The ‘Third World’

The modern Empire of the USA is different from empires that came before.

Unlike the colonial empires of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the USA does not try to rule other countries directly. The former colonies are almost all politically independent, with their own flags and governments. But beneath the mask of self-rule, they remain deeply dependent and subordinate. They are semi-colonies.

The ‘First World’ of advanced capitalist powers and its multinational corporations super-exploit the semi-colonial Third World. The IMF and World Bank put the Third World on rations. They use desperately needed loans as blackmail to make already impoverished countries carry out huge programmes of cuts in services and living standards. They extract billions in debt and interest repayments to the West from Africa, South-East Asia, and Latin America.

The World Trade Organisation fixes the rules of international commerce to help the rich nations, not the poor. Western corporations pay Third World workers a fraction of the wages they would receive in the West and suck massive profits out of them in sweatshops, which deny even the most basic rights and conditions to their workforce.

REVOLUTION demands:

Abolish the trillion dollar debt owed to the Western banks and financial institutions.

Abolish the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation.

Refuse to pay – debtor countries should repudiate the debt and refuse all repayments.

Nationalise the multinational companies, banks, and imperialist-owned holdings under the control of the workers, without a cent in compensation to the former owners.

Stamp out sweatshops. Ban child labour. Minimum wage, maximum working week and a code of working conditions to be fixed by the workers themselves.

Nationalise the land and organise farming under the control of peasants’ co-operatives.

Massive reparations to the Third World to fund an emergency programme of reconstruction and sustainable development.

Down with military dictatorships and repressive regimes. Votes for all that are old enough to work. Free speech. For the right to organise trade unions and political opposition.

End unemployment. Divide the available work between all those able to do it with no loss of pay.

The capitalists of the semi-colonial countries are too weak, corrupt and tied to the West to free their countries from the grip of imperialism. The anti-imperialist revolution can only succeed if it becomes a socialist revolution with the workers and peasants at its head.