"Globalism" and "Neo-liberalism" -

Capitalism does not see another spring.

Capitalism is bound to die.

Dear colleagues, friends, and comrades:

the Arbeiterbund für den Wiederaufbau der KPD sends warm greetings to your congress which is so badly needed. The workers, the working people all over the world have to consult each other on common activities; we must unite against the monopolists and imperialists, which despite being an insignificant minority have become the real curse of our world. As long as they are free, we are not free, as long as they are our masters, we remain slaves.

1

Half of the global wealth and one third of the global means of production are owned by just a handful multi-millionaires. Under the flag of "neo-liberalism" and "globalism" they have embarked to new victories - at least: they think they have.

Liberalism is deemed to be: their unlimited freedom, the triumph of the market over the plan, the "retreat of the state from economy" and privatisation, the entire freedom for the flow of capital and labour, the victory of the competitive forces of market over brutal violence, the victory of freedom over protectionism and restriction.

Our main enemy, the German imperialism, has conclusively shown what liberalism really means. He annexated a sovereign state, the Democratic Republic of Germany (DDR). Between 1949 and 1990 the people of this country had endeavoured to leave the control of the German monopolists and their state. In the biggest action of privatisation history has ever seen, according to German imperialism, freedom was brought back to this people in 1990. In fact what was brought back to them was the freedom of violence and robbery.

This privatisation was performed by using the state machinery of the German imperialism applying pure violence to seize the wealth of the working people of the DDR. For the profit of the German banks the collectives of the working people of the former DDR were submitted to a new system of landlordship, millions of working people were fired, three quarters of the industrial capacity of the former DDR were demolished within a few years only, which destroyed the real base of freedom. This is what is meant by liberalism, this is their kind of freedom in full action. This is how liberalism works day by day against the people of Eastern Europe whose life is not victim of free competition, rather the life and the economy of these people is victim of political and military violence including primitive piracy, hunger blockade as well as the destruction of entire states.

"Market is the great regulating force, market will make it" - this is what the monopolists, having originated from free competition, usually say. "The market" was something great at the time when medieval workmen left their dark stables and became capitalists on a nation-wide scale looking around to find appropriate space to sell their products. At the end of this era this limited and narrow space is not good enough for the people of the world and the big bosses themselves do no longer believe in it: They have replaced the market by nude violence.

More freedom, more market and less state? The monopolists struggle for another sharing of the world. Their competition is effective world-wide - which their instruments of power are not. The development of the productive forces during the imperialist époque have broken the limits of nation-states since long. Concentration and centralisation of capital has come to such an extent that the biggest monopolists are strong enough to submit even those sectors of society to their law of maximum profit which until now had been taken care of by their common governmental committee: the means of mass transportation, the telecommunication, the postal services. The capitalist state continues to justify his existence, however. It is actually reduced to it's hard core: to a mechanism owned and run by the monopolists to apply violence both internally and externally. The bourgeois nation-state is the vehicle of this kind of political and military power. The private owners of the means of production have access to this power and use it in their world-wide battle to destroy the corresponding military and political base of their competitioners. This is the source of war. War is prepared by organising regional blocks of imperialists states and there is a hot and brutal competition for the leading position of such a block. Thus the new freedom in Europe means: The strongest imperialist power, which is the German imperialism, attacks the sovereignty not only of the smaller people, he even attacks the medium-sized imperialist powers in Europe intending to destroy them. That is the German way of "neo-liberalism". In the past this ended up with an "unification" of Europe: it's unification with utter violence and under the army boots of the nazis. (It is not by coincidence that after the defeat of the German imperialism in the second world war part of the old nazis organised themselves in a party named "Freiheitlich Demokratische Partei (FDP)" which used the label of liberalism to sell their outdated goods.

In the battle to organise and form such blocks and the fight between those blocks there is no freedom, nor free competition or flow of capital and labour. There is protectionism and cutting oneself off the rest of the world. The end result is, according to the OECD, that there are only four capitalist countries which at the end of this decade practise less protectionism and governmental interference with external economy than 10 years earlier, not to mention "free movement" of the respective working people. At the beginning of this century workers could much more easily leave their country and sell their labour at the other side of the border than they can at the end of this century. Free movement of millions of people during imperialism only exists as a constantly moving stream of refugees who, in fact, are free of any means of existence.

II

At the very end of her historical existence the bourgeoisie works against her own lifework. She has previously organised the global market, now she atomises it. She breaks this market into regional markets within the frame of imperialist blocks (a growing part of the global commerce is trade within these big regional blocks). A growing part of the world population is totally excluded: In the beginning of this century Africa and Latin America held a bigger share in the global trade than they do today. One third of the population living under capitalist conditions can no longer be submitted to imperialist exploitation - the unemployed of the 24 OECD-members are so numerous that they could form a human chain around the globe - which is also a form of globalisation. World-wide it has become a characteristic phenomenon: Bourgeoisie can no longer ascertain the existence of her slaves. It is a world-wide phenomenon that bourgeoisie has become bankrupt and is no longer necessary at all, the capitalist way of producing and exchanging is born to die.

This is the background for the hunting of maximum profit and the fight against the fall of the rate of profit which makes the big monopolists run like rats around the world. They try to exploit the workers of all countries, they try to get hold of those countries and sectors in which exploitation is still functioning, they infiltrate countries wherever this is possible. (One third of the global trade consists of the flow of goods within the big companies). The way these big "transnational" companies function demonstrates that today the export of capital is more important than the export of goods. The poor effectiveness of the measures that the big companies have at hand is astonishing. How ineffective is the export of capital when it comes, for example, to the submission of states like the former Soviet Union to capitalist exploitation at the end of the 20th. century! How far away from being truly global is the export of capital: firstly it includes only a few branches (chemical and electrical products, cars) and secondly most of this stays within the frontiers of the imperialist centres which protect themselves from competition increasingly . The end of this story is the concentration of capitalist wealth in very few regions of the world.

Few monopolist of this world get increasingly rich and an increasing part of their wealth is money. But they are like the legendary king Midas: Whatever he touched became gold until, in the end, he starved. What can be discovered under the form of the billions of dollars that these "genius of financial machinations" (Lenin) have at their disposal is the control of social working time - no longer can the capitalist way of producing make any use of this wealth of time. Capitalism consumes this wealth in speculation, financial blackmailing, strangulation of people by loans and credit institutions. Using the national debt as a lever they grab the future labour of the working people as well as the present and past. That works until the whole thing explodes and everything plunges into the next crisis and the labour of millions is once more destroyed.

III

What happens under our eyes is not a fresh blooming of capitalism. Rather it is its' lethal fight, his final and last rotting. Like advertising show masters the capitalist coin new terms: Neoliberalism is one of those, globalisation is another. We prefer to label reality with a term that, in an attack of love of truth, has been coined by bourgeoisie herself: we call it imperialism. And we complete this description by the findings of historical materialism: imperialism is a dying, rotting capitalism.

Our masters would prefer us, the people of the world, to react on this reality with nationalism, with a alliance with our masters. Imperialist cosmopolitism - that is what globalisation is all about - always means: violence, suppression, and reaction. Our answer is: internationalism. Workers of the world and oppressed people unite! That is what we are going to answer! This is why we welcome this congress and want it to be a great success.

The people of Europe will have to organise a people's alliance against Germany in order to meet the danger coming from the most aggressive European imperialism, which is the German imperialism. Accordingly the answer which the people of Latin America will give the US-imperialism is of the same kind and nature. People have to fight and to defeat their own masters. They are certainly able to and they will win this fight. Because it is their enemy who himself has prepared their victory. The wealth of the world is concentrated within few hands only, the governmental commission of the capitalists prepares plans of productions for whole continents (like the Japanese MITI) - this is the ground which since long is prepared for the working people of the world to take over the power and the economy - for the global socialist republic.

Arbeiterbund für den

Wiederaufbau der KPD

June, 1997