Broad themes and issues under global capitalism and imperialism, as they affect the entire world, various countries/regions, and major sectors

Opinion by PRISM editors

The debate is heating up on whether Mao Zedong’s theory of protracted people’s war has worldwide applicability today. The timing, while probably unintended, aptly coincides with the forthcoming 70th anniversary on October 1 of the People’s Republic of China. Mao’s theory developed and proved a success in China’s civil and national wars through the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s until the Communist-led forces won nationwide victory in 1949.

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Mao during the Long March

PRISM editors are posting below the full text of a major response by Andy Belisario to the simmering debate on the “universality of people’s war”.

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NZ 2019 mass shootout


Monopoly Capitalism Is the Cause of Mass Migration
and the White-Victim and White-Supremacy Complex

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International League of People’s Struggle
17 March 2019

In his 74-page manifesto, the Australian mass murderer Brendan Tarrant raves about the “great replacement” of white people by non-white peoples and blames the liberals for advocating mass migration, white displacement and cultural diversity in the same perverted way that the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Brevik blames “cultural Marxism”.

The hysterical fear of white genocide drove Tarrant to commit the massacre of at least 49 Muslim worshipers in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. The victims came from various underdeveloped countries as well as from war-torn countries. The white victim complex and the hysterical assertion of white supremacy are two sides of the same coin that leads to the atrocity.

White people in the developed countries are themselves victimized by the monopoly bourgeoisie but are misled by the demagogues of the capitalist system to believe that the migrants, especially the Muslims, are to blame for the erosion of the wage and living conditions of the white working class and middle class.

The neoliberal strategists, think tanks, academe and mass media of the monopoly bourgeoisie obscure the fact that economic and social conditions are becoming worse for the working class and even for the middle class because of the crisis of overproduction and the unsustainable abuse of credit.

Neoliberalism and the adoption of higher technology have pressed down wages, eroded social benefits and services and have increased unemployment and poverty among the whites and non-whites. Those few whites turned hysterical and murderous by a combination of white-victim complex and white supremacy do not think much beyond their personal and national egoism.

They are kept ignorant of the fact that the mass migration from the underdeveloped to the developed countries is the result of the policies of the monopoly bourgeoisie to avail of cheap labor, to keep the underdeveloped countries more underdeveloped and to wage wars of aggression to put down anti-imperialist governments and popular movements asserting national independence and demanding broader democracy, social justice and industrial development.

As a result of decolonization due to the direct and indirect effects of armed national liberation movements, the imperialist countries have used mass migration towards them since the 1970s to make up for the loss of colonies and semicolonies. To make up for the tendency of the profit rate to fall in their own home grounds, they have also utilized neocolonialism to cause the further underdevelopment of former colonies and semicolonies to maximize profits. The widening mass unemployment and poverty drive the people to emigrate.

And whenever certain governments and revolutionary movements arise and assert national sovereignty, nationalize the economy and promote industrial development, the imperialist countries unleash campaigns of destabilization for regime change and wars of aggression, which are the biggest and worst form of terrorism. Thus, the imperialist countries themselves have been culpable for the increasing number of both political and economic refugees since the 1980s, especially from the war-torn countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Whenever the monopoly bourgeoisie finds it too difficult or is frustrated in using liberal democracy or social democracy to disarm and sedate the working class, it resorts to the outright use of the most reactionary ideas and sentiments to obscure the roots of the crisis of monopoly capitalism, to mislead the broad masses of the people and the use the grossest form of violence and deception to suppress the anti-imperialist and democratic mass movements which aim for national liberation, people’s democracy and socialism.

We are living today in a crisis-stricken world capitalist system in which only one percent of the population, the top circle of the monopoly bourgeoisie, own 50 percent of the world’s wealth and only 10 percent own 75 percent. The gross social inequality means the increasing polarization of all societies and the intensification of the anti-imperialist and class struggle.

Under these circumstances the monopoly bourgeoisie unleashes all kinds of monsters and atrocities, including state terrorism and private terrorism of white supremacists, in order to counter the rise of revolutionary consciousness and movements among the proletariat and people in every country and on a global scale.

More than ever, it is necessary for the revolutionary parties of the proletariat to arise and strengthen themselves in order to promote proletarian internationalism among the workers of the world as well as international solidarity among the broad masses of the people of the world in order to overcome and defeat all the strategies and tactics of the monopoly bourgeoisie to divide the white and non-white workers and peoples of the world with the use of chauvinism, xenophobia, racism and fascism. ###

By Antonio Tujan Jr.
Crosscurrents 30 |7 March 2019

That the US should warn the Duterte government to be wary over concluding treaties with China just shows that the world is no longer under a single hegemonic global power.  Before, the US would not simply countenance a former colony of brown Americans to welcome the Chinese.  Nor would it allow any president before Duterte to make overtures to everyone, most specially the communist regime of China.

The rise of China as the strongest economy overall puts the US at a disadvantage even though the dollar still reigns supreme as a global currency standard.  It would be stupid for anyone, must less the government, not to recognize that opportunity to develop friendly relations along with the benefits of economic cooperation.   Not to mention the geopolitics of the West Philippine Sea dispute.

Of course, we assume that the Duterte government is wary of the pros and cons in dealing with China, of its economic and geopolitical interests on the Philippines. But Trump is playing big brother politics to even warn the Philippines or the Duterte government as if the latter does not know its business. This warning smacks of US imperialism, on the decline, especially after China has overtaken it.

Russia has emerged from the ashes of the collapse of the Soviet Union and recovered its military might, still not as strong as that of the US but sufficient enough to challenge the US.  Russian official claims that US and Russia nuclear parity has been broken with a new generation of Russian nuclear military technology. This lead Trump to break off its agreement on intermediate range missiles in Europe.

The parity in economic and military strength with emergence of China and Russia translates to the tremendous weakening of US political hegemony overall.  This phenomenon has reported by many diplomatic quarters especially from intergovernmental organizations like the UN as early as 2015 when several agreements and treaties could no longer be concluded easily with objections from China and India and the realignments in the UN such as the emergence of G77+China.

IBON International has monitored developments over the decade and reported in its International Situation Briefings in 2013 the emergence of this new phenomenon.  This has become known internationally in 2015 as the new multipolar world order – the US is no longer the sole global hegemon after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. US hegemonic power is starting to crumble in a multipolar world full of conflict.

Does this phenomenon mean the emergence of other hegemonic powers such as China and Russia?  Not necessarily.  There are several economic, political and military factors that can operate one way or the other to create new hegemons.  Several aspects and factors than can decide this include investment, trade, conflicts, military build up, diplomacy and alliances, etc.

The US continues to use what is left of its political, economic and military strength and existing agreements to preserve what is left of the framework of its hegemonic power to prevent what can be a catastrophic collapse of the capitalist system. Its stranglehold on the international monetary system through the IMF and the worldwide currency peg to the dollar is under tremendous challenge whether from the strength of the yuan/Chinese economy or the euro transactions as pragmatic solutions to address unreasonable economic sanctions on several countries like Venezuela, Iran or North Korea under US political economic attack.

US unilateralism under Trump is politically, economically and diplomatically dangerous for the US.  Trade wars with the European Union, China or Canada easily backfires when the US is on the defensive in the first place.  These actions weaken the international neoliberal agenda and leaves the WTO and similar agreements severely frayed.  These reflect the severe contradictions faced by monopoly capital in the face of a full decade of no growth since the collapse of 2008.  Since 2011 when the world emerged from the worst depression since the 1930s, it still faces depressionary features of a stagnant world economy overall. 

Behind the US-initiated trade wars is its intention to revive its flagging industry but China has long overtaken the US industrial development and high technology.  The irony of it all is that China is so far ahead in the game that it produces and exports robots to run the new factories the US wants to build.  (More in Part 2)##

Women protest vs Bolsonaro

PRISM Editor’s note: This statement by the International League of People’s Struggle, originally circulated on 2 November 2018, was reissued by the Office of the ILPS Chairperson on 4 November with slight revisions. We are posting this reissued version.

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The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) reiterated its solidarity with “the government and people of Venezuela in their heroic struggle for national independence and socialism against US imperialism and its lackeys” within the country.

In the statement, ILPS chairperson Professor Jose Maria Sison reviewed the successes of “the Bolivarian revolutionary struggle” in Venezuela under the leadership of its late president, Hugo Chavez. “The people of Venezuela are loyal to and love Comrade Hugo Chavez because he led them to assert national independence and to aim for socialism,” Sison said. Read more

ORCC Logo global

Revolutionaire Eenheid, which describes itself as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, proletarian and feminist organization, actively participated in the recently concluded October Revolution Centennial Conference on 23-24 September in Amsterdam. A member activist, comrade Susana Perez, delivered an inspiring speech focused on the lessons of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution in relation to the current “challenges amongst modern youth movements.” The full text of her speech follows: Read more

The Internationale (the anthem of the revolutionary proletariat)
New Philippine version, MP3 format, 4:32 playing time