REVOLUTIONARY
PLATFORMS OF THE SCOTTISH SOCIALIST PARTY AND RESPECT
www.revolutionaryplatformofthessp.org,
groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionaryplatformofrespect
Leaflet
produced by Steve Wallis: www.socialiststeve.me.uk,
revolutionarysocialiststeve@yahoo.co.uk
I, Steve Wallis, distributed the leaflet
with the text on this page (black and white single-sided) during the activities
in Scotland against the G8 summit in 2005.
What is the real agenda of the G8 leaders – privatisation or genetically
modified food/drink?
The leaders of the eight most powerful countries in the world (the seven richest plus Russia) are getting together at the G8 summit, with “making poverty history” supposedly on the agenda. Campaigners are calling for more aid, cancellation of debt and trade justice, and New Labour in Britain (in particular Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown) are supposedly in favour of all three of these demands.
However,
different people have different conceptions of what these demands mean, and the
G8 leaders will try to impose strings. The G8 leaders will not help the
so-called Third World without getting something in return. Aid and debt relief
can be tied to cooperation with the agenda of the large capitalist governments,
particularly enforced privatisation of essential services such as water or
buying goods from the same countries (most US aid is tied in this way). Only 18
African countries are currently being considered for debt relief, and these are
countries that have complied with the demands of Western institutions (the G8, World
Bank and International
Monetary Fund). Even then, New Labour is not calling for debt
cancellation but merely eliminating the need for interest payments over the
next ten years. The tiny amount of money they are asking capitalist governments
to fork out for this (the figure of £1.7 billion has been mooted) suggests that
something fishy is going on. Backhanders from some corporations, perhaps, that
would benefit from such debt relief. In particular, I suspect that the
genetically modified (GM) food company Monsanto is involved, and that “feeding the world” (as Band Aid called for) would be
done with GM food, not merely for profit motives but as a way of preventing
ordinary people from fighting back. Trials which supposedly prove that GM food
is safe are scientifically ridiculous; there are an infinite number of ways in
which food or drink can be genetically tampered with and even though some ways
will not have any undesirable consequences, many others would. Indeed, computer
modelling could be used to predict how it would affect people’s
minds.
Privatisation
has been the main tool of the West in controlling African and Latin American
countries in the past, but recent revolutionary movements in Bolivia (general strikes, occupations, demonstrations and blockades, which called for renationalisation of the gas industry
and forced the resignation of the President
and new elections to be called) have shown the limits to
which privatisation can be applied. Sooner or later, ordinary people are going
to fight back.
Real trade justice will not arise out of concessions from capitalist
governments. Even if they remove subsidies on Western produce (such as via the European Union’s
Common Agricultural Policy)
that make it impossible for underdeveloped countries to compete, the fact that
Western goods are comparatively expensive puts these countries at an enormous
disadvantage when it comes to competition in this globalised world, and
companies will employ workers in countries with low wages and low protection for workers such as trade union rights.
Only a democratic socialist
world can achieve trade justice, and this can only happen through a socialist
revolution. The G8 summit is the best opportunity to launch such a revolution!
Workers and
students around the world
– go on strike on Wed 6th July
(first day of G8 summit)!
A general strike and school, college and university students strike at the time of the G8 summit would inspire working class people around the world to fight back, and give the impoverished masses in the so-called third world hope that there is a way out of the nightmare of famines, deaths from preventable diseases and civil wars.
If it is only a symbolic strike on the 6th of July that would be great, but if this call for a worldwide general strike gets taken up in a big way then the whole capitalist system could be under threat. If strikes continue, they could become indefinite general strikes in some countries, with the working class taking over production and distribution of goods leading to socialist revolutions!
In this country, due to the unwillingness of political parties to take up this call (concentrating on getting people to Gleneagles) and with trade union leaders in league with New Labour and shackled by the anti-union laws, serious industrial action is unlikely. However, with Bob Geldof calling for school students to strike on the 6th of July to go to Edinburgh, school student strikes could be organised in major towns and cities across the UK – if there are events to attend, such as demonstrations starting at lunchtime.
I will publicise events when I hear of them on discussion groups at groups.yahoo.com including: g8-summit-worldwide-general-strike, g8-summit-worldwide-school-students-strike, revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp and revolutionaryplatformofrespect.
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I am launching a revolutionary socialist band called Galaxia, recording “Do They Know It’s G8 Time?” (my lyrics to Band Aid 20’s “Do Theey Know It’s Christmas?”) and my song “The Revolution Starts Now!”. For more info, go www.galaxiamusic.org, or groups.yahoo.com/group/galaxiamusic. You can download lyrics from the internet, and mp3 files will soon be available. |