By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
1 July 2008
The 34th G-8 summit in Hokkaido, Toyako, Japan from 7 to 9 July 2008 is slated to discuss and reach consensus on issues under the main themes of world economy, environment and climate change, development and Africa and political issues. As their imperialist character dictates, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia will seek to harmonize their policies in further exploiting and oppressing the proletariat and people of the world.
The policy of “free market” globalization has failed to override the fundamental ills of monopoly capitalism and has brought about the worst economic and financial crisis of the world capitalist system since the Great Depression. In this dire context, the summiteers have highlighted in advance the need for stabilizing the turbulent financial market. But the US is not being held to account for its main responsibility in generating the economic and financial crisis.
What can be expected are some moderated references to the mortgage meltdown and the international credit crunch. But certainly no serious concern will be expressed by the summiteers about the accelerated crisis of global capitalism under the myth of neoliberalism and the high costs of aggressive wars under the pretext of anti-terrorism. As matter of public relations, the summiteers will take up the soaring prices of fuel and food and pretend to be concerned about the plight of the working people and the underdeveloped countries. But they will not hold the oil and food cartels to account.
In fact, the G-8 summiteers are poised to further shift the burden of crisis to the long exploited people of the world. They will seek the further liberalization of trade and investment for the benefit of the monopoly firms, sustain their growth through bailouts and further doses of credit for them, keep under monopoly control intellectual property rights in information technology and other fields and assure them of dominion over energy and natural resources.
The monopoly capitalist interests in the G-8 have been the most responsible for environmental destruction and climate change in their constant drive to make superprofits. But they engage in evasion and obfuscation. They have built into the Kyoto Accord what they could easily ignore or circumvent and are again doing the same in toying with a post-Kyoto Framework.
They persist in obscuring their long-term and current responsibility for global warming, in playing the scam of so-called mitigation and carbon trading, in exaggerating the carbon emissions of less developed countries, especially those like China and India that host sweatshops of the multinational firms, and in blaming the underdeveloped countries for their very aspiration to industrialize and develop themselves.
On the question of development, Africa remains the favorite object of crocodile tears for the G-8 because indeed the most underdeveloped countries are in this continent. But the summiteers have the bad habit of using Africa to show off their imaginary bleeding hearts and deflect attention from the imperialist-caused underdevelopment in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
They will make no examination of conscience about their lies and false promises in the Millennium Development Goals now in midway to its 2015 end. They will not face up to the fact that they have not reduced but have instead increased the debt burden of Africa and other impoverished continents from year to year.
They will refer to the concrete needs of Africa for health, water and education if only to prettify and justify imperialist intervention in exchange for tokenistic assistance. The most acute interest of the G-8 is really to further exploit the oil and other natural resources of Africa by manipulating its needs for food and other basic necessities.
There is no shortage of these commodities on a global scale but scarcities have been contrived by oil and food cartels, taking advantage of the lopsided reality of a few countries going into overproduction of certain commodities and other countries in severe want even in such commodities (like food) that they can produce if not for the impositions of “free market” globalization.
The war criminal and No. 1 terrorist of the world Mr. Bush the junior will make his valedictory. He is expected to claim new achievements in his global war of terror. He is likely to flatter himself by boasting that the tactics of carrot-and-stick have steered the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from a nuclear weapons development program. Under the pretext of seeking to stop nuclear weapon proliferation, he is also likely to make further threats to Iran for the specific purpose of pressuring it to agree to a security agreement between the US and its Iraqi puppets before the end of July.
He will continue to misrepresent as peace-building the continuing Zionist occupation of Palestine, the US occupation of Iraq, the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan and all other aggressive and interventionist actions of the USA in the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Africa and Latin America. No one among the other summiteers can be expected to openly hold the US to account for having the largest stockpile of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, spending colossal amounts of money for military purposes, unleashing wars of aggression and whipping up state terrorism under the policy auspices of the US global war of terror.
The G-8 member-states are still united by a common determination to preserve and profit from the world capitalist system at the expense of the proletariat and peoples of the world. But the crisis of the system has reached such a point that contradictions among them have become more discernible. These involve economic, financial, social, political, security and environmental issues. Economic competition and political rivalry among the imperialist powers become conspicuous as the crisis worsens and the people’s resistance rises.
The crisis is generating the struggle of the imperialist powers for a redivision of the world. In political terms, this is a struggle for control of semi-colonies and dependent countries whose governments can be dictated upon to act as taskmasters. In economic terms, it is a struggle for captive markets, cheap labor, cheap raw materials and fields of superprofitable investment. It would be interesting to observe at the summit how much of the inter-imperialist contradictions are becoming conspicuous and how much of others are being muted for the time being.
We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, commend the Asia Wide Campaign-Japan and Japanese people’s organizations that have been valiantly resisting the preparations for the G8 summit. We thank them for taking initiative in the struggle and inspiring the people of the world to take a stand against the G8. We condemn the repressive measures being undertaken against the people and their basic democratic rights by the Japanese monopoly capitalists and their armed minions.
We call on our member-organizations and other people’s organizations in Japan, in all other member-states of the G-8 and throughout the world to conduct campaigns of information and protest actions against the G-8. Our campaigns must be resolute, militant and effective against imperialism and reformism . We must demand and fight for the national and social liberation of the peoples of the world.###
