In the world today, death blows are being struck against the imperialist system. The people of Guinea-Bissau, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Mozambique have defeated imperialism and are moving into new stages of social development, these countries, colonial and imperialist aggressors and their puppets were thrown out by the people united against them. That expulsion was led by poor and working people because they saw it in their interests to do so. We support these struggles and similar ones throughout the world (e.g., Puerto Rico, Chile, Palestine) because they are being waged against our common enemy, imperialism. The same system that has to go to other countries, especially Third World countries, to steal their natural resources, get cheap labor, and enslave their people in the quest for profits, exploits and oppresses us here at home and domestically, it is called monopoly capitalism.
Military, cultural, political and economic control is what the imperialists want when they enter into the affairs of other countries. To expand and control new markets and resources, domination of foreign lands is necessary. In their competition to exploit existing and potential markets and control resources, imperialists will inevitably resort to war. This war is either against each other or against a third world or socialist country that resists domination. We will not fight in these wars against our working class brothers and sisters for the benefit of imperialist profits. We will not fight in imperialist wars. People have the right to own and control their resources, cultures and labor and decide their political system without imperialist oppression. We support this right to self-determination.
We must combat the false ideology promoted by the bourgeoisie that developing nations need U.S. assistance, whether they want it or not. National chauvinism bases itself in monopoly capitalist rule. This ideological chauvinism is manifest in the concept that because of the "natural inferiority" of foreign lands and people, the U.S.A. should provide leadership, if not management of the political and economic affairs of developing nations. This chauvinism must be combatted at every turn by the American working class and we must see that working people face a common enemy in imperialism throughout the world. We are a part of an international movement to destroy imperialism wherever it exists.
To be able to practice proletarian internationalism it is necessary to recognize when an imperialist power is oppressing a developing country. There is quite a bit of disagreement in the U.S. left today about which countries are imperialist powers and which countries represent the greatest danger to the people of the world. The Buffalo Workers’ Movement takes the position that the U.S. is the main imperialist power today, and that it represents the main danger to the people the world. It is the U.S. which is the primary support of reactionary regimes throughout the Third World, and it is the U.S. which has the largest amount of foreign investment and economic control in the world today. We disagree with those who claim that the Soviet Union is the main danger to the people of the world. We believe that the Soviet Union is not a socialist country, and that it acts like an imperialist power in many parts of the world (such as India). Yet in other parts of the world its actions are not those of an imperialist power (Vietnam, Angola, Cuba). Therefore there is not a consistent pattern of imperialist actions by the Soviet Union. A country which is imperialist, in which monopoly capitalism has been consolidated, cannot be imperialist in one country and not in another. This is not the case of the Soviet Union. We believe that monopoly capitalism has not been consolidated in the Soviet Union, although certainly there are forces in the Union which are promoting capitalism and which are gaining more and more power. But to call the Soviet Union a fully developed imperialist country and furthermore, one which is more dangerous than the U.S. is a grave mistake. It leads U.S. leftists to class collaboration with the U.S. ruling class. This has been seen most graphically in Angola, where those groups who see the U.S.S.R. as the main danger opposed the MPLA, and by so doing, put themselves on the side of the most reactionary sectors of the U.S. ruling class.
Countries want independence, nations want liberation, people want revolution.