p For the Communits Party of Britain, recent events, current circumstances and trends, the obstacles which confront the world’s people and the ways in which those obstacles can be overcome, all vindicate Marxism and the Marxist approach.

p We would go further: because the modern world is characterised by the existence of imperialism, Marxism/Leninism remains valid as the expression of Marxism in the imperialist era.

p We stand by these propositions in respect of each of the three sources and three component parts of Marxism.

p Philosophically, Marxism is dialectical materialism, the materialist view is the world is made up of matter and that the highest and most complex organ of matter—the human brain—is capable of discovering and understanding all the phenomena of the universe. Continuing advances in the natural sciences, where materialism has resoundingly triumphed, confirm this view.

p In human society, we see fresh evidence in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South Africa of how non-materialist mysticism, obscurantism—the forces of religious and ethnic fundamentalism—seek to turn back the dock, sometimes by centuries, plunging whole countries into chaos and slaughter. While the ruling circles of the imperialist—powers seek to profit from these disasters, Communists—basing themselves on Marxist materialism, reason and humanism—work to unite people against irrationalism, bigotry and prejudice.

p The dialectical method is the only successful way of looking at and making sense of the modern world. Its validity continues to be 140 demonstrated in the natural sciences where, for example, in the field of quantum physics seemingly intractable problems are now being tackled by solutions that embody a dialectical approach. Perhaps, though, this is an area of intellectual activity that we Communists have been slow to look at and learn from in recent years.

p That everything is interconnected, is in motion and transition, contradictions that produce movement and—when resolved— qualitative change, these are dialectical propositions that are incontrovertible in the contemporary world situation.

p But did we Communists apply them honestly and resolutely enough, for instance, to developments in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? The existence of those societies within a totality which included a still-powerful and ruthless imperialist camp, imposed enormous financial and ideological pressures on socialism.Were those pressures appreciated and counteracted sufficiently and correctly? A contradiction arose in the socialist societies between the centralised command system in the economy and in government, and the need to develop and utilise the productive forces by motivating and involving the mass of the people. It was, in our party’s estimation, a contradiction that could only have been solved in the long run by greater democracy and self-government. But again, to what extent was this contradiction recognised and tackled?

p The primary contradiction in the modern world, on a global level, is that between the forces of production and the relations of production.

p At the most basic level, to take the example of food. Food production has increased considerably over the past 10 years; in the developing countries, new technology has doubled and even trebled the yields on large farms. There is enough food to supply everyone with one kilo of grain a day (which would provide 300 calories and ample protein).

p Yet 500 million people suffer hunger, malnutrition or starvation—the same number as 10 years ago. Meanwhile, 600 million tons of grain are fed to animals each year to provide meat for the better-off, using up between 3 and 10 kilos of grain to produce just one kilo of meat. In the European Community and the USA, largescale capitalist farmers are paid to take land out of productive use; 141 mountains of food are produced that cannot be sold in the market for fear of reducing prices and profits—and so they are buried, dyed or injected to make them unfit for human consumption.

p In agriculture as in other branches of capitalist industry, capitalist relations of production—private ownership of the means of production—prevent the forces of production being utilised to solve huge problems of hunger, wretched housing and homelessness, ill health and disease, mass unemployment and so on.

p The laws and imperatives of capitalist production operate today as surely and as savagely as Marxist political economy has always identified. Periodiccrisisof over-productionoccur as ever— in Britain we have been going through the longest slump in economic activity since the 1930s, with one worker in 7 out of a job. The abuseof new technology and enforced changes in employment patterns have made mass unemployment a permanent feature of capitalist Europe and North America. The reserve army of labour of which Marx wrote is now larger and more alienated than ever.

p The capitalist compulsion to maximise surplus value has led to some new developments in State economic policy and in employment practices. In Britain, for example, we have experienced a barrage of anti-trade union laws, company derecognition of unions, privatisations, the contracting-out of services to private companies who employ workers worse terms, and a huge growth in the number of workers who are part-time, temporary, at-home or contractually ‘self-employed’; they suffer lower wages worse conditions and fewer rights in law—and many of them are women, black or migrant workers.

p The divisions between workers of different race or nationality—identified as a major problem by Marx and Engles in relation to English and immigrant Irish workers—are exacerbated by economic crises, by mass unemployment and deprivation, and by the racist policies carried out by the State in capitalism’s interests.

p Lenin elaborated the workings of the imperialist stage of capitalism. He identified its characteristics including the export of capital; the domination of internationally organised trusts, syndicates and cartels; and the territorial division of the world amongst the great powers. These propositions of Marxist political economy are confirmed by the contemporary world situation; somtimes they take new form, but the essence is the same.

p Transnational Corporations (TNCs), more than half of them American or British, now account for 30% of all capitalist world output (including l/3rd of manufacturing output in the developing countries), and 60% of world wide trade. Each of the 10 largest TNCs produces more than any one of atleast 150 of the world’s countries. Between them, 300 giant banks and corporations control 2/3rd of the world economy.

p Through the repatriation of profit and interest on exported capital and bank loans, through the international division of labour, through the creation of Free Trade and Export Processing Zones, through monopolisation and the manipulation of the terms of trade, through transfer pricing, import quotas and tariffs and so on, the TNCs impede and distort development in the Third World; by other more straight-forward means, they undermine self- government and balanced economic development even in the advanced capitalist countries. In all of this, they are assisted by the States of their ‘home’ countries, by pliant or corrupt governments in the Tiosf countries and by the International Monetary Fund’s programmes for austerity, ‘free’ markets and privatisation.

p The result is that the Third World pays more to the imperialist countries every year in debt interest, loan repayments and repatriated profits than the imperialist countries provide investment, credit and so-called aid.

p The TNCs are also the main beneficiaries from international tension, war and the preparations for war. The military-industrial complex of which US President Eisenhower warned in the 1950s is as influential and corrupting as ever in public life in the advanced capitalist countries. The price of its endless drive for profit is paid mostly in the Third World, in terms of imperialist aggression, proWestern puppet dictators, war of annexation and the diversion of scarce resources away from more constructive ends.

p The modem world also has to face growing environmental problems. The drive for profit, the anarchy and irresponsibility of capitalist production—of big business and the TNCs in particular—identify capitalism as part of the problems rather than the solution. This is especially so in the developing countries, ravaged and polluted by TNCs. Thus, the chief economist at the World Bank, Lawrence Summers, could shamelessly argue in December 1991 that dirty industries should be encouraged to locate in the 143 ‘under-polluted’ Third World areas, where controls were less and human lives were not so valuable.

p The territorial division of the world is now taking the form of an intensifying struggle between three emerging economic (and political and military) power blocs: North America, the European Community and the Japan-led Far East.

p In Europe, this bloc will be consolidated by the Maastricht Treaty, which will take Britain and the other Member States towards Economic, Political and Military Union. It will be a superstate ruled by an unelected bureaucracy (the European Commission) and an intentionally unaccountable European Central Bank, carrying out austerity policies that favour big business. That is why the Communist Party of Britain campaigns for a Referendum in order to defeat Maastricht.

p Marxism is not just a theory, still less a dogma: it is also a guide to action.

p Our party’s view remains that the contradictions of capitalism will only be solved in the arena of politically-conscious class struggle. The revolutionary politics of Marxism, enriched by Lenin’s work on the nature of the State and revolution, and or the role and principles of the revolutionary party, remain our guide to action.

p In practice this means organising, supporting and leading workers in their struggles against employers; it means combatting the chauvinism, racism and sexism which divide the working class and add to the oppression of women, ethnic minorities and other sections of the population; it means campaigning against poverty, poor housing and pollution and for the national rights of the Irish, Welsh and Scots peoples. The TNCs and other sectors of big business (which also own most of Britain’s mass media) are the single greatest obstacle to progress on all these fronts in Britain today.

p That is why a democratic anti-monopoly alliance of forces, led by the organised working class, needs to be built to challenge the interests of the capitalist monopolies; that is why the Communist Party of Britain proposes an Alternative Economic and Political Strategy of demands that will benefit the working class and win greater democratic rights, at the expense of State-monopoly capitalism. The struggle for such a strategy inside and outside Parliament would, in our view, create the most favourable conditions for 144 the conquest of State power by the working class and its allies, and for the transition to a socialist society.

p In the revolutionary process, the leading role of a party based on Marxism-Leninism, and with an internationalist perspective, is essential. This proposition has been validated by recent developments in Britain, France, Italy and elsewhere, where social- democratic parties have shown themselves once again unwilling and unable to challenge capitalism.

p Nothing is constant; change can be rapid and dramatic. This Marxist proposition has been borne out not only by events in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but now by the sudden collapse of European Social Democracy.

Thus, the Communist Parties intensify co-operation at national and international levels, gathering around them all the potentially anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist forces. The contemporary world situation not only uphold the validity of Marxism as a theory—it urgently requires the proof of Marxism as a theory in practice.