donderdag 29 april 2010

Note about anti-imperialist resistance

I think that for the development of an real anti-imperialist ideology in the working class living in imperialist centres and for the theorizing of the spontaneous anti-imperialist ideology of all forms of objective resistance against imperialism (however not always subjectively or consciously reasoned or theorized), it is urgent that there will be an CONCRETE analyse of  ACTUAL imperialism. And that actual and concrete analyse -that is my opinion – has to become the base of the development of the strategy, say the program, that the real vanguard of the working class will make.
That strategy, that revolutionary program will become by agitation, propaganda, formation, education,  discussion etc..., the strategy, the program of the WHOLE working class for their revolutionary struggle against imperialism (the last possible stage of capitalism).

One can say that some organisations (who declared to be « the vanguard ») make NOT a concrete analyse (based on dialectical and historical materialism) of the actual imperialist stage of capitalism today. So they can never come to a real formulation of the tasks of the revolutionary forces in the world (of which they pretend to be a part of or even should LEAD....). It is the persisting of opportunist conceptions about applying dialectical and historical materialism that make them blind for the development of REVISIONISM in their own organisations.
Not noticing this opportunism and so not beat it led for the Workers Party of Belgium (WPB -Partij Van De Arbeid van België/PVDA) to the installing of a REVISIONIST leadership that led the former communist party to a REFORMIST party. The same dynamics happen to the KEN (ml) (Kommunistische Eenheidsbeweging Nederland - Marxist-Leninistisch - communist united movement of the Netherlands - Marxist-Leninist) they became the reformist party: Socialist Party-SP (of the Netherlands)

The self declared communist, revolutionary or Marxist organisations are often basing their strategically, political and organisational points on a Marxist-SOUNDING analyse that is made in a very GENERALISING way, using CHOSEN QUOTES of Marx or Lenin. But in their anti-imperialist and revolutionary strategy they are often ACCEPTING as a FACT, the ARTIFICIAL borders (drawn by imperialism or colonialism) and countries as “nations” IN those borders. Those borders are a result of imperialist competition dividing the world in zones of influences.
In fact those « communist » organisations are developing sometimes a nationalism (in the form of the objective of socialist revolution WITHIN those artificial “national” borders) that is MORE NARROW than the nationalism I mentioned above, because they ACCEPT a former colony, bordered by artificial colonial drawn frontiers, being a «nation» IN which the revolution has to be organised.
So are they WEAKENING real anti-imperialist resistance already from the beginning of its organising!

When the members of a communist party don't participate actively in applying dialectical and historical materialism in the basic analyses that has to be made for the development of the political and ideological line of the party, while leaving this work to leading cadres, opportunism can develop inside the party without being countered.
Democratic centralism offers in a communist party the possibility of a conscious control of the members over their leading cadres.
When serious study and discussion of the political texts of the leading cadres and a study and discussion about the effective CLASS-point out of which this text is written is neglected, when personal attempts of fundamental analysis are not been made and political guidelines are just been followed without own study and without trying to do oneself the analyse again that lies at the base of those guidelines, the development of opportunism will not been noticed.
Bourgeois elements that once entered the party, or members or cadres who change of class-position (of proletarian to bourgeois class-position) can use this existing opportunism to cover their bourgeois class-position while being member or cadre of that communist party.
When consciously a bourgeois political and ideological line is developed formulated in “Marxist-sounding” terms it is no longer opportunism but REVIONISM. With that revisionist political and ideological line (when it will be accepted by “blind” and “deaf” members) it is possible to convert that revolutionary communist party into a capitalism-protecting REFORMIST party, while many “deaf” and “blind” members are still convinced to be member of a revolutionary party.
This is what happened with the WPB. (Workers Party of Belgium – Partij Van De Arbeid van
België/PVDA, pvda.be, wpb.be, ptb.be)

I tried to analyse this teaching example of deterioration to reformism by the way of development of non-countered revisionism INSIDE a communist revolutionary organisation as the WPB WAS:

Concrete anti-imperialist resistance is growing in the world, but need further analyse based on applying correctly dialectical and historical materialism.
At the same time there exist forces in the world, that organise struggle against imperialism and who based their effective resistance against imperialism on (as I see it) programs or strategy, that is not the result of real Marxist analyse, but based on historical experiences of colonial production relations of imperialism installed by force over them.
When you are looking at the regions in the world, were imperialism is using armed intervention, war and violent repression, the organisations that are the « vanguard » in the CONCRETE PRACTICE of organising the most violent attacks AGAINST these aspects of imperialism, in the PRACTICE of organising masses in resistance against these aspects of imperialism, those organisations are often NOT “self declared communist organisations”.
Their anti-imperialist ideology is not developed by dialectical and historical materialist analyse but is a kind of nationalist ideology but by the experiences of the struggle getting an anti-imperialist character. The progressive aspect of that nationalism is that that «nation» is NOT a country bordered by artificial frontiers once drawn by colonial powers DIVIDING larger popular masses that lived under equal colonial production relations sometimes putting all kind of contradictions against each other as «competitors». That by anti-colonialist struggle developed nationalism is UNIFYING large popular masses in the same fight against the colonial aspects of imperialism.
But I think by them there is sometimes a lack of scientific analyse of the actual world, of the actual situation of imperialism, which should lead to strategically, political and organisational conclusions to fight most effectively against imperialism.
Their nationalism is sometimes based on some historical and cultural conceptions formulated sometimes in religious, cultural or other metaphysical terms.

But now I think it is the moment of discussion with the REAL vanguard organisations «in the field» to develop a real anti-imperialist line. Perhaps out of such a discussion, some new real communist organisations (being the organised vanguard of the working class) can (re-)appear....
I want to make my contribution in this development of an anti-imperialist line and worked out a first analysis that can be submitted to discussion.
The different points treated (As I think to be important) are:
  • The capitalist production system functioning concrete in the finals stage of imperialism, the aspect of a socialising of the production
  • Competition is not vanishing by further monopoly-forming, but each time reappearing and sometimes aggravating into war situations. It is the FREE competition that is replaced by monopoly.
  • How is the forming and the realising of surplus value, the materialising of the level of exploitation in the imperialist stage of the capitalist production-system
  • What is the meaning of “the ownership of the means of production” (and the production itself, the production technology, the means of distribution of the production) under the final stage of imperialism (itself the ultimate stage of capitalism)
  • The question of the CONCRETE capitalist state CONFORMED to the level of development of capitalism (in it ACTUAL CONCRETE stage of imperialism
  • Imperialism sits in a fundamental crisis of overcapacity. Imperialism can only undergo the crisis, putting the weight of the crisis by the working class and the people that live under the colonialist production relations installed by imperialism and searching all kinds of temporarily «solutions» but which are all protecting the further existence of imperialism.
  • What is the concrete composition of the working class and what are her actual tasks.
  •  What are now the concrete actual tasks of the vanguard of the working-class
I tried to make my contribution by making the following analyse in the next document (in which there are links to further documents):
"Anti-imperialist united front"

donderdag 8 april 2010

Kris Merckx (PVDA/WPB), reformist since 1968: “OK, as long as my voters BELIEVE I am communist.”

Kris Merckx in “De Morgen” (a Belgian daily), Saturday 23 February 2008, in an interview:

“We (he speaks about the PVDA/WPB[1], Nico) stay on striving for a real socialist social alternative. We will never accept the capitalist system; otherwise the PVDA (WPB, Nico) has no reason of existence anymore. But it is getting urgent to become more flexible as a party. We have to dare to admit that our discourse was indeed very pure, but at the same time it had been floating to high above the heads of the working people: that cost the WPB in efficiency....
The WPB will always have her own identity and character; we may not hide our communist identity. But I am very well aware of the fact that the youth of today have not anymore an ear for Stalin or Mao. What we can accomplish here and now, that is what we bring to the people....
... (I have).... learned a lot ... of Mao, of his idea of “serving the people”. But that means also that recognizing that he has also made mistakes. It is the same for the Soviet-Union ... has unbelievable merits. But again, I admit that the repression under Stalin was too broad. And even when they are provoked by ruthless opponents, then he had the responsibility not to fall in the same trap. Let’s recognise at the same time the positive aspects as the negative aspects of Leninism and Maoism and pull the lessons out of them.....
.....Nobody can deny the merits of “Medicine For The People”. On this way we have to go further: concrete solutions for concrete points, action on the field instead of big theories.”
In fact, Kris Merckx is saying:
“The WPB has to stick to an “anti-capitalist” and “communist” profile, otherwise she can not profile herself next to other parties and above all, next to al what is so-called “left”. But in order to take care for having a voting public (in elections) for the WPB, we have to let go our van-guard character. Therefore we have to “revise” Marxism.Let’s recognise at the same time the positive aspects as the negative aspects of Leninism and Maoism and pull the lessons out of them”.And please let’s not try to work on revolution anymore! Because that is not attracting and interesting people. We have to become reformist, “movement is all, the objective is nothing” ....; so a social movement....” Medicine For The People”. “Concrete solutions for concrete points, action on the field instead of big theories.” ...”
Forty years ago Kris Merckx and Ludo Martens[2] were opposing each other with each THEIR answer on the question: How should we now organise us?
.....and Kris Merckx has NEVER given up his conceptions and convictions of forty years ago. With the help of Boudewijn Deckers and Peter Mertens and the complicity of “comrades of 1968” as Jo Cottenier and Herwig Lerouge (and helped by the “Gods-given” physical and psychical problems by Ludo Martens that made it impossible for him to react in a right way) it became possible to transform the WPB into an kind of organisation AGAINST which Ludo Martens OPPOSED already then in 1968!
Kris Merckx in Rerum nr 1, 7 September ’68:
“It is clear that revolutionaries (of what is presenting itself as such), and “reformers” impossible can cooperate from the beginning, to do study-work together: their interests but above all there point of departure and tactics are differing too much. That is the reason for my personal choice for a progressive reformist party. SVB (Studenten Vak Beweging – Student Union Movement, Nico) is in the consequence of her actual ideology revolutionary.
So there exist a need for the organisation of a party, which is trying in the same efficient and attractive way as SVB (openness, engagement, study-work and open discussion, forming of militants, action) to work out a universitary and social alternative, based on a progressive reformist attitude. Copies of our pillared Belgian political parties ... are not in any circumstances coming in question.”
Ludo Martens in Rerum nr 3:
“Comrade Merckx turns himself in the former Free Tribune into the spokesman of the silent amaze about the ardour, the activity, the study of the student-union-movement.
Some would like to transpose that same ardour and activity in a reformers-movement.
But they are forgetting that our ardour and activity are just and solely coming forth of our insight of the revolution.
Without belief in the working class and the revolution we would not in the possibility to work as we do now.
1.       We feel as our duty to make a good worked-out analyse of the late-capitalist society. An analyse made for, and on the side of, the struggling workers!
2.       We know of ourselves that we are raised and educated in a bourgeois environment. We have to transform ourselves totally – ideas, method of thinking and attitude – so that we are capable to struggle effectively together with the workers. This transformation can only come based on practice, by permanent engagement.
3.       Only scientific knowledge of the revolution can help the workers to victory. Therefore our concern to make permanently critic on our own attitude and our own theoretic analyse.
4.       Who wants to struggle at the side of the workers, has made a choice for decades. We know that we have to abdicate of all successes and prestige of the bourgeois society. We will prove in 10 years that we are worth the trust or the workers in the class-struggle.
Who are considering these four statements, has not to worry about ardour and activity. He has to choose. There exist two possible ways. He can try to walk along on the way of the workers and the people. But he can also advance to the shining glowing parliamentary seat rising high above the flock.”
…After 10 years indeed the PVDA/WPB was founded, with revolutionary ambition… and indeed with some mistakes to correct but with a majority of militants that tried to put those four statements into practice. (And were trying to correct things in a more real Marxist way than before – the contributions to this of Ludo Martens are many) Those militants are now put in minority IN the PVDA/PVDA with the flood of “new members” who are addicted to the ideology formulated here by Kris Merckx …. or were silenced as happen with Ludo Martens … or they were EXPELLED … like me.


[1] Partij Van De Arbeid van België - Workers Party of Belgium – pvda.be wpb.be.
[2]    They were, together with Boudewijn Deckers, Jo Cottenier, Herwig Lerouge and others, the founders of AMADA in 1970(“All Power To The Workers” communist party in preparation – founding in 1979 the WPB). It were mostly the former militants of the SVB that left the universitary environment and became workers on shipyards, in mines, in steel-factories and other big factories.

maandag 22 maart 2010

"Anti-capitalism" NOT BEING anti-imperialism is reformism 2

The following “contribution of the WPB” passed apparently without critic on the 11th International Meeting of Communists and Workers' Parties, November 20-22, 2009, New Delhi:
“We have decided to walk on two legs. On the one hand, we want to get rid of rigidity and dogmatism in our mass work: we must start from what people understand today: correct demands for which they are prepared to act - whatever the level - and support and help develop the struggles they undertake.
For example, we are currently engaged in a major campaign for a tax on millionaires, a tax that would hit the 72,000 euromillionnaire families in Belgium. Compared to the population, it is the largest number in the European Union. Taxing the very rich is a claim that has already met with some support in various trade union circles.... But bourgeois political circles claim… it is absurd and "unrealistic”.... We are also advocating a reduction of VAT on energy, from 21% - the current rate – to 6%. We have already collected over 200,000 signatures and we will continue this campaign as long as the measure has not been applied. I could give you a much longer list of demands or actions that we undertake and which are at a level people can engage with.(...)
The danger of turning to the right of course exists. ... This would be a real risk, if we did not also walk on the other foot: the strengthening of Marxist-Leninist education in our party, through party schools and our theoretical journal and through open conferences.[1]
Here Boudewijn Deckers (leading cadre of the WPB-PVDA-PTB (pvda.be, ptb.be) is protecting the often still present reformist ideology by a lot of combative workers and unionists. He is saying that a consequent “left” reformism is the same as the revolutionary strategy of a “real communist party”, with the condition of having a good Marxist (-sounding) argumentation......

How is the WPB linking “a real Marxist analyse” of actual capitalism with “propagating a program of reforms?
I have already analysed how (to read beginning here....but it is -still- in Dutch) Peter Mertens (actual president of the WPB) in his publication “The working-class in the period of the transnational enterprises” (“De arbeidersklasse in het tijdperk van de transnationale ondernemingen”, Marxistische Studies no. 72, 2006, EPO, also to read in Dutch and French on marx.be) gives a very static and narrow view on what is called “the working class”. He analyses ACTUAL capitalism in a very GENERAL way, far from being CONCRETE (contrary as was Lenin in his study “Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism”. He proposes socialism as something “for which one can strive”, but not as an URGENT and BITTER necessity. (And about WHAT is in fact “socialism” he does not give anywhere a concrete explanation....) He is just talking about increased exploitation to make of the task of the communists just to: 'lead the resistance against the effects of this increased exploitation'.
After “opposing the parliamentarism of Nadine Rosa Rosso” (the former general-secretary of the WPB expelled by a group of cadres round Peter Mertens, ....one of the reasons was “her parliamentarism”) he make a large bend to come to DEFEND the importance of participating to elections and evaluating the general strategy and working of the communist party on the results IN the elections (the number of votes).....which is in fact....”parliamentarism”
He emphasizes the importance that Lenin and Marx would have attached to “the struggle for reforms”, to make of it an autonomous task (standing on its own) of the communists. At the same time he tries to prove that he (and with him the WPB) is till authentic Marxist and revolutionary.
It is very difficult to accept that he is doing this “by accident” because of insufficient knowledge.... He proves to be to have an enormous ENCYCLOPEDIARY knowledge of history and Marxists works. By “insufficient knowledge” or CONSCIOUSLY, he is anyway fulfilling the wish of the bourgeoisie: developing and promoting IN THE CIRCLES of the revolutionaries a line that postpones the revolution to a far, very far future, that puts the strategy to revolution in formal, vague and very general terms and words, whereby the revolution is from being postponed to never to be realised and so PROTECTING the CONTINUANCE of capitalism.

Peter Mertens pretending to make '“true Marxist-Leninist analyse of actual capitalism (in its stage of imperialism)”in his book....:
“Tens of thousands of hands and minds are working on all continents for the same employers. So, the contradiction between work and capital has not disappeared, but has become planetary. That antagonism became sharper by the technological revolution. Not the humanitarian needs and necessities are counting. With patents, brevets and copy-rights all the new scientific evolutions are pressed in the bodice of profit-maximalisation. (....)
The technological evolution makes that continuously fewer people are producing more. The one is working to death; the other is condemned to unemployment. Undertakers, offices of temporary workers and little enterprises are taking care of a lot of out-sourced tasks. In the statistics are those the jobs that disappear out of the industry and are counted by those in the sector of services. In the reality those jobs are not disappearing out of the industrial production. They just are disappearing out of the collective power and social protection of the bigger sectors.... The working class has changed by the industrial transformations. But she is not gone to the margins of the society. The working-class is present more than in earlier days in the core-business of the industry and is its bounding heart that is producing all the wealth. And with this she is carrying the future inside.”
“....Today ....the capitalist monopolies rule no longer the sectors on the scale of each country but on a global scale. Mergers and buying state-enterprises have brought in the last decades a huge concentration. Just some transnational enterprises (TNE's) are controlling the sectors of the world-economy. Never in history are so many people working at just one product, be it a car, a plane or an oil-based product. In the twenty biggest TNE's a quarter of a million to a half million of workers are working.... that is without the undertaking business.
But also never in history so few are ruling the production; just three in the oil-sector, six in the car-production, just two on the corn-market, just four on the soy-bean-market, just six in the agro- chemical industry and two in the civil air-transport.
The contradiction between work and capital came so not “in a crisis”, in the way that she would disappear, as Antonio Negri is insinuating. The contradiction between work and capital on the brim of the twenty-first century has just become global.
And so the world has become ripe for the next production-system, socialism.  'When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of primary raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three-fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when the raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated hundreds or thousands of miles from each other; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the material right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when these products are distributed according to a single plan among tens and hundreds of millions of consumers (the marketing of oil in America and Germany by the American oil trust)—then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere “interlocking”, that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period (if, at the worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is protracted), but which will inevitably be removed.[2]', Lenin wrote when he analysed imperialism.
The shell today means that today just a couple of thousands of families (not more!) have the private ownership over the thousand biggest transnational enterprises, and those several of thousands families by the way of those thousand biggest enterprises are controlling almost the whole global economy. So are they also controlling directly or indirectly the work of almost one billion workers who sold their workforce and of al those families depending of those workers. They control also the technology, the (tele-) communication, transport, the organisation as their property. They are controlling not, while they support social development or social progress, but to maximalise their profits. So is private ownership of the means of production (enterprises, lands and grounds, means of communication and of transport) becoming the biggest break for social progress of humanity.”
Peter Mertens is here above all emphasising on the more and more CONCENTRATION in less but bigger monopolies. (And monopolies are for him just distinct enterprises although bigger than in earlier capitalism) He is NOT talking (although he COULD, with his “outsourcing” statement ....) about the increased SOCIAL character of capitalist production in the stage of imperialism. He let (here above) in a quote of LENIN, let LENIN talk about this, but Peter Mertens himself does not see it.....
Just for a part he is treating this but in just one limited aspect where he says that IN for example a car-assembling-monopoly very much workers are involved in the production of one car. Just “analysing” imperialism as almost only a QUANTATIVE transformation out of capitalism as it is concretely analysed by Marx, in HIS actuality is making a DOGMATIC OPPORTUNIST mistake in applying “Marxist analyse”. In the case of Peter Mertens it’s a conscious made “mistake” searching a “Marxist-sounding apology” for the defence of a REFORMIST strategy.
There is a SECOND aspect, a second rather QUALITATIVE characteristic of imperialism, namely where the monopolies are linked together (under a kind of “collective” or “shared” ownership of a same group of capitalists, read my point of view in my analyse in ........) where the resources-winning-or-digging-monopolies, the monopolies of refined, composed intermediary products, the production-machines-delivering monopolies, the logistical monopolies, the financing monopolies, the end-product-assembling monopolies, the distribution-monopolies are involving FAR MORE workers for the production of that final product that by selling will realise the surplus-value extracted from all those workers involved. This is the socialised production as characteristic of imperialism; this is THE important aspect of DEVELOPMENT of the working class and ENLARGING of the working class. Lenin analysed this aspect in his book talking there about “combinations” “trusts” and “cartels”. This is the characteristic of “the break on further possible development of the production-forces” making that -as Lenin says- “imperialism is the prelude of the social revolution of the proletariat”.
Peter Mertens LIMITS the revolutionary role of the working class to just a PART of the working class which he is calling “the industrial production workers”. In fact is for him that PART of the working class what HE defines as “revolutionary working-class”.
Peter Mertens want to give his “analyse of actual imperialism” an “authentic” character by quoting Lenin out of his book “Imperialism....” But the quote is really good chosen, talking there almost only about the quantative changes of the imperialist stage of capitalism with his earlier stage.
But even in this quote Peter Mertens has to negate what Lenin really said!
Lenin is here talking about the SOCIALISING of the production as a characteristic  of becoming ripe of imperialism to replace it by socialism because the PRIVATE ownership of the means of production become the barrier to put that SOCIALISED production really in service of the SOCIETY of the workers. Using the phrase of “those thousand families” Peter Mertens has to be clear that he means here what is HIS definition of the ACTUAL capitalist class. Those “thousand families” don't only CONTROL “as if it was their private property”, but they OWN the means of production, the technology and are appropriating in first instance the whole global production, for then to be able to SELL it and so to realise the surplus-value extracted out of the work of “almost one billion people that are selling their workforce”. Peter Mertens is considering (but not clearly) those “almost one billion people that are selling their workforce” as the actual working class. .....
Quotes of Lenin where he is analysing this aspect, Peter Mertens will not give. I will do this for the sake of young Marxism discovering militants trapped by the revisionist Marxist phraseology of Peter Mertens.
“...A very important feature of capitalism in its highest stage of development is so-called combination of production, that is to say, the grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry, which either represent the consecutive stages in the processing of raw materials (for example, the smelting of iron ore into pig-iron, the conversion of pig-iron into steel, and then, perhaps, the manufacture of steel goods)—or are auxiliary to one another (for example, the utilisation of scrap, or of by-products, the manufacture of packing materials, etc.).
“Combination,” writes Hilferding, “levels out the fluctuations of trade and therefore assures to the combined enterprises a more stable rate of profit. Secondly, combination has the effect of eliminating trade. Thirdly, it has the effect of rendering possible technical improvements, and, consequently, the acquisition of super-profits over and above those obtained by the ‘pure’ (i.e., non-combined) enterprises. Fourthly, it strengthens the position of the combined enterprises relative to the ‘pure’ enterprises, strengthens them in the competitive struggle in periods of serious depression, when the fall in prices of raw materials does not keep pace with the fall in prices of manufactured goods.”[3]
The German bourgeois economist, Heymann, who has written a book especially on “mixed”, that is, combined, enterprises in the German iron industry, says: “Pure enterprises perish, they are crushed between the high price of raw material and the low price of the finished product.” Thus we get the following picture: “There remain, on the one hand, the big coal companies, producing millions of tons yearly, strongly organised in their coal syndicate, and on the other, the big steel plants, closely allied to the coal mines, having their own steel syndicate. These giant enterprises, producing 400,000 tons of steel per annum, with a tremendous output of ore and coal and producing finished steel goods, employing 10,000 workers quartered in company houses, and sometimes owning their own railways and ports, are the typical representatives of the German iron and steel industry. And concentration goes on further and further. Individual enterprises are becoming larger and larger. An ever-increasing number of enterprises in one, or in several different industries, join together in giant enterprises, backed up and directed by half a dozen big Berlin banks. In relation to the German mining industry, the truth of the teachings of Karl Marx on concentration is definitely proved; true, this applies to a country where industry is protected by tariffs and freight rates. The German mining industry is ripe for expropriation.”[4] [5]
....and his definition of the capitalist class (as owners of the means of production) as “just a couple of thousands of families (not more!) have the private ownership over the thousand biggest transnational enterprises, and those several of thousands families by the way of those thousand biggest enterprises are controlling almost the whole global economy.”....is also a proof of his dogmatism.
The “individual “capitalists exert their “ownership” over the globally integrated production-chains by their capital placed in financial institutions (bancs but also holding-enterprises and insurance-companies ...)
In the next quote of Lenin he is concluding that already Marx noticed this change of exerting the “ownership" of the capitalists over the “means of productions”.
“But facts remain facts. There are no trusts in Germany; there are “only” cartels—but Germany is governed by not more than three hundred magnates of capital, and the number of these is constantly diminishing. At all events, banks greatly intensify and accelerate the process of concentration of capital and the formation of monopolies in all capitalist countries, notwithstanding all the differences in their banking laws.
The banking system “possesses, indeed, the form of universal book-keeping and distribution of means of production on a social scale, but solely the form”, wrote Marx in Capital half a century ago (Russ. trans., Vol. III, part II, p. 144). The figures we have quoted on the growth of bank capital, on the increase in the number of the branches and offices of the biggest banks, the increase in the number of their accounts, etc., present a concrete picture of this “universal book-keeping” of the whole capitalist class; and not only of the capitalists, for the banks collect, even though temporarily, all kinds of money revenues—of small businessmen, office clerks, and of a tiny upper stratum of the working class. “Universal distribution of means of production”—that, from the formal aspect, is what grows out of the modern banks, which, numbering some three to six of the biggest in France, and six to eight in Germany, control millions and millions. In substance, however, the distribution of means of production is not at all “universal”, but private, i.e., it conforms to the interests of big capital, and primarily, of huge, monopoly capital, which operates under conditions in which the masses live in want, in which the whole development of agriculture hopelessly lags behind the development of industry, while within industry itself the “heavy industries” exact tribute from all other branches of industry.[6]
Peter Mertens is silent about a THIRD (also more QUALITATIVE) aspect of imperialism: the NECCESSITY (and NOT just “a possible choice”...) of developing COLONIALISM..... and in a world that is already divided we should talk about continuously RE-affirm a new division of the world, based on colonialism....
Just a quote of Lenin about this, a quote that Peter Mertens would never chose.....
“Alongside the colonial possessions of the Great Powers, we have placed the small colonies of the small states, which are, so to speak, the next objects of a possible and probable “re-division” of colonies. These small states mostly retain their colonies only because the big powers are torn by conflicting interests, friction, etc., which prevent them from coming to an agreement on the division of the spoils. As to the “semi-colonial” states, they provide an example of the transitional forms which are to be found in all spheres of nature and society. Finance capital is such a great, such a decisive, you might say, force in all economic and in all international relations, that it is capable of subjecting, and actually does subject, to itself even states enjoying the fullest political independence; we shall shortly see examples of this. Of course, finance capital finds most “convenient”, and derives the greatest profit from, a form of subjection which involves the loss of the political independence of the subjected countries and peoples. In this respect, the semi-colonial countries provide a typical example of the “middle stage”. It is natural that the struggle for these semi-dependent countries should have become particularly bitter in the epoch of finance capital, when the rest of the world has already been divided up.
Colonial policy and imperialism existed before the latest stage of capitalism, and even before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and practised imperialism. But “general” disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental difference between socio-economic formations, inevitably turn into the most vapid banality or bragging, like the comparison: “Greater Rome and Greater Britain.”[7] Even the capitalist colonial policy of previous stages of capitalism is essentially different from the colonial policy of finance capital.
The principal feature of the latest stage of capitalism is the domination of monopolist associations of big employers. These monopolies are most firmly established when all the sources of raw materials are captured by one group, and we have seen with what zeal the international capitalist associations exert every effort to deprive their rivals of all opportunity of competing, to buy up, for example, iron-fields, oilfields, etc. Colonial possession alone gives the monopolies complete guarantee against all contingencies in the struggle against competitors, including the case of the adversary wanting to be protected by a law establishing a state monopoly. The more capitalism is developed, the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world, the more desperate the struggle for the acquisition of colonies.[8] (Emphasising by me – Nico)
....and here is not meant, the official recognised “colonies” that existed in the stage of capitalism BEFORE becoming imperialism, so countering already a possible reaction about the so-calleddecolonisation” after the Second WW.... as I will illustrate by a second quote from Lenin about the phenomena of colonisation linked to imperialism.
“The non-economic superstructure which grows up on the basis of finance capital, its politics and its ideology, stimulates the striving for colonial conquest. “Finance capital does not want liberty, it wants domination,” as Hilferding very truly says. And a French bourgeois writer, developing and supplementing, as it were, the ideas of Cecil Rhodes quoted above,[9] writes that social causes should be added to the economic causes of modern colonial policy: “Owing to the growing complexities of life and the difficulties which weigh not only on the masses of the workers, but also on the middle classes, ‘impatience, irritation and hatred are accumulating in all the countries of the old civilisation and are becoming a menace to public order; the energy which is being hurled out of the definite class channel must be given employment abroad in order to avert an explosion at home’.”[10]
Since we are speaking of colonial policy in the epoch of capitalist imperialism, it must be observed that finance capital and its foreign policy, which is the struggle of the great powers for the economic and political division of the world, give rise to a number of transitional forms of state dependence. Not only are the two main groups of countries, those owning colonies, and the colonies themselves, but also the diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically, are formally independent, but in fact, are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence, typical of this epoch. We have already referred to one form of dependence—the semi-colony.”[11]
I think that I have now given enough arguments to prove that Peter Mertens in his by dogmatism influenced analyse of imperialism led his public to a rather limited determination of what is the actual working class. And by a chosen quote out of “Imperialism,....” he want to give his analyse a “anti-imperialist” character without really analyse what are the real qualitative characteristics of imperialism that differs from capitalism noticed and analysed by Marx, in HIS time.
The REASONS of Peter Mertens of doing this are similar to those of Kautsky, against whom Lenin argued in his book “Imperialism,....” Again some quotes that Peter Mertens would never chose.....
“Special attention has been devoted in this pamphlet to a criticism of Kautskyism, the international ideological trend represented in all countries of the world by the “most prominent theoreticians”, the leaders of the Second International (Otto Bauer and Co. in Austria, Ramsay MacDonald and others in Britain, Albert Thomas in France, etc., etc.) and a multitude of socialists, reformists, pacifists, bourgeois democrats and parsons.
This ideological trend is, on the one hand, a product of the disintegration and decay of the Second International, and, on the other hand, the inevitable fruit of the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie, whose entire way of life holds them captive to bourgeois and democratic prejudices.
The views held by Kautsky and his like are a complete renunciation of those same revolutionary principles of Marxism that writer has championed for decades, especially, by the way, in his struggle against socialist opportunism (of Bernstein, Millerand, Hyndman, Gompers, etc.). It is not a mere accident, therefore, that Kautsky’s followers all over the world have now united in practical politics with the extreme opportunists (through the Second, or Yellow International) and with the bourgeois governments (through bourgeois coalition governments in which socialists take part).
The growing world proletarian revolutionary movement in general, and the communist movement in particular, cannot dispense with an analysis and exposure of the theoretical errors of Kautskyism. The more so since pacifism and “democracy” in general, which lay no claim to Marxism whatever, but which, like Kautsky and Co., are obscuring the profundity of the contradictions of imperialism and the inevitable revolutionary crisis to which it gives rise, are still very widespread all over the world. To combat these tendencies is the bounden duty of the party of the proletariat, which must win away from the bourgeoisie the small proprietors who are duped by them, and the millions of working people who enjoy more or less petty-bourgeois conditions of life. " (Emphasised by me – Nico)
...and about the ROLE that those “hidden” reformists (I should speak of revisionists) have to play....
“A few words must be said about Chapter VIII, “Parasitism and Decay of Capitalism”. (...)
What is the economic basis of this world-historical phenomenon?
It is precisely the parasitism and decay of capitalism, characteristic of its highest historical stage of development, i.e., imperialism. As this pamphlet shows, capitalism has now singled out a handful (less than one-tenth of the inhabitants of the globe; less than one-fifth at a most “generous” and liberal calculation) of exceptionally rich and powerful states which plunder the whole world simply by “clipping coupons”. Capital exports yield an income of eight to ten thousand million francs per annum, at pre-war prices and according to pre-war bourgeois statistics. Now, of course, they yield much more.
Obviously, out of such enormous super-profits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the “advanced” countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.
This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers. take the side of the bourgeoisie, the “Versaillese” against the “Communards”.
Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution.
Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. This has been confirmed since 1917 on a world-wide scale.”
With these warnings of Lenin against “pseudo-Marxists” as Kautsky, I want to warn anti-imperialists who are just about to discover Marxist analyse and the (ex-)comrades who refuse to do their own Marxist analysing work and just “follow” in a blind activist way, their pseudo-Marxist leadership:
“The argument about words which Kautsky raises as to whether the latest stage of capitalism should be called imperialism or the stage of finance capital is not worth serious attention. Call it what you will, it makes no difference. The essence of the matter is that Kautsky detaches the politics of imperialism from its economics, speaks of annexations as being a policy “preferred” by finance capital, and opposes to it another bourgeois policy which, he alleges, is possible on this very same basis of finance capital. It follows, then, that monopolies in the economy are compatible with non-monopolistic, non-violent, non-annexationist methods in politics. It follows, then, that the territorial division of the world, which was completed during this very epoch of finance capital, and which constitutes the basis of the present peculiar forms of rivalry between the biggest capitalist states, is compatible with a non-imperialist policy. The result is a slurring-over and a blunting of the most profound contradictions of the latest stage of capitalism, instead of an exposure of their depth; the result is bourgeois reformism instead of Marxism.
Kautsky enters into controversy with the German apologist of imperialism and annexations, Cunow, who clumsily and cynically argues that imperialism is present-day capitalism; the development of capitalism is inevitable and progressive; therefore imperialism is progressive; therefore, we should grovel before it and glorify it! This is something like the caricature of the Russian Marxists which the Narodniks drew in 1894-95. They argued: if the Marxists believe that capitalism is inevitable in Russia, that it is progressive, then they ought to open a tavern and begin to implant capitalism! Kautsky’s reply to Cunow is as follows: imperialism is not present-day capitalism; it is only one of the forms of the policy of present-day capitalism. This policy we can and should fight, fight imperialism, annexations, etc.
The reply seems quite plausible, but in effect it is a more subtle and more disguised (and therefore more dangerous) advocacy of conciliation with imperialism, because a “fight” against the policy of the trusts and banks that does not affect the economic basis of the trusts and banks is mere bourgeois reformism and pacifism, the benevolent and innocent expression of pious wishes. Evasion of existing contradictions, forgetting the most important of them, instead of revealing their full depth—such is Kautsky’s theory, which has nothing in common with Marxism. Naturally, such a “theory” can only serve the purpose of advocating unity with the Cunows!” (Emphasised by me -Nico)
.....as are to my opinion, the “analyses” of the actual leading cadres of the WPB, Boudewijn Deckers and Peter Mertens.

[1]              Wpb.be,  thursday, 14 January 2010, 7h0,”The international capitalist crisis, the workers’ and peoples’ struggle, the alternatives and the role of the communist and working class movement.”, on the 11th International Meeting of Communists and Workers' Parties, November 20-22, 2009, New Delhi, Contribution of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (WPB). Report presented by Baudouin Deckers, member of the National Bureau, head of the International Relations Department.
[2]              Out of “Chapter X. THE PLACE OF IMPERIALISM IN HISTORY”, out of  “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism - A POPULAR OUTLINE”, by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Written: January-June, 1916. First published in mid-1917 in pamphlet form, Petrograd. Published according to the manuscript and verified with the text of the pamphlet. Source: Lenins Selected Works, Progress Publishers, 1963, Moscow, Volume 1, pp. 667766. Transcription\Markup: Tim Delaney & Kevin Goins (2008) Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2005,  “Marxists Internet Archive”
[3]              Finance Capital, Russ. ed., pp. 286-87 —Lenin
[4]              Hans Gideon Heymann, Die gemischten Werke im deutschen Grosseiseugewerbe, Stuttgart, 1904, (S. 256, 278). —Lenin

[5]              Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism - A POPULAR OUTLINE”,Written: January-June, 1916. First published in mid-1917 in pamphlet form, Petrograd. Published according to the manuscript and verified with the text of the pamphlet.
Source: Lenin’s Selected Works, Progress Publishers, 1963, Moscow, Volume 1, pp. 667–766. Transcription\Markup: Tim Delaney & Kevin Goins (2008) Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2005. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

[6]              Lenin in “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism - A POPULAR OUTLINE”.....

[7]              C. P. Lucas, Greater Rome and Greater Britain, Oxford, 1912, or the Earl of Cromer’s Ancient and Modern Imperialism, London, 1910. —Lenin
[8]              Lenin in “Imperialism,......”
[9]              See pp. 256–57 of this volume.—Ed
[10]              Wahl, La France aux colonies quoted by Henri Russier, Le Partage de l’Océanie, Paris, 1905, p. 165. —Lenin
[11]              Lenin in “Imperialism,....”

donderdag 11 maart 2010

"Anti-capitalism" NOT being ANTI-IMPERIALISM is REFORMISM

In KNACK 20 December 2006, Dirk Van Duppen one of the official representatives of the WPB:
” I have studied enough economy to know that Marx was right, that his scientific analyse is fitting...
the analyse of Marx is more actual than ever. Go to the Volkswagen-factory in Vorst (Brussels). What was Marx telling? It is the hunger to profit that is making the factories being closed. Under pressure of the competition the employer has to increase productivity with each time less workers. But he has also to increase profit to satisfy his share-holders. Those are two poles of a movement finally coming in collision: the decreasing purchasing-power of the worker versus the hunger to profit of the share-holders. What do you get then? The crisis of overproduction! That is what Marx wrote in 1871. And today it is even worse than then... Because in the 19th century, factories were closed because they became unprofitable and had losses. While the profits of Volkswagen-Vorst (Brussels) just is increasing. (....) Exploitation is indeed no moral concept but a pure mathematical quantitative thing. A worker in Vorst is more exploited then a child in Pakistan knotting carpets. A worker in Vorst (Brussels) produces more surplus-value. The profit as a result of his work is much bigger.”
....Dirk studied economy but does he know about Marxist analyse?
Capitalism presented as a society full of perhaps bigger and more modern factories than in the time of Marx. So the GENERAL conclusions that Marx made are working in exactly the same way today as in the time of Marx..... This pseudo-Marxist reasoning is already unmasked by Lenin in his analyse of the (for him THEN) ACTUAL CONCRETE capitalist society in the stage of imperialism. In a world where the production is so social, and free competition is so disappearing, the statement “A worker in Vorst is more exploited then a child in Pakistan knotting carpets. A worker in Vorst (Brussels) produces more surplus-value. The profit as a result of his work is much bigger.” ...is a proof of his NON-knowledge of Marxism.... and where is the capitalist class…, as Dirk is just speaking about “employer” and “share-holders”?
The “PVDA-ideologue” behind this revisionist analysing is the co-founder of AMADA(Alle Macht Aan De Arbeiders –“All Power To The Workers”) in 1970, the once “organisation preparing the real communist party” and (almost) always been a NATIONAL leader of the (once) revolutionary PVDA(Partij Van De Arbeid van België, pvda.be, ptb.be, wpb.be)  ..... Boudewijn Deckers. Internal ideological and political struggle -mostly on initiative of Ludo Martens - president of the PVDA until 1995 – could apparently never totally counter this revisionism. So was Boudewijn Deckers able to form cadres in revisionism (as Peter Mertens, Tom De Meester, but also Peter Franssen for example...). This lead to a “revisionist coup” in 2004-2005 in the PVDA (WPB).....with Peter Mertens as president of the WPB(PVDA) in 2008.

Boudewijn Deckers is an honourable speaker on the International COMMUNIST Seminar:
“When the financial crisis broke out end of 2008 it brought about a world-wide crisis of the economy. This was inevitable. Indeed, the financial crisis is rooted in a structural crisis of over-production which has been worsening in successive waves since the first years of the seventies. As Marxists, we know that it is tightly linked to the production mode of the capitalist system.[1]
And further...:
“The European Left Party persists in defending a left reformist position, an updated version of social democracy. Obtaining partial improvements within the current system is already sufficiently ambitious. We will never collaborate with these attempts to bind workers to capitalism and imperialism. “
As the leadership of the WPB make no correct Marxist analyse of ACTUAL capitalism (in its imperialist stage) it is logical that they have no correct view on what is real REFORMISM. Reformism is just connected to imperialism..... It is the ideology of the layer of “workers-aristocracy” described by Lenin as it is linked to the development of imperialism....
But we let speak Boudewijn Deckers further....:
“…It's up to us to help both blue-collar and white collar workers, as well as the unemployed, students and self-employed to realize that this is not our crisis, but that of capital. That the fundamental problem is the private ownership of the major means of production, combined with the continuous search for higher profits by the few holders of big capital. Only a truly socialist economy, planned by the workers' state can ensure that production is determined by the needs of the masses and not by profits for a minority.
This understanding does not pass so easily today in our imperialist countries. It is no good whining about this, for we know the reasons: the overthrow of socialism in the USSR and the increasing stranglehold of a few large monopolies in the media. We must start with reality and discover the ways in which workers can now move in an anti-capitalist direction.
We have decided to walk on two legs. On the one hand, we want to get rid of rigidity and dogmatism in our mass work: we must start from what people understand today: correct demands for which they are prepared to act - whatever the level - and support and help develop the struggles they undertake. For example, we are currently engaged in a major campaign for a tax on millionaires, a tax that would hit the 72,000 euromillionnaire families in Belgium. Compared to the population, it is the largest number in the European Union. Taxing the very rich is a claim that has already met with some support in various trade union circles.... But bourgeois political circles claim… it is absurd and "unrealistic”.... We are also advocating a reduction of VAT on energy, from 21% - the current rate – to 6%. We have already collected over 200,000 signatures and we will continue this campaign as long as the measure has not been applied. I could give you a much longer list of demands or actions that we undertake and which are at a level people can engage with.
The danger of turning to the right of course exists. ... This would be a real risk, if we did not also walk on the other foot: the strengthening of Marxist-Leninist education in our party, through party schools and our theoretical journal and through open conferences. (....)
“We must strengthen the revolutionary communist movement. This requires deepening our understanding and our Marxist critique of capitalism, in struggle with reformist and social-democratic ideas. This requires that we strengthen our cooperation at this level. We also share more experiences in organizing the masses, and organization of our own Communist parties, as our experience in tactics. All our work must be based on scientific socialism. But it is clear that the specific response to typical problems of our time will not be found as such in these messages. It can arise only from the scientific assessments we make of our experiences.[2]
 The former president of that same PVDA (WPB) on a SIMILAR COMMUNIST Seminar, Ludo Martens (see on my blog “Monday 29 December 2008 Fighting opportunism to beat revisionism 3 “ ) warned against revisionism AND about dangerous developments IN the PVDA (WPB)[3]

So, in 1996 on an International Communist Seminar, the President of the WPB, Ludo Martens, analysed in a contribution to that seminar, the real danger of revisionism in the international communist movement, the need of continuous intern struggle in the different parties (and so ALSO in the WPB)
In 2009, Ludo Martens was no longer president of the WPB....and Boudewijn Deckers has led a “revisionist coup” in the WPB (in 2003-2004)
On the 11th International Meeting of Communists and Workers' Parties, November 20-22, 2009, New Delhi, Boudewijn Deckers, produced a totally revisionist analyse.... and it passed clearly unnoticed! Without comment it is published for example on the weblog “The Marxist-Leninist” (you can read it here- read also my first comment under the article….)
So the SAME Marxist-Leninist or communist organisations participating in the similar Communist Seminars are NOT noticing REVISIONISM but praising AND the contributions of Ludo Martens of earlier days AND those of Boudewijn Deckers today!

Out of the “contribution” of Boudewijn (with my comment):
“Our tasks as Communist Parties
Everywhere workers are active and protesting. Some worry that class struggle is lagging behind in face of the scale of capitalist crises.[4]
So they should urge that one should organise the vanguard of the working class, raise the  consciousness of that van-guard so that they will raise the consciousness of the whole working class. All that by becoming one-self a part of the working class, so that ones own interests become the same as the objective interests of the working class: overthrow capitalism as soon as possible, as efficient as possible, by initiative of the largest masses of workers as possible..... But for Boudewijn this is “an unnecessary worry”.
“We must remember that it was not in 1929 that the most important struggles of the working class took place, but some years later. It is only when workers feel the full weight imposed on them by governments and employers that they react.”
But Boudewijn, our big Marxist knowing all the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin forget to say that that class-struggle got only a revolutionary character, when a real communist party, a real vanguard organisation was propagating, discussing, analysing convincing, and being involved themselves in the struggles so giving the workers the experiences of the correctness of the communist revolutionary strategy.
“In addition, we must not underestimate the void left by the counter-revolution. In 1930, workers saw that socialism in the USSR was the alternative. Today, workers are increasingly losing confidence in capitalism, but they do not see what to oppose to it.”
Where is Boudewijn Deckers waiting for to do real revolutionary work as Lenin, Stalin and Mao did within their respective communist parties?
“The European Left Party persist in defending a left reformist position, an updated version of social democracy. Obtaining partial improvements within the current system is already sufficiently ambitious. We will never collaborate with these attempts to bind workers to capitalism and imperialism.”
Boudewijn is trying to convince us that he will not be a reformist.
“…It's up to us to help both blue-collar and white collar workers, as well as the unemployed, students and self-employed to realize that this is not our crisis, but that of capital. That the fundamental problem is the private ownership of the major means of production, combined with the continuous search for higher profits by the few holders of big capital. Only a truly socialist economy, planned by the workers' state can ensure that production is determined by the needs of the masses and not by profits for a minority.
This understanding does not pass so easily today in our imperialist countries. It is no good whining about this, for we know the reasons: the overthrow of socialism in the USSR and the increasing stranglehold of a few large monopolies in the media. We must start with reality and discover the ways in which workers can now move in an anti-capitalist direction.”
How Boudewijn will “help” the workers in the imperialist centre were he is living “to realise that it is not our crisis” we will see her below.
Normally where he is focusing on the “fundamental problem” you should expect that the “help” would be: propagating with all means explaining how the workers can solve their “fundamental problem”. And how should they realise “a truly socialist economy, planned by the workers.
The truth is that Boudewijn himself has no longer a Marxist view on what is “a truly socialist economy, planned by the workers.”
You can read (beginning here) how Boudewijn “analyses” the development of “a truly socialist economy, planned by the workers” in China .......in fact a defence of the revisionist policy started by Deng Xiaoping in 1978..
.
“We have decided to walk on two legs. On the one hand, we want to get rid of rigidity and dogmatism in our mass work: we must start from what people understand today: correct demands for which they are prepared to act - whatever the level - and support and help develop the struggles they undertake.”
The “help” that Boudewijn is offering is, proposing REFORMS which “should be” the subject of the struggle of the workers:
 “For example, we are currently engaged in a major campaign for a tax on millionaires, a tax that would hit the 72,000 euromillionnaire families in Belgium. Compared to the population, it is the largest number in the European Union. Taxing the very rich is a claim that has already met with some support in various trade union circles.... But bourgeois political circles claim… it is absurd and "unrealistic”.... We are also advocating a reduction of VAT on energy, from 21% - the current rate – to 6%. We have already collected over 200,000 signatures and we will continue this campaign as long as the measure has not been applied. I could give you a much longer list of demands or actions that we undertake and which are at a level people can engage with.”
In fact Boudewijn didn't lie where he says about the reformists of European Left:” We will never collaborate with these attempts to bind workers to capitalism and imperialism.”
There is no need of “collaborating” as the WPB has their OWN reformist program “to bind workers to capitalism and imperialism”!

“The danger of turning to the right of course exists. ... This would be a real risk, if we did not also walk on the other foot: the strengthening of Marxist-Leninist education in our party, through party schools and our theoretical journal and through open conferences.”
 ....and Boudewijn will educate the old and new members in Marxist-Leninism?? No, he will convince the members to collaborate with the attempts of the WPB to get enough votes to have “representatives “in the parliament with the argument that a reformist program is a “Marxist-Leninist” program.

And Boudewijn want to put the whole international communist movement on that same revisionist trail....
“We must strengthen the revolutionary communist movement. This requires deepening our understanding and our Marxist critique of capitalism, in struggle with reformist and social-democratic ideas. This requires that we strengthen our cooperation at this level. We also share more experiences in organizing the masses, and organization of our own Communist parties, as our experience in tactics. All our work must be based on scientific socialism. But it is clear that the specific response to typical problems of our time will not be found as such in these messages. It can arise only from the scientific assessments we make of our experiences”
The last remark means in fact: “When an electoral strategy realises more votes than before it is the proof of the Marxist correctness of that strategy and the revolutionary character of the party having that strategy”..... This leads to vulgar populism......


[1]              Wpb.be,  thursday, 14 January 2010, 7h0,”The international capitalist crisis, the workers’ and peoples’ struggle, the alternatives and the role of the communist and working class movement.”, on the 11th International Meeting of Communists and Workers' Parties, November 20-22, 2009, New Delhi, Contribution of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (WPB). Report presented by Baudouin Deckers, member of the National Bureau, head of the International Relations Department.
[2]              Wpb.be,  thursday, 14 January 2010, 7h0,”The international capitalist crisis, the workers’ and peoples’ struggle, the alternatives and the role of the communist and working class movement.”, on the 11th International Meeting of Communists and Workers' Parties, November 20-22, 2009, New Delhi, Contribution of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (WPB). Report presented by Baudouin Deckers, member of the National Bureau, head of the International Relations Department.

[3]             In  “About certain aspects of the struggle against revisionism", Ludo Martens in Marxistische Studies no 29, march 1996, (see www.marx.be), a discussion report on the International Seminar in Janashakti, India organised by the PCI(ML) – in French: Etudes Marxistes 29/1996 :   Sur quelques aspects de la lutte contre le révisionnisme, Ludo Martens (marx.be)

[4]              Wpb.be,  thursday, 14 January 2010, 7h0,”The international capitalist crisis, the workers’ and peoples’ struggle, the alternatives and the role of the communist and working class movement.”, on the 11th International Meeting of Communists and Workers' Parties, November 20-22, 2009, New Delhi, Contribution of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (WPB). Report presented by Baudouin Deckers, member of the National Bureau, head of the International Relations Department.