Asian Marxist Review Autumn 2011 - Editor’s Note

After the revolutionary storms of the Arab Spring and the European Summer we are witnessing a wave of militant protests of the American Fall that began with the Occupy Wall street movement in the United States. The global support with demonstrations in about nine hundred cities across the planet on all the continents shows the discontent and the seething revolt against the rotting capitalist system on a world scale.

Asia Marxist Reviwe Autumn 2011 The globalisation of capitalist exploitation and the similarities of deprivation, hardship and problems they face in life are bringing the vast majority of the toilers and oppressed into a united revolt and struggle internationally. It is a vindication of the ideas put forward by Karl Marx more than hundred and fifty years ago and the strategy of class struggle and socialist revolution he devised for the ultimate emancipation of the human race. What was supposed to have failed and ridiculed by history, the very same ideology of Marxism is now making a comeback against this exploitative system and its apologists of all forms and tendencies with a vengeance.

The advanced capitalist world is in the throes of its worst economic crisis in history. The US, the mightiest imperial force that ever existed on earth, is beset with an economic catastrophe its experts don't have a clue how to avert. Its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have been a disaster. Not only have these wars of attrition spilled blood of working class American soldiers and drained trillions of dollars but a humiliating defeat stares at this military power equipped with the most advanced weaponry.

Iraq has been pillaged by imperialist aggression and even its regime installed by the US is now beyond its control. In Libya a popular mass uprising was disrupted by converting it into a civil war through the imperialist intervention. The murder of Qaddafi by pro-imperialist insurgents does not mark the end of the conflict and crisis in Libya, rather we have a society awash with arms and the imperialist stooges of the Transitional Council have no policy or programme to offer the Libyan masses any way out from the adversities they had risen up against. The prospects of another impending disaster haunt Libya. In these conditions imperialist plunder would not be easy to carry out.

The suffering of the Palestinians seems to be endless. Terrorist acts and negotiated settlements under the auspices of imperialism have led them down a blind alley. However, the volcanic eruption of the class struggle in Israel and the Arab world has given a new dimension and perspective to the liberation of the Palestinian masses. The solution of a revolutionary overthrow of the reactionary elites in Israel and the Middle East with a socio-economic transformation has come to the fore as the only way forward. That is the historical significance of the revolt of the Israeli workers and the youth.

In Afghanistan apart from the mass murder of thousands of innocent people with the most modern imperialist weaponry and the bestial terror of religious bigotry, life after ten years of imperialist invasion is far worse. Child mortality, malnutrition, obstetric deaths and generalized misery have worsened. Imperialist intervention in Pakistan has further destabilized the country and worsened the already catastrophic socio-economic situation that afflicts this tragic land.

The BRICS countries have not only failed to revive the world economy but they are either already in a severe crisis or facing the prospect of serious downturn. Russia has a repressive regime which has demolished the hegemonic designs of Western imperialisms. Brazil is caught in a spate of violence and social turmoil. China not only faces an economic slowdown but also social unrest as the strike waves that are rocking the regime in Beijing confirm. The so-called Communist Party with billionaires in its leadership has failed to control capitalist restoration. Rather capitalism’s intervention in China has prepared the forces of a new socialist revolution with the largest proletariat in the world. All this marks the death knell for the elite and capitalism on a world scale. India's growth has been a blight and a curse for the vast majority of its people. After ten years of roaring growth rates more people are living in poverty in India than anywhere in the world and at any time in its own history.

From Scandinavia to South East Asia there is not one country that is not in turmoil and socio-economic crisis. And the protests and rebellions are becoming international phenomena. Although spontaneity has been a strength of the recent revolutionary uprisings, it has also been their principal weakness. The lack of a subjective factor has led them astray. With the present instability and turmoil that is stirring societies, a revolutionary transformation can set in motion a wave of revolts in one country after another. With the formation of a Leninist party with a Marxist leadership and programme, a lasting and successful outcome of the revolution is entirely possible. Although the forces of the IMT are modest, the message is beginning to penetrate the class. A socialist victory in one important country could open up the floodgates of revolutionary mass upheavals that would transform whole regions and continents. The process of human emancipation and the beginning of real history of mankind