Contribution to the International Communist Seminar
‘Economic Crises and Possibility of a Major World Crisis’
Brussels, 2-4 May 2002

www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

Italy
Asamblea Nazionale Anticapitalista

Terrorism": A Weapon Systematically Used By Imperialism…

The weapon systematically used by Imperialism in order to characterise the present world situation, many people, not only among the imperialist propaganda servants, often refer to a break-up image, before and after , with regards to the fateful 11th September 2001. As far as our opinion is concerned not withstanding the undoubting changes that occurred due to the outrages to the symbols of the Imperialist power in Washington D.C and New York, a profound analysis is necessary, before sentencing that what happened has caused a break up, a virulent and extraordinary trends acceleration in the so called Imperialist globalisation process. This difference is not superfluous if we think who would benefit from creating and keeping a boarder -line situation. This situation allows the Imperialist authority , the only presumed, to use the full power to act freely in the whole political and social fields of life in order to face the dangers, disorder and society decaying.
According to the economical point of view, the imperialist propaganda has constantly laid the stress on the collapsing of the world capitalistic economy in America , USA and Europe, determined essentially by the catastrophic consequences of the Washington and New York outrages. We are obviously dealing with a microscopic lie e outrages might have caused a psychological negative effect on air lines and tourism, while the imperialist stock exchanges had a temporary counter blow, nothing more.
The act of 11th September has not been a sudden act, but has its roots in the plagues of a structurally ill and decaying organism caused by the discrepancies developed time ago. The US economy and consequently the world economy ,started its break down long time before the September attacks , in spite of the lies and hypocrite statements by different economic and financial imperialist institutions. The cause is a cyclic phenomenon, unavoidable in the imperialist exploitation system, whose
Hiding this reality and stating the role of contingent element, extraneous to the system, is aimed to force world wide proletarians, first and foremost the American ones, to face alone with all the sacrifices and abuses addressed to them, suppose by a "patriotic duty " to fight the absolute evil persisting against manhood. Anyway, if the "patriotic call to arms" will not work, the blackmailing climate will make to world-wide proletarians much more difficult the discover of the real causes and, overall, the mobilisation against the real responsible of the accelerated and enduring deterioration of their life and work conditions. If we concentrate on the military-political aspects of the question, determined by the imperialist system after 11th , the continuity becomes more evident. Both in the imperialist attack to Yugoslavia and in the Golf war, we find the same terrorist arguments used by the imperialist coalition to build and justify the criminal genocide of the Afghani people. The trend is building an international police corp.
Authorised to use "legal violence" against who ever oppose or interpose to imperialist plans. Their purpose is to legitimate the concept of "fair war" or "Holy war" to have the right to chastise everywhere their opponents. Even in its shape, the evolution started with the Gulf war is evident. We are now dealing with a war without risks and casualties for the strong imperialists, terror wars against civilians(who suffer more losses than the armed forces).
Unable to resist to such high technological wars or to an invisible and far enemy .It is a progression of terrorist wars, in the pure meaning of this word which has its historical basis in the imperialist crime committed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We are not saying that the two imperialist world wars were different in their essence, but was a sort of rules and limits posing that guided the belligerents to avoid absolute hostility and the deep criminality of the enemy. Nowadays we must start from a legitimate imperialist authority ,guided by the USA, holding the absolute monopoly of power to be exercised in the whole world. War is a necessary option in the deep crisis phase of imperialist system.
The "new " war, that the imperialists could build and display will not end with a single battle or a single front. This kind of operations will not help in the crisis smash, even temporarily since 11th sep., general dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and other enterprises stakes of the military industrial complex have been increasing their stock value. The enormous military fund approved by the Bush administration for the year 2003 (379 billion dollars) is already reactivating the economy of this imperialist power. Nevertheless these are unproductive costs for an economy that renounces to increase, which cannot have, strategically a positive impact on the imperialist global economy.
The aim is the development of an enduring and global operation which includes world measures economical, social, political , legal, diplomatic and obviously ideological order to safeguard and consolidate the world wide domination of the imperial power, according to hegemonic plans, already declared, in order to justify ideologically this plan, he Yankee imperialist power recover the argument of the war against terrorism. It is not only since 11th Sep. that the various American administrations have been filling out lists of people, political groups, parties and even countries defined "terrorist" to ordain embargoes, to block credits, to lay diplomatic sieges, to justify military assaults or in one word to erase everyone that could be considered a menace to other dominion. The TV.
Statement by "emperor" George W. Bush on the 20th Sep., its blackmailing warning "with us or with terrorist", is addressed to the whole world and it is hard not to consider it seriously, being based on the most powerful and sophisticated arsenal in the world. The ghost of "terrorism culprits" spreads widely and the sword of Damocles is hanging over manhood majority, subjectively opposing or objectively excluded by the imperialist system maintenance plans . The materialist world conception stated that ideas, assumed by a great mass, will turn into an irresistible strength, a material strength.
According to the imperialists, the ideological struggle for the conquest of masses is based upon terror and menace, usually effective as it is carried on by the part holding the monopoly of might, and upon manipulation built through the monopolistic mass-media control.
The ideological structure is essentially based upon appropriation and the propaganda of independent ideological and political instruments. This is our opinion, in every situation and circumstances, it is possible and necessary to develop a class analysis, a critical consideration of the "unique thought" that the dominant class is trying to impose. If imperialism today shows its real face without any reticences ,this means that imperialism counts on the fact that no critical voice now has the strength to exploit the evident duplicity and the contradictions of the system itself .
That is why in these days of inquisition and witch haunting, we need to start focusing on this concept, "terrorism", used in favourite of peace in the present imperialist assault. We must fight concepts simplification, the loss of their context in space and time; all characteristics of the maccarthist and manichaean offensive we are facing.

Violence as support of the exploitation of man upon man

First of all, if we must follow a scientific analysis method without entering the present generic definitions labyrinth, we will lay the stress a general point of view, searching the origins of this historical phenomenon know as "violence", with terrorist violence considered as a particular method, in certain cases.
The imperialist propaganda consider it as the absolute evil, the first act of force contained in the original sin and that has influenced the history of people kind. Men are divided in two categories, human beings and bestial beings, goodness and evil, sheep and wolves. According to Christian religion, only a universal judge may take charge of this classification, even if, in different historical times, lots of people took charge of it on the earth.
Actually, the use of the strength, as main element of social relationship, is linked to the appearance of social classes and class warfare. It developed in relationship with private property and exploitation of people's work. As a matter of fait it was impossible to persuade the first slaves to work for the master by peaceful means. It would be impossible to make the majority of people work for the advantage of a minority, without a permanent coercive system. Anyway the use of strength and weapons would not have been enough, without the economical submission of the slave to this master.
The slave had been dispossessed of his means of subsistence. From the very beginning violence gave away for the exploitation of men, even thought it was not the original cause. All social organisations needed violence to guarantee themselves and the State an organised form of violence. At that time there was still no division in social classes - the first time of this division was that of slaves and masters - there was no need of a system to submit people trough violence. This system is what we call STATE.
The ruling classes have always tried to hide the real nature of the system, under religious, philosophical matters. This system, this elite which rules the world, will always need and use violence and coercion tools can change: from primitive weapons to the modern ones, conquers of modern technology. Each age has its own weapon. Now, according to the new ideology, or let us say mythology, of dominant middle-class, as far as the "globalisation" is concerned, all problems are linked to the idea of STATE, which we considered, is the main point in the struggle among classes, are over. The national states would like to show themselves as a memory of the past, cancelled by the free flood of multilateral capital.
Without going back to our consideration about the "globalisation", which cannot be considered as a new post-imperialistic stage, but as the latest world expansion of the capital started which the imperialistic stage, we would like to analyse the modern distinctive features of the Capitalistic State.
There is no doubt that the historical form of STATE-NATION is now having a crisis, underlined by the change of some of its functions. There is no national government, or national State, in the world, which has enough resources to get itself apart from world economy, dominated by the flood of financial capital in the markets.
Here is the contradiction; the states and their governments permitted, trough many measures taken, and straightened the action of international capitalism.
On one side the internationalisation of economy cause the crisis of the State-Nation and denies it; on the other side neither the State-Nation the internationalisation of economic life can be cancelled; they just can feed their crisis are another, at least as long as the world economy is ruled by a capitalistic system.
The form of State-Nation is historically connected to the production relations of capitalism and will only disappear which the abolition of these relations. In the meantime the contradiction between world nature of modern production and State-Nation, as well as the division between oppressed and oppressive nations, is getting deeper and deeper and causing explosions which is more destructive.
This State-Nation, which should be over, is, at the same time, absolutely necessary to protect the interest of national capital in the international markets, and, mainly, to protect themselves against the "domestic enemy", that is to say the popular masses impoverished by the parasitism of international financial oligarchy.
The State is the mean to establish the rules of financial markets, privatisation, job flexibility and dismissals. Some of the functions, the State-Nation are becoming weaker as they are submitted to over- national centres of power. But for some others it is getting stronger , in particular in its role in controlling and oppressing the masses.
To resume, despite the "end of ideology" declared by the imperialistic mythologies, the analysis of society confirms the validity and modernity of Marxist theory, which states that the real nature and purpose of state is to maintain the power of the dominant class. The state and the problem of class power cannot be solved without the abolition of the historical and material conditions. From which they arose and which still support them.

"State Terrorism"

The state violence is the basis of man violence. During the feudal and slavery age, the purpose was to submit the majority of society to laws and rules aimed the same result: To preserve land lords' power on farmers, slaves and servants . In the capitalist age, they do not refer anymore to the divine nature of the state, but to its supposed impartiality.
With the changes occurred in the production relations and the abolition of the unproductive slavery , "citizens" seem to be equal to the law, regardless whether they own the means of production, lands and the resources of the developed industrial society, or whether just own their working capability. The cheat is evident: There will never be equality as long as there is exploitation of other workers. This is the reason why the capitalistic and imperialistic state increases the special apparatus. It is to deter and suppress every menace to the system. In the imperialist age , and in particular in the last 10 years after the European socialist system fell to pieces, what has been built, is a repressive world wide system based on a net of spying ( what about the famous "echelon" ?) and related with the growth of expenses for special prisons, special police groups and special corps. In the same time the repressive and prevention state apparatus acquired hidden methods, relations, structures and organism which exercised repressive violence together with the legal violence of the democratic middle-class system, legitimated by the system itself. The history of any capitalistic country is plenty of this secret operations carried on by this parallel structures, such as assassinations, kidnapping, tortured, sabotage, slaughters, economic and political countries' destabilisation, in the world: STATE TERRORISM.
The limits and differences between "legal" and "hidden" violence are not easy to find. Sometimes the state itself discloses the secret of its "dirty deeds"; usually scapegoating "diverted state secret services", diverted from official violence, as happened in our country (Italy).
The concept of "terrorism" itself is hard to be circunstanced, as every class in every different historical era coins its own definition of this phenomenon. For instance, how cannot we consider "terroristic" the death of 500,000 children in Iraq caused by the U.S. determined lack of medicines? Isn't "terrorism" the pharmaceutical corporations denial for a free use in Africa of the anti-AIDS medicines, which caused thousand or millions of deaths among men, women and children? Isn't "terrorism" the media crusade that followed the collapsing of the Twin Tower, which stir up hate, vengeance, xenophobia, irrationality, terror…an infinite shelling of lies aimed to terrorise mankind?
But let us stress again the "usual" meaning of terrorism, of which we find many example. So many were such cases when the former U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1976, signed a decree, then ratified by Carter and Reagan, which prevented U.S. spies - CIA & Co. - from murdering people abroad.
This doesn't mean that the decree was attended, but the imperialist haughtiness didn't need to hide its practice. Now this prohibition has fallen apart: special U.S. forces - Delta Force, SEAL, CIA, FBI - togheter with their imperialist ally, the British SAS, may do everything to fight the afghani enemy and all their enemies, wherever they are. The U.S. services stated clearly that they will spread fake information and hide the real ones, as we are dealing with a dirty war to be fought with any mean necessary. As, with all means, overall using terrorist actions, they have always fought their wars against whoever opposes or resists to their imperial dominion. The 11th September itself was the anniversary of the coup d'etat in Chile against the legal government of Salvador Allende. A coup directed by the U.S. administration, whose servants were Pinochet and military pack and which caused thousands of execution and desaparecidos and a huge social, political and human cost to the people of Chile, during 15 years of dictatorship.
The well know "Plan Condor", actioned by CIA to face the growing revolutionary movement in Latin America, has to be translated into terrorist actions in Argentina, Uruguay , Paraguay ,etc. During the so called cold war -1848-1989, the USA launched a crusades against communism that turned into a slaughter war causing thousands of victims. Let us think of the liquidation of the Iranian communists, to the 200.000 murdered in Guatemala, to the one million Indonesian communists killed, the most horrible pages of the written history of American imperialism of the last decades, not to forget the horrors of the Vietnam war(1862-1975).Then we are dealing with a struggle against evil and for the US administrations, it was not immoral to support terrorists. Through the CIA, the US has planed sabotages, outrages, murders and kidnappings. Tens of actions were planed against socialist Cuba, as the hateful outrage to the civil flight to Barbados(73 passengers were killed). The support to the counter revolutionary forces as in Escambray or in the invasion plan of Playa Giron and last but not least the hundreds assassination on plan of Fidel Castro, the same method was used in Nicaragua to support the "contras" in order to determine the collapsing of the revolutionary institutions( the Us was even condemned by the international court of Hague for the mining of the harbours).The same blind support granted to terrorist forces in Guatemala and El Salvador through weapons and millions of dollars or to the deaths squads in Honduras, the invasion of Panama in 1989 was presented as an international justice action. In Afghanistan supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the US created Islamic Brigades to fight the USSR and the local government (freedom fighters), feeding the future terrorist Osama Bin Laden. An unconditioned and shameful support is granted in the Middle East to the racist ,anti-Arab ,terrorist politics of the Zionist state. It is quite impossible to consider all the crimes occurred in Africa or where ever, the aim was to fight a liberation struggle, not only in the poor south of the world but even in the northern hemisphere . terrorism is not "the weapon of the poor" but a hidden action supported ,financed and developed by the state to safeguard its power and dominion .The state breeds both legal and illegal violence as they are originated by the coercive nature of its institutions. Some times the US violence is even self-harmful in order to manipulate particular events, when the Reichstag was burnt down by Gestapo agents , the communist opposition was blamed to create the emergency that let to Goering's extra ordinary powers attribution and the nazi-imperialist policy. Even the Japanese attack to Pearl harbour was known to president Roosevelt a few days before it took place:2400 victims were sacrificed in order to lead to the American people to the intervention mod against the axe. This is the method used in the case of the self started fire of the "Maine", in 1898 by the Cuban harbour of La Havana. This accident was the Trojan horse which was able to grant the US a primary role and a military intervention in Cuba in 1899. In the next decades, maybe hundreds of essays would explain what was behind the 11th September outrages. By now, it is clear that this allowed the achievement of several strategic targets, such as the annihilation of the Taliban regime and of Afghanistan, the reactivation of the military industrial complex ,the acknowledgement of American presence in Central Asia and last but not least, the absolute achievements of a world imperial hegemony in favour of the US. The imperialist power claims the right to use every weapon, includes those banned by the international treaties: Nuclear, chemical, bacteriological, thanks to the military technology monopoly ,the war is converted to a slaughter of meek people, unable to react with the same means. Finally, thanks to the ideological justification o the aggression, the imperialist right of an indiscriminate punishment was institutionalised , so that every one who dares to oppose the imperialist world order, will have to face black mail. The message is : Enduring terror for everyone who will not submit unconditionally to imperialist orders. Consequently we may consider if the use of violence is to be condemned generally, or if a legitimate violence exists, someone talks about "terrorist violence" every time a young Palestinian throws a stone against the Zionists occupants! Or when a young Italian defending himself from the police charges, throws back a fire-extinguisher that previously was thrown at him. The coercive state laws may even states that the bullet in the head which caused the death of Carlo Giuliani was a " legitimate answer", in a society divided into classes, the only legal violence is the one carried on by the dominant class through its coercive political apparatus, aimed to the safeguard of its dominion.

The revolutionary violence

Just as the violence of the State, used by the exploiting class to keep its class control, the violence of the oppressed class reveals itself, as one of the ways in which the conflict develops, the struggle between classes.
"History is filled with uninterrupted attempts of the oppressed classes in order to get rid of oppression. The history of slavery records wars lasting for several tens of years, whose goal was to get rid of slavery… Spartacus was one of the most remarkable of one of the most important slave insurrections… During several years, the Roman Empire, in spite of seeming to be almighty, totally based on the slavery regime, was shaken by the strikes of the immense slave insurrection, who armed and organized themselves under Spartacus' leadership, succeeding in building an enormous army… We find these civil wars in the whole history of class society." i
Bourgeoisie adopted largely the violence as a way of struggle, that became decisive to knock down the feudal regime and impose the capitalistic production system and the power of the bourgeois class. In order to make this historical step, that meant a most important progress in the history of mankind, the bourgeois revolutions were necessary to happen.
The United States, nowadays the hegemonic imperialistic power, were born with the 1776 revolution, that happened 3 years before the French revolution. None can deny, but somehow a lot of people look like forgetting, that both of the democratic revolutions, were far from "peaceful", on the opposite, adopted abundantly violence and terror against the ruling classes.
"The violence acts from a revolutionary point of view, precisely in critical, decisive moments, those of entering a new society…" ii
"Violence then has a well distinct role in history, a revolutionary one, as in the words of Marx, it has the role of midwife of the old society, who brings inside another one, of an instrument through which you win the social movement and those political forms that are fossilized and dead…" iii
Today the imperialistic bourgeoisie, which historically became a reactionary class and decaying, is trying desperately to delete history and science, by stating their "ends". We should have come to live, according to the imperialistic propaganda, in an unusual age characterized by the "end of revolutions". The imperialistic system, because of its actual undoubted world control, would be the last and eternal social system and the revolutions, as a consequence, considered unnecessary and utopian, as a way for the liberation and the emancipation of the oppressed classes and peoples.
From the point of view of the pure scientific theory, it would be extremely easy to contradict such a metaphysical absurdity, there are however some historical elements, which it stands on, that are worth to comment on. From one side, if such an imperialistic myth has strengthened again, it has been caused by the catastrophic crash of the socialist system in Europe, that has been capitalized by the imperialists, in theoretic terms, making it clash, in their omnipresent propaganda, with a kind of "historical proof" of the superiority of the capitalistic system, and in practical terms, having the possibility to set up in fact the overwhelming power of the imperialistic control. On the other side, however, the element that allowed, in the last two decades, this myth of the immutability of capitalism, has been the weakness of the revolutionary movement that, in every age, expresses the need and the will of liberation of the oppressed classes and peoples.
A weakness that confronts itself, as always happened in history, with the parallel rise of the reformist ideas and options, bringing a moderate message, promoting slight changes that make the system of exploitation and oppression more manageable. The reformist ideas existed in the slavery age, so as existed the non revolutionary bourgeoisie… they were always movements that developed, in the presence of well defined political conditions, equally as the revolutionary movement, we can say as a "by-product" of them, but the fundamental condition for their development, has always been the existence of well defined economic conditions.
In the capitalistic age, the period of the reforms, have clashed with the first and the second phase of the globalization of the capitalistic relationships (iv), before the First World War and after the Second World War. They were times of industrial expansion that didn't find an obstacle in the financial capital, but a great boost.
This expansion clashed, in its first phase, with the colonization of the "Third World" and, in the second phase, with a new colonization of it, in forms more adequate with the needs of the imperialistic expansion. Without this industrial expansion, combined with the plundering of the dependent countries, the conditions for giving those economical and social grants to the workers in the industrialized countries and, as a consequence, for the developing of reformist ideas.
Nowadays, the "belle époque" of capitalism seems rather to belong to the past. The prolonged expansion of the 30 years' economical boom has transformed itself into a unprecedented crisis of overproduction. The crisis has incited the exceeding capital to look for new directions, found essentially in the financial speculation on a planetary scale.
The umpteenth cycle of plundering the depending countries takes place by gathering the super-profits of the financial and parasitical sector, and decreasingly in the industrial sector, the one that could allow a policy of reformist grants. The crisis of over-accumulation is the cause of the organic unemployment, growing in the countries of the Imperialist Center, but, in the same time, it is impossible, more than unthinkable, a way back to neo-keynesism, as an imperialist economic strategy.
From this, the barbarian policies of neo-liberalism that promise only catastrophes for the proletarians of the North and the popular masses of the entire world, particularly in the countries of the periphery. The neo-liberalist strategy itself, however, shows its enormous limits and contradictions in the terms of its practicability and governability, as the hurricane that broke out in Asia in 1997 had already announced and the current argentine catastrophe confirms largely.
All this to say that there is no way out from the capitalistic crisis, by staying in the limits of the current production relations and that, in other terms, in the supposed age of the "end of revolutions", the ones the leading unique thinking would like to describe as utopian dreams of small groups of revolutionaries, in reality they enclose far more historical realism, than the demagogic proposals of gradual reforms of the current capitalist system.
In some historical moments, it's the reformists who are the "idealists"!
We have to remember that the revolutionaries of the modern age, the communists, that fights for overthrowing the capitalist system, abhor, as a principle, violence, as an instrument of the relations between men and fight, in the first place, the worst and more total of violence, that is the one that stands in the base of the capitalist system, that is the exploitation and the oppression of a man on another man.
Human life, in the communist idea, is a supreme good, incommensurable to any other form of "richness". The goal and the "dream" is that of participating in the necessary transit from pre-history to the history of mankind. From pre-history, made of violence and terror, to history, in which man, and not the profit, the satisfaction of its need and aspirations, be the center and the goal the entire society will go round, and the relations between the "new men" be of collaboration and mutual help.
The struggle of the proletarian class, that the communists lead, has a peculiar characteristic, that makes it different from all the previous ones. The proletariat, differently from what happened in the previous class struggles, does not fight in order to establish a new class control, but in order to eliminate every kind of class control. "The proletariat does not create a new form of possession, but keeps on transforming the possession created by the capitalistic economy, putting it in the hands of the entire society. It's because of this that it results in an illusion thinking that the proletariat will be able to reach, inside the current bourgeois society, the economical power; it can only take possession of the political power, and then suppress the capitalist possession". The matter of the State, of the conquest of political power, the most important subject in proletarian's fight for liberation, is what, historically, has pushed communists to face the problem of revolutionary violence. Until now, there has been no experience around the world, of leading class willing to give up its own privileges and to deliver its power in peaceful way.
Although communists would actually be the last to use violent means to make the power of imperialist bourgeoisie -based on entire humanity's exploitation- to fall, this choice " doesn't depend on us, but on our enemies".
In this context "those who think to have the possibility to lead society to socialism in peace, without a cataclysm, don't walk on a historical ground". 1
"Socialism oppose itself to violence exerted against nations. This is undoubtfull. But, socialism is in general opposed to violence exerted against men and, in spite of that, apart from the Christian anarchists and Tolstoj's followers, nobody else has derived from this that socialism oppose itself to revolutionary violence".
Antonio Gramsci, has articulated the greatest part of its innovative contributions to revolutionary theory, in the analysis of the imperialist countries' State and on the consequences of its characteristics in revolutionary strategy, evidencing the importance of consent, which becomes a indivisible element from the coercion, in order to maintain the class dominion. Referring to the bourgeois democracies, with extreme clarity he asserted that in calm periods "the army can remain locked up in the barracks (but that) the fundamental element of a class' power in a parliamentary system remains the coercion, even if culture can appear preponderant". Understanding this dialectic relation is fundamental, since, historically, when a revolutionary crisis starts to develop inside the structure of bourgeois power, the dominant element has moved necessarily "from ideology to violence. Coercion comes to be, at the same time, determining and dominant in a crisis, and army takes, unavoidably, the first place in the scene of class fight" in the perspective of the real foundation of the Socialism.
"Two important practical conclusions derive from here: the first, that revolutionary class, in order to realise its mission, must know how to use all the shapes and aspects, without the minimal exception, of social activity...; the second, that revolutionary class must be prepared to replace a shape with another quickly.
All should agree on the fact that would be foolish and even criminal the conduct of an army that is not prepared to dominate all the types of weapons, all the means and methods of fight that the enemy possesses or can possess. But this truth is still more applicable in politic rather than in military art. In politics, it is still more difficult to previously know which fight method will be applicable and favourable in such or others future circumstances.
If we do not dominate all the methods of fight, we can run the risk to suffer an enormous defeat - sometimes decisive - if some changes in the situation of the other classes, independent from our will, put on the agenda a shape of action in which we are particularly weak. If we dominate to all the fight shapes our victory will be sure, inasmuch as we represent the interests of the really advanced and revolutionary class, even if the circumstances prevent us to use the most dangerous weapon against the enemy, the one capable to give him mortal blows with the greatest rapidity... ".
This is one of the several occasions when the great leader of the first victorious proletarian Revolution, theorize the revolutionary violence as one of the fight shape, among the varied shapes which the proletarian fight assumes, dialectically to the circumstances. "War is the continuation of politics with other means" and in this logic, the leaders of the victorious revolutionary strategies, moved, firstly covering and excluding other ways, with the aim to demonstrate clearly that violence was not a road chosen from the revolutionary, but set up by the enemy.
Only when wide parts of the oppressed class assume the conscience that revolutionary aims are not only necessary, but also possible to achieve, they will be incorporated to revolutionary fight, and in this course the role of the revolutionary vanguard is to orient and to direct the masses, and not to confuse it, never, with a subjectivist substitution of the oppressed class' historical role.
"One of the most serious and dangerous mistake of the communists (as of all revolutionaries...) is to imagine that revolution can be given as a result of the sole revolutionary effort. On the contrary, to have a serious revolutionary job to succeed, it is necessary to understand and to apply in practice the concept that the revolutionaries are able only to carry out a vanguard role, on behalf of the really vital and vanguard class".
Revolutionary violence, violence which aims to the destruction of the old exploitation and oppression relations, the instrument that guarantees and defends the foundation and the development of the new social relations, can only be the expression of the conscience and will of the revolutionary subject, i.e. of the class, the oppressed popular masses.
In other words, violence is revolutionary when it is supported, assumed and practised, in organised shape, by wide masses.
"Only with the vanguard, victory is impossible. Launching the vanguard, alone, toward the decisive battle, when the whole class, when the big masses have not still adopted a position of direct support to this vanguard, or, at least, of benevolent neutrality toward it, demonstrating that they are incapable, in absolute, to support the enemy, it would be not only a stupidity, but also a crime. In order to make the entire class, the big masses of workers and the oppressed peoples succeed in occupying this position, propaganda and agitation alone are insufficient. It is necessary, to achieve this aim, the masses' political experience".
On these general lines the different revolutionary strategies have been processed and applied victoriously during the secular fight of the oppressed classes against the capitalist system, were they based essentially on the uprising in the city centres, or in the strategy of the guerrilla war. In both cases "actions of vanguard" are contemplated, which, dialectically to the concrete conditions, work essentially as incentive ("starter ", said the Commandant Che Guevara) for the incorporation of the masses in the fight, in addition to guarantee the defence and the sustenance of the organisation. Revolutionary violence cannot be neither free, neither indiscriminate.
As every revolutionary act, it must be inspired by politics, as far as from historical reason. This means that it cannot end in itself, but it must keep in the right value the effects that it produces, both in the opposing field that in its proper field. If it takes to forces dispersion, to a weakening of the combative moral of the enemy, leading in parallel with opposite effects inside the revolutionary forces.
At the same time, it cannot escape from a ethics dimension, inasmuch as this ethics-political binomial is indivisible and unavoidable to every revolutionary act. The violent action directed to provoke terror, used as systematic method of fight involving innocent persons (not implied in the fight), cannot be considered a revolutionary action. The brutality of an indiscriminate logic is counter-productive, can be easily instrumentalised by the enemy and removes the sympathy of the masses from the cause that it expects to defend.

Imperialism's mask has fallen

Using the pretext of 11-9 events, imperialist propaganda has strengthened, with an offensive without precedents, the ideological fight against revolutionary and progressive forces of all the world, centering it on the concept of "terrorism".
Thanks to the absolute monopoly on the powerful mass media (and adding to this the military factor), the forces of the imperialist terror succeed to obtain the control on the dictionary to world-wide level, to impose concepts and contents, to obligate to enunciate fictitious problems, created and manipulated by it, and, most of all, to deal them exclusively with categories they impose.
We cannot assist passively, or worse contribute, to the fact that, using the anathema of "terrorism", they criminalise and proceed to "a legalised" aggression, in every side of the world, of the liberation's fights of peoples oppressed by the imperialist domination, as it is happening with impunity in Colombia, in the Philippines... and this when even (!) in the United Nations' Declarations it is stead the peoples' right to fight for their independence.
Silence is also criminal not only in front of the scientifically planned slaughter of the Palestinian people by the terrorist government of Sharon, but also in front of the infinite and unprecedent arrogance of imperialist manipulation that uses the term "terrorism" in order to define the heroic resistance of the Palestinian combatants. In comparison with this imperialist crime, that the zionist State is perpetrating with no punishment in Palestine and that has nothing to envy to the horrors of the nazi occupation, there is no manipulation that can tear up to the Palestinian people and its vanguard the inalienable right to resist, with every mean, to the systematic murder of the leaders, to the brutal pillage, to the economic, social and physical annihilation of the population, in one word, to the planned extermination by the zionist occupation.
It is not acceptable and it is counter-productive that the revolutionary forces, the progressives, the social movements of the entire world continue to endure the offensive, referring - when they do it - to terrorism, to violence, only in general, metaphysicians terms, without distinguish the conditions that differentiate the reactionary violence from the revolutionary violence. This defensive attitude "simply means, to trick oneself and to trick others". It is true that, even only from the ideological struggle's point of view , all seems to send back to the image of the fight between David and Golia. But, watching well, in the wall that continues to raise in front of our eyes, multiple fissures appear.
From where does it come such imperialist aggressivity?
"It is that they begin to understand that the world becomes more and more unmanageable, that it just cannot be only supported with the magic of their advertisement, that they need force, more aeroplane, more aircraft carriers and more and more sophisticated, that they must declare a world war and threaten 80 countries... (because) they fear the rebellion of the people, fear the conscience and opinion movements that have fought great battles in places become memorable and which nearly forbid to them to meet... It is for these reasons that the promoters of this politics react with wrath and overbearingness, caressing the idea to use a powerful force, apparently unbeatable, in order to seed the panic and the terror amongst all the peoples of the earth ". The other side of the medal, for imperialist politics, is that in these circumstances, they are forced to reveal with greater and greater clarity theirs aims and their fight's methods, in spite of the fact they are aware that their dominion on the entire world cannot only rest on the supremacy of the force.
From here is derived the interest and the powerful resources they invest in the ideological struggle. Because they know that in determined crisis' conditions, in moments of great agitation, it is possible to speed up masses political conscientisation, when the real interests that move the dominant class appear with evidence, when to imperialism, as it happened now... the mask falls down!

Assemblea Nazionale Anticapitalista
Comitato per la Pace e Solidarietà tra i Popoli
Italy 2002

Note:
- V. I. Lenin "Sullo Stato"
- Federico Engels Anti-Duhring Scritti preparatori. Teoria della violenza. IV Conclusione
- Ibidem, parte seconda, economia politica. ATTENZIONE VERIFICARE LA NOTA IN ITALIANO Sta nell'ultima pagina prima del capitolo V sulla Teoria del Valore.
- su questo tema confronta articolo del FUTURO "Contro la globalizzazione o contro l'imperialismo?"
- Non è superfluo sottolineare che sarebbe un grave errore confondere le condizioni obiettive che si sviluppano dei momenti di crisi del sistema capitalista, con le situazioni rivoluzionarie, per lo sviluppo delle quali è indispensabile il fattore soggettivo, cioè lo sviluppo della coscienza, della mobilitazione e dell'organizzazione delle masse in termini rivoluzionari.
- Rosa Luxemburg. Discorso sulla liquidazione della società capitalista. Congresso del Partito Socialdemocratico di Germania (9-14 ottobre 1899)
- Rosa Luxemburg. Ibidem
- V.I.Lenin "La Rivoluzione Proletaria e il rinnegato Kautsky".
- Che cos'è l'Internazionalismo.
- Antonio Gramsci "note sul Macchiavelli"
- V.I. Lenin "L'estremismo, malattia infantile del comunismo" Alcune conclusioni.
- V.I.Lenin "Sul significato del materialismo militante"
- V.I.Lenin "L'estremismo, malattia infantile del comunismo" Alcune conclusioni.
- Su questo tema cfr. "Una strategia rivoluzionaria supera i vari …ismi" IL FUTURO
- V.I.Lenin "La Rivoluzione Proletaria e il rinnegato Kautsky"
- Fidel Castro "Più presto che tardi, il mondo cambierà" Granma 22 febbraio 2002