Intensifying Interimperialist Contradictions: Sison Reader Series, #23

By Jose Maria Sison and Julie De Lima

Intensifying Interimperialist Contradictions contains Jose Maria Sison's writings from 1989 to 2021 on the economic, political and military interactions among imperialist powers as they rise and decline and how these could develop and lead to interimperialist world wars, such as World War I and World War II.

 

But the proletariat and people of the world are waging anti-imperialist and democratic mass struggles in the imperialist countries and on a global scale. There are revolutionary armed struggles persevering in a number of underdeveloped countries. All these are the prelude to the resurgence of the world proletarian-socialist revolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intl Network of Philippine Studies
• Release date: Mar 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224597581

Book preview

Foreword

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Intensifying Interimperialist contradictions, are Jose Maria Sison’s writings (articles, speeches, statements and interviews) from 1989 to 2021 on the economic, political and military interactions among imperialist powers as they rise and decline and how these develop and lead to interimperialist world wars, such as World War I and World War II.

It starts with an interview on the decline of the Soviet Union as a social-imperialist power as it integrated itself into the world capitalist system to eventually become another imperialist power, together with China which had also turned revisionist and likewise integrated itself into the world capitalist system.

The moguls of monopoly capitalism and their retinue of executives, think tankers, politicians, academic pedants and publicists have been boasting since the 1989-1991 period that the socialist cause is dead and history has ended with capitalism and liberal democracy as the optimum condition of mankind.

In fact, the fall of the revisionist regimes, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the turmoil in China were a consequence of betraying socialism and of taking the capitalist road. They were part of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system. In the same period, the centers of the world capitalist system were then in recession and the mass of imperialist-dominated countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were in a continuous state of depression.

Since the 1980s, China had become a major partner of the US in neoliberal globalization. But in the 1990s and thereafter, it would become the main US partner. It became a far more willing partner of the US and host of foreign investments after the 1989 mass uprising. The US was also encouraged to promote capitalism in former socialist countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The conditions are favorable for building and strengthening the anti-imperialist and democratic forces in the region. The US-directed policies of neoliberal globalization and war on terror have aggravated and deepened the crisis of the world capitalist system and have wrought havoc on the lives of the people. The people are suffering rising levels of exploitation and oppression and are desirous of resisting the imperialists and the local reactionaries.

As the crisis of the world capitalist system rapidly worsens, there is an urgent need for the people of the world to fight the escalating conditions of oppression and exploitation and to stop the plunder and degradation of the environment by monopoly capitalism. The revolutionary strength of the people is also needed to counter and stop the danger of direct world war among the imperialist powers and the attendant danger of a nuclear war of annihilation. The imperialist powers can be defeated and disarmed by the people in their homelands if their revolutionary mass movement is strong enough to confront and overcome them.

The US is not yet really worried about China having the military strength that can be projected outside its borders. It is more worried about China's military strength to defend itself, fend off US imperialist dictates and threats and combat separatist forces in Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang.

For some years to come, the crisis of the world capitalist system, including interimperialist rivalries, will worsen but the imperialist powers will avoid a direct war between any of them. As much as possible, they would rather shift the burden of crisis to the underdeveloped countries and launch wars of aggression against them or mire them in regional and local proxy wars. This has been the case for 75 years since the end of World II.

Julieta de Lima

Editor

Utrecht, The Netherlands

January 12, 2024

Interview with Reiko Inoue

December 17 & 19, 1989

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You are here in Europe and must have seen what is happening in Eastern Europe very closely. We’d like to hear your analysis and evaluation of the so-called democratization of East European countries?

There are plenty of problems. The No. 1 East European country in terms of size and military power is, of course, the Soviet Union. According to Gorbachov, there has been economic stagnation, especially under the Brezhnev regime.

I start with the Soviet Union because by an understanding of the changes in Soviet policies we can have a better understanding of developments in other East European countries. Perestroika, glasnost and détente are components of a single policy.

We know that under the Brezhnev leadership the Soviet Union beefed up its military power—bringing it to a level of parity with that of the United States. So much resources went into the military buildup. Brezhnev and Reagan competed in high-speed military buildup. Of course, the Soviet Union has long-standing commitments in Eastern Europe, like the deployment of more than half a million Soviet troops. These troops and their military equipment must be very expensive to maintain. The Soviet Union also has to ante up fuel and other supplies to the other East European countries.

At the same time, the Soviet Union has engaged in a great deal of self-criticism about which the United States and other capitalist countries are very happy. There has been so much self-criticism about the rigidities of centralized planning, bureaucratism and the like. Capitalist propagandists point to these as manifestations of the failure of socialism. This kind of self-criticism obscures other issues like, for instance, the diversion of tremendous resources into military expenditures.

I suppose that a socialist country does not one-sidedly choose to spend so much on the military. Defense becomes a major concern only because the Soviet Union since the victory of the October Revolution has been under siege. The civil war and the interventionist war occurred. Then came the Nazi invasion and the entire run of World War II. After this, the Cold War and the hot wars in Korea and Vietnam into which tremendous Soviet resources were expended. It is no small matter therefore to be able to save on military expenditures.

Japan, for example, became quite prosperous by free riding on US security and military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region. Of course, the  United States deployed its military forces in the region in its role as winner in World War II and as the new policeman of the entire world.

With regard to perestroika or economic restructuring, there have been overstatements about economic difficulties as a result of the system of public ownership of the means of production and centralized planning; or the lack of private enterprise, free play of market forces and so on. These are presented as the causes of inefficiency and bureaucratism.

One cannot be blind to the heavy sacrifices involved in the industrialization of the Soviet Union, a very backward country industrialized in a very short period of time from 1929 to 1941. The industries put up were smashed to the extent of 85 percent by the Nazi invasion. In another short period of time, from 1945 to 1956, the Soviet Union was able to recover. So, it has been historically demonstrated that socialist construction or economic construction according to the basic socialist principles has its merits.

But at this stage, the Soviet Union needs to retool and expand its industries. I refer not just to the heavy industries but especially those producing basic consumer goods as well as high-grade consumer goods that have become commonplace in the West and Japan. Exist- ing industries not related to military production have been neglected technologically. The Soviet Union though has been ahead of the United States in many lines of military production, especially in space technology.

The upper-income, highly educated and highly skilled stratum in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries envy their counterparts in the West when they see that cars and sophisticated electronic products have become commonplace in their countries. They feel deprived that these are not easily available to them.

There is a connection between the production of basic consumer goods and high-grade consumer goods. If a worker simply gets wage increases—real wage increases relative to prices—but there are no high-grade consumer goods on which they can spend beyond the basic consumer goods—there is a slackening of labor discipline with regard to the production of those basic consumer goods. The opportunity and the drive to acquire high-grade consumer goods can pep up the workers. So, there is a relation between these two types of goods.

Gorbachov himself has pointed out that there is a slackening of labor discipline; workers have taken to vodka because this is the kind of leisure and extra spending widely available to them. One may have a large income and have enough savings but one cannot just buy a car or acquire a videorecorder or the like.

The Soviet Union can fix its economy by making real savings for productive investments. It has to rely on itself. It can make big savings by lessening military production and by withdrawing troops and equipment deployed in other East European countries. It can also make savings on supplies, like fuel and equipment, anted up to other East European countries. The present Soviet leadership even expects that soon it can demand world market prices for these supplies.

The Soviet Union also expects to make large savings by cutting down on military and economic assistance to the third world. It has started to save by pulling out of Afghanistan and moving towards a settlement of the Kampuchean problem. The Soviet adventure in Afghanistan has been a big drain on the Soviet economy.

In addition to savings, the Soviet Union expects to gain more access to credit, investments and market in the capitalist countries. It also wants technology transfer from the advanced capitalist countries to be able to augment its own technological capabilities. So, it is inducing the West to delist banned strategic items from the CoCom34 list.

There are, however, problems with regard to getting Western credit. The Soviet Union has no new products to sell competitively, like those sold by West Germany and Japan. It exports mainly raw materials, especially fuel, at unfavorable and deteriorating terms of trade.

The capitalist creditors—knowing the high demand for high-grade consumer goods in the borrower-country—tell the borrower that it is too expensive to simply import industrial plants and effect technology transfer; and thus they push for the direct importation of high-grade consumer goods.

As you are experiencing in the Philippines...?

JMS: Yes. And the high demand for these kinds of goods come from the high-income, highly educated and highly skilled stratum that most influences policies. The borrower is told, You get these high-grade finished products right away to satisfy consumer demand, perk up the market and make your people, at least the upper stratum, happy. If the borrower gets persuaded, he gets hooked on to something extremely costly and devastating to the economy. At the least, this can delay productive investment.

Apart from its mainly raw material exports, the Soviet Union continues to import a lot of grain. So, for its economic restructuring to succeed, the Soviet Union has to rely mainly on its own savings and productive investment and only secondarily on access to Western credit, investments and markets.

Glasnost is a necessary component of the Gorbachov policy. It means allowing the people to criticize the causes of economic stagnation. Brezhnev was in power for two decades. He restrained the policies of Khrushchov and is said to have pursued what is derisively called neo-Stalinism with its rigidities. Some would even say that Brezhnev conformed more to the basic principles of socialism. So glasnost also means undoing Brezhnevite structural patterns of think- ing and behavior so that forces hewing to the Gorbachov line can come into full play.

Détente, at this point, is obviously correlated with perestroika and glasnost. Gorbachov wants to save on military expenditures so that there is relaxation of tensions, a reduction of military confrontation, an end to the cold war, an opening up to the capitalist countries and even Soviet entry into multilateral economic and financial organizations traditionally dominated and controlled by the capitalist countries.

Of course, détente is good. Marxist-Leninists have always been for the peaceful coexistence of states. World war, especially nuclear war, has to be prevented. A peaceful environment is necessary for socialist construction. These are aims that can be appreciated.

Gorbachov’s new thinking initiated a kind of explosion of people’s power in other East European countries. And these people’s movements have raised several questions about the future of social- ism as a system, including the relationship between the party and the people and the introduction of a market economy. In a word, do you think these movements are positive or negative?

JMS: I prefer to analyze the developments and show the positive and negative aspects.

First of all, democratization, especially as defined by Western propagandists, has meant the undoing of leaders and ruling parties shaped under the shadow of Brezhnev. Those leaders supported and celebrated the suppression and removal of the Dubček regime in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The internal forces in these East European countries are of various strata with various trends of thinking. These forces can also be considered wholly, with their nationalisms. So we should consider these internal forces in the other East European countries as well as Gorbachov’s policy.

Gorbachov has the Soviet Red Army command in most other East European countries. This has been a major factor preventing the leaders of the other East European countries from moving against the mass actions. The leaders of East Germany and Czechoslovakia, Honecker and Jakes, for instance, had been put under restraint to move against the mass demonstrations.

Internal forces and conditions differ in these East European countries. Take Poland. For a long, long time before Gorbachov, the traditional forces in Poland, especially the Catholic Church, have been strong. The Catholic Church has been behind Solidarity. Poland was allowed to deal with the West and incurred its huge foreign debt long before Gorbachov.

Poland had been allowed to go its way because the self-assertion of Yugoslavia, the Hungarian uprising and the Prague spring had had their impact. Of course, the Soviet Union suppressed the Hungarian uprising and the Prague spring but at the same time had been compelled to make accommodations to Poland, especially because of powerful forces beside the Polish United Workers’ Party. Even then the ruling party in Poland had to consider the impact of the traditionally strong opposition forces there. Poland was very backward in economic and technological terms. It was allowed to borrow from the West and have its economy determined to a large extent by loan conditionalities.

What is ironic is that the economic mess, which was the effect of huge foreign loans from the capitalist countries, would discredit the communists in power. With the new developments, the noncommunists and even anticommunists have become responsible and, appropriately so, for the economy. This will give genuine communists an opportunity to bounce back and hold a discredited Solidarity responsible for an economy that cannot but plunge into a deeper crisis.

Poland has a foreign debt of US$40 billion. It has the problem of getting new loans to cover its annual debt service of more than US$4 billion. Solidarity leaders have proposed austerity measures, including a wage freeze. Let us see how they will be able to keep the support and sympathy of the workers. Anyway, there is the fact that Poland is in an economic mess for which the Polish United Workers’ Party has been held responsible by a broad range of discontented people.

Let us consider Hungary. Hungary has serious economic problems. Like Poland, it has gone into large scale foreign borrowing. Part of the loans has been used to augment resources for industrialization. But the kind of industrialization on which a large part of these loans was used was export-oriented. And another large part was used for the importation of high-grade consumer goods.

Let us take Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic. In these two countries, dissatisfaction is more political than economic. Although the people in these countries enjoy a higher standard of living than those in the other East European countries, including the Soviet Union, they tend to compare themselves in both economic and political terms with those of the most advanced capitalist countries.

The GDR is No. 10 in terms of gross national product (GNP) while the larger part of Germany, West Germany, is No. 4. But there is a linkage between the economic status of the country and the question of political freedom. The people in East Germany hold the Socialist Unity Party responsible for not making high-grade consumer goods more easily available to them. The high-income, highly educated and highly skilled workers and professionals feel deprived when they are not allowed to travel to Western Europe and shop there. It took an East German seven to ten years on a waiting list to acquire a car even if he had enough savings. So he compared himself to his counterpart in the West who could easily acquire a car due to easy access to credit for consumption. There is also a sense of dissatisfaction on the part of the East German that the wages he gets for the same kind of work is less than that of his West German counterpart. The East German is therefore driven by a desire to go to the West for higher wages and high-grade consumer goods.

Controls were necessary for East Germany to develop a socialist economy. East Germany was the more backward part of Germany. It did not benefit from anything like the Marshall Plan from which West Germany benefited. It took great effort to develop the economy of East Germany to its present level. Had there been no restrictions on travel, hard currency needed for economic construction and even goods needed by the people would have flowed out to the West. Before the Berlin Wall was put up, those who received free education in the East would cross over to the West and looked for work there. Those who sold farm produce in the western sector would return with cameras. The limited manpower and material resources of East Germany would have flowed out. The controls had been beneficial for the economic development and political consolidation of East Germany.

However, after some time, these controls would come to be resented. There was some relaxation: free travel would be allowed but only to other East European countries to keep money within the Comecon. But people’s resentment continued to build up. There was the demand for freedom to travel to Western Europe. So, political dissatisfaction grew even in the socialist countries with relatively better economies.

So, you have different conditions. For instance, in Poland, political dissatisfaction was dramatized by the fact that a section of the working class represented by Solidarity was suppressed by the ruling working class party. In Czechoslovakia, people had a sense of oppression when a playwright like Václav Havel would be imprisoned.

There are many currents operating within the general flow of this process called democratization: nationalist, anticommunist, politico- religious, reform-minded communist and communist (those who are supposed to be traditional or more adherent to the principles of socialism).

As Gorbachov has pointed out, there are nationalist currents. Though the highest principle is the survival of humanity, especially against nuclear war, every country is allowed to protect its national interests. So, the Soviet Union has its national interests in building national economic power. At the same time, within the Soviet Union, there are the nationalist currents arising from the various nationalities; and outside of the Soviet Union, there are also national currents. The most conservative kind of adherence to nationalism is specially linked to very reactionary and even pro-imperialist interests. Nationalism will continue to be a cause of tensions in Eastern Europe.

What do you think is the main cause of the failure of the ruling parties in East European countries?

JMS: In the capitalist-dominated countries, propaganda focuses so much on the so-called failure of socialism. And the self-flagellation by the leaders in socialist countries added to denunciations made by antisocialist forces underscore these claims about the failure of socialism. I will try to describe the problems.

We may raise this question: What were these countries before the socialist revolution? Most of them were backward agrarian countries. Socialism put them on the track of industrialization despite the fact that they came from a very low economic and technological level; despite the fact that their economies were further ruined by imperialist war; and despite the fact that they have had to channel a lot of resources to national defense against imperialist encirclement. The socialist countries do not exploit the third world countries as the capitalist powers are doing. The socialist countries have even assisted other third world countries and liberation movements.

All these are being obscured. Even highly placed Party and state officials in the socialist countries have been currying favors with the capitalist powers in their desire for foreign loans, investment and technology transfer. So there has been a weakening, a feebleness even among those who are expected to uphold the basic principles of socialism. Worse, there are now highly placed state and Party officials saying that imperialism is a good thing, in conformity with Kautsky’s theory of productive forces. According to them, imperialism is good because it destroys precapitalist formations in the third world and to oppose imperialism is supposed to be reactionary. So, Kautsky is being upheld against Lenin who made the critique of imperialism.

Another thing, these same Party and state officials now consider proletarian internationalism to be a provocative slogan and they no longer use the term and even go against its spirit. Worse, proletarian internationalism is considered provocative to the capitalist powers and burdensome to socialist countries in the sense that the latter would have progressed faster had they not been burdened with assisting the national liberation movements and socialist-oriented countries in the third world. These are self-centered ideas. It is ironic that leaders of these socialist countries in the past and at lower levels of development could be more willing to go into cooperation beneficial to national liberation movements in the third world. Exactly at a