Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways.  The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
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No 0708 July 13th 1993                                                                                                                                     10p 

Worsening financial trade-war mocks Tokyo 'recovery' smokescreen. Massive destruction of 'surplus' capital is imperialism's only 'solution'. US fascist bullying is the shape of things to come. Revisionism's remnants must be swept aside by a revival of serious Marxist-Leninist science. Witch-hunting Kruschev instead of honestly analysing the grotesque errors of the Stalin era is a hopeless diversion. Imperialism has found no new ways of hanging on, - in Ireland or anywhere else.

The imperialist conference in Japan to work out a 'solution' to the free-market economic crisis has been declared an instant failure by even the capitalist press (see story p 5).

Only days after all the boasting about 'new world trade agreement to create half-a-million new jobs in Britain', etc, the reality began to be faced about 'false perspectives', and 'cracks appearing' in the US-Japan deal. 'More euphoria than sound judgment' is already the broad opinion in all bourgeois circles, and the Common Market's ERM (exchange-rate mechanism) tottered towards collapse again (this time with the French franc) just to demonstrate that nothing had really changed in the trade war.

Nor could it. Any new trade expansion deal can only put off the agony of the irreconcilable contradictions between 'surplus' mountains of imperialist investment capital which cannot now all make a viable profit out of the existing exploitable markets on earth. On the contrary, more bank credit extensions to defer loan repayments and try to keep the boom going in the vain hope of a 'recovery' can only mean an even worse crash of international markets once a domino collapse of powerful imperialist economic forces really begins, which is now only a matter of time.

Far from encouraging yet more 'surplus' capital investment to come onto the world market, as all the politically-motivated talk of an economic recovery is bound to do, - it is the real destruction of excess plant, products, and creators of surplus value (labourers) which the imperialist system really needs to encourage if the monopoly-bourgeois ruling classes all want to hope to survive the slump and return to general profitability.

That destructive 'hope' and 'need' of the imperialist market system will soon be expressed openly in universal demands for beggar-thy-neighbour trade war.

The other side of the Tokyo braggadocio is the ludicrous attempt to repackage the oaf Clinton (after only three disastrous months in office) as a regular US imperialist bully in the normal kick-arse ruling-class mould. The farcical initial presentation of a 'new caring White House' has quickly been abandoned as totally unconvincing, and hopelessly inappropriate as well in the light of slump-hit and trade-war-hit US imperialism's real needs.

The tactics to show the president in a 'how tough I am' light to get the US chauvinist flags waving again and to stem the terrifying slide in Clinton's credibility have been the most monstrous cynical savagery imaginable, - blitzkrieging defenceless Baghdad on account of some comic-opera assassination plot alleged to have been prepared against George Bush on a recent visit to Kuwait City, and now repeatedly shooting-up downtown Mogadishu as part of some insane new vendetta against yet another 'evil world terrorist threat' nonentity.

If blitzing Baghdad, Tripoli and Panama City on account of the non-existent 'threat to world security' of Saddam, Gadafi, and Noriega were all a sick joke, the blitzing of Mogadishu because of Aideed's supposed 'threat to world order' must be the most obscene farce in modern history.

The 'new world order' is a fascist outrage. Only the retreat from Leninism by the wretched socialist-camp bureaucracy has kept this crisis-ridden Western comedy going.

Washington's noisy propaganda stunts about 'world trade agreement', 'capitalism now secure in Russia', and 'no one dare tread on us' are well calculated to continue spreading defeatism among the remnants of the Third International such as gathered recently under CPI(M) leadership to celebrate Marx's 175th anniversary.

The keynote Indian address prolonged most of the demoralising revisionist illusions of Stalinism, - tailor-made to fall for the latest imperialist smokescreen that 'the Tokyo summit has solved the economic crisis', and that Clinton is an all-powerful world leader unchallengeable by any monopoly-capitalist rivals or anyone else', etc.

The CPI(M) contribution declared:

"Inter-imperialist rivalries ending up in an imperialist war like the First and Second World Wars today remain a very remote possibility for a variety of reasons".

Comically, one of these was admitted to be:

"The weakness of the subjective factor today [parties with a capacity for Marxist analysis of the world situation] permits capitalism to create enough space for its manoeuvres to survive out of its inherent contradictions (sic)".

It went on:

"None of these [a list of current imperialist economic difficulties] adds up to portend a repetition of a 1950s-type crisis."

Another reason given was that:

"The ability [of the imperialist countries] to stabilise their own economies at the expense of the third world would not have been possible if the imperialist economies, despite their undoubted contradictions, had not displayed a measure of agreement among themselves." 

These hopelessly pessimistic perspectives flow naturally from the years-long refusal of the Third International remnants (including the CPI(M)) to recognise Gorbachevism as outright liquidationism, - which self-protecting blind spot is still perpetuated with the relentless barmy promotion now of the notion that it was all Kruschev's fault to start with:

"The gross distortion of the Leninist concept of peaceful coexistence and the advocacy of peaceful competition and peaceful transition by the CPSU leadership under Kruschev threw the door open for revisionism and class collaborationism of the worst kind".

As is easily demonstrated from Stalin's 1952 work Economic problems and from endless more postwar material out of Moscow, the door was opened to Kruschevism by Stalinist revisionism itself, in particular by the notion that imperialism had come to the end of its economic development, and that the socialist-camp market was already (1952) outstripping capitalism (see ILWP Books vol 18 for résumé of Bulletins 599, 631, 641, 645, and 683 taking up Lalkar, Nina Andreyeva, and others, and quoting at length from the Stalin works).

The CPI(M) has had this material in its hands since May 1991, both in the UK and in India. When is it going to reply?

This fatuous witch-hunt of Kruschev is simply the most pathetic thinly-disguised cover-up for the CPI(M) itself (and the rest of the Third International) who have not the honesty, understanding, or maturity to analyse their own part in the catastrophe of Stalinist liquidationism.
	
And what do they propose to do about the 'Kruschev' anti-revolutionary legacy anyway? Run straight back into a repeat of the same Popular Front disaster of the long slow 1930s to 1960s liquidationism which finally destroyed the Third International (and eventually the socialist camp), which began by catastrophically playing second fiddle to hopeless petty-bourgeois 'democracy' in the Spanish civil war, and repeated the same doomed tailendism postwar in Indonesia behind Sukarno, in Chile behind Allende, in Grenada, in Nicaragua, etc, - all the time terrified of proclaiming the dictatorship of the proletariat, - so much in retreat, in fact, that Gorbachev met virtually no opposition when he simply liquidated the entire European socialist camp and most of the Third International remnants in one ludicrous middle-class sweep of crass class-collaborationism.

Lesson learned? Can the Leninist programme of proletarian dictatorship as the only possible alternative to bourgeois dictatorship at last get a hearing? Not in the CPI(M):

"The tasks facing communists are indeed immense. The accentuation of the fundamental contradictions of our epoch, the new insidious and vicious process of economic 're-colonisation' of the third world, and the imperialist attempts to impose its New World Order, call for a greater closing of ranks amongst Communists and anti-imperialist contingents. The unity of all communists, progressive and anti-imperialist forces is the basis for strengthening internationalism in the present situation. It is only on the basis of this that the imperialist offensive can be rebuffed."

Exactly wrong. It was the call for armed revolution which won in Vietnam, in China, in Cuba, etc. It was the appeal to Popular Front class-collaborationism which got wiped out in Indonesia, Chile, Iraq, Iran, is about to produce the same disaster in South Africa, and led to eventual virtual CP liquidation throughout the advanced capitalist world.

Still paralysed with this unanalysed Stalinist revisionist class-collaborationism, the CPI(M) is as doomed as the rest of the remnants of the Third International.

All this cringing fear of proudly proclaiming the Leninist science of either proletarian dictatorship or bourgeois dictatorship (and in a worldwide slump, that can only mean imperialism marching to war again under the banners of international fascism) but nothing in between, - will not at all protect real communists from the persecution of universal counter-revolutionary witch-hunting. Just the opposite. All this 'tactical and diplomatic subtlety', etc, to 'maximise the anti-imperialist forces ', etc, is just an avenue for all the 'communists' to cease being communist at all, - as has just happened to the entire remnants of the Third International and the whole of the European socialist camp.

This Popular Front method of 'avoiding isolation by maximising the forces united against fascist imperialism' is in fact a way of avoiding communist isolation in the end by ceasing to be communists at all.

The key to unlocking this revisionist mess lies in the need at all times for communists to make it absolutely clear what is the main issue facing mankind.

And the Marxist-Leninist answer has always been and still remains: To overthrow the warmongering imperialist economic crisis by proletarian-dictatorship revolution.

By constantly presenting a series of merely secondary tactical questions as the 'main issue', revisionism eventually succeeded in destroying the Leninist movement worldwide by utterly polluting its basic understanding of Marxist theory.

The 'Popular Front' was presented as the 'main issue', as now by the CPI (M) and as in the catastrophe of the Spanish civil war, and subsequently under the Allende government in Chile, etc, etc.

Or 'preserving world peace' was declared primary to the socialist revolutionary struggle, idiotically forgetting the ABC of Marxism that far from 'peace' being a guarantee of eventual socialism, it is socialist revolution which is the only eventual guarantee of peace.

Where is the socialist Soviet Union and East European socialist camp now after decades of ensuring that 'peace' was put first so that socialism could survive? The socialism fell into total disrepair, and with that complete liquidation of the revolutionary communist movement, it is now certain that inter-imperialist war (always inevitable) will now embrace vastly more of humanity than ever need to have happened.

Primacy was declared for the 'peaceful road to socialism' (and incidentally, long before Kruschev came onto the scene), and the revolutionary nature of the overthrow of capitalism was driven right under the carpet, hardly even mentionable as a 'secondary' question. The result?

The entire British communist movement have become eco-liberals or things even more reactionary. There is not even a Labour Party 'parliamentary road to socialism' to tailend any more, and real proletarian dictatorship is now vilified as the most hated historical phenomenon of all time by the ex-CPers.

Tactical moves were never a problem for Leninist science. The Bolsheviks could call for 'all power to the Soviets' (and withdraw the slogan again) at various stages of opportunist leadership of the revolution without any damage to the workers movement because it was never left in any doubt what remained the Bolsheviks' real understanding of things, - that until proletarian dictatorship took power, there could only be bourgeois dictatorship or equally dangerous dual power.

On foreign trade delegations trying to break the blockade around the USSR, it was Leninist tactics to preach peaceful coexistence rather than communist revolution. But no damage was done because Leninism never left a shred of doubt that worldwide proletarian dictatorship remained the only scientific purpose for mankind, and the temporary trading arrangements with imperialism merely suited everyone's purpose for the moment.

Stalin's version of peaceful coexistence had nothing like this perspective.

For the revisionists, it was not socialist revolution which was going to rid the world of imperialism's warmongering-crisis instability and tyranny, - but the insane notion of the welfare-state socialist economies 'peacefully' overtaking the monopoly-imperialist economies on the open world market!!

In his 1952 Economic problems work, Stalin wrote: 

"It will soon come to pass that the socialist countries will not only be in no need of imports from capitalist countries, but will themselves feel the necessity of finding an outside market for their surplus products.

"But it follows from this that the sphere of exploitation of the world's resources by the major capitalist countries (USA, Britain, France) will not expand, but contract; that their opportunities for sale in the world market will deteriorate, and that their industries will be operating more and more be low capacity. That, in fact is what is meant by the deepening of the general crisis of the world capitalist system in connection with the disintegration of the world market."

This is all total anti-revolutionary class-collaborating gibberish, already complete with its 'peaceful competition between the two systems' revisionist perspective in place long before Kruschev came on the scene.

With class-war revolutionary perspectives long since abandoned as the moving force of world history, the degeneration to Gorbachevite reaction was only a matter of time, - and even when it arrived it took the CPI(M) and the rest of the Third International remnants about four years to notice it, such is their total retreat from any real grasp of Marxist-Leninist theory and how building a party of revolutionary theory really works.

This can only begin, continue, and end with a correct analysis of the current and perspective world situation. The moment that analysis goes wrong, and the party has not the wit or character to admit the mistake and correct it, then the party is in trouble. All boasts of size (the CPSU had 18 million members at its death), or bureaucratic stickling for party constitutional details, are utterly barren in the absence of a correct analysis of the world situation.

Of 24 communist parties contributing to the CPI(M) seminar on the "contemporary world situation and the validity of Marxism", only a couple had the sense of urgency to open their remarks with an analysis of the current burning world situation of imperialist crisis. Most of the rest began with the usual self-congratulatory guff about how glad they were to be there, etc, - the less significant the group, the more sycophantic the contribution.

But neither of these two contributions (from Vietnam and Nepal) got to the bottom of the disillusionment leading to the socialist camp's collapse, which likewise springs from the failure of the idiotic revisionist world perspective to remotely inspire the masses to renewed revolutionary endeavours, and which in turn made arbitrary bureaucratic repression inevitable because no healthy debate or initiatives could possibly follow from such a defeatist class-collaborating philosophy in Moscow, only opportunism.

But this longstanding Leninist analysis of the revisionist degeneration of the workers states (see ILWP Books vols 3 to 18) is unlikely to gain much hearing in the complacent 'big party' defeatist gloom imbibed straight out of the collapsed Third International by the CPI(M) without a thought for their own part in that theoretic confusion, and unwilling to take criticism from outside, - just like the whole rotten Moscow revisionist tradition.

That complacency stutters a few lines about inter-imperialist war now being a "very remote possibility" about "no portent of a new 1930s-type crisis", and about "a measure of agreement" among the imperialists (as though it was a significant new phenomenon) - all potentially world-shattering revisions of Marxist-Leninist science if they could be justified, - but then falls silent.

Guiltily, the CPI(M) tries to cover its tracks by adding that to say all this:

"is not to retreat to the Kautskyite position of 'ultra-imperialism' from Lenin's emphasis on inter-imperialist rivalry".

So what is the meaning of this revisionist defeatism?

"The point is to underline the complexity characterising capitalist development in particular conjunctures which can not be reduced to simple formulae.

"Imperialism thus, has shown far greater reserves of strength and far greater resilience than had been earlier imagined....the transition from capitalism to socialism is likely to be a far more protracted process with setbacks upon the way, with imperialism regrouping its strength, with reversals even in countries that had once witnessed socialist revolutions and appeared firmly set on the path of socialism, and so on. The point is to change the world by looking unflinchingly at the objective reality, falling prey neither to false euphoria nor to petty-bourgeois despair."

But that is precisely what the collapsed Third International did not avoid doing. From the false euphoria of claiming that the imperialist market system would simply collapse of its own accord (Stalin), it has plunged to the petty-bourgeois despair of claiming that imperialism has found new ways of avoiding defeat at all.

All of the above last quote from the CPI(M) implies that the Third International could not complete the world socialist revolution because the imperialist system has changed.

This is more revisionist nonsense, designed to cover up the CPI(M)'s part in the revisionist gibberish of Popular Front peaceful roads to socialism which was the real reason why the Third International collapsed instead of completing the world socialist revolution.

The constellation of the latest warmongering imperialist market crisis is obviously new, but that is all, and it is nothing.

The nature of the contradictions requiring the destruction of relatively 'surplus' capital built up by the inflationary postwar boom, - the essential Marxist-Leninist criticism of imperialist crisis, - has not changed at all.

It leads to deliberately-imposed fascist-political slump during which chauvinistic drums will be hammered on mercilessly to provoke first trade war and then shooting war as the only 'solution' for the monopoly-imperialist groupings threatened with inevitable wiping-out.

These are the class-war forces which are the motive power of history, and they have not changed at all since they were first analysed by Marxist-Leninist science.

All that changed was that the entire Third International leadership ended up in complete revisionist confusion, - as seen now in the shallow and irresponsible CPI(M) dither about whether the free-market crisis is going to end in war and fascist slump.

The slump will be fascist because the slump is fascism. Fascism historically is nothing but the imperialist system so deep in economic crisis that it cannot hope to survive the revolutionary resistance of the proletariat without a deliberate whipping up of hate-filled national chauvinism so that the majority of workers rally round the national flag in order to despise all foreigners and every 'alien' influence, etc.

The fact that fascism emerged so identifiably in Germany, Italy, Spain, East Europe, Japan, etc, and only less dominant in Britain, France, America, etc, does not at all make fascism a 'German' phenomenon historically.

Fascism was deliberately encouraged by every imperialist ruling class in the world. The political atmosphere of accepting that the slump was real and insoluble, that it presented a 'real challenge to the nation', that foreigners were largely responsible, and that those foreigners might need teaching a lesson, etc, - was imposed in every imperialist 'democracy' bar none, - and is now about to be imposed again, - the mentality of fascism.

German, Italian, and Japanese fascism is so much remembered simply because those were the imperialist powers most driven to warmongering aggression in that 1930s crisis by the circumstances of the time.

There, but for the accident of history, would have stood France, Britain, and the USA bearing the historical label 'fascist aggression'.

It was another giant mis-analysis by the Third International revisionists which imposed the ludicrous notion that there was 'good' imperialism with which safe and nice wartime alliances could be had leading to illusions of 'peaceful competition' and 'peaceful roads to socialism' which could be had after the war; and 'bad' imperialism which alone deserved to be thoroughly destroyed.

What naïve and dangerous revisionist nonsense. Fascism is a normal mode of existence of the entire imperialist system in crisis. Stand by for the Third International remnants to class-collaborate with 'nice' imperialism here and there against a 'real fascist danger' only there and there, etc. It will just be more disorienting revisionist rubbish. The entire imperialist system is equally potentially 'fascist'. The entire imperialist system needs overthrowing by revolutionary proletarian dictatorship equally, - whether 'democratic' with the long history of murderous colonial tyranny such as France, Britain, and the USA, - original promoters of every racist and fascist outrage in the book, - or more 'autocratic' in the German 'tradition' (i.e. just 12 years of Nazi rule, itself gained through a parliamentary vote in favour of the biggest electoral party).

And the imperialist economic crisis will end in war because, as explained by Lenin (see p8), the monopoly-capitalist forces have no other relationship than using their total strength ultimately for deciding who should rule the world markets when the boom has created a relative 'surplus' of competing capital.

And only Third International revisionists, Trotskyites, and other middle-class posturing 'revolutionary' frauds will he taken in by another G7 summit subterfuge, always trying to pretend that the 'new age' imperialism is humanely willing to write off billions of dollars in unrepayable Third World debts which are helping to pollute the international financial system:

TWENTY years ago, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania asked: "Must we starve our children to pay our debts?" Successive summits of the Group of Seven have effectively given the answer "yes" to African governments who are paying out $10 billion annually, a quarter of their export earnings, in debt servicing. Will it be different this time in Tokyo?

Africa is the only part of the developing world in which economic stagnation is leading to increasing poverty. As the Brundtland Commission observed five years ago, poverty is leading to environmental degradation, which leads in turn to even greater poverty.

The moves towards the democracy so strongly encouraged by the West are being undermined by the economic crisis in countries such as Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. Post-independence gains in health and education, under threat since the mid-1980s, are being eroded by the day. Economic infrastructures are disintegrating, and child malnutrition, which already claims 4.5 million young lives every year, is rising.

Foreign debt, owed mainly to G7 governments or the Bretton Woods institutions controlled by them, continues to fuel this vicious spiral of economic and social decline, beyond the control of African governments.

The UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, said recently: "External debt is a millstone around the neck of Africa... easing the continent's debt burden must be a priority for the international community."

Africa is considerably more debt distressed than Latin America, where external debt is 37 per cent of gross national product. For Africa it is over 100 per cent on average, and for some countries more than double that.

Sub-Saharan Africa's debt is $183 billion, small in terms of the economies of its creditors, but more than three times the level in 1980. Every year, the debt is increased as the arrears mount — only half the scheduled payments are being met.

Many countries will need write-offs of 80-100 per cent to have a realistic prospect of recovery. The argument still current in the German and British Treasuries against more comprehensive debt reduction is that it reward those who do not pay their debts. This was not the logic which guided their debt relief for Russia or the writing off of much of what Poland and Egypt owed. It ignores the fact that Africa's debt, apart from imposing enormous human costs, is unpayable.

In addition, there is the problem of multilateral debt, which is not tackled by the Trinidad terms. For a country such as Uganda, which owes more than half its debt to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the British proposal does not go nearly far enough. Even after rescheduling, servicing Uganda's debt would by 1996 require 12 per cent more foreign exchange than the country earns.

Some writing off there may be. But it is purely a cosmetic gesture for political propaganda use by reactionaries in the Third World and 'reformist' dupes in the West. Such gestures will never end the dependence of weaker capitalist nations on the stronger imperialist powers, and will do nothing to alter the balance of strength among the main trade-war rivals, where the destruction of real excess capital investments (plant, raw materials, finished goods, and trained labour) is what is needed and awaited, not the writing off of mere paper debts.

Another area where pretended imperialist 'strength' only hides real weakness is in the highly symbolic threat to British ruling-class integrity from the Irish national-liberation struggle. Even bourgeois circles are now grasping the reality of British imperialism's enforced snail's pace withdrawal from its oldest colony, and almost noting as well the weird phenomenon of the London establishment stumbling on its face just by letting happen what it knows is now inevitable, the reunification of Ireland:

RARELY can the onset of the Northern Ireland "marching" season have found Unionists in more bitter mood than today. Their abiding paranoia about the Anglo-Irish Agreement has been provoked once again by renewed pressure from Dublin for talks this autumn irrespective of opposition from the Unionists. Their despair has been heightened by opinion polls showing majorities north, south and in Britain for a new inter-governmental initiative. Their suspicious antennae twitch for the least sign of influence from Washington, where the Clinton administration has not yet made up its mind over Irish affairs but has sent a Kennedy as ambassador to Dublin.

Domestically, they are no more reassured. Sinn Fein comes slowly but surely in from the political cold — talks with John Hume, endorsement for talks from Michael Mates, a handshake with Mary Robinson — all signs that the unthinkable is now being thought. At Westminster the Labour Party breaks with the long tradition of consensus, floats the notion of joint rule over the north with Dublin and stands its ground when attacked by the Northern Ireland Secretary and the Prime Minister. The armed forces minister suggests that the army presence in Northern Ireland may have to be scaled down. So when yesterday the IRA set off a bomb in the centre of the relatively peaceful town of Newtonards, Unionists felt even more abandoned, beleaguered and angry than ever — and told the visiting Sir Patrick Mayhew so with some force.

That hardening of mood goes some way to explain the most important recent event in the north, the coordinated weekend loyalist rioting against the security forces in Belfast and several other predominantly Protestant towns. But the riots mark a significant deterioration in the political situation in their own right. Such scenes have long been familiar, though not for some time, in Catholic areas. Until now they have been rare in Protestant ones. The weekend roll call of 35 shootings, 11 bomb attacks and 63 hijackings will feed rather than assuage the mood of defiance. Only the alleged willingness of the security forces to negotiate in the Shankill district with representatives of banned organisations — something they would never have done with the IRA — marks the confrontations out from those which have occurred in Catholic areas. There is no mistaking that an important shift has occurred on the security and public order front. It is unlikely to get better before it gets worse — and it could get a lot worse very soon.

It is striking that the most forceful declaration of unionism by a British prime minister in recent times last Thursday made absolutely no difference whatsoever. British ministers seem in general to have little feel for the present fluidity of Irish events. Sir Patrick Mayhew aims to please but pleases no one. The Dublin coalition, though far from radical itself on Anglo-Irish matters, feels he is too cautious. Nationalists think he does not have a strategy any more. Unionists believe he has abandoned them. So while others push the agenda forwards, the British government falls back on assertions of an ancestral unionist faith which stirs no enthusiasm at home, cuts no ice in Northern Ireland and melts no hearts in the south. Mr Major and Sir Patrick seem to have lost their political touch just at a moment when real creativity over Irish affairs is most called for.

Even the Orange colonists at last seem to be admitting that the Irish independence spirit is unbeatable:

THE mood of the crowd was one of severe shock as residents stared at the devastation.

It was not just that Newtownards had finally fallen victim to the IRA's remorseless bombing campaign. It was disillusion at the manner in which one provincial town after another could be torn apart.

"I have to say something which I thought I would never have said," the local Ulster Unionist MP, John Taylor, confessed on local BBC radio yesterday morning."That is that the IRA are certainly winning in Northern Ireland.

"We have got to have an urgent review of the security policy...Clearly the army GOC should be removed. We will have to tell the chief constable that he must come up with another security policy within six months or he too will be removed."

Mr Taylor is a hardline Unionist, a former Stormont security minister.

An insurance assessor estimated the damage at between £1 million and £5 million. Four bombs in late May have already added £28 million to the bill for Northern Ireland this year. Others in Strabane and Newry have further pushed the cumulative running toll for bomb damage towards £40 million.

Ian Paisley MP, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, appeared in the town around lunchtime. He too called for resignations. The Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, was booed and heckled by councillors when he visited Newtownards.

Decadent British imperialism is now completely out of its depth on the world colonial-exploitation and political-bullying stage, and looks farcical trying to still hold down the last six gerrymandered-county bits of Ulster, having been forced from the rest of Ulster and the rest of Ireland by the national-liberation war of 1919-1921, ended only by the savage treachery of partition.

If the snail's-pace enforced withdrawal does continue (see ILWP Books vol 8) under US and NATO-imperialist pressure (who seek a more stable counter-revolutionary set-up in Ireland), it will be a colossal advantage to communists fighting the class struggle in Britain if workers are no longer so susceptible to racist-chauvinist 'no surrender, defend the United Kingdom' hysteria, pouring out hatred against all the Irish (and by extension against all 'foreigners') every time the bourgeois-nationalist IRA fight back against the continuing British police-military dictatorship over the last colonised corner of Ireland, with terrorist tactics on the mainland. Build Leninism. Douglas Bell

Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No..27 Friday July 9 1993
P&P South West Bulletin. If you would like more information about the South West Bulletin or the ILWP, please contact PO Box 50, London SW 17 9NL

The G7 "new trade deal" shows the imperialists stabbing each other in the back, and reveals the trade war antagonisms as fiercer than ever.

The supposed "breakthrough" in the deadlocked GATT trade negotiations at the G7 Tokyo summit should be read in exactly the same way as the recently announced US extended moratorium on nuclear bomb testing, i.e. as meaning the exact opposite of improved hopes for peace.

In the same way as the US nuclear weapon-testing moratorium is intended to secure its own military advantage and create the maximum difficulties for its main German and Japanese economic rivals in catching up militarily  — as well as further putting the boot into weaker British and French imperialism 'big power' pretensions - so the alleged 'world trade deal' is similarly laced with US 'big power' schemes to split its economic rivals and calculations to secure its own advantage.

The deal, if it is ever even ratified, which is very far from certain, has nothing whatsoever to do with any civilized rational agreement on sensibly planning economic management of the world for the benefit of the whole of humanity, but has everything to do with the desperate cut-throat scheming of degenerate, on-its-last-legs imperialists, trying to carve up the world to their own advantage.

Beneath all the G7 hype about the new possibilities opening up for 'millions of extra jobs' and a 'new era of economic growth' etc. etc., the reality of the desperate imperialist struggle for world supremacy, driven by the iron laws of capitalist economic development, keeps breaking through.

Before the ink on the 'new deal' paper is even dry, this big power rivalry is emerging as the main game at Tokyo, as the main players make temporary deals and alliances to carve up the second rate players before attempting to tear each others' throats out:

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton chose a gathering of students and academics at a Tokyo university yesterday to call for a new Pacific community based on "a revived partnership between the United States and Japan".

In doing so, he also gave encouragement to Tokyo's hopes for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, likely to be opposed by Britain and France which do not want change.

Mr Clinton's speech was a reminder that the United States is as much a Pacific power as an Atlantic one. He said 40 per cent of US trade is with Asia,  accounting for 2.3 million jobs and $120 billion in exports.

He pledged Washington's continued security commitment to the region and its military bases in Japan and South Korea.
	
"Japan is an increasingly important global partner in peacekeeping, in promoting democracy, in protecting the environment, in addressing major challenges in this region and throughout the world," he said, which was interpreted as further support for Tokyo to join the Security Council.

The Clinton administration has already proposed that Japan and Germany be given seats. The government of Kiichi Miyazawa said this week it is seeking a permanent seat. Five opposition parties are against the proposal, fearing a conflict with Japan's pacifist constitution.

The Prime Minister, John Major, yesterday responded sharply to any suggestions that resurgent Japan might be at Britain's expense."Britain's place at the G7 and at the United Nations is entirely secure."

This, read in conjunction with the recent US nuclear weapon moratorium extension, and the despatch of German troops to Somalia, begins to show an emerging but unmistakable pattern of challenging Japanese and German imperialism being simultaneously feared and flattered by US imperialism as it seeks to secure its own precarious existence at the top of the heap by playing the rivals off against each other:

President Bill Clinton's announcement of a 15-month moratorium on nuclear tests flies in the face of vociferous protests from the British Government, which planned to use the tests to develop a new warhead system for the Trident submarine. The decision, coming on top of disputes over arming Bosnian Muslims and bringing Germany and Japan into the United Nations Security Council, further strains the 'special relationship' between Washington and London. Some senior American officials, notably Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the UN, are attracted by the idea of removing what have been called the 'nuclear armchairs' of Britain and France, which give them a clout far in excess of their economic or conventional military strength.

EARLY last Friday afternoon, as pleasure boats bobbed on the Rhine outside the Bundestag and Bonn sweltered in the midsummer heat, German MPs laid one of their country's most frightening ghosts by approving the despatch of troops to join United Nations forces in Somalia.

There were no surprises in the debate, in which Helmut Kohl's government mustered a simple majority for the country's biggest overseas military deployment since the Wehrmacht marched — and thus paved the way for a gradual resumption of the global role denied Germany by the defeat and shame of 1945.

Germany has had no "place in the sun" since it lost its colonies in 1918 and there were no overseas missions in the post-1945 settlement, where security and foreign policy were cocooned in the cosy certainties of the cold war and Nato. Defence was on the borders alone.

It was habit-forming strong anti-militarist and pacifist traditions developed and West Germany's biggest post-war demonstrations were over the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in the mid-1980s.

The Gulf war, coming straight it after reunification in October, 1990, showed how powerful these sentiments still were.

Yet some see surprising progress already: "In less than two years the climate has changed," insists one senior foreign ministry official."We are no longer discussing the if of playing our full role in the world, we are talking about our conditions. It is a major leap forward."

The anomaly of Germany's international position was underlined afresh at last month's EC summit in Copenhagen when Kohl called for arming Bosnia's beleaguered Muslims. Here we go again, said the critics — Germany stepping out of line but unwilling or unable to put the men where its mouth is.

Consensus, in politics as in business, is the magic word in Germany and the signs are that a new foreign policy will emerge slowly — certainly not before next year's elections — from the miasma of guilt, apathy and ignorance that is the enduring legacy of the second world war.

Genscher used to talk about the"politics of responsibility" but today, argues his successor, Klaus Kinkel, responsibility — likely to be rewarded, later rather than sooner, by permanent membership of the UN Security Council — means using power, not opting out, not aspiring to be Switzerland, abandoning the slogan "No more war" and replacing it by "No more Munich."

By seeming to be promising its major economic rivals a greater say in the running of the 'new world order', commensurate with the greater economic power, the US imperialists hope to be the better able to check, control, and ultimately defeat them. 

Security council seats for more open markets appears to be partly what is on offer. Leaving aside the empty waffle about freedom, democracy, human rights, and the triumph of capitalism, the message from Tokyo is that the fundamental contradictions tearing the imperialists apart have hardly even been addressed, let alone resolved. Having yet again humiliated decrepit British imperialism by spitting on the so-called special relationship, and by now appearing to be siding with Japan against the EC, the new deal has, however, done nothing to alter Japan's massive trade surplus with the US, and leaves the big power inter-imperialist WW3 carve-up firmly and irrevocably at the heart of the agenda:

A new relationship does not stop old problems getting in the way. President Clinton said: "Our two nations have proved that capitalism works, that democracy works, that freedom works. Still, no system is perfect. New problems and challenges constantly arise. Old problems deeply rooted in cultures and prejudices remain." 

He criticised Japan for managing its economy too well. He urged Tokyo to do more to reduce the $50 billion trade surplus with the US. "It is clear that our markets are more open to your products and your investments than yours are to ours. And it is clear that governmental policies consistently promoting production over consumption, exports over domestic sales and protections of the home market contribute to this problem" he said.

Mr Clinton denied that American pressure amounted to managed trade, claiming that the US does not seek "managed trade, but better results from better rules of trade".

Significantly, Mr Clinton made his pleas, not to fellow leaders in the formal G7 forum, but to students and staff at Waseda University. "I wanted the Japanese people to know that I believe the changes I seek are not only good for Americans but also good for them," he said.

The real extent of unity at G7, is to some degree ludicrously revealed by the fact that each of the quadrilateral group is claiming to have gained advantage over the others, at the same time as publicly pronouncing that 'everyone's a winner':

EC negotiators claimed they had decided to use the G7 summit in Tokyo long in advance to bounce the Japanese into making key concessions. The next step was to take the agreement to Geneva to hammer out a comprehensive package involving all 110 signatories to Gatt.

THE EC was last night claiming that it would be the big beneficiary of the wide-ranging tariff cuts agreed in Tokyo by trade negotiators from the top four trading blocks...

...The Americans hope to prise open markets in Asia, while US insurance companies and investment managers are eyeing opportunities in Japan under the financial liberalisation package, now one step closer...

...The Japanese see the deal as easing pressure — particularly from the US — to take action to cut their trade surplus.

This foolish, 'everybody gains' — the 3rd world doesn't even get a mention, but is the guaranteed biggest loser of all - propaganda will in all likelihood unravel before the G7 participants even manage to leave Tokyo. Already France is threatening to use the deal as a means to reopen its bitter dispute over farming subsidies, and resentment over last year's carve-up by the US and Britain will undoubtedly resurface with a vengeance:

Later last night the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said the Quadrilateral deal was a cue to reopen the farm agreement reached between the US and the EC last autumn. But this is precisely what EC trade negotiators intend to avoid.

The real extent to which the ruling class believe their propaganda about 'everyone's a winner', and a 'bright new economic dawn ahead' etc. is revealed in Major's attempt to cover the degenerate British ruling class's savage attacks on working class living standards with some kind of cloak of international respectability because 'everybody's got to do it':

Mr Major used the opportunity to set July 29 as the date for the Christchurch by-election and to try to enlist the support of fellow world leaders for potentially draconian cuts in social security spending. He said huge budget deficits were a global problem.

The Prime Minister told the opening session of the G7 summit that it was imperative to take "unpopular but necessary steps to keep in check our social security benefits".

He implicitly threatened both the universal state pension, where he said not enough had been done to curb spending, and the health service, where he believed new ways had to be found of delivering patient care consistent with "the spending limits we can afford".

So much for the good news from Tokyo. The fascist slump will continue. There will be more and more losers and fewer winners as the imperialist powers ruthlessly exploit and destroy their rivals' markets and industries.

For the majority of the world's population, who live in the 3rd world, the 'good news' from Tokyo makes even sicker reading. The 'freer' the trade of the imperialist powers, the more ruthlessly exploited and destroyed will be the 3rd World's own agriculture and industry, which cannot possibly compete with the sophisticated 1st World capital-intensive farming techniques and hi-tech industries.

The real story from Tokyo is of ever fiercer inter-imperialist conflict, the striking of separate behind-the-scenes deals over security council seats, telecommunications, steel, agriculture and everything else in the increasing trend towards 'bilateral deals' and 'managed trade'.

The bitter resentment increasingly spilling out from the rival powers as they come off the worst in various different deals will increasingly fuel their chauvinist aggression against 'external' 'foreign' enemies and 'internal' scapegoats like immigrants, single mothers, welfare 'scroungers' etc. etc., as imperialism spins, out of control, into WW3 (EPSR 707):

There is no question whatever of the world imperialist system 'slowly edging' towards some way of mutually coexisting without war between them, - either because 'the world has grown up', or become 'older and wiser', or because the very colossal power of modern methods of destruction has created such mutually-assured devastation that 'it is in no one's interests to ever go to war again', etc.

All such idealistic make-believe is the most damaging and dangerous nonsense imaginable. Incorrigible monopoly-imperialist vested interests are driving the 'free' market system towards the most total contradictions and the most bitter confrontations ever, and it is totally disarming of the working class to help anything less than such an understanding to ooze about, paralysing scientific anti-imperialism.

The fake-'left' swamp groups who are reviving the Kautskyite revisionist ideas about the 'supra-imperialist globalisation' of Western monopoly-capitalist development, allegedly giving super-concentrations of power the chance to organise all 'free' world ambitions and changes into non-conflicting channels, are helping spread the most appalling treacherous gibberish among workers.

The trade-war contest has never been so intense in all world history, or been played for such enormously high stakes in terms of what delicious fruits of world leadership are there to be gained by whoever can out-compete the rest.

And this cut-throat competition is in turn part of the biggest-ever slump the planet has ever known, needed to destroy the greatest relative 'surplus' of capital ever known before the international market economy could return to anything like general profitability.

This slump will savage the dreams, livelihoods, and living standards of more hundreds of millions on a wider and deeper basis than ever before.

This is all heading towards the grossest outburst of inter-imperialist chauvinism human society has ever suffered, and warmongering jingoism will quickly turn out to be the only 'worthwhile' outlet for such degenerate nationalism, - as is being observed already in a volcanic eruption of regional ethnic and civil-war strife on all continents such as history has never experienced.

And there is nothing whatever fatalistic or mystical about such a perspective. Just the opposite. It is exactly scientific, as any group which has actually made longterm efforts to master the whole body of Marxist-Leninist learning will know. And it is the only scientific explanation of modern world developments that exists.

The interconnected complexities and technological revolutions of the advanced capitalist-imperialist system certainly have changed the conditions for the 'free' market to continue exactly as before in four previous centuries.

But the revolutionary alterations made necessary are not remotely in the direction of seeing the imperialist bourgeoisies suddenly start acting out of character in order to seek rational planned agreements with each other in order to overcome political and economic contradictions, as the modern Kautskyites fatuously pretend. That will never happen or the capitalist market system simply cannot remain the capitalist market system, and private enterprise cannot remain private enterprise. In other words, the ruling classes would have to self-liquidate before the monopoly-bourgeois system could find a way of 'peacefully' settling its incurable trade-war differences.

The revolutionary alterations made necessary by the endless advance of production technology and organisation (which eventually make capitalist property relations a barrier to the economy's further development, -  as seen now in this worldwide slump), - are those scientifically analysed and predicted by Marxism alone, - namely the overthrow of the bourgeois state everywhere by proletarian dictatorship.

And when the devastating destruction of 'surplus' capital by inter-imperialist war is thrown in as well in the balance of obstacles to economic development caused by the capitalist system itself, - destruction of industrial output, plant, raw materials, and of 'surplus' labour (people in uniforms), - then only the most spontaneously anti-communist of petty-bourgeois philistines could continue to mindlessly spout about how 'the material changes of capitalism had rendered part of Marxism-Leninism obsolete and had made war no longer inevitable', — (incidentally, an old Stalinist-revisionist piece of anti-revolutionary nonsense - see ILWP Books vols 4, 11, 18, etc).

Such casual and irresponsible speculation is taking no account of the actual pattern of 20th century imperialist development (two great economic crises of 'surplus' capital followed by two world wars), and even worse is not taking seriously the actual implication of war of any kind.

The incredible monstrous carnage, devastation and suffering of World Wars I and II, for example, cannot just idly be attributed to some unfortunate lack at the time in ruling-class maturity. That would be a ludicrous trivialisation of all human history.

Society only behaves so sickly and destroys itself when under the pressure of enormous historical forces which literally no-one can control.

To suggest that more than 50 million people were slaughtered in WWII, - butchered often in the most brutal manner, - merely because the capitalist bourgeoisie could not quite get its 'let's solve everything by peaceful negotiations' act together in time, — is the most soulless arid cynicism.

And to even speculate at all that the capitalist world might never have to face the barbaric catastrophe of World War III just because of some completely tenuous notion that subjective idealism in the monopoly bourgeoisie had possibly taken a turn for the better, - is simply derisory of the whole historical social and human condition.

And to go even further venture firm predictions that largescale warmongering destruction is no longer a serious threat to mankind because 'the imperialist system has seen the light', - is just sick.

The bourgeoisie has consciously run a class system to facilitate its capitalist 'free market' rule of the earth from the first moment of its ascendancy, and it cements this class-system rule deliberately with every appeal it makes to allow profitable private enterprise to be the pacemaker for economic development.

The dangerous imbalance and grotesque injustice of rags-to-riches millions for the one thick-skinned opportunist in ten thousand who actually makes it to the top of the rat-heap is accompanied by permanent mass-unemployment for 4 million in Britain alone, poverty-line existence for 10 million families, and wretched exploitation and starvation for hundreds of millions worldwide, all at the mercy of what the totally anarchic 'market' decides.

And the only major control the profiteering bourgeois classes have over this explosive powder-keg worldwide is national chauvinism, - winding up the masses to futile ethnic and jingoist conflicts with equally-impoverished masses next door to the point of all-out murderous warfare.

Throughout the entire history of the capitalist system, this blood-soaked arms-race mayhem has consistently come to a climax at the peak moments of economic and political crisis for various bourgeois or monopoly-imperialist groupings. To casually suggest that "it's all different now" on the basis of no historical evidence whatever is the most criminal lightmindedness.

Finally to lazily assume in a Hollywood-tinged dream fantasy that with the American bourgeoisie in charge of the world, somehow all the values of monopoly-capitalist imperialism really have changed, - is just certifiable stupidity.

The land-poisoning blitzkrieg holocaust inflicted on Vietnam and on Indo-China generally in the 1960s and 1970s made the entire catalogue of 'crimes against humanity' inflicted by German imperialist aggression in the 19503 and 1940s, - supposedly the worst in history up to that point, - look like child's play.

US imperialism has largely been responsible for a world-record onslaught of more than 200 wars and 'police actions' of a counter-revolutionary nature against national-liberation-struggle revolts in the Western-exploited Third World since the finish of the last great armed inter-imperialist sort-out called WWII.

Every single piece of real material evidence points towards a renewal of armed inter-imperialist conflict as the only possible 'solution' to the incurable contradictions now created by a near 50-year boom of 'get to the top' profiteering market-anarchy development.

The only way for any bourgeoisie to stay 'at the top' in the long slump which now stretches endlessly ahead is by forcing rival monopoly-imperialist groupings to suffer more 'surplus' capital destruction than the home economy must suffer.

That means vicious trade war and tariff barriers, and 'beggar-my-neighbour' financial strategies of all kinds, accompanied by a generally intensifying arms-race (as is happening constantly already, in spite of London and Washington's temporary wishes to economise and to try to score diplomatic points by such phony 'peace' and 'disarmament' moves as using the test-ban method to try to maintain a nuclear weapon monopoly for a while longer), - ending up in inter-imperialist war.

The answer to all this is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Build Leninism.
D. Watts.

Extracts from "Imperialism, The highest stage of capitalism" (1916)

Kautsky called ultra-imperialism or super-imperialism what Hobson, thirteen years earlier, described as inter-imperialism. Except for coining a new and clever catchword, replacing one Latin prefix by another, the only progress Kautsky has made in the sphere of "scientific" thought is that he gave out as Marxism what Hobson, in effect, described as the cant of English parsons. After the Anglo-Boer War it was quite natural for this highly honourable caste to exert their main efforts to console the British middle class and the workers who had lost many of their relatives on the battlefields of South Africa and who were obliged to pay higher taxes in order to guarantee still higher profits for the British financiers. And what better consolation could there be than the theory that imperialism is not so bad; that it stands close to inter-(or ultra-) imperialism, which can ensure permanent peace? No matter what the good intentions of the English parsons, or of sentimental Kautsky, may have been, the only objective, i. e., real, social significance of Kautsky's "theory" is this: it is a most reactionary method of consoling the masses with hopes of permanent peace being possible under capitalism, by distracting their attention from the sharp antagonisms and acute problems of the present times, and directing it towards illusory prospects of an imaginary "ultra-imperialism" of the future. Deception of the masses — that is all there is in Kautsky's "Marxist" theory.

Indeed, it is enough to compare well-known and indisputable facts to become convinced of the utter falsity of the prospects which Kautsky tries to conjure up before the German workers (and the workers of all lands). Let us consider India, Indo-China and China. It is known that these three colonial and semi-colonial countries, with a population of six to seven hundred million, are subjected to the exploitation of the finance capital of several imperialist powers: Great Britain, France, Japan, the U.S.A., etc. Let us assume that these imperialist countries form alliances against one another in order to protect or enlarge their possessions, their interests and their spheres of influence in these Asiatic states; these alliances will be "inter-imperialist", or "ultra-imperialist" alliances. Let us assume that all the imperialist countries conclude an alliance for the "peaceful" division of these parts of Asia; this alliance would be an alliance of "internationally united finance capital". There are actual examples of alliances of this kind in the history of the twentieth century—the attitude of the powers to China, for instance. We ask, is it "conceivable", assuming that the capitalist system remains intact—and this is precisely the assumption that Kautsky does make—that such alliances would be more than temporary, that they would eliminate friction, conflicts and struggle in every possible form?

The question has only to be presented clearly for any other than a negative answer to be impossible. This is because the only conceivable basis under capitalism for the division of spheres of influence, interests, colonies, etc., is a calculation of the strength of those participating, their general economic, financial, military strength, etc. And the strength of these participants in the division does not change to an equal degree, for the even development of different undertakings, trusts, branches of industry, or countries is impossible under capitalism. Half a century ago Germany was a miserable, insignificant country, if her capitalist strength is compared with that of the Britain of that time; Japan compared with Russia in the same way. Is it "conceivable" that in ten or twenty years' time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained unchanged? It is out of the question.

Therefore, in the realities of the capitalist system, and not in the banal philistine fantasies of English parsons, or of the German "Marxist", Kautsky, "inter-imperialist" or "ultra-imperialist" alliances, no matter what form they may assume, whether of one imperialist coalition against another, or of a general alliance embracing all the imperialist powers, are inevitably nothing more than a "truce" in periods between wars. Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the other, producing alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world politics. But in order to pacify the workers and reconcile them with the social-chauvinists who have deserted to the side of the bourgeoisie, over-wise Kautsky separates one link of a single chain from another, separates the present peaceful (and ultra-imperialist, nay, ultra-ultra-imperialist) alliance of all the powers for the "pacification" of China (remember the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion24) from the non-peaceful conflict of tomorrow, which will prepare the ground for another "peaceful" general alliance for the partition, say, of Turkey, on the day after tomorrow, etc., etc. Instead of showing the living connection between periods of imperialist peace and periods of imperialist war, Kautsky presents the workers with a lifeless abstraction in order to reconcile them to their lifeless leaders.

An American writer, Hill, in his A History of the Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe refers in his preface to the following periods in the recent history of diplomacy: (1) the era of revolution; (2) the constitutional movement; (3) the present era of "commercial imperialism".* Another writer divides the history of Great Britain's "world policy" since 1870 into four periods: (1) the first Asiatic period (that of the struggle against Russia's advance in Central Asia towards India); (2) the African period (approximately 1885-1902): that of the struggle against France for the partition of Africa (the "Fashoda incident" of 1898 which brought her within a hair's breadth of war with France); (3) the second Asiatic period (alliance with Japan against Russia); and (4) the "European" period, chiefly anti-German.** "The political patrol clashes take place on the financial field," wrote the banker, Riesser, in 1905, in showing how French finance capital operating in Italy was preparing the way for a political alliance of these countries, and how a conflict was developing between Germany and Great Britain over Persia, between all the European capitalists over Chinese loans, etc. Behold, the living reality of peaceful "ultra-imperialist" alliances in their inseverable connection with ordinary imperialist conflicts!

Kautsky's obscuring of the deepest contradictions of imperialism, which inevitably boils down to painting imperialism in bright colours, leaves its traces in this writer's criticism of the political features of imperialism. Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field. Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexations, i.e., the violation of national independence (for annexation is nothing but the violation of the right of nations to self-determination). Hilferding rightly notes the connection between imperialism and the intensification of national oppression. "In the newly opened-up countries," he writes, "the capital imported into them intensifies antagonisms and excites against the intruders the constantly growing resistance of the peoples who are awakening to national consciousness; this resistance can easily develop into dangerous measures against foreign capital. The old social relations become completely revolutionised, the age-long agrarian isolation of 'nations without history' is destroyed and they are drawn into the capitalist whirlpool. Capitalism itself gradually provides the subjugated with the means and resources for their emancipation and they set out to achieve the goal which once seemed highest to the European nations: the creation of a united national state as a means to economic and cultural freedom. This movement for national independence threatens European capital in its most valuable and most promising fields of exploitation, and European capital can maintain its domination only by continually increasing its military forces."*

To this must be added that it is not only in newly opened-up countries, but also in the old, that imperialism is leading to annexation, to increased national oppression, and, consequently, also to increasing resistance. While objecting to the intensification of political reaction by imperialism, Kautsky leaves in the shade a question that has become particularly urgent, viz., the impossibility of unity with the opportunists in the epoch of imperialism. While objecting to annexations, he presents his objections in a form that is most acceptable and least offensive to the opportunists. He addresses himself to a German audience, yet he obscures the most topical and important point, for instance, the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany. 

In order to appraise this "mental aberration" of Kautsky's I shall take the following example. Let us suppose that a Japanese condemns the annexation of the Philippines by the Americans. The question is: will many believe that he does so because he has a horror of annexations as such, and not because he himself has a desire to annex the Philippines? And shall we not be constrained to admit that the "fight" the Japanese is waging against annexations can be regarded as being sincere and politically honest only if he fights against the annexation of Korea by Japan, and urges freedom for Korea to secede from Japan?

Kautsky's theoretical analysis of imperialism, as well as his economic and political critique of imperialism, are permeated through and through with a spirit, absolutely irreconcilable with Marxism, of obscuring and glossing over the fundamental contradictions of imperialism and with a striving to preserve at all costs the crumbling unity with opportunism in the European working-class movement.