Take to the streets!

Join the g8 protests

ON 2 July this year tens of thousands of people will march through the streets of Edinburgh to protest at the G8 summit.

Sarah Sachs-Eldridge

Amongst them will be thousands of trade unionists, school students, socialists, community activists and others who have been driven to take to the streets by their will to transform the world.

There will also be one other smaller group - the hypocrites - and chief amongst them will be Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who announced on Saturday that he plans to join the Make Poverty History demo.

Beyond the white wristband, how far does the Chancellor's determination to end the privation and misery that blights the lives of so many go?

Has this caring, sharing Gordon come out to join us on other demonstrations? Against the war and occupation in Iraq for example?

Far from it. He rallied behind Blair during the election and stood by his every action in Iraq, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths of Iraqi civilians.

Is he kept awake at night worrying about how the ex-Rover workers feel when Margaret Hodge reassures them that they will find employment in Tescos, despite the huge waste of their skills and the massive drop in wages that would represent?

Saint Gordon

It will be clear in the minds of the majority of the marchers that the G8's privatisation policies play a key role in sustaining much of the poverty and lack of access to essentials such as water and electricity that we want to end.

Will Saint Gordon happily fall in behind an anti-privatisation banner? Unlikely. It is under his watch in Number 11 that the Department for International Development (DFID) has donated more money to the pro-privatisation Adam Smith International than it has to some of the poorest countries in Africa like Somalia.

DFID gave £500,000 to provide "advice" to the Tanzanian government. Adam Smith International spent more than half of that on a promotional video that included the words: "Our old industries are dry like crops and privatisation brings the rain."

We know only too well what privatisation has meant for us in Britain.

Far from bringing much needed rain for those in the poorest countries in Africa it brings the denial of essential services.

It's estimated that 45% of people in the Copperbelt province, one of the wealthiest regions in Zambia, can no longer afford to take their children to the doctor.

This is because of user fees (government spending on health is a third of what it spends on debt repayments) and job losses from the privatisation of Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines.

So Gordon, by all means join the demo, but don't expect anyone to want you there. Your record and motivations are clear. You represent big business, you do their bidding.

We represent the billions around the world who are saying enough is enough, that it's time to end the rule of profit, which you defend.

On the demonstration we will be linking the ending of poverty with the need to consign to history the system which sustains it.

Make capitalism history. Make socialism our future. And make Gordon Brown go home.

World trade - neither free nor fair

When the G8 countries meet in Gleeagles in July they will discuss ways of reducing poverty in the ex-colonial countries (the so-called 'third world').

Anti-poverty campaigners argue that this won't happen until these countries are allowed to trade on equal terms with the rich countries.

Ken Douglas looks at how the G8 countries protect their privileged position in the world market.

A fierce debate erupted at the EU summit in Brussels over the EU budget for 2007-2013, particularly the issue of Britain's annual £3 billion rebate from the EU and the question of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

This followed World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Paris (a continuation of the WTO talks in Doha, where they failed to reach agreement) on the rich countries reducing state subsidies and import tariffs.

The 30 richest countries in the world subsidise their own agricultural industries by $305 billion, compared to the $50.6 billion they pay in aid to poorer countries.

The CAP and the subsidies that the rich countries of the G8 pay to their own farmers is a key part of the debate on world poverty that is due to be discussed at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles on 6 July.

Organisations such as Oxfam argue that this system of subsidies enables the rich countries to undercut the prices of farmers in the ex-colonial countries.

Subsidising the rich

Moreover, these subsidies overwhelmingly benefit rich landowners and big companies. In Britain, the top individual beneficiary was Sir Richard Sutton, whose estates received nearly £2.2 million over two years plus subsidies for estates in Scotland and Ireland.

The Duke of Westminster, 'worth' £5 billion, has received £799,000 in subsidies on his 1,200-hectare Cheshire farm in the last two years. One top farmer insisted that the subsidies weren't too high. "This is quite boring. The subsidy is based on area. As it happens, those with the largest areas get the largest cheques".

Helped by these subsidies, EU countries export so much sugar, cereals, dairy and livestock at prices way below production costs that prices for agricultural goods produced by millions of poor farmers in Africa and other developing countries are cut.

Six big sugar refineries, including Britain's Tate & Lyle, received e819 million (£568 million) in export subsidies in 2003 to make the EU the world's second largest sugar exporter. This drove down world sugar prices by up to 23%, hitting the trade of sugar-producing countries like Malawi, Ethiopia and Brazil.

In the US, 10% of the biggest, and often most profitable, producers received 72% of the US government's agricultural subsidies ($20 billion) paid out between 1995 and 2003. 60% of farmers get nothing.

Oxfam campaigns to make trade fair, calling on governments to change the rules and remove subsidies and tariffs so that trade can become part of the solution to poverty, not the problem. However, this is like asking for capitalism not to be so capitalist.

Even if subsidies were withdrawn, the huge multi-national companies that dominate world trade in commodities such as coffee, grain and other agricultural products can drive down prices paid to producers. But in reality, countries like the US are always going to protect their own farmers and manufacturers.

Fair trade products, which undertake to support small-scale producers, work by charging a premium for the product, which is passed on to consumers in countries like Britain. These small, inefficient producers are not going to supplant the big companies and are always going to be undercut by cheaper products.

Democratic control

The working class, the peasants and the poor across the world can only change this situation by uniting and changing the system. This would include democratic, public ownership and control of the major corporations which dominate world trade. The production of goods to meet the needs of the world population could then be planned on a national, continental and world basis.

Food, commodity production and trade could be geared to sustaining and conserving food supplies to ensure that everyone had an adequate diet - to producing goods that people need, rather than profits for shareholders.

Public services such as health, education, housing, transport, water and energy could be developed using the enormous wealth that would be created; that wouldn't be swallowed by the arms industry or the banks or the rich. All the world's scientists could combine to find solutions to the massive problems facing humanity, such as global warming, environmental catastrophe and the AIDS pandemic.

Only socialism can ensure this outcome. Protest against the capitalist G8 but go further - build a socialist movement that can change the world.

The rich countries won't give up subsidies

The aim of the WTO is to liberalise world trade in order to boost the growth rate of the world economy. They argue that the ex-colonial countries will then benefit as they will be able to develop their own economies, boost exports and thus reduce poverty.

However, according to Oxfam the rich countries will not have to reduce their subsidies until 2016 at the earliest and that they will still make hidden subsidies. The US pays the equivalent of $6.6 billion of hidden export subsidies (200 times the amount it declares to WTO) to its farmers every year and the EU $5.2 billion (four times the amount it reports).

A reduction in subsidies and tariffs will only come at the price of these countries opening up their domestic markets and services - in other words privatisation and sale to western companies.

In reality, there is no such thing as free trade. A few financially powerful countries or blocs have a stranglehold on the world market. The dominant economies will still try to protect their own producers. The top five exporting countries (pop. 646 million) have 100 times more trade than the 49 least developed countries (pop. 648 million). The US particularly will use its dominant economic and military position in the world to resist any attempt at regulation.

Take the example of shrimp farming. The leading producers of farmed shrimps are all in south east Asia and Latin America. Shrimp farming was promoted by aid agencies, banks and governments as a way for poor countries to develop and alleviate poverty. The US has now placed duties of 112% on shrimps from China and Vietnam, 67% on Brazilian exports and various amounts on other countries, claiming that the products were being sold at "less than fair value".

Following the scrapping of the Multi Fibre Agreement in 2004, exports of textiles from China exploded, both to the EU and the US. For example, exports of pullovers increased by over 400%. Agreement has now been reached to limit Chinese textile exports after the US imposed tariffs on them, a move incidentally opposed by US retailers but clearly supported by manufacturers!

G8 News

Oil firm pays bribes shock

The British government is backing oil firm Halliburton, the oil services group once led by US vice-president Dick Cheney, despite it being under investigation for bribery and corruption, according to the Guardian.

Halliburton's British arm, Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) are alleged to have paid $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials over a large gas plant, after receiving $10million in loan guarantees from the Department of Trade and Industry.

They have admitted that payments had been made to officials by a British lawyer who paid the money into Swiss bank accounts.

At the G8 summit Brown and Blair will be demanding that African governments take action against corruption while at the same time they are backing companies who are behind that corruption. They are now providing KBR with a $10 million loan guarantee for an oil field deal in Kazakhstan.

Gulag

Another subsidiary of Halliburton, famous for chiselling millions out of the 'reconstruction' of Iraq, has won the $30 million contract to help build a permanent prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Described as "the gulag of our times" by the head of Amnesty International, the prison has become notorious for allegations of torture and brutality. Ex-president Bill Clinton, among others, has called for Guantanamo to be closed but Dick Cheney still thinks that detainees are providing valuable information.

Of course, they can be always transported to Syria, Egypt or Uzbekistan in unmarked CIA planes to be tortured to death for more valuable information to help the 'war on terror'. Both the US and the British governments use evidence obtained under torture, in contravention of the Geneva Convention.

Terror

OIL GIANT BP stands accused of profiting from a reign of terror by government paramilitaries in Colombia who drove farmers off their land during the construction of a 450-mile pipeline.

The development affected the water table, causing flooding in some areas and drought in others. Ponds and wells dried up and farmers were ruined.

Most of the farmers couldn't read the contracts that they were signing and were intimidated by the paramilitaries into moving off their land.

They were offered a few hundred pounds in compensation Those who protested were threatened and the organiser of the protests was murdered.

The lawyer who is representing the farmers in a £15 million compensation claim against BP has discovered that she is on a paramilitary hit list.

Review: Arguments against the G8

We need arguments for socialism

I can't fault this book for doing exactly what it says on the tin. It makes a number of well-researched points on the record of the G8 and their hypocrisy in proposing that the governments of the eight richest countries are making poverty history.

Sarah Sachs-Eldridge

The limitations of the G8's pledges are illustrated in chapters on poverty, debt, HIV and AIDS, climate change and food security. A chapter on the Group of 8 lists their combined crimes, calling on them to stop using "repressive legislation and warmongering".

Since the book was published at the start of this year many of these points have been made in the press. The Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign and all the publicity it has earned through celebrity support, a method which has its limitations, has nonetheless provided an opportunity for a closer examination of the enormous obstacles to the attempts to consign world hunger to history.

Privation, debt, the inequalities of so-called free trade have all featured in the papers. Of course we don't expect the newspapers whose owners number amongst the rich bosses to provide us with a real explanation of these horrors.

This book collates a lot of very useful information for campaigners, but the so-called leaders of the movement should go further. The overarching problems named in the book are mainly neo-liberalism, imperialism and globalisation. What the majority of the writers fail to say is that these are all manifestations of capitalism.

Manifestations of capitalism

In the final chapter the editors describe what they call "the social movement for capitalism", by which they mean the bosses of the big multinationals who run the world and the governments who do their bidding.

They quote Marx's The German Ideology in explaining how the ruling class enforces its law in different ways, through the mass media, by force etc. As an antidote to that "social movement for capitalism" they prescribe that we "raise our voices" and form our own social movement but they don't say what for.

Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT, gets the closest in his closing words on privatisation.

"More than 150 years after it was first coined by Marx and Engels, the phrase 'Workers of the world unite' remains just as relevant - not just as a call for international solidarity, but as the foundation stone of any practical programme to counter the power of global capital."

Tommy Sheridan, Scottish Socialist Party MSP mentions public ownership but does not spell out what that entails and how it would work and why it is so important.

The Socialist Party has been campaigning for the G8 protests and the MPH demo for some months now. Through that work we have met a lot of young people who recognise the need to change the world. They want to be part of the force that changes it. But they don't just want to have the problems of this system listed for them so they can wring their hands in despair.

For the most thoughtful, their hands are too busy carrying the banner for socialism. They recognise that these symptoms add up to a rotten system that we have to change. They recognise that what we have to change is the question of who owns and runs society.

They want to become active socialists so that they can play a role in making not just the G8 history, not just poverty history but to make capitalism history once and for all. For those young people this book will be useful but not enough.

Arguments against the G8, edited by Hubbard and Miller, published by Pluto Press

Take to the streets! Join the G8 protests

International youth camp

G8 forces occupy Sheffield

Summit rows intensify EU crisis

Crisis in Africa: How imperialism condemns millions to poverty

G8 protest: other news

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