ON THE L’AQUILA G8 SUMMIT

İLPS | 07 – 07 – 2009 | Another catastrophe,  this time man-made,  descends  upon earthquake-devastated  L’Aquila this week as  the  leading imperialist heads of state convene  the 35th G-8 Summit from 8 to10 July in this central Italian city.

This year’s summit departs from its usual format by inviting more than 30 other heads of state and international organizations to discuss a wider range of economic, political and security issues.  This is a sign of the relative weakening of the leading imperialist powers as well as an attempt to divide and rule the rest of the G-192 nations.  Nevertheless, the overall objective persists: to secure the interests of monopoly capital and stabilize the world capitalist system now being wracked  by the most severe  crisis since the Great Depression.

Even as the global depression deepens  further, the G-8 leaders are expected to play up false indicators of recovery in order to buoy up speculative investors’ confidence  and revive  the flow of credit.  The finance oligarchy represented by the G-8 governments has consistently misrepresented the current capitalist crisis as a problem of liquidity that can be  resolved by bailing out the biggest banks and failing financial institutions that are weighed down by toxic assets and debts.   If at all done, any discussion of “systemic problems”,  is reduced to regulatory failure which can be  easily addressed  by adopting new “global standards” for financial regulation, such as the new  charter on financial regulation being proposed  by the summit host, Silvio Berlusconi.

All this is to deny that the capitalist system  is  fundamentally flawed  and crisis-bound.  Indeed, the G8 summit  is scheduled to start discussions  on “exit strategies” that would ensure the eventual phase-out of “emergency” fiscal and monetary measures that blatantly contradict the  myth of neoliberalism except war spending.  This is to forestall any attempt at instituting even  a modest shift in the basic thrust of economic policies away from market liberalization which has  greatly accelerated capital accumulation in the hands of the monopoly capitalist elite.  The G-8 summiteers are blind to the fact that the crisis continues to deepen and worsen precisely because no determined measures have been taken  to stimulate consumer demand by stemming unemployment, raising employment and reviving production.

As if engaged in a religious ritual or in comedic repetition, the G8 summit will again call for the speedy conclusion of the Doha Round of negotiations for global trade and investment liberalization as the way out of the current economic slump.  In fact, the protectionist practices  of the imperialist powers are increasing.  The call for further liberalization is aimed at further shifting the burden of crisis to the working people,  especially in the underdeveloped countries.   These  countries are bearing the  main brunt of the crisis. For decades  under the policy of “neoliberal globalization”, their economies have been grossly distorted and degraded despite previous claims of growth,  actually bloated by debt financing and consumption.

More than 30 countries are facing imminent balance of payments crises  because  new credit has dried up for third world countries  that are chronically dependent on foreign capital inflows  to pay for older debts, sustain imports from the advanced capitalist countries and paper over chronic deficits they incur as imperialist states plunder their economies.   The tightening of international credit and the drastic fall in demand by imperialist countries for raw materials and semi-manufactured products have combined to depress  and devastate the economies of the underdeveloped  countries.

Global unemployment is expected to rise further  and precarious forms of employment will spread even further as capitalists compete on the basis of reducing labor costs and intensifying their exploitation of workers.  The number of undernourished is expected to rise at an accelerated rate  as poor people lose their livelihoods  and food systems are further captured by agrochemical and trading monopolies.  Millions more are denied access to health, housing, education and basic services  as state budgets  are spent on bailing out big banks and other favored corporations.

The imperialist states are using both the economic crisis and climate change  as  pretext for channeling more public funds towards monopoly firms including energy corporations  that seek  to commercialize new technologies  such as carbon capture and storage, “clean carbon”, renewable  energy and other techno-fixes  with dubious ecological integrity but with clear opportunities  for monopoly profits.  In line with this, the G8 leaders seek to remove barriers to trade for all “eco-friendly” goods and services via the WTO’s Doha Round so that their monopoly firms can gain control and  rapidly expand their markets.

They are also pushing for a post-2012 climate protocol that would further obscure  the historical and current responsibility of monopoly capitalists based  in the industrialized countries for dumping greenhouse  gasses  into the atmosphere  and polluting the environment in pursuit of superprofits.  The G8 leaders are trumpeting the goal of limiting the average  global temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees  Celsius in order to appear committed to combating climate change.  But they shift the burden of reducing actual emissions  to underdeveloped countries like China and India where their multinational corporations locate their labor-intensive and pollution-intensive operations. They are also seeking to expand carbon trading and carbon offset schemes  for this purpose  as well as to create more opportunities for financial speculation and profit-taking for finance capitalists.

The G8 summit will take cognizance of the global food crisis only to use this as the rationale for more agri-trade  liberalization and a new  green revolution that favors multinational agrochemical corporations that monopolize  the seeds,  plant varieties, fertilizers and other farm inputs.  This will lead to further  dispossession of peasants, more unsustainable agricultural practices and greater food  insecurity.

The plight of the people  of Africa will once  again be  used to demonstrate the humanitarian pretenses of the G8 leaders. They will once  again make pledges  which  they do not fulfill even as these  are mere tokens and are meant to facilitate the imperialist expansion of capital. They have  not met their pledges  of canceling a small part of  Africa’s debt and providing trifling amounts of aid   for realizing the so-called  Millennium Development Goals.

They do  not even consider canceling the illegitimate debts of underdeveloped countries let alone acknowledge  and provide restitution for centuries of imperialist plunder of the colonies and semi-colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Indeed,  the imperialist states collude to exploit and oppress  the African people  and at the same time  compete  for control over Africa’s energy reserves, mines, other raw materials and agriculture.

This is the first G8 Summit for the new US President who has beguiled people with the promise of change. Yet Barack Obama clings to the deceptive dogma of neoliberalism and is continuing the War of Terror previously carried out by Bush and the neoconservatives.  With Iraqi oil now  controlled by Anglo-American oil monopolies,  the Obama administration has promised to withdraw US troops from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009. Yet over a hundred thousand US troops  remain on Iraqi soil in strategic military bases  aside  from over a hundred thousand private military contractors in the payroll of the US Pentagon.  In fact, the US is building more military bases  in the Iraqi countryside, indicating the US’ intention of extending its occupation of Iraq well beyond the 2011 deadline for complete withdrawal.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US is escalating its military campaigns against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, using drones  purportedly to target armed militants but in fact massacring the civilian population and forcing their mass displacement.  None of these atrocities — like war crimes by US-Israeli forces  against the Palestinian people — will receive condemnation by the G8 leaders  and will even be lauded as  acts of counter-terrorism, humanitarian conduct and democratization.  Indeed, the G8  promotes aggressive wars and state terrorism. They are stepping up efforts at “terrorism prevention” by resorting to increased surveillance, cyber-intelligence, propaganda, recruitment and training of civilian-military operatives and repression, especially in areas  where people’s resistance is resurgent.

The G8 summiteers will insist on adding teeth to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which reserves  the privilege of having huge  stockpiles  of nuclear weapons  to  the US, Britain, France, Russia and China. They condone  the US occupation and nuclearization of South Korea but they raise hell about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for exercising national sovereignty and self-defense  in developing nuclear weapons and missiles.  They are also perturbed with the nuclear energy program of Iran.  But they are positively pleased with the nuclear weapons of  Israel and they are reconciled with those of India and Pakistan.

US intervention is also on the rise in Latin America where US-inspired military adventures  have recently targeted governments that are dramatically critical of or opposed  to US hegemony.   The generals who have ousted and ejected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya were all trained in the US-run School of the Americas (now named WHINSEC) and seem  to have followed basically  the same script used  by the generals who attempted to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez  in 2002 and the soldiers who kidnapped and ejected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti in 2004. Nevertheless the US has been forced to distance  itself from the coup plotters in Honduras after the entire Organization of American States roundly condemned  the coup.  Elsewhere in the region, US military intervention masquerades as operations against narcotics producers, traffickers or transnational organized crime syndicates.

The 35th G8 summit will once again be an occasion for the leading imperialist powers to unite behind their common determination to preserve  and profit from the  world capitalist system at the expense of the proletariat and peoples of the world.  But the worsening socioeconomic and political crisis in the world today is  sharpening all major contradictions, including those  between the imperialist powers and the oppressed  peoples and nations, between the working class and the monopoly  bourgeoisie,  and among the imperialist powers.  Inter-imperialist rivalries are intensifying in terms of  competition for captive markets, cheap labor, raw materials, fields of investment and spheres of influence.

The crisis of the world capitalism is inflicting intolerable suffering on the broad masses of the people.   Social discontent and people’s resistance are widespread and deep-going.   Various forms of militant mass struggles have broken out in the industrial capitalist countries and in the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Lain America. The people are fighting back against the escalating levels of exploitation, oppression, discrimination and all forms of social injustice.

The International League of Peoples’ Struggles calls on all its member-organizations and other people’s organizations in Italy, in all other member-states of the G-8 and throughout the world to conduct campaigns of information and mass protest actions against the G-8.  Our campaigns must be resolute, militant and effective against imperialism and reformism.  We encourage the broad masses of the people to further develop the revolutionary forces  and mass movements  to fight for the national and social liberation of the peoples of the world. #
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
06 July 2009