Under Siege! Global Capitalism and the socialist alternative
Introduction
As we go to press, the World Bank has just announced the cancellation of its Economic Development Conference scheduled for late June in Barcelona, Spain. This action was taken because its organisers feared another mass anti-capitalist demonstration made up of youth, trade unionists and environmental groups. This represents a major victory for the anti-capitalist movement and shows that the major capitalist institutions are....Under Siege!
The British newspaper, The Guardian, states that in Turkey ‘union leaders say that more than 500,000 people have lost their jobs this year, most of them since the current economic crisis in February’.
On the other hand, in neighbouring Greece ‘the biggest working-class mobilisation of the last decades has taken place. It shook every single town in Greece and not only Athens. It caused the complete paralysis of everything and everywhere. There have been many general strikes in Greece during the last decade. Certainly over 20 in all. But none of them compared to the last one of 26 April!’ (The socialist paper, Xekinima – Forward – produced by the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) in Greece).
These events, like the revolutionary upheavals in Ecuador in February 2000, and in Serbia in October, together with the worldwide anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist protests, are the reasons why the CWI manifesto, Under Siege! Global capitalism and the socialist alternative, has been produced at this time. They signify the opening of a new chapter of struggles of the working class and young people worldwide, which will be reinforced by the looming economic crisis.
The US economy has been the Atlas which has carried on its shoulders the whole of the world capitalist economy, particularly in the last decade. The dramatic slowdown in the US economy, particularly in the manufacturing sector – with nearly 166,000 jobs lost in April of this year – shows that the world stands on the eve of a serious capitalist crisis, the burden of which will be borne by working-class people.
However, they will not face the inevitable mass lay-offs and drastic cuts in living standards in silence. This has already been indicated by the mass uprising of workers and peasants in Ecuador which held real power in its hands, pushed the fake parliament of the landlords and capitalists aside for a time, and attempted to set up its own organs of rule. In Turkey, not just the working class but the middle class – shopkeepers and taxi drivers – have demonstrated and ‘rioted’, all have shown their ‘widespread disgust at the way politicians have reacted to the crisis’. One Istanbul shopkeeper declared: ‘We don’t trust any of them anymore.’
Events such as these, as well as the magnificent movements of the Greek workers, will be repeated in all countries of Europe in the next period. The already destitute working masses and poor peasants in Africa, Asia and Latin America, facing even greater impositions, will be compelled to move into action against rotting landlordism and capitalism. In North America events, as in Seattle in 1999 and Quebec this year, are beginning to stir the mighty US and Canadian working class.
There is no doubt that working-class people, under the hammer blows of this capitalist crisis, will be compelled to move into action. A significant layer of young people and workers are already rejecting what capitalism has meant for them and their families. Is there, however, a viable alternative to the ‘market’ and its supporters? Bulent Ecevit, the prime minister of Turkey, in the face of a mass uprising against all the existing main capitalist forces and their parties, thinks not. He has brazenly declared: ‘If they [the Turkish population] are shouting resign, they also have to provide an alternative. I’m not glued to my chair.’ (The Guardian, London, 12 April 2001)
In other words, there is no alternative, says Ecevit, to his brutal government and system. The CWI in this manifesto explains that there is. It combines a rigorous examination of the crisis of world capitalism, together with an explanation of the contradictions of this system. It also raises the vision of a new society, a socialist one, which is within the grasp of the working class and, indeed, of humankind as a whole, so long as we replace outworn and disintegrating capitalism with a new, world democratic socialist system. It also charts out the path towards this goal, a comprehensive fighting programme. The manifesto and the appended article, which deals with the present phase of the world anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist struggle, represents the summing up of the collective experience of the CWI and its membership, with affiliated organisations and a presence in 35 different countries worldwide.
We believe that this programme provides the basis for beginning to construct the forces that will provide a real alternative, a mass, socialist force of working-class people and the youth in all corners of the globe. This, in turn, can lay the foundations for a new mass working-class International which will be the instrument for ushering in a new socialist world.