The Socialist Answer to the Security and Prosperity Partnership

From August 19th to 21st, the warmonger George Bush and fraudulently elected Mexican president Felipe Calderón will be guests of Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In the secluded town of Montebello, Québec, they will meet with a select group of CEOs and military brass to map out the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). This is a continuation of the effort to increase corporate power through treaties such as NAFTA, FTAA, and WTO, but this time with an added military dimension.

What is the SPP?

The SPP is a new corporate agenda for North America. In partnership with similar US and Mexican groupings, the SPP follows the recommendations of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, representing the biggest ~150 Canadian corporations controlling over 70% of the Canadian economy. The SPP aims to harmonize (i.e. “lower”) approximately 300 environmental, food, labour and any other standards deemed to get in the way of corporate profit. Privatization is a major part of the SPP, with the Mexican oil industry, Canadian healthcare, public services and education as distinct targets.

However, anybody active in the fight against corporate control will not be surprised by the attempts to privatize and de-regulate. The new element contained within the SPP is security. In exchange for access to the US market by Canadian and Mexican businesses, the US military is demanding a common security perimeter across North America. George Bush’s patriot act and homeland security may soon be spreading North and South of the border. To put it simply, the SPP is Imperialism.

Canada and Mexico

Why would the Canadian and Mexican governments want to sign on to such an agreement? Left nationalist groups such as the Council of Canadians have put in a lot of work to raise awareness, and organize demonstrations against the SPP and other corporate free trade deals. The Council of Canadians condemns the Canadian (and by implication, Mexican) governments for “selling out our sovereignty.” There are a lot of hard-working individuals in the Council of Canadians, but we have to point out that calls to defend Canadian or Mexican sovereignty are counter-productive and play into the hands of capitalist interests.

Defence of a nation’s sovereignty implies that a country is under foreign domination and that it needs the formation of an indigenous, “independent” capitalist class. Mexico and especially Canada are both developed capitalist and imperialist nations. They are the 13th and 8th biggest economies respectively. The world’s richest man is no longer the American Bill Gates, but the Mexican Carlos Slim. By signing on to the SPP, Canadian and Mexican businesses aren’t selling out to anybody, they are acting in the sovereign interest of their respective capitalist States that seek to make profit off the back of the working class, irrespective of nationality.

Capitalism = Imperialism = War

What the left nationalist perspective lacks is an understanding that the problem is not an erosion of sovereignty; the problem is capitalism, which in the modern era acts as imperialism. This is why it is entirely logical that the new corporate trade agreements contain a military component. After the September 11th attacks, millions of working class Americans asked themselves, “why do they hate us?” Unfortunately the majority of the US population has been kept in the dark about the crimes of US imperialism in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America – but you can bet that the people of these regions need little reminding. When corporate profits rely on the plunder and subjugation of billions of poor slaves, then it is necessary to spend many billions of dollars on the most technologically advanced whips available.

It is not possible to go back to a non-existent era of “enlightened” capitalism where nobody was exploited and trade was free and fair. In addition, proposing protectionism as an alternative to “free trade” while leaving capitalism in place is also no solution. Protectionism against foreign imports merely increases the price of goods and constricts the entire economy as production costs increase. This leads to slump and unemployment. It was protectionism that prolonged the 1929 stock market crash into the depression that lasted most of the 1930’s. Capitalism was only able to get out of that trade war by starting an actual war that killed approximately 50 million people.

Fortress North America

It would be completely wrong to view the SPP as a victory for imperialist interests. In fact the proposals are quite modest compared with the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) which aimed to put all of the nations of North and South America (save Cuba) under its umbrella. The SPP is in fact a retrenchment after the defeat of the FTAA, due in no small part to the advance of the Venezuelan revolution. The WTO talks are currently stalled, and old antagonisms between the imperialist powers (Europe, Russia, China, USA, etc.) are beginning to resurface. The post WW2 trend towards free trade is in danger of unravelling and competitive devaluations and trade barriers could return. Imperialism is in crisis as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars take their toll in blood and money. In this context the SPP is an attempt to batten down the hatches against the surrounding storm.

While Imperialism is overstretched in the Middle-East, revolution is starting to knock at the Southern door. Venezuela is showing that there is an alternative to corporate greed, privatization, exploitation and war. Bush was recently humiliated in the USA’s “back yard” with the failure of the FTAA, and now the influence of the Venezuelan revolution is being felt in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Nicaragua. Not even the SPP can keep this revolutionary mood at bay and the Mexican oligarchy was forced to rig the 2006 presidential elections. Last year over 3 million protested this electoral fraud and the government even lost power in Oaxaca. Calderón has no legitimacy amongst the Mexican people and it is only a matter of time before new eruptions occur. In the meantime the regime is resorting to repression against activists, particularly targeting the revolutionaries active with the Movement of Non-Admitted Students, and the Marxist Tendency Militante (www.militante.org). Not even the USA is immune from this revolutionary wave, as millions of Latino immigrant workers demonstrated when they came out on May Day 2006.

Those who genuinely wish to put an end to the SPP, corporate exploitation, imperialism and war must join the growing revolutionary movement coming from the South. The problems of capitalism are not simply a result of this or that agreement. These problems are systemic. The whole of the world is controlled by a small handful of billionaires. Every decision made is made in the interest of profit. Only by breaking their control over the economy and indeed the world, can we begin to build a society that produces for need instead of greed. Our economy shouldn’t be controlled by the few big corporations who put forward the undemocratic SPP; it should be controlled democratically by the people. Only socialism – that is a democratically planned economy – can replace this madness. Venezuela has ascribed socialism on its banner and it is gaining a huge popular response. The International Marxist Tendency and Fightback are fighting internationally and in Canada to organize those who want a revolutionary solution to the injustices of capitalist exploitation. Join our struggle for a new society.