Dear Comrades and Friends.
This is a great honor for me to set foot on the Venezuelan soil. The soil that endured so much injustice during the ages of conquest and slavery, to give birth to the heroes like Simón Bolívar and Hugo Chávez. The land that belongs to brave Venezuelan people, who rose up to stand for their dignity. The nation valiantly overcoming the horrors of hardship brought by foreign powers and interference aimed to break his resistance. This is practical quintessence of struggle against imperialism, the struggle for dignity of man and national independence.
My fatherland fell first victim of Nazi Germany armed invasion and suffered a brutal conquest. Polish nation learnt painfully this lesson. The country lost 20% of its population. Whole cities were wiped out, especially the capital. The economy collapsed. People commonly suffered hunger. Soon after the victory over the Nazi Germany, the country was once again submitted to foreign pressure the kind of what Venezuela is facing now. The foreign powers were in desperate to prevent us from any recovering during these hardest times. All that in hope Poland will land in their hands. They haven’t seen the day for more than four decades!
In these appalling circumstances Polish people, overcoming a variety of hardship, not just only managed to rebuild the country out of ruins, but within the first decade of socialism the production of Polish industry exceeded prewar indicators. Within the next decade the Polish economy carried out a transformation from agriculture based to dominantly industrial model, followed by rising standards of living, broad and unseen before social, educational and cultural development.
In the decade of the 80’s we endured hardships. The consumption was modest, but the basic needs of everyone were met. The quality of domestic consumer goods, especially food and necessities was high by comparison with today’s mass consumption standards. Household products were very reliable and durable. There was no excess, but nobody was hungry. The packaging waste that is a nightmare of today’s market economies was reduced to negligible margin as almost all the packages were reusable by design or they were made from environmentally benign or biodegradable materials.
Socialism in the twentieth century not only opened the gates to a new historical epoch, an epoch in which imperialist capitalism was no longer the only systemic alternative for development of productive forces in the world, but it also made enormous contributions to political theory and practice. These contributions and experiences shall not be squandered or forgotten.
The experience of European socialist countries has proven that it is possible under a socialist planned economy not only to rebuild whole countries from the rubble of World War II, but to construct a modern industrialized economies. That it was possible to create an advanced models of societies in which not only important material needs, such as access to education or health services, were satisfied, but a complex system of humane social relations was established. The way for the man development as the social, cooperative and creative being, the way for the labor liberation was paved.
The monopolies’ seizure of power over Poland in 1989 resulted in the destruction of our productive forces. This didn’t happened because the economy was backward, ineffective and thus uncompetitive. On the contrary, the most affected areas of the economy were these highly advanced: the aircraft industry, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and machine industry. The first thing that happened was hostile takeover and rapid demolition of industries that posed a threat to foreign monopolies. It came at a huge social cost that nobody had expected. That was followed by the degradation of the infrastructure and controlled disintegration of the society. The level of misery that came had not been known for three generations. The imperialist takeover led to unprecedented economic, social and moral degradation for the majority of the society and large profits for the new, emerging class of owners. This was the cost of imposition the economic and technological dependence.
Showing weakness and subordination to imperialism caused striking social consequences that nobody foresaw.
The word “Imperialism” has all of a sudden become very fashionable in Europe, after two decades of being almost completely forgotten. If we take it at its face value, right now especially Poland is experiencing an unprecedented fertility of “anti imperialist fighters”, followed by the defenders of the rights of the nations and minions of the international law. Where have these been hiding for so long while NATO countries waged war against Afganistan, Iraq, Libya? Has any of them ever spoken a word, just a word, against US occupation of Syrian soil?
The President of Poland, this isn’t a joke, is notably the foremost among them. In a recent interview for BBC he used the word “imperialism” multiple times. And yes, he wants to stop it. With German tanks and F-16 fighter jets.
Obviously the word “imperialism” in all these cases is mandatorily tied with the adjective “Russian”. No other uses have I noticed in the mainstream media in Poland. This avoids raising the question of what the term “imperialism” really means, or to doubt whether this “Russian imperialism” is even a real thing.
Forgive me I will not answer this question directly as I have to go back to Poland. I hope you, however, can make your own conclusions.
We understand imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, the consequence of the emergence of monopolies and their reaching of political power; it is a fusion between monopoly and the political power, leading the backward forces to subordinate the world.
In today’s world, the development of capitalism should not be ever confused with economic development or the development of productive forces, and even less should it be equated with social development. By the development of capitalism we mean the structural transformation within capitalism and the increasing role of monopoly. Modern capitalist monopolies have long since transcended national boundaries. Their objective is to create monopolies on a global scale.
Monopoly cannot be equated with just a high degree of concentration of specific industries, but an inherent feature of monopoly is its use of monopolistic practices. It entails the abuse of power over the market in order either to obtain unfair advantages or to consolidate and deepen one’s political control.
In international relations, monopoly has led to unequal and unfair trade relations between countries and an unfair international division of labor. Technological and financial monopolies seem to be the most relevant among the areas in which monopolies are currently trying to be imposed on a global scale. These monopolies exploit, among other things, the phenomena of standardization resulting from the network effect: the value or utility of a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. While the standards are objectively desirable and necessary, the private control over them is a disaster. Privately controlled standards shaped today’s emerging industries: semiconductors production and software engineering. Many other industries have become highly dependent of these. Even agriculture is experiencing problems related to privately owned patents in the field of genetic engineering. This great achievement of science is nowadays abused to impose and deepen control over the developing countries rather that to feed and cure the world.
Along with the growing importance of telecommunication and data flow, the dependencies in related industries became far more important than merely economical. This is not just about the profits. The operation of critical infrastructure, social communication, the appointment of authorities and the functioning of the state rely more and more on the telecommunication and technology. Who controls semiconductor and IT industry may gain control over the flow of information. Who controls the flow of the information may control nearly everything else. The issue has become crucial for the national security of every single country in the world. Communication technology has become highly politicized. Soon we will realize it is being weaponized.
The United States started a campaign of smearing the Chinese tech industry over allegedly being a threat to cybersecurity, exerting pressure on other countries to ban it. In the other words they want the authorities of these countries to assure the US made technologies of exclusive rights in this field. So far, they have failed to prove even a single case of such a breach to security. On the other hand US companies are the world’s notorious leaders in the implementation of shady solutions in their products with a long public record of security breaches.
The US has accused Russia of interference in their elections. Many so called allied countries immediately followed suit, seeking a Russian plot in any piece of information that contradicts the official narrative, unleashing a witch hunt. The US on its side maintains a world-wide standing army, a network of so called “non-governmental” organizations, incidentally sponsored by US Department of State. They consider it their legitimate right if not part of their sacred duty of “promoting democracy”. They have the exclusive right to declare what country is democratic and what is an “authoritarian regime”. They can even simply replace the whole process of elections and declare an individual a “legitimate” winner. Every limitation in the exercise of rights is instantly denounced as a grave “human rights violation”. It seems the only right a human has is to support the US.
So far we have seen monopolies with global presence or global aspirations, that fall within a reasonably strict terms of the definition of the monopoly, focused on exclusivity and control over the market rather than secondary features that could be attributed to any large economic enterprise. All of them are managed from the countries of the collective West. The most important, most powerful ones are located in the US.
These countries are affiliated within political and military blocks, where United States are a clear leader of all blocks. Some of these countries claim official neutrality, but their practice shows their actions are coordinated. They enjoy their mutual recognition as “democratic”, a conviction of their “moral superiority” over the rest of the world and have developed an ideology justifying every interference, including forced regime change or war. The total population of these countries roughly exceeds 1 billion but they always refer their positions as “the world’s public opinion”, “the international community” (for domestic usage) or “the whole democratic world” (for external purposes). I think I do not really need to answer the question whether these countries represents contemporary imperialism.
One could ask what about the other countries as some of them are also powerful in terms of military power or the overall economy. They are active participants of international relations, pursuing their own policies. They also do foreign business. Moreover, in the most cases, they rely on the market economy with the significant presence of the private sector. Don’t the rules of capitalist development apply to them as well? If so – are these countries in the imperialist stage or are they inevitably approaching this stage? Are we facing a multiplicity of opposing imperialisms, the situation resembling the one in Europe in the eve of the Great War (WWI) but on a global scale? Some are ready to argue this is the case. Only facts based research can lead us to the answer.
First of all the development of the capitalism cannot simply be attributed to the absolute values of production, which once achieved triggers the stage automatically. Nor does it follow a deterministic, isolated model in each country. The contemporary global economy resembles a system of connected vessels. The evolution of the capitalist model is thereby determined by the circumstances of its surroundings. The economies of all countries are now exposed to the influence of the previously mentioned western monopolies. Consequently, in most cases, the domestic economies, even of the countries relying strictly on capitalist model, have been unable to develop their own monopolies in the fields that have already been dominated.
Brazil, Russia, China and India formed practical form of cooperation known as BRIC to meet the challenges of contemporary world over two decades ago. South Africa joined the alliance in 2010, thus forming BRICS. The economies of all these countries faced similar problems of unfair dependencies. All of them experienced the growing economic pressure from the western monopolies, followed by the demands to extend the control to the political arena.
Let’s try to compare some basic economic indicators to see the wider picture. In the first decade of XX century in Europe the GNP per capita of Imperial Germany amounted for 3648 USD. It was fairly comparable with that of Imperial France (3485 USD) and Imperial Britain (4921 USD). Nowadays, the average measure for BRICS countries is just about 8565 USD, while for G7 is 48200 USD. The difference is six fold. This means that BRICS economies would need to grow in size at least 6 times in order to reach the preliminary level of development characteristic for imperialist countries.
Neither BRICS or any other developing country outside the Western block can nowadays constitute a sufficient economical base for the expanding monopoly stage of capitalism. Natural resources and large populations constitute the entire wealth of these countries.
Conclusions that equate the national liberation aspirations of developing countries with imperialism based on the expansion of monopolies and their imposition on a global scale are erroneous. Assuming the further development of any of non West-aligned country, to overcame the barrier of dependence and thus create the base for future imperialism is somehow preemptive, but also completely pointless both from the practical and theoretical point of view. It may only distract the attention from the real and crucial events.
Monopoly on a global scale is emerging before our eyes, accompanied by imperialism on a global scale. Imperialism – real and contemporary – is furious, ready to unleash a global war. The US race for global hegemony has sped up so rapidly because they realize that the window of opportunity is closing for them. Their goal is to gain full economic and political control over all the other countries. To subordinate all the allies and to annihilate every potential opponent. The imposition of so called rules-based international order, where these “rules” are simply instrumental and arbitrary political decisions, hypocritically elevated to level of ideological principles. In such a world would be no space for any concept of independence we know from the previous century. Neither no alternative for monopolistic capitalism. This is a real threat the world is facing now.
However, an alliance has begun to form. The alliance of resistance against the monopoly and the hegemony. There are still important countries in the world that have never fully accepted submission to the monopoly. Some of them have started to actively oppose it. Most have taken a more cautious stance, but they are aware of the danger. The shift of the balance of power in the world may be imminent.
Socialism has already made it possible in the 20th century for developing countries to overcome their economic backwardness and embark on the path of social development. It was only due to the economic resilience and self-sufficiency afforded by socialism that we were able to withstand the pressure from imperialism for decades. In the 21st century, socialism is once again becoming a necessity, since the alternative to it is a centralized, technocratic monopoly on a global scale, which could have terrible social consequences that are extremely difficult to reverse. Socialism is a future that must be fought for!
