Statement on the 20th Anniversary of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations

Posted on May 29, 2014 | In the 21st century the world continues to be divided. The contradiction between Labor and Capital in all spheres is the division that reflects the antagonism between labor and the increasing socialization of production on the one hand, and the capitalist character of appropriation that is increasingly concentrated in a handful of people on the other hand. Scientific and industrial forces have emerged that were unimaginable fifty years ago; production has been mechanized to an extraordinary degree, technology, communications and computers have spread widely for social and individual use. However, everything carries its opposite with it, the despair caused by capitalism has reached very serious levels; the signs of decay have evolved parallel to the accumulation at a level that exceeds the final periods of the Byzantine Empire. In 2008, the global crisis of capitalism, which many countries are still suffering from, is trying to make the broad masses of the exploited pay for the crisis, the masses who have experienced that capitalism is the social organization characterized by “poverty within wealth.” To make the popular strata pay for the crisis further aggravates the disastrous consequences of capitalism: the mechanization of the labor process, the increase of exploitation, including the decrease in real wages, the explosion of poverty and famine, injustice and inequality, begging, drugs, prostitution, etc. It is impossible to accept, bear or ignore this division of the world and the growing discontent and exasperation that leads the exploited masses in various countries to rebel. This situation is evident in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, etc. The antagonism between capital and labor is not the only reason for the division of the world. There is the contradiction between a minority of rich capitalist countries and imperialist States, and the backward peoples and countries, oppressed and exploited politically, economically and financially, which are the majority. The big imperialist States, which have created international organizations such as the European Union, the Free Trade Agreements, NATO and the United Nations, touted as the “international community,” plunder the natural resources of the oppressed peoples and do not tolerate the possibility of their self-determination. This is the case of Africa which they are exhausting, or the Amazon which they are destroying, or the occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. etc. Another field of conflict and contradictions is the confrontation between the international monopolies and imperialist countries among themselves, which is expressed mainly in the formation and reformation of economic and military blocs, in the establishment of military bases on the five continents. In the dispute over who will dominate and plunder certain regions, the imperialist countries clash with each other harshly. To gain control of these regions, they incited national quarrels to obtain the support of the oppressed peoples. These internal struggles that are provoked and lead to military conflicts as has been seen in Ukraine and Syria, show that the imperialist confrontations are being aggravated. In the 1990s the capitalists and their lackeys proclaimed “the end of history,” “the eternity of capitalism” and a “new world order”; they proclaimed a peaceful, prosperous society, without crises, built on a “self-regenerated capitalism,” based on a “capitalist globalization” that would be built “superseding classes and the class struggle.” However it is not prosperity but misery that is being aggravated. Instead of peace there is war and coups, the loss of credibility of the dictatorships that we have experienced in the past decades. No, capitalism cannot propose to the workers who subsist on their labor power in the factories and offices; to the unemployed and the poor of the cities and the countryside, neither a job nor a decent wage, neither peace nor prosperity nor security in the future. To obtain all these it is necessary to encourage the workers and other working people to revolt and overthrow the power of capital. From the struggle of the slaves against the slave masters, in all societies that have been the scene of class struggle, the struggle has been resolved by the seizure of power by one class of oppressors over another. Capitalism has developed the forces of production to such a degree that it cannot maintain itself without cutting or changing property relations. Moreover, capitalism continually develops the working class, increasingly socializing it. Thus it has created the social conditions in which the power of an exploited class can replace that of the exploiting class. This historical and social evolution determines the historic mission of the working class, the seizure of power to create a transitional period towards socialism with the aim of expropriating the expropriators, abolishing classes and relations of class exploitation. The working class demonstrated against capitalist tyranny for the first time in the 19th century with the rebellions that took place throughout the European continent, and the seizure of power in France in the Paris Commune for a short period in 1871. Then there was the overthrow of the power of the capitalist class in Russia with the Great October Revolution of 1917, when it organized as the ruling class to build the Soviet Union and took giant steps for half a century toward the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. We, the Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations of the world, united in the International Conference (ICMLPO), on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of our Organization, call on the working class of the world, the oppressed peoples, the youth of all countries to unite against the international bourgeoisie and imperialism, and so to strengthen the struggle for liberation. The world, divided between exploiters and exploited, between imperialist masters and oppressed peoples, is moving towards a new period of rebellions and revolutions. Capitalism has nothing to offer the exploited masses; it has matured conditions more than in any other period of history, the prelude to socialism. Speaking of maturity, we must use that term both quantitatively and qualitatively for the working class and other working people, which are further consolidating their positions in order to strengthen their organizations in all countries if they draw upon their own experiences of both trade-union and political struggle, especially of the massive struggles in many countries. Even if the revolutions have been manipulated in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt, the future belongs to the working class and other working people of the world who are accumulating rich experiences in order to continue advancing. The experiences of the revolutionary waves and of the national and social struggles of all countries of the world show that we can move forward to victory, and now with more strength and force. Our struggles for national and social liberation will take particular forms and will follow different roads depending upon the country; they will have an internationalist character by their content, being components of a single process of the world proletarian revolution. All this demands from us the responsibility to consolidate and strengthen our unity and organization both nationally and internationally. Socialism will win! Long live internationalism! Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite! INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF MARXIST-LENINIST PARTIES AND ORGANIZATIONS May 1, 2014