Fight for the Pacific - Introduction
V. Ya Avarin
INTRODUCTION
The era of the general crisis of capitalism does not even count to four decades, but what grandiose events have taken place in this short period! The history of mankind never knew such stormy social development, such profound changes that have occurred for these several decades.
During the time that has elapsed since the memorable days of the Great October Revolution, a third of humanity has escaped from the hell of decaying capitalism. Under the banner of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin, eight hundred million people are creating a new, happy life.
The first phase of communism, socialism, was realized in the USSR. The socialist system, engendered by the proletarian revolution, gave the peoples of the Soviet Union great and irresistible power, created the conditions for an unprecedented rapid development of the productive forces, for the full flowering of the creative abilities of the masses. Relying on the socialist social system, the USSR won a historic victory over Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan and saved the peoples of the world from fascist enslavement.
The countries of the camp of democracy and socialism, led by the Soviet Union, are constantly developing along an ascending line, while the capitalist system is degrading increasingly. The capitalist countries, especially the United States of America and England, the main imperialist powers, are now characterized by deeper traits of parasitism and decay than ever before. Describing imperialism as parasitic or decaying capitalism, Lenin emphasized as early as the First World War that these traits stand out especially sharply in American imperialism.
Parasitism and decay, generated by monopolies, the financial oligarchy, found their most complete expression in American imperialism after the Second World War.
What is the modern United States of America? On the one hand, these are several hundred billionaires and millionaires who personify the tendency of modern monopolistic capital to the highest profit, which is obtained by the cost of at least millions of human lives, and this, on the other hand, is tens of millions of workers and their families, ruthlessly exploited. Surplus labor is being squeezed out of these millions on an ever-larger scale, their standard of living is ever more declining, and the number of starving unemployed and semi-unemployed among them in 1952 exceeded 13 million.
The modern United States of America is an imperialist power whose ruling classes, in pursuit of maximum profit, are striving to plunge the world into a new military catastrophe, preparing to rain down on peaceful cities, on centers of science and culture, on women and children, atomic bombs and other means of destruction and annihilation.
In his teaching on the basic economic law of modern capitalism, Comrade Stalin points out:
“It is precisely the need to obtain maximum profits that pushes monopoly capitalism to such risky steps as the enslavement and systematic robbery of colonies and other backward countries, the transformation of a number of independent countries into dependent countries, the organization of new wars, which for the bigwigs of modern capitalism is the best "business" for extracting maximum profits, and finally, attempts to win world economic domination" (1) .
Back in the days of the October Revolution, Lenin pointed out in his Decree on Peace that the Soviet government considered the continuation of the imperialist war "the greatest crime against humanity." The representatives of the dying capitalist system are repeatedly committing this greatest crime against humanity. At the present historical stage, representatives of American monopoly capital are especially distinguished in this field. English imperialism is trying in every possible way to keep up with them. After the Second World War, the bloody history of bloody American imperialism was marked by new crimes. One of the characteristic types of evidence of the policy of aggression and war pursued by the governments of the United States and Britain is the Atlantic Pact - this document of an open predatory conspiracy of modern aggressors. As early as 1949, in a statement published on January 29, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that US foreign policy was "permeated through and through with the spirit of violence, the spirit of aggression." The statement irrefutably proves that "the ruling circles of the United States and Great Britain have switched to an openly aggressive political course..." that they are shamelessly pursuing a policy of unleashing a new war.
Since then, new facts have shown that in the framework of the Atlantic Pact, feverish activities are being carried out to prepare for a new aggressive war. This pact has been turned into the main instrument of the aggressive policy of the ruling circles of the USA, Great Britain and France. The signing of a military treaty with the anti-national government of Japan, enslaved by American imperialism, and the transformation of Japan into a military base for aggressive imperialist forces and a colony of American monopolies, were an expression of the policy of preparing for a new war, the policy of imperialist aggression in the Pacific. The cold-blooded war of conquest in Korea will always remind of the shameful deeds of a handful of US rulers.
Intervention in China, colonial wars against the peoples of Southeast Asia, incited and supported by the American financial oligarchy, bloody reactionary coups in other countries, organized by the agent of the US government, expanding espionage and sabotage against democratic countries, the organization of armed gangster gangs from the discharge of humanity, and the use of bacteria plague and cholera to spread epidemics in North Korea and China, feverish preparations for a new world war - all this causes angry protest and contempt on the part of peace-loving mankind. Curses are heard all over the globe at the address of the American aggressors who inflict so much evil on the peoples of Asia and Europe, America and Africa.
The American manufacturers of death, the US military sharks, who "make" millions on the stock exchange at the expense of the blood shed on the battlefields, are hated by the peoples of the world with fierce hatred. They are hated for their atrocities in Korea, for their delusional plans to start a new world war; they are hated for their insane plans to destroy hundreds of millions of people, hold back the development of other countries, enslave the peoples of the world in order to create a world slave empire. Representatives and agents of the US financial oligarchy repeatedly after the Second World War set out the cannibal delusional program of American billionaires. Created barriers to the economic, cultural, political development of all other countries, and in particular the development of China and India, so that they remain suppliers of colonial slaves and raw materials, to establish the dominance of the American plutocracy in other countries at any cost - this is what the American imperialists are striving for.
In the United States, the people are forced to live under the iron fist of monopoly, which presses on them increasingly more the police terror reached a monstrous size. After the Second World War, the United States, the realm of the yellow devil, appears more than ever before as “one of the first countries in the depth of the abyss between a handful of insolent billionaires, drowning in mud and luxury, on the one hand, and millions of working people living forever on the edge of poverty, on the other” (2) .
The chairman of the US Communist Party, William Foster, characterizing the misanthropic policy of the American big bourgeoisie, says: “Fascism and war are what the American monopolists are now striving for ... They are perfidious conspirators against the freedom, prosperity, and peace of our nation. These greedy exploiters seek to establish their imperialist dominion over the world... "American imperialism," writes Foster elsewhere, "is an organization of the world's most inhuman fascist capitalist bandits..."
American imperialists hate the broad masses of the United States themselves. The entire American people, with the exception of a few servants of the American imperialists, is suffering from the oppression of the billionaires, just like the peoples of other countries that have found themselves in the web of American imperialism. Advanced Americans publicly declare that they will wage the most decisive struggle against cannibal policy and against the oppression of financial magnates.
American imperialism encounters irreconcilable enemies not only in the person of the freedom-loving working masses of all countries and all peoples. American imperialism is undermined and destroyed by all the internal contradictions of the last stage of capitalism.
This imperialism has competitors who want to drown it in the person of English imperialism and imperialists of other capitalist states. The British bourgeoisie embarked on the path of extensive territorial conquest and enslavement of other peoples as early as the dawn of capitalism. England then entered the international arena as one of the largest and most developed capitalist countries. For a considerable period, she was the "mistress of the seas" and, using her industrial and maritime superiority, captured the most extensive colonies on the globe. The British monopoly bourgeoisie even now cherishes the idea that, after temporarily pushing British imperialism into the background, it will be able to rise and further expand its dominion. It is trying to act in this direction, but everywhere in the capitalist world it encounters opposition and a counter, even stronger onslaught of US monopoly capital.
The clash of interests between British and American capital is not limited historically to the era of imperialism. The contradictions between England and the United States were born and began to act very actively from the very first days of the United States of America as an independent state. Two wars, numerous aggravations of relations, when often Britain and the USA openly threatened war with each other—this is what is characteristic of mutual relations between these two major capitalist predators. Hostility towards England is a historical tradition of the American bourgeoisie. Hatred of the United States is the historical legacy of the English lords and capitalists.
The contradictions between the United States and Britain are operating and developing at the present time with unrelenting force. These contradictions are fraught with the sharpest clashes and catastrophes.
The major imperialist powers are trying to mask their contradictions to some extent, but these contradictions are irreconcilable. The operation of the law of uneven development of capitalism exacerbates these contradictions increasingly more. After the Second World War, American imperialism devours its capitalist "allies" in the imperialist bloc, but the hatred of these "allies" for the main predator of the capitalist world grows all the more. Within the imperialist bloc of aggressors, a "cold war" is going on, cruel and merciless. Although US imperialism oppresses and crushes its "junior partners", the latter, for their part, seek to launch counterattacks, gradually gain strength, strengthen themselves in order to raise their heads and, in due time, turn the leg to the American imperialists.
Take, for example, England, whose capitalists did not forget at all that in the not-so-distant past they imposed their will on almost half the population of the globe.
In 1928, Comrade Stalin, analyzing the international situation, pointed out that “out of a number of contradictions existing in the capitalist camp, the main contradiction was the contradiction between American capitalism and English capitalism” (3). The fierce struggle between the two major imperialist powers, which at times became extremely aggravated, irrefutably confirmed this assessment given by the leader of the working masses of the world. Fascist Germany and militarist Japan, having formed a bloc of aggressors and attempted an armed redistribution of the world, temporarily pushed "the Anglo-American contradiction into the background, but not only did it not disappear, it revived with new and even greater force after the Second World War. Undoubtedly, at present it is the main contradiction in the capitalist camp.
As a day of the Anglo-American imperialist struggle, there are questions about which Comrade Stalin spoke a quarter century ago. “Take it,” said Comrade Stalin,
“the question of oil, which is crucial both for the construction of the capitalist economy and for the war; will you take up the question of markets for the sale of commodities that are of the utmost importance for the life and development of world capitalism, for it is impossible to produce commodities without having a secure market for these commodities; will you take up the question of markets for the export of capital, which is the most characteristic feature of the imperialist stage; Finally, if you take the question of the paths leading to sales markets or to markets for raw materials, all these basic questions lead to one basic problem, to the problem of the struggle for world hegemony between England and America” (4) .
England imports not only a huge amount of various industrial raw materials, but also about 60% of the food its people need. In order to be able to import a huge amount of necessary goods, England must also export a large amount of goods. Just to make ends meet, in order to have a non-deficit foreign trade balance, it would have to export twice as much as it exported in the first years after the Second World War. But the capitalist world market has now been taken over by other imperialist countries, and above all by the United States of America. In conditions of capitalism, England can increase its exports to other capitalist countries only at the expense of other exporting countries, mainly at the expense of the United States. Hence the fierce Anglo-American imperialist struggle for markets. In addition to France and other capitalist countries, West Germany and Japan, whose monopolies have been revived with the help of US imperialism itself, are once again drawn into the struggle for sales markets.
The struggle for markets is all the more severe and the more it tends to exacerbate, the more the economic sphere of imperialism is reduced as a result of the fall of new countries from imperialism and their accession to the socialist economic sphere. The American billionaires expelled from China see that they are in danger of being expelled from a number of other Asian countries and are conducting a continuous offensive against the positions of Britain and other capitalist states. They are trying to reimburse their huge Far Eastern losses due to the mastery of English, French and other colonies, and semi-colonies and by turning the Western European countries themselves into a colony, semi-colonies, and dependent countries. American imperialism has succeeded in this direction. He forced even such large imperialist countries as France and England to conclude unequal treaties, placed his garrisons in these countries, created his own cliques among the ruling classes of these countries, and took care of these cliques.
American imperialism is systematically oppressing and trying to crush the British, French, Belgian and other capitalists both in their own countries and in the Middle East, India, Africa and Latin America. Under the guise of "assistance to backward countries under the 4th point of the Truman Programme," US imperialism is penetrating British colonial reserves, which until recently were considered inviolable patrimonies of British monopolies."
Especially ferocious clashes are flaring up between the American and British imperialists in the Middle East, which has large resources of raw materials and is of great military-strategic importance. The American kings of oil have taken their English rivals by the throat. The Middle East has two-fifths of all the proven oil reserves in the capitalist world. Before the Second World War, in 1938, the Middle East produced about 6% of all oil produced in the capitalist world, and in 1951 about 18%. At the same time, the share of US oil monopolies in the Middle East has sharply increased. In 1938, about 80% of all production fell on the British oil monopolies and only 14% on the American ones. In 1951 the share of the USA was over 60%, while that of England was less than 37%. In connection with the loss of the Iranian oil concession by Britain, its share in 1952 will fall to approximately 20% of the total oil production in the Middle East.
A wolf fight between the imperialists on various issues is flaring up more and more strongly throughout the capitalist world. The Pacific basin is just one of the arenas of the ferocious imperialist Cold War, in which the American financial oligarchy seeks to strangle and trample its capitalist rivals, who at the first opportunity turn into fierce counterattacks. Thus, apart from the inextinguishable hatred of the masses of the capitalist countries for the American enslavers, bitterness and hostility towards American imperialism is rapidly growing among the capitalists, among the ruling classes of these countries as a result of its economic and military-political aggression, which strikes ever new blows at their interests. Comrade Stalin teaches that "even after the Second World War "the inevitability of wars between capitalist countries remains in force" (5).
Chaos reigns in the imperialist jungle; the foundations of this old world of robbery and slavery are rotten. The situation on the globe has changed radically in the few decades since the era of the general crisis of capitalism. America, which once bore the name of the New World, is now the Old World, a world dominated by obscurantists and reactionaries, sworn enemies of the progressive development of mankind. The greater part of the so-called Old World, the Euro-Asian continent, including ancient China, is now a real New World, whose population, standing under the banner of socialism, is rapidly advancing along the path of progress.
And hundreds of millions of millions of exhausted workers of the capitalist Old World, exhausted from the operation and oppression of monopolies, stretch to this new world. In the capitalist countries, broad sections of the working people are already aware that the cause of their gravest sufferings is the capitalist system, that they can be freed from these sufferings only by abolishing this system, by passing over to socialism. For a long time, socialism was for people only a dream of the future. Now it has become a reality in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and working people in all parts of the world, on all continents, see that the socialist system has incomparable advantages over capitalism. The countries of people's democracy in Europe have begun building socialism, and the people's democratic countries of Asia are advancing along the road to socialism.
The fundamental economic law of socialism discovered by Comrade Stalin expresses the great advantages of socialism over capitalism. “Significant features and requirements of the Basic Economic Law of Socialism,” Comrade Stalin points out, “could be formulated approximately in this way: ensuring the maximum satisfaction of constantly growing material and cultural needs of the whole society by continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of higher equipment” (6) .
The Soviet Union is steadfastly and effectively pursuing a policy of peace and ensuring international security. This international policy corresponds to the fundamental interests of both the peoples of the Soviet Union and all the peoples of the world. Comrade Stalin declared in February 1951 that the USSR "will continue unwaveringly to pursue the policy of preventing war and preserving peace."
It is not surprising that progressive people all over the world are striving to create the same social order, fighting for it, overcoming thousands of obstacles, making sacrifices, but steadily advancing towards it, inspired by the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin and the example of the working people of the great Soviet Union..
On the eve of the Second World War, summing up the results achieved by the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) for its XVIII Congress, Comrade Stalin said:
This is the main result, since it strengthens faith in the strength of the working class and in the inevitability of its final victory ... If the successes of the working class of our country, if its struggle and victory serve to raise the spirit of the working class of the capitalist countries and strengthen in its faith in one's own strength, faith in one's own victory, then our Party can say that it is not working in vain. There can be no doubt that this will be the case” (7) .
How brilliantly these words of Comrade Stalin were justified! How greatly the influence and power of socialism has grown in the short space of time since these words were uttered! How sharply the consciousness of the workers of the capitalist countries, their will to fight and win, has risen!
The ideology of the New World is communism, which brings mankind deliverance from exploitation and slavery. Communism takes over the minds of mankind. There is no such force that could keep the moribund capitalism from inevitable fall; there is no such force that could prevent the victory of the new social system - communism.
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The content of this book is to show the expansion of the main countries of the modern block of aggressors - the United States of America and England in the Pacific Ocean, their mutual relations and contradictions, their predatory and bloody aggression against the peoples of the Pacific countries. On the other hand, the author sought to show the struggle of the oppressed colonial and semi-colonial peoples of the Pacific basin against British and American imperialist aggression, highlight the developing crisis of the colonial rule of England and the United States, which has already led to the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism due to the victory of the peoples of China, North Korea, Vietnam. The book also highlights the liberation struggle of other peoples who rebelled in the Far East against imperialism and are an integral part of the great camp of the democratic forces of the world. A significant part of this work is devoted to the policy of peace and equality of peoples pursued by the country of victorious socialism, the Soviet Union, the stronghold of the democratic and socialist forces of the whole world.
The book mainly covers the era of the general crisis of capitalism. As this crisis developed, imperialism grew weaker and weaker, and the camp of socialism, fighting for progress and peace, became a mighty and extremely rapidly growing force throughout the globe, in particular in the Pacific Ocean. This success of the forces of socialism became possible as a result of the defeat of the bloc of fascist aggressors, in the struggle against which and in the victory over which the decisive role belonged to the Soviet Union. Most of the book is devoted to the period after the Second World War, which was marked by the enormous strengthening of the power of the Soviet socialist country, the creation and consolidation of European states of people's democracy, the anti-imperialist struggle and the victory of people's democracy in North Korea, the heroic people's liberation struggle of the Vietnamese, the Burmese and other peoples of Asia and the brilliant victory won by the great Chinese people in the struggle against the main force of the capitalist world—American imperialism and its agents. The formation of the People's Republic of China as a result of the victory of the people's liberation movement in China was a truly world-historic new event after the Great October Socialist Revolution and the victory of the Soviet Union in World War II.
While working on this book, the author tried to take into account as much as possible the critical remarks that were made in the press and during the discussion at the Academy of Social Sciences about his other book - "The Struggle for the Pacific Ocean (Japanese-American contradictions)".
(1) I. V. Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, Gos Politizdat, 1952, p. 39.
(2) V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 28, p. 45.
(3) I. V. Stalin, Soch., vol. 11, p. 198.
(4) I. V. Stalin, Soch., vol. 11, p
(5) I. V. Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 35.
(6) Ibid., p. 40.
(7) IV Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11, pp. 610-611.
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