Press statement

November 3, 2011

International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) Commission 1

On Nov. 3-4, the heads of government of the largest imperialist powers led by the US together with the world’s largest emerging economies will gather at Cannes, France for the G20 (Group of 20) Summit. The meeting is part of the ongoing attempts of the imperialist powers to stem the still raging global financial and economic crisis that is now being characterized by the exploding public debt crisis in the US and several European countries.

As declared by the current French presidency of the G20, the summit in Cannes will supposedly “seek to conclude the existing actions designed to tackle the root causes of the crisis.” Furthermore, the G20 Summit, which will also bring together the Finance ministers and heads of central banks, intends as well to “broaden its agenda to include new actions aimed at sustainably improving global stability and prosperity.”

Anti-imperialist and democratic forces around the world must expose the deception that the spinmeisters of the G20 are concocting about the reparability of the bankrupt global capitalist system. The so-called existing actions to address the root causes of the crisis have been nothing but futile attempts to conceal the progressive decay of an economic system that thrives on the private appropriation of massive profits by the few while the great majority suffers from untold poverty and misery.

Worse, efforts to address the crisis, in particular the use of trillions of dollars in people’s money to bail out the biggest banks and corporations from the crisis that they themselves created, have only further stoked up the burgeoning debts and deficits of the monopoly capitalist states, already bloated by the costly and discredited “war on terror” campaign.

Yet the people continue to shoulder the burden of the global financial and economic crisis. After losing their homes and jobs, the people have been forced to carry the weight of the austerity measures being implemented by governments to tame their respective public debts and deficits. Of particular and immediate concern is the euro zone debt crisis, wherein European leaders, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the private creditors have agreed recently to implement a 50% cut in Greek government bond investments to reduce Greece’s debt burden by €100 billion and avoid a debt default. Greece was also given a fresh $11 billion in bailout funds.

The G20 Summit is expected to extol these moves, as well as the deal to scale up the region’s bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), to as much as €1 trillion from €440 billion last year. The imperialists hope that it will be enough to stave off the worsening of the debt problems in the euro zone, specifically of Italy and Spain. But all this comes at the expense of the people who face deep austerity measures including tax hikes, depressed wages, cutbacks on pensions and social benefits, reduced social services and increased fees, and declining public sector employment, among others. The meeting in Cannes will certainly be used to push for additional austerity measures to sustain the momentum of the all-out attack on people’s rights and welfare in the name of saving the putrid monopoly capitalist system.

At the same time, the imperialist powers continue to wage costly wars of aggression that squander their people’s money and resources and end up in the mass murder of resisting forces and the civilian population as well as the destruction of physical and social infrastructure in their target countries. The upcoming G20 Summit in particular will be held at a time when the US and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are rejoicing over their successful military intervention in Libya that culminated in the barbaric killing of Muammar Qaddafi. They are sure to trumpet this victory which they achieved using the usual justification of defending democracy and the people but in reality is barefaced intervention to control the world’s resources and establish the most reliable puppet regimes to serve the imperialist agenda.

However, the imperialist crisis and wars will only feed the people’s growing struggle and resistance against imperialism that enslaves, oppresses, and exploits them. This is evident in the explosion of people’s protests in the US, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the rest of the world against the austerity measures, bank and corporate bailouts, the greed of Wall Street and other financial firms, and against imperialist plunder and wars of aggression. Thus, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) Commission 1 calls on all anti-imperialist and democratic forces around the world to wage all forms of resistance especially mass protest actions in light of the G20 Summit in Cannes, France and to sustain and intensify our struggle to replace the rotting system of monopoly capitalism with socialism wherein genuine sovereignty, democracy, and economic development can be realized. #

Reference: Renato Reyes, Secretary General, New Patriotic Alliance (Bayan) – Philippines