2009-07-07
The yearly meeting of the economic leading nations, which in 2007 and 2008 caused massive protests in Germany and Japan, takes place from the 8th till the 10th of July in Italy this year. Eight years after Genoa, the extreme rightist premier Silvio Berlusconi hosts the summit meeting again. At that time the Italian police shot and killed a demonstrator and tortured dozens. The premier plead for acquittals, some responsible persons have been advanced to EU positions meanwhile.
Ten years after the blockade of the meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle 1999 it is shown that the leading industrial nations, despite massive criticism, still continue their exploitative and violent economic policy. This policy leads to today’s crisis. Repression is the only way that remains to combat uprisings preventively.
Military operations against the civilian population and growing police contingents are necessary to protect the meetings of leading politicians in these days. The always legitimate criticism on their politics regains actuality again in connection with the financial crisis.
Again(-st) the crisis
Global economy is in its worst crisis since the crash of 1929. This crash was only the foreshock of the big crisis with pauperization on a huge scale and millions of unemployed. Are the real troubles like at that time still waiting for us at the moment?
It is fatal to blame greedy managers, bankers and speculators for the crisis. Also the workers in the USA, who bought their houses and cars on credits which they couldn't pay back, are not guilty. It is the capitalist world order, which again and again causes an overproduction of goods for which there are no buyers. At the moment there is not enough profit made out of the production of goods - meaning the exploitation of our labour-power - because of this, money’s invested in speculations.
The comparison of a bad neo-liberal capitalism and a good productive, maybe even social capitalism only distracts from the fact that there is only one capitalism. And this one automatically produces its own crises. They arise on a more or less regular basis even though not everywhere at the same time. Politics and economy now try to reflate the system with rescue programmes and economic stimulus packages. But the hundreds of billions which are spend for rescuing banks and corporations now are by no means play money. We and the following generations have to pay them by wage cuts, lengthening of working hours, new dues, more taxes, economizing and cutting of social benefits.
The institutions of the leading industrial nations are forced to deal with the consequences of the crisis. Topics on the agenda of this year’s summit of the self-announced "World Governance" (Italy’s foreign minister about the G8) are climate, raw materials, nourishments and migration as risks for the industrial nations’ security policy. The limited reserves of raw materials and nourishments are therefore supposed to be allocated to the advantage of the leading industrial nations - even by military means. By this the less industrialized nations feel the full force of the crisis caused by the politics of the G8 nations first.
...Repression as crisis management
The G8's unofficial motto reads "We produce security". Police and military forces are supposed to work together more closely at war on terrorism and secure raw materials. Social conflicts arising from this are supposed to be nipped in the bud. Demonstrations are confronted with enormous police presence and often look more like trainings for fighting uprisings. At the same time fundamental rights are restricted, the surveillance state forms up, armament is keenly practiced and even military forces are used in the inner country, while on the outer borders of Europe the border guard agency "Frontex" takes care about the violent protection of our "unshareable" prosperity. The human misery coupled with these processes is not relevant for capitalism as long as it doesn't result in uprisings, revolts or revolutions.
But it’s false to believe that all this only takes place in other regions or states. At the moment, there are even in Southern Germany tries to drive away everything which is different and resisting the system out of the inner cities with the help of new laws, more and more police and even more cameras. Whoever blocks the path of this black-green Freiburg politics of detention has to face bans, restraining orders and expensive charges.
The inner cities always have been temples of consumerism. Nevertheless there were several public spaces in Freiburg where people could meet without any commercial pressure. These places vanish, are privatized, monitored by cameras or covered with buildings. Squats are evicted, people living in wagons are driven out. Around the city centre, cheap housing space is still torn off to free space for banks, insurances and luxurious eco-houses. Within the "process of revaluation" of the so-called "Green City" there is no space remaining for dissidents.
The "social market economy" - meaning capitalism in normal mode - creates enough social misery around the globe beyond its crises as well: mind-numbing wage labour, unemployment, mental illness, war, environmental damage, hunger and death.
The leading industrial nations guarantee the "freedom" of their citizens within the framework of parliamentary democracies, which at the same time contain unsocial and authoritarian structures. The state relies by all means imaginable on the deprivation of the freedom of the people. A society based on competitiveness works through violence, pressure to consume, fear and surveillance.
Seeing a chance within the crisis...
On the way towards a better life we won't rely on the state, governments and political parties who use every possibility to cover up the obvious conflict of classes with nationalist and racist propaganda.
...we have to do it ourselves!
What happens now depends on us! We produce all the social wealth and with this force we can enable a good life for everyone on this planet instead of a constant crisis. A society without reign, without mind- and health-killing wage slavery. A world, in which the still necessary means of production belong to all. A world without wage labour, money and borders.
But a society freed from every form of pressure and reign in which there is prosperity for all won't be given to us as a present. We will fight for it bit by bit, therefore have to organize ourselves and leave the system - the false freedom - in the dust!
Anticapitalist demonstration | Saturday | 11th of July 2009 | 17 h | Freiburg Schwabentor