BOLOGNA, ITALY, JUNE 12-15, 2000
BOYCOTT THE OECD CONFERENCE
Between June 12, Monday, and 15, Thursday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will hold in Bologna an international Conference titled: "Enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) in the global economy: Strategies and policies". The Conference is jointly organized with the Italian Ministry of Industry and will be attended by the delegations at government level of the 32 member countries, plus "invited" nations, up to 50. All super-state organizations of UN, EU, other international organizations for "economic cooperation", corporations and political and syndicates on the capitalist side are invited, including notorious IMF (International Monetary Fund), WB (World Bank), WTO (World Trade Organization), ECB (European Central Bank) and more, for a total of 28 organizations.
OECD is the government forum of industrialized countries. All nations not belonging to OECD are considered "emerging". Some states such as: Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation, Slovakian Republic and South Africa last year started procedures to adhere to it.
At the Bologna Conference are also invited: Bulgaria, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Kazakstan, Rumania, Slovenia, Tunisia and Vietnam.
The Bologna Conference is expected to be a GLOBAL FORUM OF WORLD CAPITALISM and the choice to put Small and Medium Enterprises on the agenda introduces the theme of political agreements that the MAI table couldn’t establish. One of the objectives of MAI being the definition of an international protocol permitting "area contracts", with penalties to be paid to enterprises by the national governments, in case these "contracts" were not respected by the workers.
"Declared" aims of the Conference are: flexibility of labor, cluster and industrial districts, a system of regrouping enterprises through cross sharing, syndicates and outsourcing, public facilities to service enterprises (telecommunications, transport, energy, electronic commerce), security (military and police control of territory).
As individual and collective identities fighting capitalism, authoritarism and their movement for global rule, we intend to demonstrate all our enmity to the OECD International Conference. Seattle’s breeze is felt in Bologna too. Just like yesterday in Washington and some months ago in Davos, tomorrow Bologna is the place to show that wherever we live there is no pacified site for the Powerful of Earth. These gentlemen will be forced to get up at five in the morning (just as millions of workers have to do daily), if they want to attend their forum. We will not permit those gentlemen to wander undisturbed in the streets and squares of our city, just like wealthy tourists. We will not consent to local big or petty bosses to show out their talents as ciceroni and ruffians of the great international business world undisturbed.
Due to the nature and context of the Conference, it is esteemed relevant that all workers’ self organizations (collectives, Unions, etc.) be involved.
In Bologna, between June 12 and 15, there will be about 1000 representatives of world capitalism and government. Ministers and secretaries of Industry of 50 countries; high level officials of the most important over state organizations of the world. This show of power of global capitalism can be stopped. There can be no dialogue with the global system of domination and exploitation. The aim of all political and social identities that oppose the oppressive and exploiting system governing the world is to disarrange and sabot the Conference. There can be no pacified towns or countries to give hospitality to the lords of the world. Without justice, no peace.
We are preparing a great manifestation, an important international meeting to block the practicability of the OECD Conference. Tens of thousand people can render unfeasible the summit simply by being there.
We are working to have a general strike declared: it comes up to workers’ organizations to permit or not such meeting of the lords of the world.
Capitalist plans for development and reorganization are reducing to starvation proletarians throughout the world, including those of industrialized countries. Some third-world ideologies tend to induce guilt to North America’s and Europe’s proletarians because they collect wages sometimes 100 times as much as the poorest on earth. But living in Boston, or Paris, Berlin or Milan is extremely expensive, and wages are barely sufficient to satisfy the most elementary needs – to subsist. On the other side, some unionist ideologies tend to see in "the low costs of manpower" of third world countries or in immigrants coming from this same countries, a menace to the "privileges" of the working class of industrialized nations, enhancing xenophobia that penetrates also in popular sectors.
The Bologna Conference plans agreements between governments and over state organizations to fix wages to levels of pure reproduction of working force.
Small and Medium Enterprises represent the middle layer of world capitalist system.
Capitalist globalization and super state organizations are not implanted to satisfy the needs of humanity. On the economical level this system is peculiar for having a constant reduction in number of enterprises forming trusts that shape the market and manage the world economic system to draw the maximum profit of it. To do so they lay on the capacity of social, military, police and religious control of the State and on minds control of mass-media. Globalization of capitalism is the prosecution on world scale of the centuries old movement of concentration of capital that affects all competitive systems. The smallest enterprise as the huge holding are enlaced with capitalistic relations – exploitation and domination. Present time system of economic relations is a cascade exploitation system, based on a texture of hierarchy of social statutes (norms, laws, customs) and revenues.
For North American and European workers the growth of global capitalism means a heavy step back in life conditions and social, economical and political conquests. For Asian, East European, African, South American populations this development means pervasive domination of the capitalist system and the consequent proletarization.
For all proletarians on earth the growth of global capitalism means reduction of salary, negation of individual and social liberties, precarization. In a word impoverishment and submission.
International conferences of the over-state agencies like WTO in Seattle and Davos, IMF and WB in Washington, OECD in Bologna, are needed to set up instruments (juridical as well) consenting the transition of an activity, so far not yet included (or not wholly included) in marketing, into a resource directly part of the trade process. The "chain of life" of genetic codes becoming a commodity is symbolic of this process. In recent years we assist to the colonization of every aspect of the living, a really total subsumption by global capitalism. Cybernetics, the industry of the living (food and farming, biotechnology, pharmacy), the information apparatus, are nowadays involved in the so-called "fourth revolution". In this process, capital exerts its action of industrialization of agriculture on planet scale, having as characterizing moments the manipulation of genetic codes of vegetal and animal spices, aiming at exploitation both of wage-earning workers employed in the program and of the basic resource – life itself – on the planet. Modified spices result as heavy hazards for biological diversity and consumers. In the case this project is not defeated, modified spices are going to upset cultivated areas, billion of acres of soil already exhausted with every form of chemical addiction will dry-up due to the absence of hundreds of vegetal and animal spices, simply removed to the vantage of a few plants, while the farmers will have to get supplied by the biochemical producers who, alone, will control the reproduction of seeds.
All this starts a discussion about the characteristics of some technologies "morally repugnant"; in this sense, simply think at the dangers included in genetic engineering for human spice.
In such context, the "new frontier" needs to utilize new systems both for scientific assertion and for the construction of the actually missing social consensus, that is menacing to become element of great disturbance. Information/communication, formation and social organization of knowledge, the media apparatus – all is set forth towards the total colonization of the planet. A process of cultural homogenization is in general going on, an instrument for control and oppression, that causes not only the collapse of cultural and social bounds in local communities, but also destroys the essence and the meaning of culture itself. In past eras, cultural elimination was the product of imperialism – i.e. with the adoption of Christian religion and colonial languages. What is nowadays at stake is generalized dependence from the capitalist culture of mass consumption, still more difficult to wipe away than economical and political dependence. Education, communication and more in general social knowledge are codified to impose an unprecedented social doctrine, whose statements are based on competition and imposition of the western scientific model, based on quantitative exploitation of resources and not – as in other scientific traditions – on qualitative use of the earthly wealth.
In such context, everyone is called to the construction of an alternative to globalization, individually and collectively. A rainbow fighting movement must develop and strengthen in every Country. In the rush towards globalization, capitalism produces a universal proletariat that in itself is already its antagonist. Universal proletarian emancipation is possible and necessary nowadays. The Chiapas’ revolt against the NAFTA treaty of 1994 demonstrates this necessity and possibility. The very same iniquitous treaty that crushes Mexico was consecutively used as basis for the creation of WTO. Actions, opposition, mobilization, political grass root organisms have taken form since, throughout the world. Something has taken motion, although it is hard to assess that the circulation of ideas and conflicts has been able, so far, even as embryos, to set the foundations for the reassembling of the anti-capitalist front. This will inevitably be the result of a long way that will take the moves, the contradictions, the ups and downs, the conflictive expressions of the revolutionary movement – that universal proletariat forming and emerging on the paths of struggles.
With this attitude we are preparing to challenge the OECD Conference that will be held in Bologna in June, 2000. With these fore-statements we appeal to all realities that already expressed their opposition in Seattle, Davos, Washington, to show up in Bologna. This appointment is imposed by the counter-party – let’s make of this a moment of conflict against neoliberist and globalizing policies.
Program:
Saturday, June 10, 3 p.m., public demonstration. Gathering point: piazza dell’Unità (behind the Central Station).
Sunday, June 11, 10 a.m., Meeting against globalization: Sala dei Notai, piazza Maggiore. (center town)
All in the streets from 12 to 15 June. There will be a camping-site in town for people coming from outside. The camping will include a kitchen and places for discussions and socializing.
COMITATO CITTADINO ANTIRAZZISTA
CIRCOLO ANARCHICO "BERNERI"
Contacts: (…Italy) 051-260556
E-mail: cca_bologna@tin.it
Federazione Anarchica Italiana, "Che Fare" Parma, Centro di documentazione "Mario Lupo" Parma, Centro sociale "Dordoni" Cremona, Centro documentaazione antagonista Cremona, Autonomia di Classe Genova, Centro di comunicazione antagonista Acerra, Assemblea romana per l’Autonomia di Classe, Centro sociale "Askatasuna" Torino, Centro sociale "Murazzi" Torino, Assemblea nazionale per l’Autonomia di Classe, Redazione nazionale per l’Autonomia di Classe.