The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, April 25th, 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Quebec joins fight against corporate greed The Quebec meeting of heads of state of Latin American countries, held under a false banner of "free trade" and "democracy", brought massive street demonstrations from protestors who are suffering the consequences of corporate globalisation. The Canadian Government organised the biggest mobilisation in Canadian history of police to protect the pin-striped businessmen and their lackey politicians. Despite the massive police presence, the tear-gas and the baton charges, protestors succeeded in tearing down part of the two-metre high wire-meshed fence fixed to concrete blocks and delayed the opening of the conference for three-quarters of an hour. Thousands of protestors came from all over the Americas and included workers, students, professionals, religious groups, and environmentalists -- all who are appalled at the destruction caused by corporate greed. The "free trade" slogan is false. It does not create a "level playing field" for all countries, even though the tariff walls have been reduced. The corporations now exercise their dominance by patents, copyright, "intellectual property rights" and the creation of huge monopolies. They are also using the mechanisms of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to impose their dictatorship. Brazil has already run into trouble in the WTO for its laws dealing with the manufacture and import of generic AIDS drugs. Brazil implemented a very successful AIDS program using generic medicines. But the US is challenging Brazil at the WTO, demanding that Brazil repeal its laws which have dramatically reduced the price of drugs produced by the pharmaceutical corporations, giving many more people access to treatment. The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which embraces the US, Canada and Mexico and which the US wants to impose on the whole of Latin America, provides for the removal of government regulations that limit the inflow of capital investments. Furthermore, it allows foreign investors to sue governments for limiting their investments in any country. The US-based Ethyl corporation (the corporation that puts lead in petrol) is suing the Canadian Government because it prohibited the import of an Ethyl petrol additive for health reasons. Canada was forced to repeal its law and pay Ethyl US $13 million in damages even though the same product is banned in the US. Speaking of the present summit meeting in Quebec, Cuba's President Fidel Castro warned that the Latin American nations are at the point of being devoured by the United States. "We know that Latin America and the Caribbean can be devoured but not digested", he said. The gravity of the region's social ills, "can never be solved in that way and will become more dramatic." Referring to the Bush administration, Fidel Castro said that judging by the first steps taken in the international sphere and the language of his advisors and his allies among the Miami terrorist mafia, we could be facing a bellicose administration totally lacking in ethics. *********************************************************** Karl Marx: The real meaning of "free trade" Karl Marx exposed the real meaning of "free trade" at a public lecture in 1848 -- more than 150 years ago. "What is free trade under the present condition of society?, he asked. "It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action. "So long as you let the relation of wage labour to capital exist, it does not matter how favourable the conditions under which the exchange of commodities takes place, there will always be a class which will exploit and a class which will be exploited. "It is really difficult to understand the claim of the free-traders who imagine that the more advantageous application of capital will abolish the antagonism between industrial capitalist and wage workers. On the contrary, the only result will be that the antagonism of these two classes will stand out still more clearly. "Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word `freedom'. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker. "All the destructive phenomena which unlimited competition gives rise to within one country are reproduced in more gigantic proportions on the world market. "One other thing must never be forgotten, namely, that just as everything has become a monopoly, there are also some branches of industry which dominate all others, and secure to the nations which most largely cultivate them, the command of the world market... "Do not imagine ... that in criticising freedom of trade we have the least intention of defending the system of protection ... "The protectionism system is nothing but a means of establishing large-scale industry in any given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon the world market, and from the moment that dependence upon the world market is established, there is already more or less dependence upon free trade. "In general the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point ... the free trade system hastens the social revolution." The demonstrators in the streets of Quebec who join the massive demonstrations in many other cities around the world against corporate greed and corporate dictatorship, are living out the forecast of Karl Marx. ****************************************************************** -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: Quebec. What Karl Marx said about "free trade"
Communist Party of Australia Thu, 26 Apr 2001 19:34:06 -0700
