Antifascist Former Resistance Fighters Netherlands (AFVN)
Dear comrades,
I salute you on behalf of the Antifascist Former Resistance Fighters Netherlands. Marxism teaches us that the number of forms of social relations is ever-expanding. As a result, the relations between the social forces are also ever-changing. We cannot rely on answers from the past to address questions in the present. Instead, it is our duty to continuously re-examine the structure of social forces in our society.
As the raging anti-imperialist World War grows more intense every year, so does the urgency for effective action informed by thorough understanding of the current situation by anti-imperialists.
Today, we live in the age of imperialism. Unipolar, Atlantic imperialism, to be precise. Imperialism as we understand it is the international projection of economic relations as imposed by financial capital. It is therefore very important to understand that the struggle against imperialism is a class struggle in two different arenas.
It is evident that one of these is the struggle of all classes in the liberated countries and the subjugated countries that have an interest in protecting sovereignty. This usually consists of a combination of a progressive nationalist working class, a national bourgeoisie and sometimes a small peasantry.
The other class conflict is internal within imperialist countries. There are fundamental contradictions between the interests of the classes tied to the production-driven economy―the working class and industrial capital―and those of financial capital which is tied to the credit-driven economy. Imperialism has its influence on this contradiction in a number of ways.
First, the imperialist wars in the present era generally disrupt the physical economy and stimulate the speculative, credit-based economy. This drives the production-connected classes which are not at all ideologically inclined towards anti-imperialism into the anti-militarist camp. Our Iranian comrades have made brilliant use of this insight. Through the Islamic Republic’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, it has severely intensified this contradiction between international financial capital―which tends to benefit from high oil prices―and national and industrial capital―which suffer from high oil prices. We can see the outcome of this in the position of nationalist parties in Europe. In the choice between nationalism and Atlanticism, many nationalists chose nationalism and rejected military cooperation with the US in attacking Iran. Such interesting shifts in alignment have been heard in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and probably more.
Unfortunately, such developments tend to be dismissed in our circles as “cynical” or “performative”. It is a basic truth that contradictions between fractions of capital exist, and it is an observable truth that imperialist wars deepen these contradictions. Ultimately, it cannot be determined by exact science to what extent some of these parties serve national capital and to what extent they serve international financial capital, nor is it important. What is important is that we do everything we can to deepen the contradictions between the different fractions of capital. Even if a position is performative, if it brings a party to materially support the right side of a contradiction, this drives the fractions of capital further apart, weakening capitalism as a whole.
At the same time, as living standards further decline as a result of the economic fallout of the imperialist wars, more and more people of normal means are pushed into an anti-systemic dissident world view. Most of these people do not automatically turn to the revolutionary road, because there are no revolutionary organizations reaching out to them, providing their frustration with structural analysis. They tend to be drawn into world views of extreme libertarianism, so-called conspiracy thought, or other such world views. Nonetheless, they turn against the right adversary―the liberal-capitalist state―and do so for the right reasons―living standards, disillusionment with its fundamental promise of liberal capitalist democracy which is a lie―only using a very shallow analysis and confused terminology.
In many instances, the ideological foundation of these people will even be anticommunist, but this is not important. It is not the ideas they espouse we should pay attention to, but the class interest they pursue. Like Stalin pointed out in The Foundations of Leninism, the British Labor party espoused socialism but serves imperialism. The merchants of Egypt espoused capitalism and the Emir of Afghanistan espoused feudal monarchism, but they struggled against imperialism. Obviously, the former did not deserve support of revolutionaries, whereas the latter did. Like Georgi Dimitrov, whose thought is the ideological foundation of our organization, bluntly stated about the antifascist struggle: “We need not be dismayed, comrades, if the people mobilised around these day-to-day interests consider themselves either indifferent to politics or even followers of fascism. The important thing for us is to draw them into the movement, which although it may not at first proceed openly under the slogans of the struggle against fascism, is already objectively an anti-fascist movement counterposing these masses against the fascist dictatorship.”
There is a second way the imperialist wars influence the contradiction between international financial capital and all other classes. Financial capital gets its political power through its economic power, and it gets its economic power through imperialist extraction of wealth from periphery countries. Any defeat for imperialism in subjugated or liberated countries weakens political power for international financial capital domestically. In this way, our struggle for socialism in imperialist countries is not just morally connected to anti-imperialist struggles around the world, but materially.
Also for this reason, it is our primary task to defeat imperialism. Defeating imperialism is not only the necessary first step to building socialism for the reason just described, it is also a struggle which itself can bring socialism to victory. Historical examples are plenty. In most, if not all, imperialist countries, it is impossible to defeat imperialism with revolutionary forces alone; we are far too weak at this moment.
Instead, we must gather all the forces that oppose the imperialist wars for whatever reason and build a popular front against imperialism. Of course, many of the forces in this popular front will not be consistently anti-imperialist. This is to be expected―they represent a different class interest and have a shallower understanding of the situation. Instead of using this as an excuse to be cynical and declare the effort futile, we are to use the practical work of organizing against some imperialist wars to educate these political forces, and more importantly, their popular base, about the interconnectedness of individual wars, imperialism, international financial capital, other wars, and class interest and class struggle in the imperialist home country. This requires us to thoroughly study and understand the class interest of other political forces, not reduce them to a caricature as is too often the habit among people in our camp. Even if this effort ultimately fails in the short term, it will still help build and strengthen the position of the revolutionary forces.
Through building this popular front, our forces are positioned to lead it and to provide it with structural analysis other forces lack, and to prove through our actions to the masses who support nationalist parties that their instinct is correct―asserting national interests in the face of imperialist (so-called globalist) dominance―but that the only way to make true on this promise is to wage class struggle against financial capital and ultimately build socialism; the only true nationalism is socialism; the only true socialism is progressive nationalism, patriotism. All imperialist countries have proud elements of revolutionary heroes and historically progressive struggle. These heroes and these struggles belong to the people, not to the bankers!
This must be our understanding in building and leading anti-imperialist popular fronts throughout the imperialist countries, allied to our comrades in the heat of the struggle against imperialism in liberated countries such as Russia, Iran and the Alliance of Sahel States and countries struggling for liberation such as Palestine.
Down with imperialism!
Long live the struggle against imperialism!
Long live the progressive struggles of all the peoples of the world!