Category: Latin America
Argentina’s oil workers threaten STRIKE if government doesn’t greenlight private Covid-19 vaccine purchase
worker | June 3, 2021 | 8:39 pm | Argentina, Labor, Latin America | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/news/525518-argentina-oil-strike-coronavirus/

Argentina’s oil workers threaten STRIKE if government doesn’t greenlight private Covid-19 vaccine purchase

Argentina’s oil workers threaten STRIKE if government doesn't greenlight private Covid-19 vaccine purchase
Argentina’s largest oil workers union is eager to buy coronavirus vaccines on its own, warning that it will be forced to go on strike to protect the health of its members if the government doesn’t quickly authorize the sale.

The Rio Negro, Neuquen and La Pampa Private Oil and Gas Union – which has 24,000 members, many of whom are employed at the Vaca Muerta shale oil formation – insisted that it would only wait until the end of next week for permission from the government in Buenos Aires.

“If there are no answers to our request [by Friday, June 11], we are going to withdraw from our jobs to protect the health of all our colleagues,” Guillermo Pereyra, the union’s leader, warned in a statement on Wednesday, adding “we have raised this situation with the health authorities and so far we have not achieved anything.”

ALSO ON RT.COMStriking health workers in Argentina reject govt’s 53% salary increase, maintaining road blockade to country’s biggest shale siteThe vaccines purchased by the government are currently being given to senior citizens and priority workers. So far, 12.8 million doses, including Russia’s Sputnik V, have been administered in Argentina, which has a population of 45 million. Pereyra, however, said the union would rather buy its own immunizations.

“We don’t want to get vaccinations from anyone or to be assigned items that are intended for the elderly, educators, health personnel or people at risk. We are willing to pay for them,” he continued.

According to earlier reports, the union was considering purchasing 50,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from Israel, which remained unused as the country largely relied on Pfizer’s inoculation.

Covid-19 cases have surged in Argentina as it sees a second wave of the pandemic, with the country reporting a record daily death toll of 745 people in mid-May. So far, it has seen 3.82 million infections and 78,733 coronavirus-related deaths nationwide since the outbreak kicked off in late 2019.

Argentinian port workers earlier went on strike over lack of access to vaccines and only returned to the job a week ago after making sure that the government included them in the priority group. Healthcare workers have also joined strikes in recent months, with some blocking roads to the Vaca Muerta shale site in April while demanding an immediate pay increase amid the health crisis.

ALSO ON RT.COMArgentine president tests positive for Covid-19 after Russia’s Sputnik V shot, but researchers say he will recover swiftlyLike this story? Share it with a friend!

A bizarre US pretext for military intrusion in South America
worker | November 17, 2017 | 7:46 pm | Latin America | Comments closed

By W. T. Whitney Jr. November 17, 2017,

A Bizarre US Pretext for Military Intrusion in South America

The United States has imposed military bases and deployed troops throughout Latin America. Its 4th fleet cruises surrounding seaways. Such doings, one assumes, relate to war, preparing for war, or occupying territory. Whatever the case, those in charge need to produce a rationale. As regards Latin America, the U.S. government usually claims its military forces are responding to terrorists or narco-traffickers, or even to insurgencies, without advertising that fact.

Justifications like these are plausible, at least until realization dawns as to more weighty reasons for intruding. However, it looks like U.S. military honchoes long ago concocted a reason for a U.S. military presence in the region that is simply absurd.  Onlookers are supposed to believe that a generous U. S. military wants to protect Latin Americans from threats having nothing to do with bad actors.

Take, for example, a recent gathering in the “hostile and challenging Amazon rainforest,” the subject of a press release from the U.S. Embassy in Brasília.  We learn that the U.S. Southern Command had organized a training session to enable “civilians and military personnel deployed in remote regions [to carry out out] Peace Operations and Humanitarian Assistance.” On hand would be 50 active-duty U. S. troops plus 31 members of the Montana Air National Guard. They would be joined by 1550 Brazilian soldiers, 150 from Colombia, and 120 more from Peru.

The exercise, called either “AmazonLog 17” or “Operation America United,” took place November 6-13 in Tabatinga, a Brazilian town on the Amazon River, where the borders of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru converge.  Military observers from 19 other countries were present as was Brazilian Defense Minister Raul Jungmann, who was on his way to Washington “for three days of talks with Pentagon officials.”

Planners of the training exercise were anticipating that “an International Logistics Base” would be created there for the training of “Integrated Multinational Logistics Units.” That’s bureaucratese for “troops.”

To set U. S. troops to tasks billed as humanitarian is routine in Latin America – with the telling exception of hurricane – stressed Puerto Rico. In Peru the United States has created multiple “Operational Centers for Regional Emergencies” – natural disasters, for example – in the Amazonian lowlands.  Each one contains a heliport, a unit for storing humanitarian supplies, and facilities for planning and monitoring.  Among Latin American nations, the amount of U.S. military assistance arriving in Peru is exceeded only by U. S. aid to Colombian and Mexico.

For many years under its “New Horizons “ program, the Southern Command has installed bases or carried out military exercises throughout the region for the purpose of delivering humanitarian assistance, or preparing to do so. Host countries include Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, Argentina, Peru, Chile.

The U. S. military advertises other beneficent projects. Scientific research relating to Antarctica will take place at a new U.S. base  in Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. The U.S. Navy has long carried out research on tropical diseases at Iquitos in Peru.

The training exercise in Tabatinga in Brazil represented “the first time such a large military exercise has been held in the Amazon,” according to Reuters. Glauber Braga, member of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, warned that U.S. involvement there “could represent possible loss of sovereignty and subordination of the Brazilian Army.” The Brazilian military leader of   AmazonLog -17 dismissed such talk as “a senseless conspiracy theory raised by leftist parties.”

Interviewed by TeleSur, analyst Ana Esther Ceceña claimed the exercise was part of Brazilian and U.S. efforts “to finish off progressive governments” in Latin America; “The object of the U.S. Army and that too of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia is to create a prepared position and to leave a base available at any time for an intervention.”

“From there the armies of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil would be able mount an offensive against those governments – especially those of Venezuela and Bolivia – that oppose [U. S.] hegemony, and against those countries possessing enormous natural resources.” Ceceña suggested also that “installations placed along national borders, [like the Tabatinga facility] would facilitate an intervention in Venezuelan territory and have it look like an action by a regional coalition, not like an invasion by the United States.”  Venezuela’s border lies approximately 400 miles north of Tabatinga.

Testifying before the U. S. Congress on April 6, 2017, Admiral Kurt W. Kidd, the Southern Command head, pointed out that, “Venezuela faces significant instability in the coming year [and the] growing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela could eventually compel a regional response.”

Writers associated with the Latin American Center for Geopolitical Strategies (CELAG) looked at Tabatinga in the context of U.S. military activities in surrounding countries: “this U.S. presence in the region is related to a global struggle for political, economic, and scientific control of natural resources. And the Amazon region, taken as a whole, is prioritized due to its enormous reserves of hydrocarbons, water, minerals, and biodiversity.”

The Tabatinga episode is significant for shedding light on ways the U. S. government prepares for military action in Latin America.  To wage war requires a justification that is acceptable at home.  The same goes with preparing for war.  As regards the Iraq and Vietnam Wars, U. S. justifications were lies, weapons of mass destruction and attack by torpedo boats, respectively. In the present instance humanitarian generosity is concocted as one reason for why the U.S. military is stirring about in South America. It’s a rationale both farcical and false.

US opts for military solutions in Latin America
worker | July 15, 2017 | 6:36 pm | Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Donald Trump, Ecuador, Latin America | Comments closed

“The hegemonic ambitions of the United States are ultimately based more on the outsized importance of its military power than on the ‘advantages’ of its economic system.”                             — Samir Amin, Monthly Review, July 2017

By W. T. Whitney Jr.

The media circus surrounding Donald Trump’s words and actions may be distracting enough to let a revived insertion of U. S. military influence in Latin America pass unnoticed. For example, a squadron of South Carolina’s Air National Guard will be undertaking joint training exercises with pilots of Colombia’s Air Force at the Palanquero air base on July 15 – 17. The Colombians, flying aerial-refueling planes and Kfir C-10 fighter-bombers obtained from Israel, will be “fine tuning their piloting skills.”

Anticipating possible encounters with Venezuela’s Air Force, Colombian Air Force generals realized that their pilots lacked equipment and skills required for air-to-air encounters.   The Venezuelans are capable and fly well – used U. S. F-16 combat planes and Sukhoi Su-30 fighter-bombers, purchased from Russia in 2015.

Colombia’s government has been negotiating to purchase 12 old F-16 A/B Netz combat planes from Israel, and preparation of pilots is a step along the way. Pilots from the South Carolinian Air National Guard are assisting them.

U.S. military cooperation with Colombia has been ongoing for decades. By contrast, U.S. military involvement in Brazil breaks barriers.

U.S. and Brazilian military officials recently announced that troops of the two countries would be joining those of Peru and Colombia in training exercises in “the heart of the Amazon.” “Operation America United” will take place over two weeks beginning on November 6. Its advertised purpose is to prepare both responses to humanitarian disasters and measures against illegal migration, drug trafficking, and “environmental crimes.”

Brazil will be setting up a temporary international military base in the city of Tabatinga located on the “triple frontier” that separates Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. One report likens the upcoming training exercise to one in Hungary in 2015 where “the gringos arrived and are still there.”

The governments of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Panama, Canada, Bolivia, and Ecuador received invitations to send troops, presumably as observers. Even the Council of South American Defense may take part on behalf of the Union of South American Nations, formed in 2008 to foster regional integration and independence..

Brazil’s military has long been “quite jealous in its custody of Amazonia,” claims analyst Raul Zibechi. The nation’s military leaders also had opted out of Cold War initiatives for which the United States was recruiting Latin American and Caribbean nations. Zibechi attributes Brazil’s shift to accepting a U. S. military presence in the Amazon region to the influence of two new presidents, Donald Trump and Michel Temer.

Brazil’s Defense Ministry signed an arrangement with the Pentagon in March for coordination in “research and development.” A month later, the giant Brazilian airplane manufacturer Embraer and U. S. aviation electronics manufacturer Rockwell Collins agreed “to work on integrating their [products] for joint defense sales.” And the U.S. Army Armament Research and Development Center recently opened an office in Sao Paulo allowing for cooperation in pursuing “research and innovations in defense technologies.”

Perhaps the most dramatic instance of the new militarization of U. S. influence in the region was the “Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America” that took place in Miami on June 14 -16; Mexico and the United States were co-conveners. Attending were the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, countries whose violence and corruption have pushed migrants toward the United States.

The US Chamber of Commerce and the Inter-American Development Bank held a welcoming event for Central American businessmen in attendance. Later they joined a session at Florida International University where speakers included Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Homeland Security chief John F. Kelly.

General Kelly formerly headed the U. S. Army’s Southern Command which is responsible for U.S. military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The conference eventually moved to the Southern Command headquarters where officials presumably touched upon military plans for Central America.

Official U. S. press releases on the conference avoided military specifics, concentrating instead on the “business climate,” “citizen security,” narco-trafficking, and irregular migration. Writing in advance, observer Jake Johnson predicted that, “the military will be leading US policy in Central America.” He cited Tillerson who earlier had insisted, “We must protect our people … And we can only do that with economic prosperity. So it’s foreign policy projected with a strong ability to enforce the protection of our freedoms with a strong military.”

Central American and Mexican organizations defending the rights of migrants, small farmers, and women had already reacted to the prospect of such a conference. Hundreds of them endorsed a fact- filled petition sponsored by “Meso-American Voices.” Their plea condemned “a new military pact [involving] the United States, Mexico, and Central America to increase the presence of the US Southern Command on the border of Guatemala and Mexico.” That “there would be official operations of the United States Army in Mexican territory” was unprecedented.

Carolus Wimmer: The Great October Revolution and its Influence on Latin America
worker | June 14, 2017 | 9:27 pm | Analysis, Brazil, class struggle, Cuba, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, Latin America, Mexico, USSR, V.I. Lenin, Venezuela | Comments closed

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Carolus Wimmer: The Great October Revolution and its Influence on Latin America

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/06/carolus-wimmer-great-october-revolution.html
The Great October Revolution and its Influence on Latin America.
By Carolus Wimmer* / Source: International Communist Review, Issue 7, 2017.
I) Introduction
The hundredth anniversary of the Great October Revolution comes in the midst of a counteroffensive by imperialism and the forces of reaction against the social and political advances of the working class. In these conditions, it becomes especially important to deliver the objective truth about the first victorious proletarian Revolution, its historic global importance for the world’s worker movement, for the struggles to liberate the oppressed peoples from imperialism, and ultimately for all humanity.
In 1917, the proletarian and peasant Revolution did not only triumph throughout wide-reaching Russia, but its bells of freedom also began to sound across the globe. Through the construction of a socialist society and the latter building of Communism, the era in which humanity would jump “from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom”[1]– as the well-known definition from Frederich Engels states- had begun.
With the victory of the October Revolution a new social system had begun to be built. The laws of socialist Revolution, which in their earliest form had been elaborated by Marx and Engels, underwent an immense technical and practical development in the melting pot of the Russian Revolution.
That the arena was a great multinational State, with areas of developed Capitalism and others with clear signs of persistent Feudalism and the slave era, does not take anything away from or reduce the quality of the Revolution. Its own characteristics as a socialist Revolution under the hegemony of the working class; the agglutination of all of the oppressed masses; the situation of the Russian Empire, which reflected the real situation of the world under the dominion of Imperialism, all reaffirm the greatness of October and its core principal as the immense and multifaceted Revolution of our time.
For the Latin American nations, exploited as they were by Imperialism, the Russian Revolution bore a three-fold importance:
1. This severe blow at the heart of Imperialism served as a strong stimulus to all the peoples’ struggles and especially by the recently born proletariat of the colonial and dependent world against their oppressors.
2. It meant a fraternal hand from the most advanced class- which had been able to destroy the essence of Capital- to the ample oppressed masses. The totally new international relations which Russia established, its peaceful and anticolonial policies, and the quantitatively different economic links which it offered opened up impressive new horizons for national liberation struggles and, where chosen, to those who wanted to transit down the road towards Socialism. What’s more, as Soviet power began to establish itself and a new correlation of forces was created in the world, Russia transformed itself into a stronghold which put the brakes on, impeded, and defeated other Imperialist interventions.
3. In the ex-Tsarist Empire, the development of the Revolution became an example into itself with proletarian solutions being found to the problems of national self-determination and the incorporation of very backward regions into a more developed economy and culture.
In Latin America, the October Revolution gave our peoples a new perspective. In many countries Communist Parties were created, and the working class vanguard and the clearest minded intelligentsia opened their arms to Lenin’s cause. Yet its influence was even greater than that: there is not a single important popular movement in Latin America in which the powerful stamp of October cannot be seen[2].
In this year (1917) in Venezuela with its rural and pre-capitalist economic structure and in the midst of a fierce military dictatorship controlled by the USA, there was also something new happening. In the west of the country oil based economic activity was beginning, and with it came the creation of the working class in the region: great masses of handicraft workers, peasants, and fisherman started transforming themselves into oil workers. Inspired by the achievements of the Russian Revolution, these workers came to be the backbone of the formation of the Communist Party of Venezuela in 1931 from the Russian Revolution solidarity movements and from the polemic and heated definitions of the Trade Union movement, who were later to lead the vast solidarity movement with the USSR after the attacks of the Second World War.
II) The Communist International and Latin America
The Communist International, also known as the Third International or Comintern, was born out of the October Revolution and founded in March 1919, relating itself perfectly to the working class traditions of the principal and practice of internationalism. As the bourgeoisie and Capital have international characters, the working class do also, and necessarily had to organize their struggles without regard for national borders. In the face of reactionary bourgeois nationalism in Europe, the working class movement proclaimed the idea of internationalism.
In the second half of the 19th Century the First and Second Internationals had existed. The First International had had just a brief existence due to the strong repression which it suffered. The Second International had a longer duration, but the prevalence of opportunist and reformist tendencies at its heart led the majority of social democratic European parties to ally themselves to the bourgeoisie in their countries and support the warmongering policies which led to the First World War and to what Lenin correctly described as bankruptcy.
One of the first challenges the Third International faced was the urgency of considering the relationship between national and international issues, between State and Revolution, between power and the project, especially because now- for the first time- the Communist movement wasn’t merely in opposition but it was in power and was the State, as in ex-Tsarist Russia. How do you connect these elements which are not necessarily concordant? The response to this challenge can be seen throughout the history of the Communist International.
The work of the Communist International was initially directed towards Central Europe, but with its internationalist vision and so that it functioned better, the world leadership of the Communist movement created regional structures.
The idea that the Communist Party of Russia (Bolshevik) deserved great prestige was  something that was accepted in the communist movement, partly because  it “had more experience and authority” but also because it controlled the Country of the Soviets, representing the strategic rear-guard of the worlds communist movement. However, in organisational terms, the Communist Party of Russia (Bolshevik) was just one more section of the Communist International which, together with the other sectionals, obeyed the collective decisions.
In the case of Latin America, the Communist Parties of Mexico, Argentina, and USA played similar roles with respect to the other parties in the region.
Since the beginning of the 1920’s, there were special departments in Moscow for the Latin American subcontinent. Regional Secretariats were created in 1926, and Latin America was placed under the control of the “Latino” Regional Secretariat (“Latin American” as of 1928), with the number of functionaries living in Moscow who were dedicated to Latin America growing (Latin Americans as well as Europeans). The Regional Secretariat was subordinated to the Executive Committee and acted on all relevant issues connected with Latin America.
In 1919 the first branch of the Communist International in Latin America was opened in Mexico, although it only functioned for a few months. By resolution of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and as part of the process of “bolshevization”, the South American Secretariat was created in 1925 in Buenos Aires with the aim of contributing to the “intensification and unification of Communist ideological training with the objective of creating a stronger relationship between the South American parties and the Communist International”. The South American Secretariat, with its political campaigns and the work of its press organ- the Correspondencia Sudamericana (South American Correspondent)– played a decisive part in the diffusion of the politics of the Communist International in Latin America. It was reorganized in the summer of 1928 and with the Italian-Argentine Victorio Codovilla at the reins, the fulfilment of its workload was guaranteed.
In Mexico it worked alongside the Anti-imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA in Spanish)- which was founded in 1924- and diverse sub-secretaries which had been created in 1928 for the preparation of the First Latin-American Conference of Trade Unions (celebrated in Montevideo in June 1929), as well as with various regional institutions controlled by the Communists. In New York the Caribbean Bureau was created in 1931 to oversee the same tasks as its South American counterpart.
The LADLA was founded at the end of 1924 by the Communist Parties of Mexico and the USA after receiving the proposal from the Communist International. The idea was based on the concept which was developed by Lenin of a united anti-imperialist front. Workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals from across the American Continent were convened as a consequence to unite against the “principal enemy”: the bourgeoisie of each country and North American imperialism.
III)                The Impact of the October Revolution in Latin America
Workers from the Latin American countries, as those from other parts of the world did, warmly applauded the October Revolution, its great leader Lenin and the Leninist policies of peace, and they declared themselves in defence of the world’s first Socialist State and against the Imperialists and counterrevolution.
Often, the people received true and complete information about the deeds of October in Russia late, and the bourgeois press deliberately tried to silence or twist the great happenings of the world’s first socialist Revolution. All the more in vain, as Pablo Neruda would say, were the efforts of Capitalism to organize a confabulation of silence about Soviet Russia, to deform the truth and turn off the light which was arriving from the other side of the ocean[3].
The peoples of Latin America understood the immense importance of what was happening in far off Russia from the very first days. “I vote for the Russian Bolsheviks without hesitation, as they are showing us the path to peace and the liquidation of the barbaric Capitalist bourgeois regime” stated the founder of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Emilio Recabarren, in the days following the October Revolution. “He who does not defend their cause defends Capitalism and all its horrors” [4].
The progressive Brazilian writer Lima Barreto on the 14th June 1918 wrote that “the Russian Revolution has shaken not only the thrones, but also the social bases of our predatory bourgeois society. The sympathetic wave which has been awoken in our hearts cannot be ignored and it is impossible to drown our desire to see something similar here”[5].
The opinion of the Latin American vanguard was of comprehension and praise for the historic role of the leader of the Proletarian Revolution, V.I. Lenin. The Argentinian scientist José Ingenieros characterized Lenin as a man of “great intelligence” and “illustrious statesmanship”[6] in his work Economic Teachings of the Russian Revolution written in 1920. He also wrote that there had been no obstacles from the dominant bourgeois classes and Governments which may have “stopped the admirable current of good-feeling which the Russian Revolution has awoken across the entire world”[7].
In Argentina, where class rivalry had been considerably exacerbated by the eve of the First World War, 10,000 men took to the streets of Buenos Aires on the 7thNovember 1918 with slogans of support for Soviet Russia.
The 10th Congress of the FORO-V, the largest Trade Union Federation in Argentina, took the decision to “express their most ample solidarity and backing to the workers of Russia… and fervently go out and look for votes of support for the consolidation of the Socialist Federal Republic of Soviets of Russia, so that this supreme aspiration of the proletariat can be established and made a reality”[8].
Victor Codovilla, veteran of the Latin American working class movement and president of the Communist Party of Argentina, remembers that “the most conscious parts of the working class and Argentinian people felt that, with this victory, a new era in the history of humanity had opened up, the era of the fall of Capitalism and of the triumph of Socialism and Communism”[9].
The victory of the October Revolution was welcomed with enthusiasm in Brazil. The workers understood that the October Revolution was a proletarian Revolution, close to the heart of the workers[10], as Astrogildo Pereira, one of the founders of the Brazilian Communist party, recalls. In one example, a public meeting held on the 1st May 1919 in Rio de Janeiro with the participation of 60,000 workers in the Brazilian Capital, approved a message of solidarity with the Russian working class.
Another shining example of proletarian support was the 24-hour strike of 11th July 1919 of the Metal Workers Union in the Federal District of Rio de Janeiro in protest against the intervention of the Imperialist States in Soviet Russia.
The victory of the workers and peasants in Russia was also celebrated by the workers of Cuba. In November 1919 a meeting of workers was held in Habana to commemorate the second anniversary of the October Revolution. The delegates to the Second Workers Congress of Cuba, held in April 1920, sent a fraternal greeting to the soviet workers.
In October 1923, the First Student Congress of Cuba adopted a resolution which protested the unfair isolation to which the new Russia was being subject to by the world powers and to request that the Cuban Government recognize the Socialist Republic of Russia[11].
The heartfelt waves of affection and respect from the Cuban people towards Lenin manifested themselves particularly in the days of January 1924. On the 21st of this month, Antonio Bosch, Mayor of Regla (a suburb of Habana), described Lenin as a “great citizen of the world” and requested that the citizens of the city honour his memory with two minutes of silence and meetings on the 27th January, the day of the funeral of the head of the Proletarian Revolution, in the El Fortin hill where an olive tree would be planted as a symbol of peace “in memory of this date and the deeds which worry us”. More than 1,000 workers, sailors, day labourers, and students from Habana met at the given hour in El Fortin despite the torrential tropical rain where Antonio Bosch and the young Cuban Mercedes Barrero planted an olive tree. Later, all of the meetings progressed to the Municipal Palace where a joint meeting was held in Lenin’s memory. Those at the meeting received telegrams of solidarity from the workers of Santiago of Cuba, Morón, and other cities from the island. The El Fortin Hill has since been called the Lenin Hill[12].
At the start of the 20’s, Soviet Russia was visited by numerous and notable personalities of the Latin American Revolutionary movement. On returning to their countries, they emotionally explained to the workers the achievements of the first proletarian state in the world and published articles and books.
Leader of the Chilean workers and founder of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Emilio Recabarren, spent more than 40 days in the Soviet country in 1922. In the book which he published after his trip, entitled Rusia obrera y campesina (Worker and Peasant Russia), he wrote that “I went to see if the working class did effectively have political power with which they guarantee the conservation in their hands of economic power … I went to see if the working class had abolished once and for all types of Capitalist exploitation and tyranny. I gladly saw that effectively the Russian workers did indeed have all the strength of political and economic power in their hands, and it seemed that there was not a force in this world able to dispose the Russian proletariat of the power that they had won… I could also testify that the expropriation of the exploiters is so complete that a regime of exploitation and tyranny, such as that which we still put up with in Chile, will never return to Russia”[13].
The speeches of Recabarren in Chile about the Soviet Republic produced immense impressions in the auditoriums. Pablo Neruda remembers that in those days a magnificent Chilean returned from the Soviet Republic which had just been born. His name was Luis Emilio Recabarren, and the return of this titanic personality changed the progress of the ideological currents in Neruda’s generation.
Whilst talking to him and listening to his speeches, he understood the feeling of the great event… Recabarren allowed him to understand, with great simplicity, that an entire age has been left in the past, that from the utopia had been born the practical creation of a new State and of a new society[14].
In the same year of 1922, one of the founders of the Uruguay Communist Party, Francisco Pintos, similarly spent various months in the Soviet Republic.
The economic, political, and military strength of the USSR, the increase in its international prestige, as well as the thriving support from the worlds proletariat and the hopes of the commercial foreign mediums to enter into mercantile-economic relations with the USSR are key factors which forced the Governments of the majority of the Capitalist States to abandon their policies of non-recognition of the Soviet Union and proceed towards the establishment of normal diplomatic relations with her.
The foresight of Lenin, expressed in his speech to the Plenary of Soviets of Moscow on the 20th November 1922, about how “economic relations- and through them diplomatic ones- will normalize themselves, must normalize themselves, and will be normalized without fail” came perfectly true[15].
IV) The October Revolution and its influence in the formation of Communist Parties: an approximation
The October Revolution was a response from the Russian working class, peasants, and soldiers to feudal despotism and Capitalist exploitation. The Latin American working class and workers from the city and countryside similarly understood this: not only were good feelings towards Russia on the increase, but so was the consciousness of the need to follow the example of the Russian Revolution to construct Socialism-Communism.
In 1918 in Argentina, Victorio Codovilla and Rodolfo Ghioldi founded the International Socialist Party, which, with only 92 days since its foundation, decided to affiliate itself to the Communist International the following year. Codovilla, who had started his political activism in his home country in the ranks of the Italian Socialist Party, and was now a resident of Buenos Aires, was amongst the founders of the “Karl Marx Study Centre” in 1912.
In 1919 in Guatemala the League of Patriotic Workers was organized, which only months later was the principal driving force behind the insurrection of the workers against the dictatorship. In 1921 the 1st May was celebrated for the first time in this country.
Also in 1919 the First Socialist Congress of Mexico was held, which, with a majority of votes, decided to incorporate itself into the Communist International. Two months later it opted to change its name in accord with the international organisation which it had just joined: it would now be the Mexican Communist Party.
In Colombia, the Trade Union Federation, the Confederation for Social Action, and the Society of Mutual Assistance met, and, with the representation of 20 associations and guilds, formed a Socialist Party which would be used to promote the independence of the working class from other political parties and religious sects and to fight for working class concessions. Its main initial themes were proclaimed to be freedom, equality, and fraternity.
Despite the fact that we are concentrating on Latin America and the Caribbean, it is also important to mention the foundation of proletarian parties in the USA: the Communist Party and the Workers Communist Party. Both parties worked clandestinely and joined the Communist International, unifying themselves in 1921. The US Communist Party gained legality in 1929.
The people of Guatemala rose up against the dictator in 1920 and were able to overthrow him. This victory bought new energy to the young working class, and class based Trade Union organisation grew with the creation of the Trade Union confederation “Worker’s Union”.
On the 17th July 1920 the Second Congress of the Communist International met in Petrograd, setting the conditions which working class parties would have to meet to be accepted into its ranks. Lenin’s report “On the role of the Communist Party in a proletarian Revolution” was accepted, censuring the opportunist theses of some Trade Unionists which maintained the uselessness of a political party of the working class and the priority of the Trade Unions.
The report assures that revolutionary Trade Unionists “wish to fight against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie but don’t know how. They don’t understand that the working class without an autonomous party is like a headless tree trunk. The Trade Unionist and Revolutionary industrialist represent a step forward only in comparison with the old, rancid, counterrevolutionary ideology of the Second International. But, in comparison with Revolutionary Marxism, i.e. Communism, Trade Unionism and industrialism are but a step backwards”[16].
Under this Leninist line, the 8th Congress of the Uruguayan Socialist Party decided with a massive majority to incorporate themselves into the Communist International. The following year-1921- they decide to change their name to the Communist Party of Uruguay.
In December 1920, the Socialist Workers Party of Chile which had been founded in 1912 by Luis Emilio Recabarren and which had manifested its warm felt support for the October Revolution in 1919, now decided to join the Communist International. In 1922 it opted for the name of the Communist Party of Chile.
In June 1921, the Constituent Congress of the Red International of Labour Unions met in Moscow with 41 countries, including an important class-based contingent from Latin America.
In 1921 the Third Congress of the Communist International met with the assistance of 50 affiliated parties, including Latin Americans. One of the central objectives was the creation of a unified front which would allow the union of all of the workers in the fight against Capitalism. An ample discussion was held on tactical questions, and guided as it was by Lenin, the Communist International recommended “criticizing in a fraternal, but energetic and clear way, the anarchic-Trade Union tendencies which reject the dictatorship of the proletariat and negate the necessity of a leading, unique, central organization to work with the Revolutionary vanguard, i.e. a Communist party[17]. The Communist International judged the “fusion of the Revolutionary labour organisations and Communists into a united front” as being possible[18].
With this political line numerous unconnected Marxist groups met in March 1922 in Rio de Janeiro by the invitation of A. Pereira, director of the journal “O Movimento Comunista” (The Communist Movement) and resolved to construct the Brazilian Communist Party.
By the end of 1922, the following Communist Parties existed in Latin America, each of which acted as Latin American sections of the Communist International: Argentina (January 1918), Mexico (November 1919), Uruguay (September 1920), Chile (January 1922), Brazil (March 1922) and Guatemala (1922).
As per the logic of the Latin American class struggle, faced by the plan of the Communist International, US Imperialism counter-attacked; and faced with Revolutionary advances by the working class, in 1923 the Fifth Pan-American Conference met in Santiago of Chile.
In 1924, year of the passing away of Vladimir Ilich Lenin in Gorki in January aged 54, a great depression overtook the progressive forces of the world, including the Latin American Communists.
Lenin’s work, however, continued to expand in the Latin American region. This very year the Communist Party of Honduras was founded, instantly confronting the imperialist United Fruit Company with heroic acts, and declaring itself as a sectional of the Comintern on the very day of its foundation.
In August 1925 the Communist Party of Cuba was organized in illegal conditions. Back in February 1917 an insurrection against the Government which was coordinated with numerous strikes had caused US Imperialism to take the opportunity to send marines to invade the island, under legal protection from the Platt Amendment. The occupation lasted until 1922, during which the first steps for the creation of a Communist movement were taken: left wing socialists met and approved a declaration recognising the need for the creation of a unified party, such as the Comintern had suggested. Marxist groups from various cities and villages were organized in build up to August 1925 when, in a clandestine congress, the Communist Party of Cuba was born, with its leaders requesting immediate incorporation into the Comintern.
In Argentina in 1925 a strong anti-imperialist Latin American movement was given form, with great resonance in the intellectual world. Amongst its objectives was “to develop in the Latin American peoples a consciousness of solidarity for national and continental interests, supporting all ideological renovation which pushes for the exercising of popular sovereignty and combatting all types of dictatorship which oppose social reforms”[19].
In 1926 in Ecuador some Marxist-Leninist groups had sprung up since 1920, and in 1924 Ricardo Paredes founded the newspaper ‘La Antorcha’ (‘The Torch’). In 1925 the ‘Ecuadorian Communist Sectional for the Divulgation of the Ideas of Lenin’ was organized, with workers and intellectuals affiliating themselves. In May 1926 the Ecuadorian Socialist Party was formed, incorporating itself to the Comintern in 1928.
In Brazil, the Communists started making contact with the Revolutionary, democratic military movements (lieutenant rank mostly) which Luis Carlos Prestes presided over. From these contacts was born the Worker-Peasant Front.
In most Latin American Countries Anti-imperialist leagues appeared, such as in Mexico and Cuba, which combined the class-based Revolutionary struggle with the international solidarity struggle. Revolutionary intellectuals commonly participated in these organisations, often editing numerous newspapers in which North American Imperialism was challenged with great worth.
By initiative of Ghioldi and Codovilla, in December 1926 the Communist Party of Argentina manifested their solidarity with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ratifying their energetic opposition to Trotskyism and its conceptions, describing them as “erroneous, adventurous, and anti-Leninist”[20].
Propelled by this Revolutionary and anti-imperialist upsurge, in Nicaragua in July 1927 General Augusto Sandino, the “General of free men”, started the patriotic war of the guerrillas against the invading North American troops. Next to Sandino was the El Salvadorian Communist Farabundo Martí. This movement for national liberation received the support of all of the anti-imperialist sectors of Latin America. The Venezuelan Communists Carlos Aponte and Gustavo Machado were also on the scene. For the people it was the start of a historic struggle which culminated with the victory of the Sandinista Revolution decades afterwards.
At the anti-imperialist Congress held in Brussels in 1927 and presided over by the French writer Henry Barbusse, Latin Americans such as Gustavo Machado (Venezuela), Jose Vasconcelos (Mexico), and Victor Codovilla (Argentina) were present.
Similarly, as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations for the October Revolution in November 1927, some of the most important Revolutionary leaders in the world congregated in Moscow, with the Latin Americans who were present taking advantage of the encounter to discuss strategy and tactics in the Latin American struggle.
In 1928 in Moscow the 6th Congress of Comintern was held, with Latin America being amongst the themes discussed. Taking into account the existence of mass-based organisations, the Congress considered the need to transform “the expression of the will of these mass-based political parties into truly Bolshevik parties”. With this objective the Caribbean Bureau was created, and the Socialist Party of Ecuador and Socialist Revolutionary Party of Colombia were accepted as Comintern sectionals.
In September 1928 the Peruvian Communist Party was founded, with Jose Carlos Mariátegui as its most important leader.
In Colombia, an extraordinary resurgence of the masses, as much in the labour organisations as well as the political parties, drove the conservative Government to consider a law to restrict the constitutional guarantees and prohibit the practices of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR). At the time, the Venezuelan General and anti-dictatorial fighter, Emilio Arevalo Cedeño was exiled in Colombia and, whilst working with the plans of the PSR, was planning an invasion of Venezuela through the plains, giving Cedeño, an ex-telegraphist, the nickname of the “new Sandino”[21].
In June of 1929 the First Communist Conference of Latin America took place in Buenos Aires. Thirty-eight delegates took part from fifteen countries across the region (Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Uruguay, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, Mexico, and Paraguay) as well as delegates from the Comintern, the Youth Comintern, from the Communist Parties of the United States and France. In the same year, the Caribbean Bureau set up a Support Committee in Barranquilla, Colombia, for the incipient Communist movement which was working clandestinely in Venezuela. At the head of the mission was Gustavo Machado, who later became the President of the Communist Party of Venezuela whilst residing in Bogota.
In Venezuela since 1914 various foreign companies, led by Royal Dutch Shell, were extracting oil from the ground, reaching a total of 332.000 barrels. During this year, work on the first commercial refinery began, with great quantities of handicraft workers, peasants, and fisherman being transformed into oil workers. Inspired by the news of class struggle on the old continent and the victory of the Bolsheviks, political and labour struggles expanded. The US, alongside the Venezuelan dictator, recognized the dangers that the example of the October Revolution could set when, in 1918, they expressed that “the doctrines of the radicals in Europe will have a greater impact in the countries where the ignorant and poor people are deprived of their political rights. Driven by the initiative of the social parties of Mexico and Puerto Rico, a public propaganda campaign is seeking the formation of a Workers League in all of the countries of America. This type of agitation is dangerous for us because our enemies will try to exploit it and some of those will start replicating the extremist doctrines of the Russians, i.e. the redistribution of land and wealth amongst workers and soldiers…”[22].
On the 5th March 1931, the first Communist branch in Venezuela was constructed in clear clandestinity, and on the 1st May the first manifesto from the Venezuelan Communist Party was circulated “to the working people”. The manifesto finished with a phrase from Lenin: “the gun on the shoulder of a worker is the only guarantee of democracy”, and amongst the slogans used was “Long Live Soviet Russia”.
Equally, for the first time in Venezuela, the Bolshevik Revolution was mentioned in a party political document, stating that “in Russia, the largest country in the world and with a population 50 times greater than Venezuela’s, which was submitted to a tyranny as bloody as that of Gomez- the Tsarist regime- the workers and peasants overthrew this Government thirteen years ago and put in place a Government of their own class, a workers and peasant Government called Soviet. The lands of the great landowners have been redistributed to those who directly worked them, and the factories, mines, and businesses have become collective property of the workers Soviets… wages have gone up and prices have fallen and there are no workers unemployed… in the schools, colleges, and universities workers and their children are given preference and the Government covers all of the needs of all of the students. Women enjoy exactly the same rights and advantages as men and are given complete time off for 2 months before and 2 months after giving birth. Under the worker and peasant Government in Soviet Russia comfortable and clean houses are being built for the workers, magnificent tower blocks for rehabilitation centres, hospitals, clubs, libraries, schools for the workers, who enjoy a freedom and comfort that has never been seen before in the world by the class which produces… the workers of the entire world are struggling and organizing to do that which their class brothers have done in Russia”[23].
V)                 Conclusions
“As the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to”[24] wrote Karl Marx and Frederich Engels in the Communist Manifesto. One hundred years later these words have been made a reality in Latin America and the Caribbean thanks to the October Revolution of 1917 and the presence of Communist Parties.
Despite the fact that Lenin couldn’t apply himself extensively to Latin America, it was not absent from his worries. In his works about Imperialism there are frequent references to Latin America, using Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay to illustrate his theory and show the worst effects of the inter-imperialist contradictions that divided the region. In the First Congress of Soviets he denounced the North American imperialists who “are anxious to devour Mexico” [25].
With the great Revolution of October, the theory of a modern Revolution with its specific anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-oligarchic characteristics and with its uninterrupted transition to the socialist-communist Revolution expanded to Latin America.
On one hand the objective socio-economic structures existed for the popularization of Marxism-Leninism: Imperialist penetration, Capitalism, a deepening of the class struggle, and agrarian problem which still today have not been solved. On the other hand, the existed an increase in the entire region of liberation movements as part of a global “revolutionary situation of general character” whose apex was the Great October Revolution.
The Communist Parties found in the examples of popular action and socio-political thought the subjective factors which bring alive the Revolutionary processes of the region even today.
Carolus Wimmer.
We commemorate with Revolutionary optimism this 100-year anniversary of the October Revolution expressing as did Lenin in 1905: “the defeat of Russian Tsardom- heroically started by our working class- will change the course of all of the countries, will ease the task of the workers of all nations, of all states, across all of the confines of the Globe”[26].
The history of the last 100 years clearly confirms the truth of this Leninist vision.
[1] Eduardo Viera. Revista Internacional (International Review), Caracas, 1977, pg. 32
[2] Ibid, pg. 33
[3] Pravda, 8.XI, 1964
[4]Pravda, 5.XI, 1967. Quote taken from the pronounced speech in Moscow of Luis Corvalán, General Secretary of the CC of the CP of Chile in the formal meeting dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution of October.
[5] L.Barreto. Obras completas (Complete Works), Sao Paulo, 1956, t. IX, pg.72
[6] J. Ingenieros. Enseñanzas económicas de la revolución rusa. Los tiempos nuevos (Economic Lessons of the Russian Revolution. New Times), Buenos Aires, 1950, pg. 211
[7] Ibid, pg. 229
[8] Nuestra Palabra (Our Word), Buenos Aires, 21.XXX, 1967
[9] Pravda, 7.XI, 1964
[10] A. Pereira. Ensayos de Historia del Brasil (Lessons of Brazilian History), Moscow, 1962, pg. 260. Also see Problemas, 1958, N° 39
[11] Revista Cuba (Cuban Review), November 1967, pg.4
[12] Revista Cuba (Cuban Review), November 1967, pg. 5-6
[13] Revista Internacional (International Review), 1967, N°11, pg. 80
[14] Pravda, 8.XI, 1964
[15] V. I. Lenin. Selected Works in three volumes, Spanish edition, t.3, Moscow, 1966, pg. 754
[16] Ibid, pg.182-183
[17] Ibid, pg. 184
[18] Ibid, pg. 184
[19] Ibid, pg. 188-189
[20] Ibid, pg. 189
[21] Ibid, pg. 193
[22] Ibid, pp. 4-5
[23] J. Sanoja Hernández. 60 años de la URSS y su impacto en el proceso político venezolano (60 Years of the USSR and its impact on the Venezuelan Political Process), Caracas, Cantaclaro Editions, 1983, pp.27-28
[24] Ibid, pg. 8
[25] V. I. Lenin. Complete Works, 2° ed., Buenos Aires, Cartago, t. X, pg. 94
[26] Ibid, pg. 95.
* Director of the Journal “Debate Abierto” (Open Debate), International Relations Secretary of the Communist Party of Venezuela.
Mercenaries in Yemen: the US Connection
worker | April 19, 2017 | 8:25 pm | Latin America, Middle East, political struggle, Yemen | Comments closed

http://www.globalresearch.ca/mercenaries-in-yemen-the-us-connection/5494661

Latin American mercenaries are leaving the ranks of the national armies of their countries to fight in the deserts of Yemen, wearing the uniform of the United Arab Emirates. They have been contracted by private US companies and in some cases directly by the government of the Arab country, which, thanks to vast oil reserves, has the second largest economy of the region.

An article in the New York Times revealed that 450 Latin American soldiers, among them Colombians, Panamanians, Salvadorans and Chileans, have been deployed to Yemen. The mercenaries receive training in the United Arab Emirates before deployment, in part from U.S. trainers.

The presence of Latin American mercenaries in the Middle East is not new. Colombian news media have interviewed mercenaries returning from the Middle East for years. They tell of being recruited by transnational companies with promises of salaries far beyond what they’d receive at home. However, the conflict in Yemen seems to be the first time that Latin American mercenaries have been sent into combat.

Colombia contributes the largest number. According to the New York Times, the UAE military recruits Colombians because of their experience fighting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the jungles and mountains of their country. But there is another reason.

Since the beginning of Plan Colombia, between 2000 and 2015 the U.S. spent almost $7 billion to train, advise and equip Colombia’s security forces. In the last few years, the U.S. government has carried out a strategy to prepare the Colombians for an emerging industry: the “export of security.”

And apparently, one way to export security is to become a U.S.-trained mercenary for Washington’s wars in other parts of the world.

Colombian troops, drilled in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency techniques, instead of exporting security are exporting the United States’ geopolitical agenda of permanent war. They end up doing the dirty work of their ally to the north, who, as a consequence, avoids exposing its forces to harm or facing accusations of interventionism.

According to analyst William Hartung, the United States government has trained a total of 30,000 soldiers from the four countries that make up the Latin American mercenary force in Yemen. A recent investigative report from El Salvador cites a Ministry of Defense source affirming that there are about 100 Salvadorans operating in Yemen. While the Colombians claim to have contracts directly with the Emirati military, in El Salvador the source states that contracting goes through a national company subcontracted by Northrup Grumman.

Northrup Grumman has a history in the Middle East mercenary business. Forbes reports that it absorbed an obscure company called Vinnelli that holds a $819 million-dollar contract to provide personnel for the Saudi National Guard, dating back to 1975.

The same Salvadoran source affirms that there are also Mexicans in Yemen. Mexico was not included in the New York Times report, but has a close relationship with the United States security complex through the war on drugs.

It cannot be known for sure if the hundreds of Latin American mercenaries were trained in the United States or by the U.S. military in their own countries. The U.S. government does not reveal the names of the soldiers or police that it has trained. Nor is there a public registry of mercenaries. Although the practice is legal in certain contexts, it forms part of the underground world of war, in which shadow powers dictate the conditions in which we live–and often die.

What is certain is that contracting Latin American mercenaries follows the logic of the new style of war designed by the Pentagon. This strategy reduces risks to U.S. troops, increases civilian deaths and feeds war profits. Drones–unmanned airplanes–kill thousands of civilians without risking a single life on the part of the aggressors. They’re shielded from the blood of their victims and the horror of their screams.

While technology makes long-distance war possible, another aspect of proxy war is to get others to fight your battles. A sad reflection of patriarchal violence and economic inequality, the recruitment of foreign mercenaries is central to modern-day warfare.

In the case of Yemen, the populations of the countries that are involved in the conflict or feel threatened by it, such as the United Arab Emirates, have no desire to go to war. In recent months the UAE has suffered increasing casualities on the ground while the U.S. and Saudi members of the coalition keep to the skies.

And the United States has strong interests in the region, but does not want to pay the political price of seeing its soldiers return home in body bags. The solution? Hire mercenaries from impoverished Latin American countries.

Recruiting young men from Latin American countries feeds the U.S. war industry. American companies like Blackwater, which has changed its name but remains Erik Prince’s empire of death, and Northrup Grumman, headquartered in Virginia, squeeze more out of their juicy government contracts by reducing soldiers’ pay. According to Colombian reports, their mercenaries receive less than half what European or U.S. soldiers get. Despite the gouging, they still make on average five times more than what they would earn in their home countries.

The third and often ignored element of the new remote-control war is weapons sales. U.S. arms sales are booming, bringing millions of dollars to the U.S. defense industry–a powerful lobby in Congress. US strategists recognize that arms sales effectively advance the geopolitical agenda by changing the balance of power in strategic conflicts.

The Obama administration has promoted bombings by the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and developed a very close relationship with the UAE, which shares its zeal for eliminating the Islamic State. The administration has now decided to sell another $1.3 billion dollars worth of weapons to these countries to replenish supplies. While military aid to allies (and in not a small number of cases, to both sides of armed conflicts) has always been a tool of hegemony, arms sales are now explicitly a central strategy.


The Pentagon and its promoters in Congress openly talk about the advantages of killing from a distance. Critics cite the many lethal attacks on civilians, including large numbers of women and children that are characteristic of this type of war. The UN calculates that the war in Yemen has already led to the deaths of 2,500 civilians, among them women and children; almost 500 were killed by U.S. drone strikes.

Now how many will die at the hands of Latin American mercenaries?

And how many young men–Colombians, Mexicans, Salvadorans–will take their last breath in a desert half a world away, fighting a war that isn’t theirs?

Laura Carlsen is the director of the Americas Program in Mexico City and advisor to Just Associates (JASS) .

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism
worker | January 25, 2017 | 7:15 pm | Africa, Analysis, China, class struggle, Imperialism, Latin America, Russia, Venezuela, WFTU | Comments closed

https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/ch01.htm

Kwame Nkrumah 1965

The mechanisms of neo-colonialism

IN order to halt foreign interference in the affairs of developing countries it is necessary to study, understand, expose and actively combat neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear. For the methods of neo-colonialists are subtle and varied. They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres.

Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about ‘freedom’, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism.

Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can be seen all around the world.

Who really rules in such places as Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal or Italy? If General de Gaulle is ‘defecting’ from U.S. monopoly control, what interpretation can be placed on his ‘experiments’ in the Sahara desert, his paratroopers in Gabon, or his trips to Cambodia and Latin America?

Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a phenomenon dubbed ‘The Invisible Government’, arising from Wall Street’s connection with the Pentagon and various intelligence services. I quote:

‘The Invisible Government … is a loose amorphous grouping of individuals and agencies drawn from many parts of the visible government. It is not limited to the Central Intelligence Agency, although the CIA is at its heart. Nor is it confined to the nine other agencies which comprise what is known as the intelligence community: the National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence and Research, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

‘The Invisible Government includes also many other units and agencies, as well as individuals, that appear outwardly to be a normal part of the conventional government. It even encompasses business firms and institutions that are seemingly private.

‘To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans. An informed citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite direction.

‘This Invisible Government is a relatively new institution. It came into being as a result of two related factors: the rise of the United States after World War II to a position of pre-eminent world power, and the challenge to that power by Soviet Communism…

‘By 1964 the intelligence network had grown into a massive hidden apparatus, secretly employing about 200,000 persons and spending billions of dollars a year. [The Invisible Government, David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, Random House, New York, 1964.]

Here, from the very citadel of neo-colonialism, is a description of the apparatus which now directs all other Western intelligence set-ups either by persuasion or by force. Results were achieved in Algeria during the April 1961 plot of anti-de Gaulle generals; as also in Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, Suez and the famous U-2 spy intrusion of Soviet air space which wrecked the approaching Summit, then in West Germany and again in East Germany in the riots of 1953, in Hungary’s abortive crisis of 1959, Poland’s of September 1956, and in Korea, Burma, Formosa, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam; they are evident in the trouble in Congo (Leopoldville) which began with Lumumba’s murder, and continues till now; in events in Cuba, Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, and in other places too numerous to catalogue completely.

And with what aim have these innumerable incidents occurred? The general objective has been mentioned: to achieve colonialism in fact while preaching independence.

On the economic front, a strong factor favouring Western monopolies and acting against the developing world is inter-national capital’s control of the world market, as well as of the prices of commodities bought and sold there. From 1951 to 1961, without taking oil into consideration, the general level of prices for primary products fell by 33.l per cent, while prices of manufactured goods rose 3.5 per cent (within which, machinery and equipment prices rose 31.3 per cent). In that same decade this caused a loss to the Asian, African and Latin American countries, using 1951 prices as a basis, of some $41,400 million. In the same period, while the volume of exports from these countries rose, their earnings in foreign exchange from such exports decreased.

Another technique of neo-colonialism is the use of high rates of interest. Figures from the World Bank for 1962 showed that seventy-one Asian, African and Latin American countries owed foreign debts of some $27,000 million, on which they paid in interest and service charges some $5,000 million. Since then, such foreign debts have been estimated as more than £30,000 million in these areas. In 1961, the interest rates on almost three-quarters of the loans offered by the major imperialist powers amounted to more than five per cent, in some cases up to seven or eight per cent, while the call-in periods of such loans have been burdensomely short.

While capital worth $30,000 million was exported to some fifty-six developing countries between 1956 and 1962, ‘it is estimated that interest and profit alone extracted on this sum from the debtor countries amounted to more than £15,000 million. This method of penetration by economic aid recently soared into prominence when a number of countries began rejecting it. Ceylon, Indonesia and Cambodia are among those who turned it down. Such ‘aid’ is estimated on the annual average to have amounted to $2,600 million between 1951 and 1955; $4,007 million between 1956 and 1959, and $6,000 million between 1960 and 1962. But the average sums taken out of the aided countries by such donors in a sample year, 1961, are estimated to amount to $5,000 million in profits, $1,000 million in interest, and $5,800 million from non-equivalent exchange, or a total of $11,800 million extracted against $6,000 million put in. Thus, ‘aid’ turns out to be another means of exploitation, a modern method of capital export under a more cosmetic name.

Still another neo-colonialist trap on the economic front has come to be known as ‘multilateral aid’ through international organisations: the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-national Bank for Reconstruction and Development (known as the World Bank), the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association are examples, all, significantly, having U.S. capital as their major backing. These agencies have the habit of forcing would-be borrowers to submit to various offensive conditions, such as supplying information about their economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by the World Bank and accepting agency supervision of their use of loans. As for the alleged development, between 1960 and mid-1963 the International Development Association promised a total of $500 million to applicants, out of which only $70 million were actually received.

In more recent years, as pointed out by Monitor in The Times, 1 July 1965, there has been a substantial increase in communist technical and economic aid activities in developing countries. During 1964 the total amount of assistance offered was approximately £600 million. This was almost a third of the total communist aid given during the previous decade. The Middle East received about 40 per cent of the total, Asia 36 per cent, Africa 22 per cent and Latin America the rest.

Increased Chinese activity was responsible to some extent for the larger amount of aid offered in 1964, though China contributed only a quarter of the total aid committed; the Soviet Union provided a half, and the East European countries a quarter.

Although aid from socialist countries still falls far short of that offered from the west, it is often more impressive, since it is swift and flexible, and interest rates on communist loans are only about two per cent compared with five to six per cent charged on loans from western countries.

Nor is the whole story of ‘aid’ contained in figures, for there are conditions which hedge it around: the conclusion of commerce and navigation treaties; agreements for economic co-operation; the right to meddle in internal finances, including currency and foreign exchange, to lower trade barriers in favour of the donor country’s goods and capital; to protect the interests of private investments; determination of how the funds are to be used; forcing the recipient to set up counterpart funds; to supply raw materials to the donor; and use of such funds a majority of it, in fact to buy goods from the donor nation. These conditions apply to industry, commerce, agriculture, shipping and insurance, apart from others which are political and military.

So-called ‘invisible trade’ furnishes the Western monopolies with yet another means of economic penetration. Over 90 per cent of world ocean shipping is controlled by me imperialist countries. They control shipping rates and, between 1951 and 1961, they increased them some five times in a total rise of about 60 per cent, the upward trend continuing. Thus, net annual freight expenses incurred by Asia, Africa and Latin America amount to no less than an estimated $1,600 million. This is over and above all other profits and interest payments. As for insurance payments, in 1961 alone these amounted to an unfavourable balance in Asia, Africa and Latin America of some additional $370 million.

Having waded through all this, however, we have begun to understand only the basic methods of neo-colonialism. The full extent of its inventiveness is far from exhausted.

In the labour field, for example, imperialism operates through labour arms like the Social Democratic parties of Europe led by the British Labour Party, and through such instruments as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), now apparently being superseded by the New York Africa-American Labour Centre (AALC) under AFL-CIO chief George Meany and the well-known CIA man in labour’s top echelons, Irving Brown.

In 1945, out of the euphoria of anti-fascist victory, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) had been formed, including all world labour except the U.S. American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1949, however, led by the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), a number of pro-imperialist labour bodies in the West broke away from the WFTU over the issue of anti-colonialist liberation, and set up the ICFTU.

For ten years it continued under British TUC leadership. Its record in Africa, Asia and Latin America could gratify only the big international monopolies which were extracting super-profits from those areas.

In 1959, at Brussels, the United States AFL-CIO union centre fought for and won control of the ICFTU Executive Board. From then on a flood of typewriters, mimeograph machines, cars, supplies, buildings, salaries and, so it is still averred, outright bribes for labour leaders in various parts of the developing world rapidly linked ICFTU in the minds of the rank and file with the CIA. To such an extent did its prestige suffer under these American bosses that, in 1964, the AFL-CIO brains felt it necessary to establish a fresh outfit. They set up the AALC in New York right across the river from the United Nations.

‘As a steadfast champion of national independence, democracy and social justice’, unblushingly stated the April 1965 Bulletin put out by this Centre, ‘the AFL-CIO will strengthen its efforts to assist the advancement of the economic conditions of the African peoples. Toward this end, steps have been taken to expand assistance to the African free trade unions by organising the African-American Labour Centre. Such assistance will help African labour play a vital role in the economic and democratic upbuilding of their countries.’

The March issue of this Bulletin, however, gave the game away: ‘In mobilising capital resources for investment in Workers Education, Vocational Training, Co-operatives, Health Clinics and Housing, the Centre will work with both private and public institutions. It will also encourage labour-management co-operation to expand American capital investment in the African nations.’ The italics are mine. Could anything be plainer?

Following a pattern previously set by the ICFTU, it has already started classes: one for drivers and mechanics in Nigeria, one in tailoring in Kenya. Labour scholarships are being offered to Africans who want to study trade unionism in of all places-Austria, ostensibly by the Austrian unions. Elsewhere, labour, organised into political parties of which the British Labour Party is a leading and typical example, has shown a similar aptitude for encouraging ‘Labour-management co-operation to expand . . . capital investment in African nations.’

But as the struggle sharpens, even these measures of neo-colonialism are proving too mild. So Africa, Asia and Latin America have begun to experience a round of coups d’etat or would-be coups, together with a series of political assassinations which have destroyed in their political primes some of the newly emerging nations best leaders. To ensure success in these endeavours, the imperialists have made widespread and wily use of ideological and cultural weapons in the form of intrigues, manoeuvres and slander campaigns.

Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists’!

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps.

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A. were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information.

The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.

In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective countries.

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States ‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency (USIA).

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over. . . .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.

When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence agency, and in the CIA.

Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities.

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programmes whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy.

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.

Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries.

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources.

Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history.

The American Revolution of 1776 struggled through to victory over a tangle of inefficiency, mismanagement, corruption, outright subversion and counter-revolution the like of which has been repeated to some degree in every subsequent revolution to date.

The Russian Revolution during the period of Intervention, 1917 to 1922, appeared to be dying on its feet. The Chinese Revolution at one time was forced to pull out of its existing bases, lock stock and barrel, and make the unprecedented Long March; yet it triumphed. Imperialist white mercenaries who dropped so confidently out of the skies on Stanleyville after a plane trip from Ascension Island thought that their job would be ‘duck soup’. Yet, till now, the nationalist forces of Congo (Leopoldville) continue to fight their way forward. They do not talk of if they will win, but only of when.

Asia provides a further example of the strength of a people’s will to determine their own future. In South Vietnam ‘special warfare’ is being fought to hold back the tide of revolutionary change. ‘Special warfare’ is a concept of General Maxwell Taylor and a military extension of the creed of John Foster Dulles: let Asians fight Asians. Briefly, the technique is for the foreign power to supply the money, aircraft, military equipment of all kinds, and the strategic and tactical command from a General Staff down to officer ‘advisers’, while the troops of the puppet government bear the brunt of the fighting. Yet in spite of bombing raids and the immense build-up of foreign strength in the area, the people of both North and South Vietnam are proving to be unconquerable.

In other parts of Asia, in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and now the Philippines, Thailand and Burma, the peoples of ex-colonial countries have stood firm and are winning battles against the allegedly superior imperialist enemy. In Latin America, despite ‘final’ punitive expeditions, the growing armed insurrections in Colombia, Venezuala and other countries continue to consolidate gains.

In Africa, we in Ghana have withstood all efforts by imperialism and its agents; Tanzania has nipped subversive plots in the bud, as have Brazzaville, Uganda and Kenya. The struggle rages back and forth. The surging popular forces may still be hampered by colonialist legacies, but nonetheless they advance inexorably.

All these examples prove beyond doubt that neo-colonialism is not a sign of imperialism’s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp. It testifies to its inability to rule any longer by old methods. Independence is a luxury it can no longer afford to permit its subject peoples, so that even what it claims to have ‘given’ it now seeks to take away.

This means that neo-colonialism can and will be defeated. How can this be done?

Thus far, all the methods of neo-colonialists have pointed in one direction, the ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes throughout history — divide and rule.

Quite obviously, therefore, unity is the first requisite for destroying neo-colonialism. Primary and basic is the need for an all-union government on the much divided continent of Africa. Along with that, a strengthening of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation and the spirit of Bandung is already under way. To it, we must seek the adherence on an increasingly formal basis of our Latin American brothers.

Furthermore, all these liberatory forces have, on all major issues and at every possible instance, the support of the growing socialist sector of the world.

Finally, we must encourage and utilise to the full those still all too few yet growing instances of support for liberation and anti-colonialism inside the imperialist world itself.

To carry out such a political programme, we must all back it with national plans designed to strengthen ourselves as independent nations. An external condition for such independent development is neutrality or political non-alignment. This has been expressed in two conferences of Non-Aligned Nations during the recent past, the last of which, in Cairo in 1964, clearly and inevitably showed itself at one with the rising forcesof liberation and human dignity.

And the preconditions for all this, to which lip service is often paid but activity seldom directed, is to develop ideological clarity among the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, pro-liberation masses of our continents. They, and they alone, make, maintain or break revolutions.

With the utmost speed, neo-colonialism must be analysed in clear and simple terms for the full mass understanding by the surging organisations of the African peoples. The All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) has already made a start in this direction, while the Pan-African Youth Movement, the women, journalists, farmers and others are not far behind. Bolstered with ideological clarity, these organisations, closely linked with the ruling parties where liberatory forces are in power, will prove that neo-colonialism is the symptom of imperialism’s weakness and that it is defeatable. For, when all is said and done, it is the so-called little man, the bent-backed, exploited, malnourished, blood-covered fighter for independence who decides. And he invariably decides for freedom.

Communist Party of Mexico- The class character of interstate unions in America

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Communist Party of Mexico- The class character of interstate unions in America

Class character of interstate unions in America.
By Pável Blanco Cabrera & Angel Chávez Mancilla*.
Source: International Communist Review, Issue 6, 2015.
A class approach that puts aside populist criteria is necessary, and this is done on a scientific basis, using the Marxist method of analysing reality, considering the degree of development of capitalism, the process of concentration and centralization in the imperialist phase, emphasizing what is general, without neglecting the peculiarities, and avoiding to place the part above the all. Marxist doctrine establishes the mutual connection between the phenomena of nature and society rather than analyse them in isolation. As V.S. Molodtsov noted “to deny the interdependence of phenomena goes against the possibility of knowledge as a single whole, as opposed to metaphysics Marxism-Leninism developed a truly scientific method of knowledge and transformation of reality. This method requires, first of all, considering all the phenomena of nature and society in mutual connection and interdependence“[1].
These features of Marxist-Leninist analysis are not always followed and dogmatic approaches remain, for example, with regard to the study of imperialism. For example, the relationships of economic dependences are considered fixed, immovable. In addition it neglects an essential quality of imperialism, that Lenin clarified, that it is monopoly capitalism, beating away free competition[2]; five traits are expressed in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and they only cling to one, dodging other traits of critical importance. This leads to distortions in the analysis of contemporary interstate unions and the anti-imperialist struggle itself, strictly limiting it to the conception of weak countries versus foreign powers, or economic subordination relations, without considering that capital is developing and there are constant changes, and interdependence phenomena.
Since the beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Canada, USA , Mexico) in 1994, interstate unions are being promoted in America, bilateral, multilateral and even those of continental character, with economic, trade, customs, immigration, regional integration, police and military collaboration.
Latin America is not an exclusive “backyard ” of US monopolies, though its economic and political interests are still dominant, there is an increasingly growing presence of capitals from the European Union, China, and even the coordinated presence of monopolies of South America, and monopolies of each the countries involved, which are benefitted and who will occupy key places in the economic areas in which they participate.
Approaches on the class character of these interstate unions are plagued by confusion, because perceptions are mechanically supported by previous elaborations, dogmatically, as corresponding to a different time of development of capitalism rather that in its imperialist stage, and even to historical analogies such as colonial domination. This leads to ambiguity in strategic development by several communist and workers’ parties, and to the marsh in the class struggle, tasks and allies are mistaken, and promoting class collaboration, ideological misrepresentation, postponing the historic goal that was already mapped out in 1848 in the program for the communists which Marx and Engels wrote.
A first issue, is the way the Leninist theory of imperialism is assumed. Reductively it is focused as a relation of domination, and not the highest and final stage of capitalism, as monopoly capitalism. Imperialism is thus identified with “Yankee imperialism”, as a new colonial power, and maintains that the first task of the Communists is to fight for national independence, a task in which a spectrum of cross-class alliances is designed and the bourgeoisie is divided between “national” and “pro-imperialist”; by anti-imperialist sectors they mean anti-American, not necessarily antimonopoly because that would be involving many “national” monopolies, with which opposition platforms are forged against “foreign” monopolies. It is clear to the Communists, that regardless of nationality, whether they hold a higher or lower place, any monopoly is an essential component of the international imperialist system.
The main conclusion of this misperception is that Latin American countries are dependent, neo-colonies of American imperialism, and this conclusion is signed by a significant number of communist and labour parties of the region, and shared by reformist, opportunistic, and even political expressions of the bourgeoisie, not only at national scale but regional and seeking a continental character, plus it is no coincidence that these formations[3] have correspondence with projects or mechanisms of some interstate unions, claiming its alternative nature to the American imperialist centre.
It is assumed that the dominant role of the US is static, without considering the inter-imperialist contradictions and intense battle between sharks to occupy the top of the pyramid. True, today in America the monopolies from US are dominant, but they are not as much as 50, 25 or even 10 years ago, because every time they are losing ground to competitors on the rise of other nationalities. Leninist law of uneven development is checked.
When influencing the strategy and tactics, the opportunist character that contains class struggle manifests itself for it sections capital, considering that the national capital must be protected from abroad and leads to loss of class independence of the workers, placing them at the tail of the bourgeoisie.
Let us take the case of NAFTA, against which the Communists have been fighting since 1994, and even before, when it was a project proposed by the government of George Bush. Overall popular class forces, including us[4], subscribed that Mexico being a dependent country the free trade area meant that Mexico went from being a semi colony into a process of direct annexation by the United States. The struggle perspective stood with the flag of national independence and sovereignty and conceived a broad front with part of the bourgeoisie of the country. If you see the resolutions, declarations issued by PCM then you will find that we had more concern for the future of the industrial manufacturing, textiles, agriculture, small industry, bourgeois facing foreseeable ruin, and you will notice very little reference to the situation of Mexican, Canadian, American and migrant working class. More than two decades later the assessment that history provides allows us to confirm that this approach was wrong, because not only the American monopolies made huge profits, but also Canadian and Mexican monopolies, which strengthened and absorbed the weaker ones in the USA, in the field of telephony, America Movil, and in the mining branch, Industrial Minera Mexico, both dominant Mexican monopolies that plunder, export capital to and exploit workers of the in the US and in Latin America, and have a multifaceted character as they have expanded their investments from telephony to the press, and in general communication services, food, pharmaceuticals, etc. In the case of Industrial Minera Mexico it absorbed several monopolies in the mining and metal-mechanical branch in the US, Peru and Chile. Other instructive examples are the monopoly of the Mexican Bimbo, the food industry, which already dominates the sector in Spain and ventures into China; Construction monopoly ICA, in competition with Brazilian Odebrecht dispute monopoly control of the sector in building roads, bridges and infrastructure; a sobering example is the state monopoly Pemex also locks in that direction, it expanded its line of control in ports and shipyards in Spain. They are not exceptions, you could list other, and check that regardless of nationality monopolies increased their profits, advanced concentrating and centralizing in their field and expanding to others, likewise workers, regardless of nationality, are exploited, impoverished, and are affected by the measures taken by the interstate unions – in this case the NAFTA, to affect their labour rights, reducing them to ashes, devaluing the work and sharpening the capital / labour contradiction, in addition to other measures such as privatization and cutting public sectors of education, health, etc. But not only in the case of NAFTA, Plan Puebla-Panama, bilateral treaties, tried and failed in the FTAA, but also in agreements with the EU, and even in the “alternative” called as MERCOSUR, UNASUR and ALBA, where monopolies of these countries have consolidated as dominant in important branches of agriculture, construction, energy, and also concatenated with blocks, which in the inter dispute with the US, as the case of the BRICS, consider them strategic partners climbing the imperialist pyramid.
Is it correct to speak of Mexico as a dependent and semicolonial country when it ranks 11th in the gross world product? When monopolies are consolidated after a long process of concentration and centralization? According to our findings, set out in the program adopted by the V Congress of the PCM, Mexico is a country of average development in which capitalist relations are fully consolidated, intermediate in the imperialist pyramid, with interdependent relationships that ensure the development of monopolies.
As the Communist Party of Greece states: “History has shown that monopoly as a result of the concentration of capital, as a fundamental law of the present stage of capitalism is a general trend worldwide and can coexist with forms of pre-capitalist economy and property.[5]” That is, in Mexico there are characteristics of economic backwardness, though it is not dominant, as is usually intense and growing capitalist development; there are relationships of dependence and interdependence, stronger with the US economy, and growing with the European Union. We reiterate, there are very strong, dominant Mexican monopolies.
We are convinced of the fight against interstate unions, because these are unfavourable to the people and the working class, and that it has to start from a rigorous class analysis, otherwise, if wrong analyses and perceptions prevail, a wrong strategy will lead to the delay of antimonopoly, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist objectives.
Among the ideological components of non-class analysis we find the following:
a) Placing the fundamental contradiction as dependence / independence and erroneously displacing the essence of the era which is capital / labour antagonism.
b) Overideologizing the independence and anti-colonialist struggle of the nineteenth century, looking to extract out poetry of the past, and not from the future[6]. The action and the program of Hidalgo, Bolivar, Juarez, San Martin, Sucre, etc., corresponding to a particular time, two centuries ago, when the rising bourgeoisie found in favour of their class interests the need to form their States freeing them from the colonial domination of the Spanish crown, moving immediately to establish domination of the bourgeois class over the exploited and oppressed. Recognizing the revolutionary-democratic struggles and characterizing these as progressive in its time, is downright insufficient wanting to find in the programs of old the flags that workers must now take up to achieve their emancipation. Concepts such as “Monroeism vs bolivarianism” for example, contribute to conceal that at the time the antagonist is socialism vs. capitalism, and the same applies to projects of “Gran Colombia”, etc, etc, today raised by political forces that do not fight against monopolies, but on behalf of those of their respective nationalities.
c) By placing independence as the immediate objective and broad cross-class alliances as the political subject to obtain it, intermediate stages are set, and although those who advocate them may adhere to the socialist-communist goal, they only do so formally for siding with any specific section of the bourgeoisie contributes to the prolongation of capitalist society.
d) Categories such as neoliberalism, globalization, multipolarity, which provide space to the improvement and “humanization” of capitalism, managing it differently, hiding the class conflict in international relations and leading the working class and peoples to take sides in the inter dispute by a block opposite to the US, a more “friendly” one.
e) When considering imperialism as a metropolis, the class struggle in each country is left aside, for the sake of “national unity”, to focus on the struggle against foreign domination.
Another important issue is the following. There is a consensus among the opportunist forces that interstate agreements promoted by the US imperialist centre must be fought in favour of national sections of the bourgeoisie. However when these intergovernmental agreements are with other imperialist centres the position changes, they are presented as the passage of a unipolar to a multipolar world, wording which hides the need to fight for a new world, where other social relationships exist, where workers’ power imposes new conditions favourable to the peoples in open dispute against imperialism. The same is true when the State Union is e.g. MERCOSUR, UNASUR and ALBA-TCP. The equation is simple, the sum of capitalist economies results in an inter-block and cannot result in a popular alliance opposed to monopolies. Where is the alternative there? Let us go to the case of ALBA-TCP that arouses expectations; the presence of Cuba, qualitatively, the economic weight, due to the difficulties it had as a result of the imperialist blockade, has no decisive economic weight relative to the other participating countries that are qualitatively capitalist countries. The ALBA-TCP also recommends capital investment in Latin America itself; true, the Bolivarian political processes of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, arouses expectation on the course they can take; but until today, in the Venezuelan case, after 16 years, the bottom line is that the capitalist structure remains intact and monopolies still dominate. Just as wrong is “socialism of the XXI century” (market socialism, bourgeois state, multi-class party, defence of private property and profits of monopolies), as thinking that these processes have a nature distinct of the capitalist one.
ALBA actually functions as a supranational structure just as the EU, and has established an economic base in capitalist relations of production that leads them to undertake joint economic projects as the development of monopoly enterprises with state investment from member countries of ALBA, and private investment to a lesser extent, as are the so called grand-national projects and grand-national companies that have raised venture in mining and metallurgy of aluminum, iron and steel. The boost they propose to give the cement industry with the construction of a cement plant with portland type production capacity of 1,000,000 tons / year, in the departments of Oruro and Potosi with the participation of Cuba and Venezuela is also significant, as it makes clear that the expropriation of CEMEX[7] in Venezuela responds to capitalist economic interests such as the creation of a cement monopoly.[8]
Although the ALBA declares that “The concept of grand-national companies emerged in opposition to transnational companies, therefore, its economic dynamics will be directed to favour the production of goods and services to satisfy human needs” and believes that opposes the logic of capital accumulation, the reality is that economic cooperation does not change the basis of the economic system, so the Grannacional projects are actually a way to develop the industrialization of the countries participating in the ALBA which will lead to the development and strengthening of monopolies, consolidating the ALBA as an imperialist bloc.[9]
Let us recall that Lenin in Imperialism, Highest Stage of Capitalism, warned that “the monopolies have never pursued as an end, nor have resulted, in providing benefits to consumers or, at least, make available to the state a part of employer benefits, rather they have served for the State to bailout private industry, which has come almost to bankruptcy”, in this case the states of the ALBA alliance are seeking to encourage monopolies.
Another example that interstate alliances are of inter-imperialist nature is that for example the special ALBA 2014 Communiqué on states affected by transnational interests does not pronounce against the power of monopolies in general but against those most closely linked to US capital, promoting indirectly with the Southern Observatory on Investment and Transnationals that monopolies that exploit workers in the region respond to the interests of the ALBA, i.e. the exploitation of the working class of the ALBA countries enrich the grand-national companies.[10]
The economic alliance takes ALBA to close military links to defend their economic interests, as NATO is the armed wing of the member countries of the EU, which is why it counts with a defence and sovereignty committee composed of the defence ministers of the member countries seeking “popular joint comprehensive defence strategy and to establish a school of dignity and sovereignty of the armed forces” behind the popular sovereignty and integral defence is the defence of monopoly interests.
Appreciated in their economic characteristics, interstate agreements in the Americas, without exception, have a capitalist class nature and cannot be presented as alternatives to the working class and peoples.
In the fight against them, i.e. in the struggle against the international imperialist system Communists must always specify the antimonopoly and anti-capitalist content and take into account that the struggle is national in form and international for its content. That is, to put a current example, part of the anti-imperialist struggle for the Mexican proletariat is fighting the monopoly Industrial Minera Mexico that now exploits the Peruvian and American proletariat through the Southern Cooper Company. Of very little use it is to break with NAFTA if it is to benefit the monopolies of national origin. Fighting interstate agreements, in our conception and strategic analysis, is linked to the struggle for socialism and workers’ and people’s power, i.e. with a clear anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist vision.
The overthrow of capitalism, of monopoly power is the basic condition to break the plundering of peoples and the exploitation of the proletariat, to forge relations of equality among peoples and ensuring development with socialism-communism will bring welfare of the working class and popular sectors.
NOTES:
[1] V.S. Molodotsov; Marxist dialectics and the mutual connection and interdependence of nature and society phenomena, in Dialectic Materialism; Science Academy of the USSR, under the editing of  V. P. Tchertkov, V. S. Molodtsov, D.M. Trochin, K.V. Moroz, F.I. Kalochin, etc; Moscow 1954.
[2] Let us remember that the features that Lenin assigns to imperialism are the follwing: “(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopoly capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.”
Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, LCW Volume 22
[3] For example the Conference of Organizations and Political Parties of Latin America (COPPAL), the forum of Sao Paulo, which has strong ties with the Left European Party, and that to a great extent are functional for the collaboration of Latin American capitals with European, fundamentally between the MERCOSUR-EU agreements. Organizations that in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s of the XX century, led armed struggles in Central America and that have evolved towards social-democracy, and not as a degeneration, rather a logical result of its class origin and its program, are also inscribed in this analysis. It is in general the position denominated as left, concept that the PCM does not use for it does not express with clarity the class position and it does cloud ideologically, for it misleads, as for left today is also understood liberal formations, socialdemocrats and even capitalist options of neokeynesian management.
[4] The Communist Party of Mexico kept from 1994 and until the year 1999 a platform of struggle against NAFTA baseed on the misleading position that it was an anticolonial struggle for independence to break chains of imperialist domination, from 1999 the focus of struggle acquired a class character, and the rupture with monopolies that exploited the working class not only of Mexico, but also of USA and Canada. It was however until the IV Congress in the year 2010, when the position of rupture with NAFTA and any inter-state agreement was linked with the struggle for socialism-communism and for workers and people’s power.
[5] The Leninist approach of KKE on imperialism and the imperialist pyramid. Written Contribution of KKE to the 9th International Conference “Lenin and the contemporary world”
[6] As Marx well emphasized in the 18th Brumaire of Louise Bonaparte
[7] Mexican monopoly expropriated by the bolivarian government of Venezuela, ¿Do we the working class communist have to choose between the monopoly of the mexican bourgeoisie, or the monopoly of southamerican monopoly? For none, for our duty is to propose the socialization of the means of production and change.
[10] Approved communiqué of the XIV Political Council of ALBA, New York, September 26, 2014.
 
* Pável Blanco Cabrera is the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Mexico and Angel Chávez Mancilla is Responsible for the Ideology Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Mexico, Director of El Machete.