Solidarita's speech at the Prague solidarity demo with Washington DC anti - IMF/WB protests

We have gathered today for a solidarity action with anti-IMF/WB protests, which are happening in American Washington DC. There is a wide range of reasons why to be against these two key institutions of global capitalist system, although they are not mentioned in mainstream medias. IMF/WB's demands for privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation left its tragic trace on living standards and environment in many developing countries - including the Czech Republic. Already in 1990 a than Czechoslovak government accepted a loan of several billions from the IMF but it had to accept also a Structural Adjustment Programme, which has been fulfilled ever since by all post-November governments. The IMF's policy, however, affected a living standard of Czech workers even after that - following a crisis in 1997, caused by monetary speculations, a Klaus' package of measures, based on IMF's demands, comes and with it also a fall in real wages and a further rise in rates of interests, which drags Czech industries into a heavy indebtedness. Again according to IMF's advice a pace of deregulations is growing, which impoverishes the poor population. Unemployment, flexibility, nonpayment of wages, inaccessabilty of basic needs - these are the results of building capitalism, which the IMF and WB also took part in. And what about the Czech government? It spends great sums of money on the September IMF/WB conference in Prague and gives tax amnesties to transnational corporations, which now have advantageous conditions here prepared in advance by the IMF.

It is evident that IMF/WB's activity has got disasterous impacts on workers' life quality. However, it is a duty of critics of both these institutions to suggest then an effective alternative to the current situation. We do not think that reforms of these institutions are such an alternative - transnational corporations and banks will take them seriously only if they are useful for them. Neither is a solution a return to national capitalism and national protectionism - it is a need of national capital to expand, which both institutions have grown from.

We do not believe in reforming capitalism, we seek to reach a revolutionary change and we think that the current movement against capitalist globalisation might be a good basis for linking all the local struggles on our workplaces and on a community level into a global anti-capitalist resistance.

"We believe in internationalism and the globalisation of our struggle against all of capitalism... and we work towards a genuine international unity which will one day lay the basis for global social revolution" - it is written in a statement of the Washington DC Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc, which was signed by more than twenty anarchist organisation, council communist groups and other anti-authoritarian Left groupings and which was endorsed through a solidarity statement even by our organisation.

Neither them nor us demand reforms and we work towards a "self-organisation of the international working class and the opressed people for a revolutionary transformation". This should lead to constituting a free and just society, which will not serve to profits of the rich, but to needs of each and everyone. The society, where our lives will not be managed by general secretaries or by the State, political parties or capitalists, but we ourselves. Solidarity with anti-capitalist protests in Washington DC! Against Capitalism - for a free stateless society without exploitation and opression!

For Anarchist Socialism!

The Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists - Solidarita (Czech Platformists)

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