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.   V. I. Lenin 
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
Subscriptions (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074            www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk     [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]               
No 1193 July 15 2003                                                                                                                       25p

The sick US-UK pretence of "refashioning the world" is nearly totally bogged down having got no further than Afghanistan and Iraq. Capitalism's own insoluble economic crisis is the real reason for this demented imperialist blitzkrieging, and the splits in the international monopoly capitalist racket, plus the underlying unease of public opinion, are demonstrating that this crisis failure will not be easily blasted away by diversionary chauvinist aggression. The Saddam regime was just a nasty joke of the West's own making but never a serious threat to imperialist interests, - until now, in the uncontrollable mess his overthrow by Western domineering has inevitably unleashed. As imperialist economic crisis deepens, the exploited and victimised Third World will increasingly turn to revolution as the only answer. Fake-'left' Revisionist delusions bar the way.

The new Iraqi "governing council" of mostly hand-picked American imperialist stooges will flourish or fail depending on whether Iraq's masses are happy or not with a US-occupied world of insoluble capitalist crisis.

If, like everyone else on Earth, they are not willing to put up with the insane destructive mess that Western monopoly corporate power (and its armed forces) are making of the world, then this "council" will only become part of the problem, and a "solution" will be further away than ever.

With lethal inter-imperialist trade-war now looming between the Great Powers as their economic "overproduction" rivalry to maximise profits, increasingly choking the international bourgeois market (meaning no profits for anyone) goes from bad to worse, - the chaotic warmongering attempts to bully a way out of the crisis look more of a threat to Bush and Blair's positions than anything.

World society is at another new crossroads, - the greatest since 1945.

It is utterly crucial that the mistakes made then in anti-imperialist understanding by the 'left' should be learned-from, and overcome, as quickly as possible.

As soon as the argument is won that the only possible response to this new crisis of imperialist warmongering is to rebuild an international Leninist party of revolutionary theory, then the polemicising about widespread past illusions which effectively destroyed the international communist movement, will have served its purpose.

If agreement could be reached ONLY to relaunch with a conscious, open, scientifically based (Marxism), REVOLUTIONARY perspective, - then exactly who said what, when, to kill the world communist movement with Revisionism could subside into more of an academic question.

But what happens is that historical disputes are used as a smokescreen to OBSCURE the fact that the 'left' is STILL in retreat from a revolutionary perspective, but hiding it.

Quoting Stalin, the bourgeois world's great hate figure, is ONLY being done so that the SLP/Lalkar retreat into "peace protesting" and "left-pressure" reformism should not stand quite so exposed.

And Scargill's class collaborating, "anti-terrorist", Revisionist nonsense is naturally defended with EXACTLY the same tricks as Revisionism itself has always used, quoting from heroes of past revolutionary triumphs in order to cover-up the current collapse into anti-Marxist, reformist, muddleheadedness.

The notable thing about Gorbachev (as the FINAL Revisionist bureaucratic catastrophe at the head of the Soviet workers state) was the long quotations from Lenin that he put into his early speeches as CPSU boss.

In the anti-Revisionist struggle, the quarrel is NOT with Stalin's unchallengeable great role in defending the dictatorship of the proletariat for so long, but with the ludicrous THEORETICAL confusion he left the Third International in, both by what few words he DID allow to be printed in his name, and even more by the vast silences when he published virtually nothing for 14 years from 1939 to 1953.

In one of the richest periods of imperialist crisis development ever, and one of the richest periods of revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle ever, - fourteen years of it, - Stalin produced a few small speeches and his laughably incorrect Economic Problems, 1952, booklet. 

Lenin's last 14 years produced his 20 greatest volumes of scientific understanding of world development.

The SLP-Lalkarites try similar tactics to Stalin. They just never talk or write about the one thing that the international working class wants to hear about, - the perspective for world REVOLUTION. 

And similarly, they also never discuss their own blatant revisions of Marxism-Leninism.

All that is discernible is the ridiculously pale mumble that one gets from Stalin's last work, - that somehow (unspecified), "left pressure", "building socialism", and "peace protesting" will sort out imperialism.

This is not remotely what 100 volumes of Marxist-Leninist science are all about.

Last two EPSR's have dealt at length with Stalin's pathetic theoretical legacy compared with Lenin's on this crucial question of imperialist warmongering CRISIS which totally DOMINATES all world developments; but one additional factor is to contrast Lenin's brilliant description, in advance, of where imperialist warmongering crisis stands today, in 2003, with more Third International perspectives created in Stalin's time and under his OVERWHELMING influence.

First, Lenin again, from his Oct 1921 4th Anniversary remarks and his Dec 1922 Notes for the Hague Delegation, explaining how it is IMPOSSIBLE to "prevent war", which must be prepared for with a REVOLUTIONARY answer:

The question of imperialist wars, of the international policy of finance capital which now dominates the whole world, a policy that must inevitably engender new imperialist wars, that must inevitably cause an extreme intensification of national oppression, pillage, brigandry and the strangulation of weak, backward and small nationalities by a handful of "advanced" powers-that question has been the keystone of all policy in all the countries of the globe since 1914.

"We shall retaliate to war by a strike or a revolution" that is what all the prominent reformist leaders usually say to the working class. And very often the seeming radicalness of the measures proposed satisfies and appeases the workers co-operators and peasants.

Perhaps the most correct method would be to start with the sharpest refutation of this opinion; to declare that particularly now, after the recent war, only the most foolish or utterly dishonest people can assert that such an answer to the question of combating war is of any use; to declare that it is impossible to "retaliate" to war by a strike, just as it is impossible to "retaliate" to war by revolution in the simple and literal sense of these terms.

We must explain the real situation to the people, show them that war is hatched in the greatest secrecy, and that the ordinary workers' organisations, even if they call themselves revolutionary organisations, are utterly helpless in face of a really impending war.

We must take special pains to explain that the question of "defence of the fatherland" will inevitably arise, and that the overwhelming majority of the working people will inevitably decide it in favour of their bourgeoisie.

Boycott war -- that is a silly catch-phrase. Communists must take part in every war, even the most reactionary.

Examples from, say, pre-war German literature, and in particular, the example of the Basle Congress of 1912, should be used as especially concrete proof that the theoretical admission that war is criminal, that socialists cannot condone war, etc., turn out to be empty phrases, because there is nothing concrete in them. The masses are not given a really vivid idea of how war may and will creep up on them. On the contrary, every day the dominant press, in an infinite number of copies, obscures this question and weaves such lies around it that the feeble socialist press is absolutely impotent against it, the more so that even in time of peace it propounds fundamentally erroneous views on this point. In all probability, the communist press in most countries will also disgrace itself.

Compared to this clear perspective on the unavoidable fate of the warmongering imperialist system and the sole REVOLUTIONARY antidote to it, Stalin's last great speech before his bizarre 14-year silence, his report to the 18th Congress in March 1939, - was already confusing the picture.

Having correctly explained how imperialism had dragged the world back into war (by the filthiest of subterfuges and propaganda skulduggery, using "appeasement" and "non-intervention" to, in fact, promote warmongering in all directions), admitting that the West had "cast doubt on the value of international treaties and obligations" in the process, and that "pacifism and disarmament schemes are dead and buried", - Stalin curiously ended his international section only with the following:

At the end of 1934 our country joined the League of Nations, considering that despite its weakness the League might nevertheless serve as a place where aggressors could be exposed, and as a certain instrument of peace, however feeble, that might, hinder the outbreak of war. The Soviet Union considers that in alarming times like these even so weak an international organization as the League of Nations should not be ignored. In May 1935 a treaty of mutual assistance against possible attack by aggressors was signed between France and the Soviet Union. A similar treaty was simultaneously concluded with Czechoslovakia. In March 1936 the Soviet Union concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with the Mongolian People's Republic. In August 1937 the Soviet Union concluded a pact of non-aggression with the Chinese Republic.

It was in such difficult international conditions that the Soviet Union pursued its foreign policy of upholding the cause of peace. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union is clear and explicit.

1. We stand for peace and the strengthening of business relations with all countries. That is our position; and we shall adhere to this position as long as these countries maintain like relations with the Soviet Union, and as long as they make no attempt to trespass on the interests of our country.

2. We stand for peaceful, close and friendly relations with all the neighbouring countries which have common frontiers with the U.S.S.R. That is our position; and we shall adhere to this position as long as these countries maintain like relations with the Soviet Union, and as long as they make no attempt to trespass, directly or indirectly, on the integrity and inviolability of the frontiers of the Soviet state.

3. We stand for the support of nations which are the victims of aggression and are fighting for the independence of their country.

4. We are not afraid of the threats of aggressors, and are ready to return two blows for every one delivered by warmongers who attempt to violate our Soviet frontiers.

Such is the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. (Loud and prolonged applause.)

In its foreign policy the Soviet Union relies upon:

1. Its growing economic, political and cultural might;

2. The moral and political unity of our Soviet society;

3. The mutual friendship of the nations of our country;

4. Its Red Army and Red Navy;

5. Its policy of peace;

6. The moral support of the working people of all countries, who are vitally concerned in the preservation of peace;

7. The good sense of the countries which for one reason or another have no interest in the violation of peace.

The tasks of the Party in the sphere of foreign policy are:

1. To continue the policy of peace and of strengthening business relations with all countries;

2. To be cautious and not allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to have others pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them;

3. To strengthen the might of our Red Army and Red Navy to the utmost; 

4. To strengthen the international bonds of friendship with the working people of all countries, who are interested in peace and friendship among nations.

The dominant world communist influence clearly no longer understands REVOLUTION to be part of the working class answer to the warmongering imperialist world, but is still only urging peace treaties, which he admits have already failed.

This startling mental blockage, - an unsurprising by-product of class-collaborating, reformist confusion, shows up even more clearly in the uncritical summary of pre-war and post-war peace drives by Third International historian R Palme Dutt:

Hence the requirement of the situation of the nineteen-thirties was not only to build up the strongest possible united working-class front and popular front against the offensive of fascism and reaction within each country. The parallel and no less indispensable requirement was also to build up the broadest peace front, including those sections of the imperialists prepared to participate or campaign for similar objectives, for resistance to the fascist war offensive, and for the aim of a broad peace alliance of states, associating Britain and France with the Soviet Union, on the basis of collective security, through the League of Nations and also mutual assistance treaties, to bar the road to fascist aggression and thus prevent the Second World War.

Had such a peace front of states, specifically of Britain and France and Czechoslovakia with the Soviet Union, been built up in time, before Europe was surrendered to Hitler, and maintained with firmness and unity, it is universally recognised today that such a combination, with its overwhelming superior strength, would have been fully able to bar the road to Hitler's aggression, and thereby would have prevented the Second World War.

For this aim the Communist International and all communist parties, together with all progressive sections of the working class, including wide sections of the social-democratic parties, and all progressive democrats, and even some more far-sighted conservative elements, ceaselessly worked during these critical years.

The total, hopeless, failure of this policy is not really commented on (except to blame the Social Democrats for it not working, - and the British Bourgeoisie, - both known to Leninist science only as war promoters, not its inhibitors).

Undaunted, Dutt enthusiastically chronicles exactly similar Revisionist illusions to try to prevent imperialist war at his time of writing (post 1945), - describing the 1947 decisions of the CPUs and other communist parties now in power:

The manifesto adopted by the nine-party conference analysed the new features of the world situation after the Second World War, and, in particular, the character of the reactionary offensive conducted by United States and British imperialism against democratic and socialist advance in the world and for the aims of world expansion.

United States and Britain were now allied against the Soviet Union and the countries of new democracy, and were rebuilding Germany and Japan, as in the pre-Munich period, to serve this aim. So arose in the world situation of 1947 the confrontation of two camps. In place of the wartime division between the fascist and anti-fascist camp the division was now between the democratic anti-imperialist camp and the imperialist anti-democratic camp.

In this situation the task of the communist parties was stated to be to foster the unity of all democratic and patriotic forces, and to stand in the forefront of the fight of their peoples for national independence and sovereignty against domination by American imperialism for democracy and for peace

"There is a great task awaiting the communist parties, that of preserving freedom and peace....

With regard to the very noisy threats of a new war, or third world war for the destruction of communism, which were being freely spread at this time with large-scale publicity by the more aggressive sections of American imperialism and its satellites, the nine-party conference threw cold water on these sanguinary expectations, and expressed confidence in the power of the peoples to maintain peace

'One should realise that between the imperialist desire to unleash a new war and the possibility of organising a war there exists a tremendous distance.

"The nations of the world do not want war. The forces who align themselves with peace are so numerous and powerful that if they defend hard and without flinching the cause of peace, if they show perseverance and grit, then the plans of the aggressors are doomed to bankruptcy."

This clear analysis of the international situation in 1947, and confident and inspiring lead to the communist parties and peoples of the world to stand firm for national independence, democracy and peace against the economic and political interventionist offensive and expansionist aims of American imperialism and its satellites was the main contribution of the nine-party conference which founded the Information Bureau.

The cool-headed prediction 	that the peoples would prove capable of maintaining peace against these war threats, was once again proved justified, as with so many of the basic predictions of Marxism, by the outcome shown in the events of the ensuing decade.

The formation of the Communist Information Bureau was universally treated by the Western capitalist and social-democratic politicians and press as the resurrection of the Communist International. 

...of the activities of parties. But the conditions of the Communist International were vanished and belonged to a past era. In the words of Pravda on October 10, 1947, deriding these hallucinations of "warmongers frightened to death":

"The establishment of an information bureau by no means signifies the restoration of a global communist organisation with a centralised leadership, such as the Communist International represented at the time .... 

"The Communist International, which played a positive role in the cause of educating leaders of the working class, has long become a past stage in the history of the development of the international working-class movement. To return to the Communist International now would mean to go back, not forward."

In practice the Information Bureau held only two more regular meetings, although the journal continued to be published. The Bureau became involved in the differences with Yugoslavia. The last recorded meeting of the Bureau was in 1949. Its winding up was announced in May, 1956.

By that time new conditions had arisen for the advance of the international communist movement. 

THE INTERNATIONALE (1964)

Brutal wars in Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Palestine, Algeria, etc, etc, had all been raging as Dutt was writing complacently about how "the peoples would prove capable of maintaining peace against these war threats", prolonging the lying, Revisionist, nonsense that peace campaigning and socialist development would put a stop to imperialist warmongering. 

And it is carried off by using a similar, sinister, sleight-of-hand that Stalin uses in Economic Problems (see previous EPSRs), - by pretending that "world war" is something totally different from "imperialist wars" when the two are obviously one-and-the-same thing (e.g. every year from the 1931 Japanese invasion of China to the 1941 invasion of the USSR, and Pearl Harbour attack, are confidently given in HUNDREDS of serious and worthy history books as "the start of World War II" when "imperialist wars" supposedly "turned into something else").

The Cominform story is added-on, NOT in order to add to the tragic history of organisational fetishism which obviously hindered rather than helped the fight against Revisionism in the Third International, - but in order to confirm the total lack of seriousness about maintaining Marxist-Leninist international revolutionary THEORY which Stalinism is most plainly and disastrously guilty of, compared to all its other mistakes and crimes.

Minus theory, the "centralised leadership" of ANY kind of communist international could only be an ongoing disaster.

But Stalinist complacency could not even be bothered to continue the Cominform fake "international" such was its philistinism.

The Lalkar/SLP circles are Revisionism degenerated a thousand times WORSE.

Imperialist warmongering is rising towards a crescendo again, but the utterly useless "stop the war" peace protesting and "strike-boycott" posturing is now the ONLY sound heard.

Not even the word "revolution" survives, - "peaceful" or otherwise.

Worse still, the most diabolical retreats from Leninism are now deliberately fostered.

Despite Lenin's famous essay on Guerrilla Warfare (1906) utterly deploring all so-called "Marxist" criticism of spontaneous "terrorist" violence, and despite Lenin's outstanding salute to the 1916 Easter Rising middle-class "putsch" which other "Marxists" had derided, - still this Scargillite apology for Revisionism refuses to correct the outrageous "condemnation" of Sept 11 issued by the entire class collaborating fake-'left'.

Even worse, the dramatic "Islamic terrorism" turnaround in Palestine and the Middle East is either denounced, or sneered-at, or condemned with faint praise by these deluded "reformist pressure" circles.

Lalkar, supposedly the "Marxist" conscience of this wretched fake-'left' opportunism, openly supports the genocidal betrayal of the Palestinian nation known as the "two state solution", which only confirms the Western imperialists' illegal landgrab in the first place; only GUARANTEES permanent DOMINATION of the region by Zionist-state-tyranny; and which can NEVER possibly be any kind of a "solution", only an endless continuation of the original COLONISATION problem.

In the epoch of TERMINAL IMPERIALIST CRISIS, then no "colonisation" solutions of any kind can possibly survive.

And that is Lalkar's problem. Sunk deep into its Revisionist bureaucratic complacency, Lalkar's petty bourgeois soul has lost all real belief in imperialism's terminal, revolutionary, crisis.

And such is Lalkar's total philosophical domination by its museum-Stalinist daydreams that its recent, booklet-size, historical survey of the modern Palestinian problem under Zionist imperialist tyranny, simply fails to mention Stalinism's grotesque role in AGREEING TO the Zionist armed colonisation in 1947, and actually supplied the Zionists with arms for their "self-defence" when Arab indignation exploded.

And in another Stalinist class collaboration-with-imperialism touch, the SLP-Lalkarites are STILL championing the arch bourgeois compromiser Arafat as "the best leadership for Palestine".

Hamas's religious fanaticism is not the answer, true. But Hamas's REVOLUTIONARY determination IS the only way forward (but done better), and has transformed the situation.

But leaving aside all other issues, where DO these Revisionists stand on the sensational world events since Sep 11, 2001????

Is it still just another "grab for oil"???

Western oil monopolies have been stitching up material-resource areas of the world ROUTINELY since the end of the 19th century, - using greater or lesser violence in the process, or covering it with more or fewer "national interest" pretences (backed by governments) depending on the circumstances.

Is routine, corporate, oil-resource, skulduggery really the reason why the Bush and Blair regimes are now facing the distant, but distinct, possibility of even being brought down by this chaotic warmongering mess?????

Is some heavy-armed pressure to force into line one particularly awkward and obnoxious oil chieftain (Saddam), - usually a normal day's work in the Middle East by the West since the 1890s, - the true explanation why the leading monopoly imperialist powers have dramatically split apart into snarling trade-war rivalry for the first real time since the run-up towards World War II???

To think like this is exactly to prolong the daft, complacent world of Stalin's shameful bureaucracy which in 1952 effectively told the world not to worry too much about imperialism ever again because its economic expansion days were over; socialism was going to outproduce it, terminating its world domination; and the peace movement would probably be able to prevent imperialism launching "any particular war" (i.e. unstated, any WORLD war).

To follow Lalkar/SLP is a million miles from the correct Marxist-Leninist view of the world's future as expressed above in Lenin's 4th Anniversary remarks.

To think in "just another oil-grab" terms is to continue to TOTALLY DISARM THE WORKING CLASS from all revolutionary understanding, in EXACTLY the same way that Stalinist bureaucratic complacency did above, which ended in the self-destruction by the Soviet workers state's proletarian dictatorship after 70 years of outstanding achievement.

And having brought that about, Revisionism now wants to KEEP the working class blinkered from the revolutionary RE-EDUCATION that imperialist warmongering crisis is now providing (see Lenin's science) by dismissing this Middle East crisis as "just an oil-grab", - while at the same time insisting that "a real revolutionary party, and a real revolutionary understanding, is actually now growing INSIDE the  'left' of the SLP!!!!

This is one-and-the-same mentality, - sectarian fantasy-mongering.

"We know more about revolution than YOU do. We know more about revolution than ANYBODY. We are just biding our time," goes the refrain.

Just as Scargill's philistinism can be sneaked up on and toppled "when the time is right", - so, allegedly, will the OPEN revolutionary reeducation of the working class be consummately brought into operation "when the time is ripe".

Meanwhile, jokes are enough, wondering when the EPSR's supporters, e.g., might be declaring revolutionary war on George Bush, and using the telephone box they all meet in as a battering ram to break down the door of the White House; etc, etc.

But it is nothing to do with declaring revolutionary war on anyone. It is a question of the long, steady, development of working class CONSCIOUSNESS since Marx & Engels first took up the cudgels against OPPORTUNIST "socialism", - the "socialism" precisely of Scargillism/Lalkar.

There is no such thing as any "period for keeping quiet" in Marxist-Leninist science of mankind's emancipation, - not even one second's worth.

From the 1840s until Stalinism's ascendancy, there was only ONE SCIENCE of world development, and that was REVOLUTION, and it remained the central philosophy of socialist organisation from Marx's beginning to Lenin's death and the dribbling away of the Third International into nothingness.

The Revisionist nonsense that "Lenin put off the world revolutionary perspective in the more immediate interests of the need for peaceful coexistence with the imperialist states in order to ensure the young Soviet workers state's survival" is just a damnable LIE.

Lenin on the inevitability of imperialist war is the issue, - and the impossibility of preventing it, and the need for the socialist REVOLUTION as the only way to put an end to imperialist warmongering domination of the planet, and Lenin's last clearest warnings on imperialist warmongering crisis (see last EPSR) easily put this trivial question of temporary diplomatic TACTICS into its correct context, and largely post-date these passing observations too.

But for the-record, here are some of the passages most frequently misused to try to establish Lenin as the author of Stalinist Revisionist capitulation to reformist peacemongering:

We are, of course, opposed to the League of Nations, and I do not think that it is only our economic and political system with its specific features that accounts for our negative attitude towards the League; the interests of peace, regarded from the point of view of the concrete conditions of modern international politics in general, also fully justify that negative attitude. The League of Nations bears so many marks of its world war origin, it is so intimately bound up with the Versailles Treaty and is so marked by the absence of anything resembling the establishment of the real equality of rights between nations, anything resembling a real chance of their peaceful coexistence, that I think our negative attitude to the League can be appreciated and does not stand in need of further comment.

Oct 1922 Interview given to Observer correspondent

It goes without saying that the question here is, I shall not say of war, because that term is likely to be misunderstood, but at all events one of rivalry. In the bourgeois camp there is a very strong trend, much stronger than any other, that wants to wreck the Genoa Conference. There are trends which greatly favour the Genoa Conference and want it to meet at all costs. The latter have now gained the upper hand. Lastly, in all bourgeois countries there are trends which might be called pacifist trends, among which should be included the entire Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals. It is this section of the bourgeoisie which is advocating a number of pacifist proposals and is trying to concoct something in the nature of a pacifist policy. As Communists we have definite views about this pacifism which it would be superfluous to expound here. Needless to say, we are going to Genoa not as Communists, but as merchants. We must trade, and they must trade. We want the trade to benefit us; they want it to benefit them. The course of the issue will be determined, if only to a small degree, by the skill of our diplomats.

Insofar as we are going to Genoa as merchants it is obviously by no means a matter of indifference to us whether we shall deal with those people from the bourgeois camp who are inclined to settle the problem by war, or with those who are inclined towards pacifism, even the worst kind of pacifism, which from the communist viewpoint will not stand the slightest criticism. It would be a bad merchant, indeed, if he were unable to appreciate this distinction, and, by shaping his tactics accordingly, achieve practical aims.

War is now in the air. The trade unions, for example, the reformist trade unions, are passing resolutions against war and are threatening to call strikes in opposition to war. Recently, if I am not mistaken, I read a report in the newspapers to the effect that a certain very good Communist delivered an anti-war speech in the French Chamber of Deputies in the course of which he stated that the workers would prefer to rise in revolt rather than go to war. This question cannot be formulated in the way we formulated it in 1912; when the Basle Manifesto was issued. The Russian revolution alone has shown how it is possible to emerge from war, and what effort this entails. It showed what emerging from a reactionary war by revolutionary methods means. Reactionary imperialist wars are inevitable in all parts of the world; and in solving problems of this sort mankind cannot and will not forget that tens of millions were slaughtered then, and will be slaughtered again if war breaks out. We are living in the twentieth century, and the only nation that emerged from a reactionary war by revolutionary methods not for the benefit of a particular government, but by overthrowing it, was the Russian nation, and it was the Russian revolution that extricated it.

April 1922 Eleventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)

We have before us a highly unstable equilibrium but one that is, nevertheless, certain, obvious, indisputable. I do not know whether this is for long, and I do not think that anyone can know. That is why, for our part, we must display the utmost caution. And the first precept of our policy, the first lesson that emerges from our governmental activities for the past year, the lesson which must be learned by all workers and peasants, is to be on the alert, to remember that we are surrounded by people, classes, governments who openly express the utmost hatred for us. We must remember that we are always a hair's breadth away from invasion.

We know, we know only too well, the incredible misfortunes that war brings to the workers and peasants. For that reason our attitude to this question must be most cautious and circumspect. We are ready to make the greatest concessions and sacrifices in order to preserve the peace for which we have paid such a high price. We are ready to make huge concessions and sacrifices, but not any kind and not for ever. Let those, fortunately not numerous, representatives of the war parties and aggressive cliques of Finland, Poland and Rumania who make great play of this - let them mark it well. (Applause.)

We shall not forget that we are revolutionaries. (Applause.) But there are facts incontrovertibly and indisputably showing that in Russia, that has defeated the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, the smallest, completely unarmed nationality, however weak it may be, may and must absolutely rest assured that we have nothing but peaceful intentions towards it, that our propaganda about the criminality of the old policy of the old governments is not weakening, and that we are as firm as ever in our desire at all costs, and at the price of enormous sacrifices and concessions, to maintain peace with all nationalities that belonged to the former Russian Empire, but who did not wish to remain with us. We have proved this. And we shall prove this no matter how great the curses rained on us from all sides. It seems to us that we have given excellent proof of it, and we declare to the meeting of representatives of the workers and peasants of Russia, to the many millions of workers and peasants, that we shall do our utmost to preserve peace in the future, that we shall not shrink from great sacrifices and concessions in order to safeguard this peace.

There are, however, limits beyond which one cannot go. We shall not permit peace treaties to be flouted. We shall not permit attempts to interfere with our peaceful work. On no account shall we permit this, and we shall rise to a man to defend our existence. (Applause.)

The greatest difficulty here is that without definite relations between us and the capitalist countries we cannot have stable economic relations. Events very clearly show that neither can the capitalist countries have them. But today we are not in an altruistic mood. We are thinking more of how to continue in existence when other powers are hostile to us.

But is the existence of a socialist republic in a capitalist environment at all conceivable? It seemed inconceivable from the political and military aspects. That it is possible both politically and militarily has now been proved; it is a fact. But what about trade? What about economic relations? Contacts, assistance, the exchange of services between backward, ruined agricultural Russia and the advanced, industrially-developed group of capitalist countries-is all this possible? Did they not threaten to surround us with a barbed wire fence so as to prevent any economic relations with us whatever?  "War did not scare them, so we shall reduce them by means of a blockade."

Comrades, during the past four years we have heard so many threats, and such terrible ones, that none of them can frighten us any more. As for the blockade, experience has shown that it is an open question as to who suffers from it most, the blockaded or the blockaders. Experience has shown beyond doubt that during this first year, on which I am able to report as a period of a relatively elementary respite from direct brute force, we have not been recognised, we have been rejected, and relations with us have been declared non-existent (let them be recognised as nonexistent by the bourgeois courts); but they nevertheless exist. I deem it my right to report to you that this is, without the slightest exaggeration, one of the main results achieved in 1921, the year under review.

I do not know whether the report of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to the Ninth Congress of Soviets has been, or will be, distributed to you today. In my opinion, the defect in this report is that it is too bulky and is difficult to read right through. But, perhaps, this is my own failing, and I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of you, as well as all those who are interested in politics, will read it, even if not immediately. Even if you do not read it all, but only glance through its pages, you will see that Russia has sprouted, if one may so express it, a number of fairly regular and permanent commercial relations, missions, treaties,- etc. True, we are not yet recognised de jure. This is still important, because the danger of the unstable equilibrium being upset, the danger of new attempts at invasion has, as I have said, increased; the relations, however, are a fact.

May 1921 Ninth All-Russia Congress of Soviets

It could not be more obvious that the young workers state thought that the "peace" interlude with imperialism's surrounding hostility would never hang on by more than a thread; that aggressive warmongering EXPANSION BY the Soviet Union was not an option; and that formal diplomatic and trade relations were worthwhile-enough to achieve by being ULTRA careful and cautious in the workers state's international dialogue, and prepared to make every kind of concession out of weakness, short of actually surrendering Soviet power. Such was the purely TEMPORARY situation the USSR found itself in. But nowhere is there the slightest suggestion that world revolution did not remain the ESSENTIAL condition for the final triumph of the working class and socialism in history; or that imperialist warmongering can ever be stopped from its tyranny over life on Earth other than by the REVOLUTIONARY OVERTHROW of the bourgeois ruling-class and its capitalist system.

But such is the legacy of Stalinism that all understanding of REVOLUTIONARY anti-imperialism has all but disappeared from 'left' circles for the moment; spontaneous revolts fed by hatred everywhere of Western domination, are dismissed as "terrorism";
the imperialist warmongering epoch's greatest trick of feeding "democracy" and "peace protest" illusions to the working class is totally swallowed by the entire fake-'left', peddling electoral politics as a "genuine way forward"; and even when imperialism's warmongering racket starts to go wrong, and its reactionary purpose begins to show through its "liberating" pretence, such is the paralysis bequeathed by Stalin's theoretical confusion that bogus "revolutionaries" like Lalkar cannot see the difference between calling for an imperialist DEFEAT, and calling for the victory of such reactionary degenerates as Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

By all means let imperialist adventures LOSE to ANYONE. But for the working class to start WINNING anything, then their firepower needs turning AGAINST such fake and useless "anti-imperialists" as Milosevic and Saddam as soon as the imperialist no-good intervention has been sent packing.

It is the context of precisely WHICH ERA the world is living through that matters most.

The EPSR stands for a continuation of the Leninist scientific perspective that imperialist warmongering will continue inevitably to totally dominate the Earth, but once that the REVOLUTIONARY OVERTHROW of the capitalist ruling class has first taken place (Oct 1917) as the only way to end war, then it cannot be long, historically, before imperialist-crisis warmongering-degeneracy drives the international working class to more and more REVOLUTIONARY OVERTHROWS of the capitalist system for its own SURVIVAL from ever increasing and ever worsening chaos and destruction.

No party building is worth a light where this message is not constantly being heard loud and clear.

The "keep-your-head-down" school of allowing this Marxist-Leninist science to be stifled "for tactical reasons" - as the EPSR was stifled inside the SLP because it had begun to have too great an influence, and refused to stop speaking out against some of the Trot defeatist gibberish (on Ireland, etc) that Socialist News was always running with, is just treacherous opportunism which can only poison everything it touches. Build Leninism. EPSR supporters.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles)

The Zionist monster, - created on the land of Palestine, - cannot exist without colonial tyranny. 'Roadmap' is a fraud.

The roadmap has been criticised as a dead end to apartheid by many Palestinians, as it outlines a state divided into cantons isolated enclaves separated by Israeli settlements and military checkpoints. Critics say the peace plan aims merely to put an end to the Palestinian people's resistance to Israeli occupation.

This plan for the Palestinian territories would allow Israel to maintain the control of the Palestinians' land, economy and natural resources.

The US administration is trying to sidetrack Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in this process, but Arafat has made it clear that he is still a player. He and his supporters still have strong influence, and Abbas has no independent power base of his own. International envoys still visit Arafat in Ramallah, though Israel has begun to refuse to meet diplomats who also include him on their agenda.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has explicitly accepted the idea of a Palestinian state which is one of the main aims of the roadmap. For the state to be viable, Israel would have to dismantle the majority of its West Bank settlements. But Israel's reservations over the timing and order of moves called for by the roadmap may make substantial, swift progress hard to achieve.

Between 2004 and 2005 there would be a second international conference, an agreement on final borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the future of the refugees and settlements. The return of Palestinian refugees is one of the main questions for discussion in this argument. The Israeli administration would like the rights of the refugees to go back to Palestine to be relinquished, as Tel Aviv would not be ready to deal with millions of returned Palestinian to the neighbouring newly formed state.

On the other hand, the Israeli government is likely to face strong opposition by settlers on Palestinian land to any plans for their evacuation.

The main stages in the plan are the end of armed resistance, political reform and fresh elections among Palestinians, while Israel will withdraw from its latest occupation and freeze its settlement expansion. Palestinians are to unequivocally reiterate "Israel's right to exist in peace and security" and end all "armed activity and ail acts of violence against Israelis anywhere". Once a process of rebuilding a Palestinian force guaranteeing Israeli security has progressed satisfactorily, the Israeli army will withdraw "progressively from areas occupied since 28 September 2000, and the two sides restore the status quo that existed prior to 28 September 2000".

A second transitional phase takes place between June and December 2003 "focused on the option of creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty". Nowhere during this process are the actual borders of this state to be defined, nor is there any explanation of what is meant by "attributes of sovereignty".

The so-called roadmap is intended to be a goal-driven, phase-by-phase route to ending the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians within two years. It is also meant to have specific deadlines, benchmarks and reciprocal confidence-building measures built in. Pieced together by diplomats from the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, it was amended after consultation with Israelis and Palestinians.

JUST days after US President George W Bush launched his 'roadmap' peace plan at a summit in Jordan with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel launched a missile strike against a car carrying a leading Hamas official in the Gaza Strip. Abdel Aziz Rantisi was hit by shrapnel in the leg, arm and chest, while two others were killed.

In a second such attack later that afternoon, two people died and 32 were injured. The	 Sunday attack by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the AI Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Rantisi had said, was intended to send a message to Abbas that Palestinians will continue to fight Israel and will not "surrender to the pressure exerted by Israel and the United States". After the helicopter attacks, thousands took to the streets to protest.

The attacks came as a blow to Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas' efforts to negotiate a ceasefire with militant groups, his strategy for ending anti-Israeli attacks as called for by the US-backed peace plan. Hamas had already announced its opposition to the plan and Rantisi accused Abbas of going too far during the summit, when the Palestinian PM recognised the state of Israel and surrendered the claim to land within Israel's 1967 borders. Abbas angrily denounced the Israeli attacks.

If Abbas is unable to organise a ceasefire, he may have to decide between launching a violent crackdown on those groups or abandoning the road map, which calls for an end to 32 months of fighting and envisions the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. 

In the aftermath of the attack, Sharon was heckled by his own party members at an angry Likud gathering in Jerusalem; the missile attack was no doubt intended as a show of strength, although George Bush was "deeply troubled" by the helicopter strike.

******

The Israeli Army is carrying out a massive campaign of repression. There are around 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel's prisons and detention centres, a level not experienced in more than a decade. More than 1000 of these prisoners are held under administrative detention orders:  they have not been charged with any crime or faced trial, but are kept in prison for up to six months.

Israel has also implemented a draconian system of restricting Palestinians' movements through closures, curfews and military checkpoints. The West Bank now consists of 64 separate enclaves, with movement between them is regulated by a system of military-issued permits and army checkpoints. It is very difficult to obtain a permit if you have been politically active or have been previously arrested. Permits can be cancelled on a whim and, even with a permit there is no guarantee that movement between areas will be permitted.

The enclaves are also separated by large Israeli settlement blocs and Israeli-only roads built on expropriated Palestinian land. These resemble giant fingers protruding into the west Bank, dividing the north, centre and south into three cantons.

Israel is constructing what has been dubbed the "apartheid wall". This nine-metre-high concrete barrier will stretch 360 kms along the length of the west Bank. The wall hugs the edges of Palestinian towns - literally imprisoning the residents.

There are plans for another wall that will be built along the eastern side of Palestinian towns, meaning that all Palestinian areas in the west Bank will be surrounded by a concrete barrier interspersed with guard towers. According to Palestinian environmental and human rights groups, around 10% of the west Bank's land will be confiscated for the first stage of the wall. The northern west Bank town of Dalqilya has been completely surrounded by the wall: there is only one entrance to the city, guarded by Israeli soldiers.

In the last two years, more than 200 Palestinians have teen killed in Israeli assassinations; 120 of whom were not the targets of the attacks, including 27 children. In addition, thousands of Palestinians have been killed or injured at demonstrations or during Israeli military incursions into Palestinian towns and villages.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles)

The British colonial state and its judges are still protecting Orange-fascist nonsense

THE Orange Order's parade to Drumcree passed without incident but its ethos remains far from peaceful. The persistent refusal of Orangemen to extend even the minimum courtesy of speaking to residents of Garvaghy Road is indicative of the Orange Order's continuing hostility to the notion of accommodation and respect.

The Order's refusal to accept the Parades Commission's determination and Orangemen's insistence of their absolute 'right to march' unwanted through a nationalist estate has once again thrown residents into a state of siege with hundreds of British soldiers and PSNI flooding the area.

For the families of Garvaghy Road, many of which fled to the estate following persecution by Orangemen in other parts of unionist controlled Portadown, the annual siege of a nationalist enclave on the outskirts of the town is indicative of decades of sectarian victimisation.

For generations, Orangemen have stamped their authority over the Catholics of Portadown; it is only within this context that Orange outrage at being denied their 'right' to stamp their feet along the Garvaghy Road can be fully understood.

It is only within this context that the residents' experience of the Orange Order's annual siege of their community can be fully understood.

And what has years of Drumcree protests done for the Orange Order? It has brought nothing but disgrace and disorder and dwindling support. Through the media, Orangemen are still not talking to nationalist residents in Portadown - the Order suggested that as a 'concession' if they marched down Garvaghy Road they would limit their numbers to less than a thousand marchers.

But of course, as with many so-called concessions by the Orange Order, last week's parade exposed the 'offer' as nothing but a sham.

Outside Carleton Street Orange Hall, Portadown Orange Order district secretary, Nigel Dawson appeared at an upstairs window to address the crowd. "Portadown district stands as strong this year as it did in 1998," he reassured the assembled marchers. But it wasn't true. This year the Order could barely muster 500 Orangemen to march to Drumcree. Orange Order chaplain Cecil Allen led a short prayer before the parade lined up behind an accordion band.

In the past, the Order's protest at Drumcree has led to extreme acts of violence including the killings of Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick in 1996 and three children in Ballymoney in 1998. The three brothers, Jason (8), Mark (9) and Richard Quinn (10) screamed and cried for help as they were burnt alive after a petrol bomb attack on their home. In 1999 Lurgan Lawyer Rosemary Nelson, who acted on behalf of the Garvaghy Road residents, died in a car bomb attack.

But unlike previous years, the emphasis at this year's Drumcree protest was one of peace, if not reconciliation, and there was no repeat of violent scenes at the field outside the church. "I don't need to tell you how to behave when you are wearing your collarettes," said Dawson. While Reverend John Pickering, the vicar who refused to bar Orangemen from church premises despite pleas from Church of Ireland Primate Robin Eames, called for "healing of division".

After the service, Orangemen marched to the barrier at the bottom of Drumcree hill to register their protest. At the barrier, Nigel Dawson told the PSNI chief superintendent to "remove this hideous barrier and your men".

Orange Order Deputy District Master David Burrows said the annual protest would continue "until our rights are given back to us". The crowd dispersed shortly afterwards.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles)

COULD IT HAPPEN ANYWHERE but the Six Counties? The fact that a man facing 64 serious charges, including murder, has been granted bail at all is amazing. The fact that those conditions were 'relaxed' to allow him to attend a 12th of July parade is utterly astonishing. Or it would be if anyone could be surprised at the crazy operation of the sectarian Orange state.

A senior loyalist and the brother of the notorious LVF killer Mark 'Swinger' Fulton, who is currently charged with a series of serious offences including murder, a number of attempted murders, possession of guns and explosives, membership of the LVF and drug dealing, is not only out on bail but also had his bail conditions relaxed to allow his attendance at an Orange Parade and a Battle of the Boyne re-enactment.

William James Fulton (34) of Queens Walk in Portadown is currently awaiting trial on charges that include aiding and abetting in the murder of Portadown grandmother Elizabeth O'Neill in 1999. The victim was targeted because she was married to a Catholic. Supporters of the Orange Order's Drumcree protest threw a pipe bomb through the front window of the house.

But the circumstances of the killing and its direct link to the Orange Marching Season and its specifically sectarian nature appeared to have held no sway over presiding Judge Brian Kerr during a bail application hearing in Belfast Crown Court this week.

At the hearing, Judge Kerr banned Fulton from attending an 11th Night bonfire, deeming it 'prudent' for him not to attend but granted the loyalist's request to attend an Orange Parade and re-enactment of the 300-year-old battle in which Catholic King James was defeated by the forces of Protestant King William of Orange.

During a bail hearing in June, the court heard Fulton described as a "dedicated terrorist" who had assumed leadership of the LVF after his brother's suicide in jail in 2001. Fulton, who was arrested in England two years ago, has also been questioned in connection with the car-bomb killing of Lurgan defence lawyer Rosemary Nelson in 1999.

Commenting, Sinn Féin's Pat Doherty said nationalists and republicans were "sick and tired" by the sectarian ethos that still operates at the heart of the Six-County judicial system.

"In recent times we have seen a leading loyalist caught with a firearm in the middle of an internecine loyalist turf war released on bail, a man convicted of targeting a Sinn Féin councillor given a suspended sentence, an RIR member accused of stealing firearms and ammunition granted bail and now Jim Fulton being given a judge's blessing to attend the 12th parades," said Doherty.

The court's willingness to accommodate Fulton's leisure activities stand in stark comparison to the courts' attitude in a number of recent cases involving nationalists. John 0'Hagan from North Belfast has been held in custody for over a year on charges relating to documents; a 58-year-old businessman on similar charges has also been refused bail.

"At the core of the criminal justice system in the Six Counties are the Diplock judges. These are men who rubber stamped the Special Branch activity in torture centres, who refused security measures to Sinn Féin politicians facing loyalist death squads and who continue to operate a blatant anti-Catholic securocrat agenda," said Doherty.