I. Protracted global depression and disorder
The world today is characterized by protracted economic depression and political disorder. The crisis of the world capitalist system keeps on worsening and deepening because the imperialist powers cling to the rapacious fundaments of capitalist exploitation and the dogma of neoliberal globalization. The consequent political disorder involves the rise of reactionary currents, the escalation of state terrorism, foreign military intervention and wars of aggression. Amid all this rise the people's resistance and revolution.
The recent flurry of summits by the Group of 8, the Group of 20 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation have exposed the confusion and inability of the leaders of the imperialist states to solve the protracted economic depression in their respective economies. They openly worry about protectionist trends that run counter to the policy of neoliberal globalization. They fear both the deflationary tendency resulting from the depression and the inflationary tendency from public spending.
In the imperialist countries, public funds have been used to bail out the big banks and corporations responsible for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The use of public funds for bailout in combination with tax cuts have allowed the monopoly bourgeoisie, especially the finance oligarchy to show profits and revive the financial markets. However, production and employment have continued to decline.
Public deficits and debts have mounted. Subsequently, brutal austerity measures at the expense of the workers and the rest of the people have been adopted. Workers' economic, social and political rights are under severe attack. Wages have been pushed down. Health insurance has been made more expensive. Unemployment relief and pension benefits have been reduced. Social services have drastically been cut back.
The workers are being pressed upon by their dire conditions to wage class struggle. They are conducting strikes intermittently and on a widening scale. Among the most threatened and victimized as a result of the crisis are the blue-collar, the public sector, the young and the migrant workers. They are also the most conspicuous and most militant in general strikes and other mass protest actions. The student youth are rising due to the drastic cutbacks on education and other social services. Mass protests of millions have been sprouting in many countries in Europe and some states in the US and spreading to other countries.
The mass movement of the workers and youth is exposing the root causes of the crisis and is favoring the advance of progressive political parties. But the monopoly bourgeoisie is whipping up chauvinism, racism, religious prejudices and other reactionary currents in order to obfuscate the roots of the crisis and favor the rise of reactionary parties. A tug of war is going on between the forces of the Left and the Right in the electoral and other forms of struggle.
The imperialist states are increasingly repressive and prone to use state terrorism. The legal and political infrastructure for fascism has become well entrenched since the 9/11 anti-terrorist hysteria. The imperialist states have stepped up war hysteria and war production, and have proceeded to escalate military intervention and wars of aggression. They have taken advantage of the high rate of unemployment to recruit more troops for their armies and more police agents for breaking up strikes and street demonstrations. Fascism is rearing its ugly head as immigrants and migrant workers are scapegoated as having caused the crisis.
Contradictions among the imperialist powers on economic, financial, political and security issues are steadily growing and becoming conspicuous. But the imperialist powers still manage to maintain their alliance as they confront the oppressed peoples and nations in the underdeveloped countries. At any rate, the crisis is generating protectionism in the imperialist countries. Inter-imperialist competition is intensifying more than ever before for sources of cheap labor, oil and other raw materials, markets, fields of investments and spheres of influence.
The US is wary over the tendency of the European Union to look after its own interests in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. The EU is currently being buffeted by the public debt crisis as a consequence of the bailouts and accumulated neoliberal spending on high consumption and on construction projects. Japan continues to hold on to the coat tails of Uncle Sam in terms of accommodation or cooperation in trade, investments, technology and security. In turn, the US wants Japan to act as a counterforce to China as part of the arc of containment against China in the Asia-Pacific region.
However, the US and China have been the main partners under the policy of neoliberal globalization, with the former serving as the main source of investments and main market for the cheap sweatshop consumer manufactures of the latter. Now the US is increasingly blaming China for the global economic and financial crisis and prating that China's export surpluses are the cause of US indebtedness and that China is prolonging and aggravating the crisis by manipulating its currency in order to continue cheapening its exports.
The US depicts China as its current and long-term No. 1 rival in economic and political terms, notwithstanding the fact that China is a poor country with a low per capita GDP even if its total GDP now ranks second in the world. China has strengthened certain parts of the industrial base inherited from socialism, but has undermined other parts through privatization. It has large foreign exchange reserves which it has used to export capital to various parts of the world. But US and other multinational firms have a claim on such foreign exchange reserves.
China has improved its modern weaponry formidable for defensive purposes, but it is still no match to that of the US for offensive or aggressive purposes. It has sought to counterbalance the US military presence by forming the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, developing close friendly relations with Russia, and making the US dependent on its mediating role with regard to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The US is currently being weakened by the economic and financial crisis as well as by its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and the overstretch of its military forces elsewhere in the world. Thus, it appears weakened relative to China in East Asia and relative to the bloc of countries aligned with Cuba and Venezuela in Latin America.
The countries most devastated by the crisis of the world capitalist crisis are, of course, those underdeveloped ones in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and those degraded in Eastern Europe and certain republics of the former Soviet Union. The oppressed peoples and nations in all these countries undergo terrible suffering. They yearn and struggle for national and social liberation from the imperialist countries and the local exploiting classes.
The armed movements fighting the largest and most intense struggles are those of peoples victimized by the US wars of aggression such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking the revolutionary lead on a longer time scale are the Maoist parties waging or preparing to wage people's war for national liberation and new democracy in various continents. The people's war in India, the Philippines, Turkey and elsewhere is showing the way. Avowedly Marxist-Leninist parties like those in Colombia and other countries have also been waging revolutionary armed struggle for several decades.
The defeat of the Tamil Tigers has been due to strategic and tactical errors but has not foreclosed the reemergence of the revolutionary armed struggle in Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka. A new revolutionary leadership has declared the continuance of the people's war. The Maoist party in Nepal is at the crossroads of gaining control over government through parliamentary struggle and mass uprisings, or of resuming a protracted people's war.
More armed revolutionary movements are bound to arise in various continents and countries due to the protracted crisis and its effects, such as increasingly severe forms of oppression and exploitation, more wars of aggression against the people and sharpening contradictions among the imperialist powers themselves. The ever worsening crisis of the world capitalist system is favorable to the armed revolution of the Filipino people.
