The Freedom Road Socialist Organization condemns President Trump’s outrageous attacks upon Venezuela and President Maduro. Trump claims he had the U.S. Navy attack a boat and that eleven Venezuelans were killed. Assuming it so, it is another in a long list of violent attacks by the U.S. against the independent country of Venezuela and its leadership.

The loss of innocent Venezuelan lives with no investigation, evidence, or trial is shameful. It is an act of war. The U.S. needs to seek peace and friendship, not war and intervention.

This time Trump mobilized multiple U.S. Navy missile ships, 4000 marines and sailors, and a nuclear-powered submarine. In response, masses of Venezuelans flocked to join the people’s militias in their communities and at their jobs. The militias are a reserve force of citizen soldiers, the eyes and ears of the revolution, trained under the National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela (FANB) to defend their homeland.

While Trump’s attacks are dangerous, the past U.S. provocations and repeated coup attempts against both President Chavez and President Maduro have failed again and again. Instead of hurting the Bolivarian Revolution, the U.S. interventions strengthen it.

The Bolivarian Revolution emerged out of the Venezuelan armed forces, under the leadership of high-ranking military officers sickened by corruption and thievery of the nation’s resources. It spread among working people, farmers and the poor. It is a democratic revolution with broad participation. It is based on the idea that Venezuela belongs to the masses of Venezuela, instead of rich elites who serve U.S. oil companies and Wall Street capitalists.

Ever since Comandante Hugo Chavez won the presidency in 1999, the U.S. has harassed, sanctioned and violently attacked Venezuela. Trump is now intensifying these attacks against the former bus driver and union leader President Nicolas Maduro. The whole world sees the lies and slander of Trump and his media kooks. None of it is worth repeating.

President Maduro continues to build and develop an independent and sovereign Venezuela benefiting the people instead of Wall Street capitalists and U.S. oil corporations. The leadership is provided by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which recently won elections in all but one state. The Bolivarian Revolution has broad support, and people’s participation is reaching an all-time peak due to U.S. threats.

As Venezuela builds a new society, a new economy for the people, with steady economic growth for the past couple of years, we can see what it is that Wall Street fears. As the U.S. empire continues to decline at a rapid pace, Trump fears the example of Venezuela. He can try to bully Maduro and Venezuela’s leadership, but it isn’t working. So now the U.S. is escalating toward missile attacks and threatening an invasion.

The FRSO stands in solidarity with President Maduro, the PSUV and the Bolivarian revolution! No to U.S. attacks and war! Bring the U.S. warships and Marines home now!

#Venezuela #Imperialism #AntiWarMovement #International #Trump #InternationalSolidarity

Hace 50 años, en el 30 de abril, las puertas del Palacio Presidencial en Saigón fueron destrozadas por un tanque—un tanque manejado por un luchador por un Vietnam unificado e independiente. La bandera del régimen títere respaldado por Estados Unidos cayó, y en su lugar se alzó la bandera del Frente de Liberación Nacional.

Saigón, la capital del colonialismo francés y después del imperialismo estadounidense, dejó de existir. Saigón se convirtió en Ciudad Ho Chi Minh—nombrada así en honor al líder comunista que encabezó la lucha por la liberación nacional de Vietnam.

El 17 de julio de 1966, Ho Chi Minh declaró, “La guerra podría durar cinco años, diez años, 20 años o incluso más. Hanói, Hai Phong y algunas ciudades y fábricas podrían quedar devastadas. ¡Pero el pueblo vietnamita nunca tendrá miedo! No hay nada más valioso que la independencia y la libertad. Cuando llegue la victoria, nuestro pueblo reconstruirá nuestro país, más fuerte y hermoso que nunca.”

Entonces, así fue, después de largas décadas de lucha heroica, los muchos derrotaron a los pocos. Un país pequeño derrotó a uno grande, y por fin Vietnam fue liberado. Unas semanas antes, el 18 de abril, el régimen títere camboyano de Lon Nol fue puesto en fuga; en la ciudad capital de Phnom Penh, las calles fueron nombradas en honor a los estudiantes asesinados en una protesta antibélica en Kent State. Laos también se liberaría y tomaría el camino socialista.

Un factor crucial en estas victorias fueron líderes visionarios que aplicaron la ciencia del marxismo-leninismo. Al hablar de cómo se hizo comunista, Ho Chi Minh dijo, “Hay una leyenda, tanto en nuestro país como en China, sobre el milagroso ‘Libro de los Sabios’. Al enfrentar grandes dificultades, uno lo abre y encuentra una salida. El leninismo no es solo un “libro de los sabios” milagroso, una brújula para nosotros, los revolucionarios y el pueblo vietnamita: también es el sol radiante que ilumina nuestro camino hacia la victoria final, hacia el socialismo y comunismo.”

La lucha por liberar Vietnam fue una batalla titánica que sacudió al mundo. Tanto la República Popular China como la Unión de Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas brindaron un apoyo crucial que hizo posible la victoria.

Aquí en Estados Unidos, el movimiento en contra de la guerra en Vietnam tendría un impacto profundo. Sacó a millones de personas a las calles. Para cuando terminó la guerra, el movimiento antibélico se había convertido en un movimiento de solidaridad con Vietnam, y la bandera que más ondeaba en las manifestaciones estadounidenses era la del Frente de Liberación Nacional. La lucha en Vietnam también contribuyó al surgimiento de un nuevo movimiento comunista en el país, lo que llevaría a la fundación de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad.

La victoria en Vietnam demuestra que quienes tienen una causa justa y la historia de su lado triunfarán. Desde principios de la década de 1970, el imperialismo estadounidense ha estado en decadencia, y esa decadencia se está acelerando hoy.

Seguimos inspirándonos en las victorias pasadas y estamos seguros de que habrá muchas más—desde Palestina hasta Filipinas—y sí, aquí mismo en EE. UU. Para citar al destacado revolucionario Mao Zedong, “Aunque el camino por delante es tortuoso, el futuro es brillante.”

#International #Vietnam #Imperialism #AntiWarMovement #FRSO #OSCL #Statement

Comrades and friends:

On behalf of the Central Committee, and indeed the entire membership of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, we thank the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and its member organizations for organizing this important conference. We salute all of you who are gathered here. Having a developed understanding of imperialism and national oppression, as well as the fights for national liberation, is vital for understanding the world as it is and what one needs to do to change it. This conference will no doubt further this end.

Trump and the decline of U.S. imperialism

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the U.S. is symptomatic of a monopoly capitalist power in decline. His return to power reflects a failure of the other party of monopoly capitalism (the Democratic Party of Biden/Harris) and its inability to address the needs and aspirations of the working class. Drawing from a toxic brew of national chauvinism and reactionary currents of all kinds, Trump’s return to the White House will signal the sharpening of a host of contradictions domestically and internationally.

Trump has referred to himself as “Tariff Man,” promising to slap 20% tariffs on all imports and substantially more – 100 or 200% – on things like electric vehicles from China. The people around him, like some of the Biden crowd, look towards “delinking” the U.S. economy from the People’s Republic of China.

In his outstanding work, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin made the point that one of the features of imperialism, of decaying monopoly capitalism, was that big capital finds it increasingly difficult to utilize science and holds back advances in the productive forces. This phenomenon is on full display in the U.S., where someone like “vaccine skeptic” RFK Jr will be put in charge of public health, and where industrial policy is turning against technologies that cause less harm to the environment, such as electric vehicles.

The role of the U.S. in the world economy is shrinking. In 1960 the U.S. had about 40% of the world GDP. Today it is about half that. There was a day when U.S. imperialism championed free trade. For the past decade-plus, Washington DC has moved away from the neoliberal trade model, erecting a growing tariff blockade. The abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and paralysis of the World Trade Organization are signs of things to come.

After World War II, the United States constructed a web of economic intuitions where Wall Street and Washington DC occupied center place. That world is gone, and it has been replaced by a fragmenting world economy, where the decline of U.S. imperialism is picking up speed. Trump will accelerate the process.

One of the symptoms will be a sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions, which will have political and military dimensions. For example, Trump’s view of the Ukraine is that it is mainly a concern of Europe and that too much U.S. time and treasure has been wasted on it. If implemented as policy, this shift on the Ukraine will force the European imperialist powers, especially Germany, to carry out a military buildup while putting new stress on NATO.

What we are seeing is clearer definition in the developing spheres of influence and domination – where the U.S. has a smaller role to play. Also worth noting is that the two other monopoly centers of monopoly capitalism, i.e. Japan and the European Union, are also producing a smaller share of the world GDP.

People vs. imperialism

The principal contradiction in the world today is between the peoples, nations and countries of the developing world versus imperialism. The U.S. is presently the principal imperialist power, and as such, it is the main danger to the world’s peoples. From Puerto Rico to the Philippines and Palestine, people are rising up and fighting for liberation.

The battle taking place in the Middle East is vital to the world revolutionary process in the current period. On one side you have Western imperialism, Zionism and Arab reaction. On the other, we have the heroic resistance of Palestine and Lebanon, and a whole axis of resistance, which encompasses Yemen, Syria and the popular forces of Iraq and Iran. This is a battle of world historic importance.

The U.S. cannot continue to exist as a world empire without dominance of the Middle East, and this fact explains why the bond between imperialism and Zionism is so strong. The broad masses of people throughout the Middle East hate foreign domination and want it to end. Israel is the cop on the beat for Western imperialism, a reliable nightstick that can be used against those who want freedom and independence. This means that Trump will double down on the Gaza genocide facilitated by Biden/Harris.

It is also worth noting that things can turn into their opposite, that Israel can move from being an asset to a liability: if the genocide and carnage in Palestine and Lebanon provoke uprisings in the Arab world, the position of imperialism will be impacted.

The fact that many of the forces fighting imperialism and Zionism are not led by the working class does not change the revolutionary, anti-imperialist nature of the struggle that is taking place. Stalin, an outstanding Marxist-Leninist and pathbreaking theorist on national question, wrote in the great work, The Foundations of Leninism:

“The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such ‘desperate’ democrats and ‘Socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism.”

That said, the struggle for working class leadership in the movements for national liberation is important, and as communists we have the responsibility to support other communists who are contending for leadership in the national movements – be it in Palestine or anywhere else.

Marxism-Leninism and the fight for national liberation

In an environment of declining imperialism, there are some important things to keep in mind.

First, there needs to be a strategic alliance, a “union” as Lenin put it, between the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, and the broad masses of the oppressed in the developing countries. There are hundreds of millions of people in rural areas locked in semi-feudal property relations, which in part provides the material conditions for people’s war.

Second, while there has been a resurgence of the communist and national liberation movements, party building and the construction of revolutionary, communist organizations is a vital task in the present period. Ending, or breaking free of imperialism is not easy, and to successfully do so over the long run requires organizations that embody the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism. Building a new communist party should be the central task of revolutionaries in the U.S., and great progress is being made on this front.

Third, national liberation movements which weaken imperialism are objectively progressive and will hasten imperialism’s end. Self-determination of oppressed nations is a democratic demand, and, to the extent and degree that the fight for self-determination weakens imperialism, those fights should be supported. This has an application in multinational states, including the U.S.

Fourth, monopoly capitalism is a law-governed system where the drive to seek the highest rate of profit is basic. While capitalism is always incapable of genuine long-range planning, imperialism in decline is animated by the shortest of short-term gain and contingency. One of the things that makes the Trump administration dangerous is precisely a reactionary pragmatism that is reshaping the U.S. empire. It is a recipe for more wars and intervention, particularly in Latin America and the Pacific.

Finally, we need to be proletarian internationalists who are serious about uniting the working and oppressed people of the world. Looking around this room, that is exactly who we are. Mao made the point that imperialism is strategically a paper tiger. He was right – in the short term imperialism is an “iron tiger,” it is dangerous. In the long run it will certainly be defeated.

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Long live the unity of the people of the world!

Long live the unity of working and oppressed people – we have nothing to lose but our chains!

#RevolutionaryTheory #FRSO #Statement #Imperialism #Trump #NDFP #OppressedNationalities

Washington, DC – On July 7, hundreds of activists from over 60 organizations mobilized to protest the 75th anniversary NATO Summit occurring July 9 -11 in the city. The protest, organized the Resist NATO coalition started at McPherson Square and marched to the White House, demanding an end to U.S.- NATO aggression and to defend peoples’ struggles.  

The Resist NATO coalition is made up of various groups including the International League of Peoples’ Struggle – US (ILPS-US), Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), Bayan USA, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), International Action Center, and the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR). 

A member of NAARPR spoke at the rally stating, “From the war-torn streets of Afghanistan to the devastated cities of Libya, we raise our voices in support of those who have been killed by U.S. military aggression. Instead of money going towards our military, why is money not going towards our community? Why is money not going towards education? Or mental health?” The U.S. is by far the largest contributor to NATO’s budget. In 2023, the U.S. represented 68% of the total expenditure of NATO, spending $860 billion.

An organizer in Palestinian Youth Movement stated, “It is not only important, but necessary, to resist NATO through a broad united front, in order to protect people’s just struggle for freedom in Palestine, in the Philippines, in Puerto Rico, in Washington DC, and everywhere in the world. The peoples’ resistance in Palestine threatens the interests of Western imperialism and for the first time in recent history, the tides are turning. The myth of Israeli invincibility, of U.S. supremacy, of the futility of resistance, and of capitulation being the only solution has shattered. People around the world are joining the fight for total liberation.”

The Resist NATO coalition had a successful weekend of actions to protest the NATO summit, and they plan to continue building out the united front against US-NATO military escalation and aggression.

#WashingtonDC #ResistNATO #ResistNATOCoalition #FreePalestine #Philippines #PuertoRico #Imperialism #ILPS #FRSO #NAARPR #IAC #BAP #NATO #NATOSummit #USOutOfThePhilippines

The World Federation of Trade Unions, representing more than 105 million workers who work live, and struggle in 133 countries all over the world, strongly condemns the continuation of military interventions and wars, the accelerated militarization of international relations and confrontational rhetoric, the soaring of the military expenditures, as well as the NATO plans amid the escalating intra-imperialist confrontation. The 2024 ΝΑΤΟ summit which will take place in Washington D.C. on 9-10-11 July 2024, constitutes one more step toward the intensification of NATO’s aggressive imperialist plans, interventions, and wars.

NATO has already announced an increase of its military budget for 2024 by 12% to 2.03 billion euros and its civil budget by 18.2% to 438.1 million euros increasing even more the operating capacity of NATO Command Structure headquarters, missions, and operations around the world. This year’s figures confirm the continuation of an at least 10 years-long course of moving towards a “war economy” for the member states of NATO, with NATO’s Secretary General emphasizing that “burden sharing is improving within NATO” while military spending is up 18 percent across European Allies and Canada in 2024, and 23 member states will spend at least 2% of GDP in military spending this year.

The International class-oriented trade union movement unequivocally condemns the war plans of the imperialists and strongly opposes the uninterrupted increase of the NATO budget which sharpens even more the confrontation and deepens the preparations and the risk for a generalized imperialist conflict with disastrous consequences for the popular strata and the ordinary people who always pay the cost of the imperialist antagonism.

NATO’s history demonstrates nothing but interventions, wars, juntas, refugees, starvation, destruction, and death. In addition, the continued soaring in military spending constitutes a provocation for the people who constantly see their living standards affected due to generalized price rises, inflation, and long-term austerity policies.

The militant class-oriented trade union movement intensifies the struggle against imperialist wars and the system that creates them. The WFTU fights for the dissolution of NATO which constitutes an aggressive war machine in service of the imperialist interests of its member states, aiming to maintain, and expand if possible, the existing favorable correlation of forces for the NATO countries in order to safeguard the profits of their monopolies.

Simultaneously we reiterate our firm demand for the immediate dissolution of all military coalitions, the complete abolition of nuclear weapons, an immediate end to all imperialist armed conflicts, and full respect for the sovereignty, independence, and right of every people to freely choose their present and future. We denounce the exclusions, discriminations, embargoes, and sanctions imposed by the US, NATO, and the EU against various countries, negatively impacting the standard of living of low-income families, workers, poor small farmers, and popular strata in general.

The WFTU calls upon workers all over the globe, the militant trade unions to join the ranks and the struggles of the international class-oriented trade union movement for lasting peace, for a world free of imperialist interventions and man-by-man exploitation.

#WFTU #NATO #EU #Militarization #Imperialism #Exploitation #Peace #Labor #TradeUnion

When the first World War broke out in 1914, it threw the socialist movement into disarray. Within the Second International, socialist leaders from all over the world disagreed on how to analyze the causes of the war and the way forward. According to Vladimir I. Lenin: A Political Biography by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, “On the very outbreak of the war he set to work to make a profound and detailed study of the world literature on the economics, methods of production, history, geography, politics, diplomacy, the working class movement, the colonial question, and other spheres of social life in the different countries in the epoch of imperialism.” These Notebooks on Imperialism, over 600 pages of copious research, make up Volume 39 of his Collected Works. The Institute notes, “The fruit of this vast work of research was Lenin’s famous book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Completed in June 1916, this book is one of the greatest works in Marxist-Leninist literature.”

Lenin’s analysis of imperialism

Let’s begin with Lenin’s definition of imperialism: 

“Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the partition of all the territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed.”

Lenin notes that this process is a dialectical one. In other words, it is driven by the contradictions inherent in capitalism, as the aspects of those contradictions transform into their opposites. In economic terms, this means free competition is transformed into monopoly. Lenin puts it like this:

“Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly. Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system.”

We can trace where this happens historically. Imperialism arose as a result of the laws of motion of capitalism beginning in the late 19th century. Lenin writes,

“Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism.”

In the section “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”, Lenin further explained, “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia, took final shape 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 in Europe in 1900 are the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world history.” Indeed, the origin of imperialism was accompanied early on by war, in order to divide and re-divide the world. This trend has persisted, erupting in World War I and World War II, both of which began as imperialist wars for the redivision of the world among themselves. In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. rose as the dominant imperialist power.

In the first section of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin addresses the how and why capitalism transitioned from its earlier stage of competitive capitalism to its new, higher stage, of monopoly capitalism. Lenin notes “Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialized.” 

Lenin makes two important points here. First, the transformation from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism happens according to the laws of capitalism itself, not because a few particularly bad capitalists decided to steer it in that direction. Second, he points out that the imperialist stage of capitalism represents an important stage in the dialectical process driving capitalism towards revolution and socialism. Therefore, he writes, “Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.” 

Lenin also notes that, in the contradiction between free competition and monopoly, both continue to exist side by side, but that monopoly has become the dominant, determining aspect of the contradiction. “The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains,” Lenin writes, “and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.” 

The result of this is that different strata among the capitalists are operating in very different ways. The petit bourgeoisie are, by and large, being crushed by the monopoly capitalist class. Simultaneously, non-monopoly capitalists continue to exist, but precariously, under immense pressure from the monopoly capitalists. The result is that these non-monopoly capitalists and petit bourgeoisie are buried unless they can achieve an extraordinarily high rate of exploitation. 

But the petit bourgeoisie cannot compete effectively with the superprofits of the monopoly capitalists. By exporting capital (namely factories) to the developing world, the imperialists are able to achieve a higher rate of exploitation than is possible with domestic labor. In other words, they can produce cheaper, and then sell for more. In this way, the imperialists use superprofits as life-support for a dying system. They are able to relieve some of the effects of the economic crises that plague capitalism by exporting capital to where labor is cheaper. 

All the while, they reinforce their superprofits with unequal trade agreements, predatory loans and other neocolonial policies meant to keep the peoples of these countries dependent and weak, and they back this up with military power. 

Meanwhile, the nature of the imperialist system drives forward and intensifies the crises within the capitalist countries. It pushes the class struggle towards its extreme limits, as the working class and oppressed nationalities are further exploited and oppressed in order to fatten the pockets of the capitalists. This cannot but lead inevitably towards a revolutionary struggle within the heart of the imperialist countries themselves.

Further, imperialism drives towards a revolutionary crisis in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. This inevitably leads towards the struggles for national liberation against imperialism on the part of the oppressed nations and peoples of the world.

And, finally, under imperialism wars cannot be averted. War is an essential and fundamental feature of the imperialist system. Because imperialism develops unevenly, the imperialist powers will seek again and again to redivide the world among themselves. Furthermore, the imperialists will inevitably resort to war to protect their interests, and the working and oppressed people of the entire world will fight to resist imperialism oppression by any means necessary. 

Imperialism today

“Leninism,” writes Stalin in The Foundations of Leninism, “is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.” The rise of monopoly capitalism has pushed to the forefront four fundamental contradictions on a world scale: the contradiction between the imperialist powers themselves, the contradiction between the imperialist powers and the oppressed nations and peoples, the contradiction between the monopoly capitalists and the proletariat in the imperialist countries, and the contradiction between the imperialist and socialist systems. 

Of these four, the principal contradiction on a world scale is the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations struggling for national liberation, while, within the imperialist counties the principal contradiction is generally reflected in the class struggle between the monopoly capitalists and the proletariat. 

This means that Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is essential to guiding our understanding of the terrain of struggle, as we work to build a united front against monopoly capitalism, based on the strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the liberation movements of oppressed nationalities. 

Indeed, within the U.S. itself, the monopoly capitalist class holds whole peoples under the yoke of national oppression, in order to extract super profits. Therefore, the core of the united front against monopoly capitalism in the United States is that between the multinational working class, and the oppressed nations. Namely, these are the African American nation, which has a national territory in the Black Belt South, the Chicano Nation in the Southwest, and the Hawaiian Nation. These struggles for national liberation and self-determination are essential for the development of a revolutionary movement in the U.S.

It also means that, on an international scale, the working class here in the U.S. must ally with the national liberation struggles all over the world, from Palestine to the Philippines. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class is our mutual oppressor and enemy, and every blow struck against this class weakens them and aids our respective struggles. Solidarity is essential. 

In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution struck a major blow against imperialism, breaking the Soviet Union away from the imperialist world system and creating a counterbalance to imperialist hegemony. World War II saw further shifts in the balance. After the invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany, the character of the war fundamentally changed from an inter-imperialist war to a war between socialism and imperialism. Blows were struck for liberation and against fascism all over the world. China and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe broke free of the imperialist system and joined the socialist bloc. And despite the turn towards revisionism in 1956, leading to the eventual restoration of capitalism in the USSR in 1991, the socialist countries, namely China, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK and Laos, continue to be a force against imperialism hegemony throughout the world. And since the historic defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1970s, U.S. imperialism has been in a state of prolonged decline, scrambling to hold on to its ebbing power and influence. 

Today the U.S. monopoly capitalist class struggles to cling to the remnants of a fading empire. It still dominates the UN, though that domination too seems to be slipping. Likewise, it controls international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, which it uses to leverage neocolonial policies in the developing world. Further, it intervenes militarily, both directly and indirectly, all over the world to protect its interest. Currently it is pursing two simultaneous proxy wars, propping up Ukraine in an attempt to weaken Russia, and supporting the Israeli genocide against Palestine. It is pushing with all its might to pursue a cold war policy against an ascendent socialist China. Indeed, the U.S. is stretched very thin, and is everywhere on the ropes. 

The working class here in the U.S., together with its allies, needs to make every effort to support these struggles in whatever way it can. Lenin’s analysis in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, is essential reading to understand the way forward. 

#RevolutionaryTheory #RedReviews #Lenin #MarxismLeninism #Imperialism