|
|
|
|
||
|
A WORLD FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFITS!
BUILD THE PROTESTS AGAINST THE FTAA AND WTO!
Resolution adopted by the Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada, Toronto, Oct. 9-10, 1999
(This article is from the Oct. 16-31, 1999 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.)
THE FINAL YEARS of the 20th century have been a period of growing instability of the global imperialist system. Even a recent International Monetary Fund report called the 1990s a period of "unstable macroeconomic conditions," marked by falling growth rates, currency and banking crises, price collapses and other crisis phenomena which "are not particularly reassuring."
The reality is that a decade after capitalism's "triumph," the global gap between rich and poor countries, and between the transnational corporations and the world's working people, is growing ever wider. On the one hand, we see the astonishing concentration of vast wealth in the hands of a tiny number of billionaires and TNCs; on the other hand, unemployment, mass poverty, disease, inequality, famines, environmental degradation, violence and wars threaten the lives of billions of people across the planet. Increasingly, the major imperialist powers decide unilaterally when to use military might to enforce their dictates, as seen in the bombings of Yugoslavia and Iraq.
But the struggle is also building to win a world for people, not for profits, putting the needs of people and the environment come before the greed of the TNCs and the super-rich. Mass resistance is growing against neo-liberalism and capitalist globalization. Struggle by struggle, strike by strike, country by country, working people are fighting back to defend hard won economic gains and social programs, to save the environment, and to reverse the elimination of national sovereignty by the TNCs. One of the most outstanding successes in this resistance came in 1998, when world wide protests were instrumental in forcing the OECD to shelve the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, which had been touted as "a global bill of rights for the corporations."
Still, the process of capitalist globalization keeps gaining momentum, often disguised as "trade liberalisation." This fall, two major gatherings of corporate and government leaders in North America will seek to accelerate this process.
First, trade ministers of the western hemisphere countries will meet Nov. 4 in Toronto to discuss the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a pact which would expand NAFTA to cover the entire region. Along with plans for a hemispheric military force under Washington's command, the FTAA would help to secure the entire region as a virtual fortress for the interests of US-based transnational capital and the biggest corporations in other countries of the Americas.
Then at the end of November, world political and business leaders will gather in Seattle for the "Millennium Round" of World Trade Organization talks. With its sweeping powers to rule on trade and investment issues, the WTO has the capacity to wipe out any meaningful exercise of sovereignty by individual countries. A world economy operating under WTO rules would be one in which the corporate drive for profits would always override the interest of working people demanding better wages and social programs and the need for a clean environment.
Major protests against the FTAA and WTO meetings are being mobilized by the labour and people's movements. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada expresses our complete solidarity with these protests, which are a top priority for our work in the coming weeks. We urge the entire labour movement and all Canadians who support democracy and social justice to take part in these crucial protests, the next major step in the struggle to build a massive, cross-Canada and international movement to stop capitalist globalisation and to win support for a genuine people's alternative to neoliberalism.
Rather than simply calling for some protections of labour rights and the environment within the globalization pacts, such a people's alternative should focus on fundamental changes to the global economy: abrogation of the WTO, FTAA and other imperialist trade pacts; redistribution of wealth; cancelling the debt load of developing countries; reconstruction of world economic relations on the basis of fair trade; a just and environmentally sound international division of labour; curbs on cross-border currency and commodity speculation; a new International Charter of Labour and Environmental Rights and Responsibilities, and an end to militarism and war.
Within Canada, such a people's alternative should focus on jobs, democracy and sovereignty, including: pull out of the FTA and NAFTA, other steps to defend Canadian sovereignty, public ownership and control of the banking and finance sector, policies to make full employment the main goal (such as the 32 hour work week with no cut in pay), protection of collective bargaining rights, progressive tax reform, constitutional changes to recognize the rights of Quebec and the First Nations, and strong action against sexism, racism and homophobia.
The sweeping changes in technology and productivity in Canada and around the world make it possible for working people to achieve such gains, but only through massive political action. The struggle against capitalist globalization is the struggle for a new world, a world for people, not profits!
|
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||
