First of May 2001:
AGAINST GLOBAL CAPITALISM - WORKERS SELF-EMANCIPATION!
We see now in the beginning of the 21th Century rapid changes and expansion
of the system we call capitalism. The freedom for some is the slavery
for the vast majority. The profit is privatised and the rich are getting
richer, but the costs, risks and oppression are socialised. The mobility
of the investors is a freedom from obligations towards the employees,
the old, the young, the ill, the unemployed, the nature and the communities.
The multinational Temporary Work Agencies are making a commercial industry
of the same trend.
This economical, social and cultural conquest- called globalisation- is
done by force. USA`s status as the world premier power is unlikely to
be contested by any single challenger and they dominate the military,
economic, technological and cultural dimensions of power. The development
of monetary, and more integrated military blocks as the EU and South East
Asia increases the competition and tension towards the USA, but they all
agree in using institutions as IMF and WTO to exploit the so-called Third
World. But again, freedom for the capital means oppression, prisons, fences
and fortresses for the ones that want to escape from the worst consequences
of the exploitation.
One of the United States main objectives is both to manipulate and accommodate
the countries in the "corridor" from the Baltic countries, Poland,
through East and Central Europe, to the Balkans, Turkey, the Caspian Sea
and the Caucasus, the former Central Asian Soviet Republics, to Xinjiang
and to Tibet. This is to reduce and undermine European, Russian and South-
East Asian ambitions and to get control of vast oil- and natural resources.
USA policy towards Russia is the "whip and carrot". They co-operate
and try to control them economically, but at the same time they undermine
Russia by developing interests in the "Eurasian Corridor" as
for example supporting an oil pipeline from Caucasus through Turkey to
the Mediterranean Sea.
It is in this context we must see the new strategic concept of NATO of
having mobile units of soldiers that can defend "western" interests
as in the Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo or wherever they are on the globe. NATO
is also experimenting with new "conventional" bombs with nuclear
explosives in mines in Northern Norway. It’s a further development
of the ammunition used in the Gulf and Balkans causing so much death and
serious injuries. The military laboratories and the arms industry must
be kept with orders after the fall of the "Iron Curtain".
The human rights policy is subordinated the interests of the NATO. Chechnya
is accepted as a domain of the Russians. The new painted ex-Bolsheviks
can continue with the war, violations, cleansing and torture without any
interference from western mass media. Turkey is kept as an allied whatever
oppression of the workers and the Kurds.
Central- and South America is left as a backyard of the USA. It was no
coincidence that the riot of the Zapatistas started the First of January
1994, the same date as the NAFTA agreement between Canada, USA and Mexico
was into function. The "Plan Colombia" is a plan for military
intervention to secure access to natural resources, especially oil, and
to gain control to a geopolitical strategic region in order to continue
the implementation of the planned FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas)
The capitalist barbarism is everywhere on all continents of the world.
The multinationals find no profits in developing medicines for the poor
in Africa. In Bangladesh young women workers (children) are locked into
the garments factories, causing death and injuries by fire. In the FTAA
country Argentine, there are social unrest against the cut of the social
budget of 8 000 million US Dollars in three years to satisfy the demands
of the IMF.
To these and other examples we as anarchosyndicalists ask: What are the
consequences for the human beings? How can we as workers fight for self-emancipation?
This is not the first time the capitalism has moved into a global direction.
The industrial period from 1870 to 1914 was also characterised by new
forms of production and expansion. Capitalist development creates both
oppression and revolt as in the First of May 1886 in Chicago where the
workers were striking for the 8 hours day. The 4th of May a provocatory
bomb exploded. The blame was put on the anarchists. Parsons, Fischer,
Engel, Spies, Lingg Schwab, Neebe and Fielden were arrested. Of them Parsons,
Fischer, Engel and Spies were hanged. Lingg died in prison. These Haymarket
Martyrs belong to the international proletariat, and the universal celebration
of May Day commemorates these crimes perpetrated by defenders of "free
enterprise" in the United States.
The period 1870-1914 ended with the slaughter in the First World War.
The IWA- the inheriting of the First International recovers the anti-militarist
tradition and proposes boycotts against the manufacturing of arms and
general strike against the war. Sections and Friends of the International
have been, and are active against the war in Chechnya, the Balkans and
now Colombia.
The IWA`s anarchosyndicalist identity makes us develop the direct actions
according to our strenght- not relying on subsidies or other offers from
our enemies. Against the increasingly assimilation of traditional factors
belonging to the opposition such as the workers movement at a cultural,
political, unionist and social level, we refuse to integrate our free
associations into the capitalist system. The reformist workers unions
today are service organisations and burdens on the back of the workers,
not free tools for the workers self -activity and self-emancipation. Class
collaboration as for example participating in "union elections"
under state schemes means loosing- not increasing strenght. You can’t
survive by eating the cheese in the mousetrap.
Capitalism is an automatic machine producing human and ecological misery,
children exploit, unemployment, fascism and wars. The IWA`s goal is to
replace the capitalism and the state by
the free federation of workers free associations- libertarian communism.
Only proletarian internationalism can resist the barbarism. There are
good signs of resistance against globalisation as we have seen in Seattle
and Prague, but we should not have any illusions about alliances containing
organisations using their opportunity to rescue the capitalism from itself-
functioning as lightning conductors against self- emancipatory struggles
and initiatives.
The IWA and its Sections and Friends have started the year 2001 with international
coordinated actions for the parador Miguel in Granada, Amelia in MINIT
in Madrid, Jean Louis fired from a NGO in Montpellier and later harassed
by the police, against the arrests of antifascists in the Czech Rep.,
against violations, kidnappings and harassments in Colombia and support
of the workers at Lebenshilfe in Bremen. In 22/23/24 of June the IWA will
organise a conference about immigration in Milano. Later the IWA will
coordinate actions against the multinational Temporary Work Agencies-
enterprises making profits from selling slave contracts.
These and other activities are steps for a further development of the
International Workers Association.
Against global
capitalism- for workers self-emancipation!
Long live the IWA!
Oslo the 12th of
April 2001
IWA- Secretariat