Mass struggles against imperialist globalization

Contribution to the International Communist Seminar
"The World Socialist Revolution in the Conditions of Imperialist Globalization"
Brussels, 2-4 May 2001

Globalization, as used by the monopoly bourgeoisie, the bourgeois media and imperialist-funded NGOs, is meant to negate the term imperialism and pass off monopoly capitalism as «free market» capitalism.

To accelerate the process of globalization, which is said to be inevitable, the monopoly bourgeoisie uses the IMF, World Bank and WTO to dictate on member states the neo-liberal policy of liberalization, deregulation and privatization extolling the preeminence of the «free market».

Hiding behind the signboard of «free market» globalization, the monopoly bourgeoisie has gone into the naked plunder of the world’s natural and social wealth. It makes use of the reactionary state which is completely under its command to accelerate the transfer of public resources to the monopoly firms and banks.

Under the neo-liberal dogma, the state lays aside its social pretenses, takes back hard-won social benefits from the working class and the people, carries out attacks on workers’ rights and their wage and living conditions, and increases the tax burden.
At the same time, it grants tax exemptions to the monopoly firms and banks, gives them generous state contracts and subsidies and allows them to destroy the livelihood of the people and their environment.

The monopoly bourgeoisie and their paid propagandists blame the supposedly high wage levels and social spending by government as the cause of inflation and as the hindrance to economic growth. They portray the working class as a parasite and deny its role as the creator of social wealth.

The monopoly bourgeoisie extracts superprofits from the working class as well as from the oppressed peoples who bear the brunt of the disastrous consequences of the neocolonial and neo-liberal policy of denationalization, liberalization, privatization and deregulation.

Imperialism, disguised as «free market» globalization, has unleashed the worst forms of oppression and exploitation. The people are now undergoing intolerable suffering and are driven to wage resistance and revolutionary struggle.

In the Philippines, glowing promises of the benefits of globalization were made with the country’s entry into the regime of so-called free trade under the World Trade Organization (WTO). Supposedly 1 million new jobs a year would be created in agriculture and industry. There would be greater access to the world market, bigger volume of trade, higher technology and a steady flow of foreign investments.

Instead, we saw the collapse of our local industries. Domestic agriculture has been crushed by the swamping of the local market of cheap agricultural produce from abroad.

The workers and peasants have suffered the most with massive dislocations and loss of incomes. As farm-gate prices fall and production costs rise, peasants are forced to abandon their farms and join the ever-increasing army of unemployed workers. Those who find work, mostly on a contractual or part-time basis, see their wages continually eroded.

Today, the Philippine economy is in shambles, totally dependent on foreign loans, remittances from overseas contract workers and speculative foreign investments.

For us in the Philippines, so-called free market globalization has only aggravated the worst features of monopoly capitalism: unbridled profit-taking, sinking wage levels, mass unemployment, breakdowns in production, neglect of social services and the devastation of the environment.

The proletariat and people of the world are fighting back

Mass protests against imperialist globalization have mounted in recent years not only in the underdeveloped countries of the third world but in the imperialist countries as well. From the anti-APEC mobilizations in Manila in 1996, to Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, and Prague the proletariat and people of the world have raised their collective and militant opposition to the destructive consequences of imperialist globalization.

In November1996, the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization (PCAIG) was launched in Manila, Philippines during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. APEC is an association of 18 economies in the Asia Pacific that includes the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Canada, Chile, Mexico and the United States. Member countries account for about 40% of the world’s population, about one half of the world’s GNP and around 70% of world trade.

APEC’s avowed purpose is to develop an «open multilateral trading system and reduce barriers to trade and investment.» It is actually meant to open up the economies of the member countries and for the strong economies to dominate the weak ones.

Mass organizations under the umbrella of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) declared a «National Day of Protest» against imperialist globalization and the APEC. A People’s Caravan of more than 200 vehicles carrying 10,000 protestors motored to Subic (site of the former US Naval base abandoned in 1991 because of the Filipino people’s militant struggle) where the heads of states of the 18 member economies were gathered. March-rallies were also held in many parts of the Philippines. In all, over 200,000 people joined the simultaneous mass actions.

Two weeks before, the Anti-Imperialist World Peasant Summit was held in Manila from November 10 to 13. It brought together delegates from 16 peasant organizations and 33 solidarity movements from 24 countries of Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, North America and Australia.

It was among the first of international gatherings of peasant organizations and peasant advocates in recent memory that has taken a clear anti-imperialist position. Speakers from different countries discussed the destructive effects of imperialist globalization on their agriculture and the peasantry. The delegates also exchanged experiences on the mass struggles in their countries such as the uprising and resistance of indigenous peoples in Mexico and Ecuador, the land occupations in Brazil, growing peasant unrest and resistance in China and the agrarian revolution in the Philippines.

The following year, the NO to APEC coalition convened the People's Conference-PCAIG Continuing the Resistance, as counterpoint to the 1997 APEC Leaders' Summit in Vancouver, Canada. 299 delegates from 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific, North, South and Central America, India, Africa and Europe came. The conference took the theme, «Continuing the Resistance» to reaffirm the analysis, declarations and resolutions of the People’s Conference Against Imperialist Globalization (PCAIG) held in Manila, Philippines the previous year.

In its Conference Declaration it said: «We uncompromisingly reject the APEC, the NAFTA, and the multilateral institutions, the IMF-World Bank and the GATT-WTO, as tools of imperialism in its attempt to further subjugate, exploit and oppress the peoples of the world. Moreover, we resolve to strengthen our opposition and continuing resistance against imperialism and all of its globalization schemes in our respective countries and worldwide in every way and by every means possible.»

And in 1998, the Asia Pacific Peoples' Assembly with the theme, "Confronting Globalization: Asserting People's Rights" was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and declared its militant opposition to imperialist globalization.

On November 29, 1999, the Third Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) opened in Seattle. Previous trade negotiations organized by the WTO had led to massive privatization and deregulation of the banking, telecommunication and utility industries.

The Seattle meeting was intended to extend the "liberalization" toward the total elimination of all food and agricultural tariffs. The giant agricultural and food monopolies were bound to benefit from this new round of «liberalization» while demolishing the small farmers and agricultural workers around the world.

In the biggest of mass mobilizations in the US in years, around fifty thousand workers, students, environmentalists and political activists, shut down the Third Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization.

Major unions including those from the AFL-CIO mobilized thousands of their members. Labor delegations and political activists from 120 countries joined the mass actions.

Longshore workers of the ILWU shut down the docks in Seattle and elsewhere in the West Coast in solidarity with the WTO protests. Taxi drivers went on a sympathy strike and tens of thousands of workers around the country did not go to work to participate in demonstrations and mass meetings.

To coincide with the WTO meeting, a counter-conference, NO to WTO/Seattle International People's Assembly, was organized and participated in by various movements (workers, environment, peasants/farm workers, students/youth), people's organizations and non-governmental organizations from Asia, Africa, Central America, Canada and the US.

Speakers took turns in exposing so-called globalization as nothing but imperialism dressed in new garb. Despite being denied a permit to hold a rally, the participants proceeded to hold a march to join up with the bigger march/rally to downtown Seattle at the site of the WTO meeting.

Thousands of demonstrators blocked the streets around the convention center delaying the opening of the WTO meeting for several hours. Many delegates, including US Secretary of State Madeline Albright and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, could not get into the convention center because of the blockades.

The police were called in to clear the streets. Police used CS gas, concussion bombs and pepper spray to disperse the demonstrators. The mayor of Seattle brought in the National Guard and declared a state of emergency. Curfew was imposed. Over 600 were arrested and dozens were injured from beatings and plastic bullets.

The Battle of Seattle, despite the greatly disproportionate violence employed by the reactionary state, led not to the rout of the protesters but to the collapse of the WTO meeting. The delegates went home without any agreement being signed.

The next battle zone was the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in April 2000 in Washington, D.C.On April 16 and the days that followed, an informal alliance of workers, students, environmentalists, human rights and political activists, gathered under the banner of "Mobilization for Global Justice" for a series of actions aimed at shutting down the meetings of the IMF and World Bank.

A 30,000 strong rally greeted the opening of the IMF/World Bank meeting. Thousands of protestors blockaded the IMF and World Bank buildings.

But the Washington police had made their own preparations. For 3 months, they studied videos of the Seattle demonstrations and mapped out their strategies.

On the eve of the convention, the police raided the main protest headquarters. They also rounded up hundreds of activists and kept them in jail for 23 hours to prevent them from participating in the major demonstration the next day.

The protestors set up a pirate radio station called «Mobilization Radio» to broadcast assembly points and assembly times. The police also attempted to raid and shut down this«guerrilla» radio station.

Baton-charges and pepper spray were used by the police to disperse the demonstrators. By the end of the days of protest, police had arrested nearly 1,300 people.

The G-77, in its first summit held in Havana on 10-14 April 2000, endorsed the Washington protests and made a stinging critique of the IMF and World Bank's structural adjustment policies. The G77 takes its name from the alliance of the 77 underdeveloped countries which took part in the first meeting of the UN Conference on Trade and Development in 1964.

In his address to the conference, Fidel Castro described globalization as a vessel of inequity with too much injustice on board and called on the countries of the South to unite or face death.

On September 11-13, 2000, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a club of the world's richest 1,000 corporations, met at Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. The monopoly bourgeoisie uses such institutions as the IMF, World Bank, the WTO and the WEF, to ram through the policies it wants implemented.

On the opening day of the conference, 20,000 to 30,000 protesters surrounded Crown Casino and successfully locked out around 300 of the 800 WEF delegates. The first WEF session started hours late with only 1/4 of the delegates present.

The big mobilization was very impressive considering that the position of the labor union bureaucrats was to boycott the street actions.

Over 2,000 policemen were mobilized for the defense of the WEF meeting with more on the reserve ready for action. Using batons, the police dispersed the demonstrators. There were more than 100 injuries and many were hospitalized.

Street demonstrations and blockade of the Crown Casino continued on the second day. Bill Gates was forced to cancel two public engagements due to the protest actions. Around 12,000 union members joined the protests in the afternoon.

Despite the attempts of the union bureaucrats to rein in the workers in indoor meetings, thousands of rank-and-file workers joined the street actions and blockades. Although, the WEF conference was not shut down by the mass actions, it was severely disrupted and a strong message had been delivered.

The 5th annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank on September 26, 2000 in Prague was the next battle zone for the growing anti-globalization protest movement. The Washington Post reported: «In scenes reminiscent of protests outside the meeting of the two institutions in Washington in April, delegates from 182 countries found themselves trapped for six hours inside a downtown convention center as demonstrators blocked all exit routes.»

An elaborate gala performance planned for delegates at the Czech State Opera had to be cancelled because the building was surrounded by over a thousand demonstrators. On the night of thefirst day, hundreds of delegates had already made hurried exits from Prague.

At the convention center, 15,000 demonstrators composed of workers, students, environmentalists, human rights activists, and anarchists confronted heavily armed riot police. 11,000 police had been mobilized and 6,000 Czech army troops were on stand-by. The protestors came from all over Europe. Their number would have been far bigger had there been no obstacles placed in the way by the Czech authorities on demonstrators crossingthe borders.

Delays of four to 18 hours were imposed on many trains and buses from Germany, Italy Scandinavia, France and Britain. Rumors spread by the authorities that the border would be closed discouraged thousands more from making the journey.

The demonstrations seriously disrupted and cut short the IMF and World Bank’s timetable. The conference originally scheduled for three days ended one day early.

The spokesman of the conference explained that unlike the WTO meeting in Seattle, the delegates went home early because they had «finished their business». This is probably true but only because the decisions had already been made by small committees of top US and Western European bankers and finance ministers who actually control the IMF and WorldBank. The congress of 14,000 delegates is there simply to ratify decisions that have already been made.

The broad, militant and sustained mass struggles against imperialist globalization have put the monopoly bourgeoisie and their media drumbeaters on the defensive. There is no more triumphalism in their pronouncements even as they seek ways to sugarcoat the so-called «bitter pill» of trade and investments liberalization, deregulation and privatization with such proposals as providing so-called social safety nets, etc. Even then, the supposed cure is being exposed as worse than the disease.

The proletariat and people are getting a good education on imperialism, the state and revolution. But much work still needs to be done in eradicating the blinders created by revisionism, petty-bourgeois radicalism, reformism and social-democratic collaborationism.

It is a positive thing that there are informal and tactical alliances being formed among such varied forces as Marxist revolutionaries, democrats, progressives, anarchists, environmentalists, human rights activists, and so on that oppose imperialist globalization. The broadness of the movement precludes the use of red-baiting by the apologists of the monopoly bourgeoisie.

In this context, Marxist-Leninist parties have the opportunity and the responsibility to strengthen themselves, lead the revolutionary mass movement in their own countries and help build the international united front based on the alliance of the proletariat in the imperialist countries and the oppressed peoples in the neo-colonies against imperialism and reaction for national liberation, democracy and socialism.

Contribution to the International Communist Seminar
"The World Socialist Revolution in the Conditions of Imperialist Globalization"
Brussels, 2-4 May 2001

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