12-03-05, 8:39 am
Presented at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties 'Current Trends In Capitalism: Economic, Social And Political Impact. The Communists' Alternative,' Athens, 18-20 November, 2005
Dear Comrades,
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) takes pleasure in participating in this meeting of Communist & Workers from across the globe at Athens. The CPI(M) thanks the Communist Party of Greece for organizing this event every year.
Comrades,
Globalisation, as the present phase of world capitalist development is known as, is a development that can be understood mainly on the basis of the internal laws and the dynamics of the functioning of the capitalist economic system. Karl Marx, in his seminal work Das Kapital, had shown us that as capitalism develops, it leads to the concentration and centralisation of capital in a few hands. As a result of this law, huge amounts of capital get accumulated. This, in turn, needs to be deployed to earn profits which is the raison d'etre of the system.
Towards the end of the 20th century, more specifically in the decade of the eighties, this process of centralization led to gigantic levels of accumulation of capital. The beginning of the nineties saw the internationalisation of finance capital which had grown in colossal leaps. In 1993, the global stock of principle derivatives was estimated to be over $20 trillion. Subsequently, this globally mobile finance capital had acquired unprecedented dimensions. At the turn of the 21st century, the turnover in the global financial transactions was estimated to be over $400 trillion, or, nearly 60 times the annual global trade in goods and services estimated to be around $ 7 trillion.
This huge accumulated finance capital requires a world order that places absolutely no restrictions on its global movement in search of predatory speculative profits.
Simultaneously, the huge accumulation of capital taking place with the multinational corporations, the assets of some of whom outstrip the combined GDPs of many developing countries, also created conditions which required the removal of all restrictions on the movement of this industrial capital in search of super profits. Similar pressures also developed for the removal of all trade barriers and tariff protection.
Thus, the laws of capitalist development by themselves created the objective conditions for the current phase of globalisation whose essential purpose is to break down all barriers for the movement of capital and to dovetail the economies of the developing countries to the super profit earning drive of multinational corporations. This is sought to be achieved by the global trimoorti, viz, IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. The objective that clearly emerges is one of seeking the economic recolonisation of the developing countries or the third world.
While these are the objectives that imperialism seeks to achieve, certain other features of globalisation need to be noted. These are important to underline the fact that for the bulk of humanity, globalisation means nothing else, but greater misery and exploitation.
First, globalisation is accompanied by the utilisation of vastly growing scientific and technological advances not for the benefit of the vast masses of humanity but for strengthening the rapacious plunder for greater profits. The nature of capitalist development increasingly is based on such advances which permit constant replacement of human beings by machines. The net result is, while moderate growth is achieved, it is done without generating employment and, in fact, reducing its future potential. This is the phenomenon of 'jobless growth'.
Secondly, this phase of globalisation is accompanied by sharp widening of inequalities. This is true for both between the developed and the developing countries and between the rich and the poor in all countries. This is starkly illustrated by the fact that the combined assets of 358 billionaires in the world is greater than the combined annual GDP of countries constituting 45 per cent of the world's population, or, 230 crore people. The share of the poorest 20 per cent in the world's population is less than one per cent down from 1.4 per cent in 1991.
Such large-scale impoverishment of the vast majority of the world's people means the shrinkage of their capacity to be consumers of the products that this globalised economy produces. This renders the entire process of globalisation to be simply unsustainable. This is the third feature.
The enormous growth of mobility of international finance capital had created illusions that this was a balloon that could be inflated to infinity. Burst it did, shattering many illusions created by this 'virtual wealth'. All the stock markets in the world, including the fancied Nasdaq, suffered major collapses by the middle of 2001. This was before September 11th, and hence, it would be only a deliberate effort to try and link the current global recession to the terrorist attacks. If anything, the 'war against terrorism', has to some extent bolstered public investment, particularly in the armament industry given the aggressive US hegemonic drive.
The only way imperialism seeks to sustain this unsustainable exploitative order is by intensifying its political and military hegemony. The burdens of the economic crisis will surely be shifted to the people who are already groaning under the globalisation onslaught. In this context, it is pertinent to recollect what Marx has said in the Das Kapital. 'With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; and 300 per cent and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.'
Thus, what awaits humanity is a fresh wave of assaults and onslaughts. Unless of course, the people's movement against globalisation, which has been rapidly growing in recent years, attains levels that can halt and reverse this process. But that can be possible only if an alternative to the capitalist system emerges as the objective to achieve freedom and liberty. History has repeatedly shown that no amount of reform within the capitalist system can eliminate exploitation which is inherent in the very production process of the system. An alternative socio-economic political system has to be put in place and that can only be socialism. Humanity, thus, has a choice. As Rosa Luxembourg many decades ago and Fidel Castro today put it: this choice is between socialism or barbarism.
However, the success of the struggle for socialism while depending mainly on the strength of the popular mass movements will also have to learn lessons from the past experiences and adapt to the changing situations.
While facing the current challenges, the socialist countries have embarked on a reform process, specific to the concrete situation of their countries. Particularly in the present situation where the international correlation favours imperialism with its virtual monopoly over capital and technology, the socialist countries are engaged in serious efforts at developing productive forces to consolidate socialism. These have generated concern and debate amongst well-wishers of socialism the world over. While these reforms have led to rapid economic growth in some countries, like in China, new problems have also arisen.
The triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia (and subsequently, following the defeat of fascism in the second world war, in the relatively less developed Eastern Europe; semi-feudal semi-colonial China; northern Korea; Vietnam and Cuba) did not and could never have meant the automatic transformation of the backward economies and low levels of productive forces into high levels (higher than that of capitalism) of socialised means of production.
For the purpose of our discussion, however, it needs to be noted that every socialist revolution, based on a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, worked out its approach towards developing rapidly the productive forces. How this can be done is specific to the concrete realities faced by the specific revolutions, both domestically and internationally.
Lenin, himself, noted on the 4th anniversary of the October Revolution: 'Borne along on the crest of the wave of enthusiasm, rousing first the political enthusiasm and then the military enthusiasm of the people, we expected to accomplish economic tasks just as great as the political and military tasks we had accomplished by relying directly on this enthusiasm. We expected -- or perhaps it would be truer to say that we presumed without having given it adequate consideration -- to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as ordered by the proletarian state. Experience has proved that we were wrong. It appears that a number of transitional stages were necessary -- state capitalism and socialism -- in order to prepare -- to prepare by many years of effort -- for the transition to Communism. Not directly relying on enthusiasm, but aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution, and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business principles, we must first set to work in this small-peasant country to build solid gangways to socialism by way of state capitalism. Otherwise we shall never get to Communism, we shall never bring scores of millions of people to Communism. That is what experience, the objective course of the development of the revolution, has taught us.' (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp.58 emphasis added)
Further, he proceeds to state: 'Capitalism is a bane compared with socialism. Capitalism is a boon compared with medievalism, small production, and the evils of bureaucracy which spring from the dispersal of the small producers. In as much as we are as yet unable to pass directly from small production to socialism, some capitalism is inevitable as the elemental product of small production and exchange; so that we must utilise capitalism (particularly by directing it into the channels of state capitalism) as the intermediary link between small production and socialism, as a means, a path, and a method of increasing the productive forces.' (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 350)
But, does this mean the restoration of capitalism? To this Lenin answers quite candidly during the period of the NEP (new economic policy) that: 'It means that, to a certain extent, we are re-creating capitalism. We are doing this quite openly. It is state capitalism. But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, state capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and to the detriment of the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose of withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and of fighting it. It goes without saying that we must grant concessions to the foreign bourgeoisie, to foreign capital. Without the slightest denationalisation, we shall lease mines, forests and oilfields to foreign capitalists, and receive in exchange manufactured goods, machinery etc., and thus restore our own industry.' (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 491)
Future is Socialism
As humanity moves into the third millennium, the situation confronting us is one where imperialism is preparing to unleash a renewed offensive against the majority of the world's population. As a result of these efforts of imperialism, all the main world social contradictions -- between imperialism and socialism; between imperialism and the third world countries; between imperialist countries themselves; and between labour and capital in the capitalist world -- are intensifying.
Of these, the contradiction between imperialism and socialism occupies the central space, as the only alternative to imperialism and capitalism is socialism. No amount of reform of capitalism can make it an exploitation free system. The only way of liberation from this exploitation is the establishment of a socialist system.
However, in the immediate context, with imperialism bracing itself for a new offensive, the contradiction between imperialism and the third world countries is bound to intensify rapidly and come to the forefront.
The recent years have seen growing global protest against globalisation as well as against US military interventions in pursuit of its efforts to strengthen its global hegemony. The global protests ranging from Seattle to Genoa; the international calls by trade union organisations for anti-WTO protest; the increasing participation in the World Social Forum (WSF); the struggles and joint resistance in many third world countries etc have characterised this period. Newer forms of struggles are also emerging.
This period has also seen the strengthening of the process of the regrouping of Communist forces in various parts of the world. Various regional groupings of Communist, Left and progressive forces such as the Sao Paulo Forum which brings together the Left forces in the Americas are also being strengthened. This period also saw growing interaction amongst the Communist parties and a larger number of occasions for international Communist gatherings.
Much of this, however, is defensive in nature. Defending the rights that are being rapidly eroded. The struggle against capital's rule has to intensify and develop. This however, is not to suggest that the advance of the Communist forces would be automatic. But the objective conditions open up possibilities which the Communists can utilise in strengthening the popular movement for ending a system based on exploitation of man by man. The responsibility of strengthening the subjective factor -- the revolutionary ideological struggle led by the working class, uniting other exploited classes and its decisive intervention under the leadership of a party wedded to Marxism-Leninism -- falls on our shoulders. It is imperative to utilise the objective situation and intervene to advance the movement for social emancipation. This advance in the immediate context will have to work for the convergence of the global anti-war protest and world wide anti-globalisation movements into a mighty anti-imperialist people's movement.
The XVIII Congress of the CPI(M) in its Political-Organisational report noted:
'The struggle for an alternative socialist order has to be based on the revolutionary transformation of the existing order. This, in turn, needs an engagement (i.e., joining issues) of the revolutionary forces with the existing world realities with the sole objective of changing the correlation of forces in favour of socialism. This process of revolutionary transformation has to be based on such an engagement and not on the wishful thinking of escaping from the existing realities. The entire history of the revolutionary movement led by the working class is the history of such an engagement with the existing realities in order to shape the material force required to establish the alternative in socialism'.
This is the only course available to humanity to save itself from being engulfed by the slide to barbarism. To those who argue that there is no alternative to globalisation (the famous TINA factor), our answer is that the alternative to TINA is SITA (socialism is the alternative).
Thank You. November 19, 2005
