Bruno Drweski | Association Nationale des Communistes (France)
Till the 7th of October last year it was possible for people unaware of the reality of the centralised around the USA/NATO/EU/AUKUS/Japan/Israel block of States to believe that the more than forty wars and conflicts in the world were independent one from the other. But now the “Al Aqsa flood” revolt of Palestinians against the order imperialists wanted to impose in Western Asia has made things crystal clear. Palestine and Gaza became then the central focus point of world contradictions between the decaying capitalist imperialist world (dis)order and the growing counter-hegemonic forces. And it appeared clearly then that all current wars are linked one with the other. And that all more “peaceful” blockades and sanctions constitute an integral part of this “non officially declared by imperialists” World War III. This war is real but nowadays decaying imperialist bourgeoisie is coward and does not want to take similar risks to the ones XIXth centuries bourgeois were still able to take, especially in a situation where they lost in the fifties the global control over nuclear arms and that’s the reason why they prefer to use proxies in what can be now called a world hybrid war.
Palestine and the growing unity of the world class revolutionary movement
In the capitalist Russia, you could find before last October political forces or leaders trying to believe that war in Ukraine can be solved independently from other wars. They thought “their war” was not fundamentally linked with other conflicts and/or blockades and sanctions policies imposed by imperialist in the Balkans, in Africa, in Western Asia, in Eastern Asia, in Latin America, … Serbia/ Kosovo, Bosnia, Belarus, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Libya, DR of Congo, Sahel African States, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Indian Ocean, etc. Now all “moderate patriotic” Russians have been forced step by step for the last six month to understand that the adversaries of Russia in Ukraine are the same ones as the adversaries Palestinians face in Gaza and in all the Palestine from the River to the Sea, and that they are the same ones all other peoples of the world threatened or terrorized by imperialism are facing. And this means in fact that the scientific socialist methodology was the correct one to analyse all conflicts inside socialist countries before 1991, what lead to new forms of international conflicts between countries after 1991 and the end of Soviet Union. Post-1991 situation made us clearly understand that revisionist illusions created the current situation where a new world war could break. This in fact marxist concrete analysis of concrete situation enabled resistance movements, marxists or non marxists, to mobilise and launch a new wave of national liberation movement all over the world. And this explains why the worldwide solidarity movement with Palestinians made all true marxists, but also, we have to admit it, all true muslims, all true christians, all true patriotic State leaders, all true revolutionaries to unite in a common worldwide mass mobilisation movement from Gaza to Donetsk, from Jerusalem to Gwangju, from Beijing to Islamabad, from Pyong Yang to Moscow, from Wagadugu to Caracas, from Havana to Tehran, from Minsk to London, from New York to Beyrouth, from Sanaa to Damascus, from Athens to Rome, etc. This broad bottom up unity mass movement shows that the masses are the real masters of history since they all mobilised taking first into account their class and national consciousness before or simultaneously to their ideological or religious beliefs. And in this situation, they used the political tools they could find in their own country to mobilise, or when there was no such movement, they spontaneously created such organisations. With the worldwide solidarity movement with Palestine, the material base took the lead in spite of ideological or religious differences. And the religious leaders who were able to constitute the forefront of their national liberation movement, especially in Palestine, Yemen or Lebanon, succeeded because they did not put their religious beliefs in opposition to their concrete analysis of their concrete reality. In fact, we can observe throughout history that some religious leaders are able to use materialistic tools in a much more efficient way than proclaimed coffee shop materialists. We have to remember Lenin’s words about the much more progressive and anticolonial Muslim at the time Emir of Afghanistan than British colonial Laborites. Same thing happened with the Abd el Krim insurgency in the twenties, the Algerian insurgency in the fifties and now with the Hamas or Hezbollah or Ansarullah/Houthi insurgency in Western Asia. Arab communists did understand this, and this explains they joined those insurgencies which is not the case of all pretending to be communists in the Western neo-colonial countries.
Proletarians and patriotically oriented bourgeoisies
Paradoxically the situation that developed in Ukraine after 2014 explains also the current situation when some Christian or Muslim leaders are much more conscious of the basic contradictions the whole world has to deal with in Ukraine than the so called “pure marxists” coming from different Trotskyites or superficially Extreme Left “schools of thought”.
Up to Al Aqsa flood and since the dismantling of Socialist community and Soviet Union by local revisionist bourgeoisies, counter-hegemonic national bourgeoisies played a key role to rebuild against their own comprador bourgeoisie some forms of economical reconstruction of their countries, trying to promote different attempts tending to limit the dollar centered and debt centered imperialist global economy. And that was particularly the case of Russia. National bourgeois interests were linked with the basic need for their countries and their economies to breathe and save at least some parts of the national productive capabilities. This led to the development of new more or less limited or sometimes even opportunistic but sovereign oriented trends we could observe after 2000 and especially after the 2008 crisis. We observed this contradictory processes in Russia but also in Western or Eastern Africa, in Latin America, in Turkey, in Hungary, in Serbia, in Iran or in Pakistan. Now the situation has much more fundamentally changed. The Palestinian national liberation movement including more than twelve organisations, islamic, secular or marxists, working hand by hand in Palestine and Lebanon, put masses on the forefront of the national liberation struggle and this explains the echo it encountered in all corners of the planet among broad masses. Palestine became now in fact for the whole humankind something quite similar to what Vietnam was in the sixties of the last century.
Mass line and ideological diversity in the XXIth century
This situations leads us to new challenges we have to deal with if we are true and mass line oriented revolutionaries. We have to deal then with the necessity to rebuild a united world working class and world national liberation movement taking into account all the real existing regional, national, ideological, cultural or religious differences. We must then take first into account in our mission, the positive but also the negative experiences the International worker revolutionary movement traveled through all over the XXth century and promote on this basis a renewed vision of the same fundamental rules of scientific socialism. We must also in the same time take into account the successes and the failures of the anticolonial national liberation movement launched at the 1920 Baku and the 1955 Bandung conferences. And all this cannot be done seriously, scientifically, if we do not take into account the class base of every movement, the class contradictions, but especially the class struggle that burst from inside the core of the communist movement and socialist countries, and lead most of them towards capitulation. But this cannot be done also if we do not take into account simultaneously the masses real revolutionaries were not able to lead all over the XXth century. In some parts of the world, revolutionary marxists were successful but it was not the case in other parts of the world and we have to analyse the reasons of this differences. We are in this context confronted to the necessity to understand and respect the profound feelings of broad masses of the world, taking especially into account the existence of progressive religious feelings we could observe first around the Christian liberation theology in Latin America or now with the anticolonial Islam we can observe since the Iranian revolution and the birth of Lebanese, Yemeni or the renewed Palestinian national liberation movement against officially secular and even socialist but in fact real traitor Palestinian Autonomy leadership. To take into account those facts does mean to be naive or eclectic, or worst, opportunistic, but just to respect true liberation trends and be able to differentiate them from reactionary trends we can also find in religions. But let’s be honest, we could also find all over the XXth century among marxists, beginning with trotskyism and finishing with all kinds of “democratised socialist”, “leftist” or rightist, reversionistic or sectarian tendencies which were in fact quite similar to the class opportunism and reactionary trends we observed inside religions. So what is important is not the ideological slogan officially raised, it is the concrete mass line an organisation practice or not.
All these historical experiences must be then analysed one by one because they all explain the successes but also the defeats of what I call the “socialism 1.0”, the “real socialism” of the former socialist and peace camp. Now we arrived at the stage where we must work for a new wave of socialism, a “socialism 2.0”, taking into account all our glorious marxist-leninist history but also all other glorious histories of truly emancipatory and revolutionary movements of the human history. We must then work simultaneously to rebuild a world united revolutionary class movement using the tools of marxist methodology, and learn how to cooperate strategically with non-marxist revolutionary or national liberation movements. Our main goal now is to create conditions so we could unify all forces tending to push national bourgeoisies and counter-hegemonic non-socialist powers to rebuild a new economic world order based on non-aligned countries, to create an alliance of peace oriented, economically productive and anti-imperialist states, so to be able ultimately to serve the people. Doing so, we can help to lead masses and countries at the very end towards socialism which is the only solution to finish with endless wars, neo-colonialism and exploitation of man by man.
Socialism is the solution
If we observe for example the debates developing in threatened by imperialism Russia at war, we notice that more and more people in this country, including some non-communist political leaders or economists take into account the fact that capitalism cannot lead Russia to real and final economical, military and political victory if at least some forms of economic planification and State controlled enterprises are not introduced able to compete with imperialist based enterprises. This does not mean Russia is ready now for a new socialist revolution but this means Russians became gradually aware since 1991, 1993, 2008, 2014 and 2022 of what they lost within globalised capitalism, not only in terms of social security and justice, but also in term of rationally developing national economy, culture and science. Now the Russian national bourgeoisie, more or less opposed to its comprador and oligarchic bourgeoisie, begins to understand it cannot stay in the middle of the river between capitalism and socialism. And this reminds us the works of Mao Zedong concerning the class alliances that were necessary in the thirties and forties up to now to make China free from colonial domination and exploitation, under the guidance of proletariat and its party. We observe now also similar trends to the ones we just mentioned in Russia in other non-socialist countries tending somehow towards some forms of, let’s say, “socialised economy” like Iran, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Venezuela, Algeria, Serbia, etc.
So we must now work hard if we are truly open minded and creative revolutionaries to develop a truly socialist scientific long term view, simultaneously with a much broader ideological and dialectical approach for the short and middle term goals. We must constitute a force able to unite all peace-loving and people’s liberation movements all over the world, wherever they come from, as soon as they are rooted in their people and its reality, as they practice some form of mass line and as soon as their actions tend towards the development of their local economy, people’s political mobilisation, and then objectively towards real people’s power. Class line imposes us to respect real existing people and nations with their culture and convictions, and stay away from purely intellectual petit bourgeois artificial “debates”.
