1. US imperialism, the number one global enemy of the world people, has greatly intensified its military, economic and political offensive. For the last one year, the world has remained trapped in the shadow of what the US calls the global war on terror.
Washington was bent upon ‘celebrating’ the first anniversary of September 11 by launching yet another massive attack on Iraq. In fact, a few days before the first anniversary, Iraq was indeed subjected to a vicious Anglo-American air attack. The danger of war has been temporarily averted with most of Washington’s western and Arab allies rejecting unilateral US action and insisting on collective intervention under the UN banner and Iraq accepting the Security Council resolution on weapons inspection. But the demand of weapons inspection by a state which sits on the biggest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in world history and which has the actual record of killing the highest number of people through bombs and economic sanctions is just a pretext. The real and now increasingly declared intent is a change of regime, replacement of the present regime in Iraq, which for all its controversial record stands out as a powerful symbol of resistance to the US, with a pliant and puppet regime. The threat of a war on Iraq or for that matter on any country that the US may choose for a variety of reasons therefore remains a very real threat.
Meanwhile, a war-ravaged Afghanistan continues to be battered by US troops stationed in the country. It was in the name of hunting down Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, that Washington had attacked Afghanistan. While Laden remains as elusive as ever, the writ of the post-Taliban Karzai government does not run beyond Kabul. Most of Afghanistan has again come to be dominated by the warlords and guerrilla attacks against the American troops are intensifying. Under the pretext of the war in Afghanistan, US troops are now also deployed in Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan, alarmingly increasing the US presence in the highly contentious region of Central Asia
2. While the incidents of September 11, 2001 can certainly not be supported by any sane individual or responsible organisation, Washington’s response has been utterly hypocritical and condemnable. In the name of countering terrorism, the Bush administration is waging nothing short of a terrorist war on a global scale. It is an endless or total war, which from the point of view of Washington is not limited by any constraints of time, geography or international law. Under the banner of the global war on terror, US imperialism wants to crush every pocket of resistance and every quest for an alternative international order by installing pro-US regimes in all non-compliant states which the US designates as rogue states. The declared focus of the National Security Strategy unveiled by the Bush administration in September this year is on pre-emptive action as opposed to deterrence, under the UN banner if possible and under the US banner if necessary. And ‘regime change’ has always been one of Washington’s most favourerd modes of the so-called ‘pre-emptive action’. Even before September 11, the Bush administration had adopted a policy of aggressive unilateralism in international relations, marking a shift from the Clinton-era policy of using the UN and other multilateral institutions as a cover to pursue its own imperialist interests. The unilateral US move to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with the former Soviet Union, the arrogant resumption of the aggressive Theater Missile Defence programme and National Missile Defence programme targeted particularly against China and unprecedented hikes in the US defence budget had already signalled an unmistakable intensification of Washington’s drive towards a unipolar world.
3. The doctrine of the global war on terror has given the US imperialism a blanket excuse to upgrade its mammoth military establishment and greatly enhance its global military presence, most particularly in Central Asia. This military muscle-flexing is more than matched by a corresponding rise in economic plunder and political intervention. The US has now come to acquire a much bigger and more direct control over the existing oil economy as well as the untapped oil reserves and other energy resources of strategic importance which are available in abundance in the Middle-East and Central Asian region. Politically, the level of American intervention in Asia has gone up considerably with the replacement of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by a puppet regime and with countries like India and Pakistan remaining engaged in a no-holds-barred competition to win Washington’s blessings.
The shock of September 11 also created a favourable domestic climate for the Bush administration in pursuing its superpower agenda. Dismissing the boastful claim or rather lament of American policy makers that “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad” and that “this limits the use of American power, especially its capacity for military intimidation”, the Bush presidency came up with draconian legal measures like the USA PATRIOT ACT (which in turn has inspired similar anti-terrorist legislations in a large number of countries including the notorious POTA in India). Amidst rising jingoistic clamour and racist attacks, post September 11, mainstream Western politics have undergone a pronounced rightward shift even though fascists and rabid rightwing forces have not been able to win the recent elections in France and Germany. In the US, the Bush presidency has managed to considerably consolidate its position as proved by the massive Republican victories in the recent elections to the US Senate and the Congress. The dominant international media controlled by the US and other western powers has also played its part to the hilt, generating a climate of fear and thus legitimising the repressive measures unleashed by most western states.
4. Worldwide, there is a strong view which sees the September 11 terrorist strike and the ongoing US-led war against terrorism as a vindication of Huntington’s thesis of clash of civilisations. This theory has gained a lot of currency in the western world as it legitimises the racist agenda of the US and its western imperialist allies. Behind the deceptive and often patronising talk of multiculturalism harsh anti-immigrant laws, racial profiling and systematic harassment of the non-White population are becoming the order of the day in most Western countries. Ironically, while reactionary Western ideologues and pro-imperialist propagandists continue to demonise Islam and talk of Islamic terrorism, many in the anti-imperialist camp also tend to view militant anti-imperialism in terms of an Islamic jihad. The post September 11 developments have however clearly shown that there is no undifferentiated and homogeneous Islamic bloc. Even if some terrorist groups have strong religious beliefs, the terrorism they practise is an entirely modern phenomenon and is more intimately connected to US foreign policy than to Islam. While the consistent American support for Israeli occupation of Palestine, the ceaseless attacks on Iraq and the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia continue to fuel tremendous resentment against US foreign policy, the armed outfits which are channelising this resentment along terrorist lines all owe their genesis and growth to the CIA.
Thanks primarily to the Palestinian question, there is tremendous anger against the US-Israel alliance all over the Arab and Islamic world. The US is fully backing Israel now to replace the leadership of Yasser Arafat. But the Palestinian question is no Islamic question – it is essentially a question of national liberation from colonial-imperialist occupation. While the twentieth century witnessed the dawn of freedom in almost all former colonies and by the end of the century an end was also put to the infamous apartheid regime in South Africa, it also saw the imperialist creation of the Palestinian problem with the deprivation of a people from their homeland and continuing denial of their basic right to a nation-state. Now the twenty-first century must find an urgent democratic solution to this question by putting a firm and final end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Once this question is resolved and American meddling in the Middle-East is ended, the so-called theory of clash of civilisations will collapse like a house of cards.
Behind the civilisational veil, America’s Afghanistan war and its current war plans against Iraq actually mark the continuation of the old American policy of destabilising inconvenient regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America. To be sure, the war is not confined to merely Islamic organisations or Islamic or Arab countries. Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organisations now includes the Communist party of Philippines and the New People’s Army, a move which has since been endorsed by the European Union. Even a relatively liberal democratic country like Holland has curbed all rights that Filipino communist leader Jose Maria Sison had so far been entitled to as a political exile. The US and European Union countries are extending major financial aid to Nepal to crush the Maoist insurgency. In the prisons of US-backed Turkey, communist prisoners are being subjected to systametic torture. In protest, scores of communist prisoners have embraced martyrdom as “Death Fast Fighters”.
The anti-imperialist movement must reject the misleading and mischievous thesis of clash of civilisations and focus on the centrality of the contradiction between imperialism and the third world, expressed equivalently by some as the basic and growing antagonism between the global north and the global south.
5. In our Sixth Congress we had noted the objective trend towards a multipolar world. Around the same time none other than Huntington had also described the present world order as a uni-multipolar world, a state of transition from a brief unipolar moment following the collapse of the Soviet Union to an effectively multipolar world in the coming decades. The debate as to whether the world has once again been pushed back into a unipolar order has once again been revived in the wake of the ongoing US-led war. If anything, by giving an unprecedented jolt to US arrogance as a global power and exposing its vulnerability, September 11 has demonstrated the impossibility of a unipolar world. Of course in the immediate aftermath of this colossal human tragedy, there was a global outpouring of sympathy for the terror-stricken and traumatised American people, and politically the US got a long handle to goad not only the European Union but also Russia and China into supporting the so-called global war on terror. But once the Taliban regime had been toppled and a new regime installed in Kabul, most Western powers with the sole exception of Britain gradually began distancing themselves from the US-led war campaign. Especially, Bush’s call for targeting the so-called axis of evil comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea did not receive any significant support from any quarter. In fact, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s strong stand against a renewed American war on Iraq proved to be a key factor in his favour in the recent German elections.
It is of course true that none of the other potential poles, the European Union, China, Russia, or a China-Russia axis for that matter, has still assumed such a role. There is no other country or bloc of countries which can yet be recognised as a match to the US in terms of the latter’s combined military might, economic prowess and political clout. China’s role in world politics still remains quite limited as China prefers her economy to do all the talking. But there can be no underestimating the growing contention between the US and China, the latter’s support to the US-led Afghan war notwithstanding. Russian power has been considerably eroded in economic and political terms, but militarily it is still capable of giving the US a run for its money. The Shanghai communique issued by China and Russia in August this year reiterated the two countries’ shared commitment to collective security. The European Union may have a military partnership with the US, but almost all over the third world, the US has to contend closely with the EU in terms of economic control. Politically too, France and Germany in particular often express open disagreement with the US policy of unilateralism. Indeed, US-Europe relations are marked by a growing European opposition to Washington’s ‘cowboy approach to politics where might is right’ and where the world’s only superpower arrogates to itself the right to break treaties and overrule its allies.
We must understand that all the three major international contradictions – imperialism versus the third world, heightened antagonism between capital and labour in the advanced countries and inter-imperialist rivalry, even if the last-mentioned is articulated at present in the form of non-US imperialist powers merely expressing a measured disagreement with the US and not offering an outright opposition – militate and occasionally also converge against unipolarity and therefore a unipolar world can only be an exceptional and passing moment in the global balance of forces.
6. We must also take into account the acute crisis facing the world capitalist economy today, a crisis that has been compared to the Great Depression of 1929-33 in terms of its intensity, scale and sweep. All through the 1990s most of the G-7 countries experienced a steady deceleration of growth, the downturn being most pronounced in the case of Japan which suffered a major banking crisis. The US had of course continued to enjoy a decade-long growth cycle, but this growth cycle was far weaker than previous periods of boom with the annual growth rate averaging only around 3%. More importantly, this jobless growth was propelled primarily by a massive financial bubble and the spectacular rise of the IT-based new economy. But two years ago the bubble burst as dramatically as it had grown and in March 2000 the US economy was officially declared to have hit a recessionary phase. The signs of recovery of the US economy are still considered quite weak and unstable by most economic commentators. For the managers of the American economy, the so-called global war on terror comes in handy as a crisis-management strategy that holds enormous economic incentives, a line of thinking that has come to be known as military Keynesianism. Meanwhile, after a spree of mega mergers and mega acquisitions, the US economy is now saddled with a string of mega bankruptcies. The record created by the collapse of Enron in 2001 has already been overshadowed by the Worldcom bust in 2002. These bankruptcies have revealed the ugly face of crony capitalism in the Mecca of free market economy where the reigns of political power are now held directly by an oil oligarchy.
The crisis has also led to some sort of an institutional breakdown. The incredibly massive growth and mobility of finance capital has rendered the post-war Bretton Woods system of international economic and financial management almost irrelevant. The Economic Stabilization and Structural Adjustment Programmes administered by the IMF and the World Bank have proved to be a huge disaster in most countries and the World Bank is now trying to reinvent poverty reduction programmes within the framework of market liberalisation and privatisation. In the last decade the world has witnessed drastic devaluation of certain currencies and fluctuations in share prices leading to overnight wiping out of unprecedented amount of paper wealth. But with increasing integration of the global economy, especially the globalisation of finance and the tremendous mobility of speculative capital, we find a growing globalisation of the crisis as well. No economy can remain insulated for long from the cataclysmic effect of drastic devaluation of any one currency or drop in share prices in one sector or in one market. After twenty years of unchallenged supremacy, the dollar has also started losing ground, its value having gone down by 13% vis-a-vis the euro and 6% in relation to the yen.
7. The rich countries are trying to overcome the present crisis by transferring its burden on the third world economies and in this context the World Trade Organisation has shot into prominence as the most effective institutional vehicle of globalisation. The purview of trade is being sought to be stretched indefinitely to obliterate the distinction between the internal and external spheres of a national economy. In the name of free trade in a free market weaker countries are being subjected to a most unequal kind of competition. Globalisation is accentuating income disparities across sectors and countries and also within every society including the societies of OECD and G-7 countries. The world’s richest 20 percent now receive 86 percent of the world’s gross domestic product while the poorest 20 percent receive only 1 percent. In 1998-99, with the world gross output per capita growing at the rate of 1.5-1.8 per cent, more than eighty countries had lower per capita incomes than a decade or more ago, and at least fifty-five countries have consistently declining per capita incomes.
The sharpening of disparities and globalisation of economic crisis and uncertainty have also led to a globalisation of mass protests and resistance. Anti-globalisation protests have become a defining feature of the present international situation. Protests have overshadowed and in some cases even led to the cancellation of some major meetings of the WTO, IMF, World Bank, G-7 or European Union. Ever since Bush announced the National Missile Defence programme, the protests began to take on a strong anti-US anti-imperialist character. Following September 11, there was an apprehension that the anti-globalisation movement might get muted, but in real life the protests have only become louder. The massive wave of anti-war demonstrations currently sweeping Europe bears testimony to the fact that anti-globalisation feelings have started acquiring a strong anti-imperialist anti-racist thrust.
8. Amidst worldwide anti-globalisation protests, it is in Latin America where the resistance to the neo-liberal neo-colonial economic offensive has begun to find a growing political voice. Early this year Argentina witnessed repeated mass upheavals and the situation there continues to remain turbulent. In Venezuela the US-backed attempt to overthrow President Hugo Chávez’s government through a reactionary coup was foiled by vigilant members of the Bolivarian Circles who promptly came out on the streets in large numbers. And with the emphatic victory of Lula, Brazil has now for the first time got a Left president from a working class background. Ecuador too is heading leftward. Lula’s victory, though circumscribed by considerable compromise with global capital, has nevertheless expressed a strong leftward shift in mainstream politics in the backyard of US imperialism which stands in refreshing contrast to the rightward shift being witnessed in the West. Neo-liberal economic policies have taken their worst toll in this region and there has been a drastic decline in living standards of the working people. The demand for reversal of these disastrous economic policies and opposition to US imperialism are common rallying points in this entire region. There is also great indignation against the continuing US-led embargo on Cuba and tremendous moral support for the heroic resistance being put up by the Cuban people under the charismatic and inspiring leadership of Fidel Castro.
9. In our last Congress report, we had expressed serious concern about the future of Chinese socialism. The Chinese experiment with what the CPC describes as construction of a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics has now entered the organisational and programmatic realm of the Communist Party. The recently concluded 16th Congress of the CPC has accepted Jiang Zemin’s thesis of “Three Represents”, which calls upon the Communist Party to represent the advanced productive forces of the Chinese society, the advanced culture of China and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, as the new guideline for the party. While the CPC looks at it as accommodating the fallouts of economic reforms within the framework of the communist party and its leadership over the Chinese state, the Americans are hopeful that following capitalist economic reforms China is increasingly proceeding towards bourgeois political reforms. We have our share of reservations and concerns about the orientation and fallouts of the Chinese experiment, especially about the theoretical revisions being made in the basic Marxist-Leninist understanding of the nature of a communist party and the state, but given that China has to chart a new course without any standard socialist model to fall back upon we would prefer to keep a close watch on the Chinese experience and study it with an open mind.
Reports emanating from China do indicate a continuing aggravation of social and regional disparities and serious erosion in the working and living conditions and rights of large sections of the working people, but it is also true that so far China has managed to avoid extremes and keep things within manageable proportions. While mainitaining one of the most sustained economic booms, China has managed to avoid the kind of instability and wild fluctuations that overshadow most developed market economies. Manufacturing apart, China has also made rapid strides in the IT sector even though the domination of English language poses a major hurdle to the Chinese. In the sphere of world trade, the impact of China’s entry into the WTO still remains to be assessed. In the short term, China has surely had to pay a heavy price to enter the WTO, but the presence of a leading trade power like China within the WTO framework is bound to intensify the growing trade war in the world economy.
Interestingly, while we remain concerned about the future of Chinese socialism, China’s ongoing experiments with so-called socialist market economy has made China a darling to the Indian ruling classes. The same people who once used to accuse communists of being Chinese agents today uphold China as their role model in economic matters even as New Delhi echoes the Washington view of China being the number one enemy. While critically evaluating the Chinese experience, we must firmly oppose the anti-China thrust of Indian foreign policy and press for a policy of friendship and cooperation with China.
10. Relations between India and Pakistan have deteriorated considerably in recent times. After 27 war-free years (1972-1998), the two countries fought a disastrous fourth war in 1999. India had to pay a heavy price to regain Kargil and the Pakistani withdrawal happened only at Washington’s behest. This was followed by yet another bloodless coup in Pakistan when General Musharraf overthrew the government of Nawaz Sharief. The General has since consolidated his position by first holding a dubious referendum and then organising a sanitised elections in which former Prime Ministers like Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharief and their parties were not allowed to participate and most recently by getting himself a five year term as President. The recent elections have however made it clear that pro-Taliban forces hold considerable sway in Pakistan and Musharraf will need all his diplomatic skill and much more to keep both the Bush Presidency and the pro-Taliban forces at home in good humour. So far, Musharraf has however played his Afghanistan card quite deftly to earn sufficient economic leverage and also to effectively internationalise the Kashmir question. While supporting the movement for restoration of democracy in Pakistan we reject the Indian government’s occasional bouts of moralising on the internal politics of Pakistan. The Government of India must deal with the Pakistani government of the day and absence of a proper parliamentary democracy in Pakistan can be no excuse for New Delhi to disrupt or dilute normal diplomatic relations with Islamabad.
With India and Pakistan both possessing nuclear weapons and remaining permanently locked in a disastrous arms race, any escalation of tension between the two countries aggravates the threat of a real war. Real life has refuted the simplistic notion that peace between India and Pakistan can be ensured through a balance of terror and nuclear parity. That nuclear parity between India and Pakistan cannot be viewed as an effective deterrent became clear when close on the heels of the nuclear tests in the two countries, Kargil happened. Similarly, the liberal view that treats increased American interest and intervention in the region as a factor for regional peace is also completely mistaken. So often we hear that America will not permit another war and some opposition parties even dare the BJP to defy American pressure and launch a comprehensive military offensive against Pakistan! This view is erroneous on two counts. Firstly, it misreads the implications of American involvement and interference in the region. The Bush-Blair combination has been openly fuelling the ongoing arms race between India and Pakistan and a limited war does in no way contradict the US imperialist drive for global hegemony. Secondly, it is also wrong to ignore or underestimate the relative autonomy of the Indian ruling classes. While it is true that the Indian ruling classes cannot ultimately afford to go against the wishes of US imperialism, they have considerable bargaining power and manoeuvring capacity at least in regional affairs. Just as the Sharon government of Israel took advantage of the post-September 11 climate to intensify its war of occupation on Palestine, the Indian state is also capable of waging a limited war on Pakistan.
The recent Indian decision to pull back troops from the border after nearly a year of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation has revealed the utter futility of the Indian doctrine of coercive diplomacy. By the Indian government’s own admission, the enormous deployment of troops on the border had failed to have any impact on the scale of what it calls cross-border terrorism. If anything, it had only drained the national exchequer to add to the level of bilateral tension. While welcoming the belated decision to pull back troops we call for immediate restoration of complete bilateral relations and resumption of a bilateral dialogue on all outstanding issues including Kashmir. India’s refusal to deal directly with Pakistan on the Kashmir question has only allowed the US to deepen its intervention in the region. Now that the elections in Jammu and Kashmir have produced a glimmer of hope about a political process finally taking off, we must mount pressure on the Government of India to make a positive response by initiating an unconditional dialogue with Pakistan as well as the Kashmiri militants.
11. In neighbouring Nepal, the autocratic monarchy is desperately trying to snatch away the gains made by the communist-led pro-democracy movement. The future of the Nepalese experiment with its own variety of combination of parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy now hangs in the balance with the King dismissing the elected government and installing an interim government of his own. Ironically, prior to this royal assault on parliamentary democracy, the elected Nepali Congress government itself had declared a state of Emergency and surprisingly the CPN(UML) too had extended initial support to this measure.
For the present King, who acceded to the throne following a mysterious massacre of the former King and his family, the current assault on democracy and indefinite postponement of the elections that were due this November mark an extension of his ongoing war with the Maoists who are demanding abolition of the monarchy and the setting up of what they call a classical bourgeois democratic republic. In this war on the Maoists and democracy, the King enjoys total backing of the US imperialists and many European powers. The US which was always wary of growing communist influence in Nepal and the possibility of Nepal tilting closer to China, has discovered an excellent opportunity to tighten its strategic noose around Nepal. The CPN(M) is however not averse to holding talks on the basis of an intermediate agenda that talks of an interim government and the formation of a new constituent assembly.
The role played by the Government of India so far has largely been that of a loyal American collaborator and we have already witnessed instances of harassment and intimidation of Nepalese students and workers in India, including cases of forcible deportation. While standing resolutely by the Nepalese people in their fight for democracy and against imperialist interference, we in India shall continue to oppose any intervention of the Indian state in the internal affairs of Nepal and any harassment of Nepalese citizens in India. We sincerely hope that the communists in Nepal succeed in uniting the Left and other pro-democracy forces in a powerful mass movement that will beat back the royal offensive and foil the US conspiracy in Nepal.
12. After seven years, talks have again been resumed between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. Ever since India’s disastrous IPKF experiment in the late 1980s, India has had a minimal role in the peace process and the current deal is being brokered by Norway. The resumption of talks definitely marks a welcome step forward; especially, for the battle-fatigued Tamil population in the northern part of the island, the revived peace process has provided a much-needed breathing space. In fact, with the Sri Lanka government lifting the ban on LTTE, and the latter making a climbdown from its earlier demand for a separate Eelam to some form of regional autonomy, i.e., a Tamil homeland within the framework of Sri Lanka, for the first time there now appear some real chances of a settlement of the nearly two-decade-old ethnic insurgency. However, we must remain vigilant against any behind-the-scene attempt by the Indian state to obstruct the peace process. A negotiated resolution of the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka would not only bring peace and stability to the island but also serve as a reference for similar insurgencies in other parts of South Asia and help reduce the danger of imperialist intervention in the entire region.
13. In neighbouring Bangladesh, the previous election again saw a change in government with Khaleda Zia returning as Prime Minister. The prevailing international climate continues to exert tremendous pressure on the domestic situation in Bangladesh. While on the one hand, global capital is trying to reduce Bangladesh to the status of a neo-colony, the demonisation of Islam by the western powers is fuelling a fundamentalist backlash. The rise of militant Hindutva in India, the bogey of Bangladeshi infiltration and continuing tension along the border have also added to the pressure. The harassment of minority Hindus in Bangladesh at the hands of fundamentalists is largely a reaction to the rise of Hindutva in India and calls for cooperation between democratic and secular forces in both the countries to address the problem of minorities.
While secular and progressive forces in Bangladesh fight their own battle against the neo-colonial economic offensive and the growing threat of fundamentalism and sectarian strife, we in India must put pressure on the Government of India as well as the state government of West Bengal to display a positive and friendly attitude to Bangladesh and stop bracketing Bangladesh with Pakistan and ISI. All outstanding issues between India and Bangladesh must be resolved amicably through dialogue and in a spirit of mutual accommodation.
14. The BJP’s drive for a regional hegemonic role for India under Washington’s global umbrella and the ceaseless hostility between India and Pakistan have queered the pitch for regional cooperation in South Asia. At a time when the region should have pooled all its strength and resources to put up a concerted resistance to the imperialist offensive in the guise of globalisation, SAARC has been reduced to an increasingly irrelevant showpiece. New Delhi’s policy of supporting the military junta of Myanmar may yield some short-term economic gains but it has made a mockery of India’s much-proclaimed commitment to the cause of democracy. Similarly, the pressure being exerted on Bhutan to allow the Indian army to carry out military operations against insurgent groups within the kingdom has raised the fear of Bhutan too being eventually annexed like Sikkim. Reversal of India’s short-sighted and high-handed policies towards her immediate neighbours holds the key to friendly bilateral and multilateral relations which alone can improve the prospect of durable peace and development in the region.
Every country in South Asia is currently faced with a heightened neo-colonial offensive and imperialist intervention as well as growing curtailment of democracy and rise of various shades of fundamentalism. Against this backdrop, Left and democratic forces in the region should take the lead to expand bilateral and multilateral cooperation and strengthen bonds of anti-imperialist solidarity and exert concerted pressure on the respective governments to move towards peace and regional cooperation. A free and democratic South Asia must remain the rallying vision for all progressive forces in the region. The subcontinent in particular carries deep scars of colonial subjugation and communal division and perhaps the disastrous legacy of Partition can be effectively undone eventually only in the form of a confederation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
15. For the international communist movement, the present period marks a challenging phase of recovery and resistance. The demoralisation caused in the wake of the Soviet collapse has given way to a new hope and determination among communist ranks all over the world. However, the present period does not have either any international centre of the communist movement or any socialist or revolutionary model that can provide global inspiration. With its great history, amazing economic performance and curious concepts China continues to surprise both her admirers and detractors, but it is no longer a source of inspiration for the international communist movement. Cuba does carry a strong message of defiance and there are sincere feelings of international solidarity with Cuba, but that is not enough to power a global communist resurgence.
The massive anti-globalisation anti-imperialist protests reflect a strong social disenchantment with the emerging shape of capitalism and imperialism, but they are yet to acquire a cohesive and organic political character. All that we can say at the present juncture is that, with the increasing direct role of the working class in the anti-globalisation movement, seeds of a possible communist resurgence are being sown on this soil of social disillusionment and protest.
Ideologically, all illusions about a peaceful and democratic capitalist future have been laid to rest by the renewed offensive of US imperialism. Amidst tall claims of free trade, free market and a crisis-free new economy, the monopoly and parasitic character of a predominantly speculative finance capital and the organic relationship between imperialism and war once again stand out in bold relief. The quest for an alternative to capitalism, or to a future beyond capitalism, has started acquiring a new urgency prompting even an avowedly social and non-party platform like the World Social Forum to adopt the motto ‘Another world is possible’.
As communist parties and communist-led trade unions and other mass organisations play an active role in the worldwide anti-globalisation anti-imperialist movement along with a host of other anti-capitalist tendencies, we stand for developing wider links and closer cooperation with all positive forces of the international communist and anti-imperialist movement on the principled basis of proletarian internationalism and anti-imperialist solidarity.
With US imperialism rapidly increasing its intervention in the third world in general and Asia in particular, the anti-imperialist task of our revolution has now assumed much greater importance. In this context, we must pay special attention to establishing friendly and functional ties with communist parties and other anti-imperialist organisations and movements in Asia, especially in our neighbouring countries. This increase in imperialist intervention is however not happening in isolation but in organic unity with the growing fascist threat in India. The Indian diaspora in the West is playing a key role in challenging this imperialist-fascist offensive right in the imperialist heartland and the revolutionary communist movement in India must develop closer cooperation with this important sector of anti-fascist anti-imperialist resistance. q