Miguel Ángel | Unión Proletariá (Spain)
Article for the Session 2: The Third World War and the tasks of the global anti-imperialist struggle
The imperialist periphery: dominated and oppressed countries
Imperialism continues to dominate a large portion of the world’s peoples, exercising its oppression to a greater or lesser extent even over those who managed to defeat it in their own territories. Its domination extends to all continents, although in some cases—such as in the countries that built socialism (primarily China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Korea) or in capitalist powers like Russia, heir to the Soviet revolution—its influence is limited to oppression without reaching direct domination.
However, these countries, although they are masters of their own destiny in the sense that they direct their economies and policies without having to answer to any foreign power, are still oppressed just because they are not dominated. All of them, including the former USSR, freed from imperialist domination, did not stop suffering imperialist isolation, coercion, sabotage, and harassment for even a second. In short, they continue to be oppressed by it. Thus, we can say that imperialism divides the countries it oppresses into weak and strong, like China and Russia.
The imperialist crisis
Imperialism may seem invincible, but its supposed strength depends more on the weakness of its opponents than on its own power. On three historical occasions, it was on the verge of collapse, each time when the revolutionary movement in the periphery coincided with uprisings in the capitalist center. The first was the October Revolution, which swept across Europe and forced the bourgeoisie to resort to authoritarianism, revealing the true nature of the state: class dictatorship. The second was the victory of the Red Army over Nazism and the birth of people’s democracies, followed a third time by the triumph of the Chinese revolution in 1949, which revitalized the revolutionary movement in Europe despite the USSR’s agreements with imperialism. The response was state terrorism, with operations such as the Gladio network and the maintenance of the last European dictatorships.
The problem in strong oppressed countries
For oppressed but resilient socialist nations, like China, internationalism is not an infinite resource. Revolutionary defeats in imperialist centers force them to retreat, seek compromises, or even face capitalist restorations, as happened with the USSR.
This has happened throughout contemporary history, the now-closed cycle of the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, especially with the Wars of the Coalition against the First French Republic (1793). These left France isolated, under siege at the same time from Spain, Great Britain, Prussia, and Austria. Had it had sufficient external support, especially from English “liberals,” the Jacobin leadership of the French Revolution would have had better conditions for further development instead of becoming conservative with the Thermidorian reaction.
The lack of revolutionary organization in the core countries not only prevents the defeat of imperialism, but also weakens socialist states and exacerbates oppression in the most fragile countries, such as Palestine.
The problem in weak oppressed countries
In the most vulnerable nations, national liberation often unites popular forces with sectors of the local elite, but the weakness of socialist organizations hinders a genuine revolutionary transformation. At best, one oppression is replaced by another—sometimes even worse than the previous one. Their definitive emancipation depends, to a greater extent, on the revolution in the imperialist centers.
Successes like Thomas Sankara’s revolutionary movement in Burkina Faso remain in our memory, but they are exceptions that often inherit states and societies that are tremendously vulnerable to restoration. In the case of Palestine, if Israel were to collapse, regimes like those of the Arab monarchies or even Türkiye could take its place.
How to put imperialism back into crisis?
In short, recent history shows us that imperialism is not invincible, even though it has not yet been defeated. Its economic basis is the accumulation and concentration of capital through expanded reproduction, exploiting manual labor more and more effectively, which unequally places some capitalists at an advantage over others and conquers new markets, obtaining extraordinary profits. This is its logic regardless of who governs in the US, the EU, or Spain. We must remember one of the first theses of historical materialism:
“The general conclusion I arrived at, which, once obtained, served as a guiding thread for my studies, can be summarized as follows: in the social production of their life, men establish certain relations that are necessary and independent of their will, relations of production that correspond to a specific stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production forms the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure is raised and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life conditions the process of social, political, and spiritual life in general. It is not the consciousness of man that determines his being, but, on the contrary, his social being is what determines his consciousness.”(K. Marx, Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)
Imperialism, like capitalism before it, develops social, political, and cultural formations unevenly. Generally speaking, it divides the world into an imperialist center and a dependent periphery. But this relationship of dependence is dialectical: its headquarters are in the imperialist center. Just as the center also concentrates high-value-added investments (engineering, technology, and finance), the capital exported to the periphery is mainly directed toward low-value-added sectors, such as the textile and assembly industries, where intensive labor exploitation predominates. It serves as an illustration if we ask ourselves which country has the most Atlantic imperialist bases and military forces (the US and Germany) as well as the most powerful intelligence agencies (Germany and France). Let us recall again another thesis of historical materialism regarding the importance of revolution in the advanced countries of the imperialist center:
“Without the help of the revolutionary proletariat of the advanced countries, the proletariat of the backward countries will not be able to maintain power or develop their socialist economy… As long as capitalism has not been overthrown, the exploitation of the oppressed nations by the imperialist nations will be inevitable. Consequently, the struggle of the colonial and dependent peoples for their liberation cannot be separated from the struggle of the proletariat in the imperialist countries against their own bourgeoisie.”(Lenin, Report on the National and Colonial Question, 1920.)
In short, the revolutionary experience that has proven most successful has been the one that has managed to achieve at least three unities in the anti-imperialist movement:
1) The unity of the organized working class to take over the headquarters of the imperialist bourgeoisie: The party of the revolution.
2) Support for weak oppressed countries. Solidarity with the anti-imperialist movement of peoples who have embarked on the path of national liberation. Because once this is achieved, they will be able to direct their efforts toward socialist revolution.
3) Support for the strong oppressed countries. Because, for the time being, they are the only ones capable of undermining the material basis of imperialism, sharpening the contradictions between them and hindering their unity of action.