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p We are highly honored to be invited to the International Seminar on the Contemporary World Situation and the Vitality of Marxism.

p We express our deep gratitude to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for their fraternal invitation. And we convey our warmest greetings of comradeship and revolutionary solidarity to all participants in this seminar.

p The most meaningful celebration of the 175th birth anniversary of Karl Marx is being held now through this seminar, in addition to the ceaseless daily revolutionary work and struggles of the working class parties and peoples against monopoly capitalism and all reaction.

p We appreciate the international seminar as a form and method of learning from each other and arriving step by step at a common understanding of the common situation and problems that face the world’s proletariat, Marxist working class parties and all the serious adherents to the revolutionary science of Marxism.

p We are of the view that the international seminar is the best possible mode for the widest possible convening and participation of working class parties that are committed to Marxism-Leninism and that have a track record of opposing modem revisionism from varying angles and in varying degrees or are reemerging from the countries ruined by modem revisionism and actual capitalist restoration.

These parties can make a diagnosis of both the diseases of monopoly capitalism and modern revisionism and make a prognosis on the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and people. The 231 ceaseless struggle against monopoly capitalism, modem revisionism and all reaction demonstrates the vitality of Marxism. Under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, the revolutionary struggle is bound to rise to a new and higher level of consciousness, militancy and achievement

A Large View of the
History of the Revolutionary Proletariat

p Before we take up the contemporary world situation, let us have a large view of tine history of the revolutionary proletariat.

p This history is a spiraling process and follows a zigzag course with its ups and downs. The cause of the revolutionary proletariat has repeatedly gone from one level to a higher level. There are the periods of descent from which a new and higher level of revolutionary struggle arises.

p First of all, Marx and Engels gave us the fundamental principles of Marxism in the spheres of philosophy, political economy and social science. Proceeding from the thoroughgoing analysis and critique of the laws of motion of capitalism, Marx and Engels laid the basis of scientific socialism, with its requirements of proletarian class dictatorship against the bourgeois class dictatorship, public ownership of the means of production against the private ownership of these and planned economy against the capitalist anarchy of production.

p In the era of free competition capitalism, Marx and Engels extricated the concept of socialism from the Utopian socialists and put it on a scientific basis. He demonstrated that the workers must reclaim the surplus value created by them but taken away by the capitalists to exploit them. The relations of production must be made to correspond to the social character of largescale machine production of commodities.

p Occurring 23 years after the writing of the Communist Manifesto which had been issued in the year 1848 of the workers’ uprisings coopted by the bourgeoisie, the Paris Commune of 1871 occurred as the prototype and harbinger of proletarian revolution and prdtetiMfian class dictatorship. It was a fleeting victory for the proletariat bat it served to prove that the proletariat is capabteof overthrowing the bourgeoisie and establishing proletarian class dictatorship.

p It would take 46 years from the failure of the Paris Commune 232 before the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 could occur under the leadership of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. They learned well from the lessons of the Paris Commune and from Marx’scritical study of it.

p The decades preceding the October Revolution were characterized by the rapid expansion of capital, the rise of modern imperialism and the degeneration of the major working class parties of the Second International into what we now call classical revisionism and into becoming the adjuncts of the big bourgeoisie in approving colonial projects and increasing war budgets.

p It was the great role of Lenin to further develop Marxism in the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution. He carried forward the study of materialist dialectics by contending with and debunking bourgeois subjectivism as an extension of idealism and metaphysics.

p He made the correct analysis and critique of modem imperialism and led the Great October Socialist Revolution to establish the first socialist state. It would have been impossible to win the revolution without the Bolsheviks being able to contend successfully with the Czarist autocracy, the big bourgeoisie and the classical revisionists.

p Socialist revolution and construction were carried out in the Soviet Union under severe difficulties, resulting from interimperialist war, the civil war and interventionist wars; the ceaseless overt violence and covert sabotage by the reactionaries, including the rich peasants and bourgeois nationalists; and the economic blockade and aggressive threats and actions of the imperialists.

p Stalin succeeded in undertaking socialist revolution and construction. He built and expanded the industrial foundation of the Soviet Union, collectivized and mechanized Soviet agriculture, educated the largest corps of scientific, technical, cultural and administrative personnel in the world and raised the people’s standard of living in so short a time. Stalin demonstrated the superiority of socialism over capitalism, especially when the latter was being beset by the worst depression ever and was afflicted by fascism in several countries.

p But there was no straight road in the advance of socialism in one country. Neither was there such a road for all workers of the world. The world capitalist system increasingly unleashed the 233 monster of fascism against the communist and working class parties and ultimately all-out aggression against the Soviet bulwark of socialism, destroying the lives of 20 million people and devastating the Soviet economy.

p Prom one more dismal period for the socialist cause, culminating in an inter-imperialist war which involved the fascist objective of destroying socialism, several socialist countries would emerge and the national liberation movements in colonies and semicolonies would surge forward in the period after World War II.

p Stalin was greatly honored by the capitalist powers for his successful defense of the Soviet Union and counter attack against the Nazi forces of aggression until the potentates of capitalism declared the cold war. Stalin reconstructed the Soviet economy, raised higher the material and cultural standards, strengthened the internal and peripheral defenses, completed the reversal of the ratio of urban-rural population prior to 1917 and supported the cause of national liberation and socialism abroad.

p Bu t after the death of Stalin, exactly in a period when more than one third of the world’s population were in several socialist countries, the monster of modern revisionism would arise, especially in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev totally negated Stalin in order to promote modem revisionism and to split the international communist movement.

p The petty bourgeoisification of the large mass of bureaucrats and new intelligentsia had already given rise to a monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie. The waning of the proletarian class standpoint started in 1936 when it was proclaimed that there were no more exploiting and exploited classes in the Soviet Union and no more class struggle, except the ever intensifying one between the Soviet people and the external enemy (e.g. the imperialists and their agents).

p Our Party has already approved and issued the document, Stand for Socialism Against Modern Revisionism. To cut short this part of our presentation, we refer you to this document. In this, we trace the path of modem revisionism and capitalist restoration from Khrushchev through Brezhnev to Gorbachev.

For 35 years from 1956 to 1991, the modem revisionists masqueraded as Marxist-Leninists and restored capitalism until they shed off their masks and revealed the face of monopoly bureaucrat 234 capitalism. The revisionist parties and regimes disintegrated and even the Soviet Union collapsed.

The Contemporary World Situation

p We are confronted today with a world situation which has ceased to be a bipolar one between two superpowers in the erstwhile protracted cold war.

p The Soviet Union has imploded due to internal factors, mainly the all-round restoration of capitalism and misallocation of domestic resources to the new bourgeoisie and the arms race; due to overextension in social imperialist activities; and of course due to ceaseless external pressures and subversive work of the U5.-led alliance of capitalist powers.

p The U.S. appears now to have a singular hegemony over the entire world. But this is an imperialist power which has also misallocated and wasted resources in the abuse of finance capitalism, in overconsumption and high speed spending for hightech weaponry.

p The U.S. continues to slide in a strategic decline. Strenuous efforts are being exerted to put on a brake on this slide by stepping up the production of tradable goods and reducing budgetary and trade deficits. But such efforts can only have adverse consequences to the other global centers of capitalism, Japan and Western Europe, and to the so-called newly-industrializing economies which have become dependent on the American market.

p At the same time, the U.S. attempt to reduce military spending through "burden sharing" and military sales tends to favor the resurgence of nationalism and militarism in Japan and Germany. The trend of multipolarization among the three global centers of capitalism will accelerate as thecrisisof overproduction intensifies.

p The United States is still at the head of the world capitalist system through the Group of Seven, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other mechanisms with respect to political, economic and financial domination; and through the U.N. Security Council and the multilateral regional and bilateral military alliances with respect to political and military domination.

p The crisis of overproduction in the world capitalist system is generated and accelerated by high technology, a far cry from the productivity that preceded the crises and interimperialist wars of 235 the past. The centers of world capitalism are increasingly at odds with each other over issues regarding industrial and agricultural production, investment, markets and financial policies.

p The current prolonged recession in the industrial capitalist countries or in fact depression (if we take into account the jobkilling character of new investments and reequipment and the continuing bloat in the service sector and military spending) has been preceded by the longer running depression in the general run of rawmaterial exporting countries in the third world and the Soviet bloc countries since the late seventies and by the colossal amounts of deficits of the US.

p The internationalization of capital after World War II has been unprecedented in the entire history of capitalism. After the reconstruction of the industries of Western Europe and Japan, large amounts of capital were deployed by the transnational banks and firms to favor infrastructure-building, raw-material production, high consumption of imported manufactures and military spending in the third world since the sixties and through West Germany and other West European countries, also high consumption by the new bourgeoisie and fringe-processing enterprises in the Soviet bloc countries since the seventies.

p Thus, for a while the crisis of overproduction in the industrial capitalist countries was temporarily relieved by sales which were generated as a result of profuse lending to the less developed countries. Neocolonialism through economic and financial dominance and manipulation eventually became a more profitable and effective weapon than outright wars of aggression as those in Korea, Vietnam and other countries.

p As early as 1969, it became clear to U.S. strategic planners that the U.S. could not win the war in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina and that it was more profitable to sell weapons to other countries than for U.S. personnel to use them (unless of course the U.S. can use mercenaries in low-intensity conflicts or sell the hightech weapons and still control and use them as in the Gulf War of 1991).

p There is no doubt that neocolonialism has been successful in dominating third world countries and in getting a handle on countries that continue to call themselves socialist. But there are limits to neocolonialism. When the limits are reached, there are too many countries overloaded with foreign debts, exporting types of 236 products in oversupply in the world market and not earning enough hard currency to service the debt and to keep buying the products of the industrial capitalist countries.

p At this point in time, the longrunning depression in most third world countries and in the former Soviet bloc countries is recoiling upon the very centersof world capitalism. The global market for the industrial capitalist countries has shrunk.

p Swamped by their own deficits and by bad debts on a wide scale, the centers of world capitalism are trying to consolidate their national and regional positions and are in sharpening competition among themselves. Within the industrial capitalist countries themselves, there is cutthroat competition in which the winning firms adopt high technology, throw personnel out of their jobs in large numbers and undermine their own domestic market.

p There is high productivity available. But the growth rate of productivity for entire capitalist economies has fallen down. There are large inventories that cannot be sold from previous production. And the losing firms in the capitalist competition reduce the work force, cut production or go into bankruptcies.

p In the present world situation, the proportion of people falling below the poverty line has increased by 10 percent, from 70 percent to 80 percent, during the last ten years. By this measure alone, it is understandable why the world has become more volatile and explosive since the end of the cold war.

p There is social turmoil in so many countries and continents at the same time. There is no new world order. There is greater disorder now than before the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union. Eastern Europe, especially the former Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union are hotbeds of nationalist, ethnic and religious armed conflicts.

p The peace settlements arranged by Gorbachev with Reagan and Bush in several regions have gone into shambles. There are revolutionary armed struggles and mass protest actions led by Marxist-Leninist parties and anti-imperialist movements. There is also spontaneous mass violence in the absence of a capable MarxistLeninist party. Civil wars, cycles of coups d’etat, ethnic or communal conflicts, criminality and senseless street violence abound in the world today.

p The social turmoil afflicts not only the general run of 237 underdeveloped third world countries and the former Soviet bloc countries but also the longer running industrial capitalist countries. The complicated civil wars in Yugoslavia and some former Soviet republics are now the most intense and lethal in the world and are in drawing in the foreign interventionists, principally the imperialists.

p If we may try to sort out the main contradictions in the world today, they are the following:

p First is the contradiction between the monopoly bourgeoisie and all reaction on the one hand and the proletariat and people on the other hand;

p Second is the contradiction between the imperialist and the anti-imperialist independent states, some of which strive to hold high the red flag of socialism (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba and the like);

p Third is the contradiction among the major capitalist powers which have consolidated themselves as the three most powerful capitalist centers, te United States, Western Europe and Japan; and Fourth is the contradiction between the major industrial capitalist powers and the lesser industrial capitalist countries, including those ruled by bureaucrat capitalist regimes.

p The foregoing contradictions are in motion and are running at a pace dictated by the worsening global crisis of overproduction. It must be noted that in the world today countries that consider themselves socialist assert themselves and act in the global arena more as independent and anti-imperialist states rather than as socialist states and proletarian internationalists, with the exception of DPRK and Cuba.

The social turmoil that is already occurring on a widescale makes the ground fertile for the rise of genuine Marxist-Leninist parties and the resurgence of the revolutionary mass movement for independence, democracy and socialism and against imperialism and all reaction.

The Vitality of Marxism

p There is no better way than Marxism to understand the internal laws of motion, the wholeness and crises of capitalism. Free competition capitalism has extended itself into monopoly capitalism or modern imperialism and further on to neocolonialism, 238 characterized by the use of high technology and the most wanton use of finance capitalism. But Marxism has continuously developed both in the critique of capitalism and in the theory and practice of socialist revolution and construction.

p If in the time of Marx and Engels largescale machine production had a social character in contradiction with the private character of appropriation, the high technology that is now at hand has a greater social character in sharper contradiction with the private character of appropriation by the supermonopolies.

p The big bourgeoisie has warded off the proletariat from seizing political power in industrial countries and from making socialist the relations of production to suit the social character of production by engaging in global capitalist exploitation in a manner as to undermine and dominate economically and financially the newlyindependent states and the revisionist-ruled states and enlarge the labor aristocracy and the white collar work force in the service sector in the industrial capitalist countries.

p But now high technology, the excessive use of finance capitalism and the neocolonial deployment of capital have far exceeded the limits of effective world market demand, set in the first place by the capitalist rule of maximizing profits. As the debt-ridden countries languish in depression, the centers of world capitalism are hit by an unprecedented crisis of overproduction.

p This crisis is becoming more and more obvious as the supermonopolies are trying to raise their competitiveness and profitability by disemploying large numbers of blue collars and whi te collars in favor of automation, robots and computers and by wiping out a large number of unprofitable enterprises. Like the general run of third world countries, the former Soviet bloc countries are not getting the productive investments and technology that they have expected. They are either retaining the same outdated plants or closing them down and are being reduced to penury and misery.

p In the course of the 1989-91 events in the former Soviet bloc countries, the unprecedentedly severe crisis of the world capitalist system was obscured by the powerful triumphalist propaganda of the imperialistsover the supposed victory of capitalism over socialism for all time. Even the crank idea that history has ended with capitalism and liberal democracy was celebrated as true and sophisticated.

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p An anticommunist ideological offensive was carried out misrepresenting either as Stalinism or real but flawed socialism the bureaucrat monopoly capitalism that was shedding off its socialist mask.

p Now, the imperialist ideological offensive, assisted effectively for a while by the anticommunist ideologues and publicists from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, is well overtaken by the public recognition of the crisis of the world capitalist system, which includes the monopoly, bureaucrat capitalism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

p With factual and scientific certitude, we declare that the basic principles of scientific socialism laid down by Marx and Engels remain valid and true and are superior to capitalism and have been proven correct by Lenin, Stalin and Mao and other communist leaders in actual socialist revolution and construction. Among these basic principles are proletarian revolution and class dictatorship, the public ownership of the means of production, economic planning, full employment and rising standards of living and culture on the basis of expanded production.

p But there are certain questions that must be answered well by Marxist-Leninists if Marxism is to remain vital and to further develop. What is the point in winning the new democratic revolution and the socialist revolution if at some future time in socialist society revisionism, self-interest and capitalist restoration prevail? In view of the current international situation, is the new democratic revolution through armed struggle in the Philippines one of the dying embers in a receding period of revolutionary struggle in the world or is it one of the flaming torches of a new period of revolutionary struggle?

p Again specific to the Filipino communists, how can they make socialist revolution and construction in a medium-sized and archipelagic country like the Philippines upon the completion of the national democratic revolution in an international environment in which there is no socialist country as formidable as China or the Soviet Union that is directly and materially of help? Since Philippines does not have the scale of either Russia or China, will it not be excessively vulnerable to imperialist strangulation when it shall embark on socialist revolution and construction.

p With these few questions alone being posed by comrades, 240 honest friends as well as by the mocking enemy, it is no longer enough to say that new democratic revolution and socialist revolution are necessitated by the in tolerable oppression and exploitation inflicted by the imperialists and reactionaries and that Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin provide us all the essential answers.

p The first question can be answered only by taking up Mao Zedong’s theory of continuing revolution, combating revisionism and preventing the restoration of capitalism for the entire historical epoch of socialism. There is a whole set of principles clarified by thi s theory, which must be thoroughly studied even if its application in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution failed after a longer period of success than the Paris Commune.

p In philosophy, Mao further deepened and extended our understanding of materialist dialectics, particularly the fundamental law of contradiction which is the unity of opposites, which Lenin first pointed to. In philosophy, Mao further deepened and extended our understanding of materialist dialectics particularly the unity and struggle of opposites, which Lenin first pointed to as the most fundamental law of development.

p Subsequently, he clarified the correct handling of contradictions among the people in socialist society and distinguishes these from those between the enemy and the people. He had the high distinction of coming to the defense of Stalin and yet analyzing his demerits and launching a counteroffensive against modern revisionism centered in the Soviet Union.

p When the proletariat wins political power, the bourgeoisie merely shifts to a secondary position in socialist society. It does not disappear so soon. It can even regenerate itself and reappear in various spheres of social life. The class struggle proceeds. It must proceed with the proletarian class dictatorship upheld and bourgeois rights restricted. Otherwise, modern revisionism can arise and capitalist restoration can occur. It is not true that once socialism is established it is irreversible.

p Building socialism is not simply a matter of strengthening the forces of production and increasing the ranks of the proletariat through industrialization. But more important is strengthening the socialist relations of production, putting proletarian revolutionary politics in command and revolutionizing the superstructure.

p In our view, the cultural revolution is not something to be 241 waged every ten years or periodically but continuously in a resolute but protracted and persuasive manner so as to avert ultra-Left excesses and keep the Left well in alliance with the Middle. This is the big lesson learned from the failure of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

p At any rate, Mao Zedong extended and further developed our understanding of the problems to pose and solve beyond those previously pointed to by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, such as the vestiges of the exploiting classes, the contradictions between the workers and peasants, between town and country and between manual and mental labor, the problem of petty commodity production generating the bourgeoisie and the force of old habits and customs.

p Despite all his great achievements in socialist revolution and construction and the consolidation and defense of the Soviet Union, Stalin had serious demerits. He had a lot of mechanical materialism and metaphysics. He thought of the bourgeoisie in terms of socioeconomic and legal definition alone. He could not see that the old bourgeoisie can be deprived of their properties but not of their ideas and influence and that the bourgeoisie can rearise from the bureaucracy and new intelligentsia if the bourgeoisie is considered only in terms of being the external enemy in the shape of the imperialists and their local agents.

p He relied too much on administrative measures and imagined that the relations of production can fully rather than basically correspond to the forces of production, and the superstructure also fully to the mode of production. The full correspondence can never be enforced but upon the recognition of bask correspondence and the differences the contradictions can be handled properly from stage to stage.

p Let us answer the second question. The Filippino communists are certain of the viability and growth in strength of the new democratic revolution through armed struggle in the PhUipines because of the ever worsening crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system and of he world capitalist system. In this tropical archipelagic and mountainous country, the hightech weaponry used in the Gulf war cannot be effective against the people’s war. The main thing is that the proletariat, the peasantry and the rest of the people are engaged in the armed revolution.

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p It is not only the armed revolutionary movement that faces tremendous odds in the Philippines. In fact, the puppet regime in the Philippines is now constrained by the dwindling of resources that it can extract domestically and draw from abroad, the crisis of the world capitalist system has a tremendous adverse impact on the Filipino reactionaries and their social system.

p We are of the view that the Filipino proletariat and the people are carrying the flaming torch of armed revolution from an old to a new period of revolutionary struggle in the world. We uphold the Marxist-Leninist theory of state and revolution and are confident that in due time revolutionary armed struggle led by MarxistLeninist parties will increase in the world.

p Let us answer the third question. We have no timetable for winning the new democratic revolution. After expressing a number of times our desire to win it in ten or twenty years, we now declare that we are willing to wage armed resistance in the spirit of Dagohoy and his descendants who fought Spanish colonialism for eighty five years without letup. Without the cumulative effect of the Filipino people’s armed resistance in more than 300 years, Spanism colonialism would not have been overthrown. There would be no end to foreign and feudal domination if the Filipino people ceased to wage armed revolution.

p After all, while the enemy is still entrinched in the cities, our Party, our people’s army, our united front and our mass organizations build organs of democratic political power in our guerrilla fronts. These guerrilla fronts started as small guerrilla zones. These shall eventually join up in larger and more stable liberated areas.

p We shall certainly have serious problems and difficulties in building socialism if so soon we shall have seized political power nationwide and basically completed the national democratic revolution. But fortunately, we are engaged in a protracted people’s war and we are still in the stage of strategic defense and tactical offensives to accumulate all-round strength.

p When we shall build socialism, we shall, we shall make sure that the proletariat is at the helm of the socialist state, shall have hegemony in all spheres of society, shall rely mainly on the workerpeasant alliance and shall engage in socialist construction in a self reliant way. We shall avoid dependence on the world capitalist market or any foreign country, even if socialist or anti-imperialist. 243 We shall rely on all the patriotic and progressive classes and strata and take advantage of the rich natural resources of the Philippines and the available skills and means of production.

p The strategic enterprises, sources of raw materials and main lines of distribution shall come under public ownership. Agricultural cooperation and mechanization shall be carried out stage by stage. We shall pay attention to agriculture as the base of the economy, basic and heavy industries as the leading factor and light industry as the bridge between the two. All these shall be developed in a planned, well-proportioned and well-balanced manner to serve the basic domestic needs and rising standards of living.

p We shall leam the positive and negative lessons from the Soviet experience, Mao’s critique of Soviet economics and the self-reliant Chinese experience of socialist revolution and construction under Mao and from the disastrous “reforms” of modem revisionism and capitalist restoration.

p We shall strive to apply the science of Marxism-Leninism on the concrete conditions of the Philippines and to contribute what we can to the great treasury of Marxism-Leninism. In this way, we perform our internationalist duty of contributing what we can to the vitality of Marxism, which must be reinvigorated until mankind is liberated from imperialism and the ultimate goal of communism is reached.

We are hopeful that by the time that the Filipino proletariat and people shall have basically completed the national democratic revolution and commenced the socialist revolution, the international environment shall have been more favorable, with the world capitalist system in more serious crisis and the anti-imperialist and socialist cause stronger on a wider scale than now.