Christopher Helali | American Communist Party
I would like to dedicate my speech to the memory of my great uncle, Yiorgos Kasidakos, who served in the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) of the National Liberation Front (EAM) under the leadership of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). He served throughout the war as a partisan, achieving heroic victories with his unit against the Nazi invaders and was wounded during one such battle. After the war, he was arrested, imprisoned in Gytheio, and executed by the Monarcho-Fascists backed by Anglo-American imperialism on March 21, 1947 during the Greek Civil War. Honor and glory to all our heroic anti-fascist fighters! May their memories be eternal!
On January 28, 2025, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest ever to human extinction.[1] Our world is edging closer to annihilation. The ongoing genocide in Gaza, the collapse of the Syrian Arab Republic, the war against Yemen, the US-EU-NATO imperialist war on Russia, and the increasing hostility towards China by the United States have destabilized the world, bringing it ever closer to nuclear confrontation, and ultimately, our collective extinction. Over a century ago, V. I. Lenin made critical insights into the study of imperialism through an economic analysis of its structure. It was this theory that paved the way for an understanding of contemporary imperialism and the emergence of fascism during profound crises in the World Capitalist System. Yet, regrettably we are faced with ongoing ideological struggles within the international communist movement over the nature of imperialism, the countries identified as imperialist, and what that means for the transformation from a unipolar to multipolar or polycentric international system. These issues must be properly understood theoretically for us to address the practical tasks ahead of us.
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin outlines the main economic aspects of imperialism. It is important to identify them so that they help make informed ideological positions about our contemporary situation. This is ultimately the scientific outlook that we must stress. The five main economic traits of imperialism are as follows:
1. The concentration of production and capital reach heights that give rise to monopolies, which play a decisive and outsized role in economic life.
2. The fusion of banking and industrial capital gives rise to finance capital and the financial oligarchy.
3. The export of capital, unlike the export of goods, acquires special importance.
4. International monopoly groups are formed that divide up the world among themselves.
5. The world is divided and distributed among the major capitalist powers.[2]
This definition can be juxtaposed with the definition of the so-called “imperialist pyramid” which was formulated by the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Aleka Papariga. She writes, “[t]oday there are few countries which are at the summit, in the first positions of the international imperialist system (it is illustrated with the schema of a pyramid in order to show the various levels occupied by the capitalist countries) a handful of countries one could say according to the Leninist expression. But this does not mean that all the other capitalist countries are victims of the powerful capitalist states, that the bourgeois class of most countries has submitted to the pressure, despite its general interest that it has been corrupted.”[3]
This definition seeks to expand Lenin’s definition of imperialism, conflating it with merely having a capitalist mode of production or, in the case of socialist countries, having any economic relations with a capitalist country. This theory of the “imperialist pyramid” is further expanded by noting that “[t]he number of states is increasing which are regional powers, satellites of strong imperialist powers, countries which play a particular role in the alliance and partnership policy of the various powers in the pyramid. The inter-imperialist contradictions are in effect in every form of alliance, and all these multi-facetted relations, which embrace every capitalist country in the world without exception, constitute the imperialist pyramid.”[4]
The Communist Party of Greece’s position is effectively saying that every country in the world is a constitutive part of the imperialist pyramid. While it is clear that some powers are greater imperialist powers according to the pyramid, every country in the pyramid is to a greater or lesser extent, imperialist. No exception is made for those countries which are socialist or those that are fighting against Western hegemony. Aleka Papariga goes on to say, “[t]oday the number of imperialist centres has increased, while new forms of alliance have also emerged such as the alliance centred on Russia, the alliance of Shanghai, the alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS), the alliance of the countries of Latin America ALBA, MERCOSUR etc.”[5] This idea that somehow all of these countries and alliances, even those actively against US-EU-NATO imperialism are themselves imperialist, is, I would argue, categorically false.
Some might wonder why I juxtapose Lenin’s theoretical insights about imperialism with “imperialist pyramid” theory? The purpose is to highlight the glaring theoretical differences that have now translated into major political differences. Some communist parties have interpreted the current geopolitical landscape as a rivalry between imperialist powers. This so-called theory of “inter-imperialist wars” confuses the masses, attempting to take a dogmatic and unscientific approach under the banner of “neither Washington, nor Moscow, nor Beijing.” However, it is clear that international developments have revealed that a new, more progressive world order is on the horizon.
This theoretical crisis has now manifested itself into a political crisis in the international communist movement over Russia’s Special Military Operation. Those of us who have been active in the anti-fascist struggle for years are clear about the Western-backed fascist junta that took power in Kiev in 2014. It was US-EU-NATO imperialism that installed a fascist government in Ukraine to be the frontline in their war against the Russian Federation. We know well the crimes committed by the Azov Battalion, Right Sector, and other Neo-Nazis, Banderites, and Fascists. The rehabilitation and memorialization of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Waffen SS Galicia Division, and leaders like Stepan Bandera are an attack on the memory of the heroes who defeated fascism in the Great Patriotic War.
Having been on a fact-finding mission to Lugansk in the Summer of 2024, I submitted in my report to the United Nations that “[t]he slogans of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ in 2014 were not chanted with the aim of being part of Russia at that time but calling to be protected by Russia. To protect the civilians from a Western backed-regime that was outlawing their culture and traditions inherited from the USSR and trying to change them by imposing historical revisionism and foreign cultural values. This war is one of survival for the people of the Donbass, not of separatism, expansion, nor Russian ‘imperialism.’ Since early 2014, the people of the Donbass have called on the Ukrainian government to agree to protect, as one local put it, ‘our rights, our language, our history, and our heroes.’”[6] The Ukrainian government failed to do this. However, Russia answered the call to defend the people of the Donbass, at long last launching the SMO in 2022.
There is clearly a connection between imperialism and fascism. In the aforementioned case, Western imperialists supported, financed, and armed fascists in Ukraine to be their proxy in launching a war against the Russian Federation. It is imperialism that gives birth to fascism. The Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, as described by Giorgi Dimitrov, defined fascism “as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”[7] How does a people fight against fascism?
To analyze this, it is important to understand how Dimitrov reconciled proletarian nationalism and the national sentiments of the working class. It is all too often the case that modern communists suffer from a form of national nihilism that spurns all types of patriotism and national identity. However, Dimitrov is clear when he writes that, “[w]e Communists are the irreconcilable opponents, in principle, of bourgeois nationalism in all its forms. But we are not supporters of national nihilism, and should never act as such. The task of educating the workers and all working people in the spirit of proletarian internationalism is one of the fundamental tasks of every Communist Party. But anyone who thinks that this permits him, or even compels him, to sneer at all the national sentiments of the broad masses of working people is far from being a genuine Bolshevik, and has understood nothing of the teaching of Lenin on the national question.”[8] Dimitrov goes on to say that “proletarian internationalism must, so to speak, ‘acclimatize itself’ in each country in order to strike deep roots in its native land. National forms of the proletarian class struggle and of the labor movement in the individual countries are in no contradiction to proletarian internationalism; on the contrary, it is precisely in these forms that the international interests of the proletariat can be successfully defended.”[9]
While liberals, social democrats, Eurocommunists, Trotskyists, ultra-leftists, and anarchists hurl insults at Russia and particularly the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) for a supposed red-brown alliance, for support Russian nationalism, fascism, and imperialism, what these so-called “leftists” fail to understand is the national and patriotic character of the anti-fascist front that has developed in Russia since 2014 and especially since the SMO was launched in 2022. It is the character of this national form of anti-fascist struggle that has provided Russia with the strength to take on the US-EU-NATO imperialists and their allies and to still achieve victories on the ground. It is clear that Dimitrov’s formula is a winning recipe in the struggle against fascism.
Thus, the only correct view regarding imperialism today is to see the United States, European Union, and the NATO alliance, including their allies and lackeys as constituting one imperialist axis. Combined, they represent the real unipolar, hegemonic, and imperialist power in the world today. However, this power is declining. The rise of BRICS, the SCO, BRI, and other politico-economic projects seek to challenge the decades long unipolar world order. This is the birth of a multipolar world and it is the duty of every anti-imperialist to stand against US-EU-NATO imperialism.
A true Marxist-Leninist perspective on the emerging multipolar world should be centered on the progressive nature of this new world order. The American Communist Party does not see multipolarity as the solution itself but as a progressive and strategic step for the peoples of the world to have more freedom than under the unipolar world of US-EU-NATO hegemony. It is this freedom and space that will allow social movements to thrive and develop new economic forms as we are already seeing in different countries around the world. The American Communist Party rejects the theory of the so-called “imperialist pyramid” and sees this as an attempt to obfuscate the theory of imperialism and the struggle against contemporary forms of fascism. The American Communist Party recognizes the progressive role played by Russia, China, DPRK, Iran, Yemen, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and other socialist and anti-imperialist countries in the world today.
The American Communist Party, true to the historical legacy of Marxism-Leninism, understands the importance of uniting forces that are dedicated to anti-imperialism. Our historical duty is to unceasingly confront US-EU-NATO imperialism and all of its proxies around the world. This represents the greatest threat to humanity today. Given the various fronts and lines of demarcation facing the international communist and workers’ movement today, we must sharpen our ideological positions and prepare for a prolonged ideological war with those who choose revisionism, opportunism, and liberalism. Our strategy is to be united in confronting imperialism under the banner of anti-imperialism. We must heighten and deepen our collective struggle against the US-EU-NATO imperialist axis, the greatest threat to world peace. Only through the final confrontation with Euro-Atlantic imperialism can we open the possibility of constructing socialism-communism and building a lasting world peace for all.
Notes
[1] John Mecklin, ed. “2025 Doomsday Clock Statement.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 5, 2025. https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2025-statement/.
[2] V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm.
[3] Aleka Papariga, “On Imperialism-The Imperialist Pyramid,” https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/On-Imperialism-The-Imperialist-Pyramid/.
[4] International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE, “The Leninist approach of the KKE on imperialism and imperialist pyramid,” https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-Leninist-approach-of-the-KKE-on-imperialism-and-imperialist-pyramid/.
[5] Aleka Papariga, “On Imperialism-The Imperialist Pyramid,” https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/On-Imperialism-The-Imperialist-Pyramid/.
[6] Christopher Helali, “UN Press Briefing on Factfinding Mission to Donbass and Moscow.” PopularResistance.Org, July 11, 2024. https://popularresistance.org/united-nations-press-briefing-regarding-factfinding-mission-to-donbass-moscow/.
[7] Georgi Dimitrov, “The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class Against Fascism,” n.d. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
