TO THE
CONFERENCE OF COMMUNITIES AGAINST CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION: LINKING HUMAN,
ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES
UC
Santa Barbara, April 15-16, 2000
Friends,
Let me express warmest greetings of solidarity to you all as participants of this conference. I am glad that you are holding this conference in support of the mass action focused on the IMF-World Bank meeting in Washington, DC We must carry out resolutely and militantly the struggle against US imperialism and its instruments, the IMF, World Bank and the WTO.
I am grateful to the Revolutionary Anti-imperialist League, the Campus Labor Action Coalition, Increase the Peace Rainforest Alliance, Asian Pacific Student Union, Black Student Union, American Indian Student Association, Amnesty International, Santa Barbara Green Party and all the other organizing groups for inviting me to give some remarks on the topic of this conference.
This is important and timely, especially for the communities of color in the United States. You need to confront the oppressiveness and exploitativeness of so-called globalization and find ways of struggling against it. In this regard, as you have announced, you take up and link the human, environmental and social issues.
Globalization is a smart alecky word that the monopoly bourgeoisie, academic pedants, the bourgeois media and imperialist-funded NGOs use in order to supplant the term imperialism and pass off monopoly capitalism as “free competition” or “free market” capitalism.
US imperialism wants to make it appear as an irresistible fact of life the explosive cocktail of two contradictory aspects: the rising social character of production, particularly in the adoption of higher technology, on the one hand and the unabashed rapacity of monopoly capitalist ownership in the name of laissez faire on the other hand.
It is inherent to capitalism that when higher technology is adopted, the bourgeois owners of the means of production has to cut down the cost of labor in order to pull off the profits and counter the tendency of the rate of profit to fall with the expansion of commodity production.
The problem confronting capitalism, especially monopoly capitalism, is that cutting down the cost of labor means shrinking the market. This leads to what is called the crisis of overproduction. The bust follows the boom at the expense of the working people. It can lead to the worst, like the Great Depression, the two world wars, high military spending and wars of aggression during and after the cold war.
The adoption of higher technology for the purpose of profit-making accelerates the overconcentration and centralization of both productive and finance capital in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie.
Consider further the neoliberal policy shift from Keynesianism. You get the unbridled rapacity of the monopoly bourgeoisie, using the imperialist state to accelerate the delivery of public resources to the monopoly firms and banks.
Under the neoliberal dogma of “free market”, the state openly abandons its social pretenses, cuts back on the hard-won social benefits won by the working class and the people, carries out the attack on workers’ rights and on their wage and living conditions, increases the tax burden and yet grants tax exemptions to the monopoly firms and banks, fattens them up with state contracts and subsidies under various pretexts and allows them to mess up with the lives of the people and their environment.
Before Reagan adopted neoliberalism as the official ideology of the US, Keynesian state intervention used to be regarded as the caretaker of social interest and as the antidote to economic crisis and to the rise of socialism until the phenomenon of stagflation arose in the late 1960 and early 1970’s as a result of heavy military spending in the cold war and the full reconstruction of Japan and Germany, resulting in the intensification of interimperialist economic competition.
The dominant neoliberal ideology obsessively blames supposedly rising wage levels and social spending by government as the cause of inflation and as the hindrance to economic growth. The monopoly bourgeoisie insults the working class by saying in so many words that this class is a parasite or a mere beast of burden and by denying that it is the creator of social wealth. The monopoly bourgeoisie curses social spending and loves military spending and acts of aggression.
US imperialism is self-satisfied with the myth of the “free market” for drawing superprofits from the US working class, especially the much cheaper mass of recent immigrants, as well as from the oppressed peoples abroad who are made to suffer the rigors of the neocolonial and neoliberal policy of denationalization, liberalization, privatization and deregulation.
In comparison with their counterpart in the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and the retrogressive countries of the former Soviet bloc, workers in the US get far higher wages, especially in absolute amounts. These do not take into account the higher cost of living, which reduces the advantage of the workers in the US.
But the rate of exploitation in the US is also far higher if we relate the higher productivity and the huge surplus value that the monopoly bourgeoisie extracts from the values that the workers create.
The US boasts of a high rate of economic growth and a high level of unemployment in comparison to the European Union and Japan. But consider that the US has the lead in high technology and high finance and offers high profits in these areas and thus attracts direct investments from Europe and Japan. Consider further the overvaluation of assets which bloats the gross domestic product.
The so-called new economy of high-tech propelled economic growth without inflation is actually a big bubble about to burst due to the emerging overproduction of high-tech consumer goods, like computers, telecomm and software and also due to the inflation of financial assets.
The so-called high employment level in the US involves the massacre of regular jobs and replacement of these by untenured, part-time jobs. When the bubble bursts or when they simply age into retirement, the huge number of part-timers will find themselves in great trouble, with their high level of indebtedness and to the lack or dearth of social security.
The US bubble is still growing. But it is bound burst because the crisis of overproduction within the US as well as within the world capitalist system as a whole press upon it. Intensified competition among the imperialist powers and the continuous destruction of productive forces in the third world and in the retrogressive countries betrayed by modern revisionism spell the contraction of the world market for every imperialist power.
The workers of all races in the US are increasingly insecure. But the entire communities of color are in a far worse situation than the workers of white European ancestry. They are by far the worst victims of oppression and exploitation in the US. I refer to the American Indians, African Americans, the Hispanics, Asians and others.
You suffer the highest rate of exploitation and the highest proportion of joblessness, part-time work, low pay, homelessness, indebtedness and impoverishment. You have the least opportunities in jobs, education, promotion, social security and medical insurance. You have the highest proportion of those in rundown housing, in the streets and in prisons. You are the main target of cutbacks on social benefits and on affirmative action and of the aggrandizement of the giant corporations.
The US economy is built on the superexploitation of the communities of color. The surplus product is drawn from them, from the time that the African American produced the agricultural surpluses in cotton and tobacco and the Chinese coolies laid the railways, the Hispanics and Asians in agricultural, industrial and service enterprises and lately the Asian “wetbacks” of Silicon valley.
You know better than I do the concrete conditions, policies and actions by which the US oppressors and exploiters discriminate against you and impose on you far higher rates of exploitation. Special attention must be paid to the plight of the women, youth and children.
I am deeply pleased that your conference is meant to clarify the situation of the communities of color and what you can do in order to fight for your national dignity, democratic rights and justice in every respect.
I venture to say that only by arousing, organizing and mobilizing themselves can the communities of color struggle and reap the fruits of their struggle. From where I come, the Philippines, the people are waging all forms of struggle, principally armed struggle, in the new-democratic revolution, against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
The imperialist monster, masquerading as “free market” globalization, has unleashed the worst forms of oppression and exploitation. It has been able to go on a rampage because of the assistance given to it by modern revisionists and reformists, causing the restoration of capitalism in socialist countries and undermining the revolutionary movements for decades. The people are now undergoing intolerable suffering but are driven to wage revolutionary struggle.
There is the common cause of struggle among the communities of color in the US and the nations of color abroad. They must stand together in unity and struggle against US imperialism.
When people of color throughout the world stand up and fight US imperialism, the way opens up for greater freedom for all of races humanity. I am certain that, as the global crisis of overproduction and the new world disorder worsens, the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the people for national liberation and democracy and for socialism will surge forward and win greater victories. ###