Modern colonialism rose with capitalism. Starting in the 15th century, the colonialist powers spread over the whole globe, establishing spheres of influence and control in which they could rob and plunder at will and suppress with fire and sword the resistance of the subjugated peoples. Modern colonialism reintroduced slavery and turned hundreds of millions of toiling people, in China, India, Africa and throughout the whole world into the slaves and wage slaves of the colonialist powers.
However, where there is oppression, there is resistance. In response to the plunder and enslavement by the colonial powers, the people of all countries waged revolutionary resistance. Right from the beginning of colonialism, anti-colonial wars developed in many parts of the world. The history of the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries is a history of wars of aggression and revolutionary struggles for liberation.
October 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution led by Comrade Lenin hailed a new stage in human history. For the first time the working people had seized state power and were able to use the economics, politics and culture of a revolutionary society in the service of the liberation of mankind. The Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin led the building of a vast united front against the imperialist and colonialist powers, and the struggles of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America from then on served to drastically weaken imperialism and colonialism and aid the development of socialism. For this reason, the national liberation struggles became part and parcel of the world proletarian socialist revolution.
Following the Second World War, the international relations of forces underwent profound changes. Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao Tsetung, the heroic Chinese people threw U.S. imperialism and all its lackeys out of China in 1949 and began revolutionary socialist construction. The East European countries achieved their liberation. More and more people in Asia, Africa and Latin America, seeing the glorious successes of the Chinese and the world’s people, embarked on the road of armed struggle. Today, the whole system of imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism is in serious crisis and it’s heading for total collapse. Chairman Mao correctly pointed out that, “Imperialism has created the conditions for its elimination. These conditions are the awakening of the great masses of the people in the colonies and the semi-colonies and in the imperialist countries themselves. Imperialism has pushed the great masses of the people throughout the world into the historical epoch of the great struggle to abolish imperialism.”