Voice of the International African Revolution! - Uhuru News

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18 THE BURNING SPEAR April 2003 Transcription of Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s World Summation St. Petersburg, FL — February 27, 2003 On February 27, as it was becoming clearer that U.S. verbal bellicosity toward Iraq was close to expressing itself in a new invasion of that already impoverished and brutalized country, Chairman Omali Yeshitela called together the local Uhuru Movement for a meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida for a discussion about the world situation. This discussion was designed to help our movement understand the underlying bases for the pending invasion and occupation. The following is an edited transcript of the Chairman's presentation. While we recognize that there are many who will not take the time to read such a long presentation, we have, nevertheless, decided to publish it here. We publish this presentation with the understanding that those Party members, militants and other activists attempting to respond to the obvious acts of U.S. imperial aggression will be better served with this explanation of the real motive forces of the current U.S. war drive. We’re living in a world where more than half the people on Earth live off less than two dollars a day. I’m convinced that it is not necessary to live in a world where the vast majority of the people don’t have access to clean drinking water or enough food and shelter and are confronted with all kinds of violence all the time. I’m convinced it’s not necessary to live in a world where ignorance is imposed upon masses of people on the one hand, while their wealth and resources are stolen and information is concentrated in these imperialist centers on the other hand. I’m a revolutionary. I’m not involved in a movement to try to make a better imperialism. My objective — as arrogant as it may seem — is to transform the world. Many people have problems with that because an assumption of our own insignificance has been imposed on us by the social system we live under. But as arrogant as I am about being intent on changing the world, I’m not so arrogant as to insist that everybody who participates in this discussion has to agree with this serious need for world transformation as a condition for being in action. I want to be clear that I work from a bias. Everybody does. I know what mine is. Many times people do not understand what their biases are. Main contradiction in the world is between oppressed and oppressor nations In the African People’s Socialist Party we have said that the fundamental contradiction in the world is one that exists between oppressed and oppressor nations. This is the most profound contradiction. It does not deny the existence of other contradictions, but we say this is the contradiction around which every other contradiction revolves. African People’s Socialist Party Oppressed peoples around the world have become determined to rid themselves of bloodsucking imperialists. Picture created by Reefa-1 We recognize that even as there are oppressed nations and oppressor nations, and that this relationship is the most dynamic relationship in the world, there are contradictions within the oppressed nations themselves. There are contradictions between men and women. There are contradictions between workers and bosses. There are contradictions between heterosexuals and homosexuals. There are similar contradictions within the oppressor nations – between men and women, between workers and bosses, and between heterosexuals and homosexuals. There is a whole array of other contradictions that I have not touched upon. I’m not suggesting that these other contradictions do not exist. My statement is that the most dynamic, fundamental contradiction, the one around which all the others revolve and the one which the others require for their existence is this contradiction between oppressor and oppressed nations. Capitalism is a parasitic system that was founded on slavery In fact, this is a contradiction that began with the rise of capitalism itself. Capitalism was born as a world system and it was born as part of a process. I’m not suggesting that there was never oppression or exploitation before capitalism. Of course there was. Slavery existed before capitalism. I’m not talking about the generic slavery that people like to remind us about. I’m talking about the real kind. I’m talking about the kind that people talk about when they talk about the relationship between Africans and other peoples around the world. I’m not suggesting that contradictions did not precede the existence of capitalism. Of course, there were contradictions. But the ones that we are fighting, the ones that we have to contend with, the ones that set the terms for the relationships that we have in the world, are those contradictions that were given birth by the rise of My point is that all along, the real contest has been the contest for national liberation. The Soviet Union was hated and dreaded because it would give a gun to somebody in Nicaragua or Cuba. It would give a gun to somebody in some place in the world who would really change the fundamental relationships that existed between the oppressed nations and the oppressor nations of the world. capitalism in the world. A capitalist social system dominates the entire world. It’s not feudal. It’s not socialist. It’s capitalist. Whether we are talking about capitalism as it manifests itself in the United States or Belgium or whether we’re talking about capitalism as it manifests itself in Haiti, Burma or Congo, the same capitalism dominates the entire world. Marxist theory, as developed particularly by V.I. Lenin, talked about imperialism as being capitalism developed to a certain stage. Lenin called imperialism "capitalism that had become rotten ripe." Lenin said that one of the manifestations of this development was that capitalism became parasitic. I pose to you that capitalism was born parasitic. There was never a time that capitalism was not parasitic. It was born off the slave trade. Marx referred to "primitive accumulation" -- the accumulation that didn’t come as a consequence of capitalist production, but was its starting point. Capitalism was born off the slave trade. The slave trade created the world economy that was a precondition for the rise of capitalism as a world system. Things like the 1841-42 war against China, called the "Opium Continued on next page
April 2003 THE BURNING SPEAR 19 Continued from previous page War" — that turned China into a nation of junkies — gave rise to capitalism as a world system. The French turned Viet Nam into a drug colony. The tremendous amounts of loot and resources coming from places like this into Europe transformed the relationship for peoples who used to be free and independent. We had the ability to meet our own needs, but our resources were going to what had been an impoverished and disease-ridden Europe. Europe was not only poverty and disease-ridden but it was absolutely un-free. In Europe, there was feudalism. There was no such thing as "home ownership" or the things that Europeans and North Americans like to brag about today. Those things all came as a consequence of the pillage that Europe initiated against the rest of the world. The rise of capitalism as a social system was parasitic. It came at our expense and that of other peoples around the world. Imperialism in crisis We want to talk about the situation in the world. We want to struggle to understand what is going on. Some things are very glaring to us. We see a Bush Administration up against the entire world in its absolute urgency to deepen the war that was initiated some 11 or 12 years ago against Iraq. This is a glaring manifestation. We see millions of people in the streets protesting. We saw a few million here, within the United States. We’ve seen perhaps up to 18 million people throughout the world marching, demonstrating against this genocide that the United States is intent on waging against the people of Iraq. Folks are searching for answers and we ought to be searching for some kind of answers in trying to understand what’s going on as well. What we concluded some time ago was that the whole empire, the imperialist system, is in a state of severe crisis. It almost sounds like a cliché, especially for anyone who has been involved in the struggle for social justice, as it is often characterized. You always hear the socialists talk about the crisis of imperialism. The imperialists are experiencing a severe crisis. That’s not to say that they understand that it’s a crisis, even though some thinking leaders of the imperialists have expressed some recognition of crisis. The crisis has its origin in a process that has been going on for a long time. It clearly began to manifest itself after the second imperialist war. That’s the war that the pundits like to refer to as the last honest war that America pursued. Of course, in reality, that’s just a bunch of garbage. The second imperialist war, like the first one, like the Korean War and like virtually every war that’s existed for the last 400 or 500 years, was a war to re-divide the world. There were no good guys in that war. The heroes of that war – the guys that were fighting for "democracy" – were all countries and states that had colonies. As much as people like to talk about Hitler, the truth of the matter is that Churchill presided over what they like to refer to as "an How do you explain the fact that fundamental economic crisis can happen in America, England and other places as a consequence of what some poor, starving country is doing? The oil workers go on strike in Nigeria and the gasoline prices go up in St. Petersburg, Florida. It’s because of this parasitic relationship. empire upon which the sun never set." That seems to suggest to me that Hitler was a piker. He was a boy scout compared to Churchill. In that war, a group of cutthroats was fighting to re-divide the world. Anti-colonial struggles emerge after second imperialist war One of the things that was significant about that war is that it offered up a certain type of political space for oppressed peoples around the world. The empire was at war with itself. I was taught in school that Africans went off to Europe as soldiers and, for the first time, we saw freedom in places like France. That inspired us to come back to fight for freedom here in the United States. Supposedly, we have to see freedom in that fashion before we have an inkling of what it is we should be struggling for. That’s nonsensical. The truth is, it was precisely because of the confrontation that the empire had within itself that the political space emerged and other people began to wage struggle for independence and freedom from colonialism. When you talk about imperialism, you’re talking about white power that created itself off the colonial domination of the rest of the world. Ugandan soldiers leaving the town of Bunia in Congo where hundreds of Africans have died as a result of imperialist proxy wars. As a consequence of that war, in 1947 we saw the independence in India. In 1949, it was China. In the ‘50s, revolutionary struggles emerged all over Africa. The Mau Mau were fighting against the British in Kenya. Ghana achieved independence. Even Iraq, I think, became nominally independent from England in ‘58. Of course, in ’59 there was the magnificent Cuban revolution that contributed to revolutionary fervor, particularly throughout the Americas. Anybody who’s familiar with Che Guevara knows that he didn’t stop just in Latin America. He was also in Africa. In the ‘60s, we saw the incredible and most magnificent struggle of the people in Viet Nam, who in the ‘50s had defeated the French before they saw colonialism propped up by the United States government. In the ‘50s, we also saw the people of Korea come close to total independence. Then the United States intervened in Korea to prevent the total liberation of Korea. In fact, in many ways, the first humiliating defeat of the United States was Korea. China came across the Korean border because it was clear that part of the objective of the United States was also to attack China. The Chinese pushed the U.S. back across the 38th parallel. They ended the war by having an armistice there that resulted in the Korean people being divided even today. We hear discussions about the North Koreans and the South Koreans as if they are two separate people. They’re one people. They are people who have been divided just as the people of Viet Nam were divided and just like various peoples around the world have been divided — by imperialism. You saw the emergence of these kinds of struggles after the second imperialist war. They just took off. These struggles created serious crises. People talk about the "domino theory." They talk about how many troops went to Viet Nam, how many people were killed by those troops, and how many of those people coming from here died in Viet Nam to stop this domino thing. The backdrop to all of this of course was the communist "boogie man." The communist boogieman was represented mostly by the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China because China was poor. Even though China gave significant political support, and sometimes more than political support, to struggles for national liberation, when they talked about the communist boogieman it was really the Soviet Union. I would remind you, however, that Continued on next page The International African Revolution is at Hand! Conference on July 25 - 27, 2003 London, England for more info contact the African People’s Socialist Party in the US: 727.821.6620 or apsp.uhuru@verizon.net or in Britian: 020.8265.1731 or Uhurasi@aol.com Build the African Socialist International! African People’s Socialist Party
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