[asia-apec 1112] Message to KMU's International Solidarity Affair

[tpl at cheerful.com]

>For Circulation
>From: KMU (May First Movement) <kmuid at mnl.cyberspace.com.ph>		
>
>MESSAGE OF SOLIDARITY
>TO THE 16TH  KMU INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY AFFAIR
>By Jose Maria Sison
>May 1 1999
>
>Let me convey my warmest and most militant greetings of solidarity to all
the foreign delegates and participants in the 16th International Solidarity
Affair of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU).  I agree with the call, "Intensify
the Resistance Against Imperialist and Local Reactionary Attacks on Jobs,
Wages and Trade Union Rights". 
>
>I commend the KMU for organizing this yearly event which serves as a very
important forum for representatives of workers' organizations from
different parts of the world to come together to exchange experiences in
the struggle, agree on common analyses and courses of action on specific
and general issues, and build mutual support and cooperation in the
struggle against the oppression and exploitation inflicted on the people by
the imperialists and  all sorts of reactionaries.
>
>We are in transition from the 20th century to the 21st century.  I presume
that, even as you focus on the current circumstances and immediate aims of
the working class, you take a comprehensive view of the outgoing century
and you  brace yourselves for the great challenges and opportunities in the
coming century.
>
>The 20th century has been so precisely called the era of imperialism and
proletarian revolution by a great leader of the working class.  The
economic crises and wars brought about by a parasitic and moribund kind of
capitalism in this century have been the favorable objective conditions for
successful socialist revolutions and new democratic revolutions under the
leadership of the working class.
>
>Unfortunately, the socialist revolutions have been betrayed and the new
bourgeoisie has overthrown the working class in the former socialist
countries.  But so long as oppression and exploitation persist and
intensify, the proletariat and the rest of the people have no choice but to
struggle for people's democracy and socialism against imperialism and all
reaction.
>
>The era of imperialism and proletarian revolution extends to the 21st
century.  Imperialism or monopoly capitalism is the last stage of
capitalism but certainly it is not the end of history. The proletariat and
people continue to make revolution and to make history.  They will put an
end to imperialism.
>
>In the last decade of the current century, the monopoly bourgeoisie and
their servitors have mocked at the proletariat and the people and pushed an
offensive under the piratical banner of "free market" globalization to
accelerate the rate of exploitation, push down wage levels, cause high
rates of mass unemployment, take away hard-won social benefits, suppress
trade union and other democratic rights and impose the most outrageous
terms of international usury on the client countries of imperialism.
>
>But it has been self-defeating for the imperialists to combine the
adoption of higher technology with the accelerated concentration and
centralization of capital in their hands.  They have ruined their own
market by drastically reducing the income of the world proletariat and
people.  Now, there is a severe global crisis of overproduction in all
types of goods.
>
>The imperialist countries themselves are now afflicted by a severe crisis.
   The monopoly bourgeoisie counters the tendency of profit rates to fall
by massacring jobs and further raising the rate of exploitation.  Whatever
are their export specialties, the so-called emergent markets have been
depressed since 1997.  The raw-material exporting countries, which are the
most numerous in the world, have sunk further into depression.
>
>All basic contradictions in the world are intensifying.  The working class
is fighting back against the monopoly bourgeoisie in imperialist countries.
 The oppressed peoples are resisting the imperialists. More and more
frictions are developing among the imperialists even as they continue to
unite against the proletariat and people of the world. 
>
>The revisionist betrayal of socialism and the erosion of the working class
movement in the second half of the 20th century has exacted a high cost
from mankind.  The monopoly bourgeoisie is unbridled in oppressing and
exploiting the people.  Social and political turmoil is widespread.  More
and bigger wars are in the horizon.  
>
>The intensification of oppression and exploitation engenders the rise of
revolutionary resistance.  We are confident that in the 21st century the
proletariat and the rest of the people will fight ever more fiercely and
prevail over the imperialists and all reactionaries.
>
>Like the rest of Southeast Asia, the Philippines is ravaged by the global
crisis of overproduction in low value-added semimanufactures for export
(semiconductors, garments, shoes, toys and the like) and is crushed by a
huge debt burden resulting from chronic trade deficits and the costly
consumption of the local exploiting classes (cars, office and residential
towers and the like).
>
>The Estrada regime aggravates the economic and social  crisis. It outdoes
the preceding regime in harping on the line of liberalization,
privatization and deregulation.  It assists the IMF, World Bank and WTO to
tighten their stranglehold over the Philippines and further opens up the
country to the multinational firms, which are being offered unlimited
ownership and control of all types of assets and businesses in the
Philippines.
>
>To serve the foreign monopolies and the local big compradors, the current
regime further carries out the "flexible labor" policy of violating basic
workers rights and labor standards, busting unions, increasing mass
unemployment, reducing the ranks of regular workers and pushing down wages.
It promotes industrial estates and export processing zones that are
de-facto protected as union-free and strike-free areas.  
>
>The so-called Presidential Task Force on Labor Policy, composed of
representatives of big business, high bureaucrats and labor aristocrats, is
now laying the groundwork for further attacks on the rights and livelihood
of the workers.  It is cooking up proposals for executive implementation as
well as for legislation of amendments to worsen what is already an
antiworker Labor Code of the reactionary government.
>
>The proposals include a freeze on wages, the hiring of regular workers at
apprentice rates, a ban on strikes under various pretexts and the eventual
dismantling of the minimum wage structure.  They seek to promote "social
accords" at the national and factory level between workers and capitalists
that will contain the provision imposing a ban on strikes. 
>
>The daily minimum wage of P198 is less than half the cost of living which
is about P441 in Metro Manila.  Unemployment has risen from year to year
since 1997, as a result of plant closures and production cutbacks.  With
the recent oil price hike of 50 centavos, the reactionary regime is again
rewarding the greedy foreign oil companies (despite their P6.10 B earnings
and 1,090% increase in profits last year) while imposing on the entire
people another round of price increases in prime commodities.
>
>The regime knows no bounds for its obsequiousness and subservience to the
imperialists.  It goes around begging for loans and yet allots USD 500
million from the Miyazawa fund and five billion pesos of "special
financing" for bailing out big business.  It also offers further tax
exemptions, power rate discounts and other privileges to the multinational
firms.
>
>It is pushing the Senate ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement in
order to give to US military forces free rein to trample upon the national
sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Philippines and to further
strengthen US hegemony and to protect and advance US economic interests. In
exchange for the ratification of the VFA, it expects to get more military
supplies from the US in order to launch campaigns of suppression against
the Filipino people.
>
>The Estrada regime is carrying out an undeclared martial rule against the
working class.  Workers strikes are violently dispersed and union leaders
are being harassed, abducted or, worse, summarily executed by military
agents and hired killers.  At the same time, the regime collaborates with
the labor aristocrats and the most notorious racketeers to hoodwink and
mislead the workers.
>
>The proletariat has no choice but to fight back.  There is an upsurge of
the trade union and strike movement, precisely because of the vicious
attacks on the working class. In the forefront of the workers' movement are
the KMU and its federations and unions.  In this regard, let me
congratulate all of them for their militant struggles and success.
>
>Complementary to the attacks on the working class are those on the peasant
masses.  Feudal and semifeudal exploitation is intensified.  Land
accumulation by old and new landlords, including the foreign monopolies, is
accelerated.  The regime has nullified even the token land reform
concessions of previous regimes.  To oppress the peasant masses and grab
the land from them, the regime has escalated military campaigns of
suppression in the countryside.
>
>The growth of surplus population in the countryside and the displacement
of peasants from the land increase the reserve army of labor. The
imperialists and the local reactionaries take advantage of the great mass
of unemployed to press down the wage levels of the working class, in the
absence of a simultaneous program of national industrialization and land
reform.
>
>The working class and peasantry are strengthening their own unity in order
to fight for national independence and democracy against the imperialists
and local reactionaries.  They struggle for the completion of the national
of the national-democratic revolution and look forward to a socialist future.
> 
>The entire Filipino people can fight for their national and democratic
rights and interests beyond the confines of reformism and they can hope for
a better future because they have a revolutionary party of the proletariat,
a people's army and a united front as instruments for waging revolution. 
>
>I anticipate that in the course of the 16th ISA the Filipino trade
unionists and the foreign delegates can learn from each other about the
conditions of their respective countries and the struggle of the working
people and develop a higher level of mutual understanding and cooperation.
>
>More than ever, there is the need for the workers and the people of all
countries to unite and to fight for their liberation from the clutches of
imperialism and all reaction.#
>