Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume III, Number 49 January 18 - 24, 2004 Quezon City, Philippines |
The
International Movement Against Imperialist 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 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 We want to know what you think of this article.
|
|