By Danny Fairfax
On November 30, 1999, 75,000 people converged on Seattle to successfully stop the World Trade Organisation trade talks. Taking inspiration from that momentous event, similar actions have taken place around the world in opposition to the world's corporate and government leaders wherever they meet.
Washington D.C., Davos, Melbourne (S11), Prague, Seoul, Nice, Quebec and, most recently, Gothenburg have been the sites of mass protests against corporate globalisation, with each involving more and more people.
On May 1, 20,000 activists blockaded stock exchanges and key corporate headquarters in Australia's major cities and showed that the mobilisations are not only confined to dogging global capitalist gatherings (known as "summit-hopping").
Supporters of capitalist globalisation are scratching their heads in bemusement at why tens of thousands of people are protesting. According to them, "globalisation", that is, the elimination of trade barriers and tariffs to ensure a smooth global flow of capital, will benefit all. Everybody wins in their scenario: First World and Third World, rich and poor. All our problems will be solved. Hunger, poverty, disease and war will vanish.
In reality, corporate globalisation helps just one group in society: big corporations and their owners, primarily First World-based multinational corporations. The facts are plain: Third World countries which have opened themselves to free trade are not reaping the benefits. Instead they are locked in a vicious cycle of debt.
Poverty
Third World debt is growing at alarming levels. It is now as high as US$2.6 trillion, up from US$609 billion in 1980. Many countries are just able to pay the interest installments. Often they have to borrow to service the debt repayments, receiving "bail out packages" from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These bail outs always come with strict guidelines that impose "streamlining" on the recipient's economy, meaning the slashing of public spending, privatisation and the elimination of protection for local industries. This warps Third World economies even more in favour of multinational corporations and against their own peoples.
While corporations are making record profits, untold poverty is rocketing. The number of undernourished people in the world has risen from 570 million in 1981 to more than 800 million now. The Third World is getting a much smaller slice of the pie. In 1960, the income of the world's richest 20% was 30 times that of the poorest 20%. Now that figure is 74:1.
This is what capitalist globalisation has achieved. Even much-trumpeted success stories, like the Asian "tiger" economies, have hit the wall in recent years.
The hypocrisy of the world capitalist powers is astonishing. Asking the Third World countries, whose economies have been stunted and malformed by centuries of colonialism and national oppression, to trade on a "level playing field" with the industrialised countries is like asking a six-year-old to fight Mike Tyson.
While pressing Third World countries to abolish trade barriers, the rich countries are steadfastly refusing to lower their own tariffs. With the implementation of the Uruguay Round agreements (the precursor to the Seattle talks) the average tariff imposed by the industrialised countries on imports from the poorest countries will be 30% higher than the average tariffs levied on imports from other industrialised countries.
Who benefits?
Working people in the First World are not benefiting from the capitalist system, far from it. The ill effects of the system are more than evident right here in Australia.
Just look at the Villawood detention centre. Smack in the middle of western Sydney suburbia is a concentration camp where refugees are detained for the heinous "crime" of escaping persecution and oppression.
Just look at the recent collapses of telecommunications company One.Tel and insurance corporation HIH. While the bosses get away with mansions worth millions and their huge fortunes intact, the companies' workers are left without a job and the entitlements they are owed. Thousands of customers are shafted. At the Metroshelf factory in Revesby in Sydney, 70 workers were recently sacked just for joining a union that the boss did not approve of.
And look at the situation of home workers in Australia, mostly migrant women, who are paid $1-2 an hour, for 12-hour days, to make garments which companies like Nike sell for more than $100.
Women are doubly affected. Most have to put up with the double burden of working and then doing the housework when they get home. Women workers get, on average, just 70% of the male wage, despite the fact that there has supposedly been wage equality for years. Women are far more heavily represented in casual and part-time jobs than men and have a much lower level of union membership. If that weren't enough, women are constantly bombarded with sexist images in advertising and in the mass media. The incessant message is that their bodies are not good enough, that they must look slimmer, younger and sexier.
Capitalism is causing unprecedented environmental damage. Sustaining the environment just doesn't enter into company balance sheets, and most are more than happy to degrade the environment if they can turn a profit out of it.
It is this system that allows former World Bank vice-president Lawrence Summers to say, "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."
This will only get worse if the WTO gets its way, as national environmental standards and regulations will be on the chopping block.
Resistance
This seems a pretty bleak picture, but it doesn't have to be like this. Already, hundreds of thousands of people have made a stand in recent months. In the First World — in Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Nice, Quebec, at M1 in Australia and in Gothenburg — thousands of people were prepared to demonstrate against the core institutions of world capitalism. You can bet that for each person at the protests, there are many more who supported their stand against global capital.
It is not just people in the First World who are fighting back against capitalism. People in the Third World have been engaged in struggles against neo-colonialism and imperialism for decades.
In Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been waging a guerilla struggle for more than 30 years against the US government-supported regime and the drug lords. The FARC now control more than 30% of Colombia's territory.
In Indonesia, workers and students overthrew the corrupt Suharto dictatorship in 1998. Now they face the potential return of the forces they deposed. The Indonesian government is once again beginning to crack down on radical activists, as the June 8 smashing of the Asia-Pacific People's Solidarity Conference by police showed. However that has not stopped further demonstrations, including a three-day general strike in Bandung soon after.
In South Korea, Daewoo workers have been on strike for several months after being summarily dismissed. On June 12, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions began rolling strikes to protest against the Kim Dae-jung regime's growing neo-liberal attacks, with 50,000 workers striking on the first day.
Socialism
The most heroic struggle has been that of the Cuban people. Forty-two years ago, they successfully overthrew the Batista dictatorship. Since then, despite the vehement opposition and blatant attacks from the world's most powerful superpower — the US government — this small island 190 kilometres south of Florida has shown that there is an alternative to the capitalist system. They have shown that there is an alternative to neoliberal corporate globalisation. That alternative is socialism. A system in which it is the entire society that makes the key decisions, not a handful of selfish mega-rich men.
The achievements of Cuba, which 42 years ago was the second least developed country in Latin America and has faced an economic blockade imposed by the US almost since the revolution, are remarkable. Cubans enjoy First World standards of health, nutrition and education. No Cuban is without food, accommodation or a job. They have managed to achieve this because they have discarded capitalism, and thus discarded exploitation, oppression and inequality.
Cuba serves as a great example of how ordinary people can change things. If the Cuban people have managed to achieve all that they have under the most difficult conditions, there is no reason to believe that a socialist Australia — a very wealthy First World country with vast resources — could not make vastly greater strides forward, to the benefit of the Australian people and the region.
We don't have to stop at merely halting further attacks by the capitalist system. United in action, just as we were at S11 or M1, only on a larger scale, we can overthrow the capitalist system. We can set up a democratic socialist society, in which the people, not faceless corporations and their billionaire owners, exercise power.
And we can do this on a global scale. We will be able to ensure a globalisation that enriches people, not exploits them, and that allows free movement of people, not capital.
Next steps
In Australia, the next major anti-capitalist protests will be around the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). On October 3-5, there will be a blockade of the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) Forum in Melbourne, where big business heads will meet with Commonwealth government representatives. On October 6-8 in Brisbane, there will be protests at the CHOGM meeting itself. These will be the next steps taken by the movement that began at the September 11-13 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne and at M1.
Resistance will be helping to organise the mobilisations against CHOGM and the CBC. We see these as an important focus of the developing anti-capitalist movement. Resistance is also involved in the campaign to free the refugees and wholeheartedly supports the Socialist Alliance, which brings together this country's socialist groups and parties to contest the next federal election.
If you are serious about fighting against capitalism and building a better society, then join Resistance. Visit the Resistance web site at <http://www.resistance.org.au>.