By Sujatha Fernandes
Returning to Australia after spending some time in the Indian subcontinent earlier this year, it struck me how much the media attempt to isolate us here from the rest of the world. Closeted away in the suburbs with our 24-hour MTV and supermarkets with 10 different brands of tomato sauce, it is easy to succumb to the propaganda that we have never had it better, that there is no need to struggle and that capitalism has triumphed over socialism and is here to stay.
But stepping into the Third World, it is clear that there is something wrong with this picture. Poverty is still a bitter reality for hundreds of millions of people in Asia. From Bombay to Calcutta, Kathmandu to Colombo, the streets are lined with families forced to eat out of rubbish tips and beg for a living.
For these people, struggle is a part of their lives. From the workers in the free trade zones to the peasants suffering under the impact of GATT and World Bank/IMF prescriptions, millions of people are struggling against capitalism.
What really prevents capitalism from neatly tying up its ideological loose ends is the existence in these countries of strong socialist movements. The massive demonstrations I witnessed in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal consistently called for socialism and revolution.
The international situation is no longer characterised by imperialist powers sending in gunboats (although it still happens). Today, the greed of the imperialist powers is dressed up in treaties, trade agreements and world economic institutions. Agreements such as GATT and NAFTA, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are all part of the imperialist agenda to destroy any remaining barriers to exploitation of the world and its resources.
Globalisation
Third World countries are forced into dependency upon First World economies. Export-oriented economic "solutions" mean that more wealth is flowing out of Third World countries into the First World, creating a greater divide between the two. For instance, I visited a shoe factory in Madras where 346 workers produce 40,000 shoes per month, all for export to Britain. The average wage of the workers was $40 a month, while each pair of shoes sold in Britain for a profit of $50.
In the agricultural sector, an export-oriented economy means that peasants no longer produce food for their own consumption, but are forced to grow commercial crops. This results in large crops of coffee or tea on land previously used to grow food for domestic consumption. This is the irrationality of a system which puts profit before the needs of human beings.
The impact of globalisation is also being felt in attacks on workers rights. In order to make industries attractive to overseas investors, factories are set up in areas called free trade zones. The government sells off large shares to foreign capital by assuring them that these areas are free from strikes, which are banned.
One of the factories in a free trade zone I visited, the Korea-Ceylon Footwear Manufacturing Company, employed 2500 workers, all subcontracted to produce shoes for brand names like Nike and Benetton. Because unionisation is illegal, these workers cannot organise in response to attacks on their wages and conditions, so their actions tend to be spontaneous. Such actions are always heavily clamped down on; the last insurgency was followed by mass sackings and the killing of two workers.
The imperialist powers are still peddling the myth that Third World countries can reach a level of development similar to that of First World countries through rapid industrialisation and opening up of their economies. But when you look at the balance sheet, capitalism, as a world system, has been a devastating failure. The Third World is not "catching up" to the First World; the gap between them is growing. The successes of economies such as Singapore and Malaysia are minor in comparison to the reality of capitalism in south and west Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Alive and well
It is ironic to hear the "socialism is dead" propaganda and then visit a country like Nepal, where every available piece of wall is covered in hammers and sickles, and slogans about the need for socialism. What the capitalist propagandists will not admit, but masses of people in the Third World know, is that socialism is the only system that has ever come near to providing a solution to mass poverty and devastation.
A one-day trip to Pokhara in Nepal confirmed this for me more than anything. On our trek up to the small town of Sarangkot, 2300 metres above sea level, I was amazed to see every house covered in hammers and sickles and political graffiti.
These people were miles from Kathmandu, where the main political actions and strikes were taking place. Yet for them the struggle was not something taking place among the politicians and in parliament. Change would not come from above but rather through their own struggle against the landlords and against the brutal feudal regime that kept them in poverty.
A young Nepalese woman who was on her way to fetch water joined me, and I told her that I was a member of the Democratic Socialist Party in Australia and how we expressed solidarity with their struggle in Nepal. From that point on she called out to all the hill people as we passed by their houses, "She is a communist, from Australia, she is a communist". All the people came out of their houses shouting, fists in the air, as we went past: "Hello sister, hello comrade, lal salaam (red salute)".
It is always possible to feel powerless when faced with the enormous power of capital and its repressive machinery, but there are many stories of people not giving in and standing up. In Nepal, people like to tell the story of the time during the 1990 democracy movement when they arrested the police.
In Patan, one of three cities in the Kathmandu valley, the people had organised themselves, block by block, to defend themselves against police looting, arrests and raids. They bought radios and tuned in to the police frequencies so that they could warn people when the police were going to raid. Finally, the people of Patan penned all 185 police into the main temple, releasing them only after three days.
From then until the end of the 1990 democracy struggle, the residents of Patan armed themselves with knives and pitchforks and set up committees to patrol the streets themselves. The police dared not enter.
As imperialism consolidates its hold on Third World economies through international treaties and organisations, it becomes clearer to ordinary people who has the power and who controls their lives.
As workers around the world lose their relative independence and become paid labourers of international corporations, it becomes more obvious who is exploiting them. In Colombo I saw a very large anti-GATT demonstration including some interesting street theatre by a peasant group: a poor peasant was held under whip and harness by the government. Behind the government stood a figure dressed up as Uncle Sam, and he held all the reins.
End of isolation
There is an increasing integration of countries through the world capitalist market. The imperialist powers have at their disposal much more sophisticated tools of control, such as satellite communications, global media networks and high tech rapid deployment forces.
Our struggles can no longer take place in isolated villages or factories or communities. The urban centres need to link up with the rural centres and then they need to link up with movements internationally. We need to make the links with organisations in the Third World so that we can be aware of what our government is doing there.
In East Timor and Bougainville, the people are fighting armed forces that are funded by our government. We need to take up the struggle here, demand that our government withdraw its funding. The terrain of the struggle is as much here as it is in Timor or Bougainville. Solidarity and support are not something that we can passively participate in; they require us to organise, raise awareness and conduct campaigns.
Too often people see struggle as something that happens only in the Third World, irrelevant to Australia. We have to realise, before it is too late, that the struggle is an international one. Unless we take up solidarity campaigns in the First World, we will leave our friends in the Third World fighting a battle against our governments that they cannot win alone. But with our support to build an international movement, there's no telling what we can achieve.
[This is an abridged version of a talk presented to the Campaigning for Democratic Socialism conference held in Sydney over the Easter weekend.]