by Alice M.VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
by Alice M.
As more information on the highly secretive TPP leaks out, there’s wider understanding that it is simply a tool of global monopoly corporations and banks to remove all restrictions and obstacles that stand in their way of intensifying the exploitation of people and the environment.
In Australia, the many standards and achievements the people have won in our health, education, health and safety, wages and working conditions, clean agriculture and safe food production, jobs in manufacturing and services industries, environment, democracy and sovereignty will be watered down or swept away altogether.
It is now more widely recognised that the US government and its multinational corporations are the architects and the driving force behind the TPP.
No wonder the draft agreement and negotiations are kept secret from the people, whilst a handful of biggest US based multinational corporations and government negotiators are dictating the full text. Countries that sign up to the TPP will be required to abide by it for at least 20 years, irrespective of the wishes of the people and future governments that would want to pull the plug on it.
Foreign investments
The most determined and aggressive push for abolition of all regulations and restrictions on foreign investments is from the financial sector. International monopoly banks and financial institutions demand removal of all restrictions on capital investments inside and across all signatory countries. They want to invest capital in areas of maximum profitability for themselves, not into the needs of people and the environment.
ISDS
One of the most outrageous elements of the TPP is the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) which gives power to foreign multinational corporations to sue sovereign governments (in Australia federal, state and local) where domestic laws, regulations and actions restrict or “harm” present or future profits of corporations. The judges sitting on the international tribunals are also often same lawyers acting for the multinational corporations suing sovereign governments. It costs sovereign governments tens of millions in legal fees irrespective of the outcomes.
US Congress dictates
The latest exposures in the secretive agreement include a so-called “Certification” requirement. This openly imperialist act empowers the US Congress to directly approve, amend and draft new domestic laws and regulations for other countries in the TPP.
The US has the power to exert immense pressure (blackmail, threats and intimidation) on other countries until it is satisfied that their domestic laws and regulations comply with its own demands and interests. These US imposed laws ensure that the interests of US and its corporations and banks override the interests of local working people, communities and the environment.
The TPP is part of a global push by the biggest US and other monopoly corporations, banks and financial institutions to seize control of world‘s resources, markets and labour for its profit making.
Monopoly corporations and finance capital collude in grabbing the spoils of the world, but more often than not they fiercely compete with each other. They create and inflict ruthless wars, suffering and hardship on millions of people from around the world.
The reality is that monopoly capitalism is reaching its use by date. Its own economic laws ensure that it cannot escape the scourge of surplus accumulation (overproduction), major economic crises, declining rate of profit, greater monopolisation and more savage competition spilling into brutal imperialist wars.
Monopoly capitalism cannot be reformed, softened or reinvented within the intensifying antagonism of capitalist class relations. It has little room to manoeuvre except to inflict more austerity, suffering, hardship and wars on the people of the world. To pretend otherwise is to mislead the people.
The TPPA, NAFTA and all other so-called “free trade agreements” are nothing more than imperialist globalisation with the US presently leading the charge.
Resistance to US imperialism
The people in all corners of the world are building resistance to this imperialist onslaught. People’s demands for sovereignty, taking their country’s wealth for the people, genuine people’s democracy and taking control of their countries, are pushing their way to the forefront of many struggles. From the heart of the US imperialist beast, in Europe, Asia, Middle East and Latin America ordinary people are organising and demanding a new society free of corporate exploitation.
Australian working people are a part of this world wide movement.