Workers’ Party of Belgium Reports on Successful Holding of 13th International Communist Seminar

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Workers’ Party of Belgium Reports on Successful Holding of 13th International Communist Seminar

Peoples of the world, let us unite against imperialism, in particular against US preparations of a Third World War!

Workers' Party of Belgium (WPB), 12-05-2004

The WPB, who hosted the Seminar, reports that 60 communist and workers’ parties and organisations, coming from 45 countries, participated in the thirteenth International Communist Seminar (ICS) in Brussels, from May 2 to 4, 2004. An additional 67 parties and organisations were unable to attend (among them several due to visa problems), sent a solidarity message or showed interest in the Seminar. The 2004 ICS tackled the "Strategy and tactics in the struggle against global US imperialist war", with as sub-themes "US imperialism today, the number one enemy of the workers and the peoples of the world", "Today’s struggle against global US imperialist war" and "The tasks ahead for the communists". (For WDIE report, see 13th International Communist Seminar Issues Call to Oppose Danger Posed by US Imperialism of Another World War [http://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wdie-04/d04-062.htm#13th]).

The WPB reports that the General Resolution adopted at last year’s ICS was discussed, updated and amended to become the Declaration of the International Communist Seminar 2003-2004, with the title: "Workers and peoples of the world, let us unite against imperialism, in particular US imperialism, its policies of aggression and its preparations for a new world war!"

The Seminar participants decided to hold the Fourteenth International Communist Seminar from May 2 to 4, 2005 with the theme "The Leninist party, and the experience of the Third International".

Two international solidarity meetings were held. On the evening of May 3, communist and workers’ parties and organisations gathered to discuss concrete solidarity with socialist Cuba, in the presence of Comrade Abelardo Curbelo, responsible for the relations with Europe in the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. Twenty-seven additional parties or organisations attached their signature to the Statement of Solidarity with Cuba that resulted from the Conference of European Communist and Workers’ Parties in solidarity with socialist Cuba that was held in Brussels on October 5 last year. All in all, 41 communist and worker’s parties and organisations from Europe and 31 from outside Europe have signed the Statement so far.

On the evening of May 4, a similar gathering was held on solidarity with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in the presence of Comrade Pok Hyon Bo, the DPRK’s Ambassador in Germany, representing the Workers’ Party of Korea. 22 delegations present decided to send a solidarity telegram to the DPRK’s leader, Comrade Kim Jong Il.

Several delegations that attended the International Communist Seminar were still in Brussels on May 6 to attend the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnamese people’s decisive victory over the French colonisers at Dien Bien Phu, organised by the Workers’ Party of Belgium. The well-attended meeting included film showing, an exhibition, poetry reading, a Vietnamese song and several speeches, and was graced by the presence of Madame Phan Thuy Thanh, Ambassador of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in Belgium.

Declaration of the International Communist Seminar

Brussels, 4 May 2003 – 4 May 2004

The war of aggression on Iraq, which was launched on 20 March 2003 by the US and British imperialists, marks a turning point in history. This aggression was the continuation of the first US war against Ira in 1991, followed by a twelve years’ embargo that made one and a half million victims. These two aggressions against Iraq happened in the aftermath of the counter-revolutionary events that took place in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev in 1990. This counter-revolution has indeed changed the world balance of powers to the advantage of imperialism and mainly of US imperialism.

With the aggression against Ira in 2003, US imperialism blatantly violated the entire system of international legality established after the victory of the world coalition against German, Italian and Japanese fascism. The current Charter of the United Nations is in large part the product of the victory of the Soviet Union over the bulk of the fascist troops. Thanks to this victory, the USSR was able to ensure inclusion in the UN Charter the principles of respect for the national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all member countries.

Now that the great Soviet Union has been completely destroyed, the savagery inherent in the imperialist system is being imposed again on the whole world. The United States first tore up the UN Charter with its flagrant war of aggression against Yugoslavia. With its war of aggression against Iraq, flouting UN legality, it has exposed itself at the start of the 21st century as the only real outlaw state, the only real rogue state.

Hitler left the League of Nations in 1934 in order to get his hands free for his wars of conquest… and Richard Perle, Bush’s ideologist, said during the aggression on Iraq that he would like to see the demise of the UN.

The attack of September 11, 2001 served as a pretext for the extreme Right in the US to apply militarist plans on a world scale, that had been elaborated for years already. On September 20, 2001, Bush said: "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. (…) Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Bush demands the submission of all countries in the world, with only two options: being on the side of US hegemonism and submit to it, or defending the UN Charter and international law and risk being classified as terrorist or as a sympathiser of terrorism.

The wars of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq can be considered as the first salvos of the third world war for which the United States is preparing itself. Fidel Castro, speaking on May Day 2003, declared that Bush has developed "a global military dictatorship imposed through brutal force, without international laws or institutions of any kind. ( …) The world is coming under the rule of Nazi concepts and methods. "

The aggression against Iraq has indeed world-wide consequences. Washington has waged this war for the purpose of establishing a US monopoly over the Iraqi oil, obtaining a key position in OPEC so as to be able to determine the price of oil, and to exercise control over their European and Japanese allies.

The preceding US wars of aggression against Yugoslavia and Afghanistan had the objective of enabling the US to get its hands on the enormous Caspian and Central Asian oil and mineral reserves. These two wars clearly announced the hostile intentions of the US vis-à-vis Russia.

The war against Iraq, as indeed that against Afghanistan, was equally aimed at denying China access to the oil of the Middle East and of Central Asia. It is already a prelude to a US war against the People’s Republic of China.

From economic crisis to the danger of a new world war

The last twenty years we have witnessed gigantic waves of capital concentration on a world scale. Currently, a dozen of multinationals control most sectors of the world economy. Everywhere they intensify exploitation and reduce the number of workers, while drastically increasing productivity and their profits. Overproduction has become a generalised phenomenon.

The world’s two hundred major multinationals represent 25% of the world’s manufacturing value. A few thousands of multinationals own the major part of the means of production of the capitalist world and make them work for the only purpose of realising a maximum of profits for the shareholders. The vast majority of the world population is kept outside of modern industrial production and survives in misery, while the workers are overexploited and underpaid. All these express the fundamental and insoluble contradiction of the capitalist system: the contradiction between an apparently limitless productivity and stagnating markets. This contradiction unavoidably leads to crises, which shake the foundations of the imperialist system, and to ever more destructive wars. This contradiction places a tiny minority, which owns and controls gigantic means of production, in an irreconcilable opposition with the overwhelming majority of the more than six billion people living on this planet.

In spite of all its "gains", achieved thanks to neo-liberal globalisation, the United States is confronted with the biggest crisis of its entire history. It has a global debt (internal and external) of 35,000 billion dollar, more than three times its Gross Domestic Product. Their shares in the stock exchange remain over-valued, and new crashes are inevitable. The ratio between the average profit and the average price of a share (the so-called earnings price ratio) was 2.95% in 2001, compared with 13.46% in 1979. The US economy is virtually bankrupt. The US has to continuously and increasingly spend foreign capital to finance its deficit. The foreign debt of the US is as high as 3,200 billion dollar, or 30% of its Gross National Product. It is still on the rise. While this necessitates an ever-larger injection of foreign capital, the contrary is taking place. The foreign direct investments (FDI) declined from 300 billion dollar in 2000 to less than 50 billion dollar in 2003.

The fall of the value of the dollar compared to the Euro can only discourage more foreign investments in the US. How long with the foreign investors still accept to finance the US deficit? If they were to massively withdraw their stocks, an unprecedented crisis would hit the US.

The Euro is challenging the position of the US dollar as the only international reserve currency. Over two years, the value of the Euro has increased by 46% compared to the dollar. A transfer to the Euro of a significant part of the current world reserves held in dollars would provoke an economic earthquake. The same holds true if a major part of the US currency used in the oil trade would shift to the Euro.

By 2010, the 10 ASEAN member states (South East Asia) plus China are bound to become the biggest common market on the planet. This would constitute a hard blow on the US economy.

The laws inherent to monopoly capitalism inexorably push the United States towards war on a world scale. In twenty years of neo-liberal globalisation, almost all the short-term cures to the crisis have run out. The Third World is groaning under the burden of 2,500 billion dollar in debts. Privatisation has allowed multinationals to take over most of the wealth and enterprises of the Third World and of the other dominated countries. They have also taken over most of the world’s markets, thanks to economic liberalisation. The globalisation of the economic dominance of the multinationals has led to a global gridlock.

The Bush team came to power without being elected in a regular way, thanks to a "coup" instigated by the war multinationals, namely those in the oil, armaments and aeronautical industries. These three monopoly blocs are intent on a policy of global war.

The US superpower now places its bets mainly on the "military globalisation", on its overwhelming military superiority, in order to save its multinationals from an imminent global crisis, and this is at the expense of the entire world.

The US multinationals today take the only way left to capitalism when confronted with an insoluble economic crisis: the road to world war, boosting the economy through massive arms production, and with the purpose of crushing their rivals and grabbing sources of raw materials and markets…

1945: when the US took over the fight from Hitler’s Germany

To understand properly the significance of the US aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, it is necessary to put them into a historic perspective.

Washington took over Hitler’s dream of world domination immediately after the defeat of the fascist powers in 1945. It prepared for a world war against Korea, China and the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1953 in a bid to establish its hegemony. But at that time, the power of the socialist camp was able to defeat the US war plans. The political and ideological degeneration of the Soviet Union since 1953 led to the complete counter-revolution in 1990. Ever since, US hegemonism has returned to its orientation towards world domination, as conceived in 1945.

Robert Murphy, adviser to the US military governor of Germany, wrote in 1945: "General Patton wanted to re-arm two divisions of the Waffen SS and incorporate them in the 3rd US Army in order to direct them against the Reds. He said to me ‘we can push back the Red Army in Russia. With my Germans we would be able to do it.’ Patton said he would be able to reach Moscow in 30 days."

From 1944 onward, several thousands of former Nazi’s were welcomed into the USA to be used against the Soviet Union. Thousands of Japanese military officers and scientists, who specialised in biological, chemical and bacteriological warfare, were hired by the US army. General McArthur used them in the US war of aggression against Korea in 1950-1953.

From 1945 onward, the US also replaced Hitlerite Germany as the most aggressive and war-mongering imperialist power. It used the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without any military reason: the Soviet army had already crushed the Japanese army in China. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were essentially a ruthless crime committed for the purpose of nuclear blackmail against the Soviet Union. The English Field Marshall Alan Brooke has given evidence that "Churchill considered himself already capable of eliminating the Soviet Union’s industrial centres". That is how the ‘Cold War’ started.

The USSR responded to the war preparations by intensifying research in nuclear energy and rocket technology, which allowed it to break the US monopoly on nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, it marshalled many forces and resources to develop jet planes, the famous MIGs.

The victory of the Great Chinese Revolution on October 1, 1949 shifted the battlefront to East Asia. The US war of aggression against Korea started on June 26, 1950. The US imperialists succeeded in getting the United Nations to declare the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as the aggressor. The United States sent to Korea troops under the command of General McArthur. On October 23, he took Pyongyang.

But the Korean resistance was strong and shook the aggressors. On November 30, president Truman declared: "We can always consider to use the nuclear weapon". However, this was met with strong resistance from his allies.

On December 24, 1950, McArthur drew up a list of targets in China and in the DPRK, for which 26 atomic bombs would be needed. On March 24, 1951, McArthur once more asked permission to use the atom bomb, but the only thing he got was his dismissal as commander-in-chief of the UN troops. On May 19, 1953, US officers once more recommended the use of the atom bomb, and the National Security Council supported this recommendation.

The US aggression killed 3,000,000 Koreans according to certain estimates, but the resistance led by the Workers’ Party of Korea and Comrade Kim Il Sung triumphed – a resistance supported by socialist China and by the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of the World Peace Council, the largest peace movement that the world has ever known developed against the US aggression in Korea. 500 million people signed the Stockholm Appeal, demanding among other things, the banning of nuclear weapons and general disarmament.

The US aggressors failed to defeat the Korean and Chinese armies. They had to abandon their plan of a world war to eliminate socialism in Korea, in China and finally in the Soviet Union. It was a victory of internationalism, a victory of the unity of all communists, of all anti-imperialist forces and of all peace-loving people of the entire world.

At the time of the US aggression against Korea, the Soviet Union issued a declaration that takes on new significance for us today, 53 years later: "If the imperialists start a third world war, this war will be the grave, not only of separate capitalist states, but of world capitalism as a whole".

Let us fight US preparations for a third world war

With Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Armitage, the most reactionary, repressive, expansionist and bellicose section of the US bourgeoisie has taken power. The US has resumed its march on the road of fascism and aggression on a world scale, as it did in 1948-53.

The German bourgeoisie resorted to fascism in order to smash the powerful communist and revolutionary movement, to conquer the Soviet Union and to fight stronger imperialist rivals like Great Britain, France and the United States. Today, the US is the sole hegemonic power, with armed presence all over the world. Bush is committed to an international policy of a fascist type in order to reinforce his already established world hegemony and to fight militarily any potential rival on any continent.

In the field of domestic policy, Bush is attacking all democratic rights that could hamper his world-scale war policy. In the United States, for the first time in history, a special ministry centralises all aspects of "internal defence", that is to say the entire apparatus of repression. The Homeland Security Office will have 170,000 employees and a budget of 37 billion dollar. Its employees won’t have any trade union rights.

An American analyst wrote: "Since the Bush Administration came to power it has (…) been heading towards a Presidential dictatorship, whereby the waging of war abroad is accompanied by internal repression and attacks on democratic and civil rights at home. We have seen nothing like these new laws since Nazi Germany. (…) The Homeland Security Bill gives the President complete dictatorial powers: he is able to make any decision he wishes without judicial or legislative restraint. The executive branch can now carry on its meetings in secret, without scrutiny from the press or the people."

Non-Americans, who are "suspected" of being terrorists or even just of supporting terrorists, can be judged before secret military courts. Their judgement cannot be reviewed by other tribunals.

The Patriot Act justifies the use of torture against any person suspected of having knowledge of terrorist activities! The United States has publicly acknowledged torturing suspects it has transferred from Afghanistan to the Cuban territory of Guantanamo.

To save US capitalism from the grave crisis it is going through, Bush has resolutely opted for a policy of US domination over the entire plant and for preparations for war on a world scale. Paul Wolfowitz, currently Assistant Secretary of Defence, wrote already in 1992, right after the counter-revolution in Soviet Union: "The United States will use its unrivalled military power to manage the global order, if necessary unilaterally and pre-emptively. (…) Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defence strategy and requires that we endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union and Southwest Asia."

In other words: the European Union, Russia, China and India are potential enemies, which may suffer "pre-emptive wars" from the US. The US is very concerned about the fact that Russia is selling advanced weaponry to China, India, Japan and the ASEAN countries.

The US want to introduce, in one way or another, its armed forces in about a hundred countries, under the pretext of "fighting terrorism", but in reality to make the necessary preparations for the third world war. Bush declared on June 1, 2002 at the military academy of West Point: "Our security will require a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives….. We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries."

The wars against Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan had as objective, amongst others, to create a network of military bases. Acquiring bases is one of the essential features in the preparation of a world war. Bush declared in December 2002, in "The National Security Strategy": "The United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. forces. Before the war in Afghanistan, that area was low on the list of major planning contingencies. We must prepare for more such deployments".

Asia, with its two powers, namely China and India, having the potential to stand firm against US hegemonism, is the primary target of US imperialism. Serious difficulties stand in the way of the US in waging major wars of aggression there: the large distances, the lack of a sufficient number of US military bases in the region and the lack of infrastructure. For this reason, US imperialists are doing their utmost to get back their military bases in the Philippines, which they had to abandon in the past. This explains why US imperialism categorises the Communist Party of the Philippines, which is struggling for the genuine independence of the country, as a ‘terrorist entity’.

In order to block the US war preparations and to preserve world peace, the people of the world demand the withdrawal of the US occupation troops from the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, the dissolution of NATO and the dismantling of all US military bases abroad.

To fight the preparations of a world war, all communist, revolutionary and democratic forces must commit themselves to the defence of the two countries that are among the most threatened: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Cuba.

Since the end of the war in 1953, Korea lives under an armistice regime. There has never been a peace agreement. The overwhelming majority of the Korean people, in the South as well as in the North, demand the conclusion of a peace agreement and of a non-aggression pact, the closure of the US bases, the denuclearisation of the whole peninsula and the peaceful reunification of Korea. Preventing the aggression against the DPRK is essential to save world peace: if Korea were to be occupied, US hegemonism would start its war preparations against China.

Cuba, that has reduced the infant mortality rate from 60 for every 1,000 live births to 6 per 1,000, and that has increased life expectancy with 15 years on average, has been qualified by Bush as one of the countries sponsoring "terrorism"! However, since 1960, it is Cuba that suffered 700 terrorist attacks from US imperialism, attacks that caused 3,478 deaths and disabled 2,099 more people.

When Cuba takes measures of legitimate defence against the plans of aggression the hegemonic power is so clearly showing, the latter undertakes a new operation of political war, accusing Cuba of violating "human rights". This way, "human rights" has become yet another psychological weapon of the United States to prepare its wars of aggression.

To defend Cuba is to defend the flame of independence, anti-imperialism and socialism, which Cuba represents for the whole Latin-American continent. To defend Cuba is to defend Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela against US plots and military interventions. The struggle for change is spreading throughout the continent. The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela revives the dream of Simon Bolivar to see the entire Latin American continent free, united and prosperous. This popular project is diametrically opposed to the project of economic re-colonisation of Latin America by the yankees, that goes by the name of Free Trade Area of the Americas or ALCA, which is being pushed by the US.

In the framework of its preparations for a third world war, US imperialism is waging offensives to take over the huge mineral resources of Africa. The war of aggression against the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which the US has engaged its Rwandan and Ugandan subcontractors, has cost more than 4,000,000 lives. At stake is the fabulous wealth of the Congolese subsoil: the cobalt, coltan, copper, diamond, gold, etc., but also the immense hydro-electrical potential, the inexhaustible reserves of water, and the petroleum reserves of this huge country. The United States wants to control the petroleum of West and Central Africa, and it intends to build a large military basis on the island of Sao Tome. In ten years’ time, 25% of US oil will come from West Africa, overtaking the Arab countries as first source of petroleum. The fight for the complete independence of Africa is at the same time a fight for peace and against the US policy of world domination and world war.

We affirm our solidarity with the popular masses in the United States, who are themselves victims of monopoly capitalist exploitation, social backwardness and repression. We affirm our solidarity with all the democratic and anti-imperialist forces in the United States, and particularly with all anti-war forces of all communities who denounce and fight the politics of world domination of the Bush administration.

Let us mobilise against the US threat of launching a nuclear war!

The US superpower is able to destroy the entire world at least twenty times over with its nuclear, chemical and bacteriological weapons. We have seen this gigantic military force attack Iraq, a small Third World country of 22 million inhabitants, that it has banned from acquiring or having any "weapon of mass destruction". Hitler himself was never able to demand and obtain the disarming of Austria, of Czechoslovakia, of Yugoslavia – small countries he intended to attack.

For the first time since 1953, US imperialism dared to claim publicly, as it prepared to attack Iraq, that it was considering all options, including resorting to nuclear weapons! And this against a country that didn’t possess any nuclear weapon and that had been completely disarmed. At the same time, Israel had acquired some 300 nuclear warheads with the collaboration of the United States!

The Bush administration has been pursuing the fascist theory of "pre-emptive" nuclear attacks, explicitly mentioning Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia and some other countries as possible targets.

In March 2003, US and South Korean troops carried out two large-scale joint exercises, mobilising 200,000 US and South Korean soldiers. Six Stealth F-115 warplanes and a squad of F-15’s made 220 sorties for spying and for training to attack well-defined targets in the DPRK. The Bush administration has elaborated detailed plans to bomb the nuclear installations of the DPRK in Yongbyon.

The threat of a nuclear world war has never been so serious!

On August 6, 1950 the Gathering for Peace, which took place in Hiroshima, launched a world campaign against the production, possession and use of nuclear weapons, and for their prohibition. The movement for peace and against nuclear weapons, together with the people of the Third World who were struggling for their independence, and together with the socialist countries, prevented US imperialism from resorting to the nuclear weapon during its wars of aggression.

The counter-revolution in the Soviet Union has demobilised the peace movement: it was the famous "end of history" myth, the whole world was anticipating to get "peace dividends". But today, the people discover that it is the US, the only superpower, which is threatening the whole planet with nuclear destruction.

No sensible human being can accept the current situation where US imperialism, with its stockpile of some 10,000 nuclear warheads, can threaten small countries such as North Korea or Iran, upon suspicion of aiming to produce a few nuclear weapons. Where in the UN Charter does it say that a single superpower can do anything it pleases in this regard, while everything is forbidden to all other countries?

Before US imperialism dares to use the nuclear bomb, the world movement for nuclear disarmament must be launched anew. The nuclear powers must commit themselves never to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries. They must commit themselves never to be the first to use a nuclear weapon. Complete nuclear disarmament must be organised, under UN control, starting with the country that possesses the most nuclear weapons. Finally, complete and simultaneous nuclear disarmament of all nuclear countries must be obtained.

Workers and peoples of the world, let us unite against the number one enemy: US hegemonism!

Workers and peoples of the world, let us unite against the preparations for a third world war!

1. For the withdrawal of the US occupation forces from the Balkan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
2. For the dismantling of all US military bases abroad.
3. For the dissolution of the aggressive NATO pact.
4. For the withdrawal of the US bases from Korea, for the denuclearisation of the entire Korean peninsula, for the peaceful reunification of Korea.
5. Stop the US conspiracies to destabilise Cuba, stop the preparations for a military aggression against Cuba.
6. For the commitment of the nuclear powers never to use nuclear weapons the first.
7. For total nuclear disarmament under UN control, starting with the country that possesses the largest number of nuclear weapons, in order to obtain total and simultaneous nuclear disarmament of all nuclear nations.

Solidarity with all democratic and anti-imperialist forces in the United States.