Invent the Future

Ghassan Kanafani, China, and the global struggle against imperialism

The following review by Carlos Martinez of Ghassan Kanafani — Selected Political Writings first appeared in the Morning Star.

This new volume from Pluto Press, edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi, brings together some of the most important essays, manifestos and journalistic reports by the revered Palestinian writer and activist Ghassan Kanafani.

Kanafani is best known for his literary works, all of which are deeply imbued with the spirit of anti-colonial resistance. His novels, short stories and essays, such as Men in the Sun (1962) and Returning to Haifa (1969), vividly depict the experiences of exile, dispossession and resilience, giving voice to the Palestinian collective memory.

Rashid Khalidi, in The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine observes that, “among the literary figures whose ideas and images played a major role in the revival of Palestinian identity, Kanafani was perhaps the most prominent prose writer and the most widely translated”.

Kanafani also made important contributions as a journalist, theorist and political activist. Indeed, the editors of Selected Political Writings consider that he was “Palestine’s greatest Marxist thinker. His ideas – forged in the firepit of war, crisis and armed resistance – are flammable materials, rich in the lessons of the revolutionary sparks which ignited his era.”

Kanafani was spokesperson of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP – a Marxist-Leninist organisation that forms part of the resistance front in Gaza today) from the time of its formation in 1969, and co-authored its program, Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine.

A powerful and consistent advocate of armed struggle against colonial occupation, and of the centrality of the working class and peasantry in the struggle for national liberation, Kanafani was deeply influenced by the ideas of Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, and situated the Palestinian liberation struggle within the broader global struggle against imperialism and for socialism. His two visits to China (in 1965 and 66) “left a comparably profound mark on his thinking”.

Indeed, on page 113 of Selected Political Writings, in an extract from Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, we find: “The Palestinian and Arab liberation movement in alliance with national liberation movements in all undeveloped and poor countries will, in facing world imperialism led by the USA, find a strong ally to back its forces and augment its power of resistance. This ally is the People’s Republic of China.”

In a review for Counterfire, Michael Lavalette notes, with perhaps a hint of disapproval, that the PFLP’s Marxism was “heavily influenced by Third World, anti-colonial, armed struggles”. In Lavalette’s view, this is “not the classical Marxism of Lenin and Trotsky with its emphasis on the ‘self-emancipation’ of the working class”.

This comment brings Domenico Losurdo’s Western Marxism – recently reviewed in these pages – to mind. In their introduction to the English translation of that book, Jennifer Ponce de León and Gabriel Rockhill observe that “Eastern and Western Marxism … refer to two different political orientations… One of them is dedicated to the difficult and drawn-out process of building socialism in a capitalist-dominated world and, in particular, across the Global South, which has been the principal site for such endeavours thus far. The other is generally dismissive of such practical undertakings, often belittling concrete struggles against imperialism because they do not live up to an imagined standard of theoretical or moral purity.”

Kanafani’s writings and record of activity locate his thought very much within the sphere of Eastern Marxism. There is no “imagined standard of theoretical or moral purity”, and a great deal of “concrete struggle against imperialism”. He took tremendous inspiration from the construction of “actually existing socialism” and the revolutionary anti-colonial struggles waging around the world, and situated the Palestinian struggle within a global united front against imperialism.

In our struggle for the liberation of Palestine, we face primarily world imperialism… The major conflict experienced by the world of today is the conflict between exploiting world imperialism on the one hand, and these peoples [of Africa, Asia and Latin America] and the socialist camp on the other. The alliance of the Palestinian and Arab national liberation movement with the liberation movement in Vietnam, the revolutionary situation in Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America is the only way to create a camp that is capable of facing and triumphing over the imperialist camp. (p113)

Interestingly, the PFLP was one of only a handful of organisations globally to successfully navigate the Sino-Soviet Split, maintaining good relations with both the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. While clearly closer to China’s strategic orientation at the time, it recognised the Soviet Union as a “major supporter of the Arab masses in their fight against imperialism”, and benefitted from Soviet weapons, training and scholarships.

It’s also worth noting that the PFLP continues to maintain close links with People’s China. In July 2023, Deputy Secretary-General Jamil Mezher described China as a springboard for important global transformations that put an end to US imperialist hegemony and its savage policies in the world, and commended China’s constant support for the just causes of the Palestinian people in their struggle to restore their legitimate national rights.

Ghassan Kanafani’s ideas profoundly shaped Palestinian identity and resistance during a critical period of struggle against occupation and displacement. His influence was such that the Israeli foreign intelligence service saw fit to assassinate him on 8 July 1972. However, this despicable act (which can but remind us of so many other similarly despicable operations carried out by Mossad in the last 16 months), did not silence Kanafani, did not prevent his words from resonating. His clear-sighted and skilful application of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete reality of the Palestinian resistance has lost none of its relevance or its influence.

As Kanafani wrote, “the Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever they are, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era” (p95). As such, Selected Political Writings deserves to be widely read. The editors have performed a most valuable service in making Kanafani’s political contributions available for readers of English.

Strategic autonomy or Stockholm syndrome: whither Europe?

The following article by Carlos Martinez, first published in the Morning Star, assesses Western Europe’s position regarding the prospects for peace in Ukraine.

Political leaders in western Europe occasionally like to talk up the need for “strategic autonomy” from the US. Emmanuel Macron in particular placed it at the centre of his foreign policy platform at the start of his presidency eight years ago, and has raised the issue several times since.

The idea of Europe exercising strategic autonomy rather than simply outsourcing its foreign policy to Washington is not new, but rather a reiteration of Charles de Gaulle’s ideas on international relations from the 1950s.

There have been a handful of noteworthy examples of its deployment in the 21st century. France, under president Jacques Chirac, and Germany, under Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, refused to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The reason given is that they were not convinced by the dubious intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The real reason is that France and Germany had no interest in pursuing the intended outcome of that war: US control of Iraq’s vast reserves of high-quality, easily extractable oil.

Despite repeated warnings from multiple US administrations (Obama, Trump and Biden), Germany participated in the planning and construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, providing cheap natural gas from Russia to central Europe via the Baltic Sea.

Again in spite of the “friendly advice” of the Obama administration, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain all signed up to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — headquartered in Beijing and first proposed by China — in 2016. This at a time when the US was several years into its Pivot to Asia.

And yet, in the US-led “post-war international order,” strategic autonomy has largely been honoured in the breach. The truth is that exercising strategic autonomy is not as easy as it sounds, given the US’s actually existing economic and military hegemony.

The centrality of the US dollar to the global economy, along with the cynical use of the IMF and World Bank to further Wall Street’s agenda, causes Western governments to think twice about defying instructions emanating from the White House.

Meanwhile, the US overwhelmingly provides the muscle for an imperialist world order that western Europe — along with Japan, Canada and Australia — benefits from, albeit not to the same degree as the US itself.

“McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas,” and ultimately the US’s nuclear arsenal, Nato, hundreds of overseas military bases and an elaborate system of troop and weapons deployments around the world all have their role to play in maintaining the flow of profits from periphery to metropole.

As such, the privileging of US economic and strategic interests is built into the imperialist world system. Faced, therefore, with the choice of embracing the multipolar trajectory or seeking shelter under an increasingly leaky and fragile US hegemonic umbrella, Europe has tended towards the latter.

The examples are numerous. Britain’s involvement in Aukus; French and British enthusiasm for the war of regime change against Libya; European imposition of sanctions against China on entirely fictional charges of human rights abuses in Xinjiang — to name but a few. But rarely has this toxic relationship been more evident than with Europe’s total subservience in Nato’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

This is a war from which the US has benefited and Europe has suffered in equal measure. The US military-industrial complex has — to coin a phrase — made a killing. Shareholders in the US fracking industry are sitting pretty, while European pensioners shiver their way through another long winter of high energy prices resulting from sanctions on Russian natural gas. All in the name of a disastrous and entirely unnecessary conflict in which an estimated million people have lost their lives.

Now all of a sudden, Donald Trump is back and a new tune is playing on the Pentagon speakers. Team Trump has clearly come to the conclusion that, rather than trying to wage a new cold war on multiple fronts, it would be better for the US to build a rapprochement with Russia and consolidate forces against China, by now the world’s largest economy in purchasing power parity terms, the major trading partner of two-thirds of the world’s countries, and the leading force in the multipolar trajectory.

For the US, extricating itself from an unwinnable war in Ukraine is an essential first step down this road. But Europe finds itself in a quandary. On the one hand, a withdrawal from Ukraine that Starmer and Macron can put down to a whimsical and capricious White House resident could be just what the doctor ordered.

On the other hand, it’s painful for London, Paris and Berlin to have their subordinate role in the empire hierarchy so brutally exposed. Meanwhile, if Trump’s turn to China means that Britain, France and Germany are forced to “decouple” from China and significantly reduce trade and investment, that will likely have an even more deleterious effect on their economies than the sanctions on Russia.

All in all, now would be an excellent time for Europe to seriously develop its strategic autonomy; to accept that the world is moving in the direction of multilateralism and sovereignty; to accept that imperialism is in decline; and to develop positive and mutually beneficial relations with China, with Russia, with Iran, with the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Such a programme is by no means easy, but it is obviously necessary.

Unfortunately, this is not the way things are going. Starmer, Macron, Merz and Meloni, instead of adapting to a shifting reality, are desperately (“pathetically” is perhaps more precise) trying to persuade Trump to get the band back together and recommit to the Ukraine war. The endlessly hawkish Starmer, channelling Tony Blair and George W Bush, has proposed a “coalition of the willing” to “bring a durable peace” to Ukraine by means of, well, keeping the war going as long as possible.

He has even offered British “boots on the ground and planes in the air.” Given Russia’s oft-stated and not-unreasonable position that it will never accede to Nato troops in Ukraine, any such British deployment would likely look more like “planes on the ground and boots in the air.”

Meanwhile, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen says that “Europe urgently needs to rearm and member states must be given the fiscal space to carry out a surge in defence spending.” That is, European workers must accept ever-deeper austerity in order to help out our arms manufacturers and defend our democracy from Big, Bad Vlad.

If Europe continues down this treacherous path, the continent will see further decline, poverty, inequality, instability and conflict, inevitably accompanied by racist scapegoating and the rise of the far right. Working-class and oppressed communities should ask themselves whether they accept such a destiny.

China and Venezuela: building a Great Wall against imperialism and hegemonism

The following text is based on a presentation given by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez at a discussion forum titled The Emancipatory Struggle for Independence in Latin America, held on 18 July 2024 at the historic Casa Miranda in London, where the celebrated Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda lived from 1802 to 1810. The event was organised by the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and was hosted by His Excellency Ambassador Félix Plasencia González.

Comrade-ambassador Félix Plasencia, friends and comrades, it’s an honour to be here with you this evening.

I would like to speak about a specific aspect of independence, which is: the relationship between sovereignty and internationalism.

To my mind this is a very important part of Venezuela’s political project since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. Venezuela has been fierce in defending its sovereignty, and it also has an exemplary record of internationalism and solidarity.

The two things are inextricably linked. And Chávez understood this in a very deep way, that sovereignty and independence are not the same as isolationism. And that to embrace internationalism does not mean to give up your sovereignty.

Indeed the opposite is the case: sovereignty cannot be won, and cannot be defended, outside of the context of the broadest possible unity against imperialism; against those countries that seek to deny others’ sovereignty.

The history of the last century provides ample evidence of this.

In his famous pamphlet on imperialism, Lenin observed that by the beginning of the 20th century, “the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers was completed”. Which is to say, the entire planet had been divided into two: a small number of imperialist countries on the one hand, and a vast number of oppressed countries on the other.

Lenin’s pamphlet was written in 1916. A year later, as you all know, a new factor emerged in global politics: the existence of a socialist country, leading in the following decades to the establishment of a socialist group of countries.

The existence of this socialist group of countries was in turn a powerful boost for the national liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and elsewhere. These movements were able to win and defend their sovereignty – to struggle against imperialism – through the heroic efforts of their people of course, but combined with the solidarity of other countries, other movements. In the process they created a new group of liberated countries, such that the division of the world back that of a small number of imperialist countries on the one hand, and a vast number of non-imperialist countries on the other.

The brilliant Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh famously stated that “nothing is more precious than independence and freedom.” And the Vietnamese people won their independence and freedom, with the support of the Soviet Union, with the support of China, and with the solidarity of progressive movements and people the world over.

Studying the liberation wars in Vietnam, in Mozambique, in Angola, in Algeria, in Zimbabwe, in Guinea-Bissau, the movements leading these struggles were all profoundly internationalist, all looked for inspiration and support to the socialist countries, and all were grounded in the revolutionary internationalism that forms such a key component of Venezuela’s political ideology, of Chavismo.

Today the example that stands out is that of Palestine. The Palestinians are fighting for their sovereignty, for their independence, for their basic national rights; against colonialism, against racism, against apartheid, against ethnic cleansing. They are taking on a genocidal aggressor in Tel Aviv, backed by genocidal aggressors in Washington and London. But the people of the world stand with them. The entire Global South stands with them and demands their legitimate national rights be restored.

China’s remarkable transformation marks 75 years of socialist progress

The following short article, written for the Morning Star, provides a whirlwind tour of the extraordinary progress made by the People’s Republic of China since its founding on 1 October 1949.

October 1 2024 will mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, when Mao Zedong declared that “the Chinese people have stood up.”

In the intervening period, China has undergone an extraordinary transformation.

Life expectancy has increased from around 35 to over 78 years, surpassing that of the US. Universal literacy has been achieved. Extreme poverty and malnutrition have been eliminated. Famines are a thing of the past.

In the years immediately following the founding of People’s China, feudalism was dismantled and warlord rule was ended. New China won and defended its sovereignty.

Education and healthcare were rolled out to the countryside for the first time.

The social and economic position of women has improved beyond recognition — one example being that, before the revolution, the vast majority of women received no formal education whatsoever, whereas now a majority of students in higher education institutions are female.

China was one of the poorest countries in the world and languished in a situation of extreme technological backwardness.

Now it’s one of the world’s leading innovators in science and technology — particularly in renewable energy, space exploration, digital networking, quantum computing, nanotechnology and advanced manufacturing. It has displaced the US as the world leader in both scientific research publication and patent grants.

Crucially, China has emerged as the pre-eminent world leader in tackling climate change. Its investment in wind and solar power has brought costs down globally by as much as 90 per cent.

Indeed a recent Financial Times editorial admitted that “when it comes to climate change, Beijing’s green advances should be seen as positive for China, and for the world.”

Although it’s described in the Western media as a malevolent and aggressive power, China’s record is remarkably peaceful. It hasn’t been at war in over 40 years.

And unlike the US, China doesn’t have a global infrastructure of hegemony — foreign bases, troops and weapons stationed in other countries, and so on.

Nor does China engage in economic hegemonism. While much is made of China’s economic power, its loans and investment throughout Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and elsewhere are generally speaking welcome, because they come with a low rate of interest, there are no conditions of austerity, and they’re used to fund crucial infrastructure projects that are allowing countries to break out of underdevelopment after centuries of colonial and neocolonial exploitation.

For example, with Chinese finance and support, Ethiopia opened the first metro system in sub-Saharan Africa a few years ago. Again with Chinese finance and support, Bolivia has launched a telecoms satellite that provides connectivity to the whole country — the poorest country in South America.

Indeed just a couple of days ago, President Xi Jinping announced at the opening ceremony of the Forum on China–Africa co-operation in Beijing that China would unilaterally give all least developing countries (LDCs) zero-tariff market access for all products, making China the first major economy to take such a step. “This will help turn China’s big market into Africa’s big opportunity.”

China plays a helpful role on the diplomatic stage, its contributions oriented towards peace and co-operation. A case in point is the tragic situation in Gaza. While the US and Britain continue to provide the weaponry of genocide, along with financial and diplomatic cover, China has been a loud and consistent voice demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

China always reiterates the necessity of respecting the fundamental national rights of the Palestinian people, and — significantly — it recently mediated an agreement between 14 Palestinian resistance movements, with the rationale that Palestinians need the maximum level of unity if they’re going to win their rights.

While of course there are problems and contradictions, just as there are in all countries, Chinese people live better than they ever have done, and China plays a positive role in the world.

Research by the Harvard Kennedy School shows that the Chinese government enjoys the support of more than 90 per cent of the population — not something that can be said of Keir Starmer and his neoliberal friends.

And yet people in the West often have a negative impression of China. China is presented by politicians and journalists as being an aggressive, expansionist power; an authoritarian dystopia engaged in myriad human rights abuses; a climate criminal; and so on.

The anti-China propaganda has not moved on much from the days of Fu Manchu — these inscrutable Chinese hate our democracy and they want to take over the world.

Faced with imperial decline and the inevitable emergence of a multipolar world, the US ruling class is waging a fightback in order to keep the Project for a New US Century train on the rails. This includes a propaganda component which is essentially aimed at generating public support for a reckless new cold war.

Ordinary people in the West must not allow their consent to be manufactured for confrontation with China, which does not serve their interests.

Humanity faces serious existential threats in the form of climate breakdown, pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, and the possibility of nuclear war. To face up to these threats, we need to work collectively and within a framework of multipolarity, the UN charter, and international law.

As such, we must build bonds of friendship and co-operation with China, and we should seek to understand China better.

On Saturday September 28, from 10am to 4.30pm, at Bolivar Hall, London W1T 5DL, Friends of Socialist China and the Communist Party of Britain, supported by a number of other organisations, are holding a conference to mark the 75th anniversary of the PRC’s founding.

There will be panel discussions on: China, multipolarity and the rise of the global South; China’s road to socialism; and Standing up against the new cold war.

Speakers include Felix Plasencia (Venezuelan ambassador to Britain), Minister Zhao Fei from the Chinese embassy, George Galloway, Robert Griffiths, Alex Gordon, Jenny Clegg, Zhang Weiwei, Victor Gao, Radhika Desai, Ben Chacko, Andrew Murray, Roger McKenzie and many more. Register at www.bit.ly/china-75.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebrate-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-founding-of-peoples-china-tickets-1005591129137

Build global mass opposition to the New Cold War

The following is the text of a speech given by Carlos Martinez at an online meeting of the Scottish Trade Union Peace Network on 22 August 2024.

Many thanks for inviting me to join you.

I’m going to focus my remarks on China’s foreign policy, comparing that with the US and Britain’s foreign policy, and then discussing the dangers of this escalating New Cold War, which could all too easily end up as a hot war.

China aggressive?

China of course is framed in the Western media as an “aggressive” and “expansionist” power which is hell-bent on subverting the “rules-based international order”.

According to the NATO Heads of State summit in Washington last month, “China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge our interests, security and values”.

What’s the basis for this characterisation? I’m going to talk about some of common themes:

First, Taiwan. China is accused of undermining democracy in Taiwan and threatening imminent invasion.

The funny thing is that China’s position on the Taiwan question has not meaningfully changed in the last seven decades, and it’s entirely consistent with international law and numerous United Nations resolutions – not to mention the various joint agreements between the US and China.

Taiwan is a part of China. It was seized by Japan in 1895 and returned to Chinese control in 1945, at the end of World War 2, as agreed by Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and China at the Potsdam Conference.

In 1949, having lost in the Chinese Civil War, Chang Kai-shek and his people fled to Taiwan and set up a renegade administration, and the US positioned its Navy – the Seventh Fleet – in the Taiwan Strait to prevent the communist government from reuniting the country. But even then, Taiwan never claimed to be a separate country – the Kuomintang simply said that Taiwan was the real China and that the People’s Republic was the renegade. Indeed that idea is still part of Taiwan’s constitution.

So China’s very consistent position is that Taiwan is part of China. This position – the One China Principle – is accepted by more than 90 percent of the world’s countries, including the US and Britain. China has always said that it seeks peaceful reunification but that it reserves the right to use force in case of outside interference or a unilateral declaration of independence. Furthermore it makes the very reasonable point that the Taiwan issue is an internal matter for Chinese people on both sides of the Strait to resolve.

There is nothing particularly bellicose or unusual about such a position. Frankly, if you’ll excuse the slight provocation, China’s historic claim to Taiwan is far stronger than Britain’s historic claim to Scotland, but does anyone think Westminster would avoid the use of force if Scotland, backed and armed by Russia, say, were to unilaterally declare independence.

So nothing has changed with respect to China’s position on the Taiwan question. What’s changed is that the US and its allies, seeking to provoke conflict and undermine China, are increasing their support for separatist elements, are increasing their supply of weapons to the administration in Taipei, and are steadily rowing back on the One China Principle.

Biden has said multiple times that the US would intervene militarily if Beijing were to attempt to change the status quo by force – which goes directly against what was agreed by the US and China back in the 1970s when relations were re-established. It is essentially a way of signalling: we are building towards war against China, and Taiwan will likely be the flashpoint. And the way we plan to win public support for that war is by presenting it as a war to protect democracy in Taiwan.

Another popular accusation about China’s “aggression” is that it’s engaged in expansionism in the South China Sea, because it patrols its own waters, and because it has a number of complicated territorial disputes over control of an array of tiny uninhabited islands.

China at the forefront of the green energy revolution

The following article by Carlos Martinez, written for the journal Communist Review, describes China’s progress in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development.

It is by now almost universally understood that humans need to transition away from fossil fuels and adopt renewable energy if we are to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change. As Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, says:

“Global temperatures are rising. Sea levels are rising; ice sheets are melting; and other species are struggling to adapt to a changing climate. Humans face an avalanche of problems from flooding and drought to wildfires and fatal heatwaves. Farmers are at risk of crop failures. Cities are at risk of being submerged. There’s one main cause: human emissions of greenhouse gases.^{^[1]}

The science is clear and widely accepted: human activity, most importantly the burning of fossil fuels, has increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to an unprecedented level. This has led to more heat being trapped within the Earth’s atmosphere (that is, less heat is being radiated back into space), resulting in a global heating effect, which leads to more frequent and severe weather events, rising sea levels, and shifts in ecosystems.

Data from the ice core record, going back around 800,000 years, shows that carbon dioxide concentration has fluctuated quite widely, between around 170 and 280 parts per million (ppm), with a previous peak at 300 ppm around 320,000 years ago. CO₂ levels have been stable at around 270 ppm for the last ten thousand years, until a significant upward curve starting in the early 1800s and accelerating sharply from the 1950s onwards.^[2] At the time of writing (June 2024), carbon dioxide concentration is 424 ppm.

Greenhouse gas concentration will continue to increase, and the corresponding ecological problems will get significantly worse, unless we either reduce our consumption of energy to an extraordinary degree or we switch to non-emitting forms of energy. The idea of reducing humanity’s overall energy consumption is not plausible. For the majority of the world’s population, low energy consumption correlates to poverty; to low standards of living. Clearly, socialists hope that most people in the developing world, over the course of the coming decades, will increase rather than decrease their consumption of energy, and will experience a corresponding improvement in quality of life. As such, the only realistic option for preventing climate breakdown whilst continuing to pursue development is to undertake a massive global transition to green energy: to meet humanity’s energy needs without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and without causing permanent damage to the environment.

Hugo Chávez, Xi Jinping, and a global community of shared future

The following is the text of the presentation delivered by Carlos Martinez at a round-table discussion on Venezuela’s foreign policy in a changing world, held on 20 February 2024 at Bolivar Hall in London. The event was organised by the Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the UK in coordination with the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.

The speech discusses Hugo Chávez’s vision of a multipolar world, and explores how that vision overlaps with China’s strategy of pursuing a global community of shared future.

Other speakers at the event included Her Excellency Rocío Maneiro, Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the UK; Francisco Domínguez, Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign; Calvin Tucker, Campaigns Manager of the Morning Star; and Radhika Desai, Convenor of the International Manifesto Group.

Dear friends and comrades, thanks so much for inviting me to today’s important event.

And thank you in particular to Her Excellency compañera-embajadora Rocío Maneiro, who continues to do such a wonderful job representing her country and standing in solidarity with the progressive movement here in Britain and with the working class and oppressed peoples of the world.

Thanks also to the indefatigable comrade Francisco Domínguez for his hard work putting this event together.

I’m going to focus these brief remarks on the connection between Venezuela’s foreign policy and that of China.

As you’re all no doubt aware, Hugo Chávez had an extremely far-sighted worldview. While the Bolivarian Revolution has always aimed to have good relations with the US, its foreign policy has nonetheless been informed by the identification of that country as the principal enemy to sovereignty and to socialism, not just in Venezuela but throughout the world.

And of course the US’s consistently aggressive stance in relation to Venezuela – its campaign of sanctions, of coercion, of destabilisation – has only confirmed what Chávez and his comrades already knew.

Chávez saw Venezuela as part of a global movement challenging half a millennium of colonialism, imperialism and racism; a global movement that included the growing leftist and pro-sovereignty trend in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also China, Cuba, Russia, Libya (until NATO’s war of regime change in 2011), Syria, South Africa, Vietnam, Iran, the DPRK, Belarus and others.

This global movement seeks to put an end to the unipolar era of US hegemony, and to create a multipolar – or as Chávez called it, pluripolar – world, with multiple centres of power, in which countries and regions all have their role in global politics and in which no one power can impose its will on others.

Under the guidance of Hugo Chávez and then Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has become one of the most prominent voices in support of this multipolar project.

Indeed, one of the slogans of Chávez’s 2012 presidential election campaign was: “to develop a new international geopolitics forming a multicentric and pluripolar world to achieve equilibrium in the universe and guarantee planetary peace.”

Lenin walks around the world

The following article by Carlos Martinez, discussing Lenin’s contribution to understanding the global applicability of Marxism, was originally published on 20 January 2024 in the Morning Star, to coincide with the centenary of Lenin’s death.

The original slogan of the communist movement, ‘Workers of the world unite’ – the rallying cry and final phrase from the Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels in 1848 – was put forward at a time when the nascent communist movement was geographically limited to Europe and North America, and focused almost exclusively on the industrial working class.

Lenin’s study of global political economy, and particularly of the dynamics of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of modern imperialism, led him to an acute understanding of the expanded – global – applicability of Marxist thought.

Study of imperialism

Marx had already outlined the economic dynamics of an emerging international capitalism in Volume 1 of Capital, first published in 1867: “A new and international division of labour springs up, one suited to the requirements of the main industrial countries, and it converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production for supplying the other part, which remains a pre-eminently industrial field.”

By the end of the 19th century, the extraordinary concentration of capital and the supremacy of finance capital had brought the era of ‘free market’ capitalism to an end and ushered in an era of monopoly capitalism – in which phase capitalism remains.

Having dominated and saturated the home market, monopolies were increasingly driven abroad in pursuit of profit. Lenin wrote in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism that “the export of capital greatly affects and accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported.” Export of capital stimulated the incorporation of the “chiefly agricultural” economies of the Global South into the world capitalist system, introducing industrial production and creating a social class that had no option but to sell its labour power – the working class.

With the internationalisation of capital and the subjugation of the greater part of the planet by a handful of wealthy nations, capitalism became more and more militarised. Extreme force was needed to keep colonies and “spheres of influence” under control, and furthermore was a key feature of the rising competition between the imperialist countries for control of the world’s land, labour, natural resources and markets. Such competition was the basis for World War 1.

Lenin understood that, with capitalism having “grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries”, the capitalist class of the metropolis had become an enemy not just to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries but to the broad masses of the oppressed in all countries. “Imperialism is leading to annexation, to increased national oppression, and, consequently, also to increasing resistance.”

This analysis provided the theoretical basis for a strategic unity of the socialist and national liberation movements, on which basis Lenin and the Bolsheviks proposed the development of a worldwide united front of the working class and all peoples oppressed by imperialism. Such a united front would be capable – indeed still is capable – of taking the fight to the oppressors, of defeating imperialism, of establishing national independence and sovereignty for the peoples of the Global South, and thereby opening the possibility for a global advance to socialism.

Hence at the second congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1920, ‘Workers of the world unite’ was updated to ‘Workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, unite’.

In Lenin’s report to the Third Congress of the Comintern in June 1921, he enthused: “The revolutionary movement among the hundreds of millions of oppressed peoples of the East is growing with remarkable vigour.” He elaborates on this in his letter Better Fewer, But Better, the last document he wrote:

“In the last analysis, the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. And during the past few years it is this majority that has been drawn into the struggle for emancipation with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this respect there cannot be the slightest doubt what the final outcome of the world struggle will be. In this sense, the complete victory of socialism is fully and absolutely assured.”

Summing up this theoretical contribution in his 1924 book Foundations of Leninism, Joseph Stalin wrote that “the interests of the proletarian movement in the developed countries and of the national liberation movement in the colonies call for the union of these two forms of the revolutionary movement into a common front against the common enemy, against imperialism” and, further, that “the victory of the working class in the developed countries and the liberation of the oppressed peoples from the yoke of imperialism are impossible without the formation and the consolidation of a common revolutionary front.”

Imperialism and the split in socialism

Unfortunately, the pursuit of a global revolutionary anti-imperialist front was not a consensus position in the communist movement of the time. Many of the large workers’ parties in the West rejected – explicitly or implicitly – such a strategy and worked towards a tacit alliance with their ‘own’ imperialist ruling classes.

The material basis for such an alliance was provided by the superprofits of imperialism. The “high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries” opens up “the economic possibility of corrupting the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives form to, and strengthens opportunism” (Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism).

Further: “A few crumbs of the bourgeoisie’s huge profits may come the way of the small group of labour bureaucrats, labour aristocrats, and petty-bourgeois fellow-travellers. Social chauvinism and opportunism have the same class basis, namely, the alliance of a small section of privileged workers with ‘their’ national bourgeoisie against the working class masses.” (Lenin, Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International)

Lenin labelled this phenomenon social chauvinism – “socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds” – and described it as “the utter betrayal of socialism” and “complete desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie.” In his 1916 article Imperialism and the Split in Socialism he wrote that “the opportunists (social chauvinists) are working hand in glove with the imperialist bourgeoisie precisely towards creating an imperialist Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa”, and that “objectively the opportunists are a section of the petty bourgeoisie and of a certain strata of the working class who have been bribed out of imperialist superprofits and converted to watchdogs of capitalism and corruptors of the labour movement.”

He pointed out that the ruling classes themselves perfectly well understand and deliberately implement this strategy. Indeed, he cites the notorious colonialist Cecil Rhodes, writing in 1895:

I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for “bread, bread, bread,” and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism. My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e. in order to save the 40 million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced by them in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.

Lenin concluded that, to defeat the social chauvinist trend and to move forwards with the global class struggle, communists must go “lower and deeper”; must seek out, educate and organise the most oppressed sections of the working class, “who are more oppressed than before and who bear the whole brunt of imperialist wars.” These strata are far less corruptible; are far more capable of learning “to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.”

Success of Leninism in practice

In words and deeds, the Bolsheviks pursued the global anti-imperialist front, seeking (in Lenin’s words) to “convert the [masses of the oppressed countries] into an active factor in world politics and in the revolutionary destruction of imperialism” (Third Congress of the Communist International).

This effort bore historic fruit. The Soviet Union rendered indispensable support to the national liberation and socialist movements in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

In his 1960 essay The Path Which Led Me To Leninism, Ho Chi Minh movingly describes his years in Paris in the early 1920s, participating in the debates between the Leninists and the social chauvinists.

My only argument was: “If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging?” … At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.

Similarly, Mao Zedong stated in 1949, just two months before the proclamation of the People’s Republic, that “it was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world, to adopt the proletarian world outlook as the instrument for studying a nation’s destiny and considering anew their own problems.”

In turn, the Chinese communists have played a crucial role in developing Lenin’s ideas of anti-imperialism and applying them in practice. The overthrow of imperialist domination and the construction of socialism in China, Korea and Vietnam represented a profound shift of the revolutionary centre of gravity in the world towards the East and the South. The radical governments emerging in the Sahel and Latin America today represent a continuation and deepening of this process.

Such are the outcomes of a revolutionary strategy based on the slogan ‘Workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, unite’. The outcomes of class collaborationist social democracy in the West are, it is fair to say, less impressive.

Lenin lives

Lenin was, above all, a revolutionary Marxist, and there are two famous quotes from Marx which to a significant degree encapsulate Leninism today: “A nation that oppresses another cannot itself be free”, and “Labour in the white skin can never free itself as long as labour in the black skin is branded.”

To be Marxist-Leninists in the 21st century means to return to a strategy of a worldwide united front between the socialist countries, the oppressed nations, and the working class in the imperialist countries. It means standing up for Palestine. It means continuing the fight for a united Ireland. It means opposing the campaign of containing and encircling China. It means opposing NATO. It means supporting the emerging multipolar trend. It means standing with Cuba, with Vietnam, with the DPRK, with Laos, with Venezuela, with Nicaragua, with Syria, with all countries defiantly standing up against imperialist hegemony. It means opposing racism, sexism and all forms of exploitation and oppression, rejecting collaborationism and social chauvinism, going “lower and deeper” and fighting resolutely for a socialist future.

Global Times interview with Carlos Martinez

What follows below is the full text of a written interview with Carlos Martinez, conducted by the Global Times.

The interview deals with a wide range of issues, including the New Cold War on China, the nature of Chinese socialism, the Belt and Road Initiative, capitalist versus socialist democracy, and anti-China propaganda in the Western media.

An abridged version was published in the Global Times on 31 August 2023.

Could you please briefly introduce yourself to us? When did you start to study China? And what made you start to be interested in the country?

I’m an author and campaigner from London, Britain, with a longstanding interest in the socialist countries and global anti-imperialism. My first book, released in 2019, was about the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was involved in setting up the No Cold War campaign in 2020, and the Friends of Socialist China platform in 2021.

There were two main motivations for me to start studying China. The first comes from being a Marxist and wanting to understand how socialism is constructed in the real world. The second comes from being anti-imperialist and anti-war, and wanting to understand China’s role in the development of a peaceful and multipolar world.

The more I study China, the more I realise how poorly it’s understood in the West. In recent years, the anti-China propaganda in the media has been increasingly intense, corresponding to the rise of the US-led New Cold War. Many people have this absurd idea of China as some sort of authoritarian dystopia that’s intent on taking over the world. Many people believe the media’s disgraceful slanders about the suppression of human rights in Xinjiang, and so on.

China is misunderstood even on the left: lots of people believe that, because China uses market mechanisms, or because there are some very rich people in China, that it can’t be socialist any more. But then how do we explain China’s achievements? China has raised living standards beyond recognition; it’s become the world leader in renewable energy; it’s gone from being a poor and backward country to being a science and technology powerhouse; it’s leading the global shift to multipolarity; its life expectancy now exceeds that of the US. All this is historic and unprecedented progress, on a scale which has never been achieved by any capitalist country. Why on earth would the left want to attribute these successes to capitalism rather than socialism?

Book review: IF Stone – The Hidden History of the Korean War

Written to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement, this book review by Carlos Martinez of IF Stone’s recently re-issued The Hidden History of the Korean War seeks to identify the lessons to be learnt from the so-called “forgotten war”, and to draw out parallels between the original Cold War in the Pacific and the New Cold War in the Pacific.

A shorter version of this review was published in the Morning Star.

The 27th of July 2023 marks 70 years since the signing of the armistice agreement at Panmunjom, finally bringing about a cessation of hostilities in a war that was extraordinarily destructive but which has been largely ignored.

As Bruce Cumings writes in his preface to I.F. Stone’s classic The Hidden History of the Korean War – first published in 1952 and recently reissued by Monthly Review Press – the Korean War is a forgotten war, “remembered mainly as an odd conflict sandwiched between the good war (World War 2) and the bad war (Vietnam).”

For those seeking to build a peaceful and prosperous future for humanity, the lessons of the Korean War must not be forgotten. Indeed re-reading The Hidden History it becomes clear that there are several crucial parallels with today’s world.

Stone’s meticulous investigation provides abundant proof that most of the key players in the US government and military actively wanted the Korean War; that it was the right war, in the right place and the right time in terms of US imperialist interests.

Top US generals have since admitted that their “police action” in Korea gave them just the excuse they needed to construct the military infrastructure of Cold War in the Pacific: a vast network of overseas bases; large-scale, long-term deployments of US troops in Korea and Japan; and the permanent stationing of nuclear warheads in the region.

The Korean War set the whole military-industrial complex in motion. It created the national security state. It was the first major test case for the Truman Doctrine of “support for democracies against authoritarian threats” and helped establish the US in its self-assumed role of global policeman. By forcing through a United Nations endorsement of its invasion, the US was able to establish its dominance of the UN-based international system.

Reading Izzy Stone’s reporting today, it’s striking the extent to which these mechanisms of Cold War still exist and are being used to wage a New Cold War. The military bases, the troop deployments, the nuclear threats that aimed to contain socialism and prevent the emergence of a multipolar world in the 1950s continue to serve the same purposes in 2023.

Stone’s book emphasises that peace was very much an option in 1950.

The Soviet Union of course wanted peace; having lost 27 million lives and sustained incredible damage to its infrastructure in the course of saving the world from Nazism, the Soviets needed space to rebuild. The People’s Republic of China also wanted peace; having only been founded in October 1949 after long years of civil war and struggle against Japanese occupation, the last thing the new state needed was to become embroiled in another war. (In the event, nearly 400,000 Chinese volunteers gave their lives fighting in Korea).

The US could have accepted the post-WW2 reality: that some countries had chosen the path of socialism, and that many other countries were throwing off the shackles of colonialism and seeking to explore an independent path to development.

The US could furthermore have accepted an emerging status quo in East Asia. Before the US invasion, the trajectory was for Korea to be united under a popular, communist-led government; for Taiwan to become part of the People’s Republic of China; for China to regain its rightful seat at the UN; and for US troops to be removed from Japan.

Such a configuration would have reflected the will of the peoples of the region, but it wasn’t consistent with Washington’s idiosyncratic vision of a “rules-based world order”. The major western powers, led by the US, rejected peace and chose containment, encirclement, blockade and war.

They chose a strategy of doing everything they could to weaken the socialist countries and the forces of national liberation and sovereign development. They chose the Cold War – which for the people of Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua, Chile, and many other countries of the Global South was not cold at all.

Seventy years later, the “End of History” fever dream is over and the West is once again faced with a rising socialism and an irrepressible multipolar trend, at the centre of which is China. Once again there is a choice between peace and conflict.

China has become a major player in global affairs. It’s the largest trading partner of two-thirds of the world’s countries. It’s the second largest economy in the world in dollar terms. It’s taken the lead globally on poverty alleviation and on sustainable development. It’s on the cutting edge of advanced industry, of telecommunications, of artificial intelligence, of renewable energy and more.

Through mechanisms such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, China is promoting solidarity and shared development of the Global South. China is playing a positive role in promoting sovereign development in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caribbean, and Pacific – regions that have been held in underdevelopment for centuries by the colonial and imperial powers.

What’s more, China is recognised globally for its consistent pursuit of peace. Where the West has stoked conflict in Ukraine, China has worked with all parties for a peaceful settlement. Where the US has stoked division in the Middle East, China has facilitated a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, thereby potentially clearing a path for an end to the horrific war in Yemen.

Can the West adapt to this new reality? Can it accept China’s rise? Can it accept that the countries of the world want to determine their own economic policy and their own foreign policy? Can it accept that the era of colonialism and imperialism is over? Can it accept that the idea of any one country being the “world’s policeman” really has no place in the modern world?

Can the West work with China, with Iran, with Russia and other countries to solve the major existential problems that humanity faces? Or will the US and its allies continue on the ruinous path of a New Cold War – and potentially a devastating hot war? Such are the defining geopolitical questions of our era.

The Hidden History of the Korean War is essential reading for those who are educating and organising towards peace; towards building a mass anti-war movement that our governments can’t ignore.