The Next Front - ‘Introduction’ chapter, from the Document-China: A Modern Social-Imperialist Power, by CPI (Maoist)

Introduction

In its 9th Congress held in January 2017, the United Congress of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI-Maoist) decided to conduct a special study on emerging trends in social, economic, political, and cultural changes with regard to strategy toward capitalist-revisionist China. The Central Committee was authorised to execute this decision. As per the decision taken by the Central Committee during its 4th Conference, it considered mainly two things: the trends within China, and whether China has become a social-imperialist power. These were their two study points. After investigating, the Central Committee adopted the following thesis at its 5th Conference: “Today China has become a modern social-imperialist power, an integral part of the capitalist-imperialist world system, while also playing the role of antagonist towards the oppressed classes and people in general.” The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, groups and powers are in solidarity with the worker-peasant, suppressed, and other oppressed classes of society with the objective of world socialist revolution, marching toward a creative struggle to win over antagonistic imperialist China and end its conceptions of revisionism, social-imperialism, and obscurantism. Our two communist parties have two global responsibilities: to support the working class and to support its revolution. To accomplish these tasks, the social-imperialist nature of China must be exposed thoroughly. We must understand the process by which China transformed into a major and competent imperialist state among the imperialist nations of the world. We must also succeed in the process of segregating global alliances and enmities in accordance with the principles of international class divisions. We must evaluate everchanging structural variations and their specific conditions prevailing in the world. Unless we study these aspects, we cannot understand modern wars, the politics of modern revisionists, and the incidental variations in the imperialist system. Leninism holds that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism – it is war, it is moribund.

Imperialism affirms the rise of the socialist movement, and the 20th century has proven this. The Leninist theory of imperialism applies even today. War is the supreme tool by which imperialism divides and reorganises the world for its vested interests. Imperialism indulges in war for the sake of its monopoly on the world. It principally gains through war. Wars are inevitable so long as imperialism exists in the world. It penetrates into underdeveloped nations in the guise of neo-colonialism to continue its obsessive compulsion for loot. It sucks the blood of the common people and the oppressed, and it is the cause of their extreme misery and distress. “Modern wars are the result of imperialism,” said Lenin, time and time again. The two world wars in first half of the 20th century broke out among the imperialist countries as a contest to gain supremacy over the world by dividing and reorganizing it. “The attempt to escape the new political and economic crises of the imperialist countries led to the last two world wars,” said Mao.

America has plundered the wealth of the world through imperialist war. It acquired windfall gains by selling weapons in abundance to countries who have engaged in war. In this way, America has become  the imperialist superpower of the capitalist world. When America’s imperialist economic system  incorporated a war economy, it focused only on wars. Hence, it orchestrated aggression and war. We can see this trend from Korea, Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. War will continue so long as imperialism prevails. If we want to abolish war, we must eradicate the capitalist-imperialist system. The cold war between the then superpowers of the US and the USSR had an impact on the developed and underdeveloped countries. This gave rise to wars directly or indirectly among them. From 1945- 1990, at the least 125 regional wars, civil wars, and armed conflicts led to the deaths of more than 40 million people, while millions more were victimized and displaced. The economic crisis that resulted in these countries because of imperialist war is greater than that of the crisis that caused the World War II.

Wars continued to break out during the 1990s. American forces waged treacherous wars in Honduras, Ukraine and in Egypt, and America fomented incessant armed riots. Military interventions by Britain and America’s other allies have led to the deaths of nearly 3.2 million Muslims. The wealthiest and the most secular country in Africa, Libya, was destroyed by America. Libya, which once warmly embraced migrants, is now being destroyed, displacing half its population. More than 1 billion people live in extreme poverty and suffer from malnutrition. Moreover, nearly 17 million people are dying due to poverty every year. Half of them are children. America is trying to cover the ever-increasing expansion and expenditure of Israel. Leaving aside the welfare of its own people, America is amassing more than 20 trillion-dollars in debts to pay the debts of Israel and massacre Muslims. America is directing trillions from its budget to do this, subjecting its own people to misery and thereby causing the deaths of more than 200,000 of its own people every year.

The imperialist riots unleashed in Syria with the intent to overthrow the government of Bashar Al
Assad have led to the deaths of 500,000 people and another 2 million wounded or displaced. Moreover, millions of people were made homeless, migrating to neighbouring countries as well as some European countries. America destroyed many communities that had lived together amidst their shrines and holy places in brotherhood, peace, secularism and non-violence. The imperialist wars of aggression waged under the leadership of America on Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq and many other countries have caused countless deaths and injuries, destroyed countless homes, and forced countless people worldwide to migrate.

In order to secure the imperialist system and deceive the people of the world, imperialists and revisionists mislead the people in all possible ways with various fictions according to the changing scenery of the contemporary world. It is time to expose and mortify them. The contemporary political vengeance of imperialism is a predictable result of the capitalist economic system. Imperialism is extending its political machinery to suppress the people by implementing its fascist dictatorship far and wide. The stronger the repression, the stronger the resistance. The worker-peasant classes, the petty-bourgeoisie and other oppressed classes of society, even the endangered species, are relentlessly waging wars against Imperialism. Our party, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), is relentlessly striving to exterminate imperialism from the earth, to install communism, and to unite the oppressed classes and masses. Our party leads them and shoulders the responsibility to fight alongside them.

In light of China’s rise as a social-imperialist power, the present task is for all working-class parties around the world to develop manoeuvres to sustain themselves. Party leadership, on these principles, must gather the oppressed classes and people of their societies and lead them in the march towards socialism. This document was released by the Central Committee to elucidate how socialist China transformed into a capitalist and imperialist power and how to develop strategies to combat it. Let us study this document thoroughly. In the light of five inherent features and three special aspects of imperialism taught by the great Lenin, let us analyse and synthesise in the light of Marxism-LeninismMaoism in order to build a correct scientific understanding of China’s social-imperialist development.

Translated from Telagu by the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement