Smash the IMF and World Bank!
Sleaze and corruption
The parasitic nature of capitalism gives rise to corruption and fraud. This is also reflected in the political super structure of the system, in official politics and in the running of the capitalist state. A golden circle of politicians and businessmen have stolen millions from state coffers. There is little trust in the bourgeois institutions such as the legal system, the church and the political system. The "democratic legitimacy" of capitalist government has been drastically undermined and the present political system is in crisis. The traditional political parties have been discredited by scandals, sleaze and cronyism. The present system is rotten from top to bottom.
The growing hatred against the capitalist politicians could be harnessed if there was a clear working class alternative linking together all the different issues around a common anti-capitalist and working class agenda.
Public ownership!
The World Bank and IMF exploit and oppress the "developing" countries for the benefit of the rich. In this scheme, their partners in crime are the big Western banks and financial institutions. Simply abolishing the IMF and World Bank is not enough. We need to break the power of the big banks that carry out the same exploitative policies as the IMF and World Bank do in relation to the less developed world.
Currently, these banks are run on one simple principle - maximum short term profit. Instead of a rational plan of investment designed to increase production and reduce poverty, they invest most of their capital in speculation in order to raise profits. This causes destruction and chaos across the world. An excellent example of this is the Asian Crisis of 1997-8 when international speculators began to frantically sell their investments in stocks, currencies, and other financial instruments, triggering a devastating economic crash throughout Asia. After having made record profits off the Asian "tigers", the speculators brought entire nations' economies crashing to a halt by pulling out at a moments notice, leaving millions of workers behind in poverty and starvation.
Indonesia
For example, in Indonesia, school enrolment dropped by 25% while poverty rates rose from an official level of 11% to 40-60%, depending on the estimate. At one point, Indonesia's food shortage became so acute that then-President Habibie implored citizens to fast twice a week! Indeed, millions had no choice but to fast, suffering hunger and even starvation. How did the IMF intervene in this crisis? With US$ 200 billion - not, however, to save the jobs of millions of workers or feed starving farmers - but to bail out, Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan; the very banks that had caused the catastrophe in the first place.
The immense resources at the disposal of these banks should be used to develop the economies of the world. But this will never happen under the current setup. There can be no democratic decision on how to use the resources and wealth of the big Western banks while these institutions are privately owned and operated. The CWI fights for taking the big banks and financial institutions (insurance companies, investment banks, currency and stock speculators, etc.) into public ownership. The gigantic profits and assets of these institutions could be mobilised to put an end to poverty, hunger, and unemployment and guarantee everyone, internationally, the right to a job, housing, food, healthcare, and an education.
How to go forward
The protests against the WTO, IMF and World Bank are a great beginning, which hold out the promise of developing into a new, mass, anti-capitalist movement. The Battle in Seattle and other mass actions against the IMF and World Bank have demonstrated a growing desire to fight back against corporate greed, the destruction of the environment and global capitalism. The movement has shown the entire world that deep within the United States, at the heart of international capitalism, there is opposition to big business globalisation.
The WTO, World Bank and IMF are seriously worried at the growing anti-capitalist protests and the general mood of anger against them. The World Bank has recently attempted to go on the offensive, producing propaganda 'studies' to supposedly show how globalisation and SAPs actually help the poor. Of course, these 'findings' run counter to the actual experiences of working people across the world.
Capitalism - and its international institutions - are not easy pushovers, however. There needs to be a serious discussion and reflection on where the movement needs to go. What are the next steps? What kind of movement is necessary to decisively defeat capitalism? While protests of 20,000, 50,000 or even 100,000 can be a huge embarrassment to big business and cause some short term damage, they will not be enough to turn the tide of neo-liberalism and pave the way for a new kind of society. To do this, we must harness the collective energy of working people, youth, women, the disabled and the oppressed, in a mass movement of tens of millions. The working class makes society run. It is in its numbers and its ability to act as collective force that the working class has strength.
Building the workers' movement
The only way to build a movement is to fight on the day-to-day issues that affect large numbers of working people internationally. There is mass anger among workers and young people at the policies of big business. Big business continues to destroy our environment and the food we eat continues to be poisoned, secretly genetically modified and engineered. Schools continue to rot due to lack of funding. Police continue to brutalise and harass racial and ethnic minorities and working people each day. Many democratic rights and social gains, won by generations of mass struggle, are being attacked and rolled back.
A mass movement of the working class would link all these issues together and direct people's anger at big business, the institutions and the system responsible for them. These issues are political issues. Only by linking the day to day struggles of workers, youth and the oppressed to the struggle for socialism can the movement survive in the long term and maintain its momentum between big events.
No political voice
The parties of big business and the establishment are a dead end for those struggling to change society. They have been the ones responsible for legislating and implementing attacks on workers. In the 1990s former workers' parties, like Labour in Britain and the social democrats in Western Europe, have become capitalist parties. They have embraced the market and neo-liberalism.
The collapse of the totalitarian Stalinist states in Eastern Europe and Russia heralded the end of any alternative to capitalism as far as the leaders of the Social Democracies were concerned (never mind the fact that the regimes in Eastern Europe were not socialist!). The lifestyles of these overpaid social democrat bureaucrats meant they had long been out of touch with the reality of the market system on the lives of working class people. As the social democracies moved dramatically to the right and embraced the market system they emptied out of workers. But for the vast majority of people capitalism still means exploitation, inequality and poverty. Working people have no choice but to fight back. Big business is class conscious - they organise and fight for their class interests. It's time working people did the same. We need our own political party, funded and controlled by workers, to fight for our interests, like free national health care, better jobs, stopping environmental destruction, a massive increase in funding for education, and an end to racism.