Civil War threatens in East Timor, Australian and New Zealand troops out of East Timor!

East Timor is on the brink of civil war, after a revolt by rank and file soldiers and a series of bloody attacks on protesters by police. This is the direct result of US imperialism’s role, backed by its local sheriffs, Australia and New Zealand, in suppressing East Timor’s struggle for independence since it conspired in the Indonesian coup of General Suhato in 1965.

Police kill rebels and civilians

On February the 8th nearly six hundred soldiers - a third of the army - went on strike by walking out of their barracks. Most of the rebel soldiers come from the Loromonu ethnic group in the West of the country. They have complained of brutal treatment by commanders, poor pay, and poor living conditions. They have also been bitterly critical of East Timor's police force, accusing it of widespread human rights abuses and links with pro-Indonesian militias.

On the 16th of March the government of Mari Alkatori sacked the rebels en masse, but the protests did not end. On April the 28th the rebels marched on the capital, determined to win reinstatement and have their grievances heard by Alkatari and President Xanana Gusmao. The march was joined by thousands of unemployed Dili youths shouting anti-government slogans. When the march reached the offices of the Prime Minister in the centre of the city police opened fire on it, killing six people and prompting the youths to begin a riot that saw one hundred buildings burnt down or vandalised. The rebel soldiers fled the city, pursued by police. The World Socialist Website has received a report that one rebel was shot along with his two sons on the outskirts of the city. Two female relatives of the slain men were also reportedly murdered when they attempted to recover the bodies of their loved ones. Twenty thousand civilians fled Dili in the wake of the violence of April the 28th.

The rebels have regrouped and established a zone under their control in East Timor's mountainous interior. They have been joined by sympathisers carrying arms and by many members of East Timor's military police. On May the 5th the rebels issued a declaration which threatened attacks on Dili and other towns. On May the 9th a thousand of their supporters surrounded the police station at Gleno, a town outside Dili. After stones were thrown the police opened fire on the demonstation, killing one person and injuring thirty.

Australian and NZ to intervene

The violence in East Timor has alarmed the governments of Australia and New Zealand. John Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer have both suggested that Australian troops may have to return to East Timor in large numbers, and on the 5th of May New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters echoed their sentiments. Australia has already boosted the size of the skeleton UN force in Dili from 90 to 200, in response to a request from East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta.

The East Timorese government has characterised the rebel soldiers and their supporters as 'terrorists' bent on 'undermining democracy', but the country's opposition politicians tell another story. Angela Feitas, who plans to run for President against Gusmao in the elections scheduled for next year, has blamed the government for the crisis, and said that 'Right now, it's worse [than it was] during the 1999 referendum [on independence]'.

The bloodshed and chaos in East Timor these past few weeks must have come as a rude shock to many New Zealanders. Over the past few years politicians and the media have turned East Timor into a sort of modern fairytale story. According to this story, Australia and New Zealand liberated the defenceless little country from Indonesian occupation in 1999 out of sheer benevolence. Since 1999, East Timor has supposedly been an island of democracy and peace, a positive example for the rest of the Third World. The reality is that the current crisis in East Timor is the direct result of 1999's 'humanitarian' intervention.

After wholeheartedly supporting Indonesia's genocidal occupation of East Timor for nearly a quarter of a century, the US and its South Pacific deputy sheriffs in Canberra and Wellington did a U turn near the end of 1999. By then it had become clear that Indonesia would be unable to retain control of East Timor much longer. Decades of guerrilla warfare and the weakening of the Indonesian state after the overthrow of the Suharto dictatorship in 1997 had made East Timor impossible to govern from Jakarta.

The US and its allies had supported the invasion of 1975 because they were worried about the emergence of an uncooperative government in East Timor. Their concern had returned in 1999. The Timor Strait which separates East Timor and Australia contains rich deposits of oil and gas, and in 1989 Australia had signed a deal with Indonesia that had allowed it to begin exploiting these deposits. The Howard government did not want to see this lucrative operation jeopardised by a nationalistic East Timorese government. Australia and the US were also worried by the possibility that an East Timorese government might encourage the secessionist war being fought in West Papua, another territory Indonesia had acquired illegitimately.

But the US, Australia and New Zealand soon found that the leaders of Fretelin, East Timor's main pro-independence movement, were more than ready to listen to their concerns. In the 1970s, Fretelin icons like Gusmao and Ramos-Horta had been anti-imperialists who espoused a mixture of radical Catholicism and Marxism; by the end of the '90s, though, they had long since become believers in free market capitalism and collaboration with the US and its allies. Ramos-Horta had spent years travelling the world trying to enlist Western support for the East Timorese cause, always emphasising the 'reasonableness' and 'moderation' of Fretelin. (In recent years, Foreign Minister Ramos-Horta has been an outspoken supporter of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.)

Fretelin betrays independence struggle

At the beginning of September 1999, Indonesian-backed militia launched attacks on civilians across East Timor in the aftermath of a referendum on independence. The militia were far weaker than the regular Indonesian army, which had mostly withdrawn from East Timor in the lead-up to the referendum. Many militiamen lacked military training and used homemade weapons. Fretelin's armed wing Falintil could easily have defeated these amateur soldiers, but Gusmao and Ramos-Horta had ensured that Falintil troops were barracked deep in the countryside, away from major population centres. Falintil fighters who wanted to march on Dili and smash the militia there were disarmed and disciplined on the orders of the Fretelin leadership. Fretelin's strategy was to sacrifice East Timorese civilians to the anti-independence militia, in order to generate international sympathy and help push the US and Australia to organise an armed intervention.

In Australia and New Zealand, thousands of people took to the streets to protest the slaughter taking place in East Timor. In Australia, trade unions took industrial action against Indonesia's national airline and a number of other businesses linked to the government in Jakarta. In September 1999 Auckland was hosting the annual APEC summit of Asia and Pacific leaders; a handful of Fretelin politicians flew into the city to lead demonstrations. In a backroom meeting at the APEC summit in downtown Auckland, Bill Clinton, John Howard, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny Shipley were already organising an armed intervention force that would operate under a UN mandate.

The vast majority of those demonstrating in solidarity with East Timor supported Fretelin's call for UN intervention in the country. Australia's most popular left-wing paper, the Green Left Weekly, demanded that John Howard organise a force to occupy the island; the trade unions of Australia and New Zealand echoed this call. Only a few small Marxist groups opposed the intervention and pointed out the strategy Fretelin leaders were employing.

Imperialist occupation leads to today’s rebellion

Many East Timorese welcomed the troops that landed under the UN's banner in October 1999. But the reality of the occupation soon set in. The mainly Australian and New Zealand troops had come to ensure the submission of an independent East Timor, and to safeguard Australia's interests in the Timor Strait. Tens of millions of dollars worth of military material was poured into East Timor, but relatively little humanitarian aid arrived. Many East Timorese resented the arrogance of the new occupying force, which was not subject to any local control.

In December 1999, UN troops and East Timorese police opened fire on a march through Dili by unemployed workers, killing several people and sparking a series of riots (the photo at the bottom of this post shows an Australian soldier standing guard over a detainee in the aftermath of one of the riots). Over the next few years Dili would see more riots, as the reality of the new order the UN force had established became ever clearer. On December the 4th 2002, for instance, two Dili students were killed after a protest against police and UN brutality was fired on and turned into a riot. By December 2002 it was clear to many East Timorese that their country's formal independence masked domination by Australia and New Zealand. Australia continued to exploit the oil and gas of the Timor Strait, but paid the East Timorese government only $130 million in royalties every year. In May 2005 Australian control of the Strait was cemented by a one-sided deal which saw the East Timorese agreeing not to stake territorial claims to previously-disputed areas of seabed for sixty years.

With only a trickle of money coming from the Timor Strait, East Timor remains very poor. The UN estimates that per capita income is $370 a year, and falling. Unemployment stands at sixty percent. It is not surprising that the extreme poverty caused by imperialist superexploitation has led to widespread dissatisfaction. But even before the soldiers' strike, the East Timorese government had been in the habit of responding to opposition with threats and repression, not dialogue. Under the rule of Fretelin, the East Timorese police force has become almost as feared as the Indonesian army of occupation once was. A Human Rights Watch Report released in April accused the police of torture, rape, and the murder of opponents of the government.

Imperialist troops out of East Timor!
 
When we consider the recent history of East Timor, it is easy to see why the soldiers' rebellion has attracted the support of many people outside the military. The soldiers' complaints of poor pay, poor living conditions, and police abuses are complaints that many East Timorese share. The big military-civilian protest which was so brutally repressed on April the 28th showed the level of popular anger with the regime of Gusmao and Alkatari. That regime and its backers in Canberra and Wellington may yet try to crush the rebellion by deploying thousands of Anzac troops across East Timor in a re-run of 1999. The Australasian left must learn from the mistake it made then, and refuse to support any new imperialist adventure in East Timor.

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

Workers answer to APEC [June 1999]

In the last issue we covered some of the history and background of the APEC forum now we look closely at the imperialist character and further develop a workers approach to such international groupings.

The APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation) forum is dominated by the imperialist interests of the U.S. and Japan. These are both competing for access to resources (raw materials, cheap labour) in the member countries.

Meanwhile the big union 'worker' leaderships try to get a social clause into APEC. A social clause means some minimal labour rights, 'justice', and doesn't exploit the workers too obviously.

CTU begs at the APEC table

The CTU (Council of Trade Unions) has further revealed just how rotten it is. Angela Foulkes (CTU secretary) has lined up for the Prime Minister's promotions team to hype APEC. The media over-kill is business as usual. They paid Sean Fitzpatrick to "hock the family silver" (in the promotion of the sale of the Auckland International Airport).

The CTU obviously thinks that it can 'reform' APEC with these proposals so that it is not hostile to workers interests. But it is naive of the CTU to think it can tame capitalism by participating in APEC. However, it is not surprising given the rightward drift of the whole traditional Labour leadership. For example, just remember the so-called "Labour" Party showed itself as a bosses' party between 1984 to 1990. Another example was the CTU's refusal to lead a fight against the Employment Contracts Act.

However as workers we remain tied into these rotten leaderships, and one of our first tasks has to be to show up these mis-leaders so they can be removed and replaced by accountable representatives. Then workers will be able to strike out in a progressive direction.

For democratic fighting unions: Unions that are run by the members and fighting to defend wages and conditions, in the first instance.

We also need a party of communist workers to provide a lead to militant workers. Otherwise, the union movement will remain tied by the "labour bureaucracy" to the capitalist class. The labour bureaucrats are the paid workers of a union. Their interests are to protect and preserve their own wages and privileges. Therefore, they do not raise a challenge to capitalism; their role invites them to negotiate with capitalism.

TUF oppose APEC

The Trade Union Federation (TUF) is working in opposition to APEC under the slogan; "Fair trade before free trade". TUF have a set of demands, some of which are worth supporting, and are part of the opposition to APEC.

The Trade Union Federation says:

APEC does not represent the interests of democratic governments in the region but of Trans-National Corporations. The lack of democratic structure and process in APEC supports the dominance of a narrow and destructive business agenda.

1) Aotearoa/New Zealand should withdraw immediately from APEC.

2) Aotearoa/New Zealand should call for the dissolution of APEC.

3) The Government should provide a full and objective National Interest Analysis of existing trade and investment policy, to be subject to further submissions before the select committee and full parliamentary and public debate.

4) Aotearoa/New Zealand should advocate the establishment of a properly constituted forum on regional economic co-operation and development comprised of member nations. This forum would produce a constitution based on the promotion of democratic control, social justice and self-determination amongst member states. It would consider the impact of globalisation and World Trade Organisation initiatives on member states in the light of these principles, including such questions as the relationship between investment flows and trade barriers, the equitable distribution of income both between and within member states and the role of trade in the national development of member states. Its first priority would be to commission a comprehensive empirical study of the impact of trade liberalisation over the last twenty years in the Asia Pacific region and assess the evidence of this study in terms of a wide range of social and economic criteria.

5) That the Government immediately adopts a policy of national economic development. That should include the specific goal of moving the Gross National Product to the level of the Gross Domestic Product within the next three years.

6) That the Government immediately announces the freezing of 1998 tariff levels until the year 2005 and a review of all other APEC "commitments

However, "fair trade" like the promise of a "level playing field" is bullshit and the TUF won't get "fair" trade under capitalism. Trade is based on the sale of commodities produced by labour and unless all the value of the commodity goes to the labourer or producer there can be no "fair trade" any more than exploitation can be "fair".

So what is wrong with "free trade" is not hat it is unfair but is based on the same lie as the "free market" under global capitalism. There is nothing "free" about the market when one group of sellers, wageworkers are forced to sell their labour to be exploited or else starve. TUF's position on "fair trade" implies that it thinks that exploitation results from "unfair" wages that can be corrected by state legislation.

The overall character of the TUF opposition is liberal. In effect it wants an international body (global government?) to set the rules for capitalism. They only want it to be a little easier for working people. They have the classic liberal mission before them; to humanise the capitalist system (eg they call for "social justice" and "self-determination"). We say that is impossible under capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system that reduces humans to the profits it wants to extract from us. There is no true "free trade" under Imperialism, and "fair trade" is impossible while the capitalist system of exploitation remains. We need to overthrow capitalism and build a new system.

Build a workers fightback

Workers cannot deny the realities of capitalism eg. concentration and centralisation of capital in giant Transnational Corporations. We know this because it hits out at workers. Whole industries have been shifted offshore, and workers have had to travel to gain a job. In other industries (eg. wood) workplaces have closed or been "restructured" and workers laid off.

Another reality of "free" trade under capitalism is that capital can move more freely (than workers). The TNCs can ship entire plants to whichever economy they wish to site it in, eg. Kenson industries shipped machinery out within days of shutting the workers out.

Against this capitalist programme we say workers need to occupy factories or plants threatened with closure. That forces the question to be asked; is the plant the boss's machines or the workers? It is built and operated and practically lived-in by workers. Or, is it machines, the capitalists' property" which produces value? We would expect that capitalists will defend their property rights with all their might - i.e. the state forces. Then we would need workers self-defence militia.

We also fight for open all borders for all working people: No bars on workers migration. As capital is mobile and does not have to obey immigration laws, so should workers be free to go where there are jobs. We fight for the rights of migrant workers to equal conditions and citizenship. This gives effect to the reality that workers have no country and are part of an international labour force and cannot defend their interests by lining up behind their nationalist bosses to fight trade wars and military wars.

The Struggle against Imperialism

The imperialist powers can trade more freely than smaller (semi-colonial) nations. The size of their companies means they have an advantage, and can reap a super-profit. We describe weak economies as semi-colonies where they are controlled, owned, or otherwise dominated by international capital.

We say that NZ is a semi-colony as the economy is super-exploited by imperialism. Apart from the already high and growing level of direct foreign investment in the privatised state assets in energy (see article on Power to the Powerful), resources (e.g. Timber - International Paper) services (TELECOM, NZ RAIL etc) media (Murdoch and O'Reilly etc) which allows super-profits to be repatriated overseas, NZ is faced with high trade barriers.

A good example is the barrier to NZ lamb going to the US. The US has force NZ to totally remove subsidies from farming, yet it subsidises its own farming industry which is inefficient to buy farmers politically conservative (land-owners often are) votes. Farmers are therefore quite a significant support for the ruling class' so-called democracy.

A second example is the barriers put up against NZ timber going into Japan. When the Asian markets crashed, and the commodity price for timber fell the Japanese protected their own timber plantations by putting a tariff on any imported timber. This clearly shows the major economies of APEC protecting their own inefficient primary production at the cost of a weak semi-colony.

A more recent development is the push by US based TNCs to break up of the NZ Dairy Board. The object is to bring key primary produce export industries to even more under their direct ownership and control (as is already the case in the ownership of Meat and Timber industries).

Dairy industry

Dairy cooperatives are under pressure from world capitalism. The interests of international capital would like to reap a super-profit from this highly efficient industry. They want to buy up sections of the dairy cooperatives and turn them into fully capitalist enterprises. That means they will run them for the TNC owners profits and not for the working farmers shareholders who get a return on the value produced by their own labour.

The industry in NZ has been undergoing a process of concentration of capital into larger and larger cooperatives. We call for a defence of the "cooperative" ownership structure in the dairy industry. Where the cooperatives are growing, working farmers need to fight for the democratising of the cooperatives. The interests of the (smaller) working farmers are being overtaken by those of the larger scale corporate capitalist owners. This means farm managers, share-milkers and labourers are set up to become exploited as cheap labour.

Nationalism

Some of the capitalist class of semi-colonies like NZ may be under threat from foreign capitalists. This may appear to temporarily align their interests with the interests of workers in opposing imperialism. Some layers of workers and capitalists are attracted to a strategy of economic nationalism or protectionism especially as this appeared to work in the interests of workers during the post-war boom.

But this is a deadly trap as national capitalists are unable to survive in the globalised economy without super-exploiting their workers also.

Therefore, despite an apparent common interest in opposing imperialism especially against trade barriers and military attacks, workers need to organise separately, because even while our immediate interests may temporarily coincide, our class interests demand the overthrow of capitalist property relations at home.

Some layers of workers have interests that coincide with the interests of national capitalists in a destructive way. For example, the workers who supply the US and its allies with arms and weapons. Their immediate interests are with the US as global "police" / war-mongers. However their long-term class interests are not.

A recent local (NZ) example of this was the Engineers Union. The executive (bureaucratised leaders) of the Engineers Union wanted the "ANZAC" frigates project. Why? - because they wanted their members to build the frigates. As long as they are paid, and collect union dues, nothing else really matters. They don't mind wasting labour, on building floating targets/tombs for the NZ state forces to sit in. The last edition of "Metal" celebrated the growth of jobs (from 120 to 300+) at "Safe Air", a branch of Air New Zealand. The EU proudly (on the front page) declares that the company as taken over the NZ Air Force maintenance team and contracts. They are proud to be servicing the military of the Asia-Pacific region, Philippines and Australia.

Many workers would be happier if they were building anything other than weapons, but work because they need a wage to survive. Other privileged workers would fight for their owners, to defend their wage-slavery and privilege. At the core of the issue is class. The working class is made up of workers because we need to work in order to survive. If we happened to live in a privileged nation state, our lifestyle may be more comfortable. However privilege cannot stop the capitalist economic crisis hurting us also.

Workers internationalism

We are for the construction of international trade unions. Not just at the level of agreements between union leaders, but also at the membership level. Members would need to fight in their unions for the programme of international unions to take up a progressive struggle.

This will be seen to differ from the programmes drawn up by bureaucratic leaders. The bureaucrats only motive is to try to defend the jobs of their current members, since these members are the source of their salary.

Current international agreements are often based in an imperialist nation or on a privileged (comparatively) workforce. Union leaders are too slow in considering expanding to cover other nations who could be a source of either cheaper labour, or if it came down to class struggle with the bosses, a source of scab labour for the bosses. Workers need to recruit these workers to unionism before the bosses can divide workers and continue to rule with ease.

Trade unions members have an interest in recruiting workers to unions, and building their awareness that our only strength as workers is our ability to take united action. Through truly international unions we can build workers solidarity.

International unions could defend workers jobs by fighting for equal wages and conditions across international borders. This could organise workers in semi-colonies, against super-exploitation by international capitalists. This would begin to improve the wages and conditions of workers in the semi-colonies. At the same time as proving the strength of workers united organisation.

Following from the above progressive moves, it becomes clear why we need to fight against barriers to workers migration. Since international unions would create the opportunities for workers to travel and work with much more protection than migrant workers get at present. This would also allow the spread of workers education in union principles across an international workforce.

The whole thrust would be for the building of worker solidarity, raising labour rights, organising non-union workers and the growth of healthy international trade unionism.

An example is the Seafarers Union. The Seafarers response to the threat of international competition on the seas was to align their interests with the nation state and the stronger Australian union. In NZ they were protected against competition on internal shipping routes through NZ state law. Internationally they had signed an agreement with their Australian counterparts (the MUA- Maritime Union of Australia) protecting trans -Tasman shipping routes.

The above were defensive, protective deals. They show that the trade unions are at most "reformist", trying to reform capitalism for their self-protection. This puts them onto the parliamentary reformist path, where they place their hopes in a new (Labour oriented) government changing the shipping rules.

Protectionist deals are no match for the already global capitalist organisations (the bosses class). What is needed is an international view, which only a truly international organisation can build, and even this would need the revolutionary communist method of Marx.

Fletchers paper mills

Lets take a look at how workers might collaborate internationally within a TNC. Fletcher Challenge was seen as NZ's main TNC (it is now half-owned offshore). Fletchers has had major strikes and lockouts of paper mill workers in a number of countries. However they have been able to continue production by isolating the industrial dispute to one country. For example the mills in Canada were out but the NZ mills carried on running. Internationally pulp and paper workers were not organised beyond appeals for financial support. If they had taken strike action at the same time, in solidarity, them they would have shown their united strength.

For workers control of all branches of TNCs!

From Class Struggle No 27 May-June 1999

What's wrong with APEC? [February 1999]

The recent APEC meeting in Malaysia was notable for its failure to push free trade in the face of the so-called Asian crisis. Instead it got into a spat about "Asian values" and "human rights". NZ’s Jenny Shipley joined with the US vice president Al Gore to attack Dr Mahathir’s jailing and prosecution of his former deputy Anwar Ibrahim. Since the US is the world’s worst offender on human rights, what really motivates Gore’s attack is Dr Mahathir’s retreat to economic nationalism to protect the Malaysian economy from the harmful effects of economic liberalisation. Yet neither free trade nor economic nationalism in any combination can end human rights abuses. Both are against the interests of workers. We explain why.

APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Council) is widely seen to be a threat to workers everywhere. This is because APEC is designed to extend 'free trade' among the Asia Pacific states. Free trade is seen to be in the interest of the major powers and against the interests of the 'developing' states because it will drive down prices and wages in these states. It is also feared that APEC will reinforce regulations like the MAI that put severe limits on the ability of weaker states to protect and benefit from their own resources.

The alternative is posed as economic nationalism – i.e. to reject ‘free trade’ and to regulate trade and capital flows for the national benefit. This means breaking from the model of APEC and following the example of China in tightly regulating Direct Foreign Investment (DFI). Malaysia is today seen as opting for this alternative after having its economy destabilised by volatile capital flows. Japan too has turned its back on demands to free up trade in timber and fish. In a recent article in the New Left Review #231, Robert Wade and Frank Veneroso argue that the Chinese model is now seen as the solution to the so-called "Asian Crisis" by insulating the region from the worst ravages of chaotic world capitalism. The Asian economies provide half of the world's savings so they don't need to agree to the destructive free trade policies of the IMF or World Bank in order to get funds.

Like the Korean students we call for the IMF to get out! We are against IMF austerity and debt for equity measures as the means by which US capital gains control of semi-colonial and weaker imperialist economies. However, we do not see a retreat to economic nationalism as the real answer because it does not change the root cause of the problem - capitalism. We argue here that both free trade and protection are merely different ways of managing capitalism and that neither of these 'alternatives' is in the interests of workers. What we want is workers control and a planned economy that is integrated into an international socialist economy where production is for need and not profits.

What's wrong with free trade?

The fear of free trade is well founded. The large protests that have met APEC meetings since its start, sure to continue in New Zealand in 1999 testify to this real fear. (See article on 'APEC Security threatens democratic rights'). 'Globalisation' is the swear word that expresses this fear. Under the capitalist world economy, NAFTA, the WTO, MAI and APEC, are all designed to regulate super-exploitation and unequal exchange between the imperialist powers and the poor colonies and semi-colonies. Free trade under these rules disadvantages the poorer commodity producers who have almost no control over prices of exports or imports.

What is produced is determined by competitive advantage under the ownership and control of MNCs. If costs are competitive DFI will flow in and super-profits will flow out. While this arrangement has the advantage of cutting costs of production, it also depresses living standards and expands the surplus population of unemployed or under-employed. Any attempt to deregulate or interfere with these arrangements will lead to punitive law suits for breach of contract, and/or economic sanctions, and ultimately political and military intervention. The fate of Iraq during and after the Gulf War is a good example.

Is Economic Nationalism any better?

Most of the left, especially the eco-left and the Maoist left, advocates national economic controls against free trade. That is, instead of the free reign of MNCs, nation states must impose social constraints on DFI and the extraction of profits. Usually this means some form of tax on DFI that can fund a social dividend to subsidise the social downside of globalisation.

Despite its apparent progressive thrust, there are some clearly reactionary political aspects to this. Any attempt to appeal to nationalism against globalisation runs the risk of subordinating the working class to the national bourgeoisie. That is, it isolates workers in each country, separates and alienates them from their working class brothers and sisters in other countries, and gives priority to an alliance between workers and bosses in which bosses are dominant.

Logically the downside of globalisation cannot be defeated by national solutions without reimposing trade and capital barriers that lead to trade wars and ultimately military confrontations in which workers kill workers.

Second, this 'solution', unless it breaks free of the capitalist world economy, can be easily sucked back into the 'new' state form widely promoted as the 'new middle' (see ‘Who Runs the German Economy? Economist, November 21), the 'third way' or the 'radical centre' (See article on the 'Smart, Wired, Zero Sum State’ in Class Struggle #24).

Under this model the local state becomes a direct agent of globalisation, as the manager of investment, and of social control. Yet because the social fund available to correct the social downside cannot be more than a token contribution without raising taxes and driving out DFI, there is no real counter to the harmful effects of globalisation upon society.

Workers internationalism

So it seems that neither alternative can escape the effects of globalisation upon the masses of workers and peasants in the 'less developed countries' or those impoverished sections of society in the 'developed' world. The answer then must be to transform those progressive struggles to limit the negative impact of globalisation on local populations, into a successful transition to socialism.

How to do this? First, we have to recognise that free trade is contradictory. It has both progressive and destructive aspects. The trick is to neutralise the destructive aspects by advancing the progressive aspects. Under the free reign of the MNCs, ownership and control is rapidly concentrated into the hands of a few powerful MNCs and their imperialist states. This amounts to a progressive 'socialising' of the means of production as the world economy becomes increasingly interdependent.

In that sense the world economy becomes internationalised, and along with it, the working class. So while on the one hand MNCs that span a number of countries can attempt to evade attempts at nationalisation in any one country by capital flight, on the other, MNCs cannot evade a potentially powerful international labour movement if it is organised and united.

Therefore instead of trying to break up MNCs by nationalising them in any one country, which can only lead to isolated struggles and defeats at the hands of sanctions and military offensives, it is important for the international labour movement to 'socialise' them further. This means giving up on the reformist idea that the capitalist state can be used in the transition to socialism, and taking up the idea that workers integrated into the global division of labour unite internationally to progressively 'socialise' these massive combines. By this we mean imposing the interests of labour onto the owners by extending workers control over production and planning. The solidarity that has emerged around the recent struggles of Korean workers and the Australian 'wharfies' is a sign of what could be possible once workers recognise that their strength in unity is must be turned into international solidarity.

Progressive nationalism?

This does not mean that some of the more progressive demands of economic nationalism should be junked. Privatised assets should be re-nationalised without compensation, and all state assets put under workers control. Similarly, progressive taxes on profits and speculation should be increased to fund social spending. Taxes on profitable industry rather than subsidies to unprofitable industry should be the basis for funding social spending. Where these social costs drive capital out of the country, capitalist property should be socialised and put under workers control.

Such demands upon the capitalist nation state would meet with rejection by the capitalists on the grounds that they would destabilise the economy by threatening the rights of private property. That’s why to be successful these measures would require a much higher level of political organisation of workers capable of supporting a Workers' Government based on workers militia. Moreover, the success of a Workers' Government in any given country to resist attempts by imperialist states to smash it would depend upon the strength of the international workers movement and the capacity of workers in the imperialist countries to put a halt to such armed interventions.

So whichever way you look at it, there can be no successful transition to socialism without overcoming the reactionary nationalisms that divide and rule the international working class, and putting the development of the progressive socialisation of the world economy that is rapidly occurring under globalisation, under workers' control.

NZ out of APEC!

For Workers Internationalism!

From Class Struggle, No 25, Dec 1998-Feb 1999