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Commentary :: Economy
Global Day of Action: We Will Not Pay for Your Crisis March 28 Berlin
Dominance of the profit logic and economization of all areas of life must be ended. Capitalism cannot solve global problems like poverty, insecurity, climate change, destruction of the environment, wars and dismantling democracy-it causes them!
GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION. WE WILL NOT PAY FOR YOUR CRISIS. MARCH 28. BERLIN
By www.kapitalismuskrise.org
[This call to the Berlin demonstration March 28, 2009 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.kapitalismuskrise.org/aufruf-antikapitalistischer-block/]
Call to the Anti-Capitalist Bloc
Global social resistance against shifting the consequences of the crisis – Fight for alternatives to capitalism!
General strike in France. Protests in Greece and Italy. In Ireland, the government is given the boot. Mass protests against colonial inequality and poverty in Guadeloupe. Hunger revolts in many countries of the Global South. Worldwide we face a new wave of social struggles. Some countries are already right in the middle of these battles.
On March 28 people will demonstrate internationally against the consequences of the capitalist crisis and for solidarity solutions. Our hope is planted in these struggles and their global perspective. In the movements against the crisis we battle for a new perspective on overcoming the capitalist social order. A solidarity society is only possible by breaking with capitalism.
THE CRISIS IS CALLED CAPITALISM
Capitalism is mired in its greatest crisis since 1929. Poverty, hunger, unemployment and lack of perspectives increase worldwide – not first since last year. The promise repeated for decades by politics. Media and the economic wise men that the market regulates everything prove once and for all to be a delusion. The crisis now widely discussed is a general recurring phenomenon inherent in capitalism and did not arise through the profit expectations of shareholders or “manager mistakes.” The crisis is the response to capital’s intensified problems in accumulating disproportional profits in gutted globalized markets and realizing these profit margins at the expense of wage earners.
Neoliberal capitalism functioned through expansion of the financial markets. Falling profit rates of the whole economy could be compensated this way. Worldwide exploitation and expansion of capitalist property occur through privatizations. Since the end of the 1970s, redistribution from bottom to the top intensified. Massive sections of the population are excluded from education and social systems.
Neoliberal capitalism led to debt crises, increasing poverty of vital resources like food and water. Local and global resistance has long raged against these distresses. To the diminishing social approval and the mounting contradictions and worldwide distribution conflicts, the ruling classes reacted with expanded surveillance of the population, authoritarian security policy, deployment of the German army internally and externally, the battle against terrorism, war and further screening of the elites. However more and more people distrust the worldwide political and economic elites’ solving of social problems and do not feel represented. Showing an alternative to capitalism arising out of this crisis of trust is incumbent on all of us.
IS THE STATE SAVING CAPITALISM?
The governments cannot solve the crisis; they are surprised by its course. If the market previously regulated all things, the strong state is now sought as the crisis rescuer. The defenders of capital and enormous sectors of the political class agree. The crisis consequences should be limited. But for whom? Governments worldwide pump billions in the banks. What is central is the expropriation of people to settle the vast losses of capital, not an expropriation of capital. The costs of the crisis, the losses of businesses and banks, are shifted to the majority of people to guarantee private profits. The people in the Global South, wage earners, unemployed and pensioners should pay for this.
CAPITALISM IS CALLED CLIMATE CRISIS! – “GREEN CAPITALISM” IS NOT A SOLUTION
After the bursting of the financial bubbles, capital seeks profitable investment possibilities and ways out of the crisis. Green capitalism is the new magic formula. The marketing of nature should be extended. New technologies and CO2-trade should solve the climate question. The market should be the solution for social problems caused by capitalism. Ecological and social interests are systematically subordinated to a growth- and profit-pressure. This pressure continues to drive climate change, undermines the essentials of life for many in the Global South and causes hunger crises, inadequate water supply and land expulsion. The dominance of private profit interests and the pressure to constant economic growth are not put in question in the doublespeak of green capitalism. Capital seeking new investment possibilities in agricultural industry, biotechnology and energy corporations should profit.
· Instead of shifting the consequences of the ecological destruction to people in the global South: expropriation and municipalization of energy corporations
· Instead of subsidies for dismissals, wage renunciation and ecological destruction: social-ecological reorganization of automobile- and industrial-production and free local public transportation for all!
· Instead of billions for businesses and banks: social security for all worldwide!
Self-determination was the promise of neoliberalism. For many, neoliberalism has only meant foreign determination, Hartz IV, deprivation of rights and low wages. In crises, the precarious (contract workers, flexible workers, multi-askers and mini-jobbers) must believe: increasingly stressful working conditions will be demanded from those who still have work. Self-determination and participation in society, collaboration in democracy and solidarity alternatives need time and rest.
· Instead of Hartz IV and low wages: unconditional basic income of at least 1500 euros for all. Abolish sanctions and need-fixation!
· Instead of short-time work, dismissals and wage renunciation in the crisis: radically reduced working hours without cuts in pay and personnel! Solidarity redistribution of social work! Higher wages for all! Equal pay for contract workers and limited-time employees with no dismissals!
To combat inequality and poverty, we urge immediate measures for equal access of all to food, health care and senior citizen provisions, education and culture. Participation in these social necessities may not be dependent on money. Participation should be possible for everyone.
* Education and health care free of charge for all – against the 2-class system in health care!
· Exodus from the three- or four-tier school system and against privatization of the school system and subjugation of students under market logic through ever-more rigorous selection in schools and universities!
· Social participation for all, including migrants!
Dominance of the profit logic and economization of all areas of life must be ended. The economy must serve the needs of people, not vice versa. The necessity of a social control of the economy is now widely discussed and strikes the limits of capitalist property relations. Producers and consumers must join the property question –the power of private owners of social production – with the international struggle around democratic rights and control of banks, conglomerates and the whole economy.
Nationalization alone is not a solution. Who controls the social wealth that we all produce, investments, working conditions and ecological production? As the power of feudal lords stood in the way of middle class democracy, the concerted power of property in business, the economy and the state is a hindrance today that opposes every effective democratic organization of society.
· Instead of nationalization of losses: expropriation and socialization of banks and corporations under the democratic control of wage earners!
CAPITALISM MEANS WAR, GLOBAL EXPLOITATION AND INEQUALITY!
The crisis intensifies insecurity and drives global competition, reinforces wage disparities and leads to new divisions. These are breeding grounds of authoritarian solutions: an authoritarian state that ensures owners of capital (preventatively) in the crisis against the resistance and fights the poor and “others” instead of fighting poverty and racism. The current crisis intensifies the competition between the capitals and between imperialist blocs over dwindling markets. A permanent war- and intervention-policy of all states wrestling for global hegemony runs parallel. Location nationalism and protectionist tendencies of the middle could also strengthen rightwing racial responses to the crisis. On the other hand, we must seek transnational ways of resistance and solidarity. We need global alliances of different social forces.
· Global solidarity instead of global capitalism!
· Fighting poverty instead of fighting the poor!
· Dissolve Nato! Worldwide disarmament instead of militarization!
What projects can master crises is unclear. When the rulers urge a “reorganization of capitalism” (Sarkozy and Merkel). We say: capitalism cannot solve global problems like poverty, insecurity, climate change, destruction of the environment, wars and dismantling democracy; it causes these problems! No appeal to politics or belief in the state helps. Our struggles for concrete improvements of our living conditions are the starting points for a different global formation of society – beyond crisis and capitalism – a society beyond competition, poverty, exploitation and paid labor.
The demo on March 28 is the prelude of a social struggle over the costs of the crisis and perspectives of change. Organization will be a key question. Only when we agree on solidarity and common shared interests can the crisis of capitalism also be a chance. Isolated we will accomplish nothing. We must create alliances in which many persons and social groups have a place. When we join wage battles, conflicts over rental costs and social security, student strikes for public solidarity education and many other social struggles, new movements will arise for a solidarity society beyond capitalism.
Class struggle, instead of social partnership! Political strike against the consequences of the crisis!
Against the consequences of the crisis and for a world without capitalism: political strike and social disobedience of employees, unemployed, precarious workers, students, migrants, persons with and without papers – here and in Paris, London, Delhi, Mexico, New York, Reykjavik!
Together against location competition and for global solidarity!
WE WILL NOT PAY FOR YOUR CRISIS!
To win a world beyond crisis, war and capitalism.
The world cannot remain as it is.
Signers
Avanti – Projekt undogmatische Linke, Antifascistische Linke Berlin (ALB), Gruppe Soziale Kampe, Gruppe Revolution
kapitalismuskrise.org
RELATED LINKS
Accra Confession of 2004 (World Alliance of Reformed Churches)
warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side.jsp
U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776
www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
Communist Manifesto 1848
www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Sermon on the Mount
www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/Bible/the-sermon-on-the-mount.htm
By www.kapitalismuskrise.org
[This call to the Berlin demonstration March 28, 2009 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.kapitalismuskrise.org/aufruf-antikapitalistischer-block/]
Call to the Anti-Capitalist Bloc
Global social resistance against shifting the consequences of the crisis – Fight for alternatives to capitalism!
General strike in France. Protests in Greece and Italy. In Ireland, the government is given the boot. Mass protests against colonial inequality and poverty in Guadeloupe. Hunger revolts in many countries of the Global South. Worldwide we face a new wave of social struggles. Some countries are already right in the middle of these battles.
On March 28 people will demonstrate internationally against the consequences of the capitalist crisis and for solidarity solutions. Our hope is planted in these struggles and their global perspective. In the movements against the crisis we battle for a new perspective on overcoming the capitalist social order. A solidarity society is only possible by breaking with capitalism.
THE CRISIS IS CALLED CAPITALISM
Capitalism is mired in its greatest crisis since 1929. Poverty, hunger, unemployment and lack of perspectives increase worldwide – not first since last year. The promise repeated for decades by politics. Media and the economic wise men that the market regulates everything prove once and for all to be a delusion. The crisis now widely discussed is a general recurring phenomenon inherent in capitalism and did not arise through the profit expectations of shareholders or “manager mistakes.” The crisis is the response to capital’s intensified problems in accumulating disproportional profits in gutted globalized markets and realizing these profit margins at the expense of wage earners.
Neoliberal capitalism functioned through expansion of the financial markets. Falling profit rates of the whole economy could be compensated this way. Worldwide exploitation and expansion of capitalist property occur through privatizations. Since the end of the 1970s, redistribution from bottom to the top intensified. Massive sections of the population are excluded from education and social systems.
Neoliberal capitalism led to debt crises, increasing poverty of vital resources like food and water. Local and global resistance has long raged against these distresses. To the diminishing social approval and the mounting contradictions and worldwide distribution conflicts, the ruling classes reacted with expanded surveillance of the population, authoritarian security policy, deployment of the German army internally and externally, the battle against terrorism, war and further screening of the elites. However more and more people distrust the worldwide political and economic elites’ solving of social problems and do not feel represented. Showing an alternative to capitalism arising out of this crisis of trust is incumbent on all of us.
IS THE STATE SAVING CAPITALISM?
The governments cannot solve the crisis; they are surprised by its course. If the market previously regulated all things, the strong state is now sought as the crisis rescuer. The defenders of capital and enormous sectors of the political class agree. The crisis consequences should be limited. But for whom? Governments worldwide pump billions in the banks. What is central is the expropriation of people to settle the vast losses of capital, not an expropriation of capital. The costs of the crisis, the losses of businesses and banks, are shifted to the majority of people to guarantee private profits. The people in the Global South, wage earners, unemployed and pensioners should pay for this.
CAPITALISM IS CALLED CLIMATE CRISIS! – “GREEN CAPITALISM” IS NOT A SOLUTION
After the bursting of the financial bubbles, capital seeks profitable investment possibilities and ways out of the crisis. Green capitalism is the new magic formula. The marketing of nature should be extended. New technologies and CO2-trade should solve the climate question. The market should be the solution for social problems caused by capitalism. Ecological and social interests are systematically subordinated to a growth- and profit-pressure. This pressure continues to drive climate change, undermines the essentials of life for many in the Global South and causes hunger crises, inadequate water supply and land expulsion. The dominance of private profit interests and the pressure to constant economic growth are not put in question in the doublespeak of green capitalism. Capital seeking new investment possibilities in agricultural industry, biotechnology and energy corporations should profit.
· Instead of shifting the consequences of the ecological destruction to people in the global South: expropriation and municipalization of energy corporations
· Instead of subsidies for dismissals, wage renunciation and ecological destruction: social-ecological reorganization of automobile- and industrial-production and free local public transportation for all!
· Instead of billions for businesses and banks: social security for all worldwide!
Self-determination was the promise of neoliberalism. For many, neoliberalism has only meant foreign determination, Hartz IV, deprivation of rights and low wages. In crises, the precarious (contract workers, flexible workers, multi-askers and mini-jobbers) must believe: increasingly stressful working conditions will be demanded from those who still have work. Self-determination and participation in society, collaboration in democracy and solidarity alternatives need time and rest.
· Instead of Hartz IV and low wages: unconditional basic income of at least 1500 euros for all. Abolish sanctions and need-fixation!
· Instead of short-time work, dismissals and wage renunciation in the crisis: radically reduced working hours without cuts in pay and personnel! Solidarity redistribution of social work! Higher wages for all! Equal pay for contract workers and limited-time employees with no dismissals!
To combat inequality and poverty, we urge immediate measures for equal access of all to food, health care and senior citizen provisions, education and culture. Participation in these social necessities may not be dependent on money. Participation should be possible for everyone.
* Education and health care free of charge for all – against the 2-class system in health care!
· Exodus from the three- or four-tier school system and against privatization of the school system and subjugation of students under market logic through ever-more rigorous selection in schools and universities!
· Social participation for all, including migrants!
Dominance of the profit logic and economization of all areas of life must be ended. The economy must serve the needs of people, not vice versa. The necessity of a social control of the economy is now widely discussed and strikes the limits of capitalist property relations. Producers and consumers must join the property question –the power of private owners of social production – with the international struggle around democratic rights and control of banks, conglomerates and the whole economy.
Nationalization alone is not a solution. Who controls the social wealth that we all produce, investments, working conditions and ecological production? As the power of feudal lords stood in the way of middle class democracy, the concerted power of property in business, the economy and the state is a hindrance today that opposes every effective democratic organization of society.
· Instead of nationalization of losses: expropriation and socialization of banks and corporations under the democratic control of wage earners!
CAPITALISM MEANS WAR, GLOBAL EXPLOITATION AND INEQUALITY!
The crisis intensifies insecurity and drives global competition, reinforces wage disparities and leads to new divisions. These are breeding grounds of authoritarian solutions: an authoritarian state that ensures owners of capital (preventatively) in the crisis against the resistance and fights the poor and “others” instead of fighting poverty and racism. The current crisis intensifies the competition between the capitals and between imperialist blocs over dwindling markets. A permanent war- and intervention-policy of all states wrestling for global hegemony runs parallel. Location nationalism and protectionist tendencies of the middle could also strengthen rightwing racial responses to the crisis. On the other hand, we must seek transnational ways of resistance and solidarity. We need global alliances of different social forces.
· Global solidarity instead of global capitalism!
· Fighting poverty instead of fighting the poor!
· Dissolve Nato! Worldwide disarmament instead of militarization!
What projects can master crises is unclear. When the rulers urge a “reorganization of capitalism” (Sarkozy and Merkel). We say: capitalism cannot solve global problems like poverty, insecurity, climate change, destruction of the environment, wars and dismantling democracy; it causes these problems! No appeal to politics or belief in the state helps. Our struggles for concrete improvements of our living conditions are the starting points for a different global formation of society – beyond crisis and capitalism – a society beyond competition, poverty, exploitation and paid labor.
The demo on March 28 is the prelude of a social struggle over the costs of the crisis and perspectives of change. Organization will be a key question. Only when we agree on solidarity and common shared interests can the crisis of capitalism also be a chance. Isolated we will accomplish nothing. We must create alliances in which many persons and social groups have a place. When we join wage battles, conflicts over rental costs and social security, student strikes for public solidarity education and many other social struggles, new movements will arise for a solidarity society beyond capitalism.
Class struggle, instead of social partnership! Political strike against the consequences of the crisis!
Against the consequences of the crisis and for a world without capitalism: political strike and social disobedience of employees, unemployed, precarious workers, students, migrants, persons with and without papers – here and in Paris, London, Delhi, Mexico, New York, Reykjavik!
Together against location competition and for global solidarity!
WE WILL NOT PAY FOR YOUR CRISIS!
To win a world beyond crisis, war and capitalism.
The world cannot remain as it is.
Signers
Avanti – Projekt undogmatische Linke, Antifascistische Linke Berlin (ALB), Gruppe Soziale Kampe, Gruppe Revolution
kapitalismuskrise.org
RELATED LINKS
Accra Confession of 2004 (World Alliance of Reformed Churches)
warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side.jsp
U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776
www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
Communist Manifesto 1848
www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Sermon on the Mount
www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/Bible/the-sermon-on-the-mount.htm
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