International League of People’s Struggle
March 2024
Thank you kindly for the invitation to this important conference organised by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
I bring you comradely greetings from the International League of Peoples Struggles. (ILPS).
The ILPS has become one of the largest, most significant democratic, anti-imperialist, mass people’s organisation in the world. It’s formation and development, was guided and inspired by our dear, now departed, Comrade Joma Sison.
The ILPS was formed in 2001, and has grown to over 400 mass people’s organisations, spread over all continents, from approximately 50 countries, in Asia, Latin America, In Africa and the Middle East, North America and Europe. It is still growing and it must continue to grow.
The historical scientific analysis by Karl Marx, Frederik Engels and Vladimir Lenin, demonstrates that capitalism has developed into monopoly capitalism, into imperialism, its highest stage of development.
This also means, according to Lenin, that we now live in the era of world proletarian revolution.
This scientific analysis has been demonstrated as absolutely correct by events and experiences, since the early 19hundreds and even before.
The Paris Commune of 1870, the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Cuban Revolution of 1956, the North Korean Revolution of 1945, the establishment of socialism in other parts of Europe following the 2nd world war and other global struggles for freedom and liberation in the neo-colonial world, such as the successful Vietnamese struggle for liberation from U.S. Imperialism and many others.
Over one third of the world’s population were living under a developing socialist system by the 1950’s, thus further proving Lenin’s thesis that we live in the era of world proletarian revolution.
Despite everything that imperialism threw at socialism, to attack it, to destroy it, militarily, culturally, economically, politically and in other ways, capitalism failed to prevent the magnificent achievements by and for the proletariat and the people in general, by the socialist revolution and socialist system.
It took the home grown” capitalist roaders” in the major socialist countries, the modern revisionists, to de-rail the socialist advance temporarily.
We must never forget that the class struggle continues and even intensifies, under socialism, because the capitalist class never forgets its class interests and never ceases to work feverishly, frantically, to restore capitalism, even whilst Socialism is developing along the road of a communist future.
Unfortunately, the modern revisionists were successful in overthrowing socialism and restoring capitalism in the two largest socialist countries. The revisionists have overthrown the rule of the producers, the proletariat, and restored the rule of the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class.
This happened despite the massive efforts against modern revisionism by Stalin and the Bolsheviks, and despite the massive efforts against modern revisionism by Mao Ze Tung and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, (GPCR), and despite the major victories over the Modern Revisionists in China, during more than 10 years of the GPCR. We must learn the absolutely vital lessons from history.
JV Stalin wrote a book, just a few years before his death, called “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. It is a book written to correct the non- Marxist views of economists and others in the Soviet Union, who were engaged, to prepare a draft textbook for the Russian and world proletariat, on political economy.
In the book Stalin says this. “Some comrades deny the objective character of laws of science, and of the laws of political economy particularly, under socialism. They deny that the laws of political economy reflect law governed processes which operate independently of the will of man. They believe that in view of the specific role assigned to the Soviet state and its leaders, they can abolish existing laws of political economy and can “form” and “create” new laws.
Stalin goes on to state, “Marxism regards laws of science – whether they be laws of natural science or laws of political economy – as the reflection of objective processes which take place in- dependently of the will of man. Man may discover those laws, get to know them, study them reckon with them in his activities and utilise them in the interests of society, but he cannot change or abolish them. Still less can he form or create new laws of science.”
This book of Stalin’s recognises the problems of non-Marxist/anti-marxist views in the U.S.S.R. more than 30 years after the Socialist revolution.
The Krushchevite revisionists, and later the Chinese anti-Maoist Revisionists, destroyed the dictatorship of the proletariat and restored the bourgeois dictatorship in both major socialist countries.
These modern revisionists have disgracefully given capitalism/imperialism more time.
Despite more time, the continuing and worsening crisis of monopoly capitalism, imperialism, is there for all to see, including the capitalists themselves.
In the last century we witnessed the two most bloody world wars, waged for capitalist gain and domination, in human history, and the most vicious and widespread economic depression ever.
We witnessed the implementation of full- scale fascism by some of the warring imperialist powers.
We witnessed the slaughter of tens of millions of the worlds people in these wars and in the depression, driven by the profit motive.
Already, in this century, we have seen a state of almost permanent warfare, waged by imperialism, to control and spread its domination of other countries and of the neo-colonies, and in the process killing millions and millions more of the worlds people.
Today, the capitalist crisis has produced the greatest disparity of wealth between rich and poor in history.
Today, homelessness has reached epic proportions.
Today, worker’s reducing wages and the growing cost of living, along with rising inflation, are leaving workers and peasants terrified about the future.
Peasants are being driven off their land, due to land grabs by the big monopolies and the land- lords.
Along with all other aspects of the capitalist/imperialist crisis, is the climate crisis, created by corporate greed, a crisis which threatens the very globe itself.
Workers, Peasants and other toilers live in fear, as their lives are more and more threatened by the application of neo liberal policies which are implemented by the capitalists to try to overcome the crisis of overproduction and other elements of the capitalist systems’ un- solvable crisis.
Australia, my country, is supposed to be in the top five of the richest capitalist nations on earth, behind the U.S., Hong Kong and Switzerland.
Yet 36% of Australian households, 3.7 million, experienced food insecurity in 2023. A ten percent increase in 2022. 2.3 million are actively going hungry.
A worsening housing and homelessness crisis in Australia is leading to more and more Australians living in their cars or otherwise living on the streets.
Over the past two decades, wealth inequality in Australia has widened, with the wealth of the richest growing four times faster than the poorest. Between 2002 and 2003, the wealthiest 20% saw their average wealth surge by 82%, with the top 5% experiencing an even greater 86% increase.
This is part of the situation in one of the so-called “richest” capitalist countries.
Since the worsening global capitalist crisis in 2008, the general decline of Imperialism, and especially U.S. Imperialism, has become even more conspicuous. The rise of the new capitalist powers, China and Russia, is leading to intensified capitalist conflict, particularly as western capitalism attempts to maintain its’ dominant position in the world.
Imperialism and its’ puppets are committing crimes and massacres against the people in Palestine, Kurdistan, Philippines, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Myanmar, and others,
not to forget the former Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan, the devastation of Iraq and Libya earlier, and the constant threats against North Korea and China in East Asia.
Despite all this, the people are rising up in struggle across the globe, including mass protests and armed revolution. Armed struggle for liberation is taking place in at least the Philippines, Palestine, Turkey, Kurdistan, India, Latin America, and more.
The magnificent struggles of the Palestinian People, fighting for their freedom and independence, has brilliantly exposed yet again, to the people of the world, the absolute bankruptcy, vicious nature, and greed of capitalism, of imperialism.
Along with the military conflict in Ukraine, provoked by U.S Imperialism and NATO, the US dominated international order is deteriorating quickly.
Only revolution to establish socialism, can overcome the crisis of capitalism/imperialism, in its advanced state of decay.
Only the defeat of revisionism will make way for revolution and Socialism. The defeat of revisionism can only come about following an intensified and ongoing study of the history of revisionism, particularly in the former U.S.S.R and in China.
I wish to finish with a quote from Professor Pao-yu Ching, a Professor Emeritus of economics at Marygrove College in Detroit Michigan U.S.A. , who specialises in China and the Chinese Economy and who contributes writing and research to the ILPS.
In an article in August 2011, she says this. “…. After 30 years of capitalist reform revolutionaries in China believe that returning to socialism, is the only way to liberate Chinese workers and peasants and the rest of the Chinese people. Revolutionaries in other oppressed countries, after going through hundreds of years of colonialism and more than a century of imperialism or neo-colonialism, are of the same belief.
Therefore, the struggle against imperialism and the struggle for socialism and national liberation have become one single struggle that unites people fighting for liberation. Sixty- two years after liberation, the lessons and imperatives drawn from China’s revolution and continuing class struggles remain as relevant and urgent as ever.”
Len Cooper
ILPS Chairperson