MANIFESTO FOR THE PORTUGUESE PEOPLE
ON THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS

Humanity is facing a crisis endangering civilization itself It is the most profound crisis since the fall of the Roman Empire. It is a global crisis — political, economical, military, cultural, and environmental.

A system of rule that uses the enormous scientific, technological and financial power of the USA is developing a world strategy with fascist-like characteristics.

The so-called neoliberal globalization functions as a complement and instrument of this imperial power system. It claims to be an autonomous phenomenon that has developed independent of ideologies, driven by the internal logic of the market, a market sanctified as an ever-present and uncontrollable force situated outside of human reason and of the power of nation-states.

This falsehood obscures a dangerous reality. As Thomas Friedman, former advisor of Madeleine Albright affirmed while making a defense of globalization, this globalization only exists and advances because it is held up by an “invisible fist” that has a name: “The Army, Navy and Air Force of the United States of America.”

This imperial system, whose hub is in Washington, cannot develop its framework of terror on its own, in isolation. It has allies. These are big capital and the governments of two dozen countries, namely those of the European Union (despite many contradictions), of Japan, of Canada, of Australia and of Israel. All together these countries represent less that 15% of the population of the earth and consume or control 85% of the world's wealth.

The imposition of neoliberal policies by the center of power on the people of the periphery has led to the current crisis of civilization. The logic inherent to this system leads to new wars of aggression, which are inseparable from the seizure and strategic control of new sources of natural resources.

The language used to justify this violence is perverse. Supposedly these aggressions are carried out to preserve democracy and peace. This language was used to justify the 1991 Gulf war, the intervention in Bosnia, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the bombardment and occupation of Kosovo, the invasion of Somalia, the attempt at genocide of the Palestinian people and the aggression against the people of Afghanistan.

The installation of a chain of U.S. military bases in the vast territory of Central Asia, from the Caucasus to the Western boundaries of China, coincides with the penetration by giant transnational corporations; the missiles that destroy Afghan cities and murder defenseless populations there, “defend” these corporations' interests.

As in the Roman Empire, the logic of this machinery makes aggression a permanent necessity. The system of rule is unable to survive without endemic violence. U.S. state terrorism has become a condition for its survival. One of its fundamental components is the neutralization and manipulation of the consciousness of the masses through bombardment with disinformation preceding each aggressive war.

In these weeks the primary target is Iraq—suddenly demonized as a threat to humanity. Baghdad, by accepting unconditionally the return of UN inspectors, has demonstrated that it possesses no weapons of mass destruction. But the USA immediately made new demands. They want war, they want to destroy Iraq and they want its oil.

Bush, spokesperson for the machinery of power, doesn't hide his intention to go on with further aggression. In his “Axis of Evil” he has included Iran and North Korea. But the Pentagon does not exclude the possibility of interventions in Colombia and in Cuba. China also feels threatened.

The aggressive character of the USA brings to mind, in a much different historical context, that of the Nazi Reich, which began with the annexation of Austria, followed by the demands on the Sudetenlands, Munich and the destruction of the Czechoslovak state, the invasion of Poland and the Second World War.

The governments of the rich countries emerge as accomplices of this irrational strategy. The people reject it. This resistance found its expression and voice in the [anti-globalization] struggles like those of Seattle, Prague, Melbourne, Quebec City, Barcelona, Genoa and others, and in gatherings like the World Social Forum, which met twice in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

These movements have accomplished an extremely important task. They mobilized millions of people in the battle against neoliberal globalization, confirming that the people, as the real subject of history, repudiate the monstrous scheme of society that is trying to force them to become the object of a global dictatorship of capital.

These great movements and Social Forums demonstrate the existence of a strong will to resist. Everyone is in agreement with the slogan: “Another world is possible.” But which other world? When you raise this question, the difficulties begin. It is not the same thing to “reach an agreement for action against a common enemy” (a formulation of Karl Marx) and to be in agreement on the desired result of this action. The agreements fall apart at the moment when each one tries to explain what they mean by “another world is possible.”

Two broad, contradictory tendencies can be identified.

One of these starts from the conviction that a reform of capitalism is viable. Its defenders recognize that the contradictions are increasing between the private appropriation of the wealth produced by society—appropriation by a tiny minority of the population--and the growing socialization of production. Never has the inequality among humans been as shocking as it is today. But this tendency believes that this situation can be changed within the system itself, that this system should be susceptible to humanization. They assert that given the collapse of “real, existing socialism” that social revolution under present conditions is absolutely impossible, that there would remain no other option for the left today outside of struggling for reforms of “real, existing capitalism.”

The other tendency points toward a head-on confrontation with the system. During a recent debate in Padua, Italy, Toni Negri and the Canadian Naomi Klein clearly represented these two positions. The Italian suggested a path that excluded a struggle for power, the Canadian declared herself for “struggle through direct and not symbolic actions.”

The Spanish Marxist thinker Sanchez Vasquez, in a declaration published in the Mexican daily newspaper «La Jornada», synthesized this duality, affirming that a large part of the left had renounced socialism as the alternative to capitalism, “assuming a posture in favor of changes possible within the system, but losing the perspective of a truly emancipating alternative which can only come from a system that destroys the foundations of capitalism.”

This duality of antagonistic perspectives is at the heart of a debate, especially in Europe, which has gained enormous significance.

In the last few years, workers parties with great traditions have renounced their revolutionary programs, gradually integrating themselves into the system, allying themselves with parties, which carry out neoliberal policies while in power.

Some have renounced Marxism, choosing instead social democracy; others assert that they are struggling for a renewal of Marxism.

Obviously, Marxism is a dynamic and not a static ideology. It must be in a permanent state of renewal, in theory and in practice. But its creative renewal is incompatible with the integration of communist parties into the system. Marxism cannot renew itself by renouncing values, principles and objectives that are part of its revolutionary essence and by gradually adopting ideas, projects and methods of action that are capitalist in nature.

Contrary to what the forces serving capital affirm, the era of revolutions did not end. The capacity demonstrated by the social movements to mobilize millions of people, including those inside the USA, show precisely that readiness of the peoples, as subject of history, to struggle against the monstrous project of a society to which imperialism is trying to turn them into simple objects of a global dictatorship of capital, in the context of a gradual militarization of the Earth.

The confused but frenetic theorizing about the death of ideology that, under the pretext of demonizing the Soviet Union, criminalizes all revolutions worldwide has now become a component of the offensive developed on a world scale against those communist parties that have remained faithful to their principles.

Politzer had already said that "for the critical mind, intellectual independence consists not in retreating before reaction, but in refusing to retreat".

The survival of the Cuban Revolution faced with the most prolonged and cruel blockade in history, the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people, the combat of the Colombian FARC set before us the limits of imperial power, demonstrating that in certain historical circumstances it is possible to resist, if necessary with arms, the most potent world power.

In a eloquent and timely essay about the rebirth of communism, the French philosopher Georges Gastaud reminds us that in the gigantic struggle of the exploited against the exploiters, the class content of contemporary universalism confronts humanity with objectives, which for their revolutionary significance were unimaginable a few years ago. For example, in combating imperialist globalization in Europe, the goal for clear-thinking communists should be transferred from the “reform of the European Union from the break with the treaties of Maastricht, Nice and Amsterdam, from a rupture with the single currency guided by the Frankfurt Bank, and with a professional army guided by NATO.”

In other words, by ruptures that lead to global crisis that capitalism is unable to resist. The final result would be the destruction of the system of power that represents today a threat to the very survival of humanity.

The philosopher doesn't generalize. The rupture, as he conceives it, would come about as the result of multiple and diverse types of actions at different times and places.

The defenders of “movementism” forget that all the great revolutions, before they began, seemed as if they were absolutely impossible. Yet they happened.

They also forget that without revolutionary organizations there can be no revolution. It is a romantic illusion that, by themselves, the dynamic of the social movements and of the great forums that condemn the effects of capitalist globalization will bring us near the goal expressed concisely by the humanist slogan, “Another world is possible.”

History does not repeat itself. But just as the causes that have brought about the great revolutions have not disappeared, the organized rebellion of the exploited against the system of power that threatens us with a worldwide military dictatorship with fascist-like characteristics presents itself as a historical necessity.

In that rebellion against the system it falls to the revolutionary communist parties to play an irreplaceable role in combat against the common enemy and in the contribution of a strategy adequate for mobilizing, ideologically arming and organizing the immense masses of the proletariat of the new type—today the majority of the planet—for the struggle.

The creative renovation of Marxism leads to the strengthening of the communist ideal, and never to the capitulation of the revolutionary party. It aims for the continuation of the road opened by Marx and Lenin in order to take on the legacy coming from the sans culotte, from the Paris Commune, and from the October Revolution of 1917, demonized by the enemies of humanity's progress.