21 October 2018

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 33

Globalization encompasses three institutions: global financial markets and transnational companies, national governments linked to each other in economic and military alliances led by the United States, and rising "global governments" such as World Trade Organization (WTO), IMF, and World Bank.
Charles Derber argues in his book People Before Profit, "These interacting institutions create a new global power system where sovereignty is globalized, taking power and constitutional authority away from nations and giving it to global markets and international bodies". Titus Alexander argues that this system institutionalises global inequality between western countries and the Majority World in a form of global apartheid, in which the IMF is a key pillar.

The establishment of globalised economic institutions has been both a symptom of and a stimulus for globalisation. The development of the World Bank, the IMF regional development banks such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and multilateral trade institutions such as the WTO signals a move away from the dominance of the state as the exclusive unit of analysis in international affairs. Globalization has thus been transformative in terms of a reconceptualising of state sovereignty

Derber, Charles (2002). People Before Profit. New York: Picador.

Alexander, Titus (1996). Unravelling Global Apartheid: an overview of world politics. Polity press. pp. 127–133.

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“In all of Europe, in the whole world, political power is at the service of high finance and banking, it submits to the abject impositions of thieves and fraudsters working together in legal consortium. Not even in the worst times of barbarism and slave trade were human beings trafficked with such cold cruelty. Nations are put on the market. Public life exists only as a filthy commerce practiced within the confines of sterile institutions and hollow laws.”

- Gabriele D’Annunzio in an address to his Arditi, Fiume, 1920

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October 20th, marks the anniversary of Gaddafi’s assassination. Let us recall the words of his will and testament:

I call on my supporters to continue the resistance, and fight any foreign aggressor against Libya, today, tomorrow and always.

Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour.

Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise.

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