Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet write About International Capitalism

Posted by
Venu K.M

After the European Parliament elections let us act to
eradicate capitalism and all forms of oppression
After the European Parliament elections
let us act to eradicate capitalism
and all forms of oppression

Eric Toussaint -Damien Millet
8 June
2009
The partisans of capitalism, and among them,
prominently, the EU leaders, have lost all credibility. For years now they have
trampled on the rights of peoples while not wavering when it came to
making decisions
directly opposed to their advertised principles in order to bail out major
banks. European government parties could have acted differently and nationalised
the banks, thus retrieving the cost of the bailout on the patrimony of major
shareholders and CEOs. The public credit instrument that would have resulted
could finance socially useful and environment-friendly projects while
guaranteeing
individual savings. The crisis has brought back onto the agenda proposals that
had been swept aside during the long neoliberal night such as a radical
reduction of working time (with creation of jobs and no loss of pay) or
indexation of wages and social benefits on the cost of living. Europe
needs new financial discipline: company ledgers
have to be opened to external and internal auditing (through the trade unions
among others), all financial products must be regulated, and it must be
forbidden for companies to have assets in any tax haven. Major means of
production, trade, finance, communication and other services must be
transferred to the public sphere and taken away from capitalists’
control. Access to public goods must be systematically promoted.

In a political perspective, European citizens
must retrieve the political power that has been taken away from them. The
populations who were able to have their say on the Constitutional Treaty turned
it down, but leaders ignored their votes without a second thought.
Meanwhile Venezuela, Ecuador
and Bolivia
show us the way. There, citizens elected a Constituant Assembly in order to draw
up a new draft Constitution, which is to be discussed with social movements and
sanctioned by referenda. In these three countries voters can now revoke any
elected representative mid-mandate, whereas no European Constitution mentions
any such highly democratic mechanism.

The
countries of Europe
must stop plundering the natural resources and know-how of the South.
They
must increase official development aid, which ought to be called
‘contribution
to reparations’ by way of repairing the historical, social and
environmental damage they brought about. Europe
must cancel Third World Debt and implement the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
in all its dimensions, including article 13, the right to freedom of
movement
and residence. Europe must turn away from
nuclear power and dismantle all nuclear weapons currently on its
territory. Europe must leave NATO and withdraw its troops from all
territories
under military occupation. Europe must close down all US military bases
on its territory.
All EU member countries must grant complete independence to populations
they
still wield colonial power over (the ‘French’ and
‘Dutch’ Antilles, British overseas territories, New Caledonia, Reunion
Island…). Europe must
rescind all partnership agreements with Israel and see to it that the
rights of the Palestinian people be at long last respected.
Capitalism has drawn humankind down into a
deep multidimensional crisis: it affects the financial sector, the economy, the
climate, food and energy supplies, not to mention wars and the arms race. The
patriarchal system perpetuates the oppression of women in all areas of life. As
asserted at the Women’s Assembly at the World Social Forum in Belem on
1 February 2009 : We are not interested in palliative answers
based on market logic in response to these crises ; this can only lead to
perpetuation of the same system. We need to move forward in building
alternatives if we are to oppose the capitalist and patriarchal system that
oppresses and exploits us. |1|

We also support the declaration of
indigenous peoples adopted at Belem: The capitalist development model, a model
that is Eurocentric, sexist and racist, is in absolute crisis, and is leading
us to the greatest social and environmental crisis in the history of humankind.
Structural unemployment is aggravated by the financial, economic, energy and
production crisis, along with social exclusion, sexist and racist violence and
religious fanaticism. That there should be so many simultaneous crises, and so
deep, forebodes an authentic crisis of civilization, a crisis of
“capitalist and modern development” that endangers all forms of
life. But there are those who continue to dream of improving this
model and refuse
to acknowledge that what is in crisis is capitalism, Euro-centrism, with its
model of a State destined for one culturally homogeneous nationality, western
positive rights, developmentalism and the commodification of life. |2|

Capitalism, patriarchy, and all forms of oppression
will not disappear of their own accord: only the conscious and deliberate
actions of men and women can yield another system whose goals would be
to guarantee
indivisible human rights and to protect the environment. We must free our minds
of the tragic Stalinist caricature of communism, do away with capitalism, and
invent an ecologically viable, socialist and feminist project rooted in the
realities of the 21st century.