This article was reprinted from the July 19, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.
The following is excerpted from a report by Communist Party USA National Chair Gus Hall to a meeting of its National Board, June 28-29 (Part two of two).
Madeleine Albright, Clinton's "right" hand on foreign policy, is now the main mouthpiece for the most extreme reactionary policies of U.S. imperialism. From her mouth comes such hawk-like phrases as, "We must prevent the rise of the great evil," straight out of the Reagan era's cold war rhetoric. Increasingly, in the Senate, foreign affairs decisions are being decided by Albright and her bosom-buddy, the insane 100-year old, ultra-right racist fanatic, Jesse Helms.
The Clinton-Albright policy to expand NATO is a continuation of the Cold War. The main purpose is to make it more difficult for the ex-socialist countries to return to socialism. The reason they took in Czechoslovakia, Hungry and Poland is because they are the weakest on socialism and have governments that are most ready and willing to comply with the dictates of U.S. imperialism. Even the reactionary Polish Pope recently visited Poland as an emissary of capitalism and to try to revive waning church attendance. The Pope's main message was meant to encourage the Poles to keep moving in a capitalist direction and part of that is moving people back to traditional Catholicism.
Capitalist roaders are having a much more difficult time than expected, especially in Russia. Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Board chairman and Wall Street's main financial guru, in a recent Wall Street speech titled, "Russian capitalism lags," admitted for the first time that "deeply embedded socialist values and the lack of some basic underpinnings of a free market economy will make Russia's evolution to capitalism very slow."
There are some serious hot spots in the world, like the Mideast, and including the continuing proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction that cry out for a revived peace movement. The expansion of NATO adds another important dimension and an immediacy to this need. The dangerous expansion, the restructuring of NATO and its threat to world peace, could be the motivating issue.
We should call for militant actions against NATO expansion. And, we should begin to argue for the dissolution of an expanding NATO alliance as a growing threat to world peace and security.
NATO expansion positions the U.S. to take direct action, covert and overt, against any ex-socialist countries that move in the direction of returning to socialism. The special agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine, signed in Madrid last week, is one example of the U.S. developing an ex-socialist country as a hostile neighbor on Russia's borders.
NATO is fundamentally and foremost anti-socialist. What imperialism, and especially U.S. imperialism, could not destroy during the Cold War, they will attempt to achieve through this expansion.
Clinton's rightward shift in foreign affairs is in the opposite direction from recent developments in Europe, and perhaps partly a reaction to them.
Clinton used the June "Summit of the Eight" as a bully pulpit to preach to the European Community about the superiority of U.S. capitalism and the wonders of the U.S. economy. Officially, it was called to bring the eight in line with the " austerity, free market, privatization, and liberalization of trade policies necessary for a global economy," and to succeed with the common European Union currency (euro) scheme scheduled for 1999.
Grating on the ears of especially Japan, U.S. speakers constantly referred to the U.S. economy as "the world's only economic superpower," and "the world's most flexible and dynamic economy."
The Summit was a forum for U.S. imperialism, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to work over these countries and coerce them into adopting even more coldblooded austerity policies that will further cut deficits by depressing wages, thinning safety nets, increasing downsizing. One of the specific aims was to convince the eight to "lengthen the workweek."
Yeltsin was probably the happiest camper as he stood proudly beside "My friend Bill", finally, as a full-fledged supplicant capitalist roader, while his country sinks deeper into chaos, poverty, unemployment, crime, hunger and accelerating privatization.
Aside from grumbling about Clinton's arrogance and pompous lectures about how to run their countries, the lukewarm European response was because these are the very policies that the people of Britain, France and Italy rejected in recent elections. And it looks like Helmut Kohl is facing a defeat by socialists in the coming German elections. In France, the coalition led by the socialists and communists won a big victory.
Which, by the way, is one reason why Clinton, Albright, Cohen and Company refused to consider more than the three compliant new NATO members. They are afraid that allowing in more ex-socialist countries opens the possibility that they might line up against the U.S. with some of the European countries that moved left in recent elections.
The French elections are and will continue to influence all developments in Europe. At the summit Jospin, the new head of state, his politics and remarks were a far cry from those of the defeated Chirac's. Clinton made it clear that the election of Jospin was not to his liking and warned that changing Chirac's policies could "lead to an era of overspending instead of austerity."
On the Summit, I think a front page article in the June 24 New York Times sums up the failure of the U.S. to force the eight completely into line,
"The French made their views quite clear in elections this month, rejecting the deficit cutting, the corporate downsizing and thinning of social safety nets that were all key elements of the U.S. rebound Clinton is touting. Now all of Europe is debating whether it can tolerate the kind of austerity and corporate bloodletting that the world's financial markets increasingly demand around the world, and that they so richly rewarded here."
The vice-chair of Goldman-Sachs International summed up U.S. corporate disappointment in this quote from the same issue of the Times,
"Just a few months ago the consensus among the world's leaders seemed to be that there was a right way to guide your economy and it looked like the American way. But the consensus we thought was universal among leaders turns out not to be shared by voters. We are coming to the limits of the political acceptance of these approaches."
The right-wing, U.S.-backed and paid for, government of Mobutu was driven out of the Congo. The government and policies of the new Kabila government are not yet clear. What is clear, however, is that the new situation is a victory for national liberation in Congo. And that world capitalism and imperialism will do everything possible to pervert, to corrupt, to derail any policies that deny them access to the fabulous mineral, diamond and other profits from the Congo.
In Nepal, the Communists won their second election. In Mongolia, the Communists won reelection and maintained the power to keep the country on a socialist path.
In Albania, the socialists took power from an extreme rightwing repressive regime. The elections in Iran, while not decisive, also move in a positive direction with 69 percent of the electorate voting against the reactionary ticket.
Perhaps the most stunning electoral victory took place in Mexico, where Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, leader of the left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) won election as the Mayor of Mexico City, defeating his rivals by a two-to-one margin. And bringing to an end seven decades of anti-people rule by the reactionary, corrupt ruling (PRI) party of President Ernesto Zadillo, the PRD won almost 26 percent of the vote for the 500-seat Chamber of Deputies. For the first time Zedillo faces a political opposition to his policies.
Cardenas, following in the political footsteps of his father, former President Lazaro Cardenas, who nationalized the banking, transport and petroleum industries, has become an immensely popular leader, especially because he is taking on big business interests and U.S. imperialism.
The PRD is the successful product of the coming together of communists, socialists, independent labor and peasant leaders to win electoral power. Also noteworthy in this part of the world are the left trends in the electoral victories in El Salvador and Guatemala.
In Canada, in the June elections for Parliament, the New Democratic Party won 21 seats, up from nine, and 11 percent of the popular vote. The Associated Press story called the New Democratic candidates "the only near-radical alternative that called for more, not less, to be spent on social safety net programs." And the Conservative Party, which not long ago was the ruling party, was just about wiped out in this election.
The Blair victory in Britain was a blow against the old, right-wing reactionary government and Thatcherite policies. And, of course, we have to add the near-end of the British Empire with the end of 155 years of occupation and colonial domination as Hong Kong is finally returned to China.
The best indication of the angry mood in Europe is the regaining of ground by the Communist parties, particularly the leap in parliamentary seats from 24 to 38 by the Communist Party of France; the continual increase in voting strength by the Refoundation Communist Party of Italy and its holding of the balance of power in the Italian parliament; and the increased representation won in recent elections by the Communists in Greece, Spain and Cyprus. This demonstrates, among other things, that socialism and the appeal of socialism are anything but dead.
What accounts for this leftward trend? Mass sentiment. Anger and insecurity. The votes were against the widening of the great gap between the very few rich and the more than 30 percent of populations in Europe living below the poverty level. It is against the over 18 million unemployed in the European Union and the decline of wages for those working.
It is a reaction to the open assault on the security nets and social programs, especially on the poor, the elderly and children. It is against the privatization of public facilities and huge rise in cost of services to insure huge profits for the new owners.
All these challenges to reactionary, anti-people, anti-labor policies and politicians around the world dovetail with the militant upsurge in the U.S. working class, the trade union movement and the AFL-CIO leadership. The working class around the world is up against the most most rapacious, exploitive, brutal and cold-blooded capitalist class in history.
Working people and their organizations are responding on all fronts of struggle - economic, electoral and political. However, the new successful fightback developments now call for a much higher level of unity and militancy than ever before.
And, In the world situation of accelerating monopolization in a global economy dominated by state-monopoly capitalism and fierce inter-imperialist rivalry, unity and militancy on the level of international working class solidarity has become more critical than ever before.
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