------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 12, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
A RESPONSE TO ANTI-COMMUNIST CARICATURES: WHERE WORKERS WORLD STANDS ON IMPERIALISM By Deirdre Griswold What are the issues that define the various political tendencies on the left today? Probably the most crucial for the current struggle of the workers in the developed capitalist countries is an understanding of imperialism and how to fight it. This issue subsumes not only the question of the attitude to take on imperialist wars, like the war on Iraq, but also how to combat racism in all its forms--a task that is absolutely essential if the working class is to win unity in its struggle against the huge predatory corporations and banks. This question has long antecedents. The first document of the communist movement--the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels--called for a new social order, but it differed from earlier utopian socialist visions of an ideal society. Instead of trying to win over the enlightened elements of the more privileged classes to construct a new, more humane society, Marx and Engels argued that it was the struggle of the working class to protect its own class interests that would be the dynamo of social revolution. This class, because of its high degree of concentration, organization and skill, and the fact that it is not a propertied class, was the only one positioned to take over the reins of political power in order to reorganize economic life. But not just to become a new ruling class, like the bourgeoisie after it won its struggle against the feudal lords. The aim of a workers' revolution would be to abolish exploitation and class oppression. In other words, here was a class whose historic task was to take the power and build a new socialist economic order that would eventually abolish class distinctions. That document was written more than a century and a half ago. Capitalism had only recently emerged in Europe as the dominant social system after centuries of feudal stagnation. A revolutionary fervor gripped not only the workers but other social classes as well, as they battled the autocratic political structures of the old order. After an age in which church dogma had governed every area of thought, down to the smallest question--like how many teeth were in a horse's mouth--the new atmosphere of free thought led to amazing advances in science and technology. It all promised a brilliant future for humankind, if only the newly created wealth could be shared equitably. The Communist Manifesto ended with the stirring dictum: "Working men of all countries unite!" And indeed, by the end of the 19th century, tremendous workers' organizations had been built on the European continent that won significant improvements in the lives of the workers and exerted great pressure on the bourgeois parties and governments. In other words, much unity was achieved in the working class, as it was then defined. The phrase "working men" shows, however, that few women were considered a socially active part of the class, although their arduous work in the home was absolutely essential to its existence and replication. The limitations of the 19th-century view of the working class and the struggle for world socialism were made even more obvious in 1914. The working class organizations of Europe, including most of the Social Democratic parties, which claimed to uphold the mantle of Marxism, fell in line behind their capitalist governments and ratified what was to become the First World War. In that war of nationalistic fervor, millions of workers were ordered into battle by their class enemies. The result was a slaughter of unprecedented proportions. And it set the stage for nearly a century of imperialist wars in which the only real winner has been the class of millionaires and billionaires. This colossal setback for the working class movement was not just a subjective failure of leadership. It didn't just fall out of the blue. It was the gory proof that capitalism had reached a new stage. That war was the ultimate expression of capitalism's transformation from its competitive to its monopoly stage. The concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands had accelerated with industrialization, but it reached a qualitatively new level with the rise of the huge commercial banks and other financial institutions. This great collection of wealth couldn't just sit idle. It had to be used in the exploitation of labor so new wealth would be created for its owners. But the home markets were saturated; economic contractions known as "panics" were demonstrating that at regular intervals. Capital was increasingly drawn to invest in the oppressed colonies, where labor and resources were cheap and super-profits were virtually guaranteed. That pitted each colonial power in Europe against the others in cutthroat competition that laid the basis for the war. Soon the United States joined in the war for spoils. Of all the Marxists of that period, the one who best understood the new relationship of class forces in the world was V.I. Lenin, a leader of the Russian Social Democratic Party. His work on "Imperialism--the Highest Stage of Capitalism" showed in detail how the quantitative growth of monopoly finance capital had led directly to the big powers' carving up the world for super-exploitation. A few gigantic banks in Europe and the United States had a tight grip on the social surplus created by hundreds of millions of workers. Lenin published his book on imperialism in 1916, during the world war. He had already acted on it, however. He was one of a handful of European socialist leaders who had opposed the war from the beginning, calling it an imperialist slaughter to re-carve the world for super-exploitation. He called on the workers' organizations to counter the reactionary nationalism of the capitalist governments with revolutionary international class solidarity and refuse to kill their fellow workers in other countries. In Russia, his wing of the Social Democratic movement, known as the Bolsheviks, organized resistance to the war and called for the revolutionary defeat of their own ruling class--which they were able to accomplish in 1917. It was Lenin who amended the communist slogan to "Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite." This was not mere words but was based upon a worldview of the class struggle that saw the fate of the workers in the imperialist countries as inextricably linked to that of the oppressed nations under the heel of colonial--and today neo-colonial-- oppression. Today's anti-worker offensive in the U.S. demonstrates the continuing truth of this thesis. The super-oppression of workers in the Third World, just like the systematic racist down-pressing of African Americans, Latinos and Native people at home, becomes a club used by the bosses against the standard of living won through labor's struggles. Leninism came to be synonymous with international solidarity--not only among the organized workers in the developed imperialist countries, but with the national liberation movements for independence and sovereignty. These movements reached a high point after World War II, when anti- colonial revolutions rocked Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In China, Korea and Vietnam, the leaders of the anti-colonial struggle were communists who led the masses to victory with a program that combined the goal of national liberation with the overthrow of the old class order and the building of socialism. These revolutions, however, took place when there was relative prosperity and conservatism in the imperialist countries; capitalism was rebuilding after the Great Depression and then the massive destruction of the war. The communist movement was on the defensive in the United States particularly. The needed solidarity between the national liberation struggles and the working class in the imperialist countries was minimal, at best. All this set the stage for an unremitting effort by the CIA, the Pentagon and other imperialist agencies to undermine the workers' movement internationally along with the states building socialism and the newly liberated nations of the Third World. But today we are in a new era, when U.S. imperialism, now the sole super- power, has become hated everywhere because of its ruthless efforts to rule the planet. At the same time, the workers in all the imperialist countries are struggling to survive against a vicious anti-worker offensive. The imperialist metropolises have become more multi-national, with large-scale immigration from the oppressed countries, and it becomes clearer every day that super-exploitation in any part of the world drags down the workers everywhere. Under these circumstances, the prospects for international class solidarity are once again on the rise. Here in the United States, Workers World Party, an independent Marxist party that has been consistent in its active opposition to imperialist war and aggression, has been roundly criticized in the recent period by elements of the capitalist media and some liberal publications. They seem astounded that the party refuses to put an equal sign between the violence of oppressor and oppressed, whether in Iraq, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Palestine, Puerto Rico or anywhere else that resists U.S. domination. As happens so often in bourgeois journalism, they have created a caricature of WWP, which they then go on to attack. In a style seemingly inspired by George W. Bush's lumping together of such diverse countries as Iraq, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as an "axis of evil," these writers accuse WWP of everything from being "Stalinists" to "simplistic apologists" for Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Fortunately, these attacks have spurred interest in WWP and its political analyses over the years, which can readily be found on the Web site www.workers.org. In such a counter-revolutionary country as the U.S., where the government has spent literally trillions of dollars taken from workers' taxes over the last half century to shore up monopoly capitalism, such attacks are no surprise. WWP is mindful of the constant propaganda from the ruling class here aimed at undermining international solidarity. Whether it's films or television or the slant of the news, a chauvinist arrogance, hatred and fear of countries that resist imperialist dictates is inculcated daily. This not only facilitates the global spread of low-wage sweatshops and the subsequent high rate of profit for investors in so-called "emerging markets," but it also dehumanizes the people and their leaders in countries that dare defy the rules set by the imperialists. How much easier for the Pentagon to impose an order satisfactory to Exxon-Mobil, Citibank or The Gap when the people and leaders of a country have been reduced to demons in the minds of the population here. Workers World refuses to participate in or condone the demeaning and insulting attacks on Third World leaders that fill the pages of imperialist newspapers and journals. It will continue to spotlight the source of today's bloody conflicts around the world: the system of imperialism and the billionaire capitalist ruling class that has nothing to offer the world but a widening gap between rich and poor and an uncontrollable boom-bust cycle. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
