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Argentina PCR
Consequences of the attack to Iraq in the international situation capitalism in its imperialist phase leads to an unprecedented crisis
When the coalition headed by the U.S. started its invasion of Iraq without the UN’s support, the decision of the North American monopolies to escape forward the ghost of recession, the financial bubble crash effects and the increasing deficit was strongly expressed. In one word, to escape from the crisis.
Since July 1997, when it emerged in South-East Asia, the world was shocked by the economic crisis. In October this year it rebounded upon other Asian countries. The crisis emerged in Japan. In August 1998 Wall Street collapsed and a few days afterwards there was the Moscow crash. The European and American stock exchanges swayed on the edge of disaster, but managed to escape.
In January 1999 the Brazilian real collapsed and in a few days Brazil lost half its reserves.
The whole MERCOSUR collapsed and Menem’s economic policy in Argentina was mortally wounded.
The Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR)’s statement from December 1997 proved to be correct: "The explosion of the property and stock exchange bubble in South-East Asian countries, which has passed on instability and uncertainty at international level, foretells a LONG crisis in the process of capitalist accumulation at world level", and in January 1998 "the crisis is international, is deep, will be long and will have ‘domino’ effect."
This characterization opposed a decade of theories and forecasts from the right majority and from the revisionists who affirmed first, that the crisis was only an "invention" of the imperialists to oppress the emerging countries and then, that the crisis was only a contingency and could even "finish with a refreshing pause."
In fact, it was a typical relative overproduction crisis, which affected the capitalist economy as a whole and the North American one in the first place. It was the expression of the profound contradictions which eroded the foundations of this capitalism in its imperialist phase, which was meant to appear as healthy, strong and in expansion, living a rejuvenating phase thanks to the so called "globalization". It was the demonstration of the fact that, as Marxism-Leninism shows, the principal trait of imperialism continues to be "parasitic capitalism, or capitalism in decomposition state" (Lenin, "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism").
The crisis leads to war
North American capitalism only got out of the crisis in 1929 with the II World War, and all its later blooming was linked to war. War expenses transformed it in the world gendarme of capitalism. Only in the Vietnam War more than 500,000 million dollars were invested, which produced a huge fiscal deficit and, in the long run, led them to the collapse of the gold support for the dollar and the international economic agreements which followed the II World War.
In the absence of war, American monopolist capitalism tended to stagnation, monopolist concentration worsened and there was an ever increasing speculation.
The growth of the speculative trait of financial capital is monstrous. "Less than 2% of the world volume of currency interchange is due to foreign trade, while the 98% left stems from speculations of all kind" (Amayta Sen, Economy Nobel Prize, 1998).
Although American and western monopolist capitalism have had a decade of expansion, after the capitalist restoration in Russia in 1957 and in China in 1978 and the USSR collapse, its gross product growth is much lower than in previous periods. The profit rate of the monopolies is going down. Due to the profitability decrease of their investments in production, monopolies turn to speculation: financial, in currency, in mortgages, in futures. They have converted the world’s economy into a giant roulette.
In order to unload their crisis over the other countries of the world, the U.S. and other powers pro-war policy has become more pronounced.
The criminal aggression of the NATO to Yugoslavia, headed by American imperialism, produced an abrupt shift in the international situation. The aggression was performed without using (as in the Gulf War) the United Nations mask, showing that the imperialist powers, the U.S. in the first place, intended to intervene in any place on earth to defend and increase their imperialist interests.
On the other side, the Russian invasion of Chechenya, in a large scale, demonstrated once again that a fundamental part of the inter-imperialist struggle for the control of the influence areas revolves around oil control.
This tendency was reinforced by the North American invasion of Afghanistan, using the 11th of September events as an excuse.
The American aggression unleashed now against Iraq, their unrestrained warmongering, expresses the need to escape from a severe crisis which crosses their economy, and the attempt to control the oil sources; but more deeply, it expresses that American imperialism is determined to impose the other imperialist powers a distribution of the influence areas before the growing power of China can face it with possibilities of success. It is not clear if the aggression will continue with Syria and Iran. And with the collaboration of the murderous zionist Israelians, they will try to reorganize Palestina and all the Middle East.
The aggressiveness of the American and English imperialists, and the deepening of the inter-imperialist contradictions, the highest since the end of the Cold War, make the future unpredictable.
Thousands of theories, tens of libraries, renowned "thinkers" from the right and the "left", the revisionists who defend "utopias", "resistance only", and J. Holloway’s struggle within the "interstices" (who denies the possibility of revolution and ends up maintaining that "war in Afghanistan in not our war"), as well as the new defenders of the "Kaustkian" theory of "ultra-imperialism", as well as Hard and Negri’s theses, separating the "empire" from the imperialist states, have been crashed by the absurd, in spite of the unmasked support from all the academic, university and press circles from the reactionary states and the revisionists’ support.
And on the contrary, the following Leninist definitions redouble their validity: "1) our age is the age of imperialism and proletarian revolution, 2) imperialism leads to unequal development and it is inevitable that imperialist countries resort to war in order to distribute the world, and 3) imperialism has divided the world into oppressing and oppressed nations, the international proletariat struggles along with the latter and the national liberation revolutions converge with the world proletarian revolution".
A multipolar world
The process previous to Iraq’s attack has demonstrated once again that in the presence of the American imperialist policy of establishing a UNIPOLAR world, "the characteristics of a MULTIPOLAR WORLD get strengthened, and the expansionist policy of the different imperialisms and their sharp dispute of the markets have led the world to a situation of large instability." (8º Congress of PCR)
After the USSR’s collapse, an only economic, political and military superpower emerged: the United States. But militarily, three world powers can be mentioned: U.S., Russia and China.
Economically, there are four leading imperialist powers: U.S., Europe (when it acts unified in its largest part), Japan and China. And politically, there are five: U.S., Japan, United Europe, Russia and China.
As it becomes clear through Iraq’s attack, no serious political problem can be solved at international level without taking all these powers into consideration.
These contradictions can be used by the world’s peoples and revolutionaries as indicated by Mao Tse Tung’s theory and praxis during the war against Japan, or our experience in the "Malvinas" War. But as long as the interests of the working class and the people are never subordinated to the interests of one of the imperialist sides in struggle. Basing oneself on one imperialism to fight another has been the cause of great tragedies and suffering among peoples and revolutionaries. In our country, even the most democratic sector of the Independence Revolution of 1810 got to the point of suggesting: "Neither old master nor new master".
For the Iraqi people it is very important that the powers have not approved the invasion at the UN. This is positive. As long as nobody forgets that ALL of them, while considering their participation in Iraq’s distribution, voted the 1441 Resolution, which gave free rein to the war, approved the blockade and disarmed Iraq. And today, while the Iraqi people pays with its blood the struggle for independence, they still have their eyes set on how to avoid being excluded from the "post Saddam" distribution.
The struggle of the iraqi people and nation
With its blood, and resisting the most powerful military power on earth, the heroic Iraqi people proves once again, as it was proved in Yugoslavia and Chechenya before, or in the previous American aggression to Iraq, that a small country can face the aggression of a powerful country.
It is proved once again that war is not only addition and subtraction of technology and military forces, but mainly a POLITICAL issue. That imperialism does not aspire to "destroy everything", but to dominate. That it is precisely for that reason that the fundamental factor which decides a war is not the weapon, but the man.
As Mao Tse Tung said in 1970, "that who maintains a fair cause gains broad support, while that who maintains an unfair cause finds little support. A weak country can defeat a big one. As long as the people of a small country dares to rise in struggle, dares to seize the weapons and take into its hands the fate of its own country, it will inevitably be able to defeat the aggression of a larger country. This a law of history."
Imperialism may win this battle, temporary and militarily, even though it has already politically lost it. In this case, the Iraqi people will continue in war for many years to achieve independence. An this will happen sooner or later.
The masses from all the world are pronouncing themselves against the war and struggling for U.S. retreat and Iraq’s triumph. We are witnessing an international anti-imperialist wave, even larger than the one provoked by the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people.
A wave that deepens a previous struggle boom in the whole world. This is particularly manifested in South America in Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, etc.
A wave that will drive the struggle of revolutionaries and peoples, the Arab World and the Third World in particular to new heights, and that could provoke important political crises in the countries that have openly or secretly supported the invasion, including the American people itself.
The role of the youth and women in these struggles reveals itself as particularly important and that will have a great meaning for the future.
In our country, Argentina, this anti-imperialist wave adds itself to the revolutionary situation opened by the boom of the people’s struggle, which started in 1993, and the political crises, whose maximum expression was the "argentinazo" of 19th and 20th December 2001.
The unity between the revolutionary struggle of the masses and the solidarity with the Iraqi people is strengthened by the imperialist role of the U.S. within our country, and its responsibility in driving the IMF’s hunger, unemployment and handing over policies, and also due to the nature of the English imperialism which military occupies part of the Argentine territory: our "Islas Malvinas".
The duty of the communists has become clear now: staying beside the oppressed countries against the attacking imperialism. Those of us who had that position even in the previous invasion of Iraq in 1991, Chechenya and Afghanistan, can aspire today to lead this wave and direct it, not towards "pacifism", but toward a spirited anti-imperialism. Discussion which is favored by the unmasked and brutal face of the invasion.
The responsibility of Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries is doubled in Argentina and in the world, to be the vanguard of the anti-imperialist combat and take the struggle for revolution of our working classes and our peoples to new heights.
PCR 10/04/03