THERE IS little to rejoice as the international community commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Bretton Woods agreement which led to the founding of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the GATT.
The Structural Agreement Programmes imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions to obtain the reinine and the brutal impoverishment of the developing world while contributing to the 'third worldization' of the countries in the former Eastern bloc.
While the World Bank's mandate consists, amongst others, in "combar. ing poverty" and protecting the envithe dismantling of health and education programmes. Its support of large scale hydroelectric and agro-industrial projects has speeded up the process of deforestation and destruction of the natural environment, leading to the - --— Sign the World Appeal today! 1O I/We endorse the World Appeal I Name 1 Address Post Code , Organisation. Tel Fax Signature Return to: COCAD, 29 Plantinstraat, Brussels, Belgium 10. Tel: 00322 523 4033 Fax: 00322 522 6127 --forced displacement of several million people. In the South and the East hundreds of millions of undernourished children are denied the fundamental right of primary education.
In several regions of the world the brutal compression of social expenditure, combined with the collapse of purchasing power, has led to resurgence of infectious diseases including tuberculosis, malaria and cholera.
The GATT agreement further violates fundamental people's rights, particularly in the investment, biodiversity and intellectual property rights. Several clauses of the Structural Adjustment Programmes are now permanently entrenched in the arucies or te wore trade Organisation. The WTO's mandate consists in regulating world trade to the bencfit of the international banks and trannational corporations as well as "supervising' (in close collaboration with the IMF and World Bank) the enforcement of national trade policies.
- - -Email In the developed countries of the North, similar socially oppressive eco nomic polices are now being applied. "The consequences are unemployment. low wages, the marginalisation of large sectors of the population, and racism.
Social expenditures are curtailed and many of the achievements of the Welfare State repealed. State policies have also encouraged the destruction of small and medium-sized enterprises.
In the South, the East and the North a privileged social minority has acco. mulated vast amounts of wealth at the expense of the large majority of the population. This new international financial order feeds on human poverty. the destruction of the natural environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife undermines the rights of women and often precipitates in countries destructive confrontations between nationalities.
The time has come for humanity to forcefully respond and establish a agenda for social change. We the undersigned - citizens, workers, teachers, writers, artists, civil servants. trades unionists, members of NonGovermental Organisations through. out the world reassert the fundamental right of people to national economic sovereignty, democratic deWe denounce this destructive "economic model while reasserting our firm opposition to the interference of the Bretton Woods institutions and the new World Trade Organisation in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Illusions of peaceful legislative change. own class rule. sloners, of the black communities, of lesblans and gay men, of stuworldwide. 10 countries mass revolutionary party can be bullt simply by proclalming ourselves to be one. This degenerates into sectarian posturing and abstention from struggles in the labour movement, playing into right wing nanos. ans and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland, Ireland of the struggle for socialism. fight for policles which can mobilise and politically educate workers in struggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight for their rights. Issues such as racism and fascism - in which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to dewith us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in cities across the country.
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We fight to mobilise and unleash the power of the working class to topple the corrupt and reactionary rule of capital and establish Its We struggle against fragmentation by bullding solidarity, to unite the various struggles of workers, the unemployed, of women, of penSocialist Outlook is above all an internationalist current, in solidarty with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises in over Unlike some other groups on the British left, we do not belleve a Nor do we belleve that the demands of women, black people, lesbiand Wales should be left to awalt revolution. The oppressed must organise themselves and fight now for their demands, which are a part But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key If you agree with what you see in Socialist Outlook, and want to join Get organised! Contact us now!
Socialist Outlook 100 • April 6, 1996.