Q1. The new inter-relation of power that emerged after 1989 in the world provoked many debates on issues such as: Is the world multi-polar? Which are the relations between the three poles (USA-Europe/Germany-Japan) of the capitalist imperialist system? Is there a dominating super-power, and if yes, up to which extent it is dominating? Which is your opinion about all these questions and about the changes in the international situation since 1989?

JMS: From 1989 onwards, the US has emerged dramatically as the sole superpower. It is still at the head of the imperialist alliance and can dictate upon its own imperialist allies, Japan and the European Union. It has turned Russia into a running dog. That is the outcome of the Cold War as a struggle of two superpowers.

In terms of military power, it is by far the strongest among the imperialist powers, especially if we take note of its lead in high-tech weaponry. In economic terms, it has the lead in new technology and attracts investments in US stocks and bonds from Japan and the European Union even if such investments tend to depress their own economies.

In the long run, the overconcentration of political, economic and military power in the hands of the US will exacerbate contradictions with Japan and the European Union. All three centers of capitalism always try to unite at the expense of the proletariat and oppressed peoples. But they always compete with each other.

The interimperialist competition will intensify as the chronic crisis of imperialism worsens. The US position has certain fundamental weaknesses such as strategic overextension and costliness of its high-tech weapons systems in the military field and its colossal federal debt and chronic trade deficits.

The US can reduce its problems only by taking advantage of its own imperialist allies and provoking their reaction. It is always trying to seize the initiative and requiring its allies to share the costs but always grabs most of the spoils. Thus, multipolarization underlies the present dominance of the US and will ultimately break out.

Q2. What can we say more concretely about two basic links of the world system, i.e. Russia and China? In your opinion, will Russia become an independent imperialist pole, will it break the umbilical cord with the West? Or it will be limited in a role similar to that of czarist Russia in the beginning of our century? China will be a subject of a process of restoration similar to those that we saw and were completed with the changes of 1989 in the ex-Soviet bloc? Or we can expect that it will follow a different course? Which will be the attitude of western imperialism towards China?

JMS: At a glance, Russia and China have become fields of capitalist expansion. But the type of capitalism that is growing in these countries has a big comprador character in tandem with bureaucrat capitalism. The industrial foundation is in the process of destruction and social wealth is systematically being siphoned off the country.

The flagrant robbery of public assets, the rampant corruption, the imperialist impositions and the impoverishment and misery of the people are generating strong currents of popular resistance as well as bourgeois nationalism. Especially in the long run, Russia and China are major factors in making the world unstable for the US and the other imperialist powers.

As of now, Russia is like the Russia of czarist times, overloaded with loans and manipulated by creditors. The US and the other two global centers of capitalism deliberately pursue the policy of degrading the economy of Russia in order to degrade its weapons systems.

But the economic and social degradation can lead to military fascism or proletarian revolution. Military fascism is more likely to emerge before a proletarian revolution. In fact, the social fascism of revisionism has continued in the form of Yeltsin’s despotism and the criminal character of the bourgeoisie. The rise of military fascism in Russia will generate big problems for all and for each of the three centers of world capitalism.

It took several decades for the revisionists to deceive the proletariat and people and to reach the point of blatant privatization. That explains why the proletariat and the people are not so ready yet to overthrow the bourgeoisie. But objective conditions have become exceedingly favorable for building a Marxist-Leninist party in the great tradition of the Bolsheviks and for developing a revolutionary mass movement.

In China, the restoration of capitalism during the last two decades under Dengism has been far more rapid, more direct and more deepgoing than during the first two decades of revisionist rule in the Soviet Union. Since the very beginning of the Dengist counterrevolution, public assets have been openly privatized, with the return of capital to former big compradors, the breakup of the communes under the guise of the household responsibility system and the privatization of enterprises under the guise of management lease contract.

Blatant privatization of agriculture, industry and services have already gone on for one whole generation in China. The state sector of the economy has been undermined and is run by bureaucrat capitalists. Imperialist and big comprador enterprises are the driving forces of neocolonialism in the Chinese economy. The whole of China has been Taiwanized in economic and social terms. The remaining task of the new bourgeoisie is to cast away the name of the Communist Party and the ritualistic reference to socialism.

The US policy of engagement towards China, despite the policy of containment underlying it, is calculated to allow China to take the relatively peaceful way of casting away the name of the Communist Party and socialist pretenses as in the case of the former Soviet Union. Economic “liberalization” has long paved the way for political “liberalization.”

However, there are possibilities of great turbulence in China because of the worsening economic and social crisis. The rabid anticommunists can become too aggressive or the real communists are inspired by the legacy of Mao and lead the people to revolution. US and Japan can also mishandle China and generate troubles within and around China. For instance, they can mishandle the issue of Taiwan.

There is the possibility for Russia and China to work out a strategic partnership in the face of US policies that are too aggressive or too exploitative. For instance, China needs a lot of oil from Russia and the latter needs a lot of consumer goods from the former.

Such a partnership can compensate for the weaknesses of each and can upset the balance of power among the three global centers of capitalism. Russia and China can play off these three against each other. But the big drawback for such a partnership is that each of Russia and China is deteriorating economically and socially and is subject to manipulation by the imperialist powers through the domestic comprador big bourgeoisie. The imperialists can also try to play off Russia and China against each other.

Q3. Maybe you would like to add something more specific about Asia, and especially the regions that witness a certain tension lately: India/Pakistan and Korea. What do you believe about the situation in those countries, and generally about the region of Asia?

JMS: The US maintains and increases its strategic hold over Asia. It does so singly as well as in partnership with Japan and through such multilateral agencies as the IMF, World Bank and WTO. But the contradictions between the US and Japan can flare up as a result of the worsening chronic crisis of overproduction and complications arising from the anti-imperialist resistance of the oppressed people.

The US continues to bully the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and even China over the issue of Taiwan. The strategic purpose of the US is to pursue to the end its crusade of eliminating any communist party, even if that party is a phony one, and in the process to involve Japan in US strategic plans of containment.

The US needs Japan as a military adjutant but is at the same time wary of its nationalist and militarist tradition and tendency. In connection with its scheme of putting up a theatre missile defense system, the US is trying to bind Japan and South Korea against both China and North Korea.

Even while pontificating against nuclear proliferation, the US is ever willing to play off Pakistan and India against each other now and then in order to preempt the possible extension of a Sino-Russia partnership to South Asia and to give China a problem on its western flank.

The US is not really so much bothered by the nuclear weapons of both India and Pakistan because these are limited and are not pointed against the US. It preaches against the possession of nuclear weapons by the two countries only because it constantly wishes to monopolize nuclear power and to discourage the nuclear development program of North Korea.

As proletarian revolutionaries, we should recognize the far reaching consequences of the proven bankruptcy of the neoliberal economic policy stress of imperialism and the unprecedented devastation of productive forces in Asia. All that previous hype about East Asia or the Asia-Pacific region as the lead factor in the ceaseless growth area of a global capitalist economy has been negated.

Japan has been in a decade-long state of depression. The so-called economic tigers of the past are sick. The so-called emergent markets have sunk and continue to sink. Social turmoil in China and the rest of Asia in the first decade of the 21st century is now in the horizon.

The objective conditions for carrying out protracted people’s war in several Asian countries are excellent, especially in Southeast Asia and South Asia. People’s war is already being waged by Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties in the Philippines, India and Nepal. Indonesia is ripe for people’s war. It is forseeable that China and Indochina will become hotbeds of social unrest in the next decade.

4. The USA-Japan antagonism in the region of Asia seems to be intensified again. How do you estimate, in this context, the recent agreement between the USA and Japan for the continuation of their military cooperation?

JMS: The new security guidelines further bind the US and Japan in a strategic military partnership against the people of Asia. The guidelines seek to favor the US at the expense of the Japanese people but at the same time gives Japan the license to build up its own military power and intervene anywhere in Asia.

While the NATO is the western pincer, US-Japan security partnership is the eastern pincer of US global strategy, which is aimed at containing either one or both of Russia and China. At the moment, it is in the sphere of economic relations that US-Japan contradictions are becoming conspicuous.

The US has ceased to give Japan concessions in technical licensing agreements and has taken the lead in producing consumer electronics, telecommunications and cars. Japan’s export of steel and other products to the US is increasingly being restricted. There is cutthroat competition between the US and Japan in a widening range of products.

At the same time, the US wants to further penetrate Japan. It has long been pressuring Japan to open itself to US investments in all sorts of businesses, US consumer goods and US takeover of financial services. It is taking advantage of the prolonged depression of the Japanese economy.

A major factor in the economic depression in Japan is the competition with the US and increasing restrictions on Japanese goods in the US market. At the cost of depressing its own domestic economy, Japan has long been compelled by the US to invest too heavily in the US and elsewhere under conditions of increasing competition from the US and Euroland.

The policy of the Japanese monopoly bourgeoisie is to reap profits even in ways that increase unemployment in Japan. It is also whipping up chauvinism and rearmament in order to preempt the resurgence of the Japanese working class movement.

In the long run, the US and Japan will be in severe contradiction with each other in an all-round way when chauvinist and militarist forces gain dominance in Japanese politics, as a result of the protracted depression of the Japanese economy. #

An Interview by aristera@orthodox.com ↩︎