II. The crisis of imperialism and the proletarian revolution
As we enter the 21st century, the capitalist crisis of overproduction and new world disorder are worsening rapidly. The current conditions in the world are favorable for revolution and belie the claim of the imperialists that history cannot go any further than monopoly capitalism and their pretenses at liberal democracy. The adoption of high technology drives and accelerates the overconcentration of productive and finance capital in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie. To extract higher profits and counter the tendency of profit rates to fall with the expansion of production, the monopoly bourgeoisie attacks the trade union and democratic rights of the workers, massacres regular jobs and replaces these with part-time and untenured jobs in order to press down wages.
With the US at the head, the imperialists have drummed up the myth of 'free market' to rationalize the accelerating rates of exploitation of the working class in the imperialist countries and the people in the client countries. The monopoly bourgeoisie is unbridled in concentrating and centralizing capital in its hands under the slogans of privati- zation, liberalization and deregulation. The imperialists and their lackeys depict the working people as parasites rather than as the producers of wealth.
They blame the working people as the source of inflation and hindrance to economic growth. They press down the incomes of the working people to maximize profits. The bourgeois state casts away its social pretenses, increases the tax burden of the people and accelerates the delivery of public assets and funds to the monopoly bourgeoisie.
The result is the aggravation and deepening of the chronic crisis of overproduction in the world capitalist system. The reduction of incomes of the people means the shrinkage of the market. The enterprises that lose in the competition either close down or become absorbed in bigger enterprises. The further concentration of capital leaves in its wake the destruction of productive forces. The closure of firms, production cutbacks and mergers mean rising chronic mass unemployment and deteriorating wage and living conditions.
The financial crisis becomes conspicuous as the huge debts of losing enterprises and debtor countries are exposed. But new debts are incurred by the bourgeois state and the private firms to keep the capitalist economy running in the direction of further exploiting the people. To conjure the illusion of growth, the monopoly bourgeoisie does not only concentrate capital in its hands but also overvalues the assets through the workings of monopoly finance capital.
The imperialist countries are afflicted by the chronic crisis of overproduction and the related phenomena of chronic mass unemployment, erosion of hard-won social benefits and the rising chronic financial crisis of the state and private sectors. The economies of Japan and the European Union have become stagnant and unstable in comparison to the economy of the US.
The US is the strongest among the imperialist countries because it has the lead in high technology and is able to take advantage of its imperialist allies in investments and trade. Japan and the European Union themselves are attracted by higher rates of profit in the US and buoy up the US economy by buying US securities.
The biggest economic bubble has arisen in the US, with the flow of investments into high-tech stocks and the overvaluation of these. A crisis of overproduction is building up in computers, telecom and software, which are at the base of capital growth in the US. The US boasts of high employment, which is characterized by part-time jobs replacing regular jobs.
The US continues to be pressed by the costs of winning the cold war and striving to maintain its all-round hegemony in the world capitalist system. It has a huge federal debt, as a result of high military spending and trade deficits to accommodate its allies. Its efforts to reduce its colossal public debt and trade deficits aggravate the crisis of overproduction at home and abroad.
The crisis of overproduction in imperialist countries has reached the point that the workers and the rest of the people have begun to launch strikes and mass protest actions against the state and the monopoly bourgeoisie. But insofar as it can still exploit the people of the world, he monopoly bourgeoisie can dampen the class struggle of the proletariat n the imperialist countries.
It is in the lesser industrial capitalist countries, including the much- weakened imperialist power Russia, that the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is relatively more vigorous. However, his struggle still lacks an effective leadership of a Marxist-Leninist party. At any rate, war has broken out in Europe, particularly in the Balkans and portions of the former Soviet Union.
The imperialist powers are united in oppressing and exploiting the people and are still led by US imperialism in this regard. But there are growing contradictions among them. These are bound to intensify upon he further worsening of the world crisis of overproduction. Trends show he sharpening of contradictions among the imperialist powers, between hem and their client states, between them and the oppressed peoples and between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
It is in the nature of imperialism to generate economic crises and wars. So far, in the aftermath of the end of the cold war, the wars of aggression take the appearance of the imperialist powers uniting against what they call 'rogue' states but really against the people of certain countries and entire regions as in the wars against Iraq and against Yugoslavia. Underlying these wars of aggression is the worsening crisis of overproduction which leads to the struggle among the imperialist powers themselves for a redivision of the world.
The weakness of Russia invites aggressive actions from the stronger imperialist powers. Thus, after the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe, he US has launched a war of aggression against Yugoslavia in order to control the Balkans, tighten the encirclement of Russia, secure both sides of the Mediterranean and dictate the flow of oil from the Caucasus, Caspian Sea and Central Asia. The US has gone to the extent of promoting he armed resistance of the Chechens in order to foil any Russian-German plan to lay pipelines across Chechnya and towards Western Europe.
The overwhelming majority of the people of the world are in the semicolonial and semifeudal countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and the retrogressive countries where revisionist regimes had betrayed socialism and restored capitalism for decades. They suffer the main brunt of the global crisis of overproduction. Their countries are the main arena of violent conflicts among the imperialists and reactionaries as well as those between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces.
Most of these countries have no more than raw materials for export. The terms of trade for such exports have continuously deteriorated since the late 1970s because of overproduction. A few of these countries export some manufactures and semimanufactures, which have also been in overproduction since the 1990s. Thus, all these countries are burdened by huge trade deficits and foreign debt.
The destruction of productive forces in all the aforementioned countries is horrific. Closure of export-oriented, agricultural and manufacturing enterprises, mass unemployment and the deterioration of wage and living conditions are widespread. There has been no recovery from the pre-1997 level of socioeconomic conditions which were already bad.
Under conditions of the chronic crisis of overproduction, the afflicted countries can only hope in vain to earn foreign exchange for debt service and consumer imports. They continue to produce raw materials and semimanufactures at ever lower prices or reduce their imports under a policy of austerity. Consequently, the global market of the imperialists for their own exports, such as structural steel, cars, consumer electronics, telecomm and so on also contracts.
The new world disorder is raging on a wide scale in countries which have nothing to export but raw materials. Reactionary cliques compete violently for power and use ethnocentric, religious and other reactionary slogans against each other. Civil wars characterized by massacres and massive displacement of people have spread, particularly in Africa which is the continent most devastated by the crisis of overproduction in raw materials since the late 1970s.
US imperialism and its allies are quick to intervene and launch wars of aggression, hypocritically invoking humanitarian and peacekeeping motives, only when oil resources are involved, as in the Middle East and the Balkans. The wars of aggression have also been used as the occasion for the US to display and use its high-tech weapons against the fixed establishments of its adversary states, including the civilian infrastructure, public utilities, economic enterprises, hospitals and schools, government buildings and mass media facilities.
With overweening arrogance, US imperialism uses both financial and military power to bamboozle its own imperialist allies, bully its neocolonial clients and blockade and threaten countries like Cuba and the Democratic People.s Republic of Korea that assert and defend national independence and the socialist aspirations of the people.
But US imperialism is strategically overextended more than ever before and is overdependent on expensive high- tech weapons. It retains its fear of incurring American casualties in a ground war. At the same time, it weakens its own puppet states by imposing on them neocolonial and neoliberal policies that ruin them economically and financially and make them harsh and hated by the people. Certain states which are vulnerable to US financial and military blackmail but which have resisted complete US domination, have amply demonstrated the limits of US imperialist power. Even the victims of US wars of aggression in the previous decade, like Iraq and Yugoslavia, have deterred or withstood the attempts of the US and its imperialist allies to overrun them. The Democratic People.s Republic of Korea, Cuba and Libya have so far prevented US imperialism from launching a war of aggression against them.
Aware of the limits of US imperialist power, the existing armed revolutionary movements for national liberation and democracy are optimistic that in due course, they can defeat and overthrow the puppet states in their own countries and that further armed revolutionary move- ments shall arise on an unprecedented scale in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the retrogressive countries pre- viously run down by revi- sionist renegades and now neocolonies of US imperial- ism.
Armed revolutionary movements, based among the peasants and applying the strategic line of protracted people's war, render impotent the high-tech weapons of the US, as in the triumphant Vietnamese war of national liberation.
In Asia, the US relies on its own military power and its strategic security partnership with Japan in maintaining its hegemony. But in years and decades to come, Japan will be increasingly at odds with the US precisely as a result of current US impositions. Japan has its own imperialist character and ambitions. It is already reeling from the interimperialist economic competition and is bound to resist US impositions and increase its own initiative vis-�-vis other Asian countries.
The US continues to offend the peoples of Asia as it dictates upon its puppet states policies to further oppress and exploit the people. It knows no bounds for its interference in the internal affairs of the Asian countries and peoples. To push its hegemony, it meddles in such outstanding issues as the return of Taiwan to China, the reunification of Korea, Kashmir, Tibet and so on.
The US is the pioneer in the production and genocidal use of the atom bomb, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and owns the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons. It wants to maintain overwhelming nuclear superiority for political blackmail and to retain the privilege of first use. Driven by its aggressive imperialist nature and hankering for nuclear monopoly, it demands that other countries give up their nuclear weapons.
The current of armed revolution is growing in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties are leading people's wars and are gaining strength in their respective countries. These parties light up the road of armed revolution in Asia as well as in other continents of the semicolonial and semifeudal countries.
The unprecedented destruction of productive forces and contraction of the world market that are going on will intensify all the basic contradictions in the world, such as those between imperialism and the oppressed peoples, among the imperialist powers and between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the imperialist countries. They can inspire other Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties to wage armed revolution.
The info mation technolog that is fu the aising the social cha acte of production and coming into conflict with monopoly capitalist ownership is available for quick communications in propaganda, armed operations and other activities of the revolutionary movements now and for socialist economic planning, production and cultural development in the future. The imperialists and their local reactionary lackeys are doomed. The revolutionary prospects of the proletariat and people of the world are bright. The new world disorder is becoming more and more turbulent and is the prelude to social revolution.
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