Lisbon Meeting 10-12 November 2006, Contribution of NCP of
Britain
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From: Portuguese Communist Party, Monday, November 13, 2006
http://www.newworker.org , mailto:party@ncp.clara.net
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Contributions of the New Communist Party of Britain

Sexta, 10 Novembro 2006

We meet again at a time of sharpening contradictions and
the primary contradiction in the world today is between
United States imperialism and the rest of the world it
seeks to dominate. The Bush administration represents the
most reactionary and aggressive sections of the American
ruling class bent on world domination. Supported by the
most venal and craven sections of the British ruling class
they have invaded and occupied part of Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan and Iraq and their guns threaten Democratic
Korea, Cuba, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and anyone else who
dares to stand in their way.

Bush and the most aggressive circles within the American
ruling class want to carve-up the Middle East as part of
their plan to rule the world. The invasion of Iraq was just
the first step in a plan to hand over all its oil to the
big oil corporations and all its territory to the American
military for use as a strategic base to threaten the other
countries in the region that stand in imperialism's way.

They call it "globalisation" or the "New World order". They
call their colonial wars "the fight against terrorism".
They say they want peace. But Ireland, Korea, Cyprus and
Kashmir remain partitioned. The Palestinian Arabs remain
under Zionist occupation and imperialist forces straddle
the world with their arsenals and fleets.

Globalization, the internationalism of the division of
labour, has continued apace since the turn of the
millennia, it is a product of science, technology and the
development of the productive forces and should be at the
service of humanity with the right of every human being to
develop and practice their talent, skills and knowledge.
However globalisation is currently used at the behest of
the capitalists so much so that the global capitalist
system presides over a festering morass of exploitation of
workers and the environment, racial and communal strife,
and rapid growth in crime, drug trafficking, violence and
conflict from local to international levels as well as
dread diseases like HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

The potential for major military conflicts is now greater
than at any time since the 1930s.

Anglo-American imperialism is resorting to war and the
threat of war, in its quest to dominate the Middle East,
Eastern Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. But wherever
there is oppression there is always resistance.

The Iraqi people have defied the might of imperialism for
over a decade and the heroic Iraqi resistance has moved
from defence to attack effectively destroying
Anglo-American imperialism's dream of colonising Iraq and
establishing an imperialist "Greater Middle East". The
Palestinians continue to defy the Zionist state and its
imperialist masters. Throughout Latin America democratic
forces have come to power with mass support. The Nepalese
people have ended the autocracy of a hated monarch and the
Lebanese resistance inflicted a heavy political and
military defeat on the Israelis last summer.

Since the crises of 1997 in south east Asia and Russia, the
capitalist world has suffered many "after shocks" which
continue to plague the most vulnerable capitalist
countries. The most powerful economies have managed to
weather the storm by using their huge reserves, both in
terms of organisation, administration and capital. Back in
1999 it was evident that the only way the bourgeois world
was to avoid a global capitalist recession was to sustain
economic growth at its then current average rate. Until
late 2001 that average economic growth was sustained, but
now growth has plummeted for the most vulnerable to little
above zero. Turkey is in severe crisis and many countries
like France, Germany and Italy are extremely vulnerable to
the worsening conditions and are hamstrung by their
membership of the European Union. All through this period
the larger capitalist economies have placed excessive
reliance on the United States as their main growth engine.
If that growth engine unravels through high oil prices or
the collapse of the dollar brought about by the withdrawal
of foreign monies invested in the US the future for the US,
Britain, the Euro-zone and Japan will be difficult.

One of the most notable signs of the potential for chaos
and disorder can be seen in the challenge that exists to
capitalist state power by the monopoly capitalists
themselves. This is another example of the contradictions
in monopoly capitalism; the state and the big economic
monopolies are essential to each other yet they also
challenge each other. The harnessing of these monopolies to
a new system of discipline is a chief pre-occupation of
capitalist states whilst the monopolies seek to limit the
powers of the state.

The most powerful monopoly capitalists, represented by the
leaders of the developed countries, have striven through
the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to tighten their grip on
the economies of all countries, in particular those of the
developing world.

The view of the developed nations is that the raison d'�tre
of the WTO is to remove any restrictions imposed by host
countries, to ensure that member countries deregulate their
markets in trade and services, drop any restrictions on
incoming international capital and remove export subsidies
and import tariffs that protect home grown industries and
agriculture, in other words give maximum freedom to the
monopoly capitalists.

The EU proposed in December 2005, at the Doha trade talks,
that developing countries should agree to open their
manufacturing and service sectors if the EU reduces its
agricultural tariffs. The EU strategy is about domination
of the developing world. Most of the developing countries
would be in no position to bargain or compete with the
imperialists. The strategy is based on the assumption that
poor countries should satisfy themselves with being
agricultural suppliers to rich nations and should forgo
attempts to promote their own manufacturing and service
sector industries. In the Doha trade talks the WTO is
becoming the focus of the struggle, by the developing
against the developed nations, for more equitable rules and
practices in world trade that are seen as being weighted
very heavily in favour of the monopoly capitalists.

We should support the G4 bloc, consisting of China, India,
Brazil, and South Africa, within the World Trade
Organization who are opposing the monopoly capitalist
agenda. We should also support the efforts of the regional
and world Social Forums, while far from taking a communist
perspective, have done much good work in organising
opposition to monopoly capitalism.

Peace remains the central issue. In Britain the labour and
peace movement must maintain the fight to bring about the
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all British
troops from Iraq. At the same time it must mobilise to stop
Blair or whoever takes his place from spending more
billions on the needless and useless replacement of the
Trident nuclear weapons system.

Since 2003 an anti-war movement of unprecedented scale has
swept the world, not least in the United States and
Britain. Mass demonstrations reflect the mass opposition to
the imperialists, war inside the labour movement and
amongst the people as a whole challenging the
neo-colonialist conspiracies of the ruling circles in
Britain and the United States. The NCP fully supports the
Stop the War Campaign and all the other campaigns fighting
for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British
troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Anglo-American imperialism poses the greatest danger to
world peace. The National Missile Defence (NMD) system has
triggered off another global arms race. The tearing up of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty has undermined every
other international agreement on nuclear weapons. Even so,
the imperialists are trying to use part of the
non-proliferation agreement as an instrument to bully and
threaten any country attempting to develop an independent
nuclear industry. But given the fact that the
non-proliferation treaty has still to be implemented by the
imperialist camp, every sovereign state has the legitimate
right to develop its nuclear industry like the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of
Iran.

The Five permanent members of the UN Security Council all
possess nuclear weapons along with India and Pakistan. The
United States has an immense arsenal, as does Britain.
France also possesses substantial nuclear weapons and so
does Russia, which inherited the systems of the former
Soviet Union.

The fifth permanent member of the Security Council, and the
only socialist state with a major nuclear arsenal, People's
China, has long supported proposals for multilateral and
universal nuclear disarmament and this call has now been
taken up by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the
latest country to join the nuclear club.

Communists must defend the right of socialist countries to
retain their nuclear arsenals as long as the imperialists
retain theirs while calling for the complete prohibition
and total destruction of all nuclear weapons. These
long-standing demands for multi-lateral nuclear disarmament
must be projected by the world communist movement
throughout the world.

The entire Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, must be
implemented and not just the parts that suit the
imperialist interest. It was signed in 1968 to halt nuclear
proliferation but it also committed the signatories to work
towards universal nuclear disarmament.

At present the United States is in violation of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty by its commitment to its Star Wars
strategy and its efforts to develop tactical battlefield
nuclear weapons.

We support the demand for all nuclear powers to pledge not
to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under
any circumstance and to commit themselves unconditionally
not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against
non-nuclear weapons states or nuclear weapons free zones,
and to conclude, at an early date, international legal
agreements to such effect.

All states with nuclear weapons deployed outside their
frontiers must withdraw these weapons to their home
territory. All nuclear powers should pledge their support
for the establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones, respect
their status as such and undertake corresponding
obligations. The development and deployment of space
weapons systems or missile defence systems should be
outlawed and there should be an international convention on
the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of
nuclear weapons, concluded through negotiations with the
participation of all countries.

People's China has long supported these demands and it is
significant to note that the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea, the second socialist country to possess nuclear
weapons, has accepted all these points.

Anglo-American imperialism stands totally isolated in the
world even amongst the international institutions it once
relied on to do its bidding and give them some
international authority for their actions. The United
Nations has been marginalised. US imperialism only pays lip
service to UN institutions when it suits its purposes.

When the Americans can use it to rubber-stamp their plans,
the world organisation is supported. When it is no longer
of any further use to them, like now, it is ignored and
discarded.

In the past British and American imperialism upheld the
principle of the veto on the UN Security Council a right
the United States has exercised 73 times, mainly to protect
Israel. But it was ignored when it appeared that France,
Russia or People's China were prepared to use the veto to
block the invasion of Iraq in 2003. We therefore support
the call for democratic reform of the UN Security Council
to ensure that it is representative of the vast majority of
member states of the world forum. At the same time
communists across the globe must mobilise to build a world
anti-imperialist front in solidarity with all those
fighting for freedom and defending their independence
against imperialism.

The communist movement is based upon the revolutionary
principles of Marxism- Leninism. Its purpose is to equip
the working class so that it can establish working class
state power and then build a socialist society. Bourgeois
democracy is a fraud. It is democracy for the exploiters
and dictatorship in all but a formal sense for the
exploited. Bourgeois elections, when they are held, are
used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate
the maximum number of votes.

Socialism is essential to eliminate exploitation,
unemployment, poverty, economic crisis and war. Socialism
is the only solution to climate change, pollution and
global warming. Let us work together to build the movement
that will ensure that this century becomes the era of
socialism.

Andy Brooks
General Secretary