2. Growing peoples´ resistance
In the imperialist countries, there is widespread discontent among the people because of the high rate of unemployment, the erosion of hard-won social benefits, the curtailment of trade union and other democratic rights and the austerity measures being adopted against the working class and the people in general. There are outbursts of general strikes and militant mass protests by the workers, youth and students, women and other sectors of society. The public sector workers, the migrant workers, the youth and women are often in the forefront of mass protests in the streets.
The strikes and mass protests break out in countries more often where crisis conditions and austerity measures are most severe, where the authorities are most reactionary and repressive and where there are Communist Parties, mass organizations or coordinating centers that call for concerted actions on the burning issues. In most imperialist countries, there is still political inertia due to the absence of a strong communist party and a strong mass movement of the working class, youth, women and other sectors.
At the same time, the monopoly bourgeoisie has been quite adept at using the mass media, the political parties and the schools in propagating anti-communist ideas and prejudices and playing up chauvinism, anti-migrants sentiment, racism, religious bigotry, war hysteria and fascism to divide the people, to divert public sentiment, and to obscure the roots of the crisis in the world capitalist system. Elections are being used to absorb the swings of political moods from Right to Left and from Left to Right and to keep them within the frame of the capitalist ruling system.
Nevertheless, the crisis conditions persist and provide the opportunities for the subjective forces of the revolution to arise and grow in strength. The communist parties and mass organizations under their leadership are manifesting various degrees of success in developing their strength. They are conscious that a principled and effective communist party generates a strong mass movement and in turn the latter provides the base for increasing the ranks of communists.
In the underdeveloped countries, the people are carrying out and intensifying various forms of resistance against the imperialist powers and the local reactionary forces. The people wage armed resistance against imperialist aggression and occupation as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine. They do likewise in civil wars against repressive ruling systems as in India, the Philippines, Colombia, Peru, Turkey and elsewhere. Whether they wage armed resistance or not, the people engage in mass movements for national and social liberation, and intensify these against the ever rising level of oppression and exploitation.
The people who wage armed revolutions for new democracy and wars of national liberation against foreign aggression and occupation have the best chances of seizing political power and establishing a state with an anti-imperialist and democratic character.
Legal mass movements and mass uprisings without arms, as in North Africa and the Middle East recently, cannot by themselves change the reactionary ruling system even if they succeed, with the direct or indirect support of the reactionary military, in overthrowing autocrats or authoritarian regimes. But they can assist existing armed revolutions or engender these as a subsequent development.
The protraction of the global depression since 2008 has set the stage for great disorder and upheavals in the second decade of the 21st century. The rise of new democratic revolutions through people's wars in the underdeveloped countries can inspire and stimulate revolutionary mass movements in the developed countries. The more imperialist countries engage in military intervention or aggression against other countries the more they take the risk of undermining political and economic stability in their home grounds.
The growing contradictions among imperialist countries can result in the general weakening of the hold of the most repulsive imperialist powers like the US on the underdeveloped countries and in wider room for underdeveloped countries in asserting national independence and anti-imperialist and democratic mass movements to surge forward. The inter-imperialist contradictions involve imperialist powers backing different governments in underdeveloped countries and in exchanging provocations and threats of igniting national, regional or global wars.