Ebrahim Harvey
LEFT FIELD
The dramatic mass demonstrations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) conference in Seattle and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a few months ago, and that which took place last week at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings in Washington, has starkly spelled out the kind of future that awaits us in this new millennium.
As the biggest and most powerful mass demonstrations in a long time, these events have shown with brutal certainty the face of not only the kind of conflicts that further await us, but also the intensity of it.
Not since the Sixties has the passionate commitment of so many people, for a good cause, flown on to the streets with so much courage and determination. That most of these events took place in the United States, the centre of world imperialism, is of further significance.
It is very clear that the events in Seattle and Davos had set the stage and tempo for the fiery mass protests at the World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington last week, where over 600 people were arrested in clashes with the police.
All these dramatic events spoke volumes for the crisis in which we are all engulfed and the kind of action that civil society, led by the working class, urgently needs to take. It told us unmistakably that, as bad as the world situation is, there is still a great reservoir of human energy and commitment left to change it. These events were bright sparks on a dark horizon and must serve to inspire civil society around the world to unite and stop the worst social crisis ever.
What was at stake in these battles is the future and fate of the whole world. In the final analysis, further trade liberalisation, primarily meant to further open Third World markets to the rich countries without sufficient quid pro quo, is going to hurt ordinary people in all countries most. Existing high levels of unemployment and poverty across the world will rise even further.
Even many of the world’s business elite at Davos acknowledged the threat of globalisation for mankind and stated that the gap between the “haves” and the “have- nots” will most likely widen. Surely that is not a vote of confidence in globalisation for poor people, who are the overwhelming majority of mankind.
The results of greater trade liberalisation over the past few years, one of the consequences of globalisation, have been largely disadvantageous to poor countries and people. It has in fact extended and strengthened the domination of the richer countries over the poorer ones. It will only widen the gulf in existing disparities and imbalances in trade, wealth, income and human development between these countries and worsen the lot of the poor. Left to itself the WTO cannot reverse these trends and level the playing fields in trade between the rich and poor countries.
Therefore the left and all progressive forces in this country and the world have to urgently take steps towards building a united front within each country and an international centre to co-ordinate a worldwide movement against the rampant forces of globalisation. Complete debt cancellation, trade equity and scrapping of the adverse conditions and programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank are only some of the key issues.
We need to build a powerful united front that can rally together all the organisations of civil society, irrespective of political affiliation, but under the leadership of the working class, upon a common programme of action against the domination of the world by these institutions.
However, one glaring and major weakness of all the mass campaigns so far is that they were largely battalions of white middle-class activists and sympathisers. For the building of a powerful united front, black, Latino and other workers of colour, who in fact have been more adversely affected by globalisation, and have not been drawn into the campaigns in huge numbers, will need to be. Broader unity in the US, where these institutions are based, will send a positive, unifying signal to other countries of the imperative of maximum unity.
Therefore, the recent agreement signed between the Congress of South African Trade Unions ( Cosatu ) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the first of its kind, is a gigantic breakthrough in international solidarity and holds immense potential for greater unity.
While it was said many times during the 20th century that unless things changed fundamentally for the better, mankind faces a steady descent into barbarism. That truth is today, at the start of the 21st century, more stark than ever before.
The statistics of growing poverty, unemployment, hunger, starvation and deaths, especially in Africa, are so chilling that we have already entered a period of barbaric decline. The desperate extent to which hungry people are going just to ward off starvation in Africa and other parts of the Third World is heartrending and shocking.
But by all accounts it appears that the situation, as bad as it already is, is going to worsen in the first decade of the new millennium. The stranglehold in which economies of the Third World are held by the rule of the IMF, World Bank and WTO is such that the fate and future of mankind will be raised with a sharpness and urgency never known at any other time in human history. Only a united front can effectively challenge and break this domination, arrest the barbaric decline and take society forward on a co-operative and democratic socialist basis.
An old trade union dictum, organise or starve, applies today more than ever before. In our own country it is the trade unions, led by Cosatu, which have already lost many thousands of jobs and members due to trade liberalisation and will be the first to be affected by further trade liberalisation, who must take the lead in building a united front with political, civic, non-governmental, church and other progressive organisations of civil society. The unions are in the strongest position to provide real leadership for building the united front. Let us hope they take this lead very soon. As the crisis grows daily, time is of the essence.