Cancun and Trade Wars

In homing in on Cancun the anti-globalist left shows once more that the workers’ movement is being distracted by a sideshow while the capitalists get on with the real business of exploiting our labour and ruling our lives. The WTO is the UN of trade, and like the UN its purpose is to create the impression that capitalism can be reformed by global democratic institutions. Those who promote either reforming the WTO, or abolishing it, in the name of democracy, are fixated on managing the market. We say that the market cannot be managed. The only way to make trade fair is to overthrow capitalism, and we must start now.

Chasing after global shadows

The protests at Cancun called for the abolition of the WTO because the WTO is dominated by the US and EU and imposes ‘unfair’ trading conditions on the ‘developing’ countries. For example EU farmers spend $2 a day on every cow when half the world’s people live on less. Guardian journalist George Monbiot writing on Cancun rejects the call to abolish the WTO. He says countries cannot retreat from trade to self-sufficiency without increased poverty and harm to the environment. No, say the Greens, local production can be sustainable. Replies Monbiot, only global trade can be sustainable. Yet both Monbiot and the Greens promote equally unworkable and ultimately identical utopias of fair trade.

On the one hand Monbiot’s would-be multilateral world government has been wiped out by S 11. The US ignored the UN to invade Iraq and still rejects its demands to take over the rebuilding of that country. The US rejects trade liberalisation by giving its rich beef, grain and cotton farmers yet more protection. The US and EU are fighting to see who can be the most protectionist. So where is the prospect of the poor countries ganging up and forcing the rich countries to open up their markets? Trade wars in which the powerful nations dominate the weak nations are just one symptom of imperialism. The WTO is a weapon of imperialism, just as is the UN. When is suits them they use it, when it doesn’t they don’t. Right now the imperialists are embarking on trade wars with their rivals and poor countries don’t figure in this war except as victims of super-exploitation and oppression.

Monbiot’s dream requires that poor countries stand up to the rich and reform the WTO. But the poor countries are also pressured to sell off all their resources to the big multinationals to repay debt. ‘Neo-liberal globalisation’ is all about forcing poor countries to open up so that their assets can be owned and controlled by big business. So how can they resist further trade deals to earn foreign exchange to pay off debt unless they go all the way and reject the debt?

Maybe they can take a lead from Venezuela and refuse to make any further concessions on the sale of national assets until the rich countries open up to trade. But despite Chevez’ tough talk, and surviving two attempted coups, he is making deals to pay off Venezuela’s debt. None of his populist buddies, like Lula in Argentina, or Kirchner in Argentina, dare cut their ties with imperialism. Even his idol, Fidel Castro, is busy selling off Cuba’s resources to capitalist corporations.

Chasing local movements

Aziz Choudry (a founder member of the NZ anti-globalist group ARENA) writing in “Neoliberal Globalisation” (Green Paper #4 http://www.asej.org/) puts the case for the WTO rejectionists against the Monbiot-type WTO reformists.

“Can we seriously talk about humanizing or adding a “social dimension” to the exploitation and misery inflicted by market capitalism?” He says the attempts by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Greens to insert “social” and “green” clauses in the WTO are merely smokescreens to hide its real purpose. He quotes Canadian union activist Dave Bleakney who says that a ‘social clause’ is like “fighting for guarantees that you have the right to be present at your execution”. Good point.

“We need to align our struggles for alternatives to neo-liberalism with the older struggles for self-determination, against all forms of imperialism and colonialism. We must de-legitimise transnational corporations and international institutions like the WTO, World Bank, the IMF and International Development Bank, and the other institutions and processes which advance neoliberal globalisation globally, regionally and nationally.”

So to reject the WTO we must also reject the IMF, WB and all the multilateral institutions that are the weapons of imperialism in the ‘developing world’. This leaves no option but for the poor countries to go it alone. Choudry answers Monbiot charge that this would lead to stagnation and ecocide by pointing to two examples of the strategy from below that can survive the collapse of the WTO.

The first is the Solidarity Economy championed by the Zapatistas of Chiapas in southern Mexico. The rebellion of the Zapatistas in 1994 was against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement between US, Mexico and Canada) and the robbing of the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. While this was a brave attempt to resist privatisation and to promote self-reliance the Zapatistas remain marginalised and their example has failed to take root elsewhere.

The second example is that of the actions of the Argentine piqueteros (unemployed) who in December 2001 formed popular assemblies with employed and self-employed workers to occupy factories and fight the collapse of the economy.

Again, this popular and progressive social movement has yet to become a successful model to replace neo-liberal globalisation when the current Kirchner government is doing a deal with the IMF to repay $20 Billion in debt and at the same time repressing the workers movement.

Fair trade means ending capitalism

While these examples are the beginnings of social movements against neo-liberalism, in themselves they are incapable of defeating imperialism and replacing capitalism with a just society. They are limited by the type of analysis that sees ‘neo-liberal globalisation’ as something that can be resisted and reversed without challenging capitalist society (see article on Social Re-Forum Aotearoa). But there can be no ‘fair’ trade in commodities that already contain the expropriated labour of producers. There can be no ‘peace and justice’ in communities that remain dominated by global capitalism.

The rural-based movements such as the Zapatistas in Mexico or the FARC in Colombia, can be contained by imperialism because they do not link up with the mass workers movements of the employed and unemployed such as in Argentina.

But, even as in Argentina, mass workers movements that are not armed and mobilised to take power cannot defeat imperialism in their own countries. They remain hostages to the WTO, WB, IMF, UN peacekeeping forces, and open military repression. Only a united, armed working class and its class allies can win the war against imperialism (see article on Chile).

As S 11 proved to us all, ‘neo-liberal globalisation’ is nothing more than imperialism in crisis, forced to enter into trade wars and to re-colonise poor countries to privatise assets and super-exploit their labour. And when this is resisted as in Iraq, imperialism escalates trade wars into hot wars with military invasions. The WTO, like the UN, is nothing but a weapon to impose imperialism’s crisis on the poor. If it collapses imperialism will use more direct methods.

Trade wars can only be stopped by workers’ revolutions which overthrow imperialism and its client comprador capitalist agents, and replace the market with socialist plans.

The alternative to trade wars under the domination of global capitalism is the building of socialist economies based on workers production and exchange, that spread from national bases to regional bases in Latin America, Asia and Africa, and then to a global socialist economy that includes Europe and North America.

It is not enough to back the revolt of the poor countries leaders against the rich countries in the imperialist WTO. It is necessary to overthrow these leaders too, along with the whole system of capitalist production and exchange, to expropriate the means of production and exchange and to put in place a World Socialist Trade Organisation.

It will take more than Zapatistas and Piqueteros to make revolution. For that we need an organised and armed working class in every country that can lead all the oppressed and exploited in the struggle for socialism and defend it from every imperialist act of war, repression and counter-revolution.

Victory at Cancun? Think Again

The collapse of the World Trade Organisation talks at Cancun was an important even in international affairs, comparable to the crisis in the United Nations over the United States invasion of Iraq. Like the UN, the WTO is being weakened by the breakdown of multilateralism as an instrument of US and European imperialism.

As their economies become increasingly crisis-ridden, the main imperialist powers are competing head to head to gain market share and cut the cost of raw materials in the semi-colonial economies.

The UN debacle was all about the failure of the Franco-German leaders to win a deal with the US that would give them a share of Iraq’s oil and of strategic influence in the Middle East and Central Asia. For a crisis-ridden US economy, Franco-German cooperation was simply too expensive . At Cancun, the US and the Europeans were on the same side, united in their opposition to cutting agricultural subsidies and united in seeking greater access for their multinational companies to Third World economies. But the refusal of either the US or the Europeans to cut a deal with the Third World nations represented by the ‘G 22’ group reflected the decreased commitment of imperialism to multilateralism. The US seemed almost to relish the collapse of talks, with Bush boasting that he would ‘aggressively pursue bilateral deals’ in the aftermath of the talks. Both the US and the Europeans are also moving to consolidate regional trade blocs.

Anti-globalisation gurus like Britain’s George Monbiot and New Zealand’s Jane Kelsey have hailed Cancun as ‘empowering’ and a ‘victory’ for the poor countries. In fact, bi-lateral deals and regional trade blocs will speed up globalisation by cutting through the red tape and the compromises of the WTO. Globalisation will become more political and military as well as economic, as both the US and the Europeans tie ‘security issues’ to trade. It is likely that the US, Europe and the East Asian economies will form fully-fledged rival economic blocs that will confront each other in ‘contested’ zones like the Middle East and Central Asia. Cancun coincided with the beginning of an aggressive campaign by the US to force Japan and China to raise their ‘undervalued’ currencies and thereby make US products more attractive in their domestic markets and help to cut the US’s massive trade deficit.

Economic nationalists like Kelsey hope that the end of the WTO might lead to globalisation bypassing pockets of the semi-colonial world. Kelsey argues that semi-colonial countries and regions like South America should attempt to ‘delink’ themselves from imperialism and build up their own indigenous capitalisms.

The economic nationalists dream of a return to the 1950s and 60s, when nations like Brazil, Argentina, and to an extent New Zealand used high tariffs and state subsidies to create a sheltered domestic economy, and to fund indigenous industrial development. But the ‘independence’ of the 50s and 60s was illusory. Sheltered semi-colonial economies were underwritten by the post-war economic boom in the imperialist countries.

Kelsey forgets that New Zealand’s 1960s ‘national capitalism’ was funded by massive agricultural exports to Britain. When the long boom unraveled in the 70s and Britain joined the European Community, New Zealand’s economy went into a tailspin. Today New Zealand could only experience a new era of national capitalist development if one of the main imperialist powers simultaneously opened its doors to New Zealand agricultural exports and accepted the re-imposition of 60s-style tariffs on goods coming into New Zealand. In the era of globalization, when the economy is largely owned by global corporates, such an arrangement is unimaginable, unless you are Israel.

As a media pundit, Kelsey can afford to square the circle and ignore the absurdities of economic nationalism. Would-be economic nationalists in power do not have the same option. One of Kelsey’s idols is Brazilian President Lula de Silva, whose Trade Minister led the ‘G 22’ at Cancun. After the talks failed, Lula was cast by many on the left as a hero who stood up to the bullying West. In fact, Lula was desperate to strike a deal with the big boys, but found that they would not budge an inch from their demand for the further opening of poor economies to Western multinationals.

Why was Lula so keen for a deal at Cancun? Lula is an advocate of the sort of ‘national capitalism’ Kelsey advocates, a leader who constantly urges his restive working class and peasant followers to cooperate with ‘progressive’ Brazilian capitalists by avoiding strikes and land occupations. Lula wants workers and bosses to cooperate to build Brazilian capitalism, but he also wants access to imperialist economies for the exports Brazilian capitalists produce. At Cancun Lula found that the circle could not be squared. The imperialists were not interested in opening their markets to him, or even reigning in their own subsidy regimes. And the imperialists were not prepared to tolerate the meagre protections poor economies still enjoy, let alone consider the expansive new protections needed by economic nationalists! Jane Kelsey doesn’t know a victory from a defeat.

Clark and Cancun

The collapse of the talks at Cancun has created panic amongst New Zealand’s capitalist class and political elites, which had seen the World Trade Organisation as the best route to free trade with the United States. Now Clark has no option but to jump into Bush’s pocket.

In an editorial banged out a few hours after the talks were abandoned, the New Zealand Herald urged the Labour government to ‘do all it can’ to ‘improve ties’ with the United States.

A day later parliament debated Cancun, and opposition MPs rounded on Labour, accusing it of lacking a ‘Plan B’ to cover for the failure of its multilateralist strategy. ACT leader Richard Prebble took over where the Herald left off, demanding that the government immediately invite US nuke ships back to New Zealand ports. National leader Bill English played the same tune, accusing Helen Clark of ‘disloyalty’ over the war in Iraq.

When her turn came to speak Clark made a very vigorous defence of her government, pointing to Labour’s close cooperation with the US in the War of Terror. Clark recited her party’s record of collaboration with Bush’s wars, citing ‘the SAS in Afghanistan, frigates, Orions and Hercules in the Gulf, engineers in Iraq, and stabilisation teams in Bahrain’.

Clark’s speech was notable for several reasons. In the past she has often insisted that issues of trade and issues of ‘security’ are unrelated, and that Kiwi contributions to the War of Terror are unrelated to any quest for better trade terms with the US. After Cancun that rhetoric has gone out the window.

Clark also used her speech to link explicitly the New Zealand contribution to the occupation force in Iraq and the war against the Taleban and Al Qaeda. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Clark followed the French and Germans by making a distinction between the invasion of Afghanistan, which she strongly supported, and a unilateral US invasion of Iraq, to which she preferred a Franco-German occupation under the banner of the United Nations.

Clark has tried to appease local anger at Bush’s war by making a distinction between a legitimate ‘War on Terror’ and a ‘regrettable’ invasion of Iraq. Clark has tried to walk a tightrope: on the one hand she has wanted to hose down anti-Bush anger felt by the Kiwi workers who voted for her, and on the other she has tried not to offend Bush and the US money barons on whose favour Kiwi capitalism ultimately depends. Cancun has pushed Clark off the tightrope, forcing her to side unequivocally with Bush and push the Pentagon’s discredited line that post-Saddam Iraq is the latest front in some sort of global war against the ‘enemies of freedom’.

Clark also followed Bush’s lead by denouncing the ‘G 22’ nations as the villains behind the Cancun collapse. In the leadup to the talks Clark and her Trade Minister Jim Sutton thought that they could piggyback on the G22’s criticism of the agriculture subsidies and protected markets of the US and the EU. But the G 22 emerged as a breakaway from the pro-free trade ‘Cairns Group’ because poor Cairns Group countries felt that they were being dominated by wealthier members like Australia and New Zealand.

Now, sensing blood, National and ACT MPs are pointing out that New Zealand is the only Cairns Group country not to either have joined G 22 or else to have a realistic chance of a bilateral trade deal with the US. New Zealand’s place ‘out in the cold’ reflects its peculiar economic status as a small advanced semi-colony of the US. New Zealand capitalism is too wealthy to share the immediate perspectives of G 22 countries like Brazil, but too small and too moribund to have a realistic chance of playing with big boys like Australia.

Clark’s commitment to multilateralism, in the UN as well as the WTO, made sense for a ruling class which is too weak to hold its own in the hurly burly of international unilateralism. But it is Clark’s multilateralism which now threatens New Zealand’s business and political elites with international isolation in the brave new twenty- first century world of unilateral wars and feuding trade blocs.

In her speech to parliament Clark defended the ban on nuke ships, and insisted that the WTO represented the best route to a free trade deal with the US. Anything else less would have been a humiliating climbdown. It is likely that behind the scenes Labour is reformulating its trade strategy. New moves will be made to try to win entry to trade negotiations between Australia and the US. Expect new military, diplomatic, and domestic policy gifts to the US, if not a lifting of the ban on nuke ships or an opening of the gates to GE food. Clark will also likely try to use the upcoming Apec meeting to push for a US-backed Asia Pacific trade bloc as a sort of cheap alternative to the global new trade order Clark saw in the WTO.

But why is Labour so obsessed with a free trade deal with the US? A section of New Zealand’s capitalist class would benefit from a deal, but these people are mostly hostile to Labour. A free trade deal would not benefit the Kiwi working class, which still represents Labour’s electoral base. Writing in the New Zealand Herald in the aftermath of Cancun, political analyst Guyon Espiner noted that open-slather GE imports, a deregulated drug market, the weakening of existing labour and environmental legislation, and nuke ship visits would all have to be part and parcel of a deal with the US. So how can Labour keep the workers onside?

The truth is that Labour has no option but to go for free trade deals. And its survival depends on selling it to its supporters. When Labour was forced to abandon its economic nationalism and dismantle the protected economy in the 1980s, it lost the historic base in NZ manufacturing that sustained the post-war compromise of capital and labour. Today Labour is unable to fund even the very modest set of reforms it promised its core supporters who put it into office in the 1999 and 2002 elections.

Student fees are rising, hospital queues are long, and Maori wait impatiently for the closing of the gaps. Like the ‘knowledge economy’ hulabaloo, the free trade deal with the US is a mirage conjured by Labour to try to disguise the fact that there is no economic base for even the minimal reform programme laid out in 1999 and 2002.

This leaves Clark in the same position as Tony Blair and all the other right wing social democrats of trying to justify their economic retreat to neo-liberalism by the benefits of globalization. Clark and co need a free trade deal as the economic miracle that will dramatically boost the government’s tax base and make social democracy possible again. At the beginning of the twenty first century, social democratic ideology looks a lot like cargo cultism. 

From Class Struggle, 52, September-October 2003

STOP IMPERIALIST STATE TERROR

Why we need to stop the Terrorism Suppression Bill

The Terrorism Suppression Bill is now before the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. It is a Bill designed to make the NZ state conform to the US policy against Terrorism rammed through the UN Security Council in the days following the September 11 atrocities. While we condemn these acts of terrorism as anti-worker, we see the ‘war against terrorism’ that the US then declared to be infinitely worse. The US ruling class has given itself a blank cheque to go to war against any state, group or individual its own intelligence services (CIA) designate as terrorists.

The US interpreted Article 51 of the UN Charter which allows states to defend themselves if attacked justify its ‘war against terrorism’. It then ignored the requirement to bring this war under the authority of the Security Council. Effectively it rendered the Security Council a rubber stamp for US policy. In the process it has bullied its rival big powers Britain, the EU and Japan, and its traditional allies including Britain, Australia and NZ to accept this justification and to join in this war. It has bribed and corrupted weak powers formally hostile to it, Russia, China, India and Pakistan to back the war. No state, apart from Cuba and Iraq has condemned the ‘war on terrorism’ as an act of state terrorism itself. Even Libya went along with it because it could be directed at Ghaddafi’s internal rivals.

At one stroke the US made public its contempt for any multilateral action in which the UN would represent the ‘international community’. It showed that the US had bought the UN lock stock and barrel and with it the loyalty of vast majority of states. The US has also it has also gone to war against terrorism at home. Immediately after September 11 the US the Security Council passed two resolutions UN 1368 and UN 1371 requiring its member states under Article 4 to 'criminalise the financing of terrorism' i.e. freeze the financial assets of persons thought to be 'terrorists', to stop the financing, joining or supporting of terrorist groups. It required its member states to ‘report’ on measures taken within 90 days?

In a rapid response the NZ Labour/Alliance Coalition introduced legislation to amend the Terrorism (Bombings and Financing) Bill before the house. These amendments were secret until Green Party MP Keith Locke exposed their existence.

Goff’s secret amendments

The amendments to the renamed Terrorism (Bombings and Financing) Bill are now available to the public only after an outcry over plans to keep these amendments secret from public scrutiny! Goff intended to show these amendments to 9 groups including Civil liberties, CTU, Bankers’ Association, only as a check to see if they had any problems with the legislation? They could look the amendments over and submit suggestions but not disclose their content without breaching parliamentary privilege! He wanted the lawyers to OK the suspension of lawyer-client privilege. He wanted the Bankers and Accountants to agree to act as the state’s agents in seizing the financial assets of suspected terrorists. He wanted the Civil Liberties groups to give their blessing to some limitations on civil rights justified by the ‘seriousness’ of the September 11 attacks.

What he got instead from the CTU and Council for Civil liberties was a refusal to participate in this Star Chamber exercise. He also got a blast from Green MPs and Alliance Ministers in Cabinet. Goff agreed to back down and make the amendments public for written submissions until the end of November and for oral submissions until February.

In the Explanatory Note to the Bill, Phil Goff as the Minister in charge tried to excuse the secrecy on the grounds that all the UN required was Regulations that would have been made in secret anyway under the powers of Chapter V11 of the UN Charter to which NZ is bound! Goff now claims that because of the "seriousness" of the 'war against terrorism' and having a convenient Bill to attach them to, the Government would legislate instead.

According to this reasoning we should be thankful for the 'war on terrorism'. Its "seriousness" means that you no longer have your rights secretly regulated away but legislated away. At least you can now register your opposition in public before parliament. Meanwhile Goff has passed the Regulations anyway until they are replaced by the new law.

This is a very bad Bill that gives new powers to the state to interfere in our lives. The pretext is to stop terrorism, but the effect will be to stop legitimate political protest. We have little more than 3 months to stop this Bill becoming law. That could be interesting because preventing a Government from acting in the national interest is one of the criteria of terrorism in the Bill!

US shows how to terrorise

Already the US has shown what the new anti-terrorist legislation looks like. What is called 'homeland security' amounts to a massive attack on the rights of individual citizens. 1000s have been locked up indefinitely after S11. One Congressman John Conyers has said: "Today we stand on the verge of a civil liberties calamity in this country. The Administration and the Attorney General have taken a series of constitutionally dubious actions that place the Executive Branch in the untenable role of legislator, prosecutor, judge and jury."
In other words George Bush and Co is Sheriff, posse, judge and hangman.

Congress passed the anti-Terrorism Bill, dubbed the 'USA Patriot Act' on Oct 26 giving the Attorney General the power to detain and deport any suspects accused of terrorism. Since then new regulations allow the authorities to intercept communications between lawyers and clients, including in jail. After S11 many political prisoners such as Philip Berrigan, serving a term for hammering a warplane, were put in isolation and held incommunicado; in the words of one Prison Guard "you are terrorists and you hate the government". On Nov 9 the US Administration started a policy of ‘racial profiling’ i.e. racist discrimination in the issuing of visas to young men of 'middle eastern' origin. On November 13 a policy to try foreigners suspected of terrorism before military tribunals was announced. Military tribunals do not have to prove ‘guilt beyond reasonable doubt’. Note that this guilt on the part of aliens and anybody who is designated 'terrorist'.

Worst features in the NZ Bill

The amendments to the Terrorism (Bombings and Financing) Bill are to put the above UN resolutions into effect. They mean that individuals can be 'designated' terrorist on the basis of secret information and may never get to face their accusers. The burden of proof is reversed. The presumption of innocence is replaced by the presumption of guilt. Worse, guilt is established at the level of the military tribunal i.e. ‘probably cause’ rather than guilt ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. Worse still, individuals designated terrorists cannot even defend themselves against the evidence because that is likely to remain secret! So the principle that ‘homeland terrorism’ can be dealt with by military tribunals in the US is now to be exported to all the state that sign up to the Security Councils’ resolutions on terrorism!

The presumption of guilt follows clearly from the section of the Bill that states that people can be designated 'terrorists' on the basis of 'good cause'. "The Prime Minister must treat the information as sufficient evidence…unless the contrary is proved" [17K (2)]. This is Catch 22 because you cannot defend yourself against secret charges. How can you prove your innocence when the evidence against you is ‘classified’? However, there is a small problem. It’s no use having these powers unless you have a definition of terrorism that fits the Bill, i.e. includes anti-state subversion of all sorts but excludes the CIA, Mossad, SIS, MI5 type state terrorism. It must not designate the CIA as the no 1 terrorist organisation in the world with a record surpassing 1000 bin Ladens that stretches from the deposing of the Shah of Iran in 1956 (check) to today.

So the definition must exclude ‘state terrorism’ such as wars, economic sanctions, and the genocide that was caused by these e.g. in Iraq and Afghanistan. For such actions are legimitated by the UN or big power politics in defence of the interests of the ruling classes. This lets the national intelligence agencies off the hook because they are held to be protecting the national interests of their respective states. Yet according to the Explanatory Note to the Amendments, UN resolution 1373 "does not define... terrorism". Oops. This might leave the door open to the inclusion of ‘state terrorism’ . So it will be necessary to add a 'new definition' of 'terrorist act' to fit the Bill. This definition is modeled on the UK Terrorism Act 2000 and the Anti-Terrorism Bill currently before the Canadian Parliament. In both cases new legislation is also being rushed through as required by the UN resolutions. What is really clear is that the new wider definition of terrorism that is contained in this new legislation is designed to turn a wide range of political dissent into ‘terrorist acts’ to allow the state to suppress political opposition.

Terrorist act defined Subsection 2

There are three broad criteria of terrorist act defined in Section 5. . First, in Subsection 2 a terrorist act is any intention, for ideological, political or religious reasons, to intimidate a population or force a lawful government to act, or not act, and which causes any or more of death, injury, serious public health and safety risk, destruction, serious damage or disruption to property, the economy or environment, and interference or disruption to infrastructure. (disruption of infrastructure facility).

The other two definitions are first, the various terrorism conventions that are listed in Schedule 3 of the Bill and are 7 Conventions dating from 1970 to 1988 that cover specifically Aircraft, diplomats, hostages, Airports, Ships and oil plafforms., and second, terrorist acts in armed conflict situations where armed force is used to ‘intimidate populations’ and ‘compel governments’ or cause death or injury to civilians. These latter definitions are fairly standard and have been around for some time. What is objectionable is the Section 2 definition rushed in after September 11.

This is an extremely broad definition of terrorist act. It could include Rogernomics where a population was intimidated and where a lawful government was compelled by international finance capital to act in ways that caused death, injury serious destruction of the economy and disruption of the infrastructure. Or it could include the UN sanctions against Iraq or the bombing of Afghanistan that caused all of the above and were designed for political reasons to intimidate and compel lawful governments.

It all depends on who is doing the intimidating and who defines what is lawful. We can be sure that it is the opponents of Rogernomics and the Sanctions and bombings of Iraq and Afghanistan that would be the target of this definition. Opponents of privatised water could be accused of terrorism for reconnecting water supplies and preventing a lawful government from acting to cut off those water supplies.

CIA defines legitimate dissent

In an attempt to head off opposition to the new Subsection 2 definition of ‘terrorist act’ Goff introduced Subsection 4 that exempts lawful and/or peaceful dissent. Exempted are: "(a) any protest, advocacy, or dissent that is lawful, or that is unlawful but peaceful: (b)any strike or lockout:(c)any other act that is authorised or required by law: (d)any act that occurs in a situation or armed conflict and is, at the time an in the place that it occurs, in accordance with the rules of international law applicable to the conflict.

Note how the 'let-out' clause for protest, dissent etc allows it to be unlawful but peaceful. But we know who will define what 'peaceful' is. The police can decide that any protest that results in (does not have to intend) serious damage, death, injury etc as under Subsection 2 cannot be ‘peaceful’. Some of the anti-Sprinkbok Tour protests of 1981 could be defined as ‘terrorist acts’ because the disruption to economy and threat to public health and safety would be defined as a ‘breach of the peace’. Any 'intention' to take an action that could be construed by the police as a breach of the peace becomes potentially 'terrorist'.

Strike and Lockouts are exempted. But only those defined in the Employment Relations Bill. Wildcat strikes, political strikes etc would be unlawful but not ‘terrorist’ unless they were considered ‘breaches of the peace’. Any serious picket line during a legal strike could also become ‘unlawful’ and if resulting in threatened serious economic disruption or damage, deemed ‘terrorist acts’.

Note also that if the cops or military engage in some 'armed conflict' to prevent protests they are covered by (4) (e) and (d). So the use of 'justifiable force' such as that used on Steven Wallace could become standard for ‘suspected terrorists’. Again if you think that this is fanciful look at what is already happening in the 'war against terrorism'. On the basis of the CIA designation of Osama bin Laden as ‘terrorist’ Afghan kids become 'collateral damage'. Helen Clark is on record as saying that civilian casualties are 'inevitable' in this war. How many civilian casualties are OK in the 'war against terrorism' at home?

Intending, planning, preparing and carrying out terrorist acts
Section 17F says (1) For the purposes of this Act, a terrorist act is carried out if 1 or more of the following occurs: (a) any planning or other preparations to carry out the act, whether it is carried out or not: (b) a threat to carry out the act, whether it is actually carried out or not: (c) any attempt to carry out the act: (d) the carrying out of the act.

These provisions are to be used to massively increase the level of surveillance over ordinary citizens. How is it possible to spy on those planning or preparing for an ‘act’ of terrorism, unless surveillance techniques are used. When the Prime Minister gets into you 'mind' courtesy of the CIA or Echelon (which intercepts emails) of as beefed up SIS and NZ Police who will be able to intercept phone calls on a normal basis, she can then 'designate' persons or groups as terrorists on the basis of this secret or classified security information. In the US millions have been spent to upgrade telephone tapping and other snooping. In NZ we can expect a boost to spending on the SIS. This means more 'spying' to gain advance information about terrorists 'plans' and an integration of spying among all of the 'allies' in the war against terrorism.

Secret informants can accuse you

17L Classified security information defined: "In this Act, classified security information means information -

(a)about the threat to security, public order, or public interest posed by terrorist acts that an identifiable entity will or may carry out, or participate in the carrying out of, or facilitate the carrying out of; and (b)held by a specified agency (as defined in section 4: ie (a) an intelligence and security agency as defined in section (2)1 of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act 1996; or (b) the New Zealand Police) and (c) that, in the opinion of the head of the specified agency, cannot be divulged in the entity in question or to other persons, because - (i)the information is information of a kind specified in subsection (2): and (ii) disclosure of the information would be disclosure of a kind specified in subsection (3)

In other words, you can be accused of being a terrorist on the basis of secret information provided by any secret service approved by the UN or by the NZ police on the basis of secret informants, and you can never find out what this information says about you.

There follows a long list of reasons why such information must remain secret such as to protect its source (we might discover that Mossad runs the CIA which runs Helen Clark), operational methods of the agency (so as not to reveal another botched invasion like Iran or Somalia), not to blow cover of future operations (more botched invasions -where? Indonesia?).

The US has its sights set on 50 countries said to harbour terrorists); is secret in another country (eg USA) and they say no! (they would wouldn't they); not to prejudice the security or defence of NZ (this is unlikely to include the Save our Squadrons) or be a breach of trust between NZ and some other country (you did say 500,000 tonnes of lamb); interfere with the ‘fair operation’ of the law (like ‘fair’ trade) and endanger the safety of any person (i.e. a spook or informant).

What if you are 'designated'?

Individuals accused of being terrorists can ask for a 'review' of this designation only with the Prime Minister or Inspector General of Security and Intelligence (a High Court Judge). Normal reviews through the courts involving 'classified' information are not allowed. The Government is even 'sounding out' the legal profession to see if client-lawyer privilege can be waived in this Bill given the 'seriousness' of terrorism. The decision of the Inspector-General can be appealed on matters of law only to the Court of Appeal. That is, was the Judge drunk in charge at the time of the Review. Not was the CIA informant a liar! Talk about Secrets and Lies.

This Bill makes it obvious that NZ is part of the 'Western' war on terrorism that brings that war home to its own shores with new powers and a wider definition of terrorism. Despite the 'let out' for 'legitimate protest' that is 'peaceful', the definition of what is 'peaceful' should it involve 'classified' information about somebody's 'intentions or plans' (eg to blow up a Nuclear plant in Australia which figured in a recent case in Auckland where two Afghans were falsely charged with being terrorists) cannot be decided in open court but goes to the secret tribunal of the Inspector-General of spooks, spies and sundry pie eaters (that's a reference to the famous case of a spy leaving his briefcase at a bus stop containing (the briefcase that is) a 'girly mag' and a 'meat pie'.

How to fight this Bill

Cynicism and a desperate Boondocks black humour is healthy in these times, but we need a hell of a lot more than that to stop this Bill. There needs to be a war on the war on terrorism at home. If workers lose these rights and freedoms it becomes easier for us to be turned into passive victims of the 'new world disorder' and stomped on by the ruling class and its state forces. It is important therefore to know what we are fighting for.

Communists defend bourgeois democracy not for its own sake but only insofar as it allows the working class to organise politically for a revolutionary overthrow of capitalist society. Against the widespread illusion that capitalism can coexist with democracy we have to prove that this is false. That the bosses will only defend democracy while it is their interests. We say that the Terrorism Bill is evidence that the bosses are quite prepared to suspend democracy in order to fight terrorism not because of any aberration or flaw in the system, but because it is necessary to defend their class interests at a time when opposition to the system is becoming a real threat. War is an extension of politics and politics is concentrated economics. So war always has a final economic cause. And imperialist always creates revolutionary and counter-revolutionary possibilities.

Imperialist crisis means world war

Why is this happening? Opposition to capitalist rule is becoming a threat to its survival for one basic reason. The system is experiencing a major economic crisis of falling profits. To revive those profits and allow the system to survive, it is necessary to cheapen the costs of both raw materials and of labour. But this means competition between the major imperialist powers for for raw materials and cheap labour and the inevitability of war.

The usual methods of economic competition rely on the WB, IMF and WTO to force down barriers to trade so that prices fall. These methods are insufficient to overcome the latest downward surge in profits in the world economy. All the imperialist powers need cheap oil and a cheap, reliable and disciplined labour force to revive their profits. Going to ‘war against terrorism’ achieves all of these. The US ruling class has found a way to force its economic rivals, Japan and the EU, to accept its dominance and to go along in the hope that they will get a share of the booty. This avoids unnecessary direct conflict between the big powers. This applies also to the lesser states such as Russia, China, India and Pakistan who get bribed by promises of loans, gifts and other benefits such as membership of the WTO.

It also anticipates and deals with opposition from the masses in all of these countries. They are the ones who bear the cost of these measures. Even US workers will suffer massive attacks on their rights and living standards. And in Latin America and in Asia there is a long record of popular uprisings against imperialist rule. In an age when imperialists do not rule directly, neo-colonies need to be kept under control with puppet regimes kept in place by proxy wars that remove mavericks and install compliant alternative regimes.

Still the oppressed fight back

The US has found a way to police these states in the name of defending democracy and human rights and now in the name of the ‘war against terrorism’. But in doing so it runs the risk of exposing the hypocrisy of propping up or replacing client regimes whose ‘terrorism’ is the direct result of imperialist intervention in the first place.

Already the fact that the US imperialist ruling class is using state terrorism at home and abroad to smash all political opposition that it designates as ‘terrorist’ is now widely recognised as hypocritical. The fact that al Queda and bin Laden as well as the Taliban are the creation of US policy cannot be escaped. The fact that behind the cover of the ‘war on terrorism’ the US and its allies are prepared to bomb Afghanistan shows what the real purpose of the war is – to create a compliant regime that will allow the US oil interests to build a pipeline from the Caspian region to the Indian Ocean.

So it is easy to be cynical about the US ruling class especially with Bush as its figurehead. It is revealing its class interests so clearly that what is called ‘anti-Americanism’ is now the standard position among the 3^rd World masses and support for bin Laden is widespread. Respected liberal journalists like Robert Fisk and John Pilger as well as long-standing critics of US imperialism like Edward Said and Noam Chomsky are published in the mainstream media. So if the imperialist ruling class is showing up their class interests why should the masses who are suffering economic exploitation and political repression not seize the opportunity to challenge this rotten system?

Rotten role of Reformists

Exploited and oppressed workers and poor peasants are the vast majority of the world’s population. They would easily overthrow the system that rules them if it were not for the existence of institutionalised mass reformist parties committed to propping up capitalism even as it decomposes. The reformist line is that it is not possible to overthrow capitalism either because the working class is not able to do this (always a convenient excuse because it substitutes the petty bourgeois in this historic role) or because this will lead to a worse system (such as Soviet-type ‘communism’) so therefore it is necessary to reform capitalism. The reformists argue that popular parties can make governments responsive to the interests of the popular masses and rein in the ruling elites. All they need is to inform and mobilise the masses and parliamentary democracy can be made to work in their interests.

They say the Terrorism Bill is an aberration caused by the rogue US state imposing its will on the UN and small democracies like NZ. The solution, they say, is to mobilise direct democracy from below and win over a majority of MP’s to amend the Bill and remove its worst attacks on basic liberties (legitimate dissent; presumption of innocence; due process in courts of law; racial equality etc).

When it comes to the vote, just as all the MP’s voted for war except the Greens, most MP’s will vote for this Bill because they owe their pay to the bosses. The Alliance MP’s voted for the war against the membership of the party to keep their salaries. Most of them even stopped putting 10% of their salaries into paying for party activists! They will endorse the main features of the Terrorism Bill for the same reason; they are the bought men and women of the bourgeoisie.

The Green’s may be opposed to the present Government’s war and the Terrorism Bill. But their role is to divert workers from taking class action today to stop the war and to stop the Bill and to put their faith in a future ‘peoples’ government. Meanwhile millions of Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis and any other unfortunate people targeted by this war will be dead. The Greens don’t even pretend to represent workers. Their supporters are a range of social movements, environmentalist, women’s groups etc. They draw on a mixture of well-off workers, self-employed and ‘socially responsible’ or not-for-profit capitalists. They will always ‘compromise’ around the interests of small, sustainable, businesses. But small businesses are no alternative to capitalist production, and often exploit workers as much or more than big businesses.

For a workers’ state!

Fundamentally, Parliament functions as an institution that hides the class interests of the bosses behind the façade of the rule of the majority of citizens. This is clear to us from the lessons of history. It is also clear today in Bushes own election, the war on terrorism, that the politics of the working class majority will remain dominated by the wealth and power of the ruling class minority until workers are broken from ruling class ideology.

Communists believe that to break workers from this ideology it is necessary to make use of democratic rights both to defend them for as long as possible to allow open political opposition, and to prove to those who have illusions in parliamentary democracy that the Bill is no aberration and that capitalism cannot tolerate democracy when its class interests are under threat. Therefore submissions that condemn the Bill and demand that it be voted down by MPs are necessary to show these MP’s up as anti-democratic.

Those who argue that by mobilising the majority around a clear anti-capitalist program we can take back power and create a truly democratic government over look the fact that that ruling class will not give up without a fight. The Terrorism Suppression Bill is evidence of that we have been put on notice that if we dissent we can be labeled terrorists. We are now in an open class war situation. We have to refuse to sign up to this state terrorist war in Asia or at home. We must go AWOL from the bosses' state terror. We must organise our own class resistance to state terror. We must declare war on ruling class terror.

Class Struggle 42 December 2001/January 2002

DISARMING CAPITAL

Why read Capital they said.It’s unintelligible and boring. Besides Marxism is dead.Wouldn’t it be better to throw everything into the anti-capitalist movement against the WTO and big business?

No we said. You should take Capital with you on demonstrations for something to read between police riots. It might have something to say about what kind of capitalism you should be anti. Besides it makes useful padding stuffed down your shorts.

What, all three (or is it four) volumes?You could make a suit of armour out of them – six books in all.

They thought we were joking but we said No never more serious. Marx said that we had to turn the idea of weapons into the weapon of ideas. You’re never better armed than with at least Volume 1 of Capital preferably the hardback edition.

Vol 1 is the best weapon because this is where Marx brings out his heaviest ideas.This is where he explains that the origin of surplus value and profits is in the labour time of the working class. That is a powerful idea because it says outright that capitalism lives off the surplus-labour of the workers.

It’s also a revolutionary idea which motivates us to go all the way to abolish wage labour and capitalist property and fight for socialism. There can be no half measures favoured by middle class greens and/or parliamentary cretins (to use Lenin’s term) bishops and social workers who are anti-bad capitalists and for kindly, caring ones.

Then we add Vol 2 to our armoury.Marx shows that capitalism has to build up a huge banking and state apparatus including the cops and army just to keep the capitalists profits rolling in. So there’s no point just being anti- the World Bank or big governments because they are merely the paid lackeys of the giant MNC’s.

The most powerful weapon of all is in Volume 3 where Marx proves that capitalism cannot survive without massive destructive crises that force the capitalists to destroy wealth, attack jobs and drive down workers’ living standards, health and life expectancy.

So there is no way that capitalism can be tamed, humanised, reformed, prettified or Blairised.To survive the workers have to unite, fight back and take over the ownership and control of the global economy.

If you don’t read Capital and understand it you won’t know this and your ideas will be those that the bosses pay to have drummed into you from childhood by your teachers, Hollywood, Rupert Murdoch, Tony O’Reilly and all.

We are not pacifists. We read Capital every week at:

Labour Forum, Avondale Community Centre. Mondays 7-30/9-30 pm. Next to Avondale Library, Rosebank Rd.

From Class Struggle No 37 February-March 2001