International capitalism is in an especially intense stage of its general crisis. The glut of the world market in this stage of the general crisis of world capitalism is developing on the basis of the extension of advanced productive forces into the economically backward sections of the world.
The massive rebuilding of Europe after World War II and the freeing of most of the former colonies from the political and economic restraints on capitalist development opened up opportunities for massive investment in the form of loans and infrastructural projects by a grouping of supranational financiers. Representatives of these supranational financiers gained political control in most industrial countries.. The tremendous production which was made possible because of World War II has become a tremendous overproduction. Goods cannot be sold; debts cannot be repaid. The market and simultaneously the capitalist system have reached the limits of their expansion on the basis of the acute conflict between capitalist relations of production and extremely advanced productive forces.
From the beginning of the post-World War II expansion to the early 1970s, every political development took place within the context of the expansion of the world market. Today every political development is stamped by the glut characteristic of this stage of capitalism’s general crisis. USNA imperialism is conducting a retrenchment to especially the Western hemisphere to guarantee their market and to intensify the exploitation of the industrial workers of the Americas.
For the first time in 25 years, a polarity is developing in world imperialism. This emerging polarity is a direct reflection of the glutted capitalist market. Political representatives of the supranational financiers are everywhere under attack from groupings attempting to secure their national markets.
In the immediate future, the basis of the war danger is the response of the bourgeoisie to the threat of revolutions that break still more countries away from the capitalist sector. This is expressed in the growing danger of intervention. Increasing military production to offset the effects of the glut adds further pressure to this threat of intervention.
In the long range, the threat of war will be more directly pointed against the socialist camp. The departure of each country from the capitalist economic system means the sharpening of the conflict between the socialist sector and the capitalist sector. The bourgeoisie’s response to this sharpening conflict is the basis of the war danger.
As this conflict sharpens, the USNA state is more aggressively politically attacking the Soviet Union. The Soviet state’s struggle for peaceful coexistence is forced to shift from tactics of detente to tactics of confrontation.
The multinational corporation is the salient feature of the basis for the reassertion of proletarian internationalism. Proletarian internationalism is the subordination of the interests of the part to the interests of the whole in the international class struggle. The greatest danger to the world communist movement remains the danger of right-wing revisionism. The principle form of this revisionism today is petty bourgeois nationalism. The nationalism of the Soviet leadership is the most dangerous because they have the connections with the international communist movement that allow them to in fact subordinate the interests of the whole to the national interests of the Soviet Union. The nationalist clique that has temporarily gained control of the state in China is necessarily playing a counterrevolutionary role as one of the most important allies of the USNA state.
The struggle against revisionism within the world communist movement has led to the reassertion of Marxism-Leninism within certain existing comunist parties, as well as the formation of new Marxist-Leninist parties.
The stand of communists must be unconditional support for revolutions and conditional support for states. In their struggle against revisionism Marxist-Leninists in the USNA concentrate fire on the CPUSA. This is part of the worldwide efforts to aid the Marxist-Leninists of the CPSU in regaining leadership.
The current stage of world capitalism’s general crisis is affecting the social process everywhere. The emphasis in the international class is shifting from the national colonial struggle to the open collision of classes. The class struggle is specifically shifting to the direct collision of an international industrial proletariat and the multinational corporations.
In the colonies, neocolonies and semicolonies, the national bourgeoisie is incapable of leading any further. Characteristic of this period is their inability to lead not only in the long-range, historical sense, but now also in the immediate, political sense.
Capital must intensify exploitation of the proletariat within the imperialist countries. This sharpening class struggle is reflected in the developing polarity within the working class and its organizations on the basis of the split in the working class due to imperialism.
Strategy must reflect the revolutionary process. Most important to the struggle against USNA capitalism and imperialism is how the shifts in the international class struggle are expressed in this hemisphere, from Canada to Argentina. Here the revolutionary process consists of the interrelationship of national liberation movements against colonialism and neocolonialism and the hemisphere-wide movement of the proletariat.
In the Anglo-American nation, the state form of rule is bourgeois democracy. The method of control is through bribery, fraud and deceit. This is backed up by terror and brutality directed especially at the least bribed sections of the population. The material instrument of control is the bribery of the upper strata of the working class. The trade union movement is the most organized force in the labor movement. Through the upper levels of the trade union movement, and in turn through the trade union movement in general, the bourgeoisie attempts to maintain control of the labor movement as a whole.
This stage of the crisis means more intense exploitation of the proletariat in the Anglo-American nation. It is putting the least bribed and most exploited section of the industrial proletariat in the most direct struggle with capital. This demands a shift in the political leadership and the forms of organization of the working class to conform to the role of the lower sections of the industrial proletariat. It is in the struggle to accomplish this shift that the Anglo-American proletariat is prepared for its tasks in relation to the hemispheric proletarian movement.
The direction of the main blow by the industrial proletariat has to be along the lines of a fighting unity of the hemispheric proletarian class. Key to this process is the Negro Nation. The central position of the black worker in the industrial proletariat throughout the USNA is a specific expression of the interrelationship between the working class struggle and the national liberation movements in the class struggle.
The Negro Nation is one of the few remaining direct colonies in the world, a nation without its own national state. Here the state form of rule is fascism. It is the open terrorist dictatorship by the industrial section of finance capital, the direct exploiter of the proletariat. The proletariat here is bearing the heavy burden of capital’s crisis. The Negro Nation, like the other colonies, neocolonies and semicolonies, has seen a period of imperialist expansion which created a highly developed proletariat and proletarian movement. Simultaneously, leadership of the Negro People’s Liberation Movement is being consolidated in the hands of the proletariat. As the bourgeoisie’s response to that is more brutal and violent, the struggle is pointed more clearly against the USNA state.
The main economic connection between the proletariat of Anglo-America and the proletariat in the rest of the Americas is the Negro Nation. Its main political connection is Puerto Rico.
The position of the Mexican national minority is rooted in the neocolonial position of Mexico and the status of the Southwest as a conquered territory. The position of the Indian peoples in the USNA is based on their conquest, plunder and slaughter by European imperialism and by USNA imperialism during its early accumulation. Their plunder and slaughter continues today on the basis of both their early conquest and their increasing proletarianization. The form of the social oppression of the Mexican national minority and of the Indian peoples is an extension of the white chauvinism directed against the Negro people.
Leadership by the proletariat in the national colonial liberation movements in Latin America is consolidating. The modern proletariat is locked in struggle against international capital as organized in the multinational corporation. USNA imperialism is retrenching into this hemisphere. The conditions for and need for a fighting unity of the hemispheric proletarian class struggle are growing.