The imperialist system is going through the most severe crisis since the 1930s. The current attempts to address and overcome the crisis only serve to deepen and extend it.
The structural crisis that emerged in the field of finance has gradually extended to the field of production, bringing about a deepening recession. The crisis proceeds under the law of uneven development within the pursuit of the maximum extortion of surplus value and the contention on the world market.
The crisis has its origin in the laws of running of the capitalist system itself. It is the expression of the limits of production for profit, and the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, including the general and global nature of the production and private appropriation. In the world scene this means an ever growing gap between the wealth of a handful of imperialist countries and the poverty of three quarters of human beings in the countries oppressed by imperialism, between the wealth in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the relative and absolute impoverishment of proletarians and masses in the imperialist countries , between the overflowing richness of a parasitic and comprador bourgeoisie and the living conditions of misery and hunger of the proletariat and broad masses in the countries oppressed by imperialism.
It is clear that a system dominated by these laws, these dynamics, can only go into crisis, and overproduction and capital surplus become factors of crisis.
The phenomena of heightened and speculative “financialization” are the tip of the iceberg of the dynamics of the system, which become point of implosion and explosion.
The “financialization” of the economy – the main immediate cause of the crisis – tends to reject any control. So the efforts of capitalism and its ruling imperialist powers to get out of crisis through regulation and control of the financial markets and use of the opportunities offered by high growth rates, even if disarticulated, of some countries such as China, India and Brazil have so far not succeeded. Although these efforts should not be underestimated, they cannot ensure more than a temporary recovery, one which opens the door to new and even more distressing crises.
The world is still faced with two possibilities: the exit from capitalism or a painful temporary recovery from this crisis by strengthening, enhancing the mechanisms of capital and thus prolonging the misery of the masses.
The imperialist bourgeoisie all over the world take advantage of the crisis to restructure imperialism on a global scale and save the interests of their class for their profits.
This leads to unloading the vicious weight of the crisis on the workers and masses. In both the oppressed countries and imperialist countries, unemployment, job insecurity and the cost of living increase, exploitation is ratcheted up to modern forms of slavery, workers' rights are reduced, social achievements won through years of struggles are erased, factories are closed with massive layoffs, peasants are ruined and driven to suicide, cuts in social expenditures and privatization of education and healthcare grow, the logic of commodification and profit is extended even to primary goods, such as water, air, sun, etc..
These policies are carried out within the contention for domination on the imperialist world market and geopolitical strategic areas, but the unitary character of the policies to unload crisis on the proletarians and the masses is emphatically clear.
The policy of imperialism accentuates and makes more and more catastrophic the effects of the system in terms of ecological and natural disasters. Imperialism transforms factors of development in the field of science, culture and education, information technology, access to media, communication, extension of the freedom of young people and the processes of emancipation of women, into new and more refined chains. In the context of crisis this results in massive intellectual unemployment, social control and most extreme forms of barbarism, new neo medieval attacks on women's rights and the regimentation of youth.
The balance of power among the imperialists is in a flux. Though the US still remains the sole super power its capacities have been considerably weakened, by the resistance of is victims and the crisis. This gave some room for the EU grouping. However similar factors have negatively impacted on their position too. Russia had not been affected so much by the crisis. Through its axis with China and consolidating ties with erstwhile Soviet Union republics, it has gained some advantage and has stepped up contention. Overall collusion is still principal in inter-imperialist relations. But imperialism in crisis, develops within it contradictions that can become potential sources of a new world war. Imperialist powers, mainly the US, unleash and accentuate wars of aggression, invasion, and neo-colonialism in the different regions of the world where their interests are vital or threatened. In developing these wars, it continues with the arms race and gets equipped with more and more devastating military instruments, surpassing all limits enshrined in international conventions and human rights.
One or the other form of fascistic control has always been the norm in oppressed countries, even where a parliamentary system exists. In recent years, a tendency to modern fascism grows inside the imperialist countries also. This takes shape according to the characteristics of history, the reality and the culture of each country. It strives to establish once again the totalitarian, racist, securitarian and police-state forms of the rule of the bourgeoisie.
Imperialism is poverty, reaction and war. The crisis reveals that welfare, democracy and peace become more and more words that cover an opposite substance.
The devastating economic crisis of imperialism and its impact on proletarians and the broad masses have awakened worldwide a wave of struggles and revolts.
In the countries oppressed by imperialism, the protests, rebellions and liberation struggles have found in the revolts in Arab countries and in the Persian Gulf a new height and a new dawn. Young people, proletarians and the masses and, in some cases, organized sectors of workers, attacked and overthrew dictatorial regimes subservient to imperialism that seemed permanent. This has paved the way for new anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, anti-feudal, new-democratic revolutions.
False anti-imperialist regimes, such as those of Libya, Syria, Iran, and openly pro-imperialist ones such as those in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, as well as the military regimes that have replaced the reactionary tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, unleashed massacres and repression. Hiding under the flag of democracy imperialism intervened in these struggles and maneuvered to remove unreliable regimes and replace worn out servitors with new ones. It launched a war and occupied Libya. But the wave of "Arab springtimes" continue. Globally they have achieved an important position as a new front in the battle between imperialism and the peoples. They join those existing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. In these countries, the occupation and invasions of imperialists and Zionists have faced heavy resistance. This forced them to reshape their occupation plans and prevented them in a substantial manner from realizing their aims. Apart from the Arab and West Asian countries, people in Latin America, Africa and other regions of Asia have repeatedly taken to the streets to resist the attacks on their livelihoods. The persistent and growing labor strikes and peasant struggles in China is notable.
In this new wave of struggle and resistance we must support and strengthen the struggle for the liberation of peoples and for new democracy, towards socialism and communism, and oppose the pro-Western and Islamist currents which ride the tiger of people’s struggles in order to impose new chains and new subordination to the reactionary classes and their masters of all time, imperialism, mainly of the U.S. and Europe.
The wave of unrest, flaring up of rebellions and struggles involving hundreds of thousands of youth in the imperialist countries is a distinguishing feature of the present world. The exciting uprisings of the proletarian youth, which shakes the imperialist citadels, marks the entry of a new generation. Facing a life without a future, through their rebellions they shout "it is right to rebel" and declare that it is capitalism that has no future. Now fused, now in parallel, this development is coupled to a rise in labor struggles. General strikes have summoned to action the whole workers movement, especially in countries hit hardest by the crisis Greece, Spain, Italy...
The workers' struggles have had a new development in Eastern Europe, where to the bite of wild capitalism following the collapse of false socialist regimes, was added the quick transformation into systems even worse than before.
New waves of immigrants flock to the imperialist countries in hope of a better life. They flee from poverty and war devastations caused by these countries. To reach their destinations they have to put their lives at risk through untold suffering which often turn the seas into cemeteries. The imperialists respond with harsh anti-immigrant laws and racism. The emergence of modern fascism, of police states, the growing frequency of wars of aggression and anti-immigrant laws have been responded to by the masses through the development of anti-fascist and anti-racist movements, and broad movements against the war.
This is the context in which a potential new wave of the world proletarian revolution develops and emerges. It has as its reference points and strategic anchor the people's wars led by Maoist parties.
To this we must add the preparation of several new people's wars, particularly in Turkey and South Asia, with the potential for it in Latin America, and throughout the rest of the world, with the constitution of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) communist
parties. In this framework, the new MLM communist parties in the imperialist countries represent the potential for a quantum leap in revolutionary struggle and the unity of the two currents of the world proletarian revolution: the socialist revolution in the imperialist countries and the new democratic revolution, marching towards socialism, in the countries oppressed by imperialism.
All this shows that the principal contradiction in the world is that between imperialism and oppressed peoples, while both the contradictions between the proletariat and bourgeoisie and the inter-imperialist contradictions also sharpen. In the crisis it is increasingly clear that the revolution is the main trend.
In the current international situation the task of communists is to make revolution in the different countries, because the revolution is the only solution to the crisis, the only way out from imperialism and the only road to achieve the ultimate goal of the struggles of the proletarians and oppressed people.
This demands the strengthening and building of MLM communist parties in each country, as a new kind of communist party, as vanguard detachments of the proletariat and leading core of all the people, as a party fighting for the revolution.
In the countries oppressed by imperialism the perspective of people's war is advancing. In India, the people's war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) successfully withstands unprecedented attacks by the enemy and is able to expand and advance. The people's war in the Philippines led by the Communist Party of the Phillipines advances and establishes itself as an important part of the wave of world revolution. The people's war in Peru, initiated under the leadership of the Communist Party of Peru led by chairman Gonzalo remains an ideological and strategic beacon for the whole international communist movement. Though it faces setback due to the attacks of the enemy and from revisionists within the party, the struggle to overcome these hurdles persists. In Nepal ten years of people's war enriched the history and experience of the international communist movement and made significant advance towards the victory of the new democratic revolution. In recent years, however, a revisionist line that betrays the people’s war and the revolution emerged, headed by Prachanda and Bhattarai. The Maoists within the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [UCPN(M)] must save the revolution and resume its march by revolting against that line and standing firm against centrist vacillations, inside and outside the party. In Turkey, the revolutionary struggles led by the Maoists are advancing in the pursuit of the people's war strategy suited to the conditions of this country, placed as it is amidst two international theatres, the European imperialist countries and the regimes ruled by the reactionaries in West Asia. In other countries of South Asia and Latin America, the people's war is in preparation for new beginnings and progresses. It is a task of communists around the world to put into the practice the proletarian internationalism, popularize and support the people’s wars and revolutionary struggles.
In the imperialist countries, electoralism, parliamentarism and political and union reformism are increasingly in crisis and, through this, revisionism is bankrupt. The need of a revolutionary organization and a revolutionary strategy to overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the power is increasingly advancing and strengthening in the workers and people's movements.. The idea that as long as the proletarians are not in power it is an illusion to think that their lot will improve
is growing. The workers' struggles and the uprisings of proletarians and young people must coordinate and grow within a perspective of overthrowing the governments and states of the imperialist bourgeoisie, for the seizure of power by the proletariat.
In order to transform these needs into reality, these movements into revolution, we need to build MLM communist parties, in the fire of class struggle and in close link with the masses, for the proletarian revolution, with the MLM strategy of the revolutionary war culminating with the insurrection, adapted to each country according to the concrete conditions.
In all countries
we need communist parties based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, able to lead the class struggle in all fields and aimed at seizing the political power. In each country the Maoist communists strive to answer this need for a scientific and determined leadership for the class struggle, by fighting all kinds of revisionist and reformist, or dogmatist and extremist deviations, in all their forms.
Our class can rely on the huge amount of experience through 140 years of struggles and revolutions, from the birth of the glorious Paris Commune through the peaks of the October Revolution, the Chinese revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We must learn from both our victories and defeats, from our correctness as well as from our mistakes.
Always in their entire history, the communists have built, participated and counted on an international organization of the proletariat and the oppressed masses. Without the First, the Second and Third International, the communist movement would not have spread to every corner of the world, neither would it have achieved its great victories, and would not have learned the lessons from its temporary defeats.
The battle of Mao Tsetung was an international battle that paved the way to the revival of communist parties after the establishment of Kruschevite revisionism in the international communist movement.
After Mao's death and the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) has allowed the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists in the world to begin to unite on an international scale, to resume the march towards a new Communist International.
Today, facing the crisis and the collapse of the RIM, we must rebuild the international organization of MLM parties and organizations on the basis of the positive and negative experiences of the RIM. The current situation presents the need to unite in this new organization all the MLM parties and organizations, inside and outside the RIM, for a political and organizational leap. This is necessary to put the communist movement at the height of the class struggle in the new century. Thus the needs of the proletariat and the oppressed masses, facing the impact of the crisis of imperialism, can be met.
The new international organization must unite in its ranks the genuine MLM parties and organizations that exist and operate in the class struggle, that transform the revolutionary theory into revolutionary practice, that are able to be an advanced and integrant part of the proletariat and the oppressed masses, getting rid of all the old and new waste, not only of revisionism but also of the petty bourgeois revolutionaries and the self-referring "virtualism".
To build this new international organization we must break with revisionism in all its aspects and particularly with those that have led to the current crisis and collapse of the RIM, namely the post-MLM 'new synthesis' of Bob Avakian in the Revolutionary Communist Party,US and the revisionist line established by Prachanda/Bhattarai in the UCPN(M).
The new international organization should have an executive centre, whose internal life must correspond to the stage and methods shared by the political parties and forces that give life to this organization, particularly taking lesson from the positive and negative experiences of the CoRim.
The international organization of MLM communists is and should be the core of a front, of an international anti-imperialist alliance of the proletarians and oppressed peoples.
It is this that will allow the MLM communist parties to establish and develop Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, realize a new unity of the international communist movement, place it at the van of worldwide people’s struggles and fully unleash and realize the potential new wave of world revolution.
Imperialism has no future! The future belongs to communism!
for SM of RIM
signed and diffused from
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan;
Communist Party of India (M-L) [Naxalbari];
Maoist Communist Party - Italy;
May first 2012
May first 2012
