The role of the international organisations
in imperialist globalisation and
in the intensification of imperialist domination

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Janashakti

Contribution to the International Communist Seminar
"The world socialist revolution in the conditions of imperialist globalisation"
Brussels, 2-4 May 2001

    Globalisation is monopoly capitalism operating through the regulatory agencies like UN, IMF, WB, WTO and multinational corporations. It aims to integrate the international markets for goods, services, finance, technology and labour by bypassing the nation-states and ruining their economies by operating it to the global market through the stringent rules of liberalisation. Imperialism, thus, has now come with a new name for neo-colonialism – development through globalisation. They define it as an intensified effort to ensure that the poor has access to both, a safety net of basic social service (food, medical care, primary education and family planning) and social and political institutions, infrastructure and technology which promote the productive use of the poor's most abundant asset-labour. So, what is attempted by globalisation is to transform the bitter struggle for power of all imperialist countries into a debate on populist slogans and technical adjustments. Each such adjustment is the result of the bitter fight of each imperialist country's ruling classes to secure their own survival against their rivals, always at the expense of the working class. Lenin defined imperialism as the special stage of monopoly capitalism. He based his theory of imperialism on the predominance of monopoly in the developed capitalist countries. The near completion of the territorial division of the world among the leading capitalist countries and the struggle for its re-division are important aspects of imperialism during the period from 1880's to the First World War. The causes located by Lenin for this transformation are the structural changes in industry and finance leading to a new stage of monopoly capital. The specific features of this period are : The ripening of monopoly capital stimulated by what has been called the second industrial revolution, steel, electricity, oil, internal combustion engine, synthetic chemistry etc. while the laws of capitalist motion spurred both the concentration and centralisation of capital, the new technology required a concentration of finance pushing centralisation to new heights. The political direction needed by these changes involved a shift in power to the captains of finance from the industrialists associated with the manufacturer of the first industrial revolution. This shift to the internationalisation of finance capital can be noted as a distinguishing attribute of the current globalisation process. Imperialism began declining since the Second World War, due to the rise of socialism and national liberation struggles. A distinguishing feature of this period within the imperialist World was the emergence of USA as a hegemonic power by replacing the UK. But it began weakening under the strain of its Vietnamese War and national liberation struggles in various parts of the World. The anti-colonial struggles and revolutions of the post Second World War period challenged the old edifice of imperialism. And it was at this juncture, the MNCs came to the fore. The structure and strategy of the MNCs generates further penetration of the erstwhile colonies ostensibly for development but actually for under development. Multi-national corporations are the institutional basis of the system – generation and absorption of surplus under conditions of monopoly capitalism.     II Multi-national Corporation rose to prominence in the United states around the turn of the 20th century. They used various discriminatory devices to force small competitors out of the market then, having eliminated competition, they raised their prices. Similar corporation began to eat up smaller firms in Europe a few years later. These giant corporations were typically run and owned by a tycoon; John Rockefeller is one of the best known examples. Since then, their structure has changed – the giant corporations are now controlled by professional managers who are visually rich in their own right but do not necessarily have any financial interest in the corporation other than their salary. At the same time, the giant corporations are financially independent, being sufficiently large to generate their own capital needs. The giant corporation is 'an engine for maximising profits and generating capital' (Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 1966). The replacement of individual tycoons by a class of managers has had two immediate consequences – 'the corporation has a longer time horizon than the individual capitalist and it is a more rational calculator'. (Ibid). Despite devices such as planned obsolescence, increasing consumption by advertising, investment in research and development, it has become obvious that economics dominated by giant corporations produce more surplus than they rationally use. 'Twist and turn as one will, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that monopoly capitalism is a self contradictory system. It tends to generate ever more surplus, yet it fails to provide the consumption and investment outlets required for the absorption of the rising surplus and hence for the smooth working of the system. Since surplus which cannot be absorbed will not be produced, it follows that the normal state of the monopoly capitalist economy is stagnation' (Ibid). One of the outlets for the surplus of giant corporations is clearly foreign investment and there has been a continuous expansion of interest out of the metropolitan nation, often to such an extent that the corporation becomes multinational with no one nation as its home base, leaving it free to speculate against the currency of any state. One of the first giant corporations to go international was Standard Oil. In 1962 its assets amounted to 4,783,000 dollars which was more then the gross national product of Switzerland and bigger than the GNP of all but twenty nation states. Standard Oil's profit for 1962 were 350,000,000 dollars. In 1962 the company sold its products in more than a hundred countries and owned 50 percent or more of the stock in 275 subsidiaries in 52 countries. Only a third of its assets were invested abroad but they produced two-thirds of the profit. This is the pattern which is repeated by every multinational corporation. Vice-President of American Metal Climax once said that the American firms could make an average profit of 27 percent on investments in South Africa, over double the profit from comparable investments in the United States. In the monopoly capitalist nations, the governments help the giant corporations to oppose the poor nations by giving aid, the function of aid being to make things safe for private investment. In addition, the metropolitan nation negotiates agreements with poor nations whereby the corporations pay little or no tax. If any poor nation nationlises the interests of a multinational, the monopoly capitalist nation is quick to attack. When Ceylon (Sri Lanka) nationalised US oil interests and offered compensation, this was refused and the United States cut off oil aid immediately. In Iran, the Mossedegh government was toppled by a united oil cartel embargo when the country tried nationalising foreign oil interests. In Cuba, Standard Oil refused to refine oil from the USSR so the refinery was nationalised without compensation. The USA reacted immediately and the war on Cuba included financial backing for innumerable invasions including the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. John McCoy, former president of the World Bank and director of the United Fruit Company rejected a loan to Guatemala during his tenure of office at the Bank for not negotiating certain commission to his company. Esso Italian distributed 46 million dollars to various political parties, especially to the Christian Democratic Party, during 1966-71 Lock heed's bribes to politicians of several countries, including a pay-off of 201 million to Tanaka, the ex-prime minister of Japan is well known. Salvador Allende's government in Chile in 1970 became a red rag to the MNC and it was thrown out through a military coup. The foreign investments of monopoly capital have created and continue to create the structure of under development. Back in the monopoly capitalist state their foreign activities result in the repatriation of huge profits that create problems – how to absorb surplus. The government absorbs surplus by creating effective demand in the form of subsidies to businessmen, dole to the unemployed, old age pension etc. Because of the nature of capitalism as a system, it is impossible for the governments to use this surplus for the general welfare of the people which would contradict the class basis of the society. Instead the government absorbs most of the surplus in the military budget. A large military complex is in the direct interest of monopoly capital because the status of a nation in the international system is dependent on its military power and the higher the status of a nation, the more easily can its giant corporations exploit every nation below. The huge military budgets of the monopoly capitalist nations are in the interests of giant corporations because they solve three problems – absorbing the surplus profits, protecting capital invested abroad and ensuring employment at home. Ownership and management of the majority of the corporations are not multinational, they are multinational in operations only. 65 to 70 percent subsidiaries of the top 180 multinationals are wholly owned by the US. About 75 percent subsidiaries are wholly owned by MNC from Europe and UK. Out of 500 multinationals 250 to 260 have their head quarters in the US, 150 in various countries of Europe, 70 in Japan and the rest in the rest of the World. Out of 45 multinational banks 20 are American, 13 European, 9 Japanese and 3 Canadian. This predominance of US based multinational corporations over industry and banking coupled with transnationalisation of operations have enabled them to increase their control over the world productive system. The control of technology had enabled them to control the mass media, which in turn has enabled them in disseminating their ideology through its advertising agencies, television network and newspaper chains. These corporations, banks, advertising agencies, television networks, newspaper chains etc. are further integrated with the inter corporate stock holding. And finally this system provides financial support to the government, through political parties and thereby exercises control on the government.     III The multinational corporations are, thus, the driving force of globalisation process and this is the latest form of the organisation of capital today. The international organisations which play the major role in this process are the IMF, WB and the WTO. These three organisations in close collaboration function as the "Intelligence Agencies" on the economic policies of the underdeveloped countries. Trade liberalisation, privatisation and budgetary austerity are some of the measures stipulated in the Structural Adjustment Programme imposed by the IMF on the Third World. The SAP in the name of rectifying the structural balance of the payments deficits of the Third World countries, has ended many third world countries in a debt-trap. The structural readjustment in the name of curing the disease has already killed many patients. The eternal debt-servicing obligations have retarded the progress of the Third World countries on all fronts – economic, political, social and cultural. Many countries to-day are seeking new loans to service the old ones. In essence, Third World countries have been turned into exporters of capital instead of recipients. This means not only deprival of capital formation and plunder of national wealth of third world countries but contributes to extra capital formation in imperialist countries for whom the IMF functions. "This new form of economic and political domination – a form of market colonialism – subordinates people and government, through the seemingly 'neutral' interplay of market forces. The Washington-based international bureaucracy has been entrusted by international creditors and multinational corporations with the execution of a global economic design which affects the livelihood of more than 80 percent of the World's population. At no time in history has the 'free' market – operating in the world through the instruments of macro-economics – played such an important role in shaping the destiny of 'sovereign' nations (Michel choussudovsky, 1997). In India, the central government ministries are staffed with former IMF and World Bank officers and employees. The budget proposals of the government are repetitions of the agreements reached with IMF and World Bank and the finance minister directly reports to the WB in Washington D.C., bypassing the parliament. There was a remark in Indian press which said that the American styles and spelling have come to replace the British usage of Indian bureaucracy in government documents, which come directly from offices in Washington. The UN Human Development Programme (UNDP) reported that the gap between the rich and poor nations doubled from 1960 through 1989. These results are attributable in large part to the dual policies: 'free market' principles are imposed on the poor through the structural adjustment programme dictated by the IMF and WB, acting as 'bill collecting agencies for the creditor countries'; while the powerful countries protect their own firms from the ravages of the market, of course at the cost of the Third World. A review of World Bank data on the seventy six countries of the Third World and Eastern Europe, exposed to the SAP through the 1980s, shows that a large majority declined in development indices – growth in fixed investment (productive capacity), in exports, and in the economy generally –as compared with 1960s and 70s when government controls and market distortions were supposed to be crippling economic performance. The emergence of WTO as an apex body governing World trade have forced all Third World countries to amend their laws to suit the WTO conditionalities i.e. integrating all economies into a single global market. The Agreement on Agriculture, the last part of the final act of the Uruguay Round of multilateral Trade Negotiations, and the policies pursued by the imperialist countries have done considerable damage to agriculture in third world countries. In imperialist countries, the domestic support is substantially increased in the case of agricultural and horticulture commodities by increasing export subsidies. To protect the local market in the US, the import duty on the products is increased to the extent of 245 percent. In the US alone, the annual subsidy on agriculture is 45 billion dollars. But the third world countries are forced to remove the quantitative restrictions. In India, the government led by the big bourgeois-big landlord classes, 'kept its tryst with destiny' by opening up the domestic market on 30th March, 2001 to all kinds of imported consumer goods, ranging from cheese and perfumes to the finest wines and snazziest cars. 715 items have been removed from the list of goods on which there have quantitative restrictions. This is apart from 714 items on which quantitative restrictions were removed on 1st April, 2000, The Indian government's removal of quantitative restrictions on imported agricultural produce means genocide for India's 500 million peasant families. Apart from these three international organisations there are many others like OECD, G7, Group of 24, ILO and the UN. Every nation state appears to have a vote and the power that goes with it. But the security council or the permanent five members with their veto power can prevent any discussion. All these international organisations belong to the other side, in opposition to the international working class. All of them serve to accumulate more power where the power already lies. International organisations are a product of the present system and therefore reflect its characteristics.     IV John Maynard Keynes wrote in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" that - "The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit; and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep. He could at the same moment adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his own fortunes with the good faith of the towns people of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend." He was describing the situation before the first world war. He was hoping the end of economics and the end of prosperity, as if nothing would change, forward or backward. But lots of things did change. The war ravaged economies had forced all to retreat into protectionism. The Great Depression, that followed, pushed free trade on to the back burner. It was only after the end of the second world war efforts were made once again to integrate the world economy; but even then there were obstacles towards attaining this objective because of the emergence of hostile blocks. The Davos meet this year witnessed lot of serious differences and confrontations. The imperialist countries insisted on a new trade round to open up the markets further. This sparked off protests from the Third World. They protested that the promises made in the Uruguay Round seven years ago have not been implemented. Brazil's agriculture minister pointed out that western agricultural subsidies have soared since the Uruguay Round to about one billion dollars a day, ensuring that the peasants in under developed countries will never have an access to these markets. "Although history does not repeat itself in precise fashion, it is worth noting that these centrifugal tendencies echo similar developments that emerged (a) between the Great Depression of the nineteenth century and the First World War, and (b) between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War carrying such anologies too far and in mechanical fashion can be misleading. Nevertheless, they merit attention, because the resemblances are not mere accidents. Rather, they arise from similar economic and political forces" (Harry Magdoff). Globalisation had failed once, it has failed again; it will fail again because it is bound to fail, because the driving force behind globalisation, as the neo-Kautskytes say, are not a united one under monopoly capitalism. A significant majority among the leadership of the European Union nations has decided that Europe cannot punch its weight in the world if it does not have the military muscle to enforce its writ or talk to the US on a near-equal footing. Britain is firmly aligned with USA. Germany with its economic power is opposing more and more of US policies. While France opposes US domination, it fears a German resurgence. At the same time, increasing tensions on trade, military strategy, new world order etc. between USA and France are turning the classical allies into bitter rivals. The storm in Europe over the harmful effects of the use of depleted uranium in American munition employed in Bosnia and Kosovo is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The preponderant US role in the eleven-weeks bombing in Yugoslavia had brought home to Europeans their helplessness and dependence on the power across the Atlantic, ten years after the so-called end of the so-called cold war; propelling the European Union to plan its own Rapid Reaction Force. Now, whatever the final findings, Europeans seem convinced that their peace keepers, some of whom have died, are suffering from the after-effects of depleted uranium in American weapons, shared only by Britain in Europe. America's relationship with Europe, already frayed by trade dispute, further aggravated with the looming threat of National Missile Defence Programme. The Crux of the problem is that Europe is in the process of delivering itself from American tutelage. The European Union's decision is to field 60,000 troops to be deployed by 2002, with the aim of conflict resolution, peace keeping and humanitarian duties. Former president Bill Clinton's defence secretary, William Cohen, put it bluntly that if the Rapid Reaction Force became a competing force, NATO would become 'a relic of history'. And the former US secretary of State, Madelene Albright pitched in to talk about the dangers of 'decoupling' Europe from the US. The European Union is by no means monolithic. Apart from UK, which has traditionally been more comfortable playing the balance of power games on the European continent than in a collective co-operative enterprise, the Scandinavian nations share some of Britains reservations. There are also fears among smaller EU nations over being dominated by the bigger states, resenting in a tendency to look at the US as a counter weight. But the dominant and irreversible trend is towards emancipation from US domination.     V In order to understand the present crisis and contradictions of monopoly capitalism, it is necessary to analyse the metamorphosis of capitalism as a system. In the age of mercantile capitalism, the governments concerned actively intervened and supported their merchants to sell across the border and accumulate wealth at home; but in the wake of Industrial Revolution, British economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo criticised and opposed this system then called as 'mercantilism' and advocated a system in which the government would not interfere. They wanted a free exchange among the capitalists of all countries. They argued that capitalists of all countries would be able to increase their wealth by spending in the areas in which one had a comparative advantage; this system later came to be known as laizzez faire' or 'free trade'. But the economists in USA and Germany which industrialised later could not completely agree with UK's 'laissez faire' on the ground that a less industrialised country could not compete with the countries already industrialised unless it prohibited the entry of products from already industrialised or more industrialised one. The countries industrialised later found in the laissez faire an attempt on the part of more industrialised countries to dominate the less industrialised ones. American industries demanded subsidies in order to protect their new industries from foreign competition. This came to be known as protectionism. But free trade and protectionism could not cure the disease of over production. While manufacturers wanted high tariffs in order to protect their produce from foreign competition, recession and depression reduced the domestic market. The solution sought to overcome this problem was to increase exports. The philosophy of free trade and protectionism later reemerged in a different context and in a different form in the period of globalisation. The failure of capitalism, despite growth, to utilise material resources led to unemployment, stagnation, recession and depression. At this stage, after the Great Depression of 1930, the British economist John Maynard Keynes came forward with a new programme – in fact a revised one – of increased governmental intervention. Keynesianism laid down the policy of stimulating economic demand by higher wages, government spending, credit expansion and a 'Welfare State' leading to full employment which again stimulates demand. In accordance with the Keynesian idea, the USA came forward with a new programme called 'New Deal' which proposed public employment, support to agricultural produces, labour rights such as minimum wages etc. public infrastructure development like rural electrification, construction of schools, play ground, housing complexes etc. But as expected the New Deal could not overcome the consequences of Great Depression. In fact, as John Kenneth Galbraith said, the Great Depression never ended, it just merged into the war economy. Instead of governmental intervention as stipulated in the New Deal, it was the governmental intervention on a larger scale during the second world war that led to a longer period of sustained growth in the history of capitalism. By the end of Second World War, fiscal and monetary policies became the standard policy of capitalist/imperialist countries. On the eve of the Second World War itself, the imperialist powers feared another world depression due to the unregulated world market and therefore at the end of the war they entered into Bretton Woods Agreement which established institutions to regulate the international economy. This Agreement also recognised global hegemony of US imperialism. Having established the IMF and World Bank, the US, with an eye on a new free trade system, wanted an international trade organisation but it could not be established because of the insistence of the US congress for a partial protection of US markets. But the collapse of Bretton Woods System brought to the fore the urgent necessity to seek an alternate safety system. The US and other imperialists, therefore, gathered themselves in another organisation called GATT which created rules for a world market based on 'most favoured nations' principles, according to which countries agree to give each other trade conditions as favourable as those they give to any other country. And finally, by the time the Uruguay Round concluded, GATT was replaced by WTO which became the vehicle for "globalisation". The end result is considerable acceleration of the internationalisation of production and takeover of the global economy by international corporations and international financial institutions. The World Bank currently estimates the total resources of international financial institutions at about 14 billion dollars. In what way this situation, the metamorphosis of capitalism as a system to this day, is different from what Lenin said on imperialism? "Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental attributes of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental attributes began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economical system began to take shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly. For free competition is the basic feature of capitalism and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite; but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large scale industry and eliminating small industry, replacing large scale industry by still larger scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where it has grown and is growing monopoly; cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks manipulating thousands of millions. At the same time monopoly which has grown out of free competition, does not eliminate the latter, but exists over it and alongside of it and thorny gives rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, friction and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher stage. If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for on the one hand finance capital is the bank capital of the few very big monopolist associations of industrialists; and on the other hand the division of the world is transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, is a colonial policy of monopolist division of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up "(Imperialism – The Highest Stage of Capitalism). The main features of imperialism as described by Lenin are concentration of production and capital leading to the development of monopolies, merger of bank capital with industrial capital leading to the creation of finance capital, export of capital as distinct from export of commodities formation of monopoly capital organisations and the territorial division of the world among themselves. Internationalisation as explained by Lenin was visualised by Marx in analysing the three circuits of capital in volume II of capital: "Money Capital, Commodity Capital and Productive Capital do not therefore designate independent kinds of capital whose functions form the content of likewise independent branches of industry seperated from one another. They denote here only special functional forms of industrial capital, which assumes all three of them, one after the other. (The metamorphoses of capital, Vol. II, Capital). First, there is internationalisation of commodity capital (development of international trade) then of money capital (export of capital as emphasized by Lenin) and finally of productive capital in the form of multinational exnterprises (export of industrial package) as articulated by Magdoff (1969). The last stage makes the world economy the basic arena of capital. (Dalip S. Swamy : MNCs and the Third World)     VI The ongoing process of globalisation, with the active support of global orgnaisations like IMF, WB, WTO, G7 and other structures designed to serve the MNCs, banks and investment firms etc. is not a new phenomenon. Capital has always been global. What is happening is the creation of objective conditions for the intensification of contradictions between the bourgeois and the proletariat. Seven out of every eight dollar that crosses the international border is now linked to speculation. This has raised doubts regarding the present understanding about the capital accumulation process itself. But one fact is clear that monopoly capitalism generates surplus without providing a mechanism for absorption of surplus extracted resulting in unutilised productive capacity and mass unemployment. With capital highly mobile and the labour immobile, the globalisation of the economy provides imperialist employers the means to play one national labour force against another. The device can be used to diminish living standards, security, opportunities and expectations for the great mass of the population, while profits soar and priveleged sections live in increasing luxury. General Motors plans to close down two dozen plants in the United States and Canada, but it has become the largest employer in Mexico, taking advantage of the "economic miracle" that has driven wages down sharply in the past decade, to much applause; labour's share of personal income in Mexico declined from 36 percent in the mid – 1970s to 23 percent by 1992, economist David Barkin reports, while less than eight thousand accounts (including fifteen hundred owned by foreigners) control more then 94 percent of stock shares in public hands – facts that might be borne in mind (throughout the region), along with the uniquely high inequality about Latin America's prospects with "privatisation" offering (often profitable) public assets for purchase, labour costs attractive for investors and resources available for them (Noam Chomsky : 1998). Another contradiction that is getting intensified is the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed peoples and nations. There are many who criticise us by saying that a dogma has caused the communist parties in most nations to focus on their own proletariat despite the fact that this class has been largely integrated into the system as consumers in the rich nations and necessarily remains a small class in the poor nations which are prevented from industrialising by the world structure of capitalism. What they refer to as consumers in the rich nations is the labour aristocracy created in the imperialist countries out of the plunder of third world countries. In the Indian context, it is said, that the battle of Plassey gave some extra benefits to the British working class. But all these critics were disappointed when com Mao-Tse-Tung found the poor nations, apart from the class, can also become revolutionary forces, ofcourse under the leadership of the working class. Out of this another criticism arise : what Maoism affirms is the natural unity of the entire people determined to defend the national interest against domestic and foreign enemies. They further say that this ideology which is approximately as old as the hills, has nothing in common with Marxism. Let them criticise Marxism, let them even condemn it, it is their democratic right. But let them not say that Mao had nothing to do with Marxism. The revolutionary nature of the oppressed nation was reflected in the preface to the polish (1892) and Italian (1893) editions of the communist manifesto. "The nobility could neither maintain nor regain polish independence; today, to the bourgeoise, this independence is, to say the least, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity for the harmonious collaboration of European nations. It can be gained only by the young Polish proletariat, and in its hand it is secure. For the workers of all the rest of Europe need the independence of Poland just as much as the polish workers themselves" (London, February 10, 1892). "Without re-establishing the unity and independence of each nation, neither the international unity of the proletariat nor the peaceful and reasonable collaboration of these nations towards common aims could have come about. Just try to imagine joint international action of the Italian, Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian worker under the political conditions of the period before 1848. The battles of 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor have the forty-five years which separate us from that revolutionary epoch passed to no purpose. The fruits are ripening, and all I wish is that the publication of this Italian translation may auger as well for the victory of the Italian proletariat as the publication of the original did for the international revolution" (F. Engels : February1, 1893). Let there be no pedantic discussion contrasting Marx's and Lenin's theory of imperialism. Marx and Lenin were dealing with different questions : Marx with the growth of a world capitalism that created an international division of labour between the industrialised and colonial world – a process essential to the growth of capitalism as a system; Lenin with the special international features of monopoly capitalism (Harry Magdoff).  

Contribution to the International Communist Seminar

"The World Socialist Revolution in the Conditions of Imperialist Globalization"

Brussels, 2-4 May 2001