Today's reality has placed the debate about the crisis of Marxism on new grounds. Once more, life -immensely rich- is further forward than theory. Practise refutes or confirms theory and continues to claim the necessity of an ideological and political body, able to change this world, able to shed light on the way to reach the utopia.
It is the dialectics of facts and ideas that even in the darkest moments, in the most inhospitable places, there are things which do not belong to that sub-stratum and which give rise and forebode new day breaks.
Neo-liberalism has not been able to save capitalism from crisis, while it has increased the exploitation and poverty of the peoples. Bourgeois democracy has shown its class boundaries. These kinds of expressions are being heard in different places of the world. Post-modernist and rightist theories and thoughts which served as their back up, are no longer very attractive. Increasingly eyes are being turned to what we can call the left. The great challenge to Marxist-Leninists is to show theoretical and practical capacity to channel this search which is still too indefinite.

The limits and paradoxes of the "new" right
We should start saying that neo-liberalism, which has nothing new, has failed in the previous epochs. Let us leave that for other spaces of historical reflections. Let us remember now that the new right theoreticians claimed not only the victory of "free" market all over the world but they set it up as the last phase of economic thoughts. They declare that, with it and its democracy correlative views, we have arrived at the zenith of human development (some of them even say that we are dealing with the end of history). From now on, what can possibly take place is the improvement of and retouching on capitalism and its bourgeois state!
It is true -and this cannot be underestimated- that the bourgeoisie keeps same capacity to handle its crisis and that it has shown liability to move resources of different nature in order to avoid its collapse. In the ideological and political field, it has increased its power of manipulation and influence. Precisely, neo-liberal measures were set up to play their role to dodge the elements of crisis which have been accumulating since the beginning of the 1970s. One can say that up to the moment they have postponed its burst.
However, with neo-liberalism, there have been accumulated new factors of crisis that are subject to serious pre-occupation in imperialist power circles. This is mainly due to the swelling of speculative finance capital and tears of a possible explosion of the so-called financial bubble.
The development of speculative capital goes along with severe problems in the productive sector, which in dependent countries, get to the point of assuming the characteristics of industrialisation. This has increased unemployment in the world. Salaries and families' purchasing capacity have dropped. Social security cuts and privatisation have turned into negation of workers' rights and have set in motion huge mass mobilisations.
In contrast with the expansion of big powers in world domination, working people's standard of living has decreased since 1970. This is more evident in United States, but it can also be proved in Germany and Japan. This fact is worth to be looked upon in its economic and political implications, owing to the fact, among others, that the bribes used by the bourgeoisie in order to feed the strata of workers aristocracy, are no longer so directly related with the overseas exploitation. This diminishes the basis of support of pro-imperialist and nationalist positions in those workers' sectors. At the same time, it can open space for a better solidarity and common work between the working people of developed countries and the peoples of dominated countries.
Today, the gap between the rich and poor countries is bigger. The measures imposed on the dependant countries to open their doors to the world market in return for receiving international financial capital have decreased their own opportunities for development. They have also increased black economy, monopolisation and poverty indexes. It remains a paradox that while the ideas on free trade are being spread out, big power's protectionism is increasing and the real participation of dependent countries in world trade is decreasing.
Along with the present characteristics of Technical and Scientific Revolution, it has begun to be talked about a new relocation of periphery countries on the scale of imperialist interests. The importance of raw materials becomes relative in the face of technological developments, synthetic production and bio-technological advances. Comparative advantages of offering cheap labour force do not have the same weight now with robotics developments, with the fragmentation of the process of productive production, maquilles, domiciliary work, etc. Some people even dare to say that these countries, in the economic sense, should be accessory. But they cannot forget what they represent in terms of the service sector, financial speculation, imperialist geopolitics, natural reserves, military location and hegemonistic dispute.
The benefits of development, instead of reflecting themselves in the improvement of the standard of living, increase economic and social differences, and polarises even further class contradictions. At the same time, it erodes illusions of reaching better conditions of working and existence under neo-liberal policies.
The setting up of typical reform measures of market economy in the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe had a shorter life than one expected. The dissatisfaction expressed in these countries, the deepening of crisis and the outbreak of confrontation and wars of different order, have revealed the falsity of the arguments that claimed a happier life under the slogans of "free" market
In a somewhat relatively short period, the limits and contradictions of neo-liberalism have appeared more evident and this has cracked credibility on "new" right's thought. In spite of its desire, nowadays bourgeois economic policies create grounds for a new upsurge in the working and popular struggle.

A crumbly democracy
If neo-liberal benefits have meant an economic redistribution further regressive than the one that existed before, if the gap between rich and poor countries is bigger, if the workers realise a worsening in their own situation and throw themselves into protests, then it is evident that the basis of the speeches on democracy, which supposedly stems automatically from neo-liberalism, is quite fragile.
Both neo-liberal economic measures and the correlative political reforms that have been pushed upon during this period, have derived in changes in the state. What is more notorious for dependent countries in this field, is the outrageous negation of national sovereignty and the development of arguments to justify imperialist interventions. We are not speaking only about intentions but facts: Panama, Granada and Haiti, to mention just a few cases. This role of international gendarme and the palpable aggressions, mainly of the USA, widen the basis for anti-imperialist struggles, also that of a democratic recovery of national sovereignty defence and the right to self-determination, as integral aspects of national liberation struggle.
In Latin America, with the deepening of the crisis, imperialist domination, poverty and democracy comes to be deceitful or cannot be consolidated. This can be seen through some phenomena:
- After the struggle against military dictatorships, mainly in the Southern Cone, the same ever dominant classes assumed government. They were the ones in charge to impose neo-liberaloism, in connivance with the murderous generals proclaimed forgiveness and oblivion. They spoke on behalf of change and democracy, and those were able to capitalise wide popular sector support for their project. But this is past now. Unrest has come back, and the limits that those processes have shown require new formulations in order to cope with the present situation.
- In several countries of the continent, constitutional reforms have taken place and in others they are in preparation. This obeys to Washington's directives on state modernisation. It is true that constitutions that rule the life of the great majority of the Latin American peoples need to be changed. This has been a claim of the communists and revolutionaries. But the sense of reforms that were made under the label of democracy has turned out to be a new frustration.
Colombian case is a very illustrative one. In 1991, a new constitution was approved. According to Gaviria, then president, it would be a peace treaty that the country was expecting. But the reality is quite different.
New constitution keeps those piers that give the Colombian state a counter-insurgent character, in the sense that it pursues National Security Doctrine. It subordinates citizens to the requirements of preservation and defence of the bourgeois state. The 1991 chart leaves intact the domination of North-American imperialism. It does not touch privileges of the Armed Forces, many of which give cause for the impunity that pervades the country. It gives rise neo-liberalism as a category of State economic doctrine. Also, it continuous enforcing presidentialism as a form of expression of civil dictatorship.
Such essential factors make void those democratic advances obtained in the field of citizen rights, which continue to be violated by state security organs and para-military forces, as is shown by the constant murders of political and popular leaders, the forced disappearances and the existence of over 2,500 political prisoners in Colombia.
- Every time more democratic regimes resorts to executive decrees in order to govern. What we see today is more frequent electoral calls, but lower real political participation of popular sectors. This is because their truly capacity of decision making is hindered or mediated by economic, cultural and political factors.
- Corruption has increased with great speed and has eroded the prestige of bourgeois institutions, making stumble and causing some governments to fall, as it has been the case of Collor de Mello, Carlos, Andres Perez or Serrano Elias.
The consequences of neo-liberalism in the economic sphere, have their compliment in the regressive political phenomena and in the forms of hardening that the bourgeois state assume, increasing use of repression, negating labour and trade-union's rights, supporting fascism, racism, xenophobia and wars. If adding up the resurgence of scabs and plagues which seemed to be already overcome such as obscurantism, false moralist behaviour, intellectuals' turn to the right , diffusion of dominant classes' decadent thought and scepticism, this way can lead to a certain form of barbarism as a result of a system that in its beginning proclaimed equality, defence of progress and reason.
However, ruling classes have not yet closed all ways out. As a matter of fact, in several countries, they are already introducing some modifications in the neo-liberal sketch, in order to avoid the impact on the majority that may cause such unrests and protests that threaten its domination. These modifications pick up social democratic policies and are accompanied by reformist and demagogic actions in order to restore government's hegemony and forestall the development of revolutionary processes that are going on or in gestation.
Undoubtedly, this is not easy, as the dominant classes' manoeuvring space tend to shrink. However, nor is it easy for communists to capitalise discontent and searches in favour of revolutionary action. The fact that now more people place their sight on the left does not mean an automatic confluence with Marxist-Leninist ideology. Social democratic trends are already working to win that interest and to show themselves as spokesman of the left and the option of the epoch. But on them bear the coresponsability on the crisis, and the erosion they have suffered from their bourgeois commitments.

Searches in the field of ideology and action
Let us remember that in this period, the climax of the negation of Marxism-Leninism, as a standing option for the peoples, coincided with the outcome of revisionist countries and the triumphalist speech about neo-liberalism and its democracy.
It was a necessary matter to talk about the crisis of Marxism. And, from the so-called left, different versions sprung about such a crisis.
For some people, the collapse of the USSR was the negation of socialism because they did not see the degenerative process that those countries have lived through for a long time. Nor was there a convincing explanation in hand about the causes of this phenomenon. Besides, the problems of the working class movement and its setbacks, in contrast with what seemed to be an overwhelming victory of the bourgeoisie, allowed them to question all the heretical and methodological body of Marxism, and so assert that we were dealing with a terminal crisis. This trend challenged the validity of principles and relativated all historical analysis.
So, some people opted to cross over into the ranks of the new "right" and turned out to be its apologists. Others decided to trap Marxism between question marks, calling for an epistemological restatement, in order to strip it from "dogmatic" aspects, in other words, to make it useless in practice for class struggle and in reality, to queue in social democracy, which has seen its ranks swollen with many repentants. This path has taken them into class collaboration, inserted in the bourgeois governments, as we have seen clearly in Colombia with a great part of the guerrilla members and fractionalist that demobilised themselves. Many of them fell into scepticism, taken refuge in the individual or gender reasons, valuating only sensorial and immediate facts, living only the present and taking shelter in the "light" and intimate culture.
It can be said that such tendencies fall into the so-called post-modernist philosophy, which covers a spectre of positions, wide by its variations, but short in its historical and political views.
In those positions there are common elements that, apart from any intention of their authors, pave the way to conservative, regressive or disagragative ideologies. For example, they coincide with denying the need to study history as a whole, they disregard the possibility to find rationality which rules it, its laws, the importance of the economic base and the form in which it relates with the rest of factors which comprise society. And what is even more meaningful is that they share the impossibility to act consciously to transform the course of the history. For that reason, it is often heard all kinds of diatribes against "metar-relations", totalling ideologies and cosmoviews.
More concretely, they do not recognise dialectical materialism but start with a gamut of positions from a return to Kant up to the fad to come back to Hegel. All that without the materialist aggregate that Marx made.
Other aspects that are motive of fierce onslaught by these philosophical currents are referred to the place and importance of class struggle, proletarian characteristics and its historical role, the popular and working class organisation, which they pretend to be replaced by this aggregation, individualism and fragmentation of all elements of life. All these points have to be dealt with as expressions of the interest to prevent workers from taking hold of the indispensable class struggle's weapons to face capital.
This view of the crisis of Marxism-Leninism was sustained, among other things, in a unilateral appraisal which not only idealised bourgeois "triumphs" while exaggerating the problems in the field of revolution but also it forgot the dialectical analysis of those contradictions and started from an abandonment of revolutionary perspective. The basis for these theories are questioned today by reality itself. The aminous prediction of terminal crisis must now have difficulties to continue singing praises to this system.
From the Marxist-Leninist point of view, some parties, among others, specified in what sense the crisis of Marxism-Leninism could be spoken about. We have seen that facing the speed of events, we have dragged behind in developing our theory, making explanations, having the capacity to reach wide sectors and generating actions. We start acknowledging the validity of Marxist-Leninist theory, its principles and its method. We recognise that it continuous to be the scientific base to study reality and to transform it. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we already have all phenomena explained and solved all practical problems. Instead, this implies that, setting out from that practice, it is necessary to state new developments, to appreciate different advances in science, to keep up with studying important political phenomena and to be able to articulate proposals up to the requirements of today's world. All these are necessary to unleash or to mature revolutionary processes towards seizing power.
As an open theory, Marxism-Leninism demands a permanent development. In this sense, we can say that it always faces crisis that should be overcome by its constant advances. It will always need advances. This is positive. Knowledge is not a place seized once and for all life.
The neo-liberal world and its particular version of democracy, which have been the material substrate of the auspices of post-modernist trends and of their diffusion as well as of negating Marxism-Leninism, are in crisis. People are again occupying the streets with their protests. They are starting to feel some disenchantment with the decadent theories and, at least, there is evidence that a search to explain the situation causes and disposition to listen for new proposals.
In these conditions, we Marxist-Leninists have the necessity and the obligation to face it openly. Those of the terminal crisis have nothing to say. Those -despite problems and shortcomings- who have defended the validity of Marxism-Leninism and the necessity of its permanent theoretical and practical actualisation, have to take the stage. From that, it can be said that we are facing a great challenge.
It is in this point where the role which pertains to communists is more demanding. Many young people again -at least- ask themselves what Marxism says? The workers start saying why not try the left, if, from the right, only comes misery and negation of a real democracy? Situation begins to prefigure a change in the way of thinking that should reflect itself in revolutionary changes. This is a field in dispute, all the more when there continuous to exist a great dose of scepticism towards left, when we still face a lack of confidence and a confusion that were derived from the degenerative processes in which ex-socialist countries lived and when Marxist-Leninist forces are still weak.
It will be our part to answer this defiance against learnt speeches, against repetition of the same old formulas which can neither satisfy nor be at the height of the epoch, against dodging the discussion about our own errors without presenting a sound analysis of the zigzags we have made. It is here where the strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist principles has to be combined with a series of interpretation of the historical moment and at the same time with correct and attractive proposals of action. Required theoretical and practical construction is a simultaneous matter of each party and then as a whole. And it is a task that communists must develop links with the masses and struggle to avoid again thinking that true is party's patrimony, which carries it as a dogma revealed to those "beneath" , under the guise of orientations.
To overcome our difficulties we have to turn ourselves into a real pole of attraction. We have to offer correct theoretical answers, and with them, we have to unleash and show, at the same time, different types of struggle processes, which should bear the quality to strengthen the confidence of the masses in their own forces, in their creativity and in their capacity to concretise partial and total victories. This is the challenge we must face. It is clear that if we strengthen the unity of world Marxist-Leninists the results will be better and will arrive sooner.