BY MAX LANE
The following speech was the opening presentation to the final plenary session of the Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference held in Sydney, March 29-April 1. Max Lane is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party and national chairperson of Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific.
Certain very significant new developments in world politics — developments taking place over the last few years — have marked all recent national and international discussions on the left and among all the movements against corporate globalisation, war, militarism, racism and colonialism.
The first of these new developments was the string of major militant anti-globalisation mobilisations that began with the Seattle protests in November 1999 and which have continued in the major First World countries, with the latest mobilisation being the massive March 16 protest in Barcelona attended by 500,000 people.
In Australia the rise of the anti-globalisation and global solidarity sentiment was manifested in the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in 2000 followed by the May Day blockades of Australian stock exchanges in 2001.
Despite the massive propaganda offensive by the United States to win support for its plans for global domination and for the deepening of neo-liberal globalisation, the movement launched in Seattle is continuing.
The second of these new developments is, of course, the US war drive, initiated with the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan, followed up by the insertion of US troops into the Philippines, and the general US support for the Israeli war drive against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people. It also seems certain that the US will soon launch attacks on Iraq.
This US war drive is parallelled with the escalation of the less publicised wars in Latin America, in particular Colombia.
The US war drive is being met with anti-war campaigns in several countries, with big anti-war mobilisations in Italy and Britain in particular.
How to bring together the anti-corporate globalisation movement and the anti-war movements has been one of the issues which has been discussed throughout this conference.
A third new development has been the crisis in Argentina, reminding us all that the economic crisis of global capitalism and the neo-liberal offensive of imperialism is threatening the very existence of any semblance of a civilised life in nation after nation of the Third World.
Such a scenario of barbarism no doubt faces the peoples of the First World some time sooner or later down the track too. But it faces so many peoples of the Third World right now. In this sense, perhaps, we shouldn't classify it as a new development but rather a new reminder of a longer existing reality.
This imposition of barbaric exploitation and domination on the Third World has been a feature of imperialism since its very beginning — giving birth to massive popular struggles, wars of national liberation and revolutions throughout the 20th century.
For us in the imperialist countries, Seattle symbolises the restarting of something that had disappeared for many decades. In the Third World popular struggle against imperialism and its comprador ruling elites has been permanent now for more than a century.
The fourth new development has been a political process within the anti-globalisation movement, among the resistances against the offensives of imperialism, which has come, at least partially, to be symbolised by the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre and the initiatives for other regional social forums, such as the European Social Forum to be held in Florence this year.
This is the process of seeking greater collaboration, convergence, coordination between all those movements, organisations, institutions, individuals who have taken a stand and are moving against corporate globalisation, as well as now opposing the US war drive.
The 1998 Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference here in Sydney, the 2001 Asia Pacific Peoples Solidarity Conference in Jakarta and now this conference have also been a modest part of this process.
The reality is that the capitalist classes' offensives against the oppressed classes and peoples of the world have provoked a rise in resistance — both a resistance of the immediate victims of intensified exploitation and oppression and war as well as a rise in resistance generated by a moral rejection and sense of solidarity by those who are not yet suffering the full force of the intensification of exploitation and oppression.
We all know that these new resistances are developing unevenly. They are developing unevenly from country to country, region to region and even continent to continent. We know that they take many different forms, which give them different capacities to sustain themselves and to grow and threaten ruling elites, their corporations and states.
There are huge movements that have sprung out of a single issue, such as against landlessness in Brazil, but are seeking ways to become even something more than that. There are national liberation movements. In some places it is the labour movement providing the motor. There are so many different combinations of movements, organisations and sectors that we can find in the united front struggles that exist from country to country.
We know too that the political agendas of the different elements inside these combinations of resistances are also uneven. In any case, this has always been the case in politics and is nothing new.
There are people mobilised by a single issue and far from having an anti-system consciousness — they too are out in the streets, in both First and Third World. But there are more and more people mobilising around many different issues, and who do sense that there is a system behind all the horrors in the world, who do respond to the slogan: people before profits. These more radical layers can mobilise now in their hundreds of thousands, whether in India, Argentina or Barcelona.
Among this most important layer there is also unevenness: many can sense the existence of a system; many can identify or name capitalism as the system; but the idea of turning the movement as a whole into a conscious force to replace capitalism with something different and of developing a strategy to do this has not yet become the dominant idea of these resistances.
Without this jump in consciousness the movement will remain confined to protesting against the excesses of capitalism. It will remain a movement to present a counter-power to capitalist power rather to replace capitalist power with popular power. It will remain a movement that implicitly accepts the permanence of capitalism and seeks strategies for reforming the system rather than replacing it.
All this unevenness — in form, size, geographic spread and consciousness — set the agenda of struggle for those of us who are Marxists and socialists: we want to deepen the political consciousness, strengthen the forms of struggle and help the movement become a vehicle for revolutionary social change.
But achieving this depends on and requires the current resistance to war and globalisation, in all its unevenness and different forms, to continue to grow. We want more Seattles, Genoas, Barcelonas and Melbournes. We want more Suhartos overthrown, more colonial oppression defeated by mass struggle, more of the International Monetary Fund's austerity programs to be blocked by mass struggle, more delays and defeats for the World Trade Organisation.
In Australia, this is our challenge with building the refugees' rights, anti-racist and anti-war movements and in revitalising our trade unions and presenting a dynamic socialist alternative in elections.
We all have our challenges in the national arenas, in developing movements that can and will eventually lead us to finally settling matters with our own capitalist rulers. We will all get on with doing this.
But the neo-liberal offensive of imperialism and the war drive by the US are also global. Imperialism is taking global and regional initiatives. That is why the various resistances must also organise our own convergences, gatherings and global and regional action initiatives. This is an essential part of the movements in each national setting also becoming stronger.
We need a stronger process of convergence and coordination to happen. Of course, here too, we need not just more and bigger, but better too: a deeper consciousness here too. We must enter the arena and struggle for that also.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the Asia-Pacific solidarity conferences have helped bring together some of the forces, especially the socialist forces. We will need more initiatives to strengthen these specific links — more exchanges, more attendance at each other's national gatherings, more dialogue and discussion, more coordinated action. We will find the ways to do this.
But there is more to do to bring together an even broader range of forces opposed, in one form or another, at one level or another, to neo-liberal globalisation, war and militarism, racism and colonialism. This is what we are all doing anyway in our national settings — building whatever united fronts are possible.
We must take such initiatives regionally as well. We must engage with the process that is symbolised by Porto Alegre and reflected in the Social Forum initiatives in other regions.
There is so much struggle, so many resistances in Asia and the Pacific, and still only minimal coordination. The restricted nature of the regional gatherings means the process of radicalisation is slowed. It means also that the process of organising real coordinated actions throughout the region is limited.
So we must and we will engage.
There have been many exchanges, discussions, chats, and dialogues among comrades from the region about how to do this. There are a few ideas that have, I think, crystallised out of these exchanges.
We must state and declare our engagement. We can do this immediately by declaring our support for the Call for Mobilisation that was issued by a big section of the participants at the last World Social Forum. This conference should add its name to this call. As many of the parties, people's organisations and campaigns represented at this conference should add their names to its list of supporters.
We must declare our willingness to take some of the responsibility for furthering the process and our desire for this process of uniting resistances to also be built out of the struggles here in our own region, in Asia and the Pacific.
At the last World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, a formal proposal was made that in 2004 the World Social Forum should be held in India. This conference should declare its support for this proposal, for the WSF to meet in India in 2004, and we should set ourselves the task of helping motivate this proposal throughout the Asia-Pacific region and globally.
A successful international convergence of all those in struggle against neo-liberal globalisation and war in India in 2004 will require much work and struggle by all of us here. Of course, a significant part of the burden, challenge and opportunities will fall upon the movement in India. But it will require a general regional collective effort in which the socialist current, most of us here, must also strive to foster, support and, by our arguments, help lead these efforts.
So there are other things we must do.
Any already planned regional meetings must be utilised to push the process of coordination and convergence forward. One particularly important opportunity to make sure that the interests and the movements in the Pacific are properly represented in this whole process will be the gatherings of activists that take place at the time of the next South Pacific Forum summit in Fiji in August.
But there needs to be more than this.
I would like to propose that this conference issue the call that all the organisations here today meet again in a year's time for another regional gathering. Central to its agenda should be discussion and planning of how to ensure the best possible engagement within the Asia-Pacific region with the whole process of deepening the global collaboration and convergence among the movements against neo-liberal globalisation and war. In this respect, we should issue the call for all those in the region, in whatever form they are engaging in this struggle — parties, NGOs, trade unions, peasant organisations, national liberation movements, whatever — to join us at this gathering next year.
The comrades from the Philippines, from the BMP trade union federation, the Socialist Party of Labour and the Resource Centre for Peoples Development have offered to form a committee to host this gathering in Manila.
There is one more thing. We need, I think, to make another statement, another declaration even as we declare our engagement with this whole convergence and coordination process.
More and better regional and global gatherings and discussion — absolutely yes, that is what we support. But also more and better regional and global coordinated actions, starting now.
I would also like to propose, on behalf of all those seated here on the platform tonight, an Asia-Pacific region-wide protest action to be held on April 19 in solidarity with the people of Palestine and the Middle East as they face Israeli and US aggression.
I know for us in the Democratic Socialist Party we are driven by a particular concern or obsession. This is to contribute as much as we can to the organisation of the working people in Australia to build a powerful movement that can end the inhumanity of the capitalist system by doing away with capitalism altogether, delivering whatever blows that can be delivered to each of the specific offensives that the capitalist class here tries to impose on the people. I know this desire to "settle matters with our own bourgeoisie" is what drives all the comrades represented at this conference.
The proposals I have made have a specific idea underlying them, namely, that given the nature of our enemy — imperialism — we will be able to wage this fight better if we do more of it together.
We have made a good start over the last few years. We won't stop here though. We will engage and go further. There is a world to win and we will build the unity of struggle that is needed to win that world.
From Green Left Weekly, April 10, 2002.
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