MELBOURNE: A meeting of over 60 people at the Melbourne Trades Hall voted unanimously on 28 January to endorse a new campaign established to fight the Multinational Agreement on Investment (MAI).
MAI is a would-be secret agreement of the 24 richest countries in the OECD (Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development) due to be signed in a few months time. It is the most extreme form of globalisation yet proposed, making the interests of transnational corporations supercede national laws. If signed it would mean amongst other things that no country could impose restrictions on foreign investment, or implement social, labour, environmental, cultural or human rights protection. It would take 20 years before a country could withdraw from the agreement.
On the basis of a new world recession as the East Asian economies try and dump cheap goods onto the US and European markets, provoking trade wars and protectionism, it is likely that even the among the OECD countries there will be opposition to MAI. But the lead so far against MAI has been from Non-Government Organisations especially in Canada, where the New Democratic Party-ruled British Columbia Provincial Government has voted to oppose MAI. Right-wing nationalists and racists like Pauline Hanson have already begun to campaign against MAI. They counterpose 'national sovereignty' to the dictates of international capital. We do not believe Australian companies like BHP are better for workers than any other monopoly. Hanson and Co ignore the fact that in this era of globalisation and monopoly control, there is no way a single country can opt out of world processes without running the risk of mass retaliation from the major powers and bodies such as the IMF. There would be a run on the dollar, an investment strike and so on. We must fight bosses' internationalism with workers' internationalism. We support a planned world economy, but on the basis of workers' control and ownership of the major monopolies. On a capitalist basis, international and regional agreements like the EU and NAFTA and MAI means greater profits at the cost of mass lay-offs and cuts to wages and conditions.
It was Hitler who wrote 'The sharp separation of stock exchange capital from the national economy offered the possibility of opposing the internationalisation of the German economy without at the same time menacing the foundations of an independent national self-maintenance by a struggle against all capital.' As leftwing economist Doug Henwood said 'one should always be careful of critiques of finance that stop short of being critiques of capital - especially ones that focus on internationalisation as an evil in itself.'
The campaign meeting in Melbourne decided to begin a publicity campaign to educate more people about MAI and there will be a public action soon. Phone (03) 9380-6414 to get involved in the campaign.