Imperialism versus working people.

Since the 1990s, the collapse of the socialist system has objectively strengthened the hand of capital while weakening that of the working class. The glue of anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism which held competing imperialist interests together has melted away, freeing imperialism to intensify its rivalries and its domination of the Third World. Far from creating a single economic 'global village' in the wake of the collapse, competing transnational corporations have intensified their struggle for new markets and larger shares of existing markets, so intensifying the exploitation of the working people of all countries.

So long as the capitalist world economy was expanding rapidly, rival transnational corporations could share in swallowing up their smaller competitors. But when the rate of world expansion slowed down from the early 1970s, German and Japanese companies -built up with substantial state aid and protection - mounted a challenge to their mainly US and British competitors. The economic and political outcome has been the polarisation of the world's monopolists into three groups. The capitalist monopolies have pressed their own national governments to construct rival trading blocs based on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), where the USA is dominant; the European Union, where Germany, France and Britain are dominant; and the countries of the Pacific Rim, where Japan is dominant.

It should not be imagined that TNCs 'have no country'. They constantly exert pressure to ensure that national state power is deployed to create a favourable class and financial climate at home, and to support their struggle against rival monopolies and troublesome governments abroad.

In western Europe, though, the use of national state power to help establish monopolies which dominate in a single country or even on an all-European scale is no longer enough. Because the struggle for domination takes place today in a global arena, transnationals in Europe are disadvantaged without an all-European state apparatus. The most powerful monopoly capitalism, Germany, organises others under its own hegemony in accordance with an absolute law of monopoly capitalism: the domination of the stronger over the weaker. Hence it strives for European economic unity backed by a European state apparatus, one which is capable of taking on the USA and Japan in a global struggle.

The European Union (EU) was established as the European 'Common Market' (later the EEC) in 1957 precisely in order to increase the power and the profits of the capitalist monopolies through greater exploitation of the working peoples of Europe and the Third World. Its bureaucratic, anti-democratic structures reflect this purpose. The political representatives of monopoly capital use the EU to co-ordinate their attacks in each member state on social and welfare programmes, nationalised industries, job security, migrant workers and refugees. The single European currency (the 'euro') is a central element in the strategy to impose pro-monopoly and anti-working class monetarist policies in every member state of the European Union.

At the same time, the transnational corporations see in the EU the opportunity to weaken the power of individual member states to regulate the economic activities of monopoly capital. So big business and finance work to undermine national economic sovereignty and so remove themselves from any possibility of democratic control by - and accountability to - national governments. Thus in the EU, economic and financial powers are transferred from democratically elected national governments to the European Commission, the European Central Bank and other supra-national agencies that are beyond direct democratic control and accountability.

Lenin warned in the midst of the First World War that the formation of a capitalist 'United States of Europe' would either be impossible or reactionary: impossible, because the monopoly capitalists of different European imperialist powers were fundamentally the deadliest of rivals; or - to the extent that they could bury their differences temporarily - reactionary because their unity could only be 'for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America'.

Capitalism portrays deregulation, privatisation, cuts in the welfare state and mass long-term unemployment as necessary medicine to be swallowed by workers in the 'era of globalisation'. A handful of imperialist powers are the main driving force within the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation in efforts to create a 'globalised' market, one in which their transnationals can operate without restrictions. This is reflected in the formulation of one-sided definitions of 'free trade' and 'fair competition', whereby power blocs such as NAFTA and the European Union are exempt from many of the measures imposed on other states. IMF and World Bank programmes are designed to create the most favourable conditions for the penetration of Third World and former socialist economies by Western monopoly capital, usually involving privatisation and cuts in social spending.

Changes stemming from the scientific and technological revolution and operating mainly through the transnational corporations have had a devastating impact upon the poorest and least developed countries.

Firstly, imports of the most industrialised countries are increasingly of sophisticated manufactured goods, whose raw material content is decreasing or is composed of artificial substitutes. By the late 1990s, the developed capitalist countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) drew less than 20% of their imports of food, beverages, tobacco and raw materials (other than petroleum) from former colonies, compared with two-thirds from each other. Lower tax rates on company profits in the imperialist centres have made it more attractive for transnationals to impose artificially low prices on imports from their subsidiaries in the Third World. In this and other ways, the underdeveloped countries are robbed of much of the value that their working people produce, and which could otherwise be used to develop their economies and societies. But this trade is also of less significance to the imperialist countries than it was in the 1950s and 1960s.

Secondly, the relative reduction in demand for raw materials from underdeveloped countries has shifted foreign investment away from them and towards the developed countries and their sophisticated industrial products. By the late 1990s, the six leading imperialist economies (the USA, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy) received less than one-fifth of their foreign investment income from the developing countries. Four-fifths of their assets abroad are now located within north America, western Europe and Australasia. The flow of rent, interest and profit from foreign investments is predominantly between the developed industrial countries themselves.

Operations in the Third World currently provide less than 3% of the total profits of the home-based capitalist class in most imperialist countries, although this figure takes no account of the cheap prices imposed on imports from the Third World by monopoly pressure. Significantly, the chief exception is Britain, whose capitalists draw nearly one-tenth of their total investment income from the developing countries. These global interests impel sections of the British ruling class towards a close alliance with US imperialism.

The export of profits and interest payments from the Third World to the West makes a significant contribution to the balance of payments of a number of imperialist countries, especially Britain, while plunging Third World countries themselves into utter destitution. Their balance of payments is kept permanently in deficit, forcing many of them to subordinate their economies to cash-crop production for export. Deeply in debt and short of foreign currency, they turn to the IMF and the World Bank for assistance that comes with strings attached - they must slash social and welfare spending, and sell off state industries to Western transnationals.

This analysis of world economic relations and the latest developments in the productive forces shows that, for imperialism as a whole since the 1980s, the most important source of profit is the working class of the highly developed capitalist countries. So long as that situation holds, it follows that the sharpening struggle will be primarily within the 'First World' itself, between the three main imperialist blocs for a redivision of markets and spheres of investment and influence. Control over oil resources, supply lines and key minerals, many of which are located in the Third World and the former socialist countries, will remain a vital strategic objective of the imperialist powers - one for which they will threaten and use force. In a world dominated by imperialism, without the Soviet Union as a powerful force for peace, there is greater scope for a reversion to the open military methods of colonialism and the final arbiter of inter-imperialist conflict has always been war.

How can the world's left, democratic and progressive forces find a way forward from this dangerous juncture in world development?

Intensified competition between rival transnationals and their states invariably means a deepening trend towards reaction in every sphere of society. Economically, this coincides with severe cyclical crises, exerting greater pressure on wages and the social wage, reinforced by political and ideological offensives. The response to this must be practical struggles for the first stages of alternative economic and democratic strategies - consistent with the historical position and traditions of each country - that would shift the balance of wealth and power towards working people. Such strategies would prioritise the need to defend jobs, trade union rights and the welfare state, and to build solidarity against the transnational corporations.

Politically and ideologically, pressure for reactionary unity within Europe will coincide with pressure for growing hostility towards the USA and Japan. All moves towards the creation of a European capitalist super-state must be resolutely opposed on democratic and anti-monopoly grounds. The militarisation of the EU, with its common foreign and security policy, military-industrial complex and European Army (or 'rapid reaction force'), threatens not only the neutral status of some member states, but also the national self-determination of peoples beyond western Europe. Communists see national and multinational states with their popularly-based democratic institutions - the only democracy we have - as essential vehicles for the establishment of socialism.

The EU's 'Fortress Europe' policy is imposing further racist legislation in the field of immigration and asylum rights. The resurgence of neo-fascist parties and movements within the European Union and in non-EU states in Europe is of enormous concern. Whether arising from counter-revolution in eastern Europe after 1989, or from xenophobic and racist policies pursued by the EU under the Schengen Agreement, neo-fascism needs to be confronted and isolated. The ruling class everywhere will seek to make scapegoats of national and ethnic minorities. All manifestations of racism have to be actively countered by the Communist and working class movement.

In the former socialist states, the best condition for slowing down and even reversing the restoration of capitalism is that the people's democratic and socialist organisations have the greatest freedom to operate. Their battle to keep their countries' development free from external capitalist intervention is a vital part of the working class struggle for national self-determination everywhere.

The collapse of socialism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has led to increasing external pressure on the remaining socialist countries. Thus there is need for growing solidarity with, for instance, Cuba against US imperialism. The campaign to impose capitalism upon China and People's Korea has begun, with Tibet and Taiwan providing pretexts for imperialist interference. To safeguard and develop the socialist countries and those of a socialist orientation, their right to self-determination must be defended by the world's working class movements.

The oppression and indebtedness of much of the Third World will continue to give rise to revolutionary struggles and attempts to break from the yoke of imperialism. Control of strategic oil supplies and other key natural resources will continue to be a source of conflict in the Third World and in parts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Growing divisions within imperialism preclude a US monopoly, and provide openings for smaller and Third World states where popular struggle can reinforce a neutral or anti-imperialist stance. This underlines the importance of a reinvigorated Non-Aligned Movement. All of these possibilities will demand greater solidarity from the labour and progressive movements in the imperialist countries, in defence of national self-determination and against imperialist interference including military intervention dressed up as 'humanitarianism'.

The future role of the United Nations depends upon the balance of forces and interests between member states, and between peoples and governments. The collapse of the USSR removed a powerful progressive force from the UN Security Council and agencies such as the International Labour Organisation, UNESCO and the World Health Organisation. The changed international balance of forces has allowed the imperialist countries to sideline the UN when necessary, as in the war against Yugoslavia and the prolonged bombing of Iraq.

The United Nations is in urgent need of democratic reform, but this will not be easy. Many smaller states are subject to the economic power of the imperialist countries. For the present, therefore, the Security Council veto exercised by China and Russia alongside the imperialist powers remains an important check. Democratisation will depend on the strengthening of anti-imperialist and working class forces at national level. Immediately, it is necessary to put forward initiatives on basic economic and social issues which can expose and isolate imperialist programmes at world level, to demand the scrapping of debt repayment and begin developing the UN as a forum for promoting a democratic New International Economic Order.

Faced with imperialism's renewed and militarised drive for new markets and for the redivision of old ones, the campaigning for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation needs to be stepped up. The peace movement nationally and internationally has to be strengthened in the struggle against great power interference in countries' internal affairs, for the right of nations to self-determination, for the peaceful resolution of international disputes and against the political and economic doctrines of imperialism. In this context, the role of China as a socialist power committed to peaceful relations between states becomes increasingly important.

Success in the campaign for peace and disarmament would release enormous resources for the conquest of poverty, hunger and disease, and for protecting the world's ecological balance. By opening up a new system of international relations, it would make possible co-operation between all states irrespective of their social system - to deal with the problems of global environmental protection.