Comrades and Friends,
First, thank you for the invitation to this important event. It has been an eventful six months since our last meeting. During this six months, one may say that the world has accelerated. It is becoming increasingly clear, that we are approaching yet another global military conflict. The nature of this conflict is a subject of controversy within the communist and workers movement, as there are two contradictory theories of the nature of contemporary imperialism.
One theory draws a parallel between today and World War I, labelling both sides ‘imperialist’, postulating a class-against-class policy. However, in light of this theory, it is very difficult or even impossible to understand current events. Is the proxy war in Ukraine waged merely for re-division of resources and markets? Are the anticolonial actions of the people of Sahel really a competition between two equivalent ‘colonial’ powers? Is the uprising of the Palestinian people really a sign of rivalry between two imperialist blocks?
Accepting these premises leads to conclusions dangerously close to official narration of the Western elites. The struggle of African people for national liberation and control over their own natural resources has become Putin’s “Wagner” army plot. The attempt to develop productive forces and infrastructure in underdeveloped African countries has become a subjugation to “Chinese colonialism”. The desperate and heroic struggle of the Palestinian people has become the act of the “axis of evil”—waged by Iran, Russia and China. Is this not what we hear on the daily basis from the Western media? Since when has the struggle of a Korean worker, an African peasant, a Palestinian exile ceased to be a revolutionary struggle? There must be something seriously wrong with this analysis, if it echoes imperialist propaganda and denies our support for the well-established anti-imperialist fight. This theory is fundamentally wrong and leads to false conclusions about the true nature of the current conflict.
In our opinion, the true nature of the current conflict is the war waged by imperialism against the people of the rest of the world. What we mean by imperialism—is using Lenin’s own words—“a world system of colonial oppression and financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the world by a handful of advanced countries”—in our times these are countries of the so-called “golden billion”.
The contemporary world consists of a mosaic of capitalist and socialist states of a different level of the development of productive forces. Only a handful of countries, mainly in the G7, have reached the imperialist stage of development of the capitalist formation, as evidenced by their technological and financial monopoly. Others, including China, Cuba, Russia, Angola, Vietnam, Brazil etc. are either socialist countries or underdeveloped capitalist, which would need to multiply its economic output in order to reach the level comparable to let’s say Germany or France!
The vast majority of the people of the Earth in one form or another have been subjected to Western imperialism for centuries. Western imperialism, through political and economic means, keeps whole continents in a constant state of underdevelopment and poverty. This gives rise to the contradiction between the colonized nations and colonial empires. The destruction of Soviet Union, which was a great ally of the anti-colonial and national liberation struggle, resulted in three decades of unquestioned imperialist rule. But this carnival of reaction is now over.
China, a fast-growing and powerful socialist country is rising as a new ally of the hopes and aspiration of the oppressed nations all around the world. At the same time, the capitalist system itself, as predicted by Marx and Engels has found itself in a deep, structural crisis.
Let’s take the two largest imperialist economies, the EU and US. The EU economy has officially started to contract by GDP. A continued recession is forecast by PMI figures. The crisis of overproduction is accompanied by de-industrialisation and decrease of productive forces. The US is facing a record national debt and budget deficit crisis, which is unprecedented in peacetime. Living standards have dramatically declined while corporate profits hit record levels and huge social problems have re-emerged.
Imperialism, after exhausting geographical sphere of expansion turned against a human being himself. Capitalists, in their pursuit of the maximisation of profit, have abandoned the necessity of reproduction of workforce locally and substituted it for mobile and flexible labour. Working wages are no longer sufficient to “reproduce the race of the workers”. This change in the economic base is followed by the change in its superstructure. Society as a whole and social institutions, such as nuclear or extended family, and the obligations on workers’ time and resources they bring, are perceived as obstacles to profit maximisation. Capitalism, like the snake eating its tail, has turned against human nature and his social character. This shift has triggered the recent change of the political orientation of sections of the bourgeois class from “conservative” to “liberal” and self-described “left-wing”. The crisis of capitalism has also its cultural and moral dimension. Imperialism actively destroys social structures and prevents people from forming stable social relations. It promotes individualism, consumerism, hedonism and decadence. In place of social means of satisfaction of human needs it provides mere substituents. The pandemic of social diseases is its consequence. The contradictions inherent to the imperialist system have resulted in it being unable to provide a healthy society even in the imperialist heartlands.
Imperialist leaders are well aware of this crisis. They know that few more decades of peaceful development will lead to the liberation of peoples of so-called “Global South”, to the loss of their privileged position, their technological and financial monopolies and their access to natural resources and labour. This is why imperialists are pushing towards the new war. By staging and provoking military conflicts, they seek a military solution to its crisis. The objective of their war against the people of the world is the containment of rising economies and return to a colonial, unilateral “rules based order”, another “US century”.
The last six months ensured us that this plan is doomed to fail. The failing proxy war of imperialism against Russia has revealed the weaknesses of its military and political strategy. The arrogant attempt to impose Brzezinski’s doctrine led to the formation of the alliance between Russia, China and North Korea. It is clear that the Western imperialism has no productive capabilities, especially in the ship building industry, to win a war of attrition against Russia, China and North Korea combined.
The peoples of the world correctly perceive the present weakness of imperialism as a chance to liberate themselves from centuries of colonial and neo-colonial domination. What we are now witnessing can be compared to a new spring of nations. Peoples of Sahel in Africa, Palestinians and others are turning against their imperial overlords. The peoples of the world are fighting for their rightful place on the arena of the history, for the control and ownership of their natural resources, for the development of their productive forces, for their dignity and improved living standards. They struggle against imperialism, colonialism and injustice. Their war is a just war.
What does this all mean to us as socialists? The question of anti-imperialism is intrinsically linked to the class and social question. The worker’s question cannot be realized under the boot of imperialism. Equally, imperialism cannot be defeated without socialism, realizing the aspirations of the proletariat. What weakens imperialism, advances the cause of proletariat, is a revolutionary act. What strengthens imperialism—damages the cause of the proletariat, is counterrevolutionary. Those who weaken imperialism are our friends in the front against imperialism. Those, who strengthen it are our enemies.
The weakening of imperialism and the rise of the new world, peaceful or not, opens new possibilities for socialism to emerge, develop and advance. Due to the decline of power of the imperialist financial and technological monopolies and emergence of regional blocks, the punitive system of sanctions, threats and interventions against sovereign or socialist countries will lose its efficacy. This means that socialism is back on the agenda.
Down with imperialism and colonialism!
Socialism will win!