Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)
Index
Part 1: Critical approach to the positions of the CPG
• Reasons for a response to the Communist Party of Greece (CPG)
• Greece must leave NATO! Or should not it?
• The CPG’s subterfuge to avoid debate
• No support for capitalists?
• Reactionary Venezuela?
• The member organizations of the Platform “ignore or deny” that the current mode of production in the world is capitalist…
Part 2: Criticism of the ideological foundations of the CPG
• A handful of countries?
• “Imperialist pyramid” or Lenin’s theory of imperialism?
• Idealism hidden in “Imperialist pyramid”
• Methodological error
• No participation of communists in governments led by the bourgeoisie?
• Are there no stages between capitalism and socialism?
• Erroneous positions are not harmless
• Incorrect and damaging derivations
Part 3: Imperialism vs. imperialism?
• A long work
• Brief and concise summary of the “imperialist pyramid” and the CPG study method
• A big mess
• China and Russia belong to the G20
• State presence in Russian companies
• Foreign penetration of the Russian economy
• “Gigantic amounts” of capital export from Russia
• The “big” Russian banking
• Warmongering Russia?
(The previous sections have been published in past issues.)
Warmongering Russia?
Imbalance
The task of defeating imperialism is not and will not be easy. As we see in Ukraine and recently in the Middle East, the struggle will demand sacrifices because the imperialist states, especially the U.S., wield immense military power which they do not hesitate to use when it suits them and because they control the world banking and financial system.
Only 42 of the nearly 800 military bases that the US[1] maintains worldwide are located in NATO member states. The rest are scattered across the globe. This means that the US has undisputed military control over all continents.
Russia, for its part, has some 15 military bases in 8 countries[2]… Most of them, with the exception of Syria and Moldova, are located in post-Soviet countries and therefore close to its borders. China has a single base in Djibouti[3].
The imbalance between the United States, on the one hand, and Russia and China, on the other, in terms of the number of military bases around the world is remarkable. If Russia had withdrawn its military bases from all post-Soviet countries, as it did in the German Democratic Republic[4], it would be in a very precarious position today in the face of NATO’s advance. These bases guarantee Russia degrees of territorial security, albeit decreasingly over time, as NATO has managed to gradually (politically) separate the post-Soviet world from it, encircling Russia from the Baltic countries to Kazakhstan[5], despite the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)[6] and all Russia’s attempts to enter an era of post-Soviet capitalist cooperation with “the West”.
If we add to all this the fact that the US has the largest war budget in the history of mankind and the incredible 255 military actions recorded from 1991 to 2024 by the US Congressional Research Service[7], we find an unprecedented war culture. But that is not all: the history of U.S. interference around the world is inconceivable: China in 1945, Italy in 1947, Greece in 1947, the Philippines in the late 1940s, Korea in 1945, Syria and Albania in 1949, Germany in the 1950s, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1953, Costa Rica in the mid-1950s, Syria in 1956 and again from 2011, Indonesia in 1957, British Guiana in 1953, Italy in the 1950s, Vietnam from the 1950s, Cambodia from 1955, Laos from 1957, Haiti from 1959, then from the mid-1980s and again in 2017, Cuba from 1959. Then from the 1960s Guatemala, Algeria, Ecuador, Congo, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Ghana, Uruguay, Chile, Greece, Bolivia, Guatemala. Then Panama 1969, Costa Rica from the 1970s, Iraq 1972 and 1990, Australia 1973, Angola 1975, Jamaica 1976, Nicaragua 1978, Seychelles 1979, Grenada 1979, Afghanistan from 1979, Morocco 1983, Libya 1981 and 2011, Suriname 1982, Bulgaria 1990, Albania 1991, El Salvador from the 1980s, Yugoslavia 1990, Ukraine from 2014 and Yemen in 2024.
Table 1: Air power of the countries of China, Russia and the US according to Global Firepower[8] for the year 2024.
According to Global Firepower[9], China has 1207 fighter aircraft, 371 specialized attack aircraft, 289 transport aircraft, 402 trainer aircraft, 112 special mission aircraft, 10 air tankers, 913 helicopters (see Table 1).
The same source notes that Russia has 809 fighter aircraft, 730 specialized attack aircraft, 453 transport aircraft, 552 training aircraft, 145 special mission aircraft, 19 air tankers, 1547 helicopters (see Table 1).
Comparatively, the US possesses 1854 fighter aircraft, 896 specialized attack aircraft, 957 transport aircraft, 2648 training aircraft, 695 special mission aircraft, 606 air tankers, 5737 helicopters (see Table 1).
The undisputed air supremacy is in the hands of the USA. China and Russia together cannot come close to US air power.
Table 2: Land power of the countries China, Russia and the USA according to Global Firepower data for the year 2024.
Table 2 shows that the three countries are more or less on a par in terms of land power. However, it should be borne in mind that the land power of the United States is based not only on its equipment, but above all on its military bases distributed over the five continents, especially those located at strategic points both from a military point of view and from the point of view of control of international trade routes. The U.S. has stationed several of its nuclear weapons (some are even active) at certain strategically located military bases. Its military bases are also used to monitor areas with drones or to deploy them in military conflicts. For example, the US used the Ramstein military base in Germany to recalibrate the flight of its drones by adjusting them to the curvature of the earth in order to deploy them in Syria.
Therefore, objectively speaking, one cannot speak of an equal relationship between the land power of Russia and China, on the one hand, and that of the United States, on the other.
Table 3: Naval power of the countries China, Russia and the USA according to Global Firepower data for the year 2024.
According to Global Firepower, the US is the undisputed maritime power (see Table 3), although it may seem otherwise.
As for naval power, we would like to reproduce part of an article from Le Monde Diplomatique, which aptly describes US naval power and, in particular, its comparison with China:
“What makes a maritime power is its presence in the straits, the bottlenecks of the main maritime routes: the Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, which connect the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean; the Strait of Malacca, between the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Pacific; and the Strait of Hormuz, at the exit of the Persian Gulf, through which a quarter of the world’s oil exports are transported. The US Navy is in a position to control all three bottlenecks: the US 5th Fleet is based in Bahrain, the 6th is headquartered in Naples and the 7th in Yokosuka, just outside Tokyo Bay.
[…] U.S. ‘carrier strike groups’ play a particularly important role in securing defense. A CSG (Carrier Strike Group) consists of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with dozens of fighters, fighter planes and helicopters, accompanied by two guided missile cruisers, two or three destroyers and two combat submarines. The giant aircraft carriers, which are almost as long as the largest container giants, give the US a degree of control over the world’s sea lanes that no previous maritime power has ever achieved.
[…] The real challenge is the rise of China as a maritime superpower. The Pentagon is particularly concerned about the expansion of the deepwater port of Gwadar in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, which lies at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, and U.S. intelligence services consider the Chinese presence on this strategically important coast a serious problem. However, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), as the Navy’s secret service is known, conclude in their analyses that China is incapable of challenging the US as a naval power.
It is true that China has expanded its military capabilities in parallel with its economic growth and has also developed anti-ship missiles, for example. However, Beijing has only two aircraft carriers, far inferior to those of the US. A DIA analysis states that China wants to ‘circumvent the US-led regional security system’ (in its own region!). The scenarios depicted by the Pentagon envisage a possible confrontation between the two countries in the waters of China’s areas of interest.
The idea that China wants to seize control of sea lanes essential to its economy is pure speculation.”[10]
The undisputed military power is that of NATO, especially that of the US. This fact is key to understanding which countries are aggressors and which are not. As Le Monde Diplomatique rightly points out in the previous quote, it is the US that has control of the sea lanes and it is the US that wants to confront China in “China’s areas of interest”.
What a brazen statement then from Jens Stoltenberg at the last World Economic Forum: “NATO is not moving towards Asia. It is China that is moving closer to us.”
And what dehumanization is evidenced by the words of NATO Admiral Rob Bauer, who told the press after a meeting of NATO defense chiefs in Brussels. He noted that NATO forces are preparing for the outbreak of a war against Russia in the next 20 years, that citizens should do the same (i.e., prepare for that war) and that they should understand that their lives will change radically. So that’s 20 years that NATO is giving humanity so that it―humanity―can prepare for its―NATO’s―war of annihilation against Russia…
Let us now see how far from reality the CPG assesses the current international situation.
All the same… or not?
A statement entitled “On the one year since the imperialist war in Ukraine”, published on the CPG website on March 27, 2023, reads:
“The peoples of the two countries, Ukraine and Russia, who lived in peace and prospered together as Soviet Republics under the USSR, have been shedding their blood for nine years now, culminating in last year’s massacre. This is due to the plans of the USA, NATO and the EU, in the context of the fierce competition of those powers with capitalist Russia for the control of markets, raw materials, transport networks and geopolitical pillars in the Eurasian region.
The Communist and Workers’ Parties express our solidarity with the peoples of Ukraine and Russia, who are paying for the imperialist conflict with their blood. We have shown and continue to show the peoples that the developments in Ukraine are taking place in the framework of monopoly capitalism, rejecting the false pretexts utilized by both sides of the conflict.”[11]
We agree with the idea that “the peoples of the two countries, Ukraine and Russia, lived in peace and prospered together as Soviet Republics within the USSR”, and also with that which points out that these peoples began to wage war against each other since its dissolution. However, the statement of the CPG and the other signatory organizations on the causes of these military conflicts seems to us to be erroneous. In its well-known reductionist analysis, the CPG overlooks important circumstances and consequently equates “the USA, NATO and the EU” with “capitalist Russia”.
According to this party, Russia would wage an “annexationist, predatory and rapacious war” in Ukraine, using Lenin’s terminology. Well, we have already seen that, according to the CPG, any capitalist country recognized by the United Nations would be imperialist, so it is not surprising that the CPG considers “capitalist Russia” as such. Similarly, Burkina Faso or Niger could wage a war on their own borders, for example over a conflict with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and in the opinion of the CPG they would be imperialists and the resulting war would be a war of an imperialist nature.
In this sense, according to the CPG there could be no support from the international proletariat and in general from all the exploited, oppressed and neglected strata in the world to almost any country involved in a war anywhere in the world, with the exception of the war waged by the Palestinian people against the Zionist fascism of Israel, although in this case with the usual lukewarm positions:
“The KKE has opposing ideological, political and philosophical views with this political-military organization. However, it will never allow the mass bombing of Gaza and the killing of thousands of small children, allegedly carried out for the elimination of Hamas, to enter into the consciousness of the people in order to justify the long-standing Israeli occupation. At the same time, all the evidence shows that Israel’s aim is to cancel the two-state solution, to exploit the hydrocarbons and the geographical location of the Gaza Strip, to commit genocide against the Palestinian people and to force the displacement of those who do not die in the Israeli massacre to the desert.”[12]
We were surprised by the CPG’s not-so-unfavorable assessment of Hamas. However, the CPG makes its usual masterful leaps from correct to incorrect, or, in this case, lukewarm positions when it expresses support for the two-state solution. In our view, this solution lost its validity many years ago, and if we make a cold historical analysis, it lost its validity at the very moment when the Zionist state of Israel began to expand into Palestinian territory. A truly humane position in this context can only envisage one solution: a single secular Palestinian state in which Muslims, Jews (non-Zionists), Christians, all other religions and non-believers coexist on an equal footing; regardless of the fact that in a region where the Muslim religion predominates, it will naturally occupy the leading position.
To continue to insist on the two-state solution at this time seems to us, to say the least, naive, because it means accepting in the midst of the Arab, Turkish and Persian world a state that is in practice―as the CPG itself says―“a US base”. Moreover, the ideology underlying such a Zionist state is fascist. How could the Zionist state, aggressive by nature, not pose a threat to peace in the region? Genuine support for Hamas requires support for the struggle for a Palestinian state from river to sea and an end to the Zionist state of Israel.
We also agree with the CPG that the conflict in Palestine is part of the international conflict, with the countries organized in NATO on the one hand and “Russia, China, Iran, etc.” on the other. However, on the basis of this correct statement, the CPG equates the second group with the first[13]:
“Given that the war in Palestine is objectively intertwined with the competition between imperialist powers (USA, NATO, EU on the one hand and Russia, China, Iran, etc. on the other) in the region and internationally, two different but equally incorrect perceptions arise from the above: 1) one that says that an “anti-imperialist axis” (Iran―Russia―China) is being formed that should be supported against the US imperialists and their allies; 2) a second one, which is less widespread at the moment but equally erroneous, that says that both war conflicts are imperialist, that they are different expressions of an imperialist third world war, therefore we cannot support the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation because it is part of the imperialist conflict. […]
Russia, China and Iran do not express their support for the Palestinians because they stand with the peoples’ just cause but because they want to hinder the US plans in the region, to impede it, to afflict it. Therefore, these powers do not constitute an “anti-imperialist axis”. Their monopolies work for their own interests and that is why they cannot be consistent in supporting the Palestinian struggle. It is another matter that the Palestinians, like any national liberation or even revolutionary movement, are righteously seeking to take advantage of these contradictions in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.”[14]
The CPG rejects the fact that Russia, China and Iran support Palestine, which amounts in practice to postulating that the Palestinian people should fight alone against a Goliath, a country that has more than 80 nuclear weapons, a formal army, an intelligence service considered the best in the world and is supported by the US and the EU, i.e. NATO. Not to rejoice that Russia, China and Iran are on the side of Palestine and to characterize this fact as “working for their own interests, for their own monopolies and therefore cannot be consistent in supporting the Palestinian struggle” is not to side with the Palestinian people, but to see them destined for a lonely struggle that therefore has no choice but martyrdom. “They have fought bravely for a just cause,” the CPG would like to proclaim, even though there is no longer a Palestine to fight for or living Palestinians to fight for.
Russia is currently fighting in Ukraine to defend its borders from NATO and in defense of the anti-fascist peoples of the Donbass. Unlike NATO, it does not make other peoples fight for it. Russia fights with its soldiers, Russian soldiers, and because it has fought a real human war, a war directed at military objectives, it has had to sacrifice excessive numbers of its own soldiers, which would not have happened if Russia had been the US or Israel. In that case, no stone would have been left unturned in Ukraine, as we see today in Gaza, or as we saw in Mosul (Iraq) and Rakka (Syria) when the US fought there one of its many battles for “democracy and against international terrorism”.
The CPG is unable to distinguish these essential differences between imperialist and fascist belligerent actions, on the one hand, and Russian actions, on the other, demonstrating a not inconsiderable myopia in matters of international politics.
On the other hand, the CPG expects Russia, which is not only trying to push back NATO in Ukraine, which is fighting against a miserable fascist regime[15] lackey of this organization, which has supported Syria against NATO’s (almost) direct interference in this country, to pursue a “consistent” policy in Palestine as well. Our question is: What does the CPG mean by a “consistent” policy in Palestine: Russia sending soldiers, weapons, planes and tanks to Palestine? We have not been able to find an answer to this question.
But we know that the CPG is in favor of a two-state solution on Palestinian territory. You may not know it, but in this case it shares its position with Russia, which has officially declared itself in favor of a return to the 1967 borders. Would this be a “consistent” Russian position according to the CPG?
In the following parts we will continue the “warmongering Russia” theme and discuss the current conflict in Ukraine and the way the CPG evaluates them.
Notes
[1] The United Kingdom, the main US ally, has another remarkable 140 military bases around the world.
[2] The countries in which Russia has military bases are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Syria and Tajikistan. Some unserious lists also include the following countries: Georgia, Libya, Ukraine and Sudan. We have not included these countries for the following reasons:
– Sudan: because the project of a Russian military base in this country unfortunately never came to fruition. The civil war in Sudan broke out precisely because the Sudanese government had agreed with Russia to establish a Russian naval base on Sudanese territory. Imperialism (US and EU) prevented such “daring” by encouraging radicalized groups against the government, seemingly overnight. Today we see the sad result.
– Ukraine: Since the Donbass republics have decided by referendum to join the Russian Federation, it is no longer Ukrainian but Russian territory and therefore cannot be considered a “foreign military base”.
– Libya: because it is a military presence of the private Russian company Wagner, which is not a permanent deployment.
– Georgia: because Ossetia and Abkhazia have become independent from Georgia and are under Russian protection, which is not identical but similar to the situation of the Donbass republics.
Moldova deserves an additional comment: Transnistria became independent from Moldova and is supported by Russia.
[3] Two other military bases attributed to China (one in Cuba and the other in Tajikistan) do not exist.
[4] It is likely that this decision will not be viewed favorably by the CPG, although we cannot find any opinion about it on its website.
It seems to us that Russia’s decision to withdraw its armed forces from democratic Germany was a naive act, at least from today’s perspective, considering that the USA did not do the same and, on the contrary, subjected the whole of Germany to an iron military, political and economic domination.
[5] A NATO peacekeeping center began operating in Kazakhstan in October 2023. U.S. Ambassador Daniel Roseblum attended the opening ceremony. Kazakhstan is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and shares borders with China and Russia. Kazakh military personnel are scheduled to be trained to NATO standards at the center.
Soon, in January 2024, Kazakhstan began to follow the path of the Baltic countries and Ukraine in rehabilitating Nazi accomplices. The Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan condemns the final decision of the State Commission for the Final Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression to acquit 311,000 people, many of them criminals or with weapons in their hands, who fought against the Red Army and Soviet power as terrorists, Basmachi, members of the Turkestan Legion and Eastern Muslim SS units.
All of them are presented today as “victims of Stalin’s regime in the 1920s and 1950s”, although among the prisoners there were numerous people convicted of banditry, political sabotage, looting of public property, attacks on trains and motor vehicles.
A scenario similar to that of the Baltic countries or Ukraine is foreseeable in Kazakhstan in the future. If Russia were to intervene there in defense of the Russian-speaking minorities and to prevent further NATO advance on its borders, the CPG would have no qualms in accusing Russia of imperialism, because for this party defense is synonymous with aggression.
The case of Bulgaria is equally tragic. On January 17 and 18, 2024, the inhabitants of the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv defended the monument to the Soviet liberator soldier “Alyosha”, which was to be moved from the Liberators’ Hill to another place at the proposal of the Bulgarian deputies because “it does not belong to the culture and history of the city”.
It should be recalled that the Bulgarian Defense Minister recently gave vent to his Russophobia by calling for the facts concerning friendly Russian aid to Bulgaria to be removed from the history books.
The post-Soviet countries, under the influence of imperialism, continue the process of breaking with their Soviet past and their friendly relations with Russia and its peoples.
[6] The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a Russian-dominated group of six post-Soviet states that requires its members to assist each other in the event of an attack.
[7] Congressional Research Service, “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2023”, Updated June 7, 2023, in: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42738
[8] In the case of the US, the data does not add up. There is an inexplicable difference of 184 air units.
[9] The information is available at the following link: https://www.globalfirepower.com/
[10] Le Monde Diplomatiqu, “Atlas der Globalisierung―Ungleiche Welt” (in english: “Atlas of globalization―Unequal world”), article: “Geopolitik des maritimen Welthandels―von Tankerflotten und strategische Alianzen” (in english: “Geopolitics of Global Maritime Trade: Tanker Fleets and Strategic Alliances”), author of the article: Tom Stevenson, p.107
[11] Communist Party of Greece (CPG), “On the one year since the imperialist war in Ukraine,” in.: https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/ON-THE-ONE-YEAR-SINCE-THE-IMPERIALIST-WAR-IN-UKRAINE/
[12] Communist Party of Greece (CPG), “Short answers to current ideological-political questions concerning the Israeli attack and massacre against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”, in: https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Short-answers-to-current-ideological-political-questions-concerning-the-Israeli-attack-and-massacre-against-the-Palestinian-people-in-the-Gaza-Strip/
[13] At this point, we would like to point out another subterfuge used by the CPG: Let us note the “etc.” that comes after the enumeration of “Russia, China, Iran”.
The “etc.” certainly includes, and this is also recognized by the CPG, the people of Palestine, but also the people of Syria or the people of Yemen or the people of Donbass, the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or the peoples of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. It seems to us no coincidence that the CPG has not included in the list at least some of the countries belonging to the bloc of Russia, China and Iran. The list replacing this “etc.” could in fact undermine their argument, because it would include countries like Cuba or Palestine, for example, which are clearly “anti-imperialist” according to the common sense of the broad progressive masses. Such sentiments would clash with the not-so-sensible positions of the CPG and cause perplexity among those who read its statements. The CPG is well versed, as we have already seen, in the art of obfuscation.
[14] Communist Party of Greece (CPG), “Short answers to current ideological-political questions concerning the Israeli attack and massacre against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”, in: https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Short-answers-to-current-ideological-political-questions-concerning-the-Israeli-attack-and-massacre-against-the-Palestinian-people-in-the-Gaza-Strip/
[15] This miserable regime has on its conscience so many victims, among them the Chilean-American journalist Gonzálo Lira, was the product of a coup d’état in 2014, sends its people to death in the service of NATO as if they were cannon fodder, has systematically erased all traces of the memory of the victory of socialism over fascism during World War II… and a long etcetera of terrible deeds.
