|
|
FALSE 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..###
|
|