Letters: Imperialism, Crisis, War and Revolution

On this page: World War Not Inevitable here ♦ Imperialism and Communist Revolution here ♦

World War Not Inevitable but Communism Is

In the past two issues, RF/BR has published two articles putting forth the inevitability of an imminent US/China armed conflict. I think this was a serious mistake.

These articles were very long (800+ words each), and neither had much to say about communism and why (or even that) it will eventually make violence obsolete. Instead of communism from Marx, Lenin and Mao, we get geopolitics from Kevin Rudd, Napoleon and Admiral Mahan.

But the worst aspect is prophesying war just around the corner (“sooner rather than later” and “approaching a boiling point”).

I realize that Lenin’s theory of imperialism predicted inevitable wars to re-divide the world. When WWII broke out, that seemed to confirm his theory. But Lenin’s theory is more than a century old and there hasn’t been a full-scale war to re-divide the world for 75 years. Perhaps all out world war is not inevitable (although still a possibility). Perhaps they’ve found ways to re-divide the world without total conflict (e.g. Mali and Belarus).

The fate of the Soviet Union is a case in point. For a long time, leftists predicted the Soviets would resort to nuclear war to defend their system. It didn’t happen. Instead, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Could the same thing happen with the US and China? Why couldn’t the US collapse? It’s not looking very stable at the moment!

The reason I’m skeptical about predictions of imminent war is that I’ve heard them all my political life. In 1951 the US Communist Party published We Charge Genocide (a very powerful document) and in it they predicted imminent war and fascism.

When the PLP, our predecessor, emerged from the old party, they soon took up this call. In 1976 (!) I remember reading a review of the Star Wars movie that said it was obviously propaganda preparing workers for the inevitable US/Soviet war.

Ten years ago, I was at one of the founding meetings of the ICWP and one comrade made a serious plea that we prepare the Party for imminent war.

I’ve been assured that these articles present the Party’s line though I don’t recall any debate about imminence. It’s not in Mobilize the Masses for Communism, our founding manifesto. Do we really require members to believe that cataclysmic war is around the corner?

We should not be in the business of making prophecies. When they fail, it discredits us. Instead we should talk about possibilities. World war is definitely one but so is economic collapse, which I think is neglected. Another possibility is civil strife between factions of the bosses, brought on, for example, by a disputed election.

I agree that eventually communism will replace capitalism, but we shouldn’t assume that the inevitable revolution will come out of a world war. There are other roads to victory.

Comrade in Canada

Red Flag note: Thank you for the letter. Disagreements and debate are good for the party. We don’t think our party can or should try to “require members to believe” anything. We welcome all as members who want to contribute to the collective work of mobilizing masses for communism.

Imperialist Wars and Communist Revolution

In March 1871, during the France-Germany war, the French working class “stormed heaven” (Marx). For the first time ever, the working class seized power and held it for 72 days.

The French imperialists and German capitalists stopped their war and united to attack the revolutionary masses in Paris.

This was another “first”: the heroic French working class temporarily shifted the world’s main contradiction from great-power rivalry to the working class versus the capitalist class.

The German capitalists then released 250,000 captured French soldiers who were used by the French rulers to drown in blood what became known as the Paris Commune.

They were, however, unable to stop the Commune from inspiring the international communist movement. Forty-six years later, in the fourth year of World War I, the communist Bolshevik Party led the Russian working masses to power.

This, the second time that the working class seized power, temporarily liberated one sixth of the globe from the yoke of capitalism-imperialism. This reverberated among the world’s suffering masses, including millions of soldiers being slaughtered for the imperialists’ profits and empires.

It also sent shivers down the spines of the world’s warring capitalists-imperialists. Terrified that “their” workers and soldiers might follow the Russian example, they hurriedly ended the war and invaded Russia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared their goal openly: “To strangle Bolshevism in its cradle.”

Again, the working class had shifted the main contradiction in the world from inter-imperialist rivalry to capitalism versus a communist-led working class.

Fourteen imperialist armies invaded Russia, joining forces with the counter revolutionary Russian White Army. The Russian working class defeated them all after five years of bloody war.

Millions were inspired worldwide. Many communist parties were organized on the Russian model. Many of them organized armed insurrections. Although all failed because of their internal weaknesses, for decades the class struggle’s main aspect worldwide was the international working class versus the capitalists-imperialists.

This temporarily prevented the imperialist butchers from going to war again on a global scale. But the Communist International’s 7^th Congress (1935) adopted the line of building unity with the liberal capitalists/imperialists to defeat fascism. Then the imperialists felt free to start their global war in 1939.

In spite of the alliance, the western imperialists were still bent on destroying the socialist Soviet Union which still stood as a beacon of hope for the world’s oppressed masses. They bankrolled Germany’s formidable military build-up, hoping Hitler’s fascist hordes would vanquish the Soviet Union. It did not happen. Instead, the Russian Red Army turned the tide of the war in its favor, defeating the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in early 1943.

It was the beginning of the end of Hitler’s “Thousand-Yeas Reich.” The prestige of the communist-led Soviet Union surged to new heights. Fearful that inspired masses might start revolutionary insurrections internationally, Russia’s “allies” (US and Britain) demanded the dissolution of the Third Communist International. Stalin complied in May, 1943.

Based on this history: Can the working class today change the main contradiction in the world like the Russian working class did in 1917? This time to communism versus capitalism–before WWIII explodes?

We will explain why we think this can happen in the US and what ICWP’s role should be. We encourage Party collectives and Red Flag readers worldwide to write about similar possibilities where they live and their role in them.

Comrades in the US

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