This text, “International Situation and Our Tasks”, has come to being on the basis of sincere and comradely debates held in a process of a series of sessions of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations, social practice, and the understanding with regard to the viewpoint on the current international problems. It has been adopted as a result of such process and is being published today by the Coordinating Committee.
This document analyses the many aspects of the present characteristics of capitalism and imperialism; emphasizes the revolutionary character of the working class and the role of the revolutionary parties of the proletariat; points out the perspectives and tasks of the workers, peoples and youth in the struggle for social emancipation; deals with the problems of International Communist Movement; and sets as a target the establishment of a new International.
International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations considers this document as a guide for action that will be tested and enriched in social practice. However, it is not something that is concluded, closed or unchangeable. The formulations and propositions in this document are to be developed and enriched within the struggle of the proletariat and the peoples, and with theoretical and practical contributions of the communists.
These formulations which give direction to and unite the activities of the communists must become a strong material force and a weapon for social emancipation in the hands of the workers and labourers. We put them into the service and the critical views of the workers’ and the popular movement and of other revolutionary forces.
Seref Aydin was born on 15 January 1951 in an Anatolian city, Amasya, situated in the mid-Black Sea region. He was a young teacher when he joined the People’s Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO) which was smashed, together with other revolutionary organisations, by the 12 March 1971 junta, and the leaders of which were executed on 6 May 1972, the same year he joined the organisation. Against all odds, he undertook the task of becoming a professional cadre enthusiastically in the THKO, which was later to become the Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey (TDKP) in February 1980.
S. Aydin was a member of the Party’s Kurdistan Committee when he was arrested in 1981, following the military fascist coup of 12 September 1980. When he was released in 1986 the circumstances were not rosy at all: the Party and its organisations were disintegrated and paralysed by the liquidationist tendencies. He was one of those militants who led the fight against these tendencies. Thus, it was not a coincidence that his consistence in this struggle as well as his attitude while in custody made him renowned in the party.
Comrade Seref Aydin had been on the Central Committee since 1987, and a member of the CC Executive Committee and the Secretariat since 1991. When he passed away in 24 September 2006, he died as a genuine marxist-leninist and a genuine communist whose place could not be filled easily.
Love for and belief in the workers and the people, learning from comrades and workers, working with limitless dedication and modesty as well as revolutionary assertion, educating the young generations with the progressive international culture of the working class as well as the national one… There is no doubt that Comrade Seref Aydin had a primary role in, among other things, these values being established in our party. His name and memory will live forever in our party’s struggle.
The victory of the 1917 October Revolution had led to the emergence of a new and antagonistic contradiction in the world: the contradiction between the socialist Soviet Union and the imperialist countries. The countries which broke away from the capitalist world with the World War II formed together with the Soviet Union a socialist camp against the capitalist camp led by the USA. It was due to the establishment of this camp that this new contradiction that had emerged with the October revolution was transformed into an antagonistic contradiction between the socialist camp and the capitalist camp. In the struggle between socialism and capitalism, the world working class no longer depended on only a country or state but also on a group of socialist countries forming a major power against the imperialist world. On the other hand, the struggle between the two camps was shaped as a “life and death struggle” from which all other struggles in the world took their inspiration and direction, and made progress by being attached to its course.1
The transformation process of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc which began with the liberal and bureaucratic “reforms” taking place in the period of 1956-60; even though the struggle continued in different forms all around, meant that this great struggle between capitalism and socialism (which also depended on the camp of socialist countries) suffered a discontinuity.2 Despite this, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc continued to use the name of worker as well as “socialist” forms. However, this country and this bloc no longer had anything to do with the working class and socialism except “their histories”. The fight between the two concerning camps by mid-1960s was a fight for dominance and hegemony.3 This fight, whose character was to become increasingly evident, was to continue with the “balance of terror” and “threat of nuclear war” which it generated for the next thirty years until the collapse and disintegration of Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, while becoming more acute.
The collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc was an idiosyncratic completion of the struggle for the markets and spheres of influence between the Eastern and Western camps which erupted under these very conditions and lasted decades. Nonetheless, a) their recent histories and b) the “socialist” forms they have used have added another feature to the collapse of this country and bloc; it had also implied the loss of all the gains of the world working class and peoples and a painful devastation and heavy defeat,4 which also meant a great liquidation.
Due to a two-fold reason, i.e. the ending of a period of struggle for hegemony and its displaying of a feature of being a heavy defeat for the working class; the collapse of Soviet Union in the 1989-90 period “midwifed” the renewal and surfacing of the following two facts: a) a new attempt by the capitalist monopolies and imperialist countries to re-conquer the world whose conquest was completed together with this collapse; b) a general campaign of attacks5 which was to be set off against the working class and the oppressed peoples and which would progressively become a wave!..
The “New World Order” was declared in 1990 in the framework of these two facts and undoubtedly by either the cover-up of facts or their meanings being completely distorted: Economic crises, class struggles, imperialist oppressions, arms races, moreover, revolutions and wars were to be left behind in history; the world was going to become an island of harmony and peace where fair distribution, development and wealth dominated, etc! Nevertheless, as was to be seen also by those who made the promises, all these “promises” were demagogy: while the events arising in the midst of the “new order” threw all these demagogies into the bin; these two facts behind the events, had also came to govern the entire course in the world.
That their collapse and disintegration led to such determining facts
was undoubtedly related to reasons such as the place the Soviet Union
and the camp it led occupied in the world, and the consideration by the
world working class and peoples of this country and camp as the
representative of the October revolution, the construction of socialism
and the victory in the Second War. That the concerning two facts were
those which conditioned the entire course was completely in accord with
the nature of capital and imperialism.
Notes