Globalisation

Ciao Floods of East Europeans... leave Britain Plus ça change... Comrade racist? Yes, we have bananas Ciao For three weeks they drifted in the Mediterranean because no European country was willing to take them in. Then the 37 men - reportedly Sundanese refugees - made it… to the safety of an Italian concrete shed surrounded by barbed wire. They were brought to land by a German aid agency in their own boat. Originally the Italian authorities had refused to receive the ship, arguing that it ought to have docked at its first port of call, Malta. Under pressure, the Italians caved in. But on their...

Moving on up? Massive BAE bungs Feudal blues Siberian blues Viva, left of centre politicians! Moving on up? Residents of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest have been promised that should London's bid to host the 2012 Olympics goes ahead, their boroughs will benefit from 'the most significant urban and environmental regeneration ever seen in London'. However, many of them won't be around to see it. That's because Ken Livingstone's London Development Agency (LDA) are threatening residents of the proposed Olympic site with Compulsory Purchase Orders if they don't agree to sell...

27-29 June, London Arts programme running simultaneously alongside main conference Venues: 27 June: The Friends House, Euston 28-29 June: SOAS, Malet St Register and more details from www.iwsf.org

From Workers' Liberty 2/3 . TODAY, WORLD markets - not just markets in goods and services, but, as important, credit markets - create vast and increasing inequalities. They convey the choicest fruits of the world's labour to the billionaires in the global centres of finance. They are regulated by the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank - international institutions dominated by the ruling classes centred in those "global cities". At every stage of market haggling - who gets contracts, where investment is sited and on what terms, which trade barriers remain (as they do, lower than in the past, but...

by Amina Many of those who initially opposed the US war on Iraq said that they would have supported it if the United Nations Security Council had passed a "second resolution". A large section of the anti-war movement, including the Stop the War Coalition, focused on the war being "illegal" - with the strong implication that, if the UN had backed it, it would have both "legal" and right. I think socialists should reject this approach, and refuse to put their trust in the UN. There is a very obvious practical problem with making our opposition to or support for something hinge on the UN. A...

by Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Stiglitz was Clinton's economic advisor and, from 1997 to 2000, chief economist at the World Bank. So he is no socialist radical. He is for capitalist globalisation, but against the way in which it has been "managed". He regards the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as having often acted on behalf of the advanced capitalist states and for the US state and the US's financial sector. By so doing, institutions like the IMF have acted against the interests of capitalism as a whole. And they have often had an appalling and, according to Stiglitz, an unnecessary effect on...

By Martin Thomas A right-wing group is now cock-a-hoop in Washington. They advocated US war on Iraq at a time when almost all the USA's ruling circles considered the idea crazily risky. They feel vindicated in their view that blasts of US military power can ratchet the whole world, bit by bit, into a levelled-out free-market arena - their ideal of democracy and liberty. One of their main reference points is a Washington think-tank called the Project for the New American Century. Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (now Defence Secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (now Deputy Defence...

Paul Hampton speaking at AWL school 23 March 2003 on War, Imperialism and Globalisation. Globalisation is not an entirely adequate concept from a Marxist point of view, and most discussions on globalisation look at the question only from the capital side. I won't say much about the capital side, and will concentrate on the workers' side of the question. The capital side is important because globalisation involves the tendency of the internationalisation of capital. This means that firms expand out of their home market, trade and also produce in other countries, grow in size, merge and takeover...

What is the attitude of Marxists to "backward" and "underdeveloped" countries and peoples who are being assaulted, occupied, or colonised by a more advanced but predatory civilisation? No-one expressed it so clearly and so forcefully as Leon Trotsky: "What characterises Bolshevism on the national question is that in its attitude to oppressed nations, even the most backward, it considers them not only the object but also the subject of politics. Bolshevism does not confine itself to recognising their 'rights' and parliamentary protests against the trampling upon of those rights. "Bolshevism...

By Colin Foster Workers' Liberty forums in London, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield over recent weeks on "The USA as hyperpower" have produced lively discussions around questions on the shape of the modern world raised by the current drive for war in Iraq. Today's US "hyperpower" is fundamentally structural power within a world of more-or-less free trade, different from the old colonial empires of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and their more-or-less organised trade blocs. As the home of the dollar, the basic currency of world trade and financial reserves worldwide...