8 points on the world situation and the anti-imperialist direction and struggle
1/ We have entered a period marked by the preparation of the conditions for the Third World War. On the basis of this assessment, we believe that we need to approach and understand all the developments on the planet: the feverish competition to upgrade and strengthen the nuclear arsenal between the USA-Russia-China; the generalized arms race in which all the imperialist powers participate, and from which not even those that were under the prohibitions of their defeat in the Second World War are excluded (Germany, Japan); the formation of individual military–war alliances within the West and under the USA (QUAD, AUKUS) and the steps towards the formation of the BRICS as an attempt for a counterweight to NATO, the basic formation of the West; the heated military incidents in the Pacific and the situation in Africa where all the main imperialist powers are "ready to pull the trigger"; the escalation of the genocide of the unyielding and heroic Palestinian people in order to consolidate the US gendarme, the killer state of Israel; the extension of the massacre and the new divisions in the Middle East through which the question of the alignment of the regional and local powers to the imperialist camps being formed is raised; the flame of instability and coups in Georgia, Romania, Moldavia, Moldova, Slovakia, Serbia, Hungary, that is, in the perimeter of the great unjust war in Ukraine —which is the focus— the main workshop for the preparation of the Third World War.
On the same basis of preparing the conditions for the Third World War, we have —and will keep having— the aspirations and moves of Trump, as president of the first imperialist power in the world, the power that has the primary role in developments. Trump's announcements–interventions on Mexico, Greenland and Canada, regardless of how they will develop, express the pursuit of an even greater strengthening of the United States. The pursuit of upgrading its wealth potential, its geostrategic advantages, and the expansion of its sovereign rights and even the expansion of the US territory. At the same time and in parallel with this pursuit, US imperialism has already put its demand to its European allies, in a crude and blunt way, that they should align themselves with its ambitions. In other words, it demands the formation of the imperialist-war bloc of the West under the undisputed hegemony of the USA, and with a view to serve their own goal of world domination.
The generalized attack on the proletariat and the peoples is -and will become even further- the basic element of this course of developments. In order to make them pay with heavier exploitation, dispossession and suppression of their rights for the course of preparation for war. To be irrevocably lined up on one side or the other and become the targets for the cannons of the disaster prepared by oppressors and exploiters.
2/ The basis and the cause of this situation is the mutual feeding of the crisis of the capitalist-imperialist system with the intensifying imperialist rivalries. It is the very nature and characteristics of the system. A system which, while culminating in parasitism and the dispossession of workers, peoples and countries, cannot start a new extended cycle of reproduction of capital with the given division of the world, with the current unclear arrangement between the imperialist powers. Under these conditions, there can be no "skyrocketing" of any imperialist power so that it becomes the locomotive for the capitalist system overall. This is officially confessed, among others, with regards to the notorious AI, whose shares form another bubble of stock market gambling.
Based on this problem, rivalries on economy, finance, energy, and trade have flared up. However, albeit forming the conditions, none of these rivalries can solve the question of spheres of influence, markets, and the arrangement of imperialist powers. On the contrary, all these rivalries further exacerbate the question of "who will prevail over whom", and make armed confrontation, generalized war, more urgent.
Let us put it another, more specific way. China's more than two decades of capitalist growth and accumulation are a necessary but not sufficient condition for Chinese imperialism to conquer global hegemony/sovereignty. The USA will not surrender to China their 850 military bases, their fleets, their army and their nuclear potential, which are the basis of their present primacy! This is precisely why Beijing is quick to equate economic to military-strategic power, and Xi is concerned about the "peace disease" that is prevalent in China's military and society.
3/ We therefore consider an evaluation of Russia, based exclusively on its GDP and, based on which, Russia "appears" to be on a par with Italy or Spain, incorrect as well as economistic! This approach is wrong because Russia's GDP is presented as being of the same size as that of Italy, with GDP valuation based on the dollar-rouble exchange rate. On the contrary, with a valuation based on purchasing power parity (as was presented even on the CIA website in 2023) Russia's GDP is 4th in the world with a value of 5.8 trillion dollars, following those of China, the USA and India.
However, this assessment is wrong mainly because it omits several basic and crucial facts of Russian imperialism:
– The extent of the Asian continent, which is a counterweight to the US military bases.
– Its huge energy potential that has been exploited as a means of strategic access to Europe.
– The exploitation of the rich resources of Central Asia (Kazakhstan) and its ever-stronger presence in Africa.
– Its presence and influence in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean region.
– Above all, the military-industrial complex and the nuclear potential inherited from the social-imperialist USSR, upgraded to a level equivalent to that of US imperialism, and operationally tested in Ukraine, such as the supersonic missile "Oreshnik". This potential, among others, ensures for it the second place in global arms exports, and this we consider enough not to assess Russia merely as a capitalist country among many others. After all, it is above all because of the barrier that Russia's nuclear potential places in the way of the USA's goal of world domination that the latter has officially declared Russian imperialism to be its strategic rival.
4/ The unjust war in Ukraine is three years old and counts hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled, many more uprooted, and untold destruction. It is still not an imperialist war since the USA–West participate in it through their proxy, the Zelensky regime. However, precisely because it is a conflict, even indirectly, between the two most powerful imperialist powers in the center of Europe, it is, as we have already mentioned, the core of the preparations for World War III. It is a war that the USA built up over the decades-long expansion of NATO eastward, with the aim of crushing its strategic rival, which it had defeated in the Cold War, and that is why this was an "imperfect", "incomplete" victory. A war that was finally declared by Russian imperialism, to pave the way towards its own global aspirations, which have as a necessary condition the halting of NATO's expansion, the reversal of the current correlation so that it turns against the United States, elegantly formulated as a "new security architecture in Europe". These Russian aspirations are currently camouflaged by the theorem of "multipolarity" which in general cannot be a target for an imperialist power, and today is the problem that the imperialist conflict has set out to solve.
For these reasons in the war in Ukraine, the USA cannot stand not winning and Russia cannot stand being defeated! Therefore, we have reached the deadlock of nuclear blackmail, answered by the missile escalation that brings back the nuclear blackmail even more intense! Into this impasse, and while Russia was expanding its successes in the field, came Trump. Not to "bring peace" of course, but to resolve the impasse in favor of US aspirations. That is, without compromising the cohesion of the West and the enlarged with Sweden–Finland NATO and keeping the membership of Ukraine in it an open possibility. But Putin also wants a solution to the stalemate that will safeguard Russia's successes on the ground, impose the demilitarisation and neutralisation (i.e. de-Westernisation) of the rest of Ukraine and thus exclude its admission to NATO.
5/ Against this background came the recent Trump proposal, presented as a "peace proposal", a proposal that supposedly "wants to end the war". The exact opposite is actually true. The Trump proposal seeks to change the terms of the war according to American objectives. To stop the expansion of the occupation by Russian imperialism. To involve the European powers' military, i.e. the West, in Ukraine, with large forces and fully armed. To enlist the European imperialists in the American objective in the most direct way possible. To intensify the entrenchment of Russia with war and use of military, to block and void its aspirations for an opening in Central Europe, the Balkans and the West. Based on these actual aspirations, Trump's proposal has already met and will meet even more opposition from allies and enemies, and it remains to be seen whether and which temporary and fragile compromise can finally emerge from the ongoing negotiations.
Consequently, and with all its peacemaking masquerade, Trump's proposal confirms that the war in Ukraine has global stakes. That it cannot be "frozen" or overcome by other conflicts. That is why the shockwaves of the conflict in Ukraine jolt the entire planet. A number of regional powers (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India...) are being blackmailed and regressing spectacularly under the weight of this conflict, while in dependent countries, particularly in the Caucasus and Balkan regions, open conflict is being waged to shift them to one side or the other. All these are elements of the "preparation of conditions" and they are linked to the formation of the rival imperialist camps, which is still under development. In other words, it remains to be seen whether China's strategic cooperation with Russia will develop into a strategic alliance. But France and Germany, organic powers of the West and NATO, are also being put to the test under the pressure of the conflict in Ukraine, which has brought them economic recession and political instability, highlighting their strategic impasses. The veto on Ukraine's membership of NATO, which both these powers had placed at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 , shows 'in what world' they saw their own imperialist ambitions could stand. That kind of world today is a very distant one, given the intensification of the dominant US-Russia rivalry on the imperialist tableau, and the Trump administration demanding and blackmailing in the most cynical way the European imperialists to fully align with the US. But given the dynamics of war and the developments it produces, what today may seem unexpected and unlikely, cannot be ruled out.
6/ Considering all the above, it is obvious that we understand the intra-imperialist contradictions as the motor of developments in the present period. These are the contradictions that produce and shape the developments, while both the basic contradiction between capital and labor and the main contradiction between imperialism and peoples seem to be in the background. Although both the basic and main contradictions are more acute than in any other period since World War II, on the basis of the savage and generalized attack of the capitalist-imperialist system on the working class and the peoples of the planet. However, we must realize that the level of the responses given —and much more the perspective that these responses raise— of the working class and the peoples is disproportionate to this attack and the demands put in place. Certainly, popular uprisings, great workers' struggles, youth uprisings have been breaking out more and more frequently and persistently for years in the metropolises as well as in the periphery. The working-popular masses are looking for answers for their rights, their life and their perspective on the road of struggle.
However, these valuable steps are taken in the landscape that has been shaped since the defeat of the revolutionary communist movement as it has evolved since the mid-20th century. A defeat that was sealed by capitalist restoration in the countries where the proletariat stormed the skies and showed the historical future of humanity with the unprecedented historical conquests of socialist construction.
This landscape is characterized on one hand by the de-construction of the working class as a class for itself and of peoples as a force of struggle. On the other hand, in the forces with a reference to the Left, the theories of class cooperation, of the development of the productive forces, of submission to imperialism, which is considered "invincible", prevail in various versions, as shown by their adoption of the systemic construct of "globalization".
The revisionist load produced by the 20th Congress of the CPSU and what followed up to the collapses of 1989-91, the theories of Deng and his descendants after the interruption of the historical step taken by the GPCR and the capitalist restoration in China as well, constitute the material of conformity–submission to the conditions of the present correlation of powers. Moreover, on the basis of this correlation and this prevailing policy, in the ranks of the forces that refer to the working class and the people, there is a distance —a denial even— of the necessity to study the restoration, to draw approaches and conclusions on its causes, which are necessary for the rearmament and reconstruction of the revolutionary communist movement and party that our time demands in every country.
7/ The great delay in the formation of initiatives for the development of the anti-imperialist, anti-war struggle of the workers and peoples can be explained on the basis of the previous point. It can be explained why for most of the forces that refer to the people and the movement, the war in Ukraine almost "does not exist" or for a significant part of them this war is "good news" for the peoples, since it brings out an opponent to the US and NATO imperialist camp!
Let us therefore put two issues as clearly as possible: a) The only anti-imperialist, anti-war struggle that can exist is that of the workers and peoples who rely only on their own forces. The alignment of the workers and peoples behind the perceived "lesser evil", or "lesser (or whatever) imperialist", is submission to imperialism, it is submission as well as dragging the peoples to the slaughterhouse. The more broadly the position THE PEOPLES HAVE NO NEED OF PROTECTORS is adopted, the more powerful is the hope and the possibility for the struggle of the peoples to formulate the conditions for a way out of the present bleak landscape. b) The struggle for the reconstruction of the revolutionary communist movement and party in every country that our times demand, passes through the formation and development of the anti-imperialist, anti-war struggle. This task cannot be bypassed; it is inseparably linked to the struggles for workers' and people's rights, to the reconstruction of the revolutionary socialist prospect.
8/ The necessity of coordinating the anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces of the countries of the world is obvious.
To favor the effort to build the anti-imperialist struggle in every country.
To internationally highlight the direction of friendship and solidarity between peoples.
In order to formulate conditions - and inasmuch as the movement is being built up in each country - for the formation of the PEOPLE'S FRONT OF STRUGGLE that will stand against the massacre that the imperialists are preparing.
In the face of this necessity of coordination, a common political stigma, a basic line of struggle needs to be conquered. Elements of such a line we believe should be:
In any case, we look forward and seek for this meeting to be the beginning of a path of coordination, information and common struggle between the forces that are here today and many other forces that could not attend. That is why we believe that the conclusion of the anti-imperialist, anti-war meeting in Athens should also seek to leave its mark in this direction.
