The US imperialists and their allies in NATO, representing the past, appear to be on the brink of launching an all-out war against the future, desperate to preserve their dusty thrones and crowns. The rising bloc of opposition and new economies centered around the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, BRICS, the Bolivarian Alternative of Latin America, and the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East, points the way to the future. The imperialists seek to resolve the global crisis by attempting to reconquer sections of the planet that have broken free from their system.

Underlying the war drive is the all-out breakdown of capitalism. Marx’s words in the Communist Manifesto about a crisis that would have been “an absurdity” in previous epochs—a crisis of poverty and economic turmoil created by abundance and technological advancement—ring truer than ever before. This should be a time of greater harmony, prosperity, and comfort than ever before, but because the means of production function to maximize profits for their owners, not for social good, we face the opposite. Human creativity and brilliance have outstripped the narrow limits of the profit system.

The Center for Political Innovation sends greetings to the World Anti-Imperialist Platform and all its signatories and participants. The Paris Declaration and this regroupment of international Marxist-Leninist organizations are vitally important in light of world events. While anti-imperialist forces around the world march ahead, the anti-imperialist movement in Western countries has lost its way. The pro-imperialist or supposedly “neutral” geopolitical sentiments espoused by many organizations claiming to speak for Communism are reprehensible. It echoes the lead-up to the First World War and the collapse of the Second International. The way the Greek Communist Party has steered many official communist parties rooted in the Communist International will be remembered as a grotesque example of self-serving opportunism when anti-imperialism and revolutionary defeatism were needed more than ever.

In Western countries, the confused lack of anti-imperialist politics accompanies anti-populism and anti-working-class sentiments. Leftism has deteriorated into nothing more than an attempt to defend the richest of the rich, the ultra-monopolists, against resistance from lower levels of capital. As imperialists attempt to “wokify” their system, disavowing their origins in colonialism and slavery, and decorating their drones and bombs with Rainbow Flags, the opportunist left stupidly sees this as a bandwagon to jump on and claim as a victory. They seek to join the imperialists in punishing and cancelling those among the working class and genuine anti-imperialists who see the idiocy of this charade.

The failure of the “communist” left in America to defend the Uhuru 3 and oppose the persecution of this Black revolutionary organization is very telling. It accompanies the replacement of Marx and Lenin with Judith Butler, popular explanations and working-class rhetoric with academic obfuscation, and class struggle with identity politics. It reveals a political current that is entirely bankrupt.

As Lenin said in 1916, we should not seek to compete with or pressure the opportunists to improve, but surpass them, going lower and deeper to reach the real masses. The Center for Political Innovation has rallied around the slogan “Out of the Movement, to the Masses!”

What we have accomplished with our meager resources and fewer than 200 dues-paying members, compared to many other organizations with similar stated goals, is very revealing. We are not a party and allow dual membership in other organizations, but we focus on carrying out the task of socialist and anti-imperialist education. It shows how much hunger there is for our work among the people and how much can be accomplished with mere willpower and sincere intentions.

We hope that every organization represented here will join us in looking beyond the leftist and pro-imperialist elements and doing outreach among the masses. The time to build a real movement against empire and for popular economic power among the American people has come. We look to the accomplishments of the platform and its signatories as an inspiration and look forward to the all-out victory of anti-imperialist forces across the planet.