Of grave concern is the fact that since the dismantling of the socialist camp headed by the erstwhile Soviet Union the aggressive acts of the imperialists have increased manifold. Overlordism and bullying by the US imperialists in particular have grown menacingly during these years. The attempt of the Pentagon and the CIA to dominate other countries goes undeterred.

Ever since the Second World War the US imperialists have been engaged in expanding the network of military bases to all corners of the world. To establish an un­challengeable supremacy they carried out military inter­ventions, imposed economic blockades and engineered local and partial wars. Other destructions and losses apart, the loss of human lives alone in these local and regional wars exposes the scale of imperialist brutality and savagery.

In the present changed situation, the routine activities of the US imperialists comprise carrying on banditry and intrigues, planting agents in other countries, military intervention in the name of protecting freedom and democracy, perpetrating subversive political activities in the name of peace-keeping and relief missions, controlling the entire economy of recipient countries through loans and economic assistance, reckless plunder in the name of free trade, and fanning religious, racial and ethnic riots.

In 1989 the US committed aggression against Panama to destroy its national defence forces and impose US puppets. In the same year, to get candidates supported by it win the elections in Honduras, it carried out large-scale killings of political opponents by contriving a fratricidal bloodbath. In 1990, in order again to ensure victory of its candidate in the elections in Nicaragua it spent large sums of money and brazenly declared  that only if candidates of its choice became victorious, the economic blockade of Nicaragua would be lifted and US assistance to that country would be resumed. In Angola, Jonas Savimbi, the US stooge, engineered a renewed civil war with US assistance after his defeat in the 1992 elections; this claimed no less than one hundred thousand lives.

That the declared US object of establishing peace on the globe after the end of ‘cold war’ is only a trickery of US imperialism to hide its own design of establishing its absolute hegemony over the whole world is clear as daylight today. To execute their nefarious designs, the US along with other imperialists have converted the UN to a virtual rubber stamp and, in the guise of UN peace­keeping force, they have launched military intervention in one country after another, with US leading the attacks on Somalia and Haiti, the French and Belgium imperialists in the genocide perpetrated in Rwanda and the German imperialists in the intervention in the territories of the former Yugoslavia. To force countries to submit to US supremacy, the USA imposes economic sanctions and blockade against them unilaterally as it is the case in Cuba, where they are trying to strangulate the socialist revolution. The USA, with the other partners in the UN following suit, is threatening to wipe out socialist Korea and has almost razed Iraq to dust, even contemplating at one stage, use of nuclear weapons there. The US is also trying to bring to NATO membership the Central and Eastern European states, former Soviet Republics and other countries, which constitutes a grave menace to international peace and. security.

The US, Germany and Japan are the main imperialist contenders, but France and the UK are also in the fray, to carve out, their own sphere of influence, as far as and wherever they can in West Asia, Africa and erstwhile Yugoslavia. Contra­dictions between the imperialist powers centring round their bid to create or expand their respective spheres of influence is intensifying day by day. Yeltsin’s Russia is also displaying imperialistic aspiration in its incessant attempts to establish spheres of influence of Russian  capital and militarism in CIS countries as well as through bloody war in the Chechen Republic.

Added to this is the danger of the regional superpowers, which, though they themselves are being exploited by big imperialist powers, try to dominate and bully their small neighbours  through hegemonistic manoeuvers. Development and stockpiling of nuclear and other lethal weapons of mass destruction by different imperialist powers is going on unchecked. Each successive year the military budget of the imperialist states recording steep rises. In the face of an unprecedented crisis of recession, militarization has become a general feature of economy in every capitalist-imperialist country. Not only that, they are producing arms on an ever bigger scale. They are selling these arms and military hardware to other countries, particularly to the under­developed ones. The US imperialist clique not only heads the list of possessors of deadly weapons in the world today, it is also the biggest seller of armaments. The USA aims to build up a stockpile of nuclear warheads equal to that of the rest of the world combined. The powerful imperialist countries are trying to ensure an undisputed supremacy in the field of nuclear arms and industry through the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US supremacy is beyond question. But with production of newer and newer and ever deadlier weapons, the contra­diction between the imperialist powers has gone on intensifying and the worldwide trade in these arms has made the situation dangerously hot today. Defying public opinion the world over, particularly the opposition of the people of Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti, France carried out its latest nuclear test in the South Pacific and held out the threat of repeating it in future.

For obvious objective reasons, the imperialists long ago abandoned the old way of plundering colonies by direct occupation. But in no way did that signify a change in the character of imperialism. Adoption of new techniques have made their attacks more ferocious, more ruthless. In order to control the economy, politics, art, literature and all other realms of culture in the interest of their plunder, the US imperialists are today engaged in manipulating elections through reckless recourse to money-power or installing its stooges in power by engineering military ‘coups’. Again, in many countries, by granting huge loans through the World Bank, the IMF; etc, they are gradually roping in the economy of those countries, particularly the underdeveloped countries into their fold. Sinking more and more in the debt trap, Zaire ultimately went totally bankrupt and Mexico has not been able to overcome the evil consequences of its bankruptcy. Besides, the imperialists compel the underdeveloped countries to produce exportable cash crops in exchange of the loans or assistance granted to them, and they purchase those produce at cheap rates. And, taking advantage of the food crisis thus created there due to low production of food grains, the USA sells its surplus wheat at a high price to these countries.

By ruthless exploitation of the environment for profit without any effort for environmental regeneration, capitalism-imperialism has created great environmental problem alarming right thinking people today. The imperialists have converted the under­developed countries into their dumping ground, exporting to these countries, in the name of assistance, lethal pesticides and other harmful wastes, scraps, plastics, metal ash and residue, etc., and setting up plants producing dangerous and prohibited chemical thus polluting the natural environ­ment of the developing and underdeveloped countries, they are making millions of people victims to various diseases and deficiencies, gradually pushing millions of them towards a premature death. Even as they do this, the imperialists are using the issue of environment to dominate the developing nations economically and politically. They pressurize developing nations to adopt environment-friendly technologies on which they themselves have a monopoly. Far from solving environmental problems, they intensify them and seek to profit from them.

At the same time, increasing retrenchment of workers has been  the  result of wider application   of   improved technology.   Technological development is not being used in the interest of the common man; on the contrary, it is being used to produce all sorts of deadly weapons, including the nuclear weapons. Ignoring the fundamental research aspect of science the imperialists are putting greater stress on its technological aspect.

The imperialist onslaught is manifested not only in the economic and political fields but also in the cultural arena. imperialist control over print and electronic media is leading to a situation which is eating into the very vitals of the ethical, moral and cultural fabric, destroying the essence of finer human qualities. This is giving birth to dehumanized,   self-centred machine like robots thriving in consumerist culture. The overall situation in the cultural arena is providing a fertile ground for emergence of fascism in addition to other political and economic factors favouring it.

In this context particularly condemnable is degradation of womanhood brought through portrayal of women as mere commodities in the mass media.

But whatsoever illusion they may have been trying to create in the name of ‘globalization’ of economy and also of politics, capitalism-imperialism cannot escape from the growing intense general crisis of its economy. Those who believe that worldwide prosperity will be achieved through globalization and liberalization of economy are in gross error. Imperialism invents newer and newer methods of exploitation in keeping with the changing situation. The World Trade Organization (WTO) or globalization of economy likewise are but new contrivance to plunder the world peacefully by establishing domination over the global market. This is bound to result in accumulation of immense wealth in the hands of the giant multinationals on the one hand and, on the other, in pushing common people the world over to extreme poverty. The liberalization of economy in Mexico was much lauded. But the extreme crisis that has beset its economy should be an eye opener pointing to the consequences of the imperialist designs against the people.

India and other developing countries where liberalization has started only recently are already experiencing worsening unemployment problem, pauperization of the rural poor, high price rise of all essential commodities, including the life saving drugs, as concomitant evils of liberalization. The condition obtaining in the relatively more backward countries is even worse.

Having failed to resolve the trade conflicts in several rounds of talks, the imperialists, primarily with a view to carrying on exploitation in the underdeveloped countries through redivision of the world market among themselves, reached the present GATT accord. On the one hand, attempts have been made through this Agreement to demolish all barriers protecting the markets of the under­developed countries. On the other hand, through ensuring scope of investment in the service sector of these countries instead of investment in productive sectors, and adding clauses of TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) etc., a wider sphere of exploitation has been created impending the development in the fields of agriculture, scientific research and education. The relatively more developed among the underdeveloped countries which have already given birth to monopoly and finance capital have joined hands with the imperialists, even accepting some conditionalities, in the hope of getting a share in the global market. But those who are very weak and underdeveloped have signed this Agreement under compulsion of the circumstances.

Growth of monopoly and finance capital and formation of international trusts and cartels, signaling the stage of imperialism of capitalist economy, started before the First World. This set the stage for globalization of economy which is now being attempted on a much wider scale. In the name of ‘free trade’ the imperialists are engaged in trade war, with each one trying to obstruct penetration by the others into its own market while demanding unrestricted right to enter into others’ markets. They are talking of ‘global market’, ‘free trade’, etc., but are after creating regional markets like European Union, NAFTA, etc., to fight one another. Again, there are combinations within combinations. Today, the USA, Japan, and the EC are the three imperialist contenders. Before the ink of the GATT accord dried, the USA and Japan locked horns in a fierce trade war, each trying to gain at the expense of the other. Among the imperialist powers trade wars are going on an ever wider scale, at any ripe moment, may lead to fullscale armed warfare.

Today an unprecedented recession has gripped the whole of the world capitalist economy. The imperialists are unable to solve their own economic crisis, “the supply side crisis”, and to overcome this problem, (at least from the point of view of some bourgeois economists) they must activate the consumption capacity of less developed countries. To do that they are sometimes forced to write off debts and invest in these latter countries. But still there is no hope of recovery. Not only in backward countries, but even in advanced imperialist countries thousands of factories are being closed down, millions of workers are getting lay off and retrenched, and millions of unemployed roam in the streets ; all social welfare schemes, including unemploy­ment relief are being curtailed.

Not only immigrant workers, even migrant native workers are being driven out, thanks to the advancement of the market economy. The US, the number one imperialist power, is reeling under deficit budget and crisis of inflation. Japan and Germany, defeated and devastated in the Second World War and put under the jackboot of dollar imperialism, have now emerged as powerful rivals to US imperialism. France is not lagging behind. British imperialism which once enjoyed the supreme position among the imperialist powers cannot yet reconcile itself with its present position. Japan and Germany too are making military preparation, of course in the name of peace. France and Germany are trying to develop ‘European Security Forces’. Conflicts centring round attempts to establish absolute supremacy over the oil and other natural resources in the Middle East have begun to surface. France, Germany and other such powers are no longer ready to submit to the dictates of the US. The contradiction among the imperialists is getting more and more sharpened.

Those who think that there is no longer any danger of world war since globalization has created a scope to compete freely and since the world socialist camp which existed parallel to the world imperialist camp stands dismantled today, are grossly mistaken. The cause of the world war does not lie in the contradiction between the socialist system and the imperialist-capitalist system. The two World Wars did not take place because of this contradiction. Both the Wars started as a result of conflict between the imperialists for division and redivision of markets. Those who think that as a consequence of globali­zation there is no longer any question of redivision of the market are also in error. Conflict among the imperialists for dominating this globalized market is there and it has now intensified further. The possibility of war is rooted in this. Contra­diction between imperialists has grown more acute. The Soviet Union which was regarded by all the great humanists of the twentieth century — for instance, Romain Rolland, Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Rabindranath Tagore, Lu Sun, Bertolt Brecht, Bertrand Russel, and others — as the unfailing defender of world peace and a genuine friend of the anti-imperialist freedom struggles, the Soviet Union which played the pivotal role in defeating the fascist Axis powers in the Second World War and in attainment of independence of the different erstwhile colonies, the Soviet Union under whose guidance the powerful world socialist camp played a significant role in the non-aligned movement of the newly independent countries and a powerful peace movement could emerge as the guarantor of peace against imperialist war machinations in the post-Second World War period, is no more today. Further, with the collapse of socialism in Soviet Union and East Europe and the resultant weakening of the non-aligned movement, the danger of imperialist war has menacingly increased. Naturally, if such a war breaks out it will not remain confined to the imperialists only. The underdeveloped countries and the remaining socialist countries will also be engulfed in it. Even though at the moment there is no world war, local and partial wars are being engineered.

To stoke the fire of local and regional wars, fomenting ethnic strife is an imperative necessity for the imperialists today. It is necessary not only for increasing the sale of war materials, but also for enhancement of war budgets, maintenance and use of military bases and forces abroad even after the end of ‘cold war’ with the avowed declaration of ‘peaceful settlement’ and ‘keeping of peace’. They call the military forces the ‘peace keeping forces’, and to preserve and strengthen the ‘peace keeping forces’ they need local wars. In the name of ‘peaceful settlement’ the imperialists are tightening their grip over the warring countries. The significance of these local wars does not remain confined within local boundaries, as the imperialist powers are directly involved militarily in these wars. Moreover, the developing countries which are being engaged in local wars have to spend a lion’s share of their state budgets in war preparation at the cost of developmental expenditure thus bringing immense suffering to the common people of these countries.

The imperialist camp is developing very powerful and effective propaganda and communication machinery, specially TV and Radio network, plus telecommunication network on global and regional basis. This machinery is being used for ideo-cultural degeneration of the toiling classes and youths, for creating public opinion in favour of imperialist plans and designs and for developing consu­merism among the people. It has been very effective in aborting the revolution in the very womb.

Thus, imperialism today is posing a great threat to world peace, freedom and democracy. So the need of the hour is to build up a mighty anti-imperialist people’s movement all over the world in order to thwart imperialist intrigue, interference, intervention and war machination, which in its wake should give birth to a militant peace movement conducive to the struggles for emancipation of the toiling people of the world.

The ray of hope is that popular opinion against imperialist aggression and war machination, interference and subversion is growing stronger everyday and everywhere. It is, therefore, incumbent on the progressive forces to rise to the occasion and take up the task of giving organized shape to the growing anti-imperialist sentiments of the people.

It is also bounden duty of the progressive forces that they express solidarity with the people inhabiting the region constituting the former Soviet Union in their struggle against restoration of capitalism and for establishment of the socialist state as a voluntary union of peoples and a mighty bulwark of peace and democracy.

This Convention calls upon the progressive and peace-loving people of different countries to take initiative to form anti-imperialist for a through suitable means. These organizations should be made as broad based as possible and their progra­mmes drawn up on common agreed bases. The basic approach should be that we are opposed to unjust wars — wars of annexation and aggression.

The anti-imperialist organizations of different countries should strive towards giving shape to an international organization to coordinate and guide all anti-imperialist struggles through mutual consultation.

Tasks Ahead