Platform of the Anti-Imperialist Camp
1. Contrary to the expectations after the October Revolution, capitalism has not collapsed under the weight of its internal contradictions, but it has even passed through the most turbulent period of its history – with some visible injuries. There are three reasons for that: a. The dominant classes ruthlessly suppressed the various attempts of emancipation and liberation; b. The majority of the working class movement in the west, as well as the elites who led the national liberation processes in the semi-colonial countries have given up the revolutionary traditions and prefer a policy of collaboration with imperialism; c. Eventually capitalism has made a great development in its productive forces, while the countries which chose the path to socialism lapsed from an initial period of upswing into stagnation that led to collapse. The economist and mechanic thesis, that imperialism is the stage of decay and agony of capitalism, has proved to be treacherous and wrong.
2. The so-called “globalization” (with neo-liberalism as one of its many faces) is definitely a new stage of the international hegemony of capitalism, even if it can’t be seen as a new historical phase of bourgeois society. Nevertheless it is untrue that “globalization” meant a return of capitalism to the times of “free” competition and the laws of “free” markets, to a new phase of historical development. In the past ten years, opposing tendencies were strengthened: a strong and unbalanced international concentration of capital in favour of speculative finance capital and parasitic bond economy; a widening gap between highly and hardly developed countries, with an intensification of the neo-colonialist character of the imperialist system; a strengthening of north-American dominance; growing international militarization. The devastating collapses of a few capitalist countries (Mexico 1995, Thailand 1997, Russia and Indonesia 1999, Argentina 2001) demonstrate, that capitalism despite all efforts remains and antagonist and unstable regime that doesn’t allow the majority of the peoples to overcome their chronic under-development. Capitalism is resistant to any policy of strategic programmes, it naturally refuses the subordination of the economy to social aims. On an international political level this corresponds to an intensification of contradictions and conflicts. The answer of the west is an intensification of its commanding rule and the application of force as a permanent factor, with the strategy of “low intensity warfare” in the devastated periphery, with preventive attacks against any country that is viewed as an enemy and finally with the authoritarian degeneration of the “opulent democracies”, with the goal to prevent an internal antagonistic movement. National states will encounter an asymmetric fate in this contradictory process: Those states whose capitalist system is weak and dependent, will be further weakened and destabilized, the imperialist ones (as the USA), will be strengthened. The European Union (if the process of unification is not interrupted) expresses the crisis of the old bourgeois national states, but not in the direction of an unclear and non-state reality, but in the best case in the direction of an imperialist meta-state subordinate to the USA.
3. The collapse of the Soviet Union and her satellite states in central and eastern Europe, the capitalist orientation in China and the split of Yugoslavia are a decisive turning point in modern history. These events have had devastating effects in the international class struggle. They have fatally injured the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements (which have already been in crisis at that time) and led to a radical shift of forces in favour of the imperial front with the USA as its centre of power and decision-making. The north-American super-power and it’s strategic alliance with the other forces (Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan) with the support of numerous satraps (such as Israel, Turkey and many Arab governments in this crucial region) is trying by any means to prevent the emergence of a “multi-polar” world order and seems to ready to use any means to preserve global dominance. Enduring Freedom, the theoreme of the Axis of Evil, the pretext of fighting terrorism demonstrate that the White House has started a permanent preventive war with the goal to break any enemy power in areas deemed strategic – i.e. in most regions of the earth. The imperial super-power is trying with any means necessary to prevent the re-emergence of a revolutionary power that could start a liberating tide of anti-imperialist movements in any country of any importance. This policy leads to further international destabilization, an increase of the latent contradictions and conflicts. New wars and new revolutions shall be inevitable and they could put the question of the oppressed conquering power back onto the agenda, but in ways hitherto unknown and unpredictable. These victories won’t be able to withstand the imperialist counter-attack if they won’t expand on an international scale of if they hesitate to smash the reaction. The conflict is increasing on an international scale.
4. The revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces are passing through a long phase of strategic retreat. Imperialism is attacking on all fronts, in the centres as well as in the periphery. But it is in the periphery where the imperialist system can offer the masses neither economic growth nor most elementary rights, where it’s demonstrating crude savagery, where the imminent and explosive contradictions are concentrated. The so-called new world order, i.e. the mono-polar order, can be shaken most easily. In fact the anti-imperialist resistance in it’s various forms has not stopped for a moment in the semi-colonial countries. The policy of exploitation there does not only force the poorest to resist, but even important sectors of the intelligentsia, the army and the national bourgeoisie, who have to side with the masses sometimes, almost invariably under the banners of patriotism, nationalism or pan-Islamism. This contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations can assume the role of paving the path for truly revolutionary processes of national and social liberation. Besides the pockets of resistance who are still led by genuinely anti-imperialist forces (such as Palestine and Colombia), the impoverished masses are mobilized also under populist, caudillist, pan-Islamic, “ethnic” and often even under reactionary and semi-feudal slogans. It is our duty to not only to support those struggles of national liberation that are led by anti-imperialist forces, but to support any insurrections of peoples, nations and movements that cause cracks in the imperial capitalist system, even when those movements have reactionary leaderships; nevertheless we retain our critical approach and must not lose our internationalist and revolutionary basis.
5. Our anti-imperialism is based on anti-capitalist principles, our perspective is eventually international socialism. Our anti-imperialism is thus different from those who are based on purely nationalist-bourgeois, religious, ethnic-cultural or populist criteria. In those cases our support is always critical and conditional. The case is different with all those movements of the oppressed peoples that have a revolutionary-democratic character, and it is no pure co-incidence that those movements are almost invariably led by forces of communist origins. In those cases our active support must go further and be developed into a stable alliance, if possible into a coordination of initiatives with the perspective of an international united front. That doesn’t mean an uncritical unity with this or that party and its policy. We were completely in solidarity with the liberation movements, but we expressed our disdain when they subordinated their struggle to negotiations with the enemy and concluded “peace agreements” that lead to fatal failures. We unconditionally defend the countries that have shed the yoke of imperialism. That doesn’t mean that we won’t voice our reservations when their policies are detrimental for the international or local anti-imperialist struggles.
6. The questions of national self-determination, war and peace have special importance and a new physiognomy. Not all struggles for national self-determination are progressive and not all should be supported. Imperialism has learnt its lesson and often supports and arms secessionist forces to defend its own geo-strategic, economic or military interests (cf. NATO policies on the Balkans). In general we can say that we only support those national liberation struggles that are in fact anti-imperialist. The fact that there has not been a third World War doesn’t mean that the world has been pacified. In earlier times between one war and the next there could be quite a long pause, but today we find ourselves in a permanent and global state of war, even if imperialism can still manage to keep it from it’s territory (although this ability is slowly decreasing). Just regard Europe and the Mediterranean: A war has been going on since 1991 on the Balkans; there is war in Algeria and on the territory of the Sahara people; there is war in Palestine, in Iraq and in the Middle East; there is war in Turkey. A bit further to the east, we can see war in Afghanistan and a latent war between Pakistan and India. A bit to the south, in Africa, there is war all over between “nations”, states and so-called ethnic groups. In South America, the war in Columbia has been the longest civil war since Vietnam, while reactionary forces are trying by any means to topple the Chávez government and threaten the insurgent masses of Argentina.
This fragmentation does not allow for a unified position. In general, we have to take a defeatist position in inter-bourgeois wars and conflicts, but we have to be ready, to take sides if a concrete analysis of a concrete situation shows that imperialism (our main enemy) has taken one side, and how it’s puppets are acting. Concerning conflicts between imperialist powers for the partitioning of the world (inter-imperialist wars), we are for revolutionary defeatism! The lesser evil is the defeat of the own imperialism. No support for patriotic imperialism, no matter of what race it is! Transform imperialist war into war for social liberation!
7. As we are awaiting for a new upswing and a continuation of class struggle in the west, for a re-emerging proletarian movement in the heart of bourgeois Europe as a motive force of a new anti-capitalist bloc, anti-imperialist solidarity and international mobilisation (as proved by twenty years of struggle for Nicaragua, Iraq, Mexico, Kurdistan, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Palestine) have decisive relevance.
The anti-globalisation movement that had started in Seattle – even though it seems to be limited to pacifist and philanthropist ideas, is a clear sign for a renewed conflict in Europe. Not only do we actively take part in this movement, we have to play a positive role in it to overcome it’s civilistic minimalism and to become a true anti-imperialist movement. We therefore need a policy of criticism and unity: criticism of their ideas of humanitarianism, their policy across class boundaries and towards the (new) media, their leading groups that are getting closer and closer to Social Democracy. We also criticise those who worship guerrilla as a fetish, who want to emulate the armed struggles of the oppressed countries and to take the path that was shown to be wrong during the 60s and 70s. Conflict and consensus must walk hand in hand. When the most militant sectors would start an offensive while they are isolated, this would only promote their destruction.
The strategic centres of economic, political, military and financial power of the imperialist system are located in the west. The task of the anti-imperialists and internationalists is not limited to creating solidarity with the anti-imperialist struggles in the periphery of the empire, but to actively support them by being a linking bridge, to help those struggles to penetrate the heart of the imperialist system. This cannot be separated from the necessity to stand up against the liberalist onslaught against the proletariat and against the authoritarian armament of the west, where under the pretext of “combating terrorism”, basic democratic rights are trampled upon and chauvinist, racist and militarist tendencies are growing. This reactionary course could not exist if what Lenin called social imperialism would not exist, i. e. the tendency of the working class movement in the west to be integrated into the system as a complimentary force into imperialist policy. The grand streams of migration from the south and the east into the imperialist countries could be in the middle or long term a very positive element for the anti-capitalist forces. A new multi-national proletariat is slowly emerging and that could – although not automatically – become a cohesive element for a new antagonistic social bloc and finally a flame of oxygen to weld together class struggles in the periphery and the in the imperialist centres.
