Originally posted February 27th at: www.pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article13649 A rough machine translation from Google, checked against some translations I received:
Congo in the grip of crisis
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a 21st-century example of the fate of countries rich in natural resources in the midst of a savage capitalism that expropriates them and plunges their inhabitants into misery.
A prison where prisoners escape but first rape and burn female prisoners alive, in February 2025; Mbox, monkeypox, spreads in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) without a health system to deal with it, August 2024; the eruption of a volcano that leads to the disappearance of hundreds of children, in May 2021, are just some of the tragedies experienced by the population of the DRC in the midst of the world's largest reserves of coltan, more than 40%, the mineral from which tantalum is extracted, which is very rare and is used in the manufacture of cell phones and other technological equipment.
The Tutsis, an ethnic group that suffered the Rwandan genocide in 1994, formed a defense group, the M23, which questions the government but does not define its political position. It took over the city of Goma, with a population of one million people, controls part of the coltan production, earning about USD 800,000 a month, which it uses to equip its soldiers and which has the support of Rwanda. It is now the main military force that disputes the government for control of the country, which is headed by Félix Tshisekedi, who has the support of the PPRD, a party located on the right, which among its achievements shows the decision to execute bandits and the prosecution of Apple, the multinational cell phone company, who it accuses of benefiting from the natural resources of the DRC without sharing its profits.
The multinationals of Switzerland, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and above all China own the vast majority of mines in the DRC. China controls 70% of the world's copper and 50% of its cobalt. The DRC is the largest producer of coltan, and its largest exporter is neighbouring Rwanda.
In addition to the M23, which does not claim to be a political movement, there are several political parties, most of which define themselves as centre-left. It faces 120 other armed groups, including one identified with the Hutus, a declared enemy, and another with the Islamic State.
Some history
In 1884 and 1885, the Berlin Conference was held, where the European countries shared out Africa, and it was the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium until 1908, when it became a Belgian colony.
In 1960, supposedly, Belgian influence culminated, Patrice Lumumba, a Congolese social activist with a Marxist tendency, was appointed Prime Minister, but his leadership was short-lived, the DRC army assassinated him and took power in a coup d'état, with the support of the Kingdom of Belgium, i.e. Belgian influence remained.
In 1965 Ernesto, El Che, Guevara tried to organize armed groups to take power, but his efforts were unsuccessful, deciding to leave RCD and go to neighboring Angola.
The population of the DRC lives in poverty, its more than 102 million inhabitants, of which seven million live as displaced persons, fleeing from areas of conflict between armed groups and ethnic massacres, 75% of Congolese do not have access to drinking water, great difficulties in obtaining food, one in 12 children dies before the age of 12, the DRC is one of the five poorest countries on the planet.
However, the DRC is a very rich country in minerals, apart from its natural beauty and its native species. Its current riches are the attraction of tantalum, tungsten, cobalt, copper, gold, diamonds and the list goes on. A wealth estimated at 24 billion dollars.
The tragedy of the millions of Congolese is that they are the owners of an extraordinary wealth that has been the attraction of the capitalists of the world who, with false offers, with gigantic corruption, have extracted these riches, leaving their owners in a serious situation of survival.
Originally posted February 27th at: www.pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article13647 and translated with Google:
Negotiations between imperialist powers
The European elites received a hard political blow from the decision of American imperialism; the snub by the Americans shows the servile attitude of European imperialism.
The talks between Trump and Putin, in which they agreed to start talks to end the war in Ukraine, are moving forward at an accelerated pace, without involving Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, or the European Union.
Donald Trump announced a new phase of negotiations for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine between the American and Russian delegations. The talks would take place in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on February 25, a week after the first round that took place in the same city on Tuesday, February 18, 2025.
How to understand this change in the position of the United States? The answer must be found in the sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions. Apparently, the United States is seeking to get out of a conflict that did not develop as they wanted and that has cost them millions of dollars.
On February 14, at the Security Conference in Munich, Germany, US Vice President JD Vance said that the main threat to Europe was not Russia or China, but “the threat from within, Europe’s retreat from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.” The Europeans received a hard political blow from the decision of US imperialism, the snub of the Americans shows the lackey attitude of European imperialism, they will have no choice but to turn a blind eye and throw away the money and ink invested in escalating a confrontation with Moscow, which could have been resolved by other means.
The European leaders led by Olaf Scholz (Germany), Emmanuel Macron (France) and Donald Tusk (Poland) refused to accept Ukraine’s defeat. The trio said they would do everything possible to prevent Russian imperialism from winning the war, when the Ukrainians could no longer bear it. The three leaders decided to acquire more weapons, expand the production of military equipment and advance in the manufacture of long-range rocket artillery. The decision to confront the Russians at any cost led the EU to commit economic suicide by renouncing the cheap energy supplied by Russia.
Ukraine lost the opportunity to reach a peace agreement with Russia in Istanbul in March 2022, just a month after the military intervention began and which would have meant better conditions for it, since it had the initiative, after having stopped the lightning invasion. The pressure of imperialism from the United Kingdom, the United States and others, guaranteed the supply of weapons and safe entry into NATO, thus sealing its future. After three years of war, the economy in tatters, with millions of dollars in debt and thousands of young people dead, the powers are negotiating their future behind Ukraine's back.
Russia is waiting calmly and, in the meantime, is moving forward with the conquest of Ukrainian territory in order to improve the positions on the border that will be fixed in the agreement with the United States.
Originally posted February 27th at: www.pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article13651 (see for links to related articles from En Marcha); roughly translated through Google (with clear errors?); slightly edited:
The Communist Party, class party of the proletariat
"The stronger our Party organisations are, the more effective Social Democrats are, the less hesitation and instability there is within the Party, the broader and more multifaceted, the richer and more fruitful will be the influence of the Party on the elements of the working masses surrounding it and which it leads..."
Maintaining the class character of the party and its status as a revolutionary vanguard are fundamental elements of the Marxist-Leninist communist party. Only an organization that keeps these aspects in mind and works constantly to affirm and develop them is in a position to lead the struggle of workers, youth and peoples for revolution and socialism to victory.
Like many other aspects related to revolutionary theory and practice, the elements mentioned at the beginning of this article have also motivated deep and heated discussions since the beginning of the international communist movement. It is enough to note that, when the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (1903) debated how to understand the party of the working class and who can be considered its militants, it split between the supporters of V.I. Lenin and the followers of Yuli Martov, thus giving rise to the separation between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
Lenin wrote an entire book in which he analyses the events of that congress and, above all, argues his views on how to understand what the class Party of the proletariat is and who can be a member of it. The text in question is entitled One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, which was published in 1904.
The first point of disagreement at the Congress occurred when they were discussing point 1 of the statute. Lenin proposed an article that said: "Anyone who accepts its programme and supports the Party both with material resources and with personal participation in one of its organisations will be considered a member of the Party." Martov, for his part, presented the following text: "Anyone who accepts its programme, supports the Party with material resources and lends it personal collaboration on a regular basis under the direction of one of its organisations will be considered a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party."
If not given due attention, the difference between one proposal and the other would seem minor; However, there is a marked difference between the understanding of party militancy and what the revolutionary party of the working class is in itself. Lenin, in the cited work, says that disagreement "reveals nuances of a principled nature," but that "every small disagreement can acquire enormous importance, if it serves as a starting point for a turn towards erroneous concepts..." The fact is that Lenin's proposal subordinates the condition of party militant to someone who is part of one of its organizations, while Martov believed that it was sufficient to occasionally help from outside with material resources or grant personal collaboration.
We make a brief digression to present what the statute of our Party says on this subject: «Art. 1.- Any person who does not live off the exploitation of the labor of others, especially workers, agricultural wage earners, poor peasants, employees, revolutionary intellectuals who accept the Declaration of Principles, the Political Line, the Program and the Statute of the Party, who is part of one of its organizations and works actively in it, complies with the decisions of the Party, observes its discipline and pays dues according to the established norms, can be a member of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador. As can be seen, our Party adheres to the Leninist conceptions of party organization.
Continuing with the reading of Lenin, we find a fundamental statement: «The Party must be a sum (and not a simple arithmetic sum, but a complex) of organizations. …[And] I make my wish, says Lenin, I demand that the Party, as the vanguard detachment of the class, be as organized as possible and that it should only include those elements that admit at least a minimum degree of organization. Here, it is necessary to make the same clarification that Lenin establishes when analyzing this subject. “The word “organization,” Lenin clarifies, is usually used in two senses: broad and narrow. In the narrow sense, it designates a cell of a human collectivity, as soon as it has acquired even the most minimal form. In the broad sense, it means a sum of these cells, united into a whole. […] a party is also an organization, it must be an organization (in the broad sense of the word); but, at the same time, a party must consist of a series of diverse organizations (in the strict sense of the word).
Lenin advocates that the working-class party militant be dedicated to revolutionary work, and this is possible only for those who develop particular qualities. Not every striker can be a member of the Party, says Lenin himself, not because he devalues the quality of the fighter, but because to be a member of the vanguard detachment of the revolution it is not enough to go out and protest. “The stronger our Party organisations are, composed of effective Social-Democrats, the less hesitation and instability there is within the Party, the broader and more multifaceted, the richer and more fruitful will be the influence of the Party on the elements of the working masses that surround it and that it leads. For one cannot, in truth, confuse the Party as the vanguard detachment of the working class with the entire class.”
[This is the 901st post on DS.]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment