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A WORLD FOR PEOPLE, NOT PROFITS!
May Day 2000 Statement from the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada
(This article is from the May 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
ON EVERY CONTINENT, and in nearly every country, May Day 2000 is witnessing an upsurge in working class struggles. A powerful global resistance to capitalist globalization is beginning to emerge. Millions of working people are in action against the neoliberal agenda of the transnational corporations, demanding policies for people, not profits! That call will also be heard at May Day actions across Canada this year.
This new stage in the fightback was signalled last fall by the historic Battle in Seattle. Over the last decade, workers and their allies have battled against corporations and governments, not only to defend wages and working conditions, but to stop the selloff of public assets and the destruction of social programs, and to defend the sovereignty and independence of their homelands.
In recent months, working people have conducted major strikes and other struggles in countries as far apart as Ecuador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, India, and South Africa. The brutal state repression against anti-IMF/World Bank protesters in Washington shows once again how the ruling class fears a united, militant, people's resistance.
Canadian workers are also on the move this spring, as seen by the strikes of Toronto municipal workers and school support staff in British Columbia.
The fight for genuine democratic and anti-monopoly reforms, and ultimately for working class political power, is still carried out primarily within each country. But as the interests of workers at the local, national and international level become increasingly linked, we need to forge coordinated regional and global forms of struggle.
One important step in this direction has been the building of new alliances of trade unions, women's movements, environmental groups and many other forces against the dictatorial institutions of global capital, such as the "free trade" deals, the MAI, the FTAA, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. The World March of Women 2000 is uniting women of all countries against poverty and violence, and the Jubilee 2000 campaign has put tremendous pressure on imperialist governments to cancel the huge debts which shackle Third World countries.
Another key advance this year is the tremendous expansion in the scope and size of May Day actions planned by the labour movement and its allies. The Canadian Labour Congress played an important part in this development. Delegates at the 1996 CLC convention called on the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to declare May 1, 2000 as a Day of Action for International Working Class Solidarity. This initiative was taken up around the world, not only by ICFTU affiliates but by the World Federation of Trade Unions and other labour bodies.
But to go on the offensive against the power of international capital, working people urgently need an international democratic and anti-imperialist front or alliance, forged around an alternative program that puts people before corporations. Such an alliance should be based on the principles of peace, non-aggression, and global disarmament; respect for the sovereignty of all states, for the equality and rights of all nations, large and small, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; fair and balanced trade and economic cooperation; respect and promotion of cultural diversity; and protection of the global environment.
Within Canada this May Day, the working class movement faces several critical issues: the defence of Medicare, education and other social programs against the privatisation drive by right-wing governments; the fight for the shorter work week and other measures to reduce unemployment; the need to unite working people in the First Nations, Quebec and English-speaking Canada against our common enemy, Canadian and international big capital.
On this May Day, the Communist Party of Canada declares that the tragic reversals suffered by socialism have not changed the historical direction of our epoch. Anti-imperialist awareness and militancy is growing again, and a political revival is maturing. The 21st century will see the revolutionary forces regroup to mount a decisive counter-attack against international capital, and to win socialism in Canada and around the world. For the sake of humanity, world peace and our global environment, there is no alternative!
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