THE INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS OF IMPERIALISM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE AT THE PRESENT STAGE

THE INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS OF IMPERIALISM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE AT THE PRESENT STAGE

PART I

Speech by General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, N.A. Andreeva at the All-India Anti-Imperialist Forum. 24 November 2005, Calcutta

THE INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS OF IMPERIALISM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE AT THE PRESENT STAGE
PART I

Speech by General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, N.A. Andreeva at the All-India Anti-Imperialist Forum. 24 November 2005, Calcutta
As is already known, dialectical materialism, or the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism is the only scientific world outlook, is the methodology of recognising the world, is the science of the most general laws of movement and development of nature, society and thinking. Dialectical materialism is the highest form of materialism, presenting itself as the sum of previous history of philosophy.
Dialectical materialism examines movement and development of the world as the result of acting internal contradictions in it, which may be antagonistic as well as non-antagonistic.
K. Marx discovered the acting laws of human society and showed that the struggle of antagonistic classes, the class struggle is the moving force of historical process, the result of which one social-economic formation is replaced by another higher one according to the level of development of the production forces of society.
This qualitative leap, or revolutionary leap in the development of society occurs when the production forces of society arrive at a state of extreme contradiction with the production relations, having become at a given stage of society's development, a brake on the development of the production forces. But the struggle of the antagonistic classes does not lead to the recking and destruction of society, but only compels society to cross over to a higher stage of its development.
K. Marx scientifically substantiated that irreconcilable contradictions can be resolved only by way of revolution and not by way of conciliation of the contradictions, and that only a revolution can bring the production forces and production relations into line.
K. Marx, on the basis of a deep analysis of all sides of the fuctioning of capitalist society, revealed the essence of the mechanism of obtaining profit in capitalist society, consisting in the appropriation of surplus value, the source of which is the labour power of the hired workers. With this, K. Marx explained the economic nature of capitalist exploitation and the essence of capitalist production as the owner of the means of production races towards obtaining maximum profit. We note that any class society bases itself on the extraction of surplus labour from the class direct producers for the sake of profits for the owners of the means of production.
K. Marx showed that the contradiction between the social method of production and the private form of ownership is the main contradiction in capitalist society. This contradiction finds its own direct appearance in the class struggle between the bourgeioise and the proletariat and, being antagonistic, it can be overcome, resolved only in the violent way of a socialist revolution.
Today's opportunists often replace the word socialist revolution with the word social revolution. I believe it to be expedient to clarify the essence of the replacement of these concepts.
A social revolution, or social-political one is, like a socialist revolution, a leap in the development of class antagonist society based on private ownership on the means of production and class antagonisms. The transition from slave-owning to feudal, and from feudal to capitalist society and system is brought about by a social revolution, which does not abolish private ownership on the means of production, only the owner of the private property is changed. A socialist revolution is the highest form of social revolution. It proposes the obolishment of private ownership over the means of production and therefore, brings about the deepest, most root, qualitative changes in the social-economic, political and other spheres in the life of society.
The exhaustive character of capitalism and its highest stage - imperialism was given by V. I. Lenin. In his work "Imperialism - the highest stage of capitalism", the leader of the proletarian revolution deeply analysed five main hallmarks of imperialism: - the concentration of production and capital, concentrated to such a high stage of development that it itself forms monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life; - the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the forming on this of "finance capital", finance oligarchy ; - the export of capital, compared to the export of goods, gains special significance; - international monopoly alliances of capitalists are formed, dividing the world; - the territorial division of land by major capitalist power is complete.
Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development when the domination of monopolies and finance capital has taken shape, the division of the world by international trusts has begun and the division of the entire territory of land by the major capitalist countries is complete. (V.I. Lenin, Com. Col. Works, vol.27, pp 386-387, Rus. version).
Characterising "imperialism as an epoch of finance capital and monopolies" (ibid, p, 419), V.I. Lenin made the conclusion on the parasitic and decaying character of capitalism at its highest stage -imperialism.
In his fundamental work, V.I. Lenin showed that contradictions between various groups of capital inside one country, and also between various capitalist countries always exist and are brought about by the very nature of capitalism itself, by the pursuit of capital for gaining of maximum profit and super-profit, is the main law of capitalist formation -, the brutal competition between separate groups of capitalists, groups of capitalist states for sources of raw material, sellers' markets, markets of capital, cheap workforce, etc. etc..
The aggravation of these contradictions between imperialist countries led to two imperialist wars in the 20th century.
V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin in their works on the building of socialism in the USSR, examined the dialectics of the transition from capitalism over to socialism, the dialectics of the development of socialism itself as the first phase of communism in the period of which the transition over to a classless society is brought about. J.V. Stalin in his works showed that internal contradictions existed and exist nowadays in any society always and everywhere, but in different conditions carry a qualitatively different character, manifest themselves and are surmounted differently. Analysing the development of the imperialist system, J.V. Stalin foresaw that peace, won as the result of the defeat of fascism due to the irreconcilable contradictions of imperialism, may continue to last for a period of 50 years.
We, living in the present, see how prophetic these words of the great continuer of the cause of V.I. Lenin turned out to be.
The global economy of imperialism after the end of the Second World War endured a certain boom (foremost in the USA), connected with the obtaining of large amounts of capital for the supply of arms during the war, the development of state-monopoly capitalism and state interference in the economy, together with certain concessions made to the working class of their own countries brought about by the fear of a socialist revolution (in connection with successes of the Soviet Union in forming a system of socialist states after WW II). As an example, in the period between 1942 and 1966, the rate of profit in the USA approached 20%, somewhat lower than in other capitalist countries. But this "paradise" at the start of the 70-s came to an end. In 1974-75, economic crisis broke out, when the rate of profit in the USA fell sharply. The same thing also happened in other capitalist countries. But even after the exit from this crisis, the global economy could not return to the level of the 1960-s. It entered a period of lengthy stagnation, expressed in high-level unemployment and high inflation.
The system of imperialism, having clashed with a lowering of the rate of profit, nevetheless managed to use the achievments of the scientific-technological revolution for raising labour productivity, introducting new energy and resource-efficient technologies, automation and computorisation of production, merging of separate productions into a single one together with mass lay-offs of workers and office personnel and the subsequent growth of unemployment, along with increased exploitation of the working class by way of the intensification of labour, and increasing the length of the working day for the same former pay but for longer hours.
The introducing of high-technological methods of production accompanied by the removal of Man from the sphere of production, or - the reduction of expense of living labour led to the reduction of the rate of profit. Therefore, the 1980-s and 1990-s are characterised by stagnation of production, a growth in unemployment and social tension in capitalist society. Temporarily and to a large degree, these problems were removed due to the recking of the USSR and the Socialist camp, but not for long.
In their drive for maximum profits, the bourgeoisie of imperialist states had to expand production to the maximum possible limits, transferring production into mainly backward countries, who pay their workers slave wages, bringing about with this and between themselves, a brutal struggle for the redivision of spheres of influence and subordinating other countries to themselves.TNC-s (transnational corporations / multinationals) are merging into larger conglomerations which between themselves are fighting for redivision of the world.
Capital tries to overcome reductions in the rate of profit, by means of various forms of speculating and gambling on stock-markets, by way of financial operations that are ever more alienated from the sphere of direct production.
V.I. Lenin spoke about this when he said, that the alienation of ownership of capital from capital's application in production, the alienation of monetary capital from industrial or production capital, the alienation of the rentier living entirely off the income of monetary capital, from the entrepreneaur and all those people directly involved in the handling of capital, are characteristic of capitalism (V.I. Lenin, coll. works, vol 27, pp. 356-357, Russian version).
Nowadays, this alienation has reached gigantic proportions. As an example, the trading of foreign currency at the end of the 1990-s had already valued at 1.5 trillion US dollars a day (!), that is 10 times higher than the 1986 indicator- the profit is obtained due to wavering in the quotation of currencies. The value of world export of commodities and services in 1998 was only 7 trillion dollars, or 25 billion dollars a day that was 60 times less than that of currency speculation.
In 1995, the size of capital in the USA in the form of mutual funds, pension funds etc. exceeded by 10 times the indicators of 1980. International transactions on bonds and shares expressed in percentages in relation to gross output grew by 57% in the USA, 55% in Japan and 60% in Germany (1970- 1997). The observed growth in the stock-markets expresses the growth of capital by way of purely credit-monetary speculation.
The trading in shares on the stock-market has little in common with mobilization of new capital. It is - trading in the right to ownership, in claims for future profits. Therefore, shares and bonds are fictitious capital, the right to profit, to ownership, claims to surplus value produced in the process of capitalist production.
Capitalist production having reached unseen before concentration, stated the need in raising the mobilty of capital, the possibility of its free movement from one branch to another, from one country to another with the aim of using the favourably formed state of the world market in its various parts to the full. This is brought about by way of the stock-market via the transfer of capital in the form of shares, by way of selling them without liquidating industrial capital as such.
The rise of the stock-market provides an increase in the value of capital by way of trading on the stock-market. But this is fictitious value to a certain extent. Money alienated from the production process may make money only while capital flows onto the market, while industrial capital forms surplus value. From here flows the extreme instability of capital as a whole. The trillions of dollars of capital used to support its own rate of profit, are carried around the world market in search of spheres for its investment. But when a hitch occurs in the share market, the value of capital falls and its collosal outflow begins. Not only is fictitious capital destroyed, but also industrial capital with it. A reduction in industrial output takes place accompanied by mass lay-offs of thousands of workers and inpoverishment of the working people.
Mankind has created huge production forces. But their further development has entered into contradiction with the existing production relations. Monopoly capital dominating the world is leading to the accumilating in some countries, of huge amounts of fictitious capital. The number of individuals - rentiers who have billions of dollars and living exclusively on the backs of speculating on the stock-market, is growing. There exist individual states which are occupied with money-lending on the backs of financial speculation. The USA is the main state-money-lender nowadays, the main source of profit bring the emission of securities, speculation, robbing the whole world by way of military and political annexations. At the same time, the state budget deficit of the USA exceeds the budget of the Russian Federation by 4 times. The deficit of the US budget has nowadays become the chief problem of the global economy. The profit of states-rentiers goes to their ruling class and also towards buying up sections of the working class of their own country. Here is the reason for the absence of revolutions in America and Europe. At the same time, 20% of the population of the USA live in poverty with no full time job or housing. The level of unemployment in the countries of the "gold billion" wavers around the figure of 10%.
Speaking at the summit of the Carribean forum, which passed in the Dominican Republic (2004), Fidel Castro declared that "the world has turned into a gigantic casino, where everyday a trillion and a half dollars are staked, which is equal to more than a fifteen-day gross product of the whole planet."
Due to the growth of speculation and gambling on the financial markets, Mankind may clash with a global economic crisis and that the future world economy, according the words of Fidel Castro, would turn out under threat, due to the global growth of speculative tendencies.
Modern-day imperialism has become a brake on the development of productive forces, at the same time, pregnant with irreconcilible contradictions. The harshest financial crises at intervals of roughly 10 years constantly shake the world, and from them it becomes even more difficult for the imperialist system, despite the joint help given, to crawl out of each crisis.
In the 80-s and 90-s of the XX century, the imperialist system managed to escape another deep crisis due to the break-up of the USSR and the colossal theft of its wealth. (To be continued) (Raboche-Krestyanskya Pravda No 2 (107) As is already known, dialectical materialism, or the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism is the only scientific world outlook, is the methodology of recognising the world, is the science of the most general laws of movement and development of nature, society and thinking. Dialectical materialism is the highest form of materialism, presenting itself as the sum of previous history of philosophy. Dialectical materialism examines movement and development of the world as the result of acting internal contradictions in it, which may be antagonistic as well as non-antagonistic. K. Marx discovered the acting laws of human society and showed that the struggle of antagonistic classes, the class struggle is the moving force of historical process, the result of which one social-economic formation is replaced by another higher one according to the level of development of the production forces of society. This qualitative leap, or revolutionary leap in the development of society occurs when the production forces of society arrive at a state of extreme contradiction with the production relations, having become at a given stage of society's development, a brake on the development of the production forces. But the struggle of the antagonistic classes does not lead to the recking and destruction of society, but only compels society to cross over to a higher stage of its development. K. Marx scientifically substantiated that irreconcilable contradictions can be resolved only by way of revolution and not by way of conciliation of the contradictions, and that only a revolution can bring the production forces and production relations into line. K. Marx, on the basis of a deep analysis of all sides of the fuctioning of capitalist society, revealed the essence of the mechanism of obtaining profit in capitalist society, consisting in the appropriation of surplus value, the source of which is the labour power of the hired workers. With this, K. Marx explained the economic nature of capitalist exploitation and the essence of capitalist production as the owner of the means of production races towards obtaining maximum profit. We note that any class society bases itself on the extraction of surplus labour from the class direct producers for the sake of profits for the owners of the means of production. K. Marx showed that the contradiction between the social method of production and the private form of ownership is the main contradiction in capitalist society. This contradiction finds its own direct appearance in the class struggle between the bourgeioise and the proletariat and, being antagonistic, it can be overcome, resolved only in the violent way of a socialist revolution. Today's opportunists often replace the word socialist revolution with the word social revolution. I believe it to be expedient to clarify the essence of the replacement of these concepts. A social revolution, or social-political one is, like a socialist revolution, a leap in the development of class antagonist society based on private ownership on the means of production and class antagonisms. The transition from slave-owning to feudal, and from feudal to capitalist society and system is brought about by a social revolution, which does not abolish private ownership on the means of production, only the owner of the private property is changed. A socialist revolution is the highest form of social revolution. It proposes the obolishment of private ownership over the means of production and therefore, brings about the deepest, most root, qualitative changes in the social-economic, political and other spheres in the life of society. The exhaustive character of capitalism and its highest stage - imperialism was given by V. I. Lenin. In his work "Imperialism - the highest stage of capitalism", the leader of the proletarian revolution deeply analysed five main hallmarks of imperialism: - the concentration of production and capital, concentrated to such a high stage of development that it itself forms monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life; - the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the forming on this of "finance capital", finance oligarchy ; - the export of capital, compared to the export of goods, gains special significance; - international monopoly alliances of capitalists are formed, dividing the world; - the territorial division of land by major capitalist power is complete. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development when the domination of monopolies and finance capital has taken shape, the division of the world by international trusts has begun and the division of the entire territory of land by the major capitalist countries is complete. (V.I. Lenin, Com. Col. Works, vol.27, pp 386-387, Rus. version). Characterising "imperialism as an epoch of finance capital and monopolies" (ibid, p, 419), V.I. Lenin made the conclusion on the parasitic and decaying character of capitalism at its highest stage -imperialism. In his fundamental work, V.I. Lenin showed that contradictions between various groups of capital inside one country, and also between various capitalist countries always exist and are brought about by the very nature of capitalism itself, by the pursuit of capital for gaining of maximum profit and super-profit, is the main law of capitalist formation -, the brutal competition between separate groups of capitalists, groups of capitalist states for sources of raw material, sellers' markets, markets of capital, cheap workforce, etc. etc.. The aggravation of these contradictions between imperialist countries led to two imperialist wars in the 20th century. V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin in their works on the building of socialism in the USSR, examined the dialectics of the transition from capitalism over to socialism, the dialectics of the development of socialism itself as the first phase of communism in the period of which the transition over to a classless society is brought about. J.V. Stalin in his works showed that internal contradictions existed and exist nowadays in any society always and everywhere, but in different conditions carry a qualitatively different character, manifest themselves and are surmounted differently. Analysing the development of the imperialist system, J.V. Stalin foresaw that peace, won as the result of the defeat of fascism due to the irreconcilable contradictions of imperialism, may continue to last for a period of 50 years. We, living in the present, see how prophetic these words of the great continuer of the cause of V.I. Lenin turned out to be. The global economy of imperialism after the end of the Second World War endured a certain boom (foremost in the USA), connected with the obtaining of large amounts of capital for the supply of arms during the war, the development of state-monopoly capitalism and state interference in the economy, together with certain concessions made to the working class of their own countries brought about by the fear of a socialist revolution (in connection with successes of the Soviet Union in forming a system of socialist states after WW II). As an example, in the period between 1942 and 1966, the rate of profit in the USA approached 20%, somewhat lower than in other capitalist countries. But this "paradise" at the start of the 70-s came to an end. In 1974-75, economic crisis broke out, when the rate of profit in the USA fell sharply. The same thing also happened in other capitalist countries. But even after the exit from this crisis, the global economy could not return to the level of the 1960-s. It entered a period of lengthy stagnation, expressed in high-level unemployment and high inflation. The system of imperialism, having clashed with a lowering of the rate of profit, nevetheless managed to use the achievments of the scientific-technological revolution for raising labour productivity, introducting new energy and resource-efficient technologies, automation and computorisation of production, merging of separate productions into a single one together with mass lay-offs of workers and office personnel and the subsequent growth of unemployment, along with increased exploitation of the working class by way of the intensification of labour, and increasing the length of the working day for the same former pay but for longer hours. The introducing of high-technological methods of production accompanied by the removal of Man from the sphere of production, or - the reduction of expense of living labour led to the reduction of the rate of profit. Therefore, the 1980-s and 1990-s are characterised by stagnation of production, a growth in unemployment and social tension in capitalist society. Temporarily and to a large degree, these problems were removed due to the recking of the USSR and the Socialist camp, but not for long. In their drive for maximum profits, the bourgeoisie of imperialist states had to expand production to the maximum possible limits, transferring production into mainly backward countries, who pay their workers slave wages, bringing about with this and between themselves, a brutal struggle for the redivision of spheres of influence and subordinating other countries to themselves.TNC-s (transnational corporations / multinationals) are merging into larger conglomerations which between themselves are fighting for redivision of the world. Capital tries to overcome reductions in the rate of profit, by means of various forms of speculating and gambling on stock-markets, by way of financial operations that are ever more alienated from the sphere of direct production. V.I. Lenin spoke about this when he said, that the alienation of ownership of capital from capital's application in production, the alienation of monetary capital from industrial or production capital, the alienation of the rentier living entirely off the income of monetary capital, from the entrepreneaur and all those people directly involved in the handling of capital, are characteristic of capitalism (V.I. Lenin, coll. works, vol 27, pp. 356-357, Russian version). Nowadays, this alienation has reached gigantic proportions. As an example, the trading of foreign currency at the end of the 1990-s had already valued at 1.5 trillion US dollars a day (!), that is 10 times higher than the 1986 indicator- the profit is obtained due to wavering in the quotation of currencies. The value of world export of commodities and services in 1998 was only 7 trillion dollars, or 25 billion dollars a day that was 60 times less than that of currency speculation. In 1995, the size of capital in the USA in the form of mutual funds, pension funds etc. exceeded by 10 times the indicators of 1980. International transactions on bonds and shares expressed in percentages in relation to gross output grew by 57% in the USA, 55% in Japan and 60% in Germany (1970- 1997). The observed growth in the stock-markets expresses the growth of capital by way of purely credit-monetary speculation. The trading in shares on the stock-market has little in common with mobilization of new capital. It is - trading in the right to ownership, in claims for future profits. Therefore, shares and bonds are fictitious capital, the right to profit, to ownership, claims to surplus value produced in the process of capitalist production. Capitalist production having reached unseen before concentration, stated the need in raising the mobilty of capital, the possibility of its free movement from one branch to another, from one country to another with the aim of using the favourably formed state of the world market in its various parts to the full. This is brought about by way of the stock-market via the transfer of capital in the form of shares, by way of selling them without liquidating industrial capital as such. The rise of the stock-market provides an increase in the value of capital by way of trading on the stock-market. But this is fictitious value to a certain extent. Money alienated from the production process may make money only while capital flows onto the market, while industrial capital forms surplus value. From here flows the extreme instability of capital as a whole. The trillions of dollars of capital used to support its own rate of profit, are carried around the world market in search of spheres for its investment. But when a hitch occurs in the share market, the value of capital falls and its collosal outflow begins. Not only is fictitious capital destroyed, but also industrial capital with it. A reduction in industrial output takes place accompanied by mass lay-offs of thousands of workers and inpoverishment of the working people. Mankind has created huge production forces. But their further development has entered into contradiction with the existing production relations. Monopoly capital dominating the world is leading to the accumilating in some countries, of huge amounts of fictitious capital. The number of individuals - rentiers who have billions of dollars and living exclusively on the backs of speculating on the stock-market, is growing. There exist individual states which are occupied with money-lending on the backs of financial speculation. The USA is the main state-money-lender nowadays, the main source of profit bring the emission of securities, speculation, robbing the whole world by way of military and political annexations. At the same time, the state budget deficit of the USA exceeds the budget of the Russian Federation by 4 times. The deficit of the US budget has nowadays become the chief problem of the global economy. The profit of states-rentiers goes to their ruling class and also towards buying up sections of the working class of their own country. Here is the reason for the absence of revolutions in America and Europe. At the same time, 20% of the population of the USA live in poverty with no full time job or housing. The level of unemployment in the countries of the "gold billion" wavers around the figure of 10%. Speaking at the summit of the Carribean forum, which passed in the Dominican Republic (2004), Fidel Castro declared that "the world has turned into a gigantic casino, where everyday a trillion and a half dollars are staked, which is equal to more than a fifteen-day gross product of the whole planet." Due to the growth of speculation and gambling on the financial markets, Mankind may clash with a global economic crisis and that the future world economy, according the words of Fidel Castro, would turn out under threat, due to the global growth of speculative tendencies. Modern-day imperialism has become a brake on the development of productive forces, at the same time, pregnant with irreconcilible contradictions. The harshest financial crises at intervals of roughly 10 years constantly shake the world, and from them it becomes even more difficult for the imperialist system, despite the joint help given, to crawl out of each crisis. In the 80-s and 90-s of the XX century, the imperialist system managed to escape another deep crisis due to the break-up of the USSR and the colossal theft of its wealth. (To be continued) (Raboche-Krestyanskya Pravda No 2 (107)