Athens Meeting 18-20 November 2005, Contribution of
Sudanese CP
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From: SolidNet, Tuesday, November 29, 2005
http://www.midan.net , mailto:fathifadl@hotmail.com
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International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties
"Current Trends In Capitalism: Economic, Social And
Political Impact. The Communists' Alternative"
Athens, 18-20 November, 2005

By Sudanese Communist Party

Introduction

The recent riots in France which swept over 300 hundred
cities and towns reflects in a way the deepening crisis
capitalism to currently facing. No one expected the shear
rage the rioters showed, even in country used to outbursts
and violence. Violence in France say a French journalist,
is a tradition, almost a rite and passage for every
generation. It is also seen as a legitimate political form
and expression. But these rioters are not begging for a
change and a reform, they want to burn the whole house
down.

People attended speaking about the failure and the French
model and the Republic and that racial discrimination the
fundamental problem, and that France must be blind no to
see its 6 million suffer from endemic racism every day. The
critics are right but only in part. What we see in the
streets and the French cities are towns are dissatisfied
youth with little education hardly any job prospects, from
poor background. Their misery is first and a social and
economic. They are white, black, "beings" second and third
generation north - African migrants); they are from Muslim,
Christians and secular backgrounds. They are the French
people who feel they are not represented by any political
party or organization, and especially by the French left.
And this is more dangerous than any ethnic minority riots
it constitutes a revolutionary ferment.

The rioters in their own way are saying enough to
capitalism, they want more and the Republic and their
country more liberty, more egalite and more from
fraternite. Not less it is an indication and the failure
and the capitalist system in the 21st Century. This is not
only a French crisis is an extension of the aftermath of
Katrina and the failure of Capitalism to protect the down
trodden and the poor, the poor in Pakistan who continue to
die a month after the earthquake and the hundreds of
thousands who are lost to famine, diseases and poverty in
Africa, Asia and Latin America the victims of Capitalist
exploitation and local corruption. Yes, this is not a
French crisis all the capitalist countries must heed the
flames.

From the beginning capitalism was a global system,
expanding from Europe into the rest of the world through a
relentless process of colonization that also involved
slavery and genocide. Merchant capitalism created the
beginning of world market and helped provide the accumulate
wealth (from theplunder of the countries of Africa, Asia
and Latin America) that established the industrial
revolution of mid eighteenth century. Control over
foreign natural resources (in competition with other
capitalists and/or other nations) is needed to secure
essential materials for production. This policy of
exploitation, of protecting so called national interest
continued till today. The US war in Iraq and its
occupation is a part of an attempt to control oil.

During the early years of capitalism, the main capitalist
states, waked had to protect their industries and their
business from competition from abroad. Now, the great
strength of these mature business and their need to
penetrate the third world more efficiently has resulted in
capital in the center states, their governments, and the
international organizations working in their interest to
all jointly promoting "free trade" while hypocritically
still supporting many advantages for "home" industry. In
the current wave of global capitalist expansion, with
capital having gained a great degree of mobility, goods
once produced, in the countries of the center are more and
more produced in the countries with cheap labour and no
trade rights.

Capitalism, through a variety of mechanisms from outright
robbery and colonial domination in the early years to the
imperialist relations in its more mature version continues
to produce the wealth of the center and the
underdevelopment of the countries of the third world. It
also continues to produce and reproduce a class structure
in each country including a service ruling class in the
developing countries with their foreign bank accounts and
faith in US military force.

The production and continual reproduction of a class
structure, with an always present receive army of labour
means that these will always be significant in equality
under capitalism.

Ecological degradation occurs in numerous countries and
societies. But with capitalism these is a new dimension to
the problem. They drive for profits and capital
accumulation as the overriding objective of economic
activity they control that economic interests exact over
political life, and the many technologies developed that
allow humans rapidly to change their environment near and
wide, mean that adverse effects on the environment are
inevitable. Pollution of water, air, and soil are nature
by produces of capitalist system organized for the sole aim
of making profit.

Climate change resulting from global warming, not
completely predictable, but with mostly negative effects,
is another repercussion of unfettered capitalist
exploitation of resources.

Reforms can be enacted to soften the social and ecological
effects of the capitalist plunder of natural resources and
exploitation. Certainly many have occurred, including those
that resulted in workers gains in the main capitalist
countries, such as shaken wakely and weak, limited trade
union rights, a government run social security retirement
system, higher incomes worker safety laws. However, as we
are now seeing in all capitalist countries it is possibly
to reverse the gains that were won through hard taught
struggles of the working class. During the ebb periods and
flow of class struggle when conditions are decidedly in
favor of capital all these gains come under curtailment to
push towards minimal constraints and maximum flexibility
for capital. At the end of the 2nd world war, capital
fearing revolution that can destroy the system, promoted a
welfare state in much of Europe paid vacations, better
wages and Germany placed workers on boards of directors. In
the United States the welfare state began with Roosevelt's
New Deal and new programs were added in the 1960s.

The development and growing of the capitalist economies
coupled with its desire to have masses support during its
Cold War, are also part of the explanation for increases in
social programs. What actually happened also depended on
the military of trade unions as well as other forms of
class struggle such as the riots 68 in France and some
other European countries, the works strikes in Britain, and
the black movement for political and economic rights in the
United States. But with the growth of larger and larger
corporation, competition between countries became more
intense and true were the new forces stimulating the
economy to grow.

When economic stagnation developed in the 1970s, capital
responded in a number of ways. Investment strategies
changed in order to sustain profits development service
sector and speculative world of finance. With stagnation,
capitalist societies, as throughout their history in
depressions, also shifted the bundere of economic
stagnation, militation, and wars to the working people in
the Center and those in the developing countries. Beginning
in the 1980s those at the top have promoted a continuous
class war aimed at reducing corporate taxes and taxes on
the wealthy. Also capital it continued its war to dismantle
as many workers rights as possible: attacking welfare
programs, making it harder to unionize workers and easier
to fire them, decreased passion coverage, privatizes banc
services (including education, schools, tutorial fees are)
and attempt to privatize social security.

With the advance of neo liberation, counter reforms are
becoming more frequent, this will increase as the strength
of the capital increases relative to that of labour, and
class war from above becomes the norm. But more importantly
the evils of inequality, poverty and misery, environmental
degradation, using of resources faster than replacement can
be found as well as the imperialist economic, political
and military control over the countries of the third world
all flow out of the very nature of capitalism

Alternative to Capitalism

A new society is needed because all evils are part of the
capitalist system. Moving away from capitalism really a
choice the environmental constrains and the depleating
resources will force a change in the society. The future
points to limited possibilities a turn to fascism or the
creation of a collective society that can provide the basic
needs for all humanity.

In view of the extent of misery and threat catastrophy and
disaster endemic to capitalism, what needs to be done.

Unfortunately, many of us have a simplified view of history
and overlook the contradictions on the road to a new social
order. The past experience of the Soviet Union accomplished
a great deal full employment, mass education, and medical
care for all the people, industrialization, longer life
span and much more. It checked imperialist aggression and
attempted to present a more human society. It marked
advances on the road to socialism. Despite the collapse of
the Soviet Union lessons can be learned to advance in the
future. Hard answers are difficult, and we don't pretend to
know all answers.

Most important, in our opinion, is that the departure. From
the socialist road were not inevitable; rather they are
outgrowth of specific historical circumstances. Perhaps
one, if not the leading, lesson of the past experience is
the affirmation that socialism can not arrive overnight
the road to such a major transformation of social structure
and people's consciousness is indeed very long. It took
capitalism to develop and prosper many centuries. Socialism
is no exception. It is also full of pitfalls and mistakes.
Mao put it simply and clearly: "Marxism, Leninism and
practice of the Soviet Union, China and other socialist
countries all teach us that socialist society covers a
very, very long historical stage. Throughout this stage,
the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the
bourgeoisie. goes on and the question of "Who will win"
between the roads of capitalism and socialism remains, as
does the danger of restoration of capitalism. (Mao Zedong,
"On Khrushchev's Phony Communism and its historical lessons
for the world: Comment on the open letter of the Central
Committee of the CPSU," 1964).

The long transition to fully developed socialism requires
a truly new culture inbred with a new ideology. We live in
a society that promotes and often requires selfishness,
greet, individualism, and a dog eat dog competitive
spirit. A socialist society, would require to produce a new
human focused on serving all the people, outlawing
hierowely, overcoming difference in status and moving
toward fuel equality.

New forms of struggle for social justice to emerging in the
global South and is drawing attention of thinkers and
communist parties. They vary widely in scope, aims and
organization. They may not even use the word "socialism".
But in their basic struggle for a fairer distribution of
available resources, they embody the main body of
socialism, social justice and liberty. The people with no
other road to take have always been in the heart of any
substantial socialism movement. Increasingly, large
population in the "third world" are finding themselves
squeezed as they are by even greater demands of profit
seeking corporations on the one hand and the corrupt
national governments on the other. Direct action is
becoming the only way to escape from poverty and
exploitation. The new movement are drawing more on local
traditions and developing tactics that are suited purely to
that local environment. Resistance to India's huge dam
project has been influenced by Gandian principles of
nonviolent resistance. The Ogoni people of Niger Della in
Nigeria pursued various nonviolent tactics against shell.
Organization such as the movement for the survival of the
Ogoni people were formed and continue to operate after
leaders like Kien Salo Wiwa were executed. The Zapatistas
in Mexico are another example. The Association of
Indigenous Councils of Nalleum Cauca in Colombia as waging
peaceful struggle for agrarian reform and against free wade
agreement with its states. Across Latin America a similarly
explosive movements are underway, with indigenous people
redrawing the Continents political map, demanding not just
"rights" but a reinvention of the state along deeply
democratic line. In Bolivia and Ecuador they toppled
governments. In Argentina when mass movement out led five
presidents in 2001 2002 the world of Zapatistas were
echoed in the streets. The same can be said of the mass
struggles in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Ethiopia, demanding
democratic transformation, social justice and peace.

Even though these new movement are localized, but their
struggle is usually in response to conditions resulting
from globalization. In dozens of countries around the world
it is the swinger demands of the international Monetary
Fund or the World Bank that bring people to the streets.
Globalization is not new. Nineteenth century imperialism
was an earlier cruder form. The economies of countries like
Britain and France went in a relatively short span of time
from being depended on local agricultural markets and small
scale artisans to being the hub of a massive global system
for expropriating resources from Asia Africa and Latin
America sending to the factories in French and British
cities and shipping the resulting goods out to foreign
market. Tens of millions of African were taken from their
homeland and transported to distant slave plantations and
work in factories to support their massive accumulation of
capital. Globalization, in deed capitalist globalization
has wreaked havoc on the world for countries. Its recent
manifestation is not a radical departure from the past.

Consuls and armies have simply being replaced by trade
subsidies and structural adjustment programs. If these
fails, there is always the option of sending armies under
different protect. But to African, Asians, West Indians and
Latin Americans it is all too familiar. The cry for
resistance that echo from the South illustrates this. It is
not a cry of outrage at some new phenomenon, but rather of
resistance to one more depredation after century of
exploitation.

The capitalist world system of today can therefore be seen
as enveloped in an au encompassing crisis of the future
civilization. Not surprisingly in their context, resistance
to the system is growing and its more widespread. In
France the spirit of 1968 is still living and has not
entirely disappear. Change is everywhere. The May 2005
rejection by the French and Dutch people of EU constitution
is a landmark in the resistance process. The changes in
Venezuela is a great achievement. Venezuela, in alliance
with Cuba, is drawing upon and stimulating the discontent
in other parts of Latin America.

It is impossible to know what form the alternative will
take since it is still in the making.

Based on the experience of the past, one can safely say
that future alternative can only survive only if transcends
not only class divisions that divide off those who run the
society from those that are to work mainly on their behalf
but also other major forms of oppression that crippled
human potential and prevent democratic social alliances. If
any lesson was learned from the past it is that class
struggle must be inseparable from the struggles against
gander, race and national oppressions. The alternative can
not really make headway unless it promotes and protect
environment.

The struggle for human right and democratic liberties in
the heart of the new society. Rosa Luxemburg insisted that
"without general election, without unrestricted freedom of
the press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion
life dies out in every public institution, becomes a more
semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as
the active element." Hence, the requirement of "socialist
democracy", she insisted "begin simultaneously with the
beginnings of the destruction of class rule and the
construction of socialism". The reason for these is not
some abstract sense of justice but a law of socialist
revolution itself. Such democracy not longer formal but
filled with economic and social content constitutes "the
very living source from which alone can come the correction
of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions.. [It
thus Embodies the active, untrammeled, energetic political
life of the broadest masses of the people" Rosa Luxemburg.
Socialist democracy it is not to be conceived as applying
merely to the political sphere, narrowly conceived, but
would have to extend to all aspects of public life.