9-09-05, 8:56 am
Dear Comrades,
Let me first of all thank the Communist Party of Britain for making this arrangement possibly.
The subjects for this workshop are very important, and, off course, not easy to discuss in depth in a short time.
Neo-Liberalism
In our opinion globalization and imperialism today cannot be analysed separately from neo-liberalism.
Neo-liberalism is inseparable from globalization and from the capitalism of today.
It is a combination of extreme exploitation, some times in new forms; it is a combination of domestic political, economic and ideological pressures, backed up by international pressure and military force if necessary.
Globalization is generally presented as an inescapable process (nearly as a natural phenomenon) leading to greater competition (which is regarded as a positive phenomenon), welfare improvements and the spread of democracy around the world.
But globalization is the international face of neo-liberalism. A worldwide strategy of accumulation of capital in an alliance between the ruling class of the United States of America and other centres of the developed capitalist world and locally dominant capitalist groups.
The neo-liberalists are talking about 'more market and less state'. But in reality neo-liberalism is a systematic exploitation of the governments and the peoples in especially the poorer and the poorest countries in the narrow interests of finance capital and the trans-national companies.
The power and importance of the state-monopolistic capitalism is not declining - on the contrary!
But the case is that the governments more and more directly becomes an important tool for the finance capital and monopolies and under new, never seen forms.
New markets are exploited, e.g. the former socialist countries, and the third world are experiencing an extreme exploitation. But also in the high developed capitalist countries new possibilities of making profits are found.
One of the new ways are trough the so-called 'deregulation' in the form of extensive privatisations, higher charges for the users of public service, 'flexible' labour markets with small minimum wages, cut downs in pensions and unemployment-benefits, changes in the tax systems in favour of the richest, etc. This all leads to a greater gap between the poor and the rich.
The exploitation finds new forms. The latest figures from the EU and USA shows, that the profits are the highest in many years.
Neo-liberalism is also increased suppression of the populations, fight against the trade unions and all democratic and popular organisations. And with the US-inspired terror-legislation after 9/11 it is also a direct attack on democracy. Therefore I believe, that you can conclude that neo-liberalism is the economical, political, ideological and military main doctrine today for the modern capitalism and imperialism. And it is very important to realise, that the greatest enemy to mankind is the US-imperialism.
This is not just caused by a Mr. Bush or by his advisers. They are just the tools. The thread is caused by the strong American companies' aggressive strategy in trying to reach world command and hegemony.
The Third World Poverty, Aid and The G8-plan for Africa
More than 2 billion people especially in the Third World have less than 2 dollars per day for living, and 13 million children dies every year from starvation or curable illnesses.
The Third World has paid 5400 billions of dollars in repayments and interests since 1982 to the rich part of the world, or, more correctly, to the rich in the rich parts. But still the total debts of the third world have in the same period grown from about 1000 billion dollars to 2500 billion dollars.
This is the result of the so-called Washington-consensus, which is deeply inspired by neo-liberalism.
No loans or help from The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund or from individual countries are granted without demands to the receivers – demands on cutting down of the public sector including education and health systems, liberalisation of the access for the trans-national companies to the national economies, extensive privatisations especially of water and electricity supply and telecommunication, etc.
All these demands lead to dislocations and disorder in the third world's economies and tie the countries in poverty and under repression.
The 22 rich countries, the members of The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, granted in 2003 in total 0,25 % of their gross national income to development assistance to developing countries. But the goal as decided by the United Nations General Assembly back in 1970 was 0,7 %!
Tony Blair's proposal for a debt relief for the poorest countries, which shall be discussed on the G8-Summit in a few days, will just be as a drop in the ocean.
And as far as I understand it, new demands will follow the proposed debt relief: the poor countries shall even more than before accept the demands from the rich countries on the next Summit in The World Trade Organization in December in Hong Kong. First and foremost this includes more liberalisation and privatisations in the poor countries.
Therefore I will not give much for the Report of Tony Blair's Commission for Africa.
As Naomi Klein wrote: Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest place on Earth, is also the most profitable investment destination: It offers the highest returns on foreign direct investment of any region in the world.
Tony Blair's Third Road with a so-called ethical foreign policy is nothing but neo-imperialism.
This was among others stressed by the British chancellor Gordon Brown, as he under a visit to Africa said, that 'The time where Great Britain had to ask for excuse for itscolonial history has now ended'.
The same was the case when the former adviser for Tony Blair in Foreign Affairs, Robert Cooper, talked about the necessity of a new type of imperialism which is capable of creating order in the world.
Military expenses/rearmament the United States' official development assistance to developing countries was 0,15 % of its gross national income in 2003.
But far the biggest part of this assistance was decided on the background of the US geo-policy that is based on the US' imperialistic interests.
On the same time US spends more than 3 % of its gross national product on military rearmament. This is half of the total spending on military equipment in the whole world!
Globally the situation is quite similar to the time of the cold war: In 2004 the total military spending reached 1.035 billion dollars, while the international development assistance just reached about 77 billion dollars, a little more than 7 %!
The world's military expenses are growing in an explosive manner – and the development assistance is declining!
And we have to remember that these today's military conditions are closely connected to the American companies' desire of reaching global dominance.
This is a very serious thread on peace in the world and on every population, who wants another way of development than the neo-liberalistic.
EU a new super-power?
In the EU you now hear worried words saying, that the EU-countries just spend one third of what the US is spending on military equipment and only one fifth of the US-spending on military research.
This has generated a pressure on all EU countries on spending at least 2% of their gross national product on military.
Some progressive forces in Europe and throughout the world have made the mistake to consider the EU as a counterbalance to the hegemony of the US. Nothing could be more wrong than that theory.
The European Union represents the big companies established in Europe, and they are not in any way different from those in America or anywhere else in the world.
The main task of the companies is to secure and enlarge their profit and their access to the global markets. To do that, they send young workers into war and have them killed, and they have innocent civilians killed in the very same wars if it serves their interests.
The war on Iraq and the preparations of it is an excellent example on how they carry out their policy.
The creation of a new capitalist superpower can be compared with the situation that lead to World War I, only on a different level.
The theory, that the EU should be able to perform a better imperialism than the US, is comparable with the discussions in the international labour movement before World War I. Socialist MPs throughout Europe voted in favour of increasing military budgets to secure the interests of their national working class, they said. The results are well known.
With the draft of a new EU-treaty, they are trying to create an EU-constitution building on neo-liberalistic principles. This is the main reason for the people's reactions against the treaty. The overwhelming majority of the peoples do not want their countries to develop into neo-liberalistic and imperialistic powers.
'The anti-globalization Movement'
I have a great respect for those leading people in, that we in lack of better words can call The anti-globalization Movement.
Books and articles by Naomi Klein as 'No Logo', Susan George's 'Another World is possible if.' and Noreena Hertz's 'The Silent Takeover' are important and necessary. They are important contributions to a critic of different sides of the capitalist globalisation process. And criticism is necessary; it can create clarification and a sound and basic understanding.
But criticism alone cannot make it – and the criticism must by very target and analytical on a scientific basis – if not it will not bring us any further.
These good people are criticising some of the effects of modern capitalism and imperialism.
They want to roll-back neo-liberalism. But they do not recognize the very close connection between neo-liberalism, capitalism and imperialism.
Struggle against neo-liberalism is a struggle against capitalism and imperialism and struggle for socialism!
In Denmark the Socialist People's Party has put forward a plan for a more social EU. The idea is to get the peoples of Denmark and Europe to accept the EU-treaty if it is followed by a more 'social' content.
One of their main concepts is the concept of sustainable competition.
Competition under capitalism is first and foremost the question of wages - ore more precisely of the size of the profit. And hence it is the question of exploitation of labour and the working class. There is no sustainable competition – it is nonsense. There is no sustainable exploitation.
And neo-liberalism cannot be changed into a 'human' capitalism or imperialism. A sustainable capitalism or a sustainable imperialism is impossible!
Imperialism and capitalism cannot be controlled in a progressive direction or in a sustainable direction.
It is an old reformist way of thinking, which has refined and hidden the exploitation and suppression, not at least by an intense ideological struggle against the working class and other segments and groups of the population. This has clearly been shown by the recent examples in the so-called welfare-states. But of course some progress has been achieved since the born of capitalism as a result of a strong working class and the struggle of the trade unions and other popular organisations. But these historical achieved results are now under intense attack.
The social democratic parties in Europe are today among the warmest advocators of neo-liberalism, this holds for Blair in Great Britain, for Schr? in Germany and for the Danish social democratic party.
It is useful to gather the forces against neo-liberalism as an aggressive form of capitalism and imperialism. But neo-liberalism is nothing but capitalism in its present historic form. It is therefore only possible to fight neo-liberalism if its root – the capitalism system as such – is the final target of the activities.
And for this there actually exists good conditions. It is necessary to understand that the population in almost all countries are in an objective contradiction to the monopolistic capitalism.
Hence the great task is to build anti-monopolistic alliances. And this hold for the struggle against privatisation of the water supply in Peru and for the struggle for the right of the poor countries for having a sovereign economic and political development and a fair access to the world market – as it holds for the struggle for a denationalisation of the railways in Great Britain, against the introduction of student's fees on higher educational institutions in France, for the struggle against the Hartz-IV-plan in Germany or the activities against the introduction of payment for former free public services in Denmark.
Trough their active participations in concrete fights, struggles and activities – small or big – people will gather their own experience.
The creation of broad anti-monopolistic alliances is the only hope for the beating back of neo-liberalism and imperialism.
This is the only way to create the basis, from which new steps towards an anti-monopolistic democracy can be taken. This can make the power of the people so strong, that it will make the success possible – and from here it will be possible to go further on the necessary road to socialism.
As we say in out parties' main slogan: People's power against the power of money!
FromSolidarity Network
-- Hans Christian Andersen is international secretary for the Communist Party in Denmark, KPiD. This speech was delivered at the workshop on The EU, Neo-Liberalism and The Third World Poverty, Sunday 3 July 2005, Edinburgh
