Joti Brar | Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
There is a general acceptance amongst the core parties that make up the Platform that the essence of the third world war which is now unfolding is of a struggle between the forces of imperialism and those of anti-imperialism.
Despite their various rivalries and internal contradictions, the imperialist powers today have no option but to band together in order to save the US-led post-WW2 capitalist world order, which has been undermined by the imperialist powers’ industrial decay, their waning technological lead and their deep crisis of overproduction, as well as from the inevitable advance and increasing cohesion of the socialist and liberated territories that today make up the anti-imperialist camp.
Meanwhile, despite differences in social and economic forms, and in their resulting ideological frameworks, the countries that have achieved genuine national liberation and socialism are recognising their need to work more closely together if they wish to retain their sovereignty in the face of an increasingly desperate and rabid imperialist bloc.
While the tasks that face the forces of progress in this struggle can seem overwhelming, it is important to recognise the factors that are strengthening our own hand and weakening that of the enemy. In particular, the deepening global economic crisis and war drive are creating conditions that cannot but compel ever wider sections of the masses to be drawn towards the struggle as their lives become less and less bearable. And each fresh uptick in war activity, accompanied by a further downturn in the crisis, heightens and accelerates the process of creating fresh reserves for the proletarian and anti-imperialist struggles.
But merely being forced to endure terrible conditions of life is not in itself enough to bring the masses to the point of revolutionary activity. The key role in moving the masses from passive victims to active proponents of the intensifying class struggle lies with the anti-imperialist and socialist forces. For only socialists can explain clearly the core content of this struggle and struggle consistently for the unity of all the genuinely interested forces.
In key imperialist heartlands such as Britain, the communists have an especially important role. Given the huge accumulation of riches on which British, US, French, German and Japanese finance capital rests, there can be no final defeat for imperialism while those vast stores of wealth remain intact and at the disposal of the capitalist-imperialist ruling elites.
For a final victory of the world’s masses that will allow the nations of the world to develop in sovereignty and fraternal harmony, socialist revolutions must take place in these centres of imperialism; the ill-gotten wealth of the western financiers must be expropriated and redeployed in the interests of those who created that wealth (ie, the working masses and oppressed peoples), and their entire system of capitalist-imperialist exploitation must be dismantled.
Differing tactics and approach; same strategic goal
From all the above, it can be seen that the vast mass of humanity has a direct interest in working for the defeat of this parasitic, vampire-like system, which in its death throes is casting aside its mask and revealing its violent, ruthless and bloodthirsty essence. It can also be seen that humanity is being presented with a real opportunity to bring about the defeat of the capitalist-imperialist global system, since even the mighty USA is now declining rapidly in all essential fields: economically, industrially, technologically, militarily, educationally and culturally.
Nevertheless, with so much wealth at their command, the system and its overlords remain powerful and extremely dangerous. So what is needed to bring about victory for the anti-imperialist camp as WW3 unfolds?
The first requirement is unity of forces across fronts. This means we need to focus our efforts, depending on where we are living, on building:
• the maximum possible unity between anti-imperialist states;
• the maximum possible unity between anti-imperialist non-state forces;
• theoretically and organisationally steeled Marxist-Leninist forces that are able to provide the steel at the core of anti-imperialist movements everywhere.
The role of Marxist-Leninists is especially vital in popularising key concepts that will enable the struggle to be fought with maximum strength and unity. The most important of these are:
• the Leninist understanding of imperialism;
• a resulting clarity on the question of which countries are and are not imperialist powers;
• the necessity of forging of strong links between working-class movements in the imperialist countries and anti-imperialist movements in the oppressed world;
• vigilance regarding the imperialists’ penetration of our movement with provocateurs and their use of psyops and doom-mongering (often dressed up as ‘left-wing’ commentary) to demoralise the most active cadres;
• the necessity of shifting from passive commentating or information consumption to active building―agitation and propaganda must be harnessed to the project of building a movement, not seen as ends in themselves or paths to a paid career.
In the anti-imperialist countries, comrades must learn the lessons of the past regarding retaining their ideological and organisation identity while also building maximum national unity against imperialism.
The lessons of history and the course of the war must be used to help the people see that only socialism will bring a final and complete solution to their problems. In this respect, much important experience is summed up in the theoretical works of Mao Zedong from the period of the anti-Japanese war which document the Communist Party of China’s role in creating and sustaining a united front with the nationalist Kuomintang.
1. In the sovereign nations
Key aims for socialists in anti-imperialist countries that are now or expect soon to be facing the full onslaught of imperialist aggression must include:
• forging maximum possible unity of the people in defence of the nation;
• developing a Marxist-Leninist movement to provide theoretical clarity on questions of imperialism and anti-imperialism;
• propagating and supporting demands for military and defence preparedness;
• propagating and supporting demands for food, energy, industrial and technological sovereignty;
• propagating and supporting demands for the ejection of western NGOs, and the replacement of western electronic devices and communication methods for as much of the population as possible;
• propagating and supporting demands for media sovereignty, including the replacement of western social media platforms with local or ally-provided platforms.
• building campaigns of popular mobilisation aimed at identifying and rooting out of networks of intelligence agents and saboteurs.
The DPRK provides an excellent example of how a small country that combines all the above with socialist central planning and a proletarian dictatorship is able to withstand imperialist pressure and delay the outbreak of war, despite the eagerness of the imperialists to renew hostilities and try to bring it down.
Meanwhile, the difficulties faced by Venezuela show that while a newly sovereign nation can make great strides in mobilising, educating and organising vast masses of the poor, raising their living standards and creating a revolutionary patriotic force that would be impossible to beat if a land invasion were attempted, nevertheless it is a huge struggle for the most staunchly anti-imperialist government to fully withstand imperialist pressure when it has not yet reached a stage of energy, industrial, technological or media sovereignty, and when its inability to operate a planned economy at the national level leaves it open to various forms of economic sabotage.
2. In the oppressed nations
In oppressed countries ruled by comprador governments, comrades must work with all genuinely patriotic forces to expose and oppose the role of their governments in acting as local gendarmes for the imperialists, holding down the people and facilitating imperialist resource extraction and superexploitation.
The hardships brought by the war must be harnessed to facilitate a new wave of revolutionary national-liberation energy―as we see being displayed today by the countries of the Sahel alliance.
In imperialist countries, comrades must put forward a clear programme of demands to the workers that can provide a real route out of the downward spiral of deindustrialisation and immiseration, building a new movement against war and for socialism.
3. In the imperialist nations
Core demands for socialists in the imperialist countries must include:
• the transformation of the trade union and antiwar organisations into movements that genuinely represent the interests of the working masses rather than being vehicles for bureaucratic control over workers’ anger and energy;
• the building of wide campaigns in defence of the supposed freedoms that bourgeois democracies constantly claim to uphold, such as freedom of opinion, of speech, of the press and of association, and which are at present being discarded in favour of overtly political and even fascistic policing regimes in every western nation;
• the building of broad campaigns against conscription in every Nato and Nato-aligned country;
• the building of mass campaigns of non-cooperation with the imperialist and zionist war machines, which must expand to include not only refusing to fight the wars but also refusing to make or move munitions and other supplies, refusing to provide logistical and support services, and refusing to write, broadcast or distribute the imperialists’ propaganda lies;
• the promotion of the slogans ‘No cooperation with the war machine’, ‘Build the axis of resistance at home’ and ‘Victory to the resistance!’, through which workers can be brought to understand their common cause with all those fighting on the frontlines and motivated to work for the defeat of ‘their own’ imperialist rulers.
And workers across the capitalist world must resist the siren songs of the bourgeoisie, who are working overtime to deploy divide-and-rule tactics that aim to prevent a genuine anti-imperialist unity from emerging. This means, in particular:
• exposing the lie that immigrants, rather than capitalist economics, are to blame for the immiseration of workers (eg, it is this system that causes inflation, deindustrialisation, underdevelopment, unemployment, homelessness, austerity, poverty and war);
• exposing the ‘culture wars’ framing of various issues, from immigration and anti-racism to climate change, women’s liberation and the transgender issue, which works to polarise debate and divide workers into hostile camps that are led by bourgeois ideas and political figures (eg ‘Maga’ v ‘No Kings’ in the USA; Reform v Greens/‘left’ Labour in Britain).
Victory is ours if we have the courage to work for it
Many well-meaning socialist-leaning workers, and even many of those who consider themselves ‘activists’, have allowed themselves to feel crushed by the size of the task that faces our movement, particularly given the history of revisionist capitulation by formerly powerful communist parties and state infiltration of our ranks.
The growth and militarisation of the imperialist state machineries, the development of powerful electronic tools for surveillance and manipulation, and the apparent indifference of many members of the working class to these problems and to the cause of their own liberation all combine to leave many would-be progressives feeling powerless and demoralised.
But this view is un-Marxist and ahistoric, and can be refuted by an examination of modern history as well as of the present course of the war on its various fronts.
To take just one example: we are endlessly assured by our class enemies and their mouthpieces that their new AI tools are too powerful to be resisted. Yet the example of the resistance struggles in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere show clearly that determined and organised movements are already facing these tools, adapting their tactics and winning.
We must learn to look beyond the bluster and bravado of western politicians and Silicon Valley CEOs, much of which is as much fuelled by a desperation to retard the development of the looming stock market crisis as it is to retain dominance over the minds of the masses.
When we do so we find that beyond the mass murder of innocents and the increasingly heavy policing of social media, we can see the same inability to defeat an organised and risen people that characterised every anti-imperialist and socialist struggle of the 20th century.
