Convergence Of People’s Movements Can Fight

US Hegemonistic Designs

  Sitaram Yechury

Below we reproduce the paper presented by CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury at the international meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, held at Athens on June 19-20. Held on the theme of “The Movements Against The War And Capitalist Globalisation, And The Communists,” the meeting was organised by the Communist Party of Greece.

AT the outset, I would like to extend our gratitude to the Communist Party of Greece for having provided, once again, such an opportunity for interacting with our fraternal movements across the world on this most important theme and at this  crucial time. 

All of us assembled here are not only interested but are actively working to seek the convergence of the growing people's movements against globalisation, on the one hand, and against the US-led war on Iraq, on the other. We are all aware that it is only the combined power of such a convergence that can halt, if not reverse, the current hegemonic aggressiveness that US imperialism has embarked upon.

IDEOLOGICAL CLARITY WARRANTED

Such efforts, however, warrant the need for ideological clarity centering around two important propositions. First, this war against Iraq is not isolated from or independent of the US-led process of globalisation.  Secondly, the crimes being committed against humanity, both through globalisation and through such wars, can only be reversed, in the final analysis, by an alternative socio-economic order to the current world capitalism. The stronger the struggles for such an alternative, the more effective will be the halting of globalisation's offensive. 

This war against Iraq is part of the overall strategy to establish an unquestioned  US hegemony in the world, a hegemony that extends to all spheres --- military, political, economic, social, cultural, etc.  The process of  creating a "new world order" that the US leadership had begun with the end of the cold war has culminated in this unprecedented unilateral action against Iraq.

Following the bipolar cold war, the natural process in the development of the international situation was the movement towards multipolarity in international relations.  This natural process is being subverted by the USA in order to establish a unipolarity under its hegemony. It is this frightening reality that faces all of us today.

IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES

This reality has four important consequences for the world situation.  These, in fact, seek to determine the contours of relations between nations. 

First, such US hegemony implies that the economic offensive against the developing countries in the name of globalisation and liberalisation will be mounted further. Already, the WTO is being goaded by the USA to widen its agenda which imposes greater burdens on the developing countries. The degree of economic exploitation of the poor people of the world and the  poor countries of the world is bound to be intensified. Even the World Bank and the IMF are forced to admit that the last decade of globalisation has seen many developing countries actually slide back in terms of absolute levels of poverty and hunger. 

The political aim of such intensification of economic exploitation, under globalisation, is to seek the economic recolonisation of the third world.

The second consequence will be the effort by the USA to direct the domestic politics of every country in its favour. The slogan of "regime change" actually means that the regimes in independent countries will be determined by the furthering of US interests and not by the democratic will of their own people. This will be an outright assault on the sovereignty of independent nations. Such US interference was seen in the past in many countries, especially in Latin America. This will now be sought to be generalised  across the globe. 

The third consequence would be that the world will be a place of greater insecurity after this war on Iraq. State terrorism practiced by the USA invariably feeds individual terrorism. The victims of both are innocent lives  and massive destruction of people's wealth. The post-Iraq war developments in Riyadh, Casablanca, Chechnya and elsewhere vindicate this. Far from eliminating the scourge of terrorism, the US-led war on Iraq provides it a fresh lease of life. 

This, in turn, will be used by reactionary regimes to impose an authoritarian order in their countries. In the name of fighting terrorism, draconian laws severely curtailing civil liberties and democratic rights will be put in place.  All in the name of democracy!

The fourth consequence of this US hegemony will be the marginalisation, if not the negation, of all norms and institutions that guided international relations in the post-second world war period. The virtual marginalisation of the United Nations, during this war, is there for all to see. The US has now succeeded in rallying the UN Security Council to undertake the reconstruction of Iraq under its leadership. The United Nations will be  relevant only if it endorses the US  initiatives; otherwise it will be reduced to what President Bush called a "debating club."

Already, the USA is showing scant respect to international laws and treaties.  It has chosen to boycott the Kyoto Protocol. It walked out of the Durban UN conference on racial discrimination. All international laws and treaties henceforth would be treated or considered only if they suit the interests of USA.

UNSUSTAINABLE PROCESS

Clearly, this is a world that many of us would not want to live in. The USA is not only seeking to act as the world's policeman but will also play the role of the prosecutor and the judge at the same time. 

If we wish to live in this world with a decent degree of freedom, liberty and dignity, then we need to change this world.

The huge unprecedented protests against this war on Iraq saw millions of people on the streets all across the globe. To the extent that even The New York Times had to editorially comment that there is not one superpower in the world, but two. Counter to US’s superpower status are the people of the world who need to assert and prevent the USA from hijacking the civilisational advance of mankind.

On the other hand, the process of globalisation itself intensifies these tendencies of war  and aggression. This comes precisely because of the fact that in its efforts towards the economic recolonisation of the  third world, globalisation has led to an intensification of economic exploitation on a world scale. This is all too evident in the economic data provided by the  World Bank itself, which shows that a large number of world's people  are today worse  off than a decade earlier. 

Further, the sharp widening of inequalities, both between the developing countries and the developed countries and between the rich and poor in all countries, is leading to large-scale depravation and want. Such large-scale impoverishment of a majority of the world's people means the shrinkage of their capacity to be the consumers of the products that this globalised economy produces. This renders the entire process of globalisation to be simply unsustainable. 

The only way imperialism seeks to sustain this unsustainable exploitative order is by intensifying its political and military hegemony. The burdens of the economic crisis will surely be shifted to the people who are already groaning under the globalisation onslaught.  In this context, it is pertinent to  recollect what Marx had said in the Das Kapital: "With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent certain will produce eagerness;  50 per cent positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; and 300 per cent and there is not a crime  at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged."

SOCIALISM: THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE

Thus, what awaits humanity is a fresh wave of assaults and onslaughts. Unless of course, the people's movement against globalisation, which has been rapidly  growing in recent years, attains levels  that can halt and reverse this process.  But that can be possible only if an alternative to the capitalist system emerges as the objective to achieve freedom and liberty.  History has  repeatedly shown that no amount of reform within the capitalist system can  eliminate exploitation which is inherent in the very production process of the system. An alternative socio-economic political system has to be put in place and that can only be socialism. Humanity, thus, has a choice.  As Rosa Luxembourg many decades ago and Fidel Castro recently put it, this choice is between socialism or barbarism.

The convergence that we, as communists, are seeking amongst the anti-war and anti-globalisation movements is the key factor that can prevent humanity from being  engulfed by this slide to barbarism.

Finally, there is a need to address some of the questions that have emerged in the intense debates within the anti-globalisation movement itself.  There has been a tendency which suggests that the anti-globalisation movement should work for the elimination of corporate control over resources as well as the state control over resources. Instead, the movement should aim to  establish people's control over resources.  Obviously, corporate control here refers to capitalism while state control refers to socialism. Given the experience of the collapse of the USSR, it has become fashionable to suggest that state control over resources is neither sustainable nor an alternative to capitalism. 

From this, two tendencies emerge.  First, that suggesting that since socialism has failed, there is no alternative to globalisation (the famous TINA factor).  The second suggests a nebulous alternative called people's control of resources. Now, people's control requires a social order that sanctions and legitimises such a  control. The only social order that can ensure the real control over resources by the people is socialism. True people's control can never be achieved except under socialism. Notwithstanding the reverses to world socialism in the past, the period since has only vindicated that these reverses do not constitute either a negation of the socialist ideal or that of the creative science of Marxism-Leninism. If anything, these reverses are in the main due to the distortions and deviations from Marxism-Leninism and socialist ideals. Hence, the communists' answer to the TINA argument is that the alternative to TINA is: SITA  --- socialism is the alternative! 

(Subheadings have been added.)