False Sense of Recovery at G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh

Published on October 3, 2009

Self-interest sets limits to such supposed “coordination” and hastens the onset of new and worse episodes of crisis. Indeed it is even likely that the inevitable failure to coordinate will be used as justification for retaliatory protectionism and economic policy counter-maneuvering. The civility during the G-20 summit barely hides the intensifying rivalries and competition for the world’s finite raw materials, cheap labor, markets and areas of investment. The struggle for a redivision of the world among the imperialist powers is being sharpened by the worsening global economic and financial crisis.

The deteriorating social and economic conditions of the world’s working people over the last decades and the even more severe decline since last year expose how world capitalism is fundamentally flawed. The foundations for a world economy that promotes the well-being of the people have to be built. This cannot happen through the world capitalist system, the G-20 or any mechanism controlled by the imperialist powers such as the IMF, WB and WTO. If anything, these schemes for intervention and influence have to be done away with.

The G20 leaders are now foolishly talking about “exit strategies” from pseudo-Keynesian stimulus spending and a return to neoliberal reliance on “private sources of demand”. The G-20 seeks a return to the most unbridled and brazen forms of capitalist exploitation and plunder that have brought about the current grave crisis. On the other hand, the people of the world are driven by the crisis to assert their sovereignty in crafting development, and investment and trade policies, and in regulating capital flows in their favour. The only acceptable reform of the global financial system is one that supports domestic industrial development, that is not designed to drain backward economies of scarce capital, that cancels burdensome debt and that promotes development-oriented trade on equal terms with other countries.

Our economies must serve the needs of the people and not be geared merely towards generating profits for monopoly capital. In the capitalist countries, jobs must be created , incomes increased and consumption revived rather than bail-outs poured out to the monopoly bourgeoisie. Production must be restored based on expanding the people’s incomes and capacity to consume and on sustaining this by keeping them productive in a well-balanced economy. In the vast number of backward countries the struggle remains to develop national economies, involving the balanced development of both industry and agriculture. At the same time, the basic demand for social and economic justice must be met in terms of fair and decent wages, land reform, food self-reliance, adequate livelihood, social benefits and expanded social services.

The mass protests leading up to and during the G-20 summit that breached the fences of iron and steel underscore the extent of social discontent and readiness of the people to fight against exploitation, oppression, discrimination and all forms of social injustice. A week before the summit there was the “National March for Jobs” in Pittsburgh with thousands of workers, healthcare activists, unemployed and homeless from across the US.

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) congratulates the mass mobilizations against the G-20 in Pittsburgh led by the US-based alliance of grassroots organizations Bail-Out the People Movement (BOPM). BOPM marched and sponsored “A Global Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed” which included protestors camping out in a make-shift tent city dubbed “Bail-Out the Jobless, a Tent City dedicated to the Unemployed, the Homeless, the Hungry, and the Poor of the World”. Also noteworthy were mass actions at US embassies and national workers’ conferences on the G-20, such as in the Philippines and elsewhere. Mass protests such as these are among those giving the greatest hope for fundamental social change.

As the crisis of the world capitalist system worsens, we can expect ever larger and more militant forms of popular resistance. It is important to keep on conducting campaigns of education and information on the G-20 and the entire scheme of monopoly capitalism against the people of the world. We must build on our achievements in mass mobilization and we must further develop our political and organizational strength in preparation for mass actions in the next summits in Canada in June 2010 and Korea in November 2010.

As the imperialist powers are redoubling their efforts to preserve global capitalism, then more so must the people become ever more resolute and effective in waging militant anti-imperialist struggles for greater freedom, democracy, social justice, development and international solidarity and peace. The progressive mass movements and revolutionary forces of the people of the world are steadily gaining strength in the struggles for national and social liberation and are making advances towards the ultimate goal of liberating mankind from imperialism and all reaction. (Posted by Bulatlat)

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