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Some Fundamental Characteristics of the International Situation

The analysis of the basic characteristics of imperialism made by Lenin just before the great Russian October Revolution is still correct. Accordingly, the world is in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution even today. In today's world, there are four kinds of basic contradictions: the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, the inter-imperialist contradiction for profit and plunder, the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed countries and people, and the contradiction between the capitalist system and socialist system. Among them, the fourth is not at the surface now but as per the past experience and for future guarantee, we must take it into account continuously. The socialist revolution comes out of the first contradiction and that is its solution. The second contradiction leads to world war for redivision of the world but has not been permanently resolved. As Mao has said, the proletariat should attempt to prevent world war as far as possible, but if unsuccessful, they should carry out the policy to turn the world war into world revolution. The third contradiction leads to the national liberation movements and the contradiction ends with their success.

Among these, the contradiction between imperialism and the op:. pressed countries and people is the principal world contradiction today. The Party should be clear about some important ideological and political questions as regards deciding about the principal world contradiction, because a wrong trend to undermine and neglect the historical significance of national liberation movements and label them sectarian nationalism has been prevailing in the international communist movement. Moreover, Trotskyist and, chiefly, Khrushchevite revisionism has influenced it to a great extent.

The first thing to note here is that, in the course of the development of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the founding of Russian socialism and the forming of the Comintern in order to .advance the world revolution and formulate its strategies, Lenin stated that the proletarian revolution and national liberation movements should fuse into each other and that this fusion would be a historically important task. Imperialism has been blocking socialist revolution by creating an aristocratic class even within the working class, with a portion of their unaccountable profits extracted through merciless exploitation and plunder of the masses of the colonial and semi-colonial countries of the world. Therefore, Lenin, paying due attention to the importance of incorporating national liberation movements within the proletarian movement, forwarded the slogan, "Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!" He concentrated maximum attention on the national liberation movements of the oppressed countries, including India and China. On the basis of this analysis of Lenin, Mao developed in the world proletarian movement a total concept of the significance and the question of the leadership of the national liberation movements.

Imperialism has been maximising the exploitation, oppression and political suppression of the people of the oppressed countries by using their reactionary ruling classes. It has been making the people poorer and poorer, by making use of the economy of the oppressed countries as its own integral part and by drawing excessive profits through cheap labour and raw materials. That is exactly what has made the situation mature for new-democratic revolution in Asia, Africa and Latin America:. This is why Mao declared these regions storm centres of world revolution and asserted revolution as being the basic trend of the world. He proclaimed the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations as the principal contradiction of the world. Grasping the historical truth that the national liberation movements had become an integral part of the world proletarian movement, Mao developed the strategic method of establishing proletarian leadership over them.

Despite important changes in form, Mao's analysis stands correct in essence even today. During the Cold War, Russian social-imperialism and US imperialism spent huge amounts of money on arms for the expansion of their influence and eventually turned into superpowers. They imposed various kinds of regional wars on the oppressed countries, and another world war appeared very close. But Russian social-imperialism could not maintain its old form, due to the imperialist crisis, and collapsed politically and economically. Ironically, Western imperialism propagated this collapse as the collapse of communism and celebrated joyously its unipolar hegemony.

This event definitely gave US imperialism more opportunity for direct plunder, exploitation and intervention in the "Third World" and the entire world. This accelerated the unhindered mobilisation of financial capital on a world scale. This is what has been hailed by imperialism as "globalisation". Through this "globalisation" imperialism has entrapped the whole economy of the oppressed countries and has been dictating and pressurising the ruling reactionary classes of these countries to pursue the policy of liberalisation in order to speed up the flow of capital. Through the economic giants like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc., imperialism has created an environment to play the role of director and controller of the economic affairs of the oppressed countries. mainly imperialism grew more and more encouraged to grab unlimited profits by mixing up the unprecedented progress in science and technology, including electronics, with the cheap labour of the Third World.

After all, what ultimate objective result has the imperialist campaign of "unipolar world", "globalisation" and "liberalisation" brought? The experience of the last 10 years has already shown the truth. That is the intensification of the contradictions between different classes and between the rich and poor countries. Even according to the data prepared by the imperialists (which is manipulated to best suit the interests of the authority concerned) the rich countries, with only 25 per cent of the population of the world, own 80 percent of the world's wealth... Today, 2.5 billion people are extremely poor and one billion people are living an extremely miserable life below the absolute poverty line. Eighty million people of the Third World are forced to leave their country for their livelihood every year. More than 20 million children are forced into labour. The class contradiction is intensifying, even in the imperialist countries. Even in the US. the number one hoodlum of the world, more than 20 million people are suffering from absolute poverty. Racial discrimination. inequality, unemployment homelessness, social insecurity, women's oppression. etc. are growing day-by-day. They cause the resentment of the people from time to time, to suppress which the ruling classes are compelled to use special military force and devise new strategies. In Western Europe, unemployment has been institutionalised and people resort to street struggles because of shortages and inflation. Suppression. terror, religious and communal riots against the people's resentment, and against the national liberation movements and socialist movement, which are developing everywhere in the Third World countries. have been the daily routine of the imperialists and reactionaries.

The fact that their political cover. bearing the signboard 01 parliamentary democracy, has been tom to pieces. has been splendidly brought about by the recently conducted drama of the , US presidential election. If a country advocates even a little economic and political freedom, the imperialists take no time in imposing economic sanctions against them, resorting to political pressure, military intervention and genocide. Their intervention in Iraq, Yugoslavia. Palestine and Mexico, along with other Asian, African and Latin American countries. verifies this.

Imperialism has built a gigantic mechanism of military force and strategy in order to maintain the "new world order'. US imperialism has developed a military strategy "to keep up" its global economic plunder and hegemony. According to the data of their defence budget, US imperialism has allocated $262 billion to defence alone. which is almost half of that of the world. When the defence budget of its alliance partners, like the NATO countries, Japan. Israel and South Korea, are also included, it exceeds 80 per cent of the world's total. Today, the us has become the main headquarters for arms smuggling. US imperialism has, through its military-industrial complex, been successfully looting the world and fooling their people by parting with a small portion of its loot. It has put on alert a huge military force in the Gulf and in the Korean Peninsula to fight against Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Cuba, whose total defence budget amounts to $15 billion only. As Lenin has stated about imperialism, the US has been giving priority to its military force to continue its political and military hegemony over its allies, and is intensifying its activities with its global military hegemony in countries like India and China in order to capture the huge store of cheap labour and raw materials. On top of this, its strategic alliance with Indian expansionism has been rapidly growing, and dark clouds of massive plunder and genocide in South Asia are looming larger. The opening of an FBI branch in Delhi is its evidence. These facts show the importance of Mao's concept of Three Worlds in the immediate tactical sense.

However, facts have also indicated that objectively the imperialists, mainly Yankee imperialism, have been getting fully engulfed In the contradictions with the oppressed countries and people. Though there is no contention between the super-powers at present, following the end of the Cold War, the so-called unipolar dream is what can never come true, as shown by open and disguised clashes and conflicts of economic and political interests between the US, the European Community, Japan and Russia. With this crisis the possibility of revolt by millions of masses is intensifying day-by-day.

We must seriously pay attention to the following distinct situation, created by imperialism with the evil intention of grabbing profits in the present world. Firstly, it has guaranteed the acceleration of the people's consciousness to move from the world of necessity to that of freedom, by linking high technology with the cheap labour of the huge population of the masses. Secondly, with globalisation to grab profits, unprecedented development in the field of information technology, mainly electronics, has narrowed down the world just to a small rural unit. Therefore, it is very likely that an event in any place will have a great positive or negative impact on the world as a whole, and vice versa. Thirdly, the world-wide system of imperialism producing and distributing arms has been indirectly playing a role for the technical preparation of people's war on a world scale. Fourthly, the unlimited production and globalisation of its social process has strangely built a material basis, in a rapid way, for the communist principle of work according to ability and distribution according to need. Fifthly, and mainly, imperialism, by intensifying the class struggle, principally the contradiction be" tween imperialism and the oppressed countries and people, to the maximum, has been preparing a revolutionary objective situation for 80 per cent of the people of the world.

Through the internal contradiction of the imperialists, unequal development and distribution as per the inherent character of capitalism, the development of this objective situation will lead to revolution in any country in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and its international importance is just evident. It magnificently justifies Mao's analysis that Asia, Africa and Latin America shall be the storm centres of revolution. These characteristics clearly indicate that the twenty-first century shall be a century of people's wars and the triumph of the world socialist system. Apart from this, it also shows that there has been a significant change in the prevailing concept of the model of revolution since 1980. Today, the fusion of the strategies of armed insurrection and protracted people's war into one another has been essential. Without so doing, a genuine revolution seems almost impossible in any country.

The historical need today is to advance the world revolution through the means of people's war in accordance with the particular characteristics of each country by developing genuine communist parties on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to lead the masses in different countries. This historical responsibility cannot be borne until the universality of Mao's contributions for world revolution is upheld and MarxismLeninism-Maoism is established as its ideological commander.
The new situation has been preparing the ideological and material ground for the formation of a new communist international to advance the world revolution by learning lessons from past experiences, RIM (Revolutionary Internationalist Movement), constituted on the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to co-ordinate the revolutionary movements of various countries and to advance the world revolution, is a significant step in this direction. It has been developing through the experiences of the revolutionary movements and ideological struggles of various countries. Serious challenges are posed before RIM for the development of a new international, like: developing an integrated understanding through scientific synthesis of the world communist movement, mainly, the Comintern, the Second World War and Stalin 's role; struggling against the ultra-internationalist Trotskyist deviation that minimises the national liberation movement, on the one hand. and the ultra-nationalist deviation that undermines proletarian internationalism, on the other; co-operating to develop the genuine Maoist parties in various countries; and uniting with all existing revolutionary parties through struggles, etc. Facing these challenges successfully, all genuine proletarian revolutionaries need to accelerate their initiatives for the development of a new international.

What is most important is to correctly grasp the nature of the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed countries and people and to establish proletarian internationalism as the leader of the national liberation movements. A world revolution isolated from the struggle to establish the world-wide significance of revolution developed in any backward country of Asia, Africa and Latin America is just impossible.

Finally, it is crystal clear, from analysing the world situation, that the world order of the imperialists is the rotten, barbarian and terrorising system that is but a curse for the whole of mankind. The material conditions for the establishment of the great ideals of communism with the complete elimination of exploitation and oppression of man by man has been growing more and more mature, and the political parties of the proletariat need to take initiatives from new heights in order to courageously advance the world revolution. The twenty-first century shall be the century of world. revolution. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism shall be its ideological leader.

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 (Excerpt from 27th issue of  "A World To Win")