I. Unprecedented Global Crisis and DisorderNot so long ago, when the Soviet Union and the revisionist regimes disintegrated and gave way to undisguised capitalism, the imperialists, the local reactionaries and renegades were beside themselves with glee in proclaiming the permanence of the world capitalist system, the futility of armed revolution and socialism and the availability of civil society through reformism under the imperialist and client states.
The imperialists have recycled the antiquated language of laissez-faire capitalism to fan the rapacity of monopoly-capitalism. Now, the world capitalist system is in a crisis unprecedented since the Great Depression. Modern imperialism again proves itself as the highest and final stage of the development of capitalism: parasitic, destructive and moribund. At the root of the crisis of monopoly capitalism is the acceleration of profit-taking from the proletariat and the people, the rapid concentration and centralization of productive and finance capital in the hands of the monopoly capitalists, the pushing down of wage and living conditions to counter the falling rate of profit and the shrinkage of the world market, and the crisis of overproduction.
The rising social character of production through the adoption of higher technology, concentrated in the imperialist countries, is in greater contradiction with the monopoly capitalist mode of appropriating the values created by the working people. And yet the monopoly-bourgeoisie uses the rationale and slogans of laissez-faire capitalism and �free market� globalization to tighten the outmoded capitalist relations of production. Abandoning the social pretenses of Keynesian economic policy and adopting �neoliberal� economic policy since the beginning of the �80s, the monopoly bourgeoisie has regarded its capital as the creative factor in expanding production and has blamed as the
| THE WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS IN A CRISIS UNPRECEDENTED SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. |
cause of stagnation and inflation the supposedly rising wage levels and governmental social spending.
Thus, all over the world, the monopoly bourgeoisie has used the imperialist and client states and such multilateral agencies as the IMF, World Bank and WTO (previously GATT) to push down wage and living conditions and cut back on social spending and to accelerate the enlargement of private monopoly capital through privatization, deregulation and trade and investment liberalization.
The imperialists, their bureaucratic agents and propagandists decry social welfare but acclaim the delivery of tax cuts and public assets and funds to the private monopoly firms. They decry social spending but acclaim huge military spending. They decry state intervention in the economy if an anti-imperialist or socialist state musters public resources for industrial development but acclaim the delivery of subsidies, contracts and bailouts to the private monopoly capitalists by the state.
In conjunction with the accelerated concentration of productive and finance capital in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie, there are such conspicuous phenomena as the following: the unprecedented overvaluation or inflation of private assets through the workings of finance capital, the rising level of chronic mass unemployment, the plunging of incomes and the barbaric suppression of the rights of the working people and the chronic overproduction of all types of goods relative to the shrinking market.
�Globalization� is a term used by the imperialists to obscure the precise scientific term, imperialism, as defined by Lenin. It is a complete misnomer, a revival of Kautsky�s ultra-imperialism, when it is used to suggest that the monopoly bourgeoisie is spreading productive capital on a widening scale to promote economic development, employment and the growth of the industrial proletariat in underdeveloped countries.
Prior to the massive flight of capital from the socalled emerging markets, more than 80 percent of the global flow of direct investments were concentrated on the US, Western Europe and Japan. More than onethird of the less than 20 percent, flowing to some ten �emerging markets�, went to China, particularly to the eastern coast enclaves. The three global centers of capitalism and China accounted for more than 90 percent of the global flow of direct investments.
The United States is the strongest global center of capitalism and attracts investments from Japan and the European Union because of relatively higher rates of profit and interest. The US has used its lead in high technology and its financial power as well as its political power to undertake an export drive and tighten control over oil and other strategic resources.
But fundamental weaknesses of the US economy persist and worsen, such as its accumulated trade deficits and ever-rising federal debt and the drastic reduction of regular tenured employment in favor of temporary and part-time jobs, especially in the service sector. To the extent that the US has succeeded in its export drive, it has been at the expense of its allies among the imperialist and client countries.
However, the economic and financial collapses in the �emerging markets� adversely affect the US economy. The spread of the crisis from East Asia to Russia and further on to Latin America, especially Brazil, is cutting down US exports, increasing cheap imports to the US, bringing down profit rates, causing bad loans and bankruptcies, and intensifying competition | �GLOBALIZATION� IS A TERM USED BY THE IMPERIALISTS TO OBSCURE THE PRECISE SCIENTIFIC TERM, IMPERIALISM, AS DEFINED BY LENIN. |
with its imperialist allies.
Japan has been hardest hit by the capitalist crisis of overproduction and by the megacompetition with its imperialist allies. Its domestic economy has been in a state of stagnation since the bursting of the bubble in the early �90s. Its growth rate has gone negative since three years ago. Its crisis has been so severe that Keynesian pump-priming through public works since the early �90s has proven futile.
Its problems of unemployment and reduced domestic consumption are growing. The contradiction between its own domestic economy and its overseas plants in the US and East Asia continue to grow. Domestically, Japan has not recovered from its problem of bad loans. This is aggravated by bad loans to the �emerging markets� in East Asia. It is compelled to hold on to a huge amount of US bonds in order to keep down the value of the yen and promote its exports in a shrinking global market.
The European Union is also hard hit by the capitalist crisis of overproduction and by megacompetition with its imperialist allies. It has a chronically high rate of unemployment fluctuating between 11 and 12 percent. The EU countries have caused the contraction of their domestic markets by cutting back on social spending dictated by the dominant �neoliberal� policy and the determination to stay within the limit on public deficitspending in preparation for the launch of the Euro.
The exports of the European Union meet stiffer competition from those of the US and Japan in East Asia and elsewhere. The European Union has naturally the closest access to Russia and Eastern Europe as a market. But these new areas of unbridled capitalism are a shrinking kind of market and a sinkhole of bad loans because of the ceaseless breakdown of industry and agriculture and the unrestrained thievery of the criminal new bourgeoisie.
Under the �neoliberal� policy regime, the national rates of growth and profits have fallen in all OECD countries. In fact, there is now a global depression. The adoption of higher technology for profit-taking by the monopoly firms has led to massive downsizing and chronic mass unemployment, shrinkage of the market and the crisis of overproduction, falling rates of profit and bankruptcies. Corporate mergers have become more frequent for the purpose of massacring jobs, claiming costs for restructuring, research and development and increasing profits.
The crisis in the real economy is so severe that the entire monopoly bourgeoisie can no longer claim rising production through the overvaluation of assets and | THE MAIN CONTRADICTION TODAY IS BETWEEN THE IMPERIALISTS AND THE OPPRESSED PEOPLES. |
services and through credit expansion. Finance capitalism itself is conspicuously the problem weighing down on the real economy. In the last two years, there have been several waves of steep declines in the stockmarket and collapses of financial institutions in imperialist countries in the wake of currency and stockmarket meltdowns in the �emerging markets�. State intervention and public funds have been used to bail out banks and hedge funds.
In view of the rising rate of exploitation and work stress among the employed, the chronic mass unemployment, wage reductions and cutback on social benefits and social services, such manifestations of the class struggle as strikes in key industries, general strikes and popular protests in the imperialist countries areincreasing. But the general level of resistance by the proletariat and the people is still contained in the imperialist countries in the absence of strong Marxist-Leninist parties. In the United States, there is increasing disaffection with the political system as proven by strikes and protests by mass layoffs and against state bailout for monopoly firms, by low voter turnout during elections and by outbursts of anarchy. But the duopoly of the Democrats and the Republicans and the influence of the labor aristocracy over the long-reduced ranks of the trade union movement still prevail. In the European Union, the proletariat and people have put up a definitely higher level of resistance than their counterparts in the United States. There have been huge strikes, general strikes and popular protests. But the conservative, social-democratic, revisionist and bourgeois-environmentalist parties compete and coalesce to carry out �neoliberal� reforms. The labor aristocracy nurtured by the old breed of conservatives and social-democrats is still well-entrenched. However, more and more workers are conducting strikes, bypassing the labor aristocracy. At the same time, fascist and racist formations are rearing their ugly head. In Japan, the proletariat and the people are on the verge of bursting out in unprecedented workers� strikes and popular protests. Job losses and income reduction are forcing them to dig deep into their much-vaunted personal savings. The increase of homelessness is visible on the streets. The Liberal Democratic Party and other bourgeois parties and the big reactionary labor federations run by the labor aristocrats are increasingly losing the confidence of the workers.
The hype about �globalization� has obfuscated the gross fact that the overwhelming majority of the countries in the world have been subjected to further underdevelopment, impoverishment and crushing debt burdens. The imperialists have | IN THE EVENT THAT ECONOMIC COMPETITION AMONG THE IMPERIALISTS LEAD TO A BELLICOSE REDIVISION OF THE WORLD, THE PROLETARIAT AND THE OPPRESSED PEOPLES MUST WAGE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO STOP THE IMPERIALIST WAR OR, IF THE LATTER CANNOT BE STOPPED, TO TURN IT INTO A REVOLUTIONARY WAR. |
been able to band together against the oppressed peoples and impose their policies on client states in order to exploit cheap labor, press down the prices of raw materials and extract superprofits from the export of surplus goods and surplus capital. But objectively, they also reduce the global market eventually.
First, the majority of countries that have suffered the overproduction of raw materials since the late �70s have never recovered from their crisis and depression. Second, countries that previously acquired some basic industries due to socialism (Russia, Eastern Europe and China) or due to bourgeois nationalism (India, Brazil, Egypt and the like) have been increasingly subjected to compradorization and deindustrialization. And, third, the few �emerging markets� (with such varying export specialties as semimanufactures of China and Southeast Asia, higher value-added manufactures of South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil and the oil and gas of Russia) are plunged into a state of economic and financial collapse.
The widescale devastation of national economies allows the imperialists to take over national resources and lines of businesses and negate the national sovereignty of so many countries. But the imperialists select for takeover only the most profitable assets and have no intention whatsoever of lifting the underdeveloped or less developed countries to a level of balanced development. The imperialists themselves say that it will take a long while before the �emerging markets� cease to sink.
The main contradiction today is between the imperialists and the oppressed peoples. The imperialists are shifting the burden of crisis to the oppressed peoples, are engaged in a drive to extract bigger superprofits and are ceaselessly engaged in acts of intervention, instigating regional and local wars and launching wars of aggression.
Counterrevolutionary violence is rampant today. The imperialists headed by the United States supply weapons to reactionary states and push them to oppress the people. They also instigate wars among reactionary factions in many countries and intervene in the name of peace, humanitarianism or weapons inspection in order to gain positions of strength and make arrangements in their favor.
By launching another war of aggression against Iraq, applying economic sanctions and ceaselessly bullying it, US imperialism has tightened control over the Middle East and its oil resources. By instigating local wars in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, as in Kosovo now, it has secured the most advantageous positions in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. It blockades and pressures Cuba and the Democratic People�s Republic of Korea. It provides military cover to the Taiwan reactionaries and instigates tensions in Southeast Asia over the Spratly islands.
War is inherent to imperialism. The US and other Western imperialists lay the ground for global war by provocatively enlarging the NATO and expanding it to the borders of Russia. The US has also pressed upon Japan to become an active partner in acts of intimidation and aggression against the people of Asia and to assume heavier military burdens under the new US-Japan security guidelines in order to foil Taiwan�s return to China and the reunification of Korea.
In so many countries of the world today, there is political turmoil as a result of the dire social and economic conditions under the world capitalist system. In the countries long depressed by the crisis of overproduction in raw materials, there are revolutionary wars of the people against despotism and against national oppression and there are many more internecine conflicts between reactionary factions that use the slogans of ethnocentrism and religion to incite massacres of huge proportions, especially in Africa.
Most important of all are the new-democratic revolutions through protracted people�s wars against the imperialists and the local reactionaries. These include the armed revolutions led by Marxist-Leninist- Maoist parties in India, Nepal, Peru, Philippines and Turkey. These answer the central question of revolution, which is the seizure of political power as a precondition to social revolution.
The destruction of productive forces in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet bloc countries wrought by the imperialists and their local stooges has resulted in widespread political turmoil and a new world disorder. If the revolutionary forces and the people in semicolonial and semifeudal countries fight selfreliantly for their national and social liberation, the imperialists and the local reactionaries will ultimately face a widescale conflagration that they cannot stop and that can engulf them.
Right now, the contradictions among the imperialists are intensifying but the US-led alliance is still holding insofar as this can shift the burden of crisis to the oppressed nations and peoples. At any rate, in the event that economic competition among the imperialists lead to a bellicose redivision of the world, the proletariat and the oppressed peoples must wage revolutionary war to stop the imperialist war or, if the latter cannot be stopped, to turn it into a revolutionary war.
| THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PHILIPPINES VIEWS THE GRAVE CRISIS OF THE WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM AS PROVIDING FAVORABLE CONDITIONS FOR WAGING THE NEWDEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION |
The Communist Party of the Philippines views the grave crisis of the world capitalist system as providing favorable conditions for waging the new-democratic revolution. It is resolutely leading the revolution in the interest of the Filipino people as well as in support of other peoples abroad in order to advance the world proletarian socialist revolution.
In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the Party has developed close bilateral and multilateral relations with communist and workers� parties in order to raise common understanding, cooperation and mutual benefit. It has taken initiatives and participated in bilateral meetings, conferences and seminars in order to exchange ideas and experiences and clarify and invigorate the revolutionary struggle against imperialism, revisionism and reaction and for socialism and the ultimate goal of communism.
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