12-11-06, 8:46 am
Contribution of Sudanese Communist Party to the Lisbon Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, 10-12 November 2006
Since our last meeting in Athens, we have been witnessing a further development of the concept of imperialist global intervention. Efforts to turn NATO into a global arm of capitalist intervention have been gaining ground. The models for intervention implemented in Afghanistan and the Balkans are now being generalized to a great extent. This is particularly seen in the cases of Iraq and Lebanon, and in other crisis areas. The Bush administration, faced by a serious setback in Iraq, is seeking to bring together an international police force under its leadership. This is being done under the guise that they will be NATO or UN forces and not American-controlled. This tendency is particularly apparent in current efforts to build an alliance against Iran, the PDRK (People’s Democratic Republic of Korea), and other so-called “rogue states” according to Bush administration terminology. Such policies pose serious dangers for the independence of states, and the social and economic development of their people.
The campaigns orchestrated by the Western powers against Iran for its insistence on acquiring nuclear know-how for peaceful purposes, and against the PDRK for possessing nuclear weapon, are rather farcical. However, before proceeding any further, we would like to make clear the SCP's principled position against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and for nuclear disarmament. The campaign against both these countries is a clear manifestation of the double-standard policy of the Western capitalist countries. They attack Iran and the PDRK, while keeping completely silent about Israel's nuclear arsenal and program. They even refuse to have the International Atomic Energy Agency inspect Israel’s nuclear facilities and programs. There are some states apparently which are above the law.
It is of the utmost importance that all efforts be directed at preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but this should also be coupled with concerted action to realize without delay the nuclear disarmament of all states that are already in possession of nuclear weapons.
We are, in fact, now witnessing a campaign of intensified exploitation in the form of so-called globalization that is being supplemented by individual and/or collective military intervention under the guise of different appealing names, such as spreading democracy, good governance, the protection of human and minority rights, anti-terrorism, religious freedom, and the like. The most desirable tool for attainment of these fine-sounding goals is the US administration’s current catch-phrase, “regime change.' We have seen this in action in places like Afghanistan, Haiti, and Iraq.
Lebanon was also the target of such an attempt at regime change. It recently became the object of a US-supported, Israeli war of aggression that sought to establish a puppet regime. It is noteworthy that all the major capitalist governments kept mum as most of Lebanon’s infrastructure was destroyed and nearly one-third of the population were driven out of their towns, villages and homes.
We witness the same silence today in the face of daily Israeli massacres in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Despite all this, we are also observing stubborn resistance and opposition by the peoples of the world as they condemn these new tactics of the capitalist governments. Demonstrations have been organized around the globe against the continued occupation of Iraq, against the US supported Israeli war of aggression against Lebanon, against all of imperialism's aggressive policies.
Recently, the US administration has emphasized the concept of 'oil security” or “energy security.' This should be read as a desire to control the world’s oil and gas resources. President Bush referred openly to this concept in his 2006 State of the Union address, when he finally put into words what all previous US presidents could not bring themselves to announce in public. The aim of the US is not only to assure access to cheap and reliable oil and gas, but also to keep its hold on the supply of both commodities to its allies, and to other countries such as China, Japan and South Korea. It is a very well known axiom that whoever controls the oil and gas resources will control the world.
We have seen in practice that energy and oil security has turned out to be, as one US commentator has said, 'a terrifying hybrid of the old and the new: primitive accumulation and American militarism coupled to the war on terror.'
NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA
In this context, we find a new scramble for Africa. The US Council on Foreign Relations discusses this openly in a report called 'More than Humanitarianism,' which was published in 2005, in which it called for a different US approach to Africa. This new approach, it turns out, is dictated by what is called 'Africa's strategic importance for US Policy.' For US policy makers, the West African Gulf of Guinea, which encompasses the rich on- and offshore fields stretching from Nigeria to Angola, represents a key plank in their oil policy. Nigeria and Angola alone account for 4 million barrels of oil per day.
In regard to its designs on Africa, it is important to note that US imperialism is planning to completely dominate Africa, after it suceeds in dominating the Middle East.
Today, although the US has experienced a steady decline in its economic hegemony, it still remains the leading capitalist power, and is actively seeking to gain global dominance by military means, on a scale that would have been previously inconceivable. The fall of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole remaining superpower. In the 1990s, it began to move militarily into areas that were formerly part of the Soviet sphere of influence or that had been contained by the superpowers. Thus, in the past two decades, the US has fought wars or carried out military interventions in the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Following the events of September 11, 2001, the US invaded and occupied Afghanistan, thus reaching into Central Asia and the Caspian Sea region with its abundant natural gas and oil resources. Immediately thereafter, it invaded Iraq in an attempt to gain control over Iraqi oil and of the Gulf countries as well. Recently, it supported the Israeli war of aggression against Lebanon as a stark warning to the Lebanese resistance, Syria, and Iran to toe the line or face annihilation.
By threatening to seize control of the world’s oil reserves through the exercise of military power, the US has sent a message to the rest of the world, contributing to rising fear and insecurity around the globe.
The US has engaged in 'preemptive' attacks against smaller powers, has announced its intention to maintain and modernize its vast, world-threatening nuclear arsenal, and increased its military spending to an unprecedented level, one that overtakes the expenditures of all other states put together.
Meanwhile, the ecological crisis engendered by the capitalist world economy threatens the collapse of world civilization, causing irreparable damage to the biosphere, from which human society and the planet as we know it may never recover if current trends are not reversed.
Today the capitalist world system can therefore be seen as enveloped in an all-encompassing crisis that involves the future of civilization. Not surprising in this context, resistance to the system is growing more widespread, and the renewal of socialism as a sociopolitical movement and challenger to capitalism seems in the offing. In capitalist countries such as France and Italy, workers, students and minorities have joined forces to demand that the impossible be made possible. Protests in Seattle helped to engender a worldwide anti-globalization movement that continues to directly challenge the capitalist system. Around the world, outbursts of protest against the war in Iraq and the Israeli aggression have been the largest in recent history, and point to the groundswell of global opposition to imperialism. The fierce resistance to US imperialism within Iraq, even though it arises out of nationalism and religious fundamentalism, as well the heroic Lebanese resistance to the Israel aggression, have not only highlighted the weaknesses of the imperialist military machine, but have also pointed to the urgency with which progressive, democratic and revolutionary forces are steadily joining the ranks, and stand at the forefront of the struggle against imperialism.
Cuba continues to be a standing reproach to all those who have abandoned their faith in socialism, shining as a beacon beacon to the world's oppressed, and above all to the rest of Latin America. Progressive changes are occurring in areas as far removed as Nepal and Venezuela, and show that attempts to break with capitalism and imperialism are an integral part of present history. Hugo Chávez has called repeatedly for a 'Socialism for the 2lst Century.' In this, he is clearly not asking for the renewal of any pre-existing models, but for a new global alternative geared to 21st century needs and conditions, aimed as ever at the promotion of equality, cooperation and social justice. Venezuela, in alliance with Cuba, is drawing upon and stimulating the spirit of discontent in other parts of Latin America such as Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Ecuador where many people are changing the course of events, seizing their rights, and declaring the bankruptcy and the defeat of the 'Washington Consensus.'
It is impossible to know precisely what forms this new socialist renewal will take, since it is still in the making and will be subject to continuing historical struggles. Yet, it is not utopian to believe that present and future attempts to build socialism will reflect critical historical lessons derived from the past, as well as the changing historical conditions that define the present.
Socialism must seek to turn the enormous productivity of modern society to the achievement of other ends than merely the accumulation of capital. The exploitation that exists in the labor process needs to be eliminated by means self-organization by the workers themselves. In a socialist society, i.e., one committed to the principle that the 'free development of each is the condition for the free development of all' (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto), everyone must have access to the basic requirements of a free existence: clean air and water, safe and plentiful food, decent housing, adequate health care, essential means of transport, and worthwhile and rewarding employment.
Socialism cannot survive unless it dismantles and transcends the class division that divides those who “run” society and its enterprises from those who are compelled to work mainly on their behalf. Socialism must also end all the other forms of oppression that cripple human potential and prevent democratic social alliances. If any lesson was learned from past experiences at building socialism, it must be that the class struggle needs to be inseparable from the struggles against discrimination on the basis of gender, race, and national origin, and physical and mental disability, that is, it must be opposed to all forms of oppression against those who are currently weak and politically disenfranchised. Socialism must stand for the protection of the environment and of all the endangered species that exist on the earth.
The various forms of non-class domination are so endemic to capitalist society that no progress can be made in overcoming class oppression without fighting these other social divisions. If the political emancipation from bourgeois society constituted one of the bases upon which a wider human emancipation could be built, a major obstacle to the latter has been the fact that political emancipation in terms of what are called “inalienable human rights” have remained incomplete under capitalism and previous attempts at socialism. These obstacles must in all cases be overcome.
Rosa Luxemburg insisted that 'without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of the press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.' Hence, the requirement of 'socialist democracy,' she insisted, 'begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and the construction of socialism.' The reason for this is not some abstract sense of justice, but a law of socialist revolution itself. Such a democracy, now no longer simply pro forma, but filled with real economic and social content, constitutes 'the very living source from which alone can come the correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions ... it thus embodies the active, energetic, political life of the broadest masses of the people.' (Rosa Luxemburg, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, New York, Monthly Review Press, January 1993) Socialist democracy is not to be conceived as applying merely to the political sphere, narrowly conceived, but needs to be extended to all aspects of public and private life: the farm, the factory, the checkout counter, the office, and also the home.
