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France's military intervention in Mali marks an important stage in the evolution of the relations between the main great imperialist powers of the world. This war expresses the brutal worsening of the imperialist rivalries that the economical capitalist crisis imposes upon all national bourgeoisies. Unable to resolve the economic contradictions of their system, each national capital, each State, each ruling class, is inescapably thrown against all the others in a frantic and barbarous race for its own survival on the world arena. The only and unique “response” to the crisis that capitalism can bring is the perspective of generalized imperialist war.
Workers, proletarians, and other exploited, of France, Europe and elsewhere would be wrong to let themselves be convinced, and above all to let themselves be carried along, by the « humanistarian » and « democratic » arguments for a « war against terrorism ». The terrorists they talk about, the Islamic groups, have been created and maintained above all by the great powers for several decades now via the finance and other supports from countries like Saudi Arabia (which, we can be sure, works for Washington), Algeria, Qatar and others. They are « terrorists » and the barbarians as much as the others ! Regarding terrorism, the great imperialist powers are like the pyromaniac firemen who shout « fire ! » after having started it !
Through taking the initiative of a military intervention in Mali in the name of « war against terrorism », French imperialism takes back to its own account, and in another situation, the American policy of Bush, father and son, in Iraq – initiative of a « moral » war for defending their sordid imperialist interests in order to oblige their main rivals to side with them and to support them. Fundamentally, France aims at taking advantage of the present weakening of the American bourgeoisie – at the imperialist and economic levels – to regain the positions it was losing in Africa to the benefit precisely of the US and others powers like China – the latter being incapable of intervening militarily in this region. Besides the direct economic interests – control of the resources and wealth of this area –, the French bourgeoisie aims also at carrying on its counter-offensive which started with the war in Libya and to thus ensure a generalized lining up of the African countries of the Mediterranean surrounds to its imperialist policy. Already, it seems it has achieved some of its goals.
The intervention in Mali is compelling Algeria to give up its autonomous imperialist policy in the region – up to now, it « allowed », not to say that it utilized for its own account, some Islamic groups – and to go along with the French intervention. The authorization of flying over its territory for the French air force has marked its desertion of the Islamic groups. The reaction of these latter has been brutal and bloody – taking hostages in In Amenas – and have sped up even more the lining up of the Algerian bourgeoisie to French policy.
The American, English and Japanese bourgeoisies were not mistaken and the bloody counter-attack of the Algerian army to the gas site gave them the chance – a small one – to show their opposition to the French intervention.
But the French bourgeoisie doesn't only aim at regaining the lost influence in sub-Saharan and at consolidating the lining up of the Mediterranean countries from North Africa behind its imperialist policy. By defending its interests, it also defends the interests of the bourgeoisies of “continental” Europe whose central axis is Germany. This latter, with Italy, Spain, Belgium – just to mention the main countries – support the French military intervention politically and militarily. Certainly, it is true that the French bourgeoisie attempts also to strengthen its political weight within the European Union. It is also true that it attempts to re-balance a little in its favor the German-French relationship through the use of its military card, unique in Europe, and by pushing to a “European defense” in which it could not but have a primordial role. Nevertheless it remains that the major political fact is that the other European bourgeoisies fully join the French bourgeoisie in its imperialist assertion of a continental Europe against its rivals – the first one being the USA.
As the refusal of these countries to participate to the 2nd American war in Iraq in 2003, the assertion of the European imperialist interests brought by France on the African continent and on the Mediterranean surrounds, as well as the discussion for a European defense, do mark an additional moment of the dynamic of imperialist polarization around two axis : an American one, the other German-European.
For the proletarians, for the workers, there is nothing good in this dynamic of growing imperialist confrontations : besides the wars and massacres, besides the use of terror and terrorism – the medias and the bourgeois specialists have never ceased to proclaiming that there are going to be still more bombings and taking of hostages, included in the very heart of the main capitalist countries –, the increasing militarization and the development of the armament production – the setting up of a “European defense force” for instance – will add yet more to the burden of the capitalist crisis the working class must pay for at the cost of an increased and exhausting exploitation, of unemployment and misery, of repression and State terror. For proletarians, nothing good but the perspective of generalized war, of barbarism everywhere and sacrifices of all kinds up to the final one, the one of their life.
Who is barbarous and who is terrorist ? Capitalism ! It is up to the proletarians to oppose it by refusing the sacrifices of all kind in order to end up with it and to set up their own power. Only the proletarian revolution, the destruction of the capitalist State and the exertion of working class' political power, in brief the class war against the terrorist and barbaric bourgeoisie, will open the path to an other society without misery and without war : Communism !
January 20th, 2013
The Fraction of the International Communist Left.
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