Intensifying Global Crisis and Conflict
- Part 4 -

Malcolm Guy *

(This paper was presented by Malcolm Guy on 6th Ojha Sanajaoba Memorial lecture held at VC's Court room on December 30, 2016)

Elsewhere in the US, workers are fighting for a $15 an hour minimum wage to enable working people and their families to get enough to eat and have proper housing; the struggle is paying off for many. Several cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York and Washington have passed ordinances that gradually increase the minimum wage to $ 15. On July 1, 2018, San Francisco is expected to become the first US city to reach a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour. Meanwhile, in Chicago and other cities, teachers continue to fight for good schools for their students and decent wages for themselves.

In Europe, workers and the people have conducted large mass actions demanding a stop to government cutbacks in spending on social welfare and public services, higher wages for working families, protection of trade union organizing and bargaining rights. In Greece they are demanding freedom from debt bondage to the EU banks and other instruments of imperialist globalization. Tens of thousands of people marched in the streets of Brussels, Madrid, Helsinki, Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, Munich, Paris and other European cities last year and more recently to oppose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US.

In Asia, the factory floor of the global economy, protests and strikes against multinational corporations and governments have been increasing, including in China.

According to CNN.com, from 2011 to 2013, China Labor Bulletin (CLB), a Hong Kong-based workers' right group, recorded around 1,200 strikes and protests across China. In 2014 alone, there were more than 1,300 incidents. The following year, that number rose to over 2,700 – more than one a day in Guangdong province – a pattern that has continued into 2016 with no province of China unaffected by strikes or worker protests.

A 2010 strike at the Nanhai Honda car plant in southern China was a turning point for the country's labor movement – showing for the first time that a young migrant workforce could stand up and successfully fight for their rights, according to Eli Friedman, author of Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China.

"The production line was brought to a halt by 23-year-old Tan Guocheng, who shouted: 'Don't work for such low wages! Don't work for such wages!' as he hit the emergency stop button. Dressed in matching, formless white uniforms and red Honda-branded baseball caps, dozens and then hundreds of young workers filled the factory's courtyard, chanting slogans and singing patriotic songs.

The stike would last 19 days and grow to include almost the entire factory's workforce, crippling its production schedule and forcing management and government officials to cede to strikers' demands in a rare decisive victory for workers."

In Indonesia and Cambodia workers have mounted nationwide actions for wages and have won significant increases in the last few years. These are linked to the global supply chains of multinational corporations, thus defying the global race to the bottom in wages.

In India, the largest strike action in history was held last September will over 150 million workers marching in the streets against the neoliberal policies of the Narendra Modi government. Strong resistance has greeted Modi's sudden demonetization decision, which has hit peasants and working people particularly hard.

In Kashmir, 2016 has seen the people once again rise up despite increased military operations and sweeping civilian arrests. In Manipur and Northeast India, resistance continues to the heavy militarisation, policing, proxy wars and suppression of democratic voices as well as the use of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, National Security Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Seditious Act and other repressive laws.

In South Africa and Senegal, workers and people are resisting the privatization drive and fighting courageously to improve wages and living standards. In Nigeria, workers and people are opposing the price increase of basic commodities like petrol. In Burkina Faso, protesters took to the streets to topple the three-decade-old dictatorship. In both countries, anger is growing against the militarism and terrorism backed or instigated by US imperialism.

There is also rising resistance in Africa, as in Latin America and elsewhere to transnational corporations scooping up farmland and war resources more commonly referred to as "land grabbing" and "water grabbing", which is putting food security at risk.

In Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere the economic slowdown, resulting from the end of the commodities boom, is being exploited by the persistent big comprador-landlord oligarchs and rabid US puppets with attempts to reverse social gains achieved under progressive government. But workers and social movement are condemning and opposing US intervention and destabilization attempt in Paraguay, Honduras, Venezuela and other countries in the region.

Meanwhile, opposition to the imposition of US overseas military bases is sharp in several locations, including Okinawa Island in Japan, Jeju Island in South Korea as well as the Philippines.

In the face of the worsening atrocities being committed by the US, its imperialist allies and its proxies, more and more people are resisting the US-led imperialist war machine. Peoples' anger against the US runs wide and deep in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and throughout West Asia where the worst crimes against humanity have been committed by US imperialism and its allies in recent decades. The struggle of the Palestinian and Kurdish people are some of the heroic examples of people's resistance in this region. They are showing the path of people's resistance against US imperialism and against the violence spread in the regions by US-backed terrorist groups.

Elsewhere progressive and revolutionary movements are also waging struggles for national liberation and democracy, including wars for liberation in the Philippines, India, West Papua and Columbia.

All over the globe the people are increasingly opposed to the wars of aggression that their government are waging in their name. To assist in widening and strengthening this movement, the International League of People' Struggle (ILPS), in coordination with the International Womens' Alliance (IWA), will be organizing a major international anti-imperialist war conference in Toronto, Canada in August 2-7, 2017. It is entitled, "Solidarity and Fightback: Building resistance to US-led war and militarism".

As the imperialist system descends further into barbarism, workers and peoples everywhere must like their struggles to one another and to a broader resistance movement against monopoly capitalism, neoliberalism, state terror and imperialist wars. We must maximize opportunities to arouse, organize and mobilize amidst the worsening global crisis and inter-imperialist contradictions. Only the struggle against imperialism and for socialism will truly end capitalist crises and imperialist wars; liberate the masses from exploitation and oppression; and realize greater freedom, democracy, social justice, all-round development and lasting peace.

(Concluded......)