|
RFALSE SENSE OF RECOVERY
AT G-20 SUMMIT IN PITTSBURGH
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle
3 October 2009
The leaders of the imperialist powers and the world’s other big economies
concluded their G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, USA and declared the capitalist
world economy on the path to recovery. They praised themselves for
arresting economic decline and stabilizing financial markets, and for
starting a reform process towards “strong, sustained and balanced growth
in the 21st century”. Again they asserted that the crisis was only due to
reckless and irresponsible financial behaviour. Since steps have begun to
be taken to rein these in they reiterated the promise that capitalism will
bring development to billions of people in the world.
But these are all self-serving declarations diverting from the
profit-driven laws of motion of capitalism and the gross reality of how
billions of working people around the world are oppressed and exploited,
denied real development, and driven into deeper suffering and
backwardness. The global economy and the people are still in deep and
acute crisis. Financial and industrial profits have momentarily risen in
relation to their steep declines since last year – but this is only
because of the unprecedented state bail-outs to monopoly capital,
cost-cutting in the form of massive lay-offs and squeezing more surplus
from the employed workforce.
Global output continues to contract, factories are still closing, millions
of jobs are still being lost, millions are losing their homes, and family
incomes and welfare continue to plunge. Conservative estimates are that
the intensified crisis will see 50-100 million additional jobless aside
from increasing the number of “working poor” to some 1.4 billion
worldwide. This additional misery is on top of how even before 2008 there
were already – again by conservative estimates – some 3.1 billion people
poor, two billion without access to clean water, one billion going hungry
every day, and 200 million outright jobless. Every year around 25 million
people were already dying from curable diseases and 500,000 mothers dying
during pregnancy and childbirth.
The touted beginnings of recovery are in any case a false dawn. They are
largely hype to try and promote investor confidence and the illusion of
market stability. The estimated US$10.8 trillion worth of stimulus so far
are financed by soaring government debt which ominously creates problems
in the near future. The US federal government alone already has US$11.8
trillion in debt even as it faces a deficit of US$1.8 trillion just for
2009 and trillion-dollar-plus deficits every year for at least the next
decade.
Desperate fiscal stimulus programs are everywhere driving huge public
deficits in the major imperialist powers. They are for instance to the
order of 13.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the US, 11.6% in the UK,
7.4% in France and 10.3% in Japan – the highest seen since the Second
World War. Even China’s vaunted economy and accumulated finance are at
their limits. These are dangerous conditions for the people. At the very
least the people will see education, health, housing and welfare services
cut to give way to massive public debt service. But also very alarming is
the menace of widespread defaults and financial meltdown with no more
possibility of further state-driven bail-outs.
The G-20 declared their agenda to be coordinating policies for economic
recovery, financial regulatory reform, and charting a course for high,
sustainable and balanced global growth. In reality they are seeking ways
to secure monopoly capital’s profits in the wake of the world capitalist
system’s deepest global depression in nearly a century. The leaders tend
to be preoccupied with using state power and public finance to generate
bigger bubbles for the benefit of the monopoly bourgeoisie, especially the
finance oligarchy. They have united on further shifting the burden of the
crisis to the people of the world,
The G-20’s members include the United States of America (US), United
Kingdom (UK), Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia – the
members of the G-8 – with China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Argentina,
Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and Australia. They
account for 80% of world trade, 85% of the world economy and two-thirds of
the global population. Also involved are the heads of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organization (WTO).
The imperialist powers have made headway in their efforts to advance their
self-interest at the expense of the world’s workers, peasants, fisherfolk,
urban poor, indigenous peoples, women and youth. The summit concluded with
the leaders agreeing to expand the G-20’s role and making it more central
to international economic policy-making. The US in particular has pushed
for the IMF and WB to have a greater and resurgent role in advancing the
imperialist agenda, especially in the over 170 underdeveloped countries
outside the G-20.
When the G-20 was set up after the so-called Asian financial crisis in
1999, it was mainly a forum for finance ministers and central bankers. The
intensification of the current global crisis last year however has seen
the G-20 become conspicuously active with the world’s big powers aiming
for a new way to craft global economic policies. Its first ever summit
with heads of state was held in Washington in November 2008, followed by
another in London in April 2009 and then this just concluded one. The
scheduled summits in Canada in June 2010 and Korea in November 2010 will
mean an unprecedented five top-tier meetings within just two years.
The international financial institutions (IFIs) are being rejuvenated to
give imperialism more teeth in enforcing their will. The IMF has been
formally tasked with ‘monitoring’ economic policies, especially of
countries outside the inner circle of imperialist powers, and over US$500
billion has been added to its resources for imposing conditionalities. The
WB and other regional development banks are meanwhile expected to become
more aggressive in pushing the ‘free market’ and corporate plunder under
cover of ‘development’ issues such as climate change, clean and renewable
energy, and food security. Imperialism’s increasing attention to the
global climate crisis and the food crisis is ominous and the capitalist
drive for profits will only worsen these crises.
The G-20 is also seeking to increase the perceived legitimacy of the IMF
and WB through supposed reforms such as increasing a little the
persistently minority voting shares distributed to under-represented
countries like China. This puny adjustment is calculated to enhance the
long-discredited interference of the aforesaid institutions in the
underdeveloped countries and to conceal the overwhelming control by the
imperialist powers. Among all the big powers, the US i has the sole veto
power and greatest control over the IMF and the WB.
The G-20 is not and can never be about radically overhauling the world and
national economies in order to meet the needs of the people. It cannot but
persist with peddling “free market globalization” to misrepresent monopoly
capitalism and the illusion that opening up to foreign investment and
trade are the keys to domestic growth and development. There certainly are
such new catch phrases as seeking a “balanced and inclusive” global
economy with “multiple poles” of growth. But these are only the latest
rationalizations for prying open domestic energy, natural resource and
infrastructure sectors, for promoting profit-seeking monopoly interests,
and for pushing so-called regional integration.
There has also been the ritualistic expression of commitment to free trade
and open markets and in particular to trade liberalization through a
conclusion to the WTO’s Doha Round of talks. Yet the imperialist powers as
ever remain two-faced and push for opening up the backward economies while
taking for themselves as much trade and financial protectionist measures
as they deem necessary. In any case, although the WTO remains a key
instrument for imperialist economic aggression the US appears to have
somewhat less enthusiasm for it because it is faced with demands by major
member states that it cannot meet and because it can use bilateral and
regional trade agreements
The G-20 cannot but recognize the worst aberrations and excesses of
capitalism’s irrational and destructive financial system. The leaders have
made much of trying to curb these through tougher financial supervision,
discouraging excessive leverage and risk-taking, regulating derivatives
trading and policing tax havens. But the deadline they set for themselves
is 2010 or later, confirming the lack of real commitment to rein in
finance capital.
In any case, even if they adopt new regulations, these cannot solve the
deeply-seated economic and financial crisis. The history of capitalism has
seen that seeming unity and disciplines always eventually give way to the
intrinsic compulsion for profit and inter-imperialist competition through
any and all means possible.
It is likewise with the destructive competition between the major
capitalist economies. The G-20’s call for “coordinated policies” and
evening out the “lopsided global growth model” acknowledges how countries
will advance their interests as they see fit even if these exacerbate the
intrinsic anarchy of the system. Monopoly capital will invariably always
seek to boost profits using the entire range of economic powers of states
including their budgets, exchange rates, monetary and debt policies.
Self-interest sets limits to such supposed “coordination” and hastens the
onset of new and worse episodes of crisis. Indeed it is even likely that
the inevitable failure to coordinate will be used as justification for
retaliatory protectionism and economic policy counter-maneuvering. The
civility during the G-20 summit barely hides the intensifying rivalries
and competition for the world’s finite raw materials, cheap labor, markets
and areas of investment. The struggle for a redivision of the world among
the imperialist powers is being sharpened by the worsening global economic
and financial crisis.
The deteriorating social and economic conditions of the world’s working
people over the last decades and the even more severe decline since last
year expose how world capitalism is fundamentally flawed. The foundations
for a world economy that promotes the well-being of the people have to be
built. This cannot happen through the world capitalist system, the G-20 or
any mechanism controlled by the imperialist powers such as the IMF, WB and
WTO. If anything, these schemes for intervention and influence have to be
done away with.
The G20 leaders are now foolishly talking about “exit strategies” from
pseudo-Keynesian stimulus spending and a return to neoliberal reliance on
“private sources of demand”. The G-20 seeks a return to the most unbridled
and brazen forms of capitalist exploitation and plunder that have brought
about the current grave crisis. On the other hand, the people of the world
are driven by the crisis to assert their sovereignty in crafting
development, and investment and trade policies, and in regulating capital
flows in their favour. The only acceptable reform of the global financial
system is one that supports domestic industrial development, that is not
designed to drain backward economies of scarce capital, that cancels
burdensome debt and that promotes development-oriented trade on equal
terms with other countries.
Our economies must serve the needs of the people and not be geared merely
towards generating profits for monopoly capital. In the capitalist
countries, jobs must be created , incomes increased and consumption
revived rather than bail-outs poured out to the monopoly bourgeoisie.
Production must be restored based on expanding the people’s incomes and
capacity to consume and on sustaining this by keeping them productive in a
well-balanced economy. In the vast number of backward countries the
struggle remains to develop national economies, involving the balanced
development of both industry and agriculture. At the same time, the basic
demand for social and economic justice must be met in terms of fair and
decent wages, land reform, food self-reliance, adequate livelihood, social
benefits and expanded social services.
The mass protests leading up to and during the G-20 summit that breached
the fences of iron and steel underscore the extent of social discontent
and readiness of the people to fight against exploitation, oppression,
discrimination and all forms of social injustice. A week before the summit
there was the “National March for Jobs” in Pittsburgh with thousands of
workers, healthcare activists, unemployed and homeless from across the US.
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) congratulates the
mass mobilizations against the G-20 in Pittsburgh led by the US-based
alliance of grassroots organizations Bail-Out the People Movement (BOPM).
BOPM marched and sponsored “A Global Week of Solidarity with the
Unemployed” which included protestors camping out in a make-shift tent
city dubbed “Bail-Out the Jobless, a Tent City dedicated to the
Unemployed, the Homeless, the Hungry, and the Poor of the World”. Also
noteworthy were mass actions at US embassies and national workers’
conferences on the G-20, such as in the Philippines and elsewhere. Mass
protests such as these are among those giving the greatest hope for
fundamental social change.
As the crisis of the world capitalist system worsens, we can expect ever
larger and more militant forms of popular resistance. It is important to
keep on conducting campaigns of education and information on the G-20 and
the entire scheme of monopoly capitalism against the people of the world.
We must build on our achievements in mass mobilization and we must further
develop our political and organizational strength in preparation for mass
actions in the next summits in Canada in June 2010 and Korea in November
2010.
As the imperialist powers are redoubling their efforts to preserve global
capitalism, then more so must the people become ever more resolute and
effective in waging militant anti-imperialist struggles for greater
freedom, democracy, social justice, development and international
solidarity and peace. The progressive mass movements and revolutionary
forces of the people of the world are steadily gaining strength in the
struggles for national and social liberation and are making advances
towards the ultimate goal of liberating mankind from imperialism and all
reaction..###
|
