EIGHT hundred British troops, with tanks, armoured vehicles and drones are to be sent to Estonia in the Spring, on the border with Russia.
The boosted mission, up from 500 announced earlier this year, is part of a planned deployment of 4,000 extra NATO troops to eastern Europe by the summer of 2017. The spectre of a third world war is now emerging out of the greatest crisis ever of the capitalist system, with its broken banks and bankrupt industries. These can only survive by a redivision of the world and the destruction of the areas where the working class has smashed capitalist rule, namely Russia, China and Vietnam. The threat of imperialist war emerges out of this crisis, and is in fact a continuation of imperialist politics by other means.
In Lenin’s book: ‘Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism’, written during the First World War in 1916, Lenin writes: ‘Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers is completed.’
He emphasised that it was the last and highest stage of capitalism, stating in 1920 that ‘Imperialism is the eve of the proletarian socialist revolution. This has been confirmed since 1917 on a worldwide scale.’
Lenin was an emigre in 1916. After the February 1917 revolution, when Tsarism was overthrown, he returned to Russia. The Bolsheviks went from a tiny group in February, to a mass party capable of leading the working class to take the power in October, and hold it against the entire imperialist world. In fact, 1917 saw the beginning of the world socialist revolution.
Imperialist war and revolutions are inseparable. The Second World War saw the Red Army advance to Berlin, the Chinese working class take the power and the British working class establish the Welfare State. The revolutionary wave grew in the 1970s to unite Vietnam and drive the French and then the US army out of the country.
Now the world crisis of the capitalist system is raging once again, as it is undermined by the new technologies that it cannot cope with. This deepening crisis is driving the imperialist powers into new wars, despite the fact that they know that it will bring new working class revolutions. The ruling class is a captive of the laws of development of its own social system – it is in its death agony and in its response it can do no other!
The overripeness of the capitalist system, its rottenness and its completely outmoded character, that sees huge advances in production leading to greater hunger and poverty is there for all to see.
In fact, its continuing existence, lurching from crisis to crisis, endangers the very existence of the human race, since the weapons that it will be hurling at its enemies of all kinds make those that it used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima look like little fireworks.
Faced with this mounting crisis of the capitalist system and the threat that it poses to humanity, workers’ organisations must proclaim, with Lenin, that the enemy is at home.
The imperialist powers must be disarmed before they go to war and destroy hundreds of millions of people. This means building up the revolutionary leadership of the working class, based on the theories and practices of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, to mobilise the working class in the major capitalist countries to prevent a new imperialist world war through socialist revolutions that smash the imperialist powers and bring the working class to power.
These revolutionary actions by the working class of the world will create the conditions for the workers of Russia and China to carry out political revolutions against the Stalinist bureaucracy and restore Soviet power. The coming year of 2017 marks one hundred years since the successful Russian revolution changed the world forever.
2017 will be the year to advance to the victory of the world socialist revolution. These are some of the issues that will be discussed at the News Line Anniversary Rally on November 12 (see ad page 5) to which we cordially invite all of our readers. Make sure you are there!
