p Though most colonies and dependencies have won political independence, the liberated peoples cannot feel safe. The imperialists are trying to revive the colonial order and not only to preserve but to intensify the exploitation of the young sovereign states. Tens of millions of people (in the South of Africa) are harnessed to the yoke of colonial oppression. Imperialism continues to be the chief enemy of the national liberation movement; that is why the freedomloving peoples of the world are determined to fight against imperialism, for real freedom and independence. The struggle against the new forms of colonial oppression, against neocolonialism, is one of the most important tasks of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

p Neocolonialism is a system of economic, political and also military and ideological measures which the imperialists use to preserve their domination, exercise political control over the developing countries and exploit their economy. Neocolonialism is economic, military, political and ideological expansion of the imperialists in countries whose people have already freed themselves from colonial domination or are fighting for liberation.

p For example, the imperialist powers which have retained control over the economy of one country or another strive to intensify its economic exploitation. In spite of the fact that the majority of Asian, African and Latin American countries have won political independence, many of them are still economically dependent on the imperialist powers. A considerable part of the industrial and other enterprises in these countries and the bulk of their natural resources are in the hands of foreign monopolies with the result that they continue to net immense profits from the exploitation of the economically dependent countries. At present the imperialists pump, out of them approximately $6,000 million annually in profits alone. One can easily imagine the 334 changes that would have taken place in the national economy and the wellbeing of the population of these countries if these funds were at their own disposal.

p Neocolonialism also finds its expression in the economic “assistance” of the imperialists to the developing countries. This “assistance” is by no means unselfish as the neocolonialist ideologists and politicians assert. It has a definite purpose—to impose on the recipient countries economic agreements that would enable foreign monopolies to preserve and strengthen their economic positions and thus subject the economic and political development of these countries to their selfish interests. As a rule, this “assistance” is provided on conditions which impair the national dignity of the recipients; it gives them no chance to choose their own path of development and is a means of pressuring their domestic and foreign policy. Posing as champions of the economic florescence of the liberated countries the imperialists force them to take to the capitalist road of development and thus keep them in imperialist bondage.

p In the struggle against the liberated peoples the imperialists even resort to the export of counter-revolution and direct armed intervention into the domestic affairs of the newly-free states. Foreign counter-revolutionary forces have attempted and are continuing their efforts to throttle the Ethiopian revolution and dismember the country, and pose a threat to the peoples of Angola, Mozambique, South Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan and other countries.

p An important place in the arsenal of measures employed by neocolonialists is occupied by ideological aggression against the forces of progress, socialism and peace. The efforts of the imperialists to continue and intensify the exploitation of the developing countries are supported by the reactionary bourgeois ideology and above all nationalism, a tested weapon of reaction.

p As Lenin wrote: “The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support.”  [334•*  Such, for example, is the nationalism of some Asian and African countries today; its 335 progressive tendency is manifested in the struggle against imperialism and colonialism, feudal reaction and backwardness, which awakens the awareness of the people, and in the first place, of millions of peasants.

At the same time nationalism is permanently in danger of shedding its democratic content and turning into a reactionary bourgeois nationalism, into Great Power chauvinism and racialism. That explains why the Communists, while supporting nationalism’s liberatory trends, are also consistent champions of proletarian internationalism which affirms international solidarity and the friendship of working people of all races and nationalities. Disclosing the decisive role of the class struggle in any social movement, including the national, and urging unity of the working people of all countries, Marxists-Leninists combat the ideology of bourgeois nationalism and cultivate proletarian internationalism in the consciousness of the people.