Athens Meeting 18-20 November 2005, Contribution of WP of
Ireland
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From: SolidNet, Monday, November 28, 2005
http://www.workers-party.org , mailto:wpi@indigo.ie
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International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties
"Current Trends In Capitalism: Economic, Social And
Political Impact. The Communists' Alternative"
Athens, 18-20 November, 2005

Dear Comrades,

On behalf of the Central Executive Committee of the
Workers' Party of Ireland I would like to extend warm
fraternal greetings to all the communist and workers'
parties assembled in Athens and to extend our best wishes
to Comrade Aleka Paparigha and the Communist Party of
Greece for their hospitality and their efforts in
organising this meeting.

Before I begin to address the main theme of this meeting I
must first bring to your attention recent developments in
respect of our Party. As many of you may already know the
President of our Party, Comrade Sean Garland, was arrested,
while attending our Party's Annual Delegate Conference in
Northern Ireland, on foot of a request by the government of
the United States of America with the active collaboration
of the British authorities. Comrade Garland has not been
charged with any criminal offence but the US government
wishes to extradite him to the US to face US "justice". The
attack on Comrade Sean Garland is based on anti-communist
propaganda and forms part of a long-standing right wing
assault on the integrity of the Workers' Party, the
internationalist communist movement and the socialist
states.

The Central Executive Committee of the Workers' Party of
Ireland condemned this provocative and politically
motivated arrest. Comrade Garland, is a long-standing and
respected member of the Workers' Party who has consistently
worked for peace and democracy in Northern Ireland and for
the unity of the Irish working-class. He has been a
consistent and vocal critic of US imperialism in its quest
for global hegemony, mostly recently in opposition to the
war on Iraq.

The request for the extradition of Sean Garland by the US
government to a country which has a long record of
repression of socialists and progressives, both at home and
abroad, and where no political opponent can expect a fair
trial is a blatant attempt to interfere in the affairs of a
democratic political party and to intimidate those who
oppose US imperial interests. The Workers' Party has made
clear that it shall not be intimidated and that it shall
oppose, by every means at its disposal, all attempts to
extradite Sean Garland from his homeland to a US prison.

The Workers' Party has appealed to all progressive forces
throughout the world - particularly those people who have
worked closely with our Party in the past, to oppose this
persecution of a political activist with a long history of
selfless work for his Party, his country and his class.
The Workers' Party thanks all those parties and individuals
who have sent messages of solidarity or organised
demonstrations in support of our campaign. Our Party wishes
to applaud in particular the constant efforts of our
comrades in the Communist Party of Greece in support of our
campaign to prevent the extradition of Sean Garland to the
United States.

The Worker's Party will not be intimidated by the US and
commits itself to its continuing struggle against US
imperialism and for the victory of peace and socialism.

Humankind has created immense productive forces. The
developments in science and technology opened the
possibility of improving the lives and living standards of
millions throughout the world. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights which was adopted by the General Assembly of
the United Nations on 10 December 1948 proclaimed that
everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social
security and to the realisation of the economic, social and
cultural rights indispensable for that person's dignity and
the free development of his or her personality. The reality
for the peoples of the world is very different. The
conflict between the productive forces and production
relations is the primary mechanism of historical
development and provides the economic basis of social
change leading to the transition from one mode of
production to another. There is an irreconcilable
contradiction between the social character of production
and the private mode of the appropriation of products.
Capitalism creates a fundamental division between the class
whose wealth derives from its ownership of the means of
production and that class which depends for its existence
on its labour.

Exploitation takes a number of forms. The greed for profit
results in the movement of capital towards "low-wage"
economies. Powerful transnational corporations continue to
evade social responsibility or democratic control.
Capitalist methods of production cause massive
environmental damage and exploitation, driving millions of
people into poverty and despair.

The IMF is deeply ideologically committed to the capitalist
project. It sees the "free" market as the solution to
economic problems and it is deeply hostile to the public
sector and public spending. The neo-liberal agenda of the
IMF and World Bank requires that as a precondition of
receiving funds the nations seeking assistance must
liberalise their economies. This requires nations to reduce
the role of the state, privatise industry, devalue
currencies, increase interest rates, reduce labour
regulations and introduce greater "flexibility" into
employment practices. These policies have had a devastating
effect on the developing world. It forces down the prices
of commodities from developing countries, decreases the
income, standards of living and services available to
workers in those countries and compels those countries and
peoples ever deeper into a vicious circle of poverty and
dependency.

Developed countries increase their wealth by selling
capital intensive products for a high price and purchasing
labour intensive products on the cheap. The gap between low
prices for raw materials and high prices for industrial
goods results in heavy losses for the developing countries.
This imbalance of trade increases and maintains the
ever-widening gulf between rich and poor. The search for
private profit also causes immense damage to the
environment. Rivers, lakes, oceans and the air itself are
polluted with toxic filth yet those responsible for
creating these conditions refuse to acknowledge
responsibility much less contribute to making available the
means required to preserve and protect the natural
environment and the resources of the world.

In 2003 Uganda was offered $52 million in aid to fight TB,
AIDS and malaria. This was rejected by Uganda on the
grounds that it was concerned at upsetting the IMF.
Honduras was suspended from HIPC status because it spent
money received under the Education For All initiative
because it spent the money on teachers' pay. In order to
qualify for loans key sectors of the economy have to be
privatised, workers' wages have to be kept low, funding of
public education, housing and health has to be reduced and
countries are not permitted to spend money on assisting and
protecting the poorest, most vulnerable and most exploited.
It is this fundamental lack of humanity that lies at the
soul of capitalism.

International monopolies continue to exploit the natural
resources of other countries, depriving those peoples of
the income from those valuable resources. The loss of
expertise characterised by the "brain drain" from
developing countries reduces the number of scientists,
engineers and health care specialists who could otherwise
provide valuable services to their own people.

These policies, followed in many parts of the developing
world, have led to the sharp growth in the balance of trade
deficit and have had a catastrophic effect on national
economies. Transnational corporations have taken up key
positions in national ecomiomies purchasing vital national
enterprises. International banking monopolies have
increased their influence at the expense of national banks.
Much of the state sector in many countries has been bought
by foreign capital. Structural adjustment policies imposed
by the IMF and World Bank continue to force developing
countries to reduce or abandon spending on housing, health,
education and development.

Imperialism seeks to use debt as a means of increasing
economic exploitation and establishing control over
national economies. International bank capital has resisted
a meaningful solution to the debt crisis. Capitalism
advocates greater austerity measures on developing
countries which results in greater poverty amongst the poor
of the world.

The headlines in the bourgeois press at the time of this
year's G8 summit sought to create the impression that the
leaders of the Group of Eight industrialised countries had
adopted a radical solution to the problems of world debt.
This ideological subterfuge, while ignoring the reality of
the G8 approach to world debt, simultaneously neglects the
essential nature of the capitalist mode of production. The
object of the capitalist project is, and has always been,
to maximise profit. It has never been the aim of capitalism
to provide for social need.

The G8 proposal is a self-serving political confidence
trick. First, the proponents of neo-liberalism realise from
the experience of Latin America that if they do not appear
to take action to address world poverty more areas of the
world will turn to the revolt against capitalism. Secondly,
the bourgeois press fails to point out that it is a
condition of the G8 proposals for Heavily Indebted Poor
Countries (HIPC) debt cancellation that debt relief will
only be granted to those countries which can demonstrate
that they are "adjusting" their gross assistance flows by
the amount given. This means that aid will be reduced by
the same amount as the debt relief. Thirdly, many charities
estimate that only a $1 billion will be available next
year.

The G8 proposals also provide that developing countries
must increase private sector development and ensure "the
elimination of impediments to private investment, both
domestic and foreign". At a time when Africa and developing
countries need greater spending on public health, education
and housing to tackle poverty the G8 proposals which, in
fact offer very little in the way of real debt relief,
promote and reinforce the ideology of neo-liberalism and
the "free market". The underlying message of liberalism
and neo-liberalism is that the poor are to blame for their
own condition, that social inequality is an acceptable fact
of life, that all problems can be solved by the market,
that state intervention in the economy should be severely
limited and that the most powerful are entitled to the
untrammelled, uninhibited pursuit of wealth.

The essence of capitalism is based on inequality,
expropriation and exploitation. Capital accumulation in the
US and Europe was built on the expropriation of land and
raw materials from Africa, Asia and Latin America and on
the exploitation of labour at home and abroad. Capitalism,
far from presenting the solution, is the problem.

A UNICEF report "The State of the World's Children 2005"
has indicated that more than half of the world's children
are suffering extreme deprivation without access to
adequate shelter, sanitation, safe water, health care
services, education and food.

500 African children die every hour. In sub-Saharan Africa
there are 2.3 million deaths a year from AIDS related
illness. 3,000 people die of malaria every day. 50% of
Africans live on less than $1 per day. Average life
expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is 46. Throughout Africa
the rural poor are migrating to pestilent urban slums. Yet
Africa is also a continent of immense wealth in terms of
its natural resources. Africa exports 3.8 million barrels
of oil per day. The product and the profits are exported
and the money which might be used to fund public health,
education, housing and jobs is commandeered by the oil
companies and their corrupt local allies. Meanwhile the
poor continue to suffer and the land is polluted and
damaged by environmental disaster.

Capitalism is incapable of solving the problems of the
developing countries. The G8 represents the most powerful
capitalist nations in the world. Many of these are the same
countries that subjected Africa to centuries of slavery,
colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialist exploitation.
Those countries continue to accumulate wealth from the
exploitation of the millions of people who reside in the
developing countries and the expropriation of their natural
resources. The problems of Africa will not be solved by
charity. Poverty will only be made history under socialism.
The first step towards solving the problems of the
developing countries requires the establishment of a new
international economic order in which is based on fair and
equal trade relations. The 2004 Report of the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development noted that
Africa received some $540 billion in loans and paid back
some $550 billion in principal and interest between 1970
and 2002 - yet remained with a debt stock of $295 billion.

Economic developments in individual countries cannot be
isolated from international developments. In mid September
2005 a United Nations World Summit was organised to review
progress since the Millennium Declaration adopted in 2000.
The goals of that Declaration included a commitment to
halve world poverty, attain universal primary education,
achieve reductions in mother and child mortality, a fairer
global trading system and the reversal of the spreads of
HIV/AIDS by 2015.

In the lead up to the summit the US has sought to resile
from the goals of the Millennium Declaration; to remove
provisions in the Summit draft that call for action to halt
climate change; to eliminate new pledges of aid; to remove
the words "corporate responsibility and accountability"
from the discussion on fighting corruption and to remove a
reference to providing the UN with sufficient resources to
fully implement its mandate. To that effect the US
submitted in excess of 750 amendments with the intention of
destroying those commitments. Leaked documents from the
World Bank suggest that its development committee may seek
to impose even more stringent conditions on developing
countries before they are approved for debt cancellation.

At the same time as it attempts to limit global action to
prevent harm to the environment and to reduce international
commitment to the reduction of poverty the US Ambassador to
the UN has objected to language which urges nations to
observe a moratorium on nuclear testing and to sign the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. While subjecting developing
countries to economic pressures the US is simultaneously
and aggressively building up its military forces and
presence throughout the world.

The US military budget request for the fiscal year 2006 is
$4,416 billion. The current US military budget is almost as
much as the rest of the world combined. The US and its
allies account for between two thirds to three quarters of
all military spending. By contrast the United Nations and
all its agencies and funds spend approximately $10 billion
every year. This is miniscule in comparison with US
military spending. Meanwhile the United Nations has faced a
financial crisis which has forced it to cut vital
programmes and which has inhibited its work. In 1997, for
example, half of the US aid was military related. When the
tsunami struck South Asia Us Secretary of State, Colin
Powell, stated that aid to the region was part of the US
"global war on terror". The unceasing expansion of US
military power is an integral part of the global capitalist
project.

The developments in the European Union also reflect the
ideology of capitalism. The European Council set out its
"Lisbon Strategy" in March 2000. The broad aim of the
strategy was to make "the EU the world's most dynamic and
competitive economy" by 2010. For more than a decade the EU
has been moving in a neo-liberal direction. The object of
competitiveness was to be achieved by cutting public
services and increasing the trend towards privatisation.
International experience dictates that this will be
achieved by lower wages, cutting taxes, reducing regulation
and lowering or removing protection for workers' rights and
the environment. The EU is simultaneously attempting to
reduce the state's responsibility for pension provision.
The Stability Pact requires EU member states that have
adopted the euro as the unit of currency not to incur an
annual defit of more than 3% or a total debt of more than
60% of the budget. This will have the effect of limiting
state spending on health, education, housing and social
security.

The European Commission has the task of furthering the
Lisbon process by forcing member states to deregulate
labour markets, open essential services to private control
and reduce social welfare commitments.

Although it has long been a principle endorsed by the
United Nations General Assembly that "all people have the
right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they
freely determine their political status and freely pursue
their economic, social and cultural development" the Lisbon
process which commits member states to the neo-liberal
political agenda cannot be changed by the voters of any
member state. It is fundamentally undemocratic that the
peoples of Europe are subjected to a right-wing political,
social and economic programme over which they have no
control.

Similarly, the unelected European Central Bank dictates
vital monetary policy. Article 105 of the Treaty states:
"The primary objective of the European System of Central
Banks shall be to maintain price stability. Without
prejudice to the objective of price stability, the ESCB
shall support the general economic policies in the
Community with a view to contributing to the achievement of
the objectives of the Community as laid down in Article 2
of the TEC."

Although Article 2 identifies community tasks as including
a high level of employment and social protection the ESCB
has considerable independence. The EU has, accordingly,
transferred vital decision making powers, not to a
transparent, accountable, democratic institution but to a
group of bankers who are unaccountable, wholly undemocratic
and fundamentally and inherently hostile to a socialist
agenda.

Euro zone countries can no longer take individual decisions
on the monetary policies they should pursue since the Euro
zone has common monetary policies which are determined
through the zone's own structures and which must be closely
aligned.

These arrangements expose the difficulties of creating a
"social Europe" when the system is based on policies and
institutions which are not amenable to democratic control
and which accept, unchallenged, the philosophy and ideology
of capitalism.

The Workers' Party subscribes to a vision of a different
world based on a genuine internationalism, peace, equality,
solidarity, dignity, social progress and workers` rights, a
respect for and defence of the environment and the value of
all living things over private profit and corporate greed.
We are committed to a world where war, misery,
exploitation, oppression and inequality have been consigned
to history and where the dictatorship of capital has
disappeared from the face of the earth.

The current developments in capitalism require a radical
and articulate response. It is necessary to expose at an
ideological level the fetishism of the market and the myth
that there is no alternative. It is also necessary to form
new alliances around the consequences of the current trends
in capitalism. The Communist and Workers' parties are aware
that at times of sharpening class confrontation the
capitalist ruling class is willing to disregard civil
liberties and human rights. The implementation of a
programme of severely repressive legislation in both the US
and Britain under the pretence of "the war against terror"
is evidence of this. The battle for democracy is a
fundamental part of our struggle. Capitalism is the
antithesis of democracy and the process of socialist
renewal can be grounded in that struggle. Communist and
Workers' parties can use this to broaden the social front
against capital, to expose its inconsistencies and
contradictions and to involve broad democratic and
progressive forces in the process to effect the radical
transformation of the society and world in which we live.

Nonetheless we must always be sure of our own position and
aware of all attempts, whether national or international,
to rewrite our history. It is only by a firm commitment to
our own socialist revolutionary principles that we can
effectively engage in broader struggles. While we must
recognise the changes that have taken place in capitalist
society we must be ever vigilant for all those influences
from whatever source which seek to dilute our socialist
identity and purpose, which seek to convince us that class
conflict is no longer relevant or that there is no
alternative to capitalism. The building of socialism
implies the dismantling of capitalism.

The Communist and Workers' parties

s must establish themselves as the most influential force
with the broad labour movement. While a significant section
of the working class remain within the influence of social
democratic parties it remains the task of the Communist and
Workers' parties to pursue a programme of work within the
working class movement to create conditions for unity of
action based on the principles of class solidarity.