The three major goals of the World Anti- Imperialist Platform 

Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum

When the World Anti-Imperialist Platform (the Platform) was founded, three major goals were stipulated. These are: the strengthening of the anti-imperialist struggle, the strengthening of the ideological struggle within the anti-imperialist\and communist movements,\and the strengthening of the communist forces. These are the most important goals according with the essential character of the Platform,\and they are closely related. 

Since its establishment in Paris, France in October 2022, the Platform has always devoted its energies to these three major goals with holding international conferences\and\organizing demonstrations\and rallies alongside other activities – in Belgrade, Serbia in December 2022; in Caracas, Venezuela in March 2023;\and in Gwangju\and Seoul, South Korea in May 2023.

The first goal of the Platform is to promote the anti-imperialist struggle. 

This is the most important goal of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform. Strengthening the world anti-imperialist struggle means strengthening such struggles in one’s own domestic country as well as coordinating such anti-imperialist struggles around the world. The anti-imperialist struggle of each country\and the corresponding anti-imperialist struggle on a worldwide level are in a dialectical relationship between the individual\and the general. 

‘Anti-imperialism’ means opposing the forces of imperialism. In this sense, ‘opposing’ means not only opposing the imperialists’ policy, but also the existence of the imperialist system itself. It means fighting until all traces of imperialism are eliminated.\and ‘opposing’ does not only mean the negation of the negative existence of imperialism but also the affirmation of the positive existence of an opposite to imperialism. 

This is not antifascism; it is anti-imperialism. In the second world war, the anti-fascist forces won a victory through the formation of anti-fascist fronts on a global scale. Today, when the third world war is imminent, the front that must be\organized globally is an anti-imperialist one. The form of an anti-fascist front can be taken in one country\or it’s a regional front. We should bear in mind also that fascism during the second world war was a variant of imperialism, a way to maintain the dominance of the imperialist countries during a period of intense class struggle. The fascism that we see in the world today, by contrast, is a puppet of imperialism in the colonized countries that are subordinate to imperialism.

In the current conditions, imperialism is the main target of our attack, while fascism is an auxiliary target. 

Various forms of struggle must be combined. We need to always pay attention to the combination of political struggle\and economic struggle; legal struggle\and semi-legal struggle; large-scale struggle\and small\and medium-scale struggle; intensive struggle\and decentralized struggle; daily struggle\and struggle at particular opportunities; spearheading struggle\and mass struggle.

The second goal of the Platform is to intensify ideological warfare.

The targets of ideological warfare are revisionism, opportunism\and sectarianism. Revisionism denies the revolutionary essence of the Marxism-Leninism, opportunism sells out the long-term interests of the revolution to the short-term interests of all\or a few\and commits Right\and “Left” errors, while sectarianism divides our ranks. Revisionism is an ideological problem, opportunism is a matter of political line,\and sectarianism is an\organizational problem. Revisionism, opportunism\and sectarianism are closely interrelated as three aspects of the same entity. 

Today, the main focus of the Platform’s ideological warfare is the sectarian opportunism of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). The leadership of the KKE has fallen into the trap of revisionism, since it expelled the sincere revolutionary general secretary Nikos Zachariadis\and his revolutionary comradesrom the party in 1957 under the influence of Nikita Khrushchev, the ringleader of modern revisionism. In recent times, it has caused confusion\and division within the communist ranks inside\or outside the country, engaging in severe Right\and “Left” opportunism\and sectarianism. 

‘Solidnet’, the authoritative solidarity network in the international communist movement, has virtually finished its life as it has failed to fulfill its periodic, political\and\organizational duty as a result of the sectarian opportunism of its\organizer, the KKE. This is comparable to the failure of the Second International to fulfill its role because of the opportunism of Karl Kautsky\and others,\and its end with the first world war. 

Will the KKE’s theory of the ‘imperialist pyramid’ surpass in infamy Kautsky’s theory of ‘Ultra-imperialism’? Just as Kautsky drew on English bourgeois economist JA Hobson’s ideas about ‘Inter-imperialism’, so the KKE’s pyramid theory is smeared with petty-bourgeois theories, including Trotskyism, defining all capitalist countries as having some level of imperialist development\and stating that “every capitalist country in the world without exception, constitute the imperialist pyramid”. (‘On Imperialism – The Imperialist Pyramid’ by Aleka Papariga, 2013)

It is so daring that the KKE revises the title of Lenin’s ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ of 1916. In the history of revisionism, it is rare to find such an audacious case of revising even the title of a book. In this sense, Lenin’s foresight in emphasizing the importance of ‘stage’ in the title shines through. Like this, the ‘Imperialist pyramid’ theory denies ‘stages’\and thus denies any tactics in the revolutionary movement. 

It is no coincidence that the KKE, as Trotsky also did, denies the Comintern’s tactic of\organizing an international united front against fascism, denies the revolutionary nature\and existence of national liberation struggles in the oppressed world,\and committed left-opportunist errors during the popular uprising in its own country in the early 2010s. 

It is also not surprising that Dimitris Koutsoúmbas, the general secretary of the KKE, in an interview with the mainstream media in May, likened Russia’s special military operation to NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia. The war in Ukraine has brought to the fore the ideological problems of the KKE. It is the nature of such opportunism of the KKE’s leadership to betray Leninism while quoting Lenin’s words, to represent imperialism while claiming to be against imperialism,\and to immerse itself in Eurocommunism while condemning it.

The problem is that the KKE, as revisionists\and opportunists have historically done, incites other parties to follow the same path of revisionism\and opportunism,\and if they refuse, it intervenes in them\organizationally to break them up. These criminal acts, which have taken place countless times,rom Spain a few years ago to Argentina this year, objectively confirm that the KKE is the leading international sectarian dividing the international communist movement today. 

The Platform fights not against the KKE itself but against the revisionism, opportunism\and sectarianism of its leadership. The leadership of KKE opposes Leninism while referring to Leninism, opposes revolution while referring to revolution,\and opposes anti-imperialism while referring to anti-imperialism. Thus the ideological warfare against the revisionism, opportunism\and sectarianism of the KKE’s leadership ends with an accurate deion of Leninism, revolution\and anti-imperialism. In this sense, the recent decision of the congress of the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB-CPB) is very encouraging.

The third goal of the Platform is to consolidate the international communist forces.

The reason we refer to consolidate not the communist parties but the communist forces is that the communist powers at present are not only\organized in parties but also in other types of political\organization. As we know, after the 1990s, communist forces everywhere have been through the hard time. The prerequisite of the principle that there should be only one communist party in any given country is that the traditional communist party in each country should follow a correct revolutionary line\and should play its historic role with consistency\and dedication. But in reality, not all party will do so. In the present conditions, it is unavoidable that militant communists have had to create alternative political\organizations outside of the traditional party formation in\order to conduct communist activities. 

The anti-imperialist struggle is the ‘world’ anti-imperialist struggle, the communist forces is the ‘international’ communist forces. In the anti-imperialist struggle, not only communist but also many non-communist forcesrom oppressed countries can join together under the banner of anti-imperialism. In this sense, to strengthen the world anti-imperialist struggle is a movement which takes on the character of a united front. Strengthening international communist forces in this united front context is like strengthening the revolutionary forces in any one country. It guarantees a better\and more resolute leadership for the whole struggle. In this sense, to strengthen the international communist forces is the movement which takes on the character of a party.

Just as the relationship of a party\and a united front can be compared to the relationship of the vanguard\and the transmission belts in one country, so the international communist forces\and the world anti-imperialist forces have to build the relationship of the locomotive\and the rail cars of this struggle ‘train’ on a global scale, metaphorically speaking. In other words, the international communist forces must further develop its role within the world anti-imperialist movement as a vanguard that is able to put forward the correct line\and powerfully\organize\and mobilize the people. While the anti-imperialist struggle is against the enemy, the communist movement is for the vanguard\and the masses.

The international communist forces achieved great advances in the period of the great turn. The First International was formed after the February Revolution of 1848, the Second International after the Paris Commune of 1871\and the Third International after the Russian Revolution of 1917. 

The first world war became the decisive trigger in dissolving the Second International, which had been steadily misled by Eduard Bernstein\and Karl Kautsky after the death of Friedrich Engels. After the October Socialist Revolution was won by Lenin\and the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Third International was built. During the period of the second world war, the Third International was dissolved for the reasons that the subjective forces of the revolution in each country had strengthened,\and in\order to lead the USA\and Great Britain to the world anti-imperialist front. 

With the victory of the world antifascist front in the second world war, the international socialist camp was enlarged to the global scale,\and national-liberation movements in the oppressed world grew significantly.  

During the second world war, the ‘world antifascist front strategy’ of Josef Stalin\and Georgi Dimitrov was the most important stratagem leading to the victory of the antifascist forces, isolating the fascist camp. The world anti-imperialist front that has been formed by socialist DPRK\and China with capitalist Russia\and other countries, should be regarded as a creative application of the world united front against fascism that the socialist Soviet\union created with the imperialist USA\and Britain.

In 2022, the Ukrainian war has escalated in eastern Europe. When wars spread to South Korea\and Taiwan, those will be considered indisputably a third world war. This world war, which has undoubtedly been provoked by the imperialist side, will bring about another period of great transition following the victory of the war of liberation in east Asia, decisively hastening the doom of the imperialist forces,\and moving the world into a period of great upsurge.

The anti-imperialist struggle, ideological warfare\and the communist forces have the close mutual connections. 

The anti-imperialist struggle is our practice, ideological warfare is our theory,\and the communist forces is our\organization. Anti-imperialist struggle\and ideological warfare have the relationship of practice to theory, while ideological warfare\and the communist forces have the relationship of theory to\organization. The communist forces\and the anti-imperialist struggle have the relationship of\organization to practice. 

In the present day, anti-imperialism is justice\and pro-imperialism is injustice. History demands of us that the just anti-imperialist front\and the just anti-imperialist war must be victorious. The proletariat\and people of the world must be united under the banner of anti-imperialism\and advance towards the final victory of revolution.

In this serious moment, with the full outbreak of the third world war imminent, the Platform will do its utmost to accomplish its sacred three-point goals of strengthening the anti-imperialist struggle, strengthening the ideological warfare,\and strengthening the communist forces. 

 

2023-08-21