The Progressive and
Revolutionary People Must Prepare for the Coming Revolutionary Storms
-Statement
of the MRC on the Occasion of New Year’s 2011
Global
Debt Crisis
During the past
year, the financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 continued to plague
the capitalist world, despite repeated claims that a recovery had begun. The claims of a recovery were based entirely
on the performance of the major stock markets, buoyed up by the approximately
US$15 Trillion dollars handed over to the big banks and other financial institutions
to prevent a melt-down of the global banking/financial system. To put this into
some kind of perspective, the total value of all real property in the world is
estimated to be about $50 Trillion. So,
over the course of the past two years, various governments have transferred the
equivalent of more than 25 percent of the world’s assets into the pockets of
the super-rich.
Yet, despite
this historically unprecedented transfer of wealth from the public to the
private sector, the debt crisis facing the private banking and financial sector
continues to cast a pall over the world’s major economies. The mortgage crisis
in the U.S. continues. Personal debt continues to skyrocket, fuelled by the
flood of cash into the financial sector and repeated assurances from the media
and political leaders that the crisis is over.
Far from ending
the crisis, the massive government bail-outs have simply set the stage for a
deeper and broader crisis. The debt crisis afflicting the “private” sector has
now been joined by a crisis of state debt in an increasing number of countries.
During the past year several states defaulted on their debt payments, including
Iceland, Ireland and Greece. It is expected that the debt crises in Italy,
Spain and Portugal will also mature this year. Many of the countries of Eastern
Europe, particularly Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the Baltic states, are
essentially bankrupt. For that matter, the American state is also, for all
intents and purposes, bankrupt. Only the fact that so many countries hold
American debt and so many countries rely on the artificially inflated American
consumer market to buy their exports has allowed the U.S. to continue its
spending spree.
The state debt
crisis in Europe is already generating enormous pressures on the Euro and on
the European Union (EU) itself. The EU was established for the sole purpose of
facilitating the economic pillage of the smaller European countries by the big
powers – Germany, France and, later, Britain. The smaller states were reduced to
mere satellites of the big powers - sources of labour, raw materials and
markets. The mobility of labour within the EU allowed the weaker economies to
get rid of their surplus labour and cheap and plentiful credit allowed them to
institute welfare states to further relieve social pressures. However, the
credit crunch and the economic crisis have combined to
simultaneously dry up the source of funds for these states and to return
hundreds of thousands of surplus workers back to their home countries. In
effect, the big powers were instrumental in facilitating the crisis and are now
relentlessly shifting the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the weakest
states and poorest peoples in Europe. As this crisis broadens and deepens, a
real possibility exists that the EU will break up and inter-state tensions will
escalate.
Re-Emergence
of Russia
To the east,
Russia has re-emerged as an economic and military power to be reckoned with,
although it is a long way from re-establishing itself as a global
superpower. Its control of vast oil and
gas resources has allowed it to recover to some extent from the wholesale
looting of the state treasury that took place during the 1990s and to shore up
its sagging military machine. In 2008 it crushed Georgia, a major U.S. ally in
the Trans-Caucasian region and re-established its essentially unchallenged
domination over the energy resources of that region. In 2009 and 2010 Russia
re-asserted its control over the Central Asian republics, signing long-term
contracts giving it sole access to their natural gas resources and convincing Kyrgyzstan to close a U.S. military base which
had been established in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in
2001. It also appears that Russia was instrumental in organizing a coup in
Uzbekistan to block a proposed U.S. military base in that country. Russia has
also been establishing or strengthening ties with those states in the Middle
East which are being threatened by the U.S. and Israel, particularly Iran and
Syria.
During the past
two years, Russia has also brought Ukraine to its knees on the issue of natural
gas transmission through Ukraine. It has completely dismantled the U.S. gains
achieved by the so-called “Orange Revolution” and brought Ukraine firmly back
into the Russian sphere of influence. It is currently building two new natural
gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine to the north and south to further weaken
Ukraine’s strategic position and make it even more reliant on Russian largesse.
However, this reassertion of Russian neo-colonial domination of Ukraine has also
exacerbated the internal tensions and divisions within Ukraine and a growing
separatist movement in the western part of the country, no doubt with support from the U.S. which
stands to gain the most from splitting Ukraine into two states.
Russia has also
retaken control of its own oil resources which were threatened by a U.S.
take-over. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch
responsible for scheming to sell Russia’s largest oil company to U.S. buyers
has been sentenced to a further jail term, signalling that the pro-U.S.
elements within the Russian oligarchy are still on the defensive.
Russia has also
taken measures to strengthen its economic alliances with Germany, on the west,
and China, on the east, further blocking American attempts to surround, isolate
and reduce Russia to a U.S. colony. These alliances are still tenuous, but, if
consolidated, they would make it extremely difficult for the U.S. to maintain
its hegemony in Europe and Asia. However, it would be a mistake to overestimate
Russia’s current position. It has still not fully recovered from the economic
and financial crisis of the 1980s and the subsequent looting of the country
during the 1990s. Financially it is still quite weak and dependent on foreign
investment. Furthermore, its implementation of neo-liberal policies has further
weakened the state in key areas and its complete integration into the
international capitalist system makes it just as vulnerable to the current
economic/financial crisis of that system as every other capitalist state.
China
China has one of
the few economies that is still growing at a rapid
rate. This growth is based on a number of factors, not the least of which is
that China has been a favourite destination for foreign investment for the past
decade or so. Much of the investment is by multinational corporations that are
simultaneously closing plants elsewhere and opening plants in China. One of the
main reasons for this is the depression of wages caused by the rapid
impoverishment of the peasantry through the privatization of land and social
services, which has created an enormous pool of surplus labour. While China is
attempting to create a large domestic market for the products produced there, a
very large portion of the production is for the U.S. consumer market, which
means that China’s continuing growth depends on the continuing growth of
American consumption. China has also become the world’s biggest purchaser of
U.S. debt which makes its economic future doubly dependent on the health of the
American economy.
China also has
imperial aspirations. It is rapidly penetrating Latin American and African
markets, long the preserve of the U.S. and European powers, and has embarked on
a multi-decade project to build up its military power, particularly its navy.
It was announced in 2010 that China has now deployed a new generation of
anti-ship missiles against which the U.S. navy has no defences and which could
force the U.S. Seventh Fleet to vacate the Taiwan Strait.
However, despite
the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, the rise in unemployment and poverty
is even more rapid. This is creating a lot of social unrest from the base of
society, unlike that of the 1980s which came from the elites and was financed
by the U.S. state and Hong Kong tycoons. So, despite its apparent strengths,
China’s economy is actually quite fragile and subject to severe disruptions
from both external and internal sources.
India
and Brazil
India and Brazil
also have rapidly growing economies, although they are expanding at a rate
considerably less than that of China. Both countries have been taking measures
to establish themselves as regional powers and have been manoeuvring to
distance themselves to some extent from U.S. dictate. But both countries are
also heavily dependent on export markets, especially the American market.
U.S.
Policy in Crisis
As for the U.S.,
2010 was not a particularly good year. It
remained bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the case of the former, it
appears that the various factions within Iraq are just waiting for a pull-out
of U.S. troops to escalate the sectarian violence and tear the country apart.
In Afghanistan, despite Obama’s “surge” of 30,000 additional troops during the
past year, the war is slowly but surely slipping out of control. The insurgents
have escalated their resistance and American casualties are growing. The
American puppet Karzai has repeatedly threatened to
join the Taliban if his demands are not met and it appears that the U.S. has no
one else to take his place.
U.S.-Israeli
attempts to isolate Iran and bring it to its knees have largely failed, while
Syria has been quietly building up its military capability. In Lebanon, Hezbollah
is, for all intents and purposes, the state and its armed forces constitute the
main defence of the country. It has reportedly acquired large numbers of
anti-ship missiles and long-range rockets that can reach deep into Israel. The genocidal Israeli war against the people of Gaza at the
beginning of 2009 has accomplished nothing in terms of destroying the
Palestinian resistance, while further discrediting the Palestinian Authority in
the eyes of the Palestinian and world’s people. Israeli acts of piracy in
boarding the Gaza flotilla in international waters and murdering seven
activists served to further isolate U.S.-Israeli policy. In apparent response to
the attack, Turkey signalled a shift in its support from Israel to the
Palestinians. Despite this growing international isolation, there are reports,
based on secret communications exposed by Wikileaks,
that Israel, with U.S. support, is planning a major offensive against Lebanon
and Gaza in the near future.
U.S. attempts to
stem the election of anti-American governments in Latin America met with mixed
results. While failing to overthrow the governments of Chavez in Venezuela and
Morales in Bolivia, in 2009 the U.S. was successful in engineering a coup in Honduras
which removed democratically elected president Zelaya. In 2010 the U.S. was implicated in an
attempted coup against Ecuadoran president Correa.
The U.S. economy
continued to struggle during the past year, kept afloat only by massive
injections of state debt and the reluctance of the rest of the capitalist world
to allow the U.S. economy to collapse and drag them down with it. Unemployment
and mortgage failures remained at high levels. In response to this situation
there were growing pressures within the U.S. government for protectionist
measures, particularly against China, but also against Canada and other trading
partners. Similar pressures are growing in other countries, as well, and are
sure to multiply as the crisis deepens and broadens.
There are
growing divisions within the ranks of the monopoly capitalists everywhere on
how to best deal with the crisis, but these divisions appear to be most marked
within the U.S. One section of the ruling elite wants to continue with the
so-called “Keynesian” approach of massive state expenditures, which consists
mainly of handing out huge amounts of cash to financially-troubled
corporations. Another section favours slashing state expenditures, particularly
expenditures on social spending, while simultaneously slashing taxes on the
super-rich. This is not so much a case of a difference in overall approach as a
difference in tactics. Both factions favour shifting the burden of the crisis
onto the backs of the working people. However, one faction favours bailing out
the monopoly capitalist class, as a whole, while the other prefers an “every
man for himself” approach in which the most powerful
monopolies get everything.
In the U.S., the
latter faction of the ruling elite has cobbled together a so-called “grass
roots movement” – the Tea Party Movement – in an attempt to seize the reins of
power and institute policies favourable to itself. Ironically, this “movement”
is funded by many of the very finance capitalists that it purports to oppose.
In Europe, similar, right-wing, racist and xenophobic movements are also being
organized by the finance capitalists to be used both as instruments to gain
power for themselves, as well as to be used against the movements of the
working class and people which are gaining some momentum.
Neither
in the U.S., Europe or in Canada does there appear to be much
of a division of opinion within the ruling elite on the issue of establishing
police states. Using the threat of terrorist attacks, most likely organized by
the states themselves, the security apparatuses of the states are being rapidly
strengthened. In the U.S., not since the
1970s have the FBI and other state agencies conducted so many raids and arrests
of political and anti-war activists. However,
the increasing fascization of the state should not be
interpreted as a sign of strength of the capitalist states. On the contrary, it
shows that the capitalist ruling elites are increasingly fearful of their own
peoples and of the inevitable resistance movements which will emerge in the
coming period.
Disequilibrium
in Canada
In Canada, the
state of disequilibrium continued over which section of finance capital will control the state machine. The country is essentially split
between East and West, with Quebec going its own way and playing one side
against the other. No parliamentary party appears poised to emerge with a
majority government and Canadians seem comfortable keeping it that way.
Rich
Becoming Richer
Meanwhile,
despite the crisis (or more accurately as a result of it) in every capitalist
country the rich, especially the super-rich, are getting richer while the poor
are rapidly getting poorer and the middle strata are either treading water or
drowning in a sea of debt. The fact that the super-rich are getting richer during
a period of decline in the average rate of profit demonstrates how the most
powerful capitalists are using the state to extort wealth from the entire
society, including from less powerful sections of the capitalist class. There
is no indication that this trend will be reversed in the near future.
Drawing
Conclusions
What can we
conclude from these developments? For one thing, the crisis which began in the
financial sector in 2008 and spread to the economic sector in 2009, during 2010
increasingly involved every aspect of society. Even the massive bail-outs could
not turn the economy around. From this it is clear that neo-liberalism, at
least in the form it has taken since the mid-1980s, has run its course and is
no longer capable of staving off crisis or restoring profit rates to previous
levels.
The U.S. is
declining in economic power and is in danger of losing its hegemonic position
within the international capitalist order. At the same time, there is no new
power on the horizon capable of taking up that mantle and imposing its own will
on its rivals. This is a recipe for extreme instability and inter-imperialist
wars to re-divide the world.
The super-rich
are taking advantage of the crisis and using their control of the state to
implement a historically unprecedented transfer of wealth from the general
population to themselves. This, in turn, can only result in further
exacerbation of the financial/economic crisis to historically unprecedented
levels.
While the
international economic/financial system is extremely weak and vulnerable to
collapse, the finance capitalists themselves control immense amounts of wealth
and power and have a virtual monopoly on the use of violence. They will use
these strengths to hold the entire world to ransom and escalate the
impoverishment of the world’s peoples. In other words, we are headed towards a
period of extreme right-wing policies and violence against the people. This can
already be seen developing in the U.S., France, Greece and other countries.
As the crisis
further develops and the burden is increasingly transferred onto the most
vulnerable nations and peoples, the viability of entire nations will be put
into question, similar to the situation which has already been created by the
imperialists in Africa and Haiti. This, in turn, will result in the creation of
weak links in the chain of imperialist states. Southern and Eastern Europe are already becoming such regions. Various countries in
Latin America and Asia are also becoming weak links. As the situation matures,
the resistance of the working class and people will also escalate and the
possibility of a break in the chain of imperialism will become more and more
likely.
In the midst of
this situation, the progressive and revolutionary forces are at their weakest
level since the early 1900s. This is not accidental; it is a consequence of
those same historical developments which gave rise to the current crisis of
capitalism. The first of those historical developments was the betrayal of
revolution and socialism by opportunism and revisionism in the post-WWII
period. This was also not accidental, but merely one of the consequences of the
emergence of a revitalized international capitalism under the control of U.S.
imperialism and the extremely aggressive counter-revolutionary activities of the
U.S. and European powers during that period. The ongoing imperialist
ideological assault against revolution and socialism was given a boost with the
collapse of pseudo-socialism in the Soviet Union and countries of People’s
Democracy in the 1989 to 1992 period. The monopoly capitalist system received
another boost with the massive transfer of wealth from the developing countries
and the former socialist countries to the advanced capitalist countries as a
result of the policies of neo-liberalism. The euphoria of the days of soaring
stock markets in the 1990s coupled with the active promotion of various
dead-end ideologies within the popular movements since the mid-1990s also
served to derail the movements of the people and destroy their effectiveness.
In North America, in particular, the revolutionary organizations have either
been destroyed or reduced to impotency.
What
is to be Done?
It is important
for progressive and revolutionary people to grasp that this objective situation
is neither of their making nor do they have any significant control over it. It
is what it is and will develop as it develops,
independent of our will. The only thing that the revolutionary forces can
accomplish at this juncture of history is to provide themselves with
organizations and institutions capable of leading the working class and people
when the inevitable political crises break out. What form those organizations
and institutions will take is not particularly clear at this time. There are
both negative and positive models from the past to learn from, but there are
also new needs of the movement which must also find appropriate forms. To a
significant degree it matters less what the forms are than what content people
are seeking to find forms for. It also matters less whether people are absolutely
correct in whatever activities they undertake than the fact that they are
taking action of some kind to change the situation. Those who are serious about
their desire to change the situation and who persist in striving to turn those
desires into reality will make progress and learn from their successes and
failures. Those who are not serious or do not persist will fall by the wayside.
That is the reality of life, not just of revolution.
No one can
predict when or where revolutionary movements will emerge and even less so
where or when they will be victorious. All we can say, as Lenin did, is that
revolution will break out where the chain of imperialism is weakest, and where
that happens to be is usually realized after the fact rather than before.
However, we do know that capitalism is organized into national states and
revolutions are also organized on a national basis. It is the responsibility of
the working class and people of every land to, first and foremost, settle
accounts with their own bourgeoisie. Our greatest solidarity with the oppressed
and fighting people of the world would be to overthrow capitalism and establish
socialism in Canada.
The thesis that
revolution is either impossible or unnecessary in Canada has
plagued the Canadian progressive and revolutionary movement for far too long
and it is time that we settle accounts with that thesis, as well. The
theories of Marx and Lenin, which have been confirmed over and over again, make
it clear that revolution is both possible and necessary in every capitalist
country in the world and will break out when the objective and subjective
conditions develop to a sufficient level. The objective conditions for the
revolutionary overthrow of capitalism have existed in Canada since the rise of
monopoly capitalism in the early 20th century. However, the
subjective conditions have historically lagged behind. At this time the main
subjective factor absent in Canada is the existence of a national revolutionary
organization and other institutions of political leadership. Therefore, the
most urgent task facing progressive and revolutionary individuals in Canada is
to build such an organization and such institutions. That act, and that act
alone, is the key to unlocking the secrets of Canadian revolution and preparing
for the revolutionary storms that are gathering force just beyond the horizon.