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Volume III,  Number 49              January 18 - 24, 2004            Quezon City, Philippines


 





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The International Movement Against Imperialist
Globalization and Prospects for the Decade

At this stage of our common struggle for human dignity, social justice and liberation, we in the people’s movements all over the world can already boast of many victories. But we face enemies that are fiercer, more powerful and more cunning than ever before. We need greater unity, cooperation and militancy to defeat the evil forces that face us.

By Crispin Beltran
Chairperson, International League for People’s Struggle
National Council Member, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Philippines*
Posted by Bulatlat.com

In the name of the International League of Peoples’Struggle (ILPS) and the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan)-Philippines, I would like to send to you, struggling people of India and the world, our warmest and most militant greetings! Long live the people’s struggle against imperialism! Long live international solidarity!

We gather here today as part of a growing global movement against imperialist globalization and war. The backbone of this movement are the people’s movements in various parts of the world, mainly those of workers, peasants, dalits and other poor, oppressed and exploited peoples.

As a worker and trade unionist for the last 50 years, I would like to thank the organizers of this conference for ensuring that the genuine voices of the people are heard in Mumbai. As you know, the World Social Forum is dominated by non-government organizations, academics and so-called civil society groups that sometimes do not know how we really look at things.

The failure of imperialist globalization

At this stage of our common struggle for human dignity, social justice and liberation, we in the people’s movements all over the world can already boast of many victories. But we face enemies that are fiercer, more powerful and more cunning than ever before. We need greater unity, cooperation and militancy to defeat the evil forces that face us.

Today, our two biggest enemies are imperialist globalization and the U.S.-led “war on terror.” They are like two legs that hold up the global capitalist system ruled by the richest and most powerful countries of the world.

Globalization is not a new word. In the early 1990s, we were told that the technological advances in production, information and communication were making the world smaller, like a village where everyone knows each other. They said a new world order was emerging where people could buy and sell freely, engage in their business and get rich without the government meddling into things. Under this system ruled by free trade capitalism and Western-style democracy, there would be abundance and prosperity, justice, democracy and peace.

They also told us globalization was inevitable. They declared as obsolete anything that did not look or sound or smell like capitalism. And so they tried to restructure the various economies of the world to make it more capitalist.

They even said that with the demise of socialism in the Soviet Union and China, capitalism had achieved worldwide victory. They said capitalism was the highest stage of human civilization. In fact, the capitalist era was supposed to be the “end of history,” because nothing else could ever come after that.               

Of course they were wrong. They were also lying through their teeth.

Globalization was not a triumph of capitalism. It was a catastrophic failure for the world’s peoples.

Today, more people are poor, hungry and oppressed than at any other time in history. Five billion out of the world’s 6.3 billion people don’t earn enough to live decently. A billion people go hungry every day, of which 200 million are malnourished children under 5 years old. Two billion people do not even have safe water to drink.

Every year, 25 million people die from hunger and curable diseases. Half a million women die in pregnancy and childbirth. In the world’s poorest countries, more than one in four children die before they reach the age of five.

In many rich countries, pet dogs and cats live better than most of us do.

Indeed, globalization has made the world a happy, prosperous global village but only for a few exploiting classes. For the rest of humanity, the world has become a more divided, impoverished and violent place to live in.

So what happened to all those promises?

The truth is that globalization was never meant to improve our lives. The neoliberal, free trade economic policies underlying globalization were designed to make more money for the monopoly capitalist banks, corporations and governments in the industrialized countries. Monopoly capitalism needed a blood transfusion, and globalization was the means to siphon blood out of the toiling masses.

Thus, markets were liberalized so they could sell us more of their goods and services. Economies were deregulated and privatized to allow them to exploit our workers, use our resources, and then rake in superprofits at our expense. Of course the small enterprises in the non-industrialized countries could not compete with the giant transnational monopolies of the industrialized countries. Many industries were closed and millions of workers were laid off in the non-industrialized countries. Hundreds of acres of farms were left barren, and many farmers could not even feed themselves.

My friends, globalization is nothing but imperialism – yes, the same old moribund capitalism disguised in bright colored clothes and sporting the latest hi-tech gadget.

But imperialist globalization does not only mean poverty, hunger and joblessness for most of the world’s peoples. It also means war.

Military might is used by the imperialist countries to capture more markets, cheaper resources and labor. They also use force to suppress the people’s struggles against imperialist plunder and exploitation.

The airplane bombings on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 was used by the U.S. government justify the invasion of oil and mineral-rich Afghanistan and Iraq. Now they’re planning the same thing to Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea and Cuba. U.S. imperialism is so blatant in using war to expand its economic interests that other imperialist countries like France, Germany, Russia and China are worried.

Today, in practically every corner of the world, they are U.S. military forces. George Bush says they are fighting terrorism, but the truth is, they are protecting and expanding America’s economic interests. More money is being poured into war than into food, water, health and housing.

Thus, the biggest warmongers in the world are the imperialist countries themselves. Nearly half of world arms spending, estimated at US$935 billion in 2004, comes from the U.S. alone, followed by its allies in Europe and Asia.

So this is what imperialist globalization is for the people. It means the globalization of poverty, underdevelopment and war. It means less jobs and lower wages. Budget cuts in health, education and housing. It means the increased concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. This is global capitalism at its most exploitative, brutal and deceptive.

Resistance and struggle

The international movement against imperialist globalization and war is a people’s movement against monopoly capitalist exploitation and military aggression. It is both a struggle of resistance as well as a struggle for national and social liberation.

The industrialized capitalist countries are doing everything to dominate, open up and plunder other countries. They use governments, armed forces, transnational corporations, the United Nations, multilateral funding agencies like the IMF and WB, official development aid, multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements, the WTO, and even non-government organizations for this purpose.

In the neocolonial states, pro-imperialist puppet regimes suppress the people’s opposition to globalization and war. These puppet states are being paid to allow the monopoly capitalists to plunder our natural resources, exploit our workers and farmers, and capture our markets.

In the imperialist countries themselves, the monopoly capitalists and their controlled governments take back the hard earned victories of the workers’ movement, including social security benefits, minimum wages and regular work.

In places where imperialist globalization and war wreaks havoc, the anti-imperialist people’s movements are our only hope. Through united, militant actions, people’s movements around the world are able to resist the policies of liberalization, privatization, deregulation and other neoliberal dictates.

Our movements oppose military interventions and imperialist wars of aggression in whatever form.

We expose and oppose the connivance of the imperialists with the local ruling elites  and reactionary classes. This means asserting human rights, democracy and national sovereignty and working for the replacement or overthrow of repressive, pro-imperialist puppet regimes.

Several armed liberation movements are now raging in countries like the Philippines, India, Nepal, Peru, Colombia, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ealam. They too are part of the international people’s movement.

Our people’s movements form the building blocks of a new social order that is truly democratic and free from imperialist exploitation and war.

Like little rivers flowing into a rampaging sea, various people’s movements around the world are now uniting, sharing experiences and working together to be more effective. We have dramaticaly seen this in various protests against the IMF-WB and WTO in Manila in 1996, Seattle, Davos, Washington, Melbourne, Prague, Gothenburg, Genoa, Porto Alegre, Cancun, Hyderabad and now Mumbai. Also in the millions of people who have marched against the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The spirit of international solidarity and struggle against imperialism has been unleashed and can never be stopped.

This was the same spirit that formed the International League of People’s Struggles, the very same spirit that brings people together in the People’s Movement Encounter and Mumbai Resistance 2004.

Is it any wonder that the imperialists are so afraid of the people’s movement? They have branded us evil and terroristic. They are doing everything they can to suppress and destroy our movements.

Prospects for the decade

The world capitalist crisis is getting worse by the day but imperialism is not going to wither away just like that. Monopoly capitalism can easily reinvent itself, as it did when it hid under the concept of globalization. Like a lethal parasite, imperialism refuses to die a natural death and instead fights tooth and nail to survive.

The United States’ blatant use of unilateral military action to pump prime and expand its economy shows how desperate the situation has become for the imperialists. They have resorted to wars and killing people just to keep their economy intact. Now, even national liberation movements, progressive thinkers and socialists are branded as “terrorist.” The “war on terror” now includes liberal democrats and human rights advocates.

This unilaterism is also reflected in the economic sphere, as the World Trade Organization becomes too unwieldy as an instrument for imposing free trade on smaller countries. We can expect imperialist countries to force weaker countries into entering into bilateral free trade agreements with them.

In other words, my friends, there will be more struggles to fight and more issues to confront.

But imperialism cannot escape its internal contradictions. First is the contradiction within the imperialist countries themselves, between the bourgeoisie and the working class. We have already witnessed the growing number of strikes and mammoth rallies in the highly industrialized countries like the U.S., Great Britain, Italy and France. People there are fighting massive layoffs, wage cuts, decreasing budgets for welfare and social services and, lately, the U.S.-led war on terror.

A second contradiction is the intense rivalries among the imperialist countries themselves. The U.S., European Union, Japan, Russia and China are competing against each other for the world’s markets and sources of cheap materials and labor. As this intensifies, so will their relationships be more antagonistic.

The third and main contradiction in the world today is that between the imperialist countries and the oppressed nations and peoples of the world. Globalization is further impoverishing the Third World. It is only a matter of time for national liberation movements to sprout and achieve more victories. They will cut themselves free from the shackles of imperialism and local oppression toward the path of national democracy and socialism.

The capitalist system has become so discredited and wracked by contradictions that the very institutions promoting globalization are faltering. The WTO’s 5th Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico collapsed when 21 developing countries chose to stand their ground against the U.S.’s, EU’s and Japan’s trade agenda.

Similarly isolated and discredited is the U.S.-led war on terror. No one believes George W. Bush anymore when he says they’re only after the terrorists. The fact that the Iraqi people continue fighting even after Saddam’s capture reveals that the resistance isn’t about Saddam Hussein at all. It’s about fighting U.S. imperialism.

What is bad for imperialism is good for the people. The people’s movement against imperialist globalization and war should exploit the contradictions inherent in imperialism in order to promote the common good.

In the next decade, imperialist globalization and the hypocrisy that is the U.S.-led war on terror will continue to be the biggest obstacles to justice, democracy, world peace and prosperity for all.

But the contradictions of the global capitalist system continue to worsen, while the people’s movements all over the world continue to gain strength. Eventually, we will unify into a truly international movement against imperialism.

Long live the struggle against imperialist globalization and war!

Down with imperialism! Posted by Bulatlat.com

*Speech delivered at the People’s Movement Encounter II
Mumbai, India
Jan. 16, 2004

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