Vibrant and consistent proletarian internationalism backed by decisive class struggle against the reign of domestic reaction has been the proven strategy of effective resistance to imperialism. With brilliant anticipation and keen historical insight, Lenin had defined imperialism as the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. In November 1917, five years after the Basle Congress of the Second International, victorious Russian revolution snapped the imperialist chain while the First World War (1914-18) was still raging. This marked the first real rupture of the imperialist order. The Second World War (1939-45) and its aftermath witnessed another series of revolutions in several countries of Eastern Europe. And within a few years, revolutionary China too broke free from the imperialist chain.
Post-World War II, the world therefore got divided into several blocs. While the US emerged as the most powerful imperialist power, replacing fascist Germany as predicted by Mao Tsetung in 1948 itself, the Soviet Union emerged as an alternative rallying centre. The newly independent countries too formed a bloc of their own under the banner of the non-aligned movement. As long as the Soviet camp existed, it ran its own parallel economic and political arrangement and this also provided the third world countries with a leeway in facing the offensive of the US-led imperialist camp. Here we are not entering into a discussion about the quality of socialism in the Soviet Union, let alone in the Soviet camp, which did suffer from serious bureaucratic distortions and eventually collapsed under its own weight. What is relevant to our present purpose is the fact that the writ of the US-led world capitalist economy did not run directly in this part of the world.
So long as the imperialist countries monopolise the means of war the oppressed nations can liberate themselves only by waging anti-imperialist war. There can be no peaceful coexistence with imperialism. History has witnessed the rise and fall of several empires. Even in modern times we have seen the decline of several big powers – Britain, Germany, Soviet Union. The United States will be no exception. It has suffered several defeats in the twentieth century. And it will not be able to monopolise the new century.
As the imperialist warmongers go on choosing their targets one after another, pushing the world to the brink of yet another world war, the anti-globalisation movement faces a real test. The limited social movements dealing essentially with the disastrous humanitarian and environmental consequences of neo-liberal policies will now have to speak out squarely against imperialist war and military interventions, the real material foundation that props up the neo-liberal framework of loot and plunder. It is just not possible to talk about the possibility of another world in a vacuum. For a real alternative world of peace, progress and international solidarity to become possible, we must get ready to deliver decisive blows to imperialism. It will take time, and there will surely be ups and downs, but every real battle against imperialism takes the world one step closer to the goal of genuine civilisation, peace and progress. In Mao’s words “we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it.”
