Dimitrios Patelis | Revolutionary Unification (Greece)
Contents
• Introduction
• A brief reference to the historical specificity of African countries
• On the current stage, the era and the context
• On the internal unity of the contradictions and the driving forces of anti-imperialism and socialism.
• Conclusion
Introduction
Nowadays, World War III (WWIII) is escalating into a multitude of fronts and theatres of operations, with the involvement of dozens of states and coalitions. After the Ukrainian front, with the Nazi coup in Kiev in 2014 as its turning point, and the armed rebellion in Donbass and Russia’s special military operation in 2022, tensions are rising once again in the Balkans (Kosovo and Metohija) and a new escalation is taking place in the Caucasus (Nagorno-Karabakh).
A year has passed since another old conflict was rekindled, in Palestine, dramatically integrating into WWIII a vast area involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which now takes on the characteristics of a religious war. The artificial formation of the racist theocratic terrorist state of Israel constitutes an imperialist military base and an advanced offensive outpost of the imperialist axis within the greater strategic region of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia. The unbridled aggression of the axis, with Israel as its strike force, is extending the theatre of operations to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, making it an “existential threat” to the latter. The risk of an immediate general conflagration in the Balkans and the entire Eastern Mediterranean is immense.
At the same time, the imperialist aggression of the US-led axis is escalating on the Korean Peninsula/Taiwan front.
The African continent has a special place within the global turmoil.
A brief reference to the historical specificity of African countries
The history of Senegal and the countries of the Sahel region is a vivid and representative condensation of the history of capitalist “primitive accumulation” and imperialist colonisation and superexploitation of the peoples of Africa. A tragic history of successive conquests of indigenous peoples by European invaders, enslavement, genocide and various forms of superexploitation of the people and of nature. In this predatory relationship, colonialist superexploitation combined with the slave trade led to the extermination of the indigenous peoples, i.e., a brutal system of colonial superexploitation carried out through the combined genocide of the peoples of two continents: Africa and America. The aggressive formation of capitalism, initially based on European authoritarian regimes with strong feudal remnants, resorted to the revival of slavery and the slave trade. It used divide and rule tactics on a large scale, exploiting or provoking conflicts between tribes, clans, ethnic and religious communities. The semi-nomadic Arab tribes of North and North-East Africa became the main strike force for the predatory enslavement of African populations.
The Île de Gorée, or Gorée Island, is a timeless historical symbol of the export of slaves across the Atlantic to the American continent.
Wars of division and conquest, conscription, requisitions, the seizure of raw materials, natural resources and people, monocultures of crops, genocides, etc. show that the predatory relationship towards people and nature is inherent to capitalism.
Under imperialism, this relationship is industrially and institutionally organised, with military conquest and presence made permanent in order to partition and repartition territories, populations, markets and spheres of influence.
It took more than a century of revolts, national liberation struggles, social struggles and wars before the people of Senegal, along with many African peoples, achieved the abolition of slavery and formal independence. It has been historically proven that there is no means (legitimate or illegitimate, “peaceful” or military, “democratic” or dictatorial, of intervention or imposition, of repression or genocide) that imperialism would hesitate to use to subjugate and superexploit the peoples of Africa.
Africa is a land drenched in the blood of heroes, in successive waves of uprisings, wars of national liberation and anti-colonial/anti-imperialist struggles.
All the victories and conquests of the anti-imperialist movement in Africa and all over the world are linked to the victories and achievements of early socialism (USSR, PRC, DPRK, SR of Vietnam, Cuba, etc.).
On the current stage, the era and the context
Presently, humanity is at the stage of the decay and decline of capitalism, which in turn is at the modern stage of imperialism, the defining characteristic of which is the attempt to subordinate humanity to the interests of the most powerful multinational monopoly groups and the imperialist powers that serve as the main headquarters of these groups.
From the beginning of the 20th century, it became clear that at the monopoly stage of capitalism, the periodic long-term structural crises of the system —manifestations of unresolved contradictions—do not only incubate large scale wars, but also waves of early socialist revolutions. Of the number of armed insurrections and revolutions that erupted in Europe after World War I, the Great October Socialist Revolution, which took place in Russia and its adjacent colonies, was victorious. This marked the dawning of the era of humanity’s global historical transition to communism.
As a result of the USSR and the world anti-fascist movement (spearheaded by the communists), crushing the axis of the “anti-Comintern” pact, the camp of socialist countries in Eastern Europe in Asia and later in the Americas (Cuba) emerged after World War II.
Alongside the victories of the early socialist revolutions and with their internationalist support, a wave of anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and national independence movements emerged, which led to uprisings and revolutions of national liberation in Africa, in Latin America and in Asia.
In the monopoly stage of capitalism, the character and manifestation of the fundamental contradiction of capital, the contradiction between wage labour and capital, between living and dead labour, is radically transformed. Initially through the displacement of the export of commodities by the export of capital, and later, through processes which pass from the sphere of circulation (of commodities and capital) to the sphere of production itself, an extremely unequal division of labour is established within the global capitalist system.
Imperialism is rooted on increasing inequality, siphoning through it, developing it, manipulating it and consolidating it further, as the foundation of the mechanisms of superexploitation through its globalised relations of production (multiply mediated forms of property, titles, bonds, derivatives, etc.).
Inequality, in turn, does not constitute a “natural” state of being, to serve as the racist justification of superexploitation, through the ahistorical and static identification of differences as a supposedly insurmountable “gap” between “naturally developed and underdeveloped, superior and inferior peoples, between humans and subhumans”. It is the result of unequal global historical development, at different degrees, rates, specificities (including physical, geographical, climate, environmental, etc.) and levels of interaction or withdrawal of countries and peoples from such interaction, in law governed historical stages.
Under imperialism, capitalist relations of production were imposed on various peoples mainly as a colonially imposed superstructure, externally and by force, having as their broader basis a diversity of inherited legacies, not only of pre-capitalist origins, but some even predating class society, such as communities of clans and tribes. Legacies which dependent colonial/neocolonial development partially transforms, to the extent that it renders them “functional” for the reproduction of the structures and mechanisms of dependency and superexploitation necessary for imperialism.
It is only as a result of these mechanisms that the expansion and intensification of the mechanism of surplus-value extraction from the scale of individual national economies to the scale of the global system occurs. This does not mean that the law of surplus value ceases to apply. It does mean though, that it is radically modified: the extraction of surplus value now takes place on a global scale, with the extraction of surplus value in the form of monopoly super-profits by the most powerful multinational monopoly groups based in a small group of countries, former colonial powers, which to this day function as the main imperialist states, as the centres of the imperialist system. They form subsystems of regional integrations, coalitions, their satellite states and transnational organs of enforcement of their interests with international claims and have global reach.
With the beginning of the general crisis of the global capitalist system, with the emergence of the first early socialist countries, a different type of development of countries and regions of the world is initiated.
Socialism is established and developed through revolutionary transformations. The only condition for their emergence is that the working class and its allies are in power on the basis of the social, state ownership, above all, of the strategic means and sectors of the economy, the development of which is achieved mainly through scientific planning. Precisely because of the fact that the era of socialist revolutions begins in the imperialist stage, these revolutions arise from revolutionary situations, which in turn manifest themselves according to dialectical law in the “weak links” of the global imperialist system, in those countries or groups of countries where internal contradictions are intertwined with regional and global ones in a complex volatile node.
Due to competition within the global capitalist system at its imperialist stage, this system does not in any way ensure “equal conditions of development and prosperity for all”, it does not allow for the equal and homogeneous development of the countries, regions and populations of the world. On the contrary, it is precisely because of the imposition by default of conditions of predatory imperialist superexploitation (in the form of colonialism, neo-colonialism, through many types and levels of economic, financial, fiscal, political, military, cultural, etc. dependency) under imperialism that inequality is exacerbated, as the root of its increasingly parasitic character.
In this way, under imperialism, the capitalist system expands and deepens the loop of parasitic hyperaccumulation, using fictitious capital for financial leverage, entering into successive vicious cycles of intensification of its fundamental contradiction (between capital and labour) within every capitalist national economy, every regional integration and at the global level. The main aim of the financial oligarchy is to impose, consolidate and maintain its sources of parasitism at all costs, in the form of the extraction of monopoly super-profits from countries with an average and below-average level of development.
Victorious socialist revolutions take place at the monopoly stage of capitalism. The revolutionary process of transition to socialism concerns primarily those countries and groups of countries which are at or near the intermediate level of development of their productive forces. All the countries of early socialism, historically, have been at such a level.
On the internal unity of the contradictions and the driving forces of anti-imperialism and socialism.
The issue of the revolutionary transition to socialism with the prospect of communism is inherently intertwined with the issue of unequal development, of dependence, of the existence of pre-capitalist forms, elements and vestiges, i.e., the failure to solve issues which in “pure form” would be tasks of “normal” capitalist development in these countries. Early socialism itself is de facto organically linked to the resolution of tasks and challenges pertaining to inequality and dependence, to struggles for national independence and popular sovereignty, to anti-imperialist struggles, to the pursuit of the right of nations to self-determination.
The triumphant victory of the Bolsheviks at first, and then of all the early socialist revolutions in history, is linked to the study, the realisation, and practical solution of these issues on a programmatic basis.
In this way, the system that is known to journalists and commentators as the “three worlds system” has historically emerged:
1. The developed capitalist countries which are the centres of imperialism, the so called “1st world”,
2. the socialist countries, so-called “2nd world” and
3. the so-called “3rd world countries”.
Here, we are not referring to three enclosed and isolated worlds. In fact, this constitutes a unified global system in transition. The interaction of its parts is contradictory and takes place on many levels.
The connection between the 1st world and the 2nd and 3d world is dynamic and is linked to the connection between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary processes. It is precisely for this reason that the countries of the so-called 3d world become a dynamic field of the global class struggle, which can ultimately be characterised as a manifestation of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, which takes on the characteristics of the conflict between early socialism and capitalism.
In addition, the contradiction between socialism and imperialism permeates the entire world, turning colonies, countries subject to new colonial exploitation, dependent, semi-independent and formally independent countries into a contested field. This contradiction is also organically linked to the major contradiction between imperialist centres/metropolises and the periphery.
The struggle for breaking free of the yoke of imperialist superexploitation, for national and popular independence and sovereignty of the dependent etc. peoples of the periphery is organically linked to the class struggle against foreign domination and exploitation and against the local comprador bourgeoisie, with the working class having a leading and decisive role in it. It is also linked to the prospect of socialism, since independence on a stable foundation is impossible without socialist revolutionary transformations, without internationalist support.
The very law governed prospect of the transition from early to late socialist revolutions, is linked to the detachment of the imperialist countries from their sources of superexploitation, from their sources of parasitism.
Socialism, as a process of formation and maturation of communism, does not constitute a simple, linear and sterile negation of capitalism, but a dialectical development/sublation of the entire history and prehistory of humanity, including the natural preconditions of the emergence of humanity and society. Communism itself constitutes a different, radically new type of development, rooted within the whole of human historical development, the attainment of which is linked to the resolution of the fundamental contradiction of early socialism and all socialism: the contradiction between formal and actual socialisation.
The resolution of this contradiction constitutes the completion of the first great spiral of the helical development of society and the transition to the next spiral of development. Such development of society now unfolds on its own basis, where the natural preconditions of society are dialectically sublated and transformed into sublated conditions for its de facto development.
The driving force of the first spiral is the contradiction between human labour activity on nature and labour relations between human beings, which manifests itself as a relation between productive forces and relations of production in those stages of the formation of society where production in abundance for the optimal satisfaction of the material needs of all members of society has not yet been achieved. In these stages of competitive modes of production, of socio-economic formations based on relations of production of the three successive forms of development of private property (slave ownership, feudalism and capitalism), the process of sublation of the natural preconditions and conditions from the social ones is initiated, but it is not fully completed. Under slave-ownership and feudalism, the main means of production is nature (land and animals), while humans themselves have not yet been separated from the means of production and remain almost entirely (under slave-ownership) or partially (under feudalism) privately owned means/ tools of production.
And in the final substage of the formation of society, under capitalism, nature is transformed into the conditions of production also transformed by labour, and people―as wage labourers―acquire formal freedom (“equality under law”) with their labour power (capacity for labour) now being marketable. However, the conditions of production dominate over human beings as an extraneous, hostile and destructive force: the dead labour of the past, embedded in the material conditions of production, functions as a force of domination of the relation of “capital” over the living labour of the present. More broadly, things, as commodities, and the universal equivalent of their value (money) as “wealth”, dominate over people. These things, after all, are nothing more than natural materials transformed by human labour. Thus, under capitalism, a dialectical sublation of the natural from the social, of nature from civilisation, has not been achieved, nor will it be achieved. This applies not only to the things that surround human beings in capitalist society, but also to their own nature, their biology. The very antagonism of classes in capitalist society is but a manifestation of still untransformed animal-like, pack etc. relations that point to a not yet socialised, uncivilised element of “natural” selection…
In the context of capitalism, the fundamental contradiction of the latter―between living and dead labour (material components of capital)―manifests itself primarily as a contradiction between productive forces and relations of production that are now distinct in history, that is, as a concrete historical form of the manifestation of the fundamental contradiction of history as a whole: between labour activity on nature and labour relations.
The same applies to the modification of this contradiction under imperialism, where the contradiction between imperialist states of the centre (the seats of the most powerful multinational monopoly groups) and the broader base of superexploitation (extracting surplus value in the form of monopoly super-profits) on a regional and global scale arises. Thus, the dipole of the contradiction between the forces of imperialism and anti-imperialism also arises, as a manifestation of the fundamental contradiction and as a strategic field of class struggle over monopoly capitalism at the international and global level.
Within the framework of capitalism, class struggle takes the form of the competition between the global capitalist system as a whole (imperialist centre and periphery) and the global system of early socialism.
Conclusion
Three interconnected forces of humanity’s progress, three component parts of the unified revolutionary process, emerge with great momentum on the historical stage:
• the forces of early socialism,
• the forces of anti-imperialism, of the struggle against neo-colonialism and dependence,
• as a whole, the forces of the workers’ communist movement within the global capitalist system.
The scientific theoretical foundation and the organisational practical development of each of these components of the revolutionary process and their optimal organic interconnection into a victorious front of struggle at the national, regional, and global levels is the primary task of the movement, it is the main purpose of the World Anti-imperialist Platform (WAP).
It is therefore vital for humanity in conditions of WWIII to reconsolidate and coordinate these three components of the unified revolutionary process, to transform them into organic components of a conscious, unified, frontal, socio-political and ideological subject, capable not only of sporadic and fragmentary acts of resistance against the imperialist axis of aggression under the USA, but capable of taking the strategic initiative in all fields, at all levels, on all fronts of this life-or-death confrontation with the axis.
Achieving the optimal organisation of these fundamental component parts and their respective driving powers of the global revolutionary process into a united militant front, for us is not a matter of choice. On the contrary, it constitutes the sine qua non for the victory of the progressive forces in WWIII, for the very survival of humanity, for the victorious outcome of the forthcoming great wave of anti-imperialist and socialist uprisings and revolutions.
For us in the WAP, a conscious attitude towards this war is crucial as a condition for its pos