p By now, about 1,700 million people have escaped from colonial and semi-colonial political dependence. Among the new states, Cuba and several Asian countries have, in varying extent, implemented socialist change; others—Burma, the United Arab Republic, Algeria, Syria, Guinea, the Congo (Brazzaville), Tanzania, Libya and Southern Yemen— have declared their firm intention to take the socialist path and implement major social change. However, most emergent states still retain a capitalist social system, and some even have vestiges of feudalism, backwardness and economic dependence on imperialism, though many strive to pursue an independent national policy.

p The colonial powers are no longer able to extort colonial 210 tribute by extra-economic means from the newly independent states and are no longer capable of dictating foreign policy to many non-aligned countries. They cannot use the liberated peoples as cannon fodder in their imperialist wars; nor can they normally employ their territories as strategic springboards for imperialist aggression; nor yet can they freely dictate policy on the various national markets, make free with their natural resources, stifle indigenous educational advancement or hamper the revival of national culture.

p The colonial collapse was particularly cataclysmic between 1944 and 1949 and in the early 1960s. Defeat in the war put an end to Hitler’s plans for a Third Reich in Europe, the Italian colonial empire in Africa and the Japanese colonial empire in Asia. The same thing was shortly to happen to the Dutch, British and French colonies in Asia.

p In the same period, freedom fighters began to shake colonial regimes in Africa, but they were mostly repulsed. Only after 1957, when socialism had clearly tilted the world balance of power, did the liberation movement in Africa rise again, sweep across the continent and wash away the chains of political dependence in virtually every African country. The African liberation movement gained immensely from the increased economic and military potential of the Soviet Union and the whole socialist community, its international campaign for the freedom and sovereignty of all peoples, the mounting ideological influence of socialism and the rebuff dealt to imperialism, with decisive Soviet assistance, over Suez. In 1960 alone, as many as 17 African states and Cyprus declared their independence; in the following two years, another 10 countries on different continents became independent, to be joined in the subsequent four years by a further 11 nations. Altogether as many as 39 new states, with a total population of 200 million people (1967), came into being between 1958 and 1966.

p At the second stage of colonial disintegration, one country in Latin America, Cuba, became the first in the Western hemisphere to break out of the imperialist system and confidently take the road to socialism. This precipitated other changes in Latin America: several countries have stepped up their fight to put paid to their de facto semi-colonial status and have achieved some success. The embittered struggle continues between the liberation fighters and the U.S. 211 colonialists, who have redoubled their efforts to hit back by staging reactionary coups in Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere. The U.S. monopolies are desperately trying to retain and strengthen their colonial domination of Latin America.

p By 1970, a number of Afro-Asian and Latin American states, with about 10 per cent of the world’s population, remained in varying degree of political dependence on the colonial powers. But, of these, less than a third of the total population lived in de facto colonial conditions, and only 1 per cent (about 33 million) were in territories juridically classed as colonies. These are the Portuguese colonies and the remaining small colonial possessions and protectorates of Great Britain, the U.S.A., Australia and a few other states. In addition, some 15 million non-whites in the racialist Republic of South Africa were in even worse conditions. Further, the U.S.-occupied South Korea, South Vietnam, Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands are, in fact, colonially dependent on U.S. imperialism.

p A number of states in Asia, Africa and Latin America are also variously politically dependent on the imperialist powers, verging sometimes on semi-colonial status, by virtue of being bound by imperialist pacts to military blocs or bilateral agreements to provide military bases, extraterritorial or other rights that violate their sovereignty and put them in a dependent position.

p Although the U.S. colonialists have been trying hard to reinforce the pacts they sponsor and even to establish new ones (ASPAC and attempts to set up an Islamic Pact), the fighters for freedom, national independence and progress are working from within to blunt these instruments of aggression and neocolonialism. Some countries have already broken free from U.S.-sponsored blocs; others, though still nominally members, increasingly act on their own and flout the dictates of American imperialism.

The people of the colonies, semi-colonies and dependent countries are stepping up their freedom campaign. And although some have met with defeat, as in Guatemala, Brazil and South Korea, the overall trend is towards success for the anti-imperialist, national liberation movement, universally supported by the forces of socialism.