Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume IV, Number 12 April 25 - May 1, 2004 Quezon City, Philippines |
War,
Imperialism And Resistance from Below So
long as imperialism persists in oppressing and exploiting the people, the
people's struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism will
continue. There is no stopping the wheels of history from moving, despite any
curve, bumps or zigzags along the way. By
Prof. Jose Maria Sison Speech
to the Third Annual Conference Dear
Colleagues, Let
me thank the Global Studies Association for inviting me to speak on the occasion
of its Third Annual Conference. It is an honor to speak before a distinguished
assembly of scholars. It
is a pleasure and privilege to speak on a topic as urgent and highly important
as "War, Imperialism and Resistance from Below" in line with the
conference theme: "Globalization, Empire and Resistance." I
shall discuss the phenomenon of war as a concomitant of modern imperialism,
imperialism in the current period of so-called neoliberal economics and
neo-conservative politics and the resistance of the people and some states
assertive of national independence. I.
The Phenomenon of War as Concomitant of Imperialism Free
competition capitalism reached the apex of its development in several industrial
capitalist countries from 1860 to 1870. Monopoly capitalism appeared in an
embryonic stage in the same decade. After the crisis of 1873, cartels emerged on
a wider scale but were not yet dominant. The boom at the end of the 19th century
and the economic crisis of 1900-03 made the cartels one of the foundations of
economic life. Monopoly
capitalism or modern imperialism became dominant in the leading industrial
capitalist countries. Industrial capital had merged with bank capital to form
the finance oligarchy.
The export of surplus capital began to gain importance over the export of
surplus goods. The imperialist countries and their monopoly firms formed
international combinations (such as cartels, syndicates, trusts and so on)
against the people and against each other. Beyond
the imperialist and colonial countries, the economic hinterland of the world was
divided into colonies, semi-colonies and dependent countries. These were coveted
by the imperialist powers as markets, sources of cheap raw materials, fields of
investment and spheres of influence. After
the frenzied acquisition of colonies by the chief European states in the years
1884-1900, the division of the world among imperialist and colonial powers
became complete. No country could be found outside the clutches of modern
imperialism and colonialism. Any
newly-risen imperialist power like the United States, Germany and Japan could
generate a struggle for a redivision of the world by striving to increase its
share of the global economic territory and disturbing the balance of power. The
manufacturing surpluses and the ensuing crisis of overproduction in imperialist
countries impelled them to compete bitterly with each other, expand economic
territory and come into violent collisions that culminated in wars. Chauvinist
calls and war hysteria became convenient for drawing away the consciousness of
the working class, particularly the unemployed, from class struggle against the
monopoly bourgeoisie. Imperialism
as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia,
became conspicuous through wars and the economic crisis in the period 1898-1914.
The Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the
Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) and the economic crisis of 1900 in Europe were the
signal events in the appearance of modern imperialism on the stage of world
history. British
imperialism, the No. 1 imperialist and colonial power then, continued to wave
the anachronistic flag of "free trade" in order to take advantage of
its well-established lead in manufacturing, engage in global capital expansion
and obscure the high war potential of macro-competition among the imperialist
powers in an increasingly limited global market. The
global expansion of capital was so pronounced that it gave an illusion of a
unilinear spread of industrial capitalism on a global scale, which induced a
split in the socialist movement in Europe. Kautsky
preached the theory of ultra-imperialism to mean that the imperialist powers
were out to break down all pre-capitalist barriers, industrialize the world and
bring about all-round progress. But Lenin pointed out the moribund character of
imperialism, the grossly uneven development under imperialism,
the spasmodic character of capital flows, the tendency of imperialism to
use the most reactionary forms of puppet rule and the destructiveness of
economic crisis and war. The
competing protectionist drives of the imperialist powers in fact prevailed over
the pretenses at free trade. The crisis of overproduction sharpened the
political and economic conflicts within each imperialist state and among the
imperialist powers and led to the first global inter-imperialist war from 1914
to 1918. The war claimed millions of lives and destroyed huge amounts of assets
on an unprecedented scale. However, it also provided the conditions for the rise
of the first socialist country and encouraged the anti- colonial struggles of
the people in many countries. After
an alternation of crisis and boom in the aftermath of World War I, the Great
Depression came upon the world capitalist system after the Crash of 1929. It was
a prolonged crisis of overproduction and financial collapse. It exacerbated the
contradictions among the imperialist powers and caused the second
inter-imperialist war to break out. World War II was even more destructive than
World War I, killing 60 million people and destroying a huge amount of property.
But
it also resulted in the rise of several more socialist countries and a great
wave of national liberation movements. It seemed as if imperialism and
colonialism were already encircled by socialism and the national liberation
movements. A majority of the people of the world, including a full third of
humanity in socialist countries, confronted imperialism and colonialism.
But the US had also come out from the war as the strongest imperialist
power in economic and military terms. As soon as the war ended, the US
engineered the establishment of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods
agreements to reflect its ascendancy and a new balance of power. In
1948 the US launched the Cold War in order to contain and combat the challenge
of socialism and the national liberation movements and to counter the tendency
of the US economy to slide into a crisis of overproduction.
The Cold War was actually a series of hot localized wars, which included
the big US wars of aggression in Korea and Indochina, the US-supported Israeli
wars on Palestine and the anti- Soviet wars in Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua and
Afghanistan. These wars caused the death of millions of people, far exceeding
the number of those killed in World War I. During
the Cold War, the US instigated the overthrow of independent governments and
propped up repressive puppet regimes, which unceremoniously killed people in
great numbers. The massacre of at least 1.5 million Indonesians was a major
campaign of repression intended to secure US, British and Dutch oil interests
and countervail the losing position of the US in Indochina. The death toll as a
consequence of the daily violence of exploitation and the intolerable burden of
foreign debt should also be taken into account in a complete reckoning. In
1975, it seemed that the victorious wars of national liberation in Indochina and
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China had put the imperialist
powers in dire straits. The US was clearly on the decline as a consequence of
the pressures of the growing economies of Japan and Germany and because of the
high costs of the Cold War, including the costs of military spending and
unsustainable trade accommodations to its imperialist and newly-industrializing
allies in the anti-communist crusade. The
US could not solve the problem of stagflation within the framework of
Keynesianism for several reasons. It served the interests of the
military-industrial complex and thus obscured the cost-push effect
and limited job growth in high military spending, especially for high
tech weaponry and space research and development. It wanted to wreak vengeance
on the working class and pointed to wage inflation and state social spending as
the cause of stagflation. Thus, the neoliberals and monetarists of the Chicago
School went to town to replace the Keynesians. Running
parallel to the economic decline of the US, the phenomenon of modern revisionism
and monopoly bureaucrat capitalism was undermining and degrading the
socialist-labeled countries and pushing them toward open and unabashed adoption
of capitalism. Afflicted by its own stagnation, corruption and military
overspending, the Soviet Union was outplayed by the US in the contest of
neocolonialism for hegemony over the newly-independent countries. From
1979 onward, it was clear that the US continued on a path of economic decline
and attracted to the policy of neoliberalism even before the Reagan regime.
Under the Volcker plan, the US raised interest rates in order to attract funds
from abroad. Subsequently, Reagan used the flow of foreign of funds to engage in
high-speed production of hightech weaponry and maintain the US as the biggest
consumer market in the world. The trade and budgetary deficits made the US the
biggest debtor country in the world. II.
Imperialism:
Neoliberalism and Neo-Conservatism In
the period of 1989-91, all the revisionist-ruled and pseudo- socialist countries
were in turmoil. The big bourgeoisie proceeded to legalize all previous
ill-gotten private assets and accelerated the open privatization of the most
important and largest public assets. The Soviet Union collapsed. The bipolar
world of the Cold War ended. The US emerged as the sole superpower. There
was the widespread notion that the end of the Cold War would result in
"peace dividends" for humanity, especially in terms of more funds for
poverty alleviation and socio-economic development. But subsequent developments
showed that the US became more rapacious and aggressive. The consensus in
Washington to this day is to let the phony free market of monopoly capitalism
solve the problems of the world and to let high tech weaponry take out any
"rogue state" or unwieldy client regime. There
is the strong bipartisan presumption in US officialdom that the US stockpile of
weapons of mass destruction rather than the internal rottenness of the Soviet
Union that caused the so-called evil empire to crumble. And more funds for the
instruments of war
are to be appropriated in order to perpetuate and expand US global
hegemony. After
inveigling Iraq to attack Kuwait, the US under the aegis of the UN Security
Council was able to muster multilateral support for driving Iraq out of Kuwait
and subsequently imposing sanctions on Iraq for twelve years.
The studies and plans in the Pentagon and in related think tanks for the
eventual total US control of Iraq and the entire Middle East go as far as the
early 1980s. They are couched in terms of protecting and securing the oil
resources for the US and the world. The
disintegration of the Warsaw Pact provided the opportunity for the US and NATO
to expand to Eastern Europe and to some former Soviet republics. Subsequently,
the US and NATO would be able to wage war on the former Yugoslavia and build
positions of strength on the southern flanks of Russia.
Further, the US gained foothold in the Caucasus, Caspian sea region and
Central Asia, all regions related to the
overweening desire of the US to control the sources and routes of energy
supply. After
the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became fashionable for some bourgeois
propagandists to proclaim the end of history with capitalism and liberal
democracy. This
is supposed to be a conclusion to be drawn from the disintegration of the Soviet
bloc and the open regression of revisionist-ruled countries to capitalism. In
fact, the crisis of the world capitalist system was conspicuously worsening in
the 1989-1991 period, as manifested by the bursting of the Japanese bubble
economy, the stagnation of the German economy, the weakening of the so-called
newly-industrializing economies and of course by the devastation of the
economies of the third world and former Soviet bloc countries. The
crisis of overproduction and financial collapses persisted in the world
capitalist system throughout the 1990s. The US economy could shine only at the
expense of its imperialist allies and the newly-industrializing economies. It
continued to attract heavy doses of funds from abroad, especially from Europe,
Japan and the oil- producing countries, due to high US interest rates and
favorable rates of return on capital. It took the lead in the commercialization
of high technology. It kept the US consumer market as "the market of last
resort" of the entire world. In
the second half of the 1990s, the US boasted of a "new economy"
ceaselessly growing without inflation, generating full employment mainly through
part-time jobs and being brought forward by high technology. The US economy was
touted as the high point of "free market" globalization, with capital
and goods moving freely and with the state maximizing the capital available to
the multinational corporations, privatizing profitable public assets and
deregulating at the expense of labor, society at large and the environment. The
moment of truth came for the US and entire world capitalist system in 2000. The
high tech bubble burst due to the global crisis of overproduction in high tech
goods. US
industrial production plummeted. The financial meltdowns spread to the stock
market and to the banks in the US and throughout the world. Until now, both the
U.S. and global economy are in a protracted state of stagnation and decline.
Bankruptcies, production cutbacks and high unemployment rates continue to
constrict the global market. Neoliberalism
has proven to be a futile policy for fixing the problems of the world capitalist
economy. It has accelerated the concentration and centralization of capital in
the imperialist countries, chiefly the US. And it has whipped up financial
speculation far beyond the real economy in the imperialist countries and in
so-called emerging markets or transition economies. Financial collapses have
been terribly devastating. The
overwhelming majority of countries that produce raw materials for export and
some countries that produce for export low value-added semi-manufactures and a
few basic manufactures are in a state of unrelieved depression. These
deficit-ridden and heavily indebted countries are targets of takeover by US and
other imperialist powers, which use the trick of converting loans to equity and
to control of natural resources. In
connection with the invasion and occupation of Iraq and other aggressive actions
elsewhere, neoconservativism as a policy direction in Washington has gained
global notoriety. It projects a new American century, in which the US as sole
superpower develops full-spectrum power, uses this to impose a Pax Americana on
the world and launches preemptive war in order to take out a recalcitrant regime
and prevent any power from being able to rival and challenge the US. The
9/11 attacks have given the so-called neoconservatives the pretext for claiming
to wage a permanent war on terrorism and for seeking to deprive opponents of the
US weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, the US went to war against Iraq in
violation of the UN charter and UN Security Council resolutions by dishing out
lies that Iraq had conspiratorial links with Al Qaida and had weapons of mass
destruction. The
real motives of the Bush regime and the so-called neoconservatives are to take
over the second largest oil resources of the world in Iraq, keep secure the US
dollar as the currency of oil transactions, increase US control over Saudi
Arabia and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), use U.S.
military bases in centrally located Iraq to control the entire Middle East and
remove Iraq as a threat to the US-Israeli collaboration. Neoconservativism
is apparently the unabashedly violent complement of neoliberalism. It adds the
force of war to the myth of "free market" under modern imperialism.
Both neoliberalism and neoconservatism are intended to expand US economic
territory and to make the pretense at building a market economy and democracy. But
I can confidently say that modern imperialism continues
its rapacious and aggressive character and conduct no matter what new
jargon it uses to misrepresent these. This long-running scourge to humanity has
always somehow misrepresented itself as a civilizing force, its acts of
aggression as the promotion of peace and human rights and its acts of plunder as
the boon of "development" or the fair result of the "free
market". III.
Resistance
from Below The
crisis of the world capitalist system has gone so far that contradictions keep
on arising among the imperialist powers over questions of trade and war. In the
World Trade Organization, the European Union and Japan have increasingly exposed
the US as being hypocritical about "free trade" for using direct and
indirect subsidies and tariffs in order to favor US exporters. But for the first
time, after so long, France, Germany and Russia (plus China) have opposed
something as large as the US-British invasion and occupation of Iraq. Major
powers have stood up against the US war of aggression against Iraq not only
because of the patent violations of the UN charter but also because the US is
determined to disregard the production and loan contracts between Iraq and said
powers and to take over the Iraqi oil resources by encumbering these with
onerous contracts and securitizing them eventually. Russia and China are also
increasingly worried by US incursions in Central Asia and by the conspicuous
drive of the US to tighten controls over sources and routes of energy supply. If
imperialist powers allied against the oppressed nations and people can become
involved in serious contradictions among themselves, non-imperialist states that
justify their existence with assertions of national independence, concern for
public well-being and even socialism quickly find themselves at odds with an
U.S. imperialist power that is increasingly rapacious and aggressive. Long
targeted by US aggressive and interventionist policy are countries like Cuba and
People's Democratic Republic of Korea. They express not only the national
independence but also the socialist aspirations of their respective peoples in
opposing US acts of aggression and intervention, military encirclement, economic
blockade and all sorts of threats and pressures.
There are also countries like Palestine, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and many
others that invoke national independence in order to resist excessive political,
economic and other demands and impositions of the US. China
continues to show that it is friendly to the US but still has many unresolved
problems with US imperialism. The US carries out a dual policy of engagement and
containment towards China, engaging it on the road of capitalism and containing
it as a potential enemy. China has taken a clear position against the US on the
questions of Iraq, Taiwan, US surveillance over China, relations with
neighboring countries and the imperialist use of the WTO against the developing
countries. It was among the 22 countries that stood up against the US position
in Cancun. We
may count as forces of resistance from below those non-imperialist states that
stand up to defend their national independence against imperialism.
In fact the US has launched the most violent wars of aggression against
such states, which have included Iraq, former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan in
recent times. It has also emboldened and supported the Israeli Zionists to
occupy Palestine and suppress the Palestinian resistance. As a consequence, we
see the steady growth of armed and other forms of resistance in countries
directly or indirectly attacked by the US. During
the first quarter of 2003, we saw the rising of millions of people in hundreds
of cities all over the world. The biggest was on February 15, when 30 million
people rose up. The protest marches and rallies were reminiscent of those held
at the peak of the people's resistance to the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. The
resurgence of mass protest actions against war and against imperialism in the
imperialist countries reflects not only a high sense of solidarity of the people
in such countries for other peoples but also the growing discontent over the
crisis of the world capitalist system. The people are restive over high rates of
unemployment, the reduction of social benefits, the deterioration of social
services and the highest priority given to corporate benefits and to military
spending. The
Iraqi people are now waging a broad-based armed resistance against the US
occupation and the puppets. The united front includes the bourgeois
nationalists, communists, the Baathists, the Sunnis, Shiittes
and other religious believers and the Arab, Kurdish, Turkomen and other ethnic
communities. The tempo and scope of the revolutionary war for national
liberation are increasing. The successful offensives of the Iraqi people are
bound to inspire bigger protest actions in the US and in the world. The
American and other peoples of the world are now demanding the withdrawal of US
troops and bases from Iraq. The peaceful mass actions alone cannot compel the US
to withdraw from Iraq.
But as in the US war of aggression in Vietnam, the mounting US casualties
in the Iraqi battlefield and the gigantic mass actions of the American and other
peoples of the world can persuade the US to withdraw from Iraq. Throughout
the world, the broad masses of the people have been roused by the exploitative
character of "free market" globalization and by the oppressive
character of "the new world order." They detest and resist the ugly
character and consequences of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
They are carrying out various forms of resistance, which are spreading
and intensifying. The
most effective and most promising kind of resistance are the revolutionary armed
struggles being carried out in such countries as the Philippines, Turkey,
Palestine, Iraq, Nepal, India and Colombia.
There are also reemerging revolutionary forces of the oppressed nations
and peoples that wish to wage armed revolution. The
US is becoming more and more vulnerable as it is stricken by crisis and further
strains itself through imperial overstretch. Thus, the number of people
determined to wage armed revolution is rapidly increasing. It
is self-defeating for the US to have used cruise missiles and other weapons of
mass destruction to take out regimes that are opposed to it and also for it to
have provocatively shown off its military presence in so many countries. The US
has nearly exhausted its deployable military forces by being absorbed even only
in the two countries of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has also become clear that
high-tech weapons are ineffective against people's revolutionary forces that
wage an armed resistance of fluid movement and offer no fixed targets to their
enemy. The
resistance from below from the toiling masses of workers and peasants is the
strongest, most inexhaustible and most important kind of resistance.
The toiling masses are ever willing and eager to resist the most
intolerable forms of oppression and exploitation, now surfacing under the
current crisis conditions. It can become sustained and well-directed and can
advance from one stage to another only if there is a truly revolutionary party
of the proletariat. The working class is still the principal agent for
revolutionary change in the epochal struggle against imperialism in both the
imperialist and dominated countries. So
long as imperialism persists in oppressing and exploiting the people, the
people's struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism will
continue. US imperialism and the local exploiting classes themselves create the
crisis conditions which generate the people's resistance and pave the way for
the revolutionary class and party leadership to arise. There is no stopping the
wheels of history from moving, despite any curve, bumps or zigzags along the
way. References: Richard
du Boff, U.S. Hegemony: Continuing Decline, Enduring Danger," Monthly
Review, December
2003. John
Bellamy Foster, "Imperial America and War", Monthly Review, May 2003. Francis
Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992). F.A.
Hayek, The Road To Serfdom (James's Liberty file collection index, http://www.jim.com/index.htm) J.A.
Hobson, Imperialism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948). V.I.
Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Beijing: Foreign Languages
Press, 1975). V.I.
Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1966). John
McMurry, "Understanding the U.S. War State", Monthly Review, March
2003. The
Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses:
Strategy, Forces and
Resources for a new Century, September 2000 Report. (http://www.newamericancentury.org) Ninotchka
Rosca, Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World, Portrait of a Revolutionary
(Greensboro, NC:
Open Hand Publishing LLC, 2004) Jose Maria Sison, U.S. Terrorism and War in the Philippines. (Breda, Netherlands: Papieren Tijger, 2003). We want to know what you think of this article.
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