Is the murder of a capitalist an "act of revolution"? Does the workers' movement, the working class in general, gain anything if someone places a bomb in the headquarters of a multinational company? Practically speaking, who benefits from individual acts of terrorism?
The so-called "left-wing terrorism," that is, individual terrorism with a "leftist," "revolutionary" ideological and political guise, has its roots in various anarchist trends of the 19th century.
To be able to do this, this presentation will focus on the analysis presented by Lenin in his pamphlet Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Here, he explored the mechanisms that decided and decide the development of international capitalism. In the course of this article, the mechanisms and features that he identified will be discussed, and light will be shed on problematic approaches that readers take to Lenin.
Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognizable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will…
- Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy (1916)
The question of the role of the Russian Federation in the global imperialist system is important now more than ever. The ongoing war in Ukraine, the growing tensions between large capitalist powers and the ongoing crisis in the international communist movement bring the topic to the forefront of the discussion. Being only one aspect of a greater discussion on the nature of imperialism, it highlights how a flawed understanding of a given phenomenon can have far-reaching consequences for the political analysis of the global situation as a whole. This, in turn, can undermine the theoretical and practical work of entire organisations.
Since the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, everything that relates to Joseph Stalin has been demonized. The so-called “destalinization” process initiated by Khrushchev and his political allies, within the broader opportunistic turn of the CPSU, tried to blame Stalin for all the evils of the world.
Khrushchev's shameless campaign against Stalin was effectively used by the capitalist world in building the anti-communist arsenal of the Cold War.
Summary in short theses:
1. In the Programmatic Theses of Kommunistische Organisation (KO) we find (in broad outline) a clear orientation for the analysis of imperialism. The theoretical conception developed therein has now been rejected in a number of contributions to the discussion (Klara Bina, Alexander Kiknadze, to a lesser extent Paul Oswald).
2. The assertion that the imperialist world system is characterized by a “unipolar world order” led by the USA cannot be confirmed by the available data. Both the economic and military balance of power at the top of the imperialist world order refute the picture of singular U.S. domination.
The inter-imperialist confrontation between the Euro-Atlantic powers (USA, NATO, EU) and Russia in Ukraine inevitably brings to the fore serious ideological-political disagreements and chronic contradictions that exist in the international communist movement.
The Russian invasion and the war in Ukraine emphatically highlights the misconception that exists in part of the communist movement concerning the issue of imperialism. A number of self-proclaimed “communist” forces are either unable, or deliberately avoid, to conceive imperialism through Leninist criteria. Instead, they disconnect economy from politics, overlook the fact that the competition between the monopolies is the basis for the sharpening of international conflicts and focus unilaterally on the aggressive foreign policy of specific states and alliances (e.g. USA, NATO, EU).
The teleconference was attended by Communist and Workers' parties from the following countries: Austria, Belarus, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine.
Click here to read the introductory speech of Giorgos Marinos, member of the Political Bureau of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).