same level, or even to label China and Russia as the “emerging” to consider them the main enemy and target.
The war in Ukraine is an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist war, a war of liberation and a preventive war. It is a war to liberate the people including ethnic Russians from the tyranny of the Ukraine fascist authority. It is a preventive war in response to the liberation of ethnic Russians and others from the tyranny of the Ukrainian fascist authorities and the war that was to follow as a result of NATO’s eastern policy toward Russia. The wars both in Taiwan and South Korea are anti-imperialist, national liberation, and national reunification wars. Therefore, it is clear who is on the side of justice and which war is a just war. The South Korean War is precisely an anti-imperialist, anti-fascist war. South Korean Yoon Suk-yeol, who came to power in May last year, is more of a fascist and belligerent than Poroshenko and Zelensky combined. The wars in Taiwan and South Korea are inextricably linked. If the Taiwan War breaks out, the South Korean War breaks out, and if the South Korean War breaks out, the Taiwan War breaks out. The agreement in 1961 between North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was reaffirmed by President Xi Jinping during his visit to North Korea in 2019.
Socialist North Korea joined with socialist China first, and then socialist North Korea and China joined with capitalist Russia, which has a socialist heritage, to form a world anti-imperialist front. These three countries are all armed with nuclear and missile weapons. U.S. and European imperialism can never win against these three countries at the same time.
Add to this the outbreak of war in the Middle East, and the anti-imperialist front is expanding to new level. In the Sahel region, the anti-France, anti-US, and anti-imperialist regime change are taking place and military tensions in Africa are increasing. The political and economic crisis of imperialism in Latin America, called “pink tide” is also deepening.
All unscientific theories and analyses that fail to see things as they are, in other words, materialistically and historically structurally, namely, dialectically, will, in practice, be rapidly crushed as war intensifies. The unscientific concepts of imperialism and the petit-bourgeois ideas of revisionism and opportunism will be dealt a decisive blow, both theoretically and practically.
The world is rapidly dividing into anti-imperialism and imperialism, justice and injustice. As historical experience proves, the final victory of the anti-imperialist camp, with not only its political and ideological superiority and but now also military superior position, is certain. As in the history of the last world war, there may be twists and turns along the way, but today’s global cataclysmic period will be driven by the “unity of the proletariat of the world” and the “struggle of the united people” to move beyond the great transition period and into a great heightened period, we are going to keep pushing forward on the path where proletariat and people will become the masters of the regime and the means of production.
