Communist Party of the Russian Federation
by Alexandr Kuvaev
Main points of the paper

At the end of the sixties, state-monopoly capitalism (SMC)
entered a period of acute crisis, which manifested itself
in the defeat of the USA in Vietnam, the upsurge in the
struggle for the "second independence" of Latin America,
the establishing of people's democratic power in a series
of countries in Asia, Africa and Central America which took
the path of socialist orientation, disintegration of the
last colonial empires, the upsurge in the labor movement in
the countries of Western Europe and Japan, the struggle of
racial minorities in the USA for equal rights, and youth
and students' demonstrations.

The extensive path of economic development based on
appropriation of the cheap resources of the countries of
the dependent periphery by the countries of the "golden
billion" finally became obsolete, an event which manifested
itself in the energy crisis of the seventies. The
possibilities of the imperialist state turned out to be
unable to regulate the capitalist economy, suppress the
revolutionary movement and maintain domination over the
dependent periphery. The calls for the state to "abandon
the economy" and to adopt a policy of economic
neoliberalism are connected with this.

In the lap of SMC, production and capital were increasingly
collectivized, while powerful transnational
corporations(TNCs) were formed and gained strength. Market
anarchy was eliminated inside these gigantic complexes,
which can be compared in scale with the economies of big
countries, and capitalist regulatory relations were
established. Emerging first in imperialist centres, the
TNCs crossed their borders and proceeded to organize not
only trade but also production on the global scale. TNC
subsidiaries appeared on the basis of capital export,
inside both imperialist mother and dependent countries,
especially in those where a middle level of capitalist
development had been achieved (Northern Europe, Latin
America, Southeastern Asia, southern Africa). The TNCs take
advantage of the huge difference in labor costs, organizing
scientific research in some countries and design work in
others, producing semi-manufactured articles in a third
country and assembling manufactured goods in a fourth.
Modern imperialism is the imperialism of the TNCs.

Only TNCs were able to organize the transition of
capitalist mother countries onto the path of intensive
development. Having monopolized the newest technologies,
they led quality changes in the production force system in
the second half of the seventies and in the eighties - the
computer and agricultural("green") "revolutions". Now 80%
of the scientific and design work is undertaken by TNCs,
while the planned redistribution of products and services
amongst TNC subsidiaries makes up about half of world
trade. Since the beginning of the eighties, the TNCs have
completely dominated the capitalist economy. Several dozen
transnational banks took the finances of the whole
capitalist world under their control. The declared "freedom
of the market" was, in practice, the transfer of regulatory
functions from the national state to the TNCs.

Transnational capital during the last quarter of the 20th
century created a global network of institutions which
direct the economy and the entire life of whole countries
and regions according to its interests. Financial-economic
unions, such as the International Monetary Fund, World
Bank, the Paris Club, World Trade Organization and regional
integration unions, first and foremost the European Union
(EU), military blocks, with NATO first of all, confidential
forums of the world financial and political "elite": the
Three-part Commission, the Bilderberg and Rome clubs,
neo-fascist and Zionist organizations, the World
Anti-Communist League and the "Black International",
transnational religious organizations and the heads of
international organized crime, first and foremost the drug
trade, became part of it. All these institutions and
unions, having large staffs of well-paid employees, more
and more lose contact with their national territory. The
financial oligarchy, in exercising its power, increasingly
prefers these organizations over political parties, even
those of a rightist persuasion.

The domination of TNCs fills with new content the priority
of confessional interests over national and state
interests, which is characteristic of world religions. On
this basis, the fundamentalist (new Pentecostal, vachabism
and so on) and totalitarian organizations (United Church of
Moon, AUM-Sinrike, scientology and others) which combine
transnational business with the use of ideological
aggression, spiritual and physical terror against the
powers of progress are strengthened.

The TNCs protect in every way the "rights and freedoms" of
their economic and socio-political counteragents and agents
per se from encroachment of any kind. The unwanted are
eliminated politically, by means of compromising or simply
hushing up, or physically, by "death squads" and the mafia.

TNCs and the supranational apparatus of class domination
they have given birth to do not need national economies or
national states. Imperialism at the stage of SMC,
increasing its expansion, has striven in this way or that,
by means of external aggression or internal conspiracy, to
subjugate national state power. At the stage of TNCs, it
strives to eliminate the state and territorial integrity of
the states-adversaries. We observed this in Yugoslavia and
the USSR, we can see it now in Russia, China, India and
probably we shall see it in other big countries. It is
quite possible that in the case of a serious crisis the
TNCs will support separatist movements, not only in the
countries of the dependent periphery, but also in the
mother countries, for instance, in Great Britain, France
and the USA. The cosmopolitan tendency which has long been
inherent in capitalism has already gained the freedom to
develop and is organically connected to pseudo-national
separatism.

In connection with this, the intensified appeal made by
contemporary "democrats" to the concept of "human rights"
which came to replace the fascist appeal to the rights of
the nation and race is eventual. The TNCs prefer to deal
not with an organized class, but with separate individuals
who, all together, constitute a group which can be easily
manipulated. The concept of "ideological and political
pluralism" is used to protect the rights of various
minorities - national, confessional, sexual - against the
rights of the majority.

The "neo-conservative wave" which swept over the USA and
Western Europe from the beginning of the eighties
constituted the ideological and political expression of the
main tendencies of imperialism in the era of the TNCs.
Social revenge came to replace the policies of "social
partnership". The TNC bosses strive to get rid of "social
sclerosis" which, in their opinion, hinders economic
development, as "sclerosis" means the social guarantees for
which the working people struggled over the course of two
centuries. Bourgeois democracy which, for all its class
narrow-mindedness, used to serve in the past as a form of
citizens' political organization, was limited to the role
of a fig leaf which covers the dictatorship of
transnational finance oligarchy.

Financial might and control over telecommunications have
secured possession of the mass media (MM) for the TNC
monopoly on the global scale. American type commercial mass
culture is being imposed on peoples through monopolized
mass media and the materialistic world outlook is being
eradicated, while ignorance and obscurantism are being
cultivated.

The world proletariat has fallen behind its adversary in
organizing the class struggle internationally. Its trade
unions and parties, mainly limited by national borders,
were not strong enough to withstand the organizations of
transnational capital. It was precisely the TNCs that
played the leading role in suppressing the revolutions of
the seventies (Chile, Portugal etc.), in reinforcing
reactionary regimes which ensured the stabilization of
capitalist procedures in their countries and in whole
regions (Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina and
South Africa), in a global counterattack of capital
against the labour movement's positions. Having drawn the
majority of the countries of the "third world" into debt
bondage, transnational capital has significantly expanded
opportunities to overexploit them. In this way it has
acquired additional resources to combat world socialism.

***
The world has entered a period of political reaction. A new
upsurge in the revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle will
inevitably follow it. However time and painstaking work to
enlighten the class consciousness of workers and organize
their struggle for their own rights and vital interests are
necessary for the prerequisites for that struggle to ripen.