From: Charles F. Moreira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <mailto:Undisclosed-Recipient:@relay8.jaring.my> Sent: Monday, August 27, 2001 2:56 PM Subject: [Cuba SI] CPA Campaign Against Imperialist Globalisation >From Aotearoa -- ie Land of the long white cloud a.k.a. "New Zealand" BTW. 30,000 Malaysia bank workers risk losing their jobs due to imperialist globalisation dicated by the WTO. http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/cpa/ CPA Campaign Against Imperialist Globalisation Hiding behind the signboard of "free market" globalisation, the monopoly bourgeoisie is engaged in a frenzied imperialist plunder of the world's natural and social wealth. Aided by willing accomplices in the ruling circles of the semi-colonies, it uses the IMF, World Bank and WTO to dictate the neo-liberal policy of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation, extolling the pre-eminence of the "free market". Under the neo-liberal dogma, the state lays aside its social pretences, takes back hard-won social benefits from the working class and the people, carries out attacks on workers' rights and their wage and living conditions, and increases the tax burden. At the same time, it grants tax exemptions to the monopoly firms and banks, gives them generous state contracts and subsidies and allows them to destroy the livelihood of the people and their environment. The monopoly bourgeoisie and their paid propagandists blame the supposedly high wage levels and social spending by government as the cause of inflation and as the hindrance to economic growth. They portray the working class as a parasite and deny its role as the creator of social wealth. The monopoly bourgeoisie extracts superprofits from the working class and the oppressed peoples who bear the brunt of the neo-liberal offensive. Imperialism, disguised as "free market" globalization, has unleashed the worst forms of oppression and exploitation. The people are now undergoing intolerable suffering and are driven to wage resistance and revolutionary struggle. The Imperialist Offensive in Aotearoa The people of Aotearoa, the working class and the tangata whenua in particular, bear the scars from 16 years of accumulated neo-liberal attacks on their livelihoods. Depressed wages, persistently high unemployment and continuing fear of layoffs, mounting personal debts, soaring prices for basic goods are the lot of the majority of the population. Maori and Pacific Islanders face much higher unemployment rates, housing difficulties, chronic health problems, social dislocation, and the highest suicide rates in the OECD. Access to health and education has become ever-more difficult as services are reduced and charges raised. The middle classes are no longer immune from the attacks, with job uncertainty and stagnant earnings among professionals, high interest rates and rising prices ruining small businesses, crippling student debts, and the closure of basic social services in provincial towns. The imperialist drivers behind the neo-liberal offensive have profited greatly from their assault on the people of Aotearoa. US imperialists in particular have snapped up large tracts of Aotearoa natural resources and factories at bargain prices. The forests, energy resources, communications, media, and associated industry are now largely in US hands. They are the new faces of the colonisation of Maori lands and the new subjugators of the settlers. Lowest cost is the prime goal of the imperialist plunder of Aotearoa and US companies like Telecom, Tranzrail and Carter Holt have been at the forefront of layoffs and the driving down wages and conditions. The forestry companies are stripping out trees with little processing while the electricity companies are expanding non-renewable thermal plants. The New Zealand settler capitalist class has been reduced to a tiny core of farmers, merchants and rentiers. They have retained control of the dairy and meat industries and much retailing through non-corporate forms, such as cooperatives and private ownership. Yet, despite the imperialist inroads, because settler capitalist profits depend on the appropriated lands of Maori, they cooperate with the foreign capitalists in resisting tino rangatiratanga. They are also united with the imperialists in holding down the wages and working conditions of workers. And many are or have become imperialists themselves. The remainder of the settler capitalists, the rentiers and comprador capitalists, are happy to engage in capitalism's oldest profession - collaborating for crumbs from the imperialists' table in the form of dividends and fees for services rendered. The emerging Maori capitalist class has built a strong foothold over their traditional fishing resources and are engaged in their own imperialist activities in fishing grounds overseas. Much of this is in collaboration with Japanese imperialists both in fishing and in leasing lands for forestry or tourism. The New Zealand state acts as a particularly willing lapdog of US imperialism, anxiously looking for praise, in the 1980s and 1990s as it paraded as the purist breed of neo-liberalism, and now as a free-trade scavenger looking for trade agreements in any dark alley. When the New Zealand government joined the WTO in 1994 it signed up wholeheartedly, the country with the least stated reservations to the agreements. Other states were more cautious, writing reservations into the agreement to exclude various industries from the free trade juggernaught. Under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), unlike most states, the New Zealand government placed no restriction on free trade in health, education or any other basic social service. The New Zealand government is now powerless to impose any restrictions on the operations of these services, such as the entry of foreign hospital or universities, or the imposition of a New Zealand content quota in broadcasting. Alongside this, the New Zealand government signed investment agreements with China and Singapore and proposes to do so with Chile and Argentina, giving up any right to restrict foreign investment by companies based in these countries. These agreements are modeled on the notorious Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which was dumped in a fury of worldwide public anger at the start of the worldwide challenge to globalisation. The investment treaties are an open slather for foreign capital in general, and US imperialism in particular, which generally has subsidiaries in these countries. The nationalisation of Accident Compensation by the Clark regime in 2000, for example, can easily be challenged by subsidiaries of US insurance companies based in these countries. Yet the Clark regime presses on with attempts to negotiate these treaties. Currently, the Clark regime's efforts are directed at negotiating a free trade agreement with Hong Kong. This agreement will be the death of the New Zealand clothing and footwear industry and its 18,000 jobs. A free trade agreement with Hong Kong will involve the Clark regime removing the tariff (or tax) that is placed on clothes and footwear imported to New Zealand. Cheap goods from China will flood the New Zealand market, driving the small and medium New Zealand capitalists out of business or encouraging them to make more use of sweatshop labour here. For the people of Aotearoa, so-called free market globalisation has only aggravated the worst features of monopoly capitalism: unbridled profit-taking, sinking wage levels, mass unemployment, reduced productive capacity, run-down social services and devastation of the environment. The Worldwide Campaign Against Imperialist Globalisation Mass protests against imperialist globalization have mounted in recent years, first in the underdeveloped countries of the third world, and more recently in the imperialist countries as well. From the anti-APEC mobilizations in Manila in 1996, to Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Prague, and Stockholm the proletariat and people of the world have raised their collective and militant opposition to the destructive consequences of imperialist globalisation. The broad, militant and sustained mass struggles against imperialist globalisation have put the monopoly bourgeoisie and their media drumbeaters on the defensive. Triumphant declarations of the inevitability of globalisation have been replaced by sham concern for social and environmental damage along the way. The working class and people's movements are getting a good education on imperialism, the state and revolution. But much work still needs to be done in eradicating the blinders created by revisionism, petty-bourgeois radicalism, reformism and social-democratic collaborationism. The informal and tactical alliances being formed among such varied forces as Marxist revolutionaries, democrats, progressives, anarchists, environmentalists, human rights activists, and so on that oppose imperialist globalisation, are a valuable development. The broadness of the movement precludes the use of red-baiting by the apologists of the monopoly bourgeoisie. In this context, Marxist-Leninist parties have the opportunity and the responsibility to strengthen themselves, lead the revolutionary mass movement in their own countries and help build the international united front based on the alliance of the proletariat in the imperialist countries and the oppressed peoples in the neo-colonies against imperialism and reaction for national liberation, democracy and socialism. Tasks of the Campaign Against Imperialist Globalisation in Aotearoa The goals of the Communist Party in the campaign against imperialist globalisation in Aotearoa is to transform the movement against globalisation into a revolutionary mass movement and to build the international united front against imperialist globalisation. These goals will be achieved by building the party in the course of building the mass movement against imperialist globalisation. Building the party will provide the capacity to lead the movement against globalisation in a revolutionary mass direction and building the mass movement against imperialist globalisation will provide the ground for building the party. The ideological goals of the campaign are to promote the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line. The key goals are to identify globalisation as the product of imperialism; imperialist globalisation (and its association with war) and to identify the importance of the mass line; the role of the party and masses in revolutionary transformation, and socialism as the solution to imperialism. The political goals of the campaign are to defeat and rollback the Clark regime's free trade offensive. Specifically, the aims of the campaign are to pressure the regime to: - abandon the negotiation of the NZ-Hong Kong free trade agreement; - withdraw NZ education and broadcasting from GATS; - withdraw from the China and Singapore Investment Agreements - rescind the proposed Chile and Argentina Investment Agreements The organisational goals of the campaign are to build a mass movement against imperialist globalisation with the organised basic masses at its centre. The movement must build from the central mass organisations of the people (workers, Maori, youth and students), combining educational work and mass actions. The mass organisations must provide ideological, political and organisational leadership through their independent publications and the work of their activists. The movement must establish organising groups throughout the country and engage in patient educational work among the widest reaches of the masses. Every opportunity for organizing mass actions in the presence of MPs or visiting foreign officials must be seized; every public forum where the issues are discussed is an opportunity for mass action and representation. The role of comprador capitalists and state officials should be exposed wherever possible. Key dates in the progress of the NZ-HKFTA, job losses in the clothing and footwear industry, instances of limited autonomy over broadcasting or education, and US use of the investment agreements is an opportunity for a national mass action. The overall aim of the mass activity is to build a groundswell of opinion against the agreements, culminating in a national mobilization of thousands. Because imperialist globalisation is worldwide, it is important that the movement in Aotearoa develop its links with the international united front against imperialist globalisation. The basic mass organisations, in particular, should contribute to the discussions and forums of the international united front. In the course of building the mass movement against imperialist globalisation, activists should be organised into discussion groups to study imperialism (including imperialist war), the mass line and socialism. Clarity on these issues strengthens the leadership of the mass movement. The best activists should be recruited into party collectives as provisional members. Organising a revolutionary core within the mass movement builds the effectiveness of the movement and increases the capacity to transform the movement into a movement against imperialist globalisation. The central organs of the party must assist this work with timely analysis, support material and public statements. Transform the movement against globalisation into a revolutionary mass movement! Build the international united front against imperialist globalisation!
