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The People's Statement on the Global Crisis is initiated by RESIST! and the Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN). RESIST! is an international campaign against neoliberal globalization and war.
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Over the last three decades the advanced capitalist countries have tried to overcome the recurrent crisis of overproduction and to keep their economies and profits growing through the neoliberal offensive of exploiting cheap labor, seizing raw materials and dominating markets across the globe. Since the 1990s, they have resorted more and more to financial devices: speculative profits and debt-driven consumption and production.
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Statements Resist Imperialist Plunder and War!Junk the WTO!
Statements Resist Imperialist Plunder and War!Junk the WTO!
| Resist Imperialist Plunder and War!Junk the WTO! |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Thursday, 01 December 2005 15:14 |
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The World Trade Organization (WTO) came into being over ten years ago, on 1 January 1995. Since then it has become one of monopoly capitalism’s most important instruments for tearing open markets, seizing control of raw materials, and exploiting cheap labor across the globe. Yet despite this imperialist economic aggression – or indeed because of it – the crisis of the world capitalist system continues to deepen: world economic growth is unstable and slowing, while poverty and unemployment continue to rise. These portend even greater turmoil in the years to come. The advanced industrial powers of particularly the G8 are increasingly desperate for greater trade and investment opportunities to support the superprofits of their transnational corporations. This is made even more pressing by the mounting debt and financial problems of their economies, which severely afflict even the world’s last remaining superpower, the United States (US). They are also scrambling for greater control over the world’s finite energy and mineral resources that are so vital in sustaining their voracious economies as well as their insatiable military-industrial complexes. Towards these they seek to open up even more the vast hinterlands of the world – as former colonizers returning to reclaim countries as neocolonies, or otherwise tightening their long-standing neocolonial grip. At the same time these industrial powers preserve control of their own domestic markets while continuing to use public resources for private monopoly capitalist benefit. However the world’s peoples are rising in angry and determined protest against neoliberal “globalization” and imperialist wars of intervention and aggression. In part this increases the possibility that some governments of the dominated and oppressed countries may be forced to moderate the removal of trade barriers and investment controls in vain attempts to stem the economic chaos that stoke dissent against their pro-imperialist political rule. All this combines into a volatile mix that can only push the imperialist powers to take even more drastic measures to preserve their respective dominance, keep markets open and secure their profits. Imperialism’s maneuverings in order to advance its economic and geopolitical interests at the expense of other sovereign countries and peoples will have far-reaching effects. At the very least the neocolonies will have to contend with more brazen intervention and pressure to change their social and economic policies to suit foreign monopoly capitalist interests. But it has already gone far beyond this for Iraq and Afghanistan. US imperialism has resorted to invading them to capture their oil, natural gas and mineral resources, and to establish its dominance in militarily critical regions of the world. On the part of imperialism, the rivalries between US and European monopoly capital that visibly started with civil aircraft, steel, beef and bananas can only deepen and spread to an even wider range of agricultural and industrial goods. Bilateral and regional free trade agreements aiming for privileged access to neocolonial markets are already multiplying rapidly. These efforts to consolidate economic territories foreshadow more generalized inter-imperialist trade conflicts over the world’s finite markets and labor and natural resources. As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens and imperialism’s “peaceful” options narrow even more, the threat of more invasions and a resurgence in proxy and possibly even direct inter-imperialist wars can only become greater. The WTO has a key role to play in imperialism’s assault on the neocolonies and on the people of the world. It is the latest and most ambitious multilateral instrument of economic hegemony, joining the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank (WB) and replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It is an expansive mechanism for global economic domination. The WTO’s 148 members – with 147 out of the world’s some 240 countries (plus the European Union also counted separately as a distinct member apart from the 25 countries that constitute it) – span 88 percent of the world’s population and 93 percent of the world economy. Counting also the WTO’s 33 observer countries brings the total to 99 percent of the world’s population and virtually the entire global economy. But it is a mechanism that has only worked to intensify the exploitation and oppression of the peoples of the world. The last decade has seen the destruction of neocolonial agriculture and industry and the throwing of millions of the toiling masses of workers and peasants into intolerable misery. Farmers and agricultural workers around the world have lost their livelihoods and been driven off the land; factory workers have been thrown out into the streets into destitution as entire industries are wiped out. This is in large part because the WTO has broadened the scope of imperialist policy-making in the neocolonies to an unprecedented scale. The staggering number of member and observer countries is only the beginning. It also extends imperialist-dominated multilateral scheming over the neocolonies far beyond the original GATT’s coverage of tariffs and some non-tariff barriers on a selection of industrial goods. The WTO is being used to greatly expand the markets for the agricultural and industrial goods of the advanced powers. The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) has already caused drastic tariff cuts on agricultural products while keeping massive imperialist farm subsidies untouched. The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) meanwhile began a process that aims to end with the so-called Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) and severe tariff cuts across the entire range of industrial goods. Leaving no stone unturned, the WTO is also out to ensure that lucrative government procurement contracts go to big corporate interests and, through “trade facilitation,” that neocolonies remove even the most minor bureaucratic impediments to trade. The WTO is also being used to open up new areas for imperialist investment or otherwise create the conditions for greater surplus and raw materials extraction. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) lays bare public power and water utilities and the vital social services of health and education to monopoly profiteering. The WTO’s inclusion of Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS) lays the groundwork for so-called “competition policy” and a future expansive investment agreement giving monopoly capital unrestricted freedom to operate, exploit and plunder whatever economic surplus and natural resources it wants in the neocolonies. Imperialism is also out to secure the raw materials and cheap labor it needs through the opening up of energy and mineral sectors to foreign investment and the controversial Mode 4 of the GATS. It is already far into preserving its technological monopolies and the attendant monopoly power through the device of an Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). They are also using this to capture the genetic resources of the world. In short, the WTO is out to tear down barriers to imperialist trade and investment, destroy neocolonial agriculture and industry, and intensify monopoly plunder and control – while preserving US, European and Japanese monopoly capital’s protections and overwhelming economic power. There is no place within it for the economic sovereignty of peoples and, indeed, of weak and backward nations who are all denied the economic policy tools essential for development and subjected to outright plunder. As the global economic crisis deepens and the desperation of imperialism intensifies, the WTO will also increasingly become an overt weapon for the wars that imperialism wages against the neocolonies. The potentially member-wide punitive economic sanctions that the WTO can impose will be a powerful weapon to force submission or for weakening a country as a prelude to war and invasion. The decade-long sanctions on Iraq preceding US imperialism’s invasions are a recent example of trade as a weapon of war. The WTO’s 6th Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong in December could prove to be a watershed in determining how far imperialism can use the WTO for its objectives. The most meaningful pressure comes from outside the WTO with hundreds of millions of workers, peasants, women, youth, intellectuals, mass-based organizations and social movements worldwide coming together in a broad informal anti-imperialist front against neoliberal “globalization.” Within the WTO, these resurgent domestic mass movements have put scores of neocolonial client states in a problematic situation: agreeing to greater liberalization may lead to political upheavals against them at home. Their reaction could be rising fascism and militarism. The imperialist powers meanwhile have been put in a situation where their “globalization” rhetoric is tested against their protectionist practice, and they are fighting over each other’s enormous agricultural and industrial subsidies amounting to many hundreds of billions of dollars. The upcoming ministerial in Hong Kong provides an opportunity for the people to sustain momentum against imperialist “globalization” through the WTO that began in Seattle in 1999 and continued to Cancun in 2003. Another collapse in Hong Kong will mean a debacle for the WTO: three out of its six ministerial meetings will have ended in failure. The surging protests and inter-imperialist rivalries make this a distinct possibility. But hindering the aggressive expansion of the WTO in this way does not change how it ultimately remains an imperialist instrument that exists to advance the imperialist agenda; “liberalization” only leads to monopoly capitalist domination and plunder. There can never be any meaningful “reforms” that can make the WTO less of an intolerable burden on the world’s peoples. Much less would another collapsed ministerial meeting mean an end to the struggle against imperialist oppression, exploitation, plunder and war. Nonetheless it would still be a resounding victory for the people from which we can continue our struggle for a genuinely just, equitable and peaceful world. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
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