Translated "Avante!" article by Albano Nunes, Member of the Secretariat of the CC
When the horizon is dark and fosters sentiments of fatalism and impotence, it becomes even more necessary to insist in the thesis formulated by PCP in its analysis of the international situation, that great dangers coexist with great potentials. Dangers of a social regression of civilizational dimension, dangers of a war of catastrophic proportions. Potential for the development of progressive, anti-imperialist and revolutionary transformation. «Dangers and potentials» is not a propaganda slogan. It is a thesis that is inscribed in the dialectic of society's movement. In the contradictions of capitalism and the deepening of its structural crisis.
The intensification of the class struggle, always down-played and often dissimulated in ethnic and religious garb artificially fostered. In reality (which the dramatic defeats of socialism don't nullify) we live the epoch of passage from capitalism to socialism, an epoch in which, in an irregular and bumpy process, the material premisses for the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism have already ripened in the world sphere.
We enter 2015 with a world deep in a profound and prolonged capitalist crisis, with the generalization of wars of aggression, with the advance of racism, the extreme-right and fascism. In Europe -- with the expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia, the liquidation of the Ukraine's neutrality, the installation of US anti-missile system, the accelerated militarization of the European Union -- a dangerous focus of was has been created. In the Far East (where in 1931, with the occupation of Manchuria by Japan, World War II really began) there is the reenforcement of the US-Japanese treaty, imperialist provocations in the Korean peninsula multiply and Japan (unable to exit its twenty year long economic stagnation) denies the more egregious war crimes (like the Nanquim massacre) and raises the tons of its expansionist aims.
In the Middle East and Central Asia, US imperialism with its EU and NATO allies generalizes destabilization and destruction, and proclaims, under the pretext of fighting the mysterious «Islamic State», a "war to last many years».
In Africa, recolonization carries on, perpetrated largely by France and the US. In Latin America, the US evidently maneuvers to recover lost positions and revert revolutionary, progressive and anti-imperialist processes throughout the region.
It is therefore necessary to alert everyone to the dangers the international situation is pregnant with, to hold a combative and mobilizing position, with a clear notion that men and their struggle make History, and that nothing is determined, the worst scenarios being drawn are not inevitable. It is in this perspective that is important to value the small and large struggles that are developed throughout the world against capitalist exploitation, for freedoms and fundamental rights, for national sovereignty and social progress.
Regarding Europe, the large demonstrations and general strikes that have occurred throughout Belgium, Italy, Greece, France, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany and other countries, without forgetting the anti-racial struggles of extraordinary dimension in the US, have a strong class character and express and unequivocal challenge to the system. It is certain that the struggle is not yet sufficient to face the severity of the situation and that hard battles await us. But to resist believing in the powerful strength of persistent struggle, an organized struggle of the working class and popular masses, is to already be heading in the right direction.
