| Workshop 1: The cause of national liberation, democracy and social liberation |
| Written by ILPS TIA Workshop 1 | |
| SATURDAY, 21 JUNE 2008 | |
The cause of national liberation, democracy and social liberation against imperialism and all reactionThe imperialist policy of “free market globalization” has wrought extreme poverty, misery, backwardness and social degradation on the world’s peoples. This has especially affected the exploited and oppressed in semicolonies and dependent countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Contrary to the claims of the imperialists and their apologists that the end of the Cold War would bring peace, the world has been pushed toward unprecedented militarization and build-up of arms by the imperialist powers. Everywhere imperialism has set back the historic gains of the toiling people in the struggle against capitalist exploitation and oppression. It has negated the historical struggles of oppressed and exploited nations and nationalities that fight for liberation, sovereignty and self-determination. The broad masses of the people throughout the world have been roused by the exploitative character of "free market globalization” and by the oppressive character of "the new world order." The peoples’ resistance to imperialism is spreading and intensifying. The resistance from the toiling masses of workers and peasants is the strongest, most inexhaustible and most important challenge to imperialism. There are the revolutionary armed struggles for national and social liberation such as in Nepal, India, the Philippines, Turkey, Peru, Columbia and other countries. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and other countries, there are the people’s armed resistance against US imperialism and its lackeys. Moreover the people of Palestine, Lebanon and other Arab peoples are combating the US-backed Israeli Zionists. There are also the historical anti-colonial struggles of oppressed nations in the US (First Nations, the Black Nation, the Hawaiian, Chicano, and Puerto Rican peoples and Latino Americans), India and other countries in South Asia and in Africa. Armed resistance to US occupation and its puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan have frustrated US designs for the region. These are laying the basis for bigger and more sustained protest actions in the US and across the world. These are also pressuring the US and other reactionary ruling elites to dissociate themselves from the discredited Bush line and find ways to extricate the US and its allies from the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires. The massive protest actions in the imperialist countries against the US-led invasion of Iraq also reflect growing discontent over the crisis of the world capitalist system. In the imperialist countries, strikes and protest marches have broken out against attacks on the rights of working people, deteriorating working conditions, racial and minority discrimination, the criminalization of migrant workers and discrimination against the youth in employment. Struggles between the exploiting and exploited classes and between the dominant nationality and the minorities are intensifying. The workers, peasants and the lower petty bourgeoisie across the world are frequently rising in large numbers against intensifying exploitation and oppression. Monopoly capitalism is in the throes of an extremely deep crisis of overproduction and destructive financial collapse. It is passing on this crisis to the world’s peoples through its policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. The bankruptcy of the imperialist policy of “neoliberal globalization” manifests itself sharply in the recent financial meltdown. The US economy is in deep crisis resulting in a protracted state of stagnation and decline. Bankruptcies, production cutbacks and high unemployment rates continue to constrict the global market. The sharp drop in US consumption is expected to put countries dependent on exports to the US in an economic tailspin. Monopoly capitalists have whipped up financial speculation far beyond the real economy in the imperialist countries and the rest of the world. Unregulated financial markets where speculators are reaping huge profits on the skyrocketing prices of oil, grain and other commodities impact heavily on the world’s peoples. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US as the sole imperialist superpower has become more rapacious and aggressive, arrogantly undertaking unilateral actions. Nonetheless, the US has been forced to rely increasingly on coalitions and alliances to wage wars of aggression against Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and engage in military intervention elsewhere. US military bases and troops in almost all global regions serve as a coercive and intimidating sword hanging over the governments and peoples of those regions, allowing US and other foreign multinationals to dictate policies and exploit and plunder their natural and human resources. Military and economic grants and loans are depicted by puppet regimes as generous aid but in fact are used to poison and subvert the political and economic sovereignty of the people and impose anti-national and anti-democratic policies on the reactionary governments. While the imperialist are united in exploiting and oppressing the world’s peoples, their divergent and conflicting interests and priorities, under conditions of extremely deep crisis of imperialism, drive them to compete with each other to acquire, keep and control sources of raw materials and cheap labor, markets, fields of investments and spheres of influence. The inter-imperialist contradictions are showing up breaches in the anti-people front of the imperialist powers. Furthermore, there are other contradictions in the international sphere which revolutionary movements for national liberation, democracy and social liberation and peoples and nations struggling for democracy and for their rights to freedom and self-determination can effectively utilize to amplify their independent strengths based on their mass support and their revolutionary integrity. The US is facing increasingly strong demands from Russia which has nuclear weapons and massive oil resources as bargaining levers. Moreover, Russia has joined several countries in Central Asia in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which includes China. These alliances are conducting joint military exercises. China is subjected by the US to a two-pronged policy of engagement and containment. It is regarded by the US as the biggest potential peer rival. China’s capitalist reforms have caused widespread inequality, poverty, exploitation and oppression of the Chinese people. It has contradictions with the US on the Taiwan question, huge trade surplus, and cutdown of Chinese exports to the US among others. There are contradictions between the US and other imperialists on the one hand and countries in Latin America like Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Under pressure of the crisis of the world capitalist system, imperialist countries can engage in proxy wars among their client states or back different conflicting parties within a client state. Another major potential cause for hostility among imperialist powers would be the rise to power of fascist forces within any or some of them. The severe socio-economic and political crisis of imperialism and the so-called global war on terror have laid the ground for fascism and inter-imperialist wars. So long as imperialism exists, the people’s struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism will continue. US imperialism, other imperialist powers and the local exploiting classes themselves create the crisis conditions which generate the people’s resistance and pave the way for the anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces to arise. Calls to action
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