International women's group hits 'globalized capitalism'

By Tim Wheeler

This article was reprinted from the August 1, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

BALTIMORE - More than 400 peace and justice activists from 50 nations gathered here July 24-31 to strategize on creation of a "vast people's movement" to break globalized capitalism's grip.

They were delegates, mostly women, to the 27th international congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). It took place on the campus of Goucher College and in the nearby Sheraton Hotel. Wednesday the delegates were scheduled to travel by chartered bus to Washington for a day of people's lobbying on Capitol Hill.

The theme was "Bread and Roses: Women Define Globalism." In her opening report, WILPF International President, Edith Ballantyne of Geneva, Switzerland, told the delegates that the technological revolution makes possible for the first time elimination of poverty, hunger, homelessness, illiteracy.

But global capitalism, she said, "does not allow those who sell their labor power to get an equitable share of the wealth they produce to secure the fulfillment of their basic needs."

On the contrary, she added, global corporations use technology to squeeze maximum production - -and profits - from fewer workers at lower pay, while terminating the jobs of millions.

"The cycle of over-production and diminishing purchasing power is setting in with a vengeance," Ballantyne warned. "Big finance capital seeks cheap acquisitions and profitable areas of investment. One looks with apprehension at the way it zooms in like a vulture on countries like South Korea and Malaysia to buy at firesale prices some of the financially troubled but still valid native transnational companies."

She urged WILPF and its allies to fight back. "Only a vast people's movement," she said, "can succeed in overcoming the powerful capitalist barrier and usher in a more human, egalitarian, nonviolent and peaceful world society."

During a panel discussion on globalization Monday, Virginia Rasmussen, co-chair of WILPF's U.S. section committee on Corporations, Trade and Democracy described transnational capitalism as "anti-democratic, anti-worker, anti-planet." Government rules and regulations, "corporate codes of conduct" and "side agreements" on labor and the environment such as in NAFTA are "thin sticks" that leave corporate power intact, she said. The crowd applauded when she called for an "organized, mobilized peoples' movement" to "tear down the system."

Njoki Njorage Njehu, of Kenya, leader of the African Women's Economic Policy Network, cited "a widening gap between the rich and the poor, more millionaires and billionaires and more people in absolute poverty." She added, "It will take forty years for a Ghanaian worker today to have a standard of living equal to the Ghanaian standard of living in the mid-1970s. It doesn't look like much of a success to me."

She accused the World Bank/Internatioal Monetary Fund of imposing austerity policies aimed at luring corporate investments. "It has meant lower wage standards, sweatshops, very, very long hours of work for low pay," she said. "There is also a focus on the extractive industries - oil drilling and mining," which has also left the people impoverished while enriching foreign transnational corporations.

During President Clinton's visit to Africa last March he "promised to hook every African village up to the Internet," Njehu said. "But a woman he met thirty miles from Kampala, Uganda, said, 'I have no running water, no electricity. How in the world is he going to hook me up to the internet?'"

She added, "We must think about basic needs: food, water, education, health care. I spend my days trying to bring a little bit of accountability and transparency to these institutions. Everybody talks about the 'African crisis,' about how far the stock market will fall, but nobody is talking about what is happening to ordinary people."

Rosario Padilla, a delegate from the Philippines said, "The U.S. would impose a development model that will fuel her economy while gaining access to the world market." She cited U.S. military corporations' domination of the trade in armaments.

In the Philippines, she said, IMF policies have forced thousands of farmers off the land, which has been taken over by corporate plantations that grow "cut flowers" for export. These policies, she said, "have not brought about an improvement in the living standards of the people."

Maria Pagano, President of the Argentine section of WILPF, a leader of the Graphic Workers Union and the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos, cited the role of the corporate media in brainwashing the people. "Never has the power of the media been held in the hands of so few," she said. "The war of ideas has to be added to the battle of the classes." She called for stronger efforts to "penetrate" the media and also to create an "alternative media" controlled by the people.

During the open-mike session that followed, delegates reported on struggles in their country. Colleen Burke, a founding member of the Toronto chapter of WILPF, cited the powerful grassroots movement that sprang up across Canada in opposition to the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) that was being negotiated in deep secrecy in Paris. It would have nullified the labor, environmental and consumer laws of countries around the world as "trade barriers."

Missing from the panel discussion was recognition that organized labor, including the AFL-CIO in the U.S., are crucial allies in the struggle against global capitalism. For example, no mention, was made of the Flint workers heroic six-week strike against GM, which brought the world's largest corporation to a standstill.

The platform speakers came right up to the word "socialism" without saying it aloud. But a delegate speaking with a German accent, said, "We have ninety miles from home an example of what can be done. They studied Marx, Engels and Lenin and adapted it to their situation." She said Cuba is an example of resistance to transnational capitalism and served as an example of building the socialist alternative.