World socialists call for world government
By Henry Lamb
web posted November 17, 2003
Concluding its 22nd global congress in Sao Paulo, Brazil, last week, the Socialist International issued its Declaration calling for implementation of "global governance," in a program that mirrors the recommendations of the U.N.-funded Commission on Global Governance, published in 1995.
The International Socialists call for: expanding the U.N. Security Council; creating a new Economic Security Council; creating a new World Environmental Organization; and the mechanisms necessary to enforce "Sustainable Development," world-wide.
This document makes public the close union between the agenda of International Socialists and the agenda for global governance developed by the United Nations. Previous efforts to keep the "socialist" label away from the U.N., have now been abandoned, and both institutions are publicly seeking total global governance through the United Nations.
Though the document does not mention the Bush administration by name, it decries obstacles to the new world order, sought by the Socialists. Article Three of the Declaration says:
"Neoconservatives are attempting to ... dismantle all forms of global governance, to minimise the role of the United Nations, to undermine multilateral institutions, to promote unilateralism and the consecration of the market, and to impose the will of the powerful to decide the future of mankind."
The President of Socialist International, Antonio Guterres, former Socialist Prime Minister of Portugal, said the "Bush administration was impeding efforts to establish a new world order," according to the Denver Post. (October 30, p. 21A)
Specifically, the Socialists want the new Economic Security Council to be a "Council for Sustainable Development � that would coordinate sustainable development on a global scale..." And, to implement the Kyoto Protocol.
Socialists want to consolidate the U.N. Environment Program, and all the existing environmental treaties, under the enforcement authority of a new World Environment Organization, the same function the Commission on Global Governance proposed for the outdated U.N. Trusteeship Council.
This document also endorses: the U.N. Millennium Development goals adopted in 2000; the U.N.'s Monterey Consensus, adopted in 2002; and the U.N.'s Plan for Sustainable Development, adopted in Johannesburg in 2002. It calls for the elimination of agricultural subsidies in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and free exportation by developing countries into these markets, and international control of "...regulation, accountability and supervision of financial systems to enhance the prospects for sustainable growth and development."
The Socialist International links "exacerbated nationalism, ...and xenophobic attitudes," with terrorism, as "threats to peace," which must be addressed only by an expanded U.N. Security Council, with the authority and means " to act to preserve and enforce peace," which "must be carried out in accordance with the decisions of the United Nations."
"The [Socialist] International, therefore, believes that reform of the United Nations cannot be delayed any longer and will continue to be strongly engaged in the process. Achieving lasting peace and security requires that the United Nations Charter be updated to meet today's new challenges, and that the Security Council be reformed to make it more representative, democratic and responsive."
The "reform" called for by the U.N.'s Commission on Global Governance, and by the U.N., would expand the Security Council in number, whose members would serve rotating terms, remove the "Permanent Member" status from the U.S., France, England, Germany, and China, and would eliminate the veto power of any single nation.
The Socialists want the U.N. to place "greater emphasis on the provision of global public services, especially with regard to sanitation, health care, child care facilities, education, employment promotion and environmental protection."
In a clear statement of support for the socialist model of economic organization, rather than the capitalist model, the document says:
"The principle of public service cannot be sacrificed to the consecration of the market. Tax systems should also be adapted to promote better public services and a new global tax should be created to fund the global public goods."
The "new global tax" endorsed by this statement is discussed at length throughout U.N. literature and is a series of taxing proposals ranging from a tax on international currency transactions (the Tobin Tax), to a tax on resource use, and use of the "global commons," which includes the air, space, the oceans, and the airwaves used for radio, television, and internet transmissions.
This global taxing authority was included in the first draft of the recommendations of the U.N.'s High Level Panel on Financing Development, meeting in Monterey, Mexico, in 2001. It was removed, at the insistence of the new U.S. delegates, appointed by the Bush administration. The panel remains in place, however, to seek independent financing of U.N. operations.
Socialist International is the world's largest political organization, according to its website, working through more than 140 national organizations. Its largest affiliate in the United States is the Democratic Socialists of America, which says it is "building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics."
The "social change" described here is the global governance agenda developed
jointly, and now publicly advanced by both the United Nations, and the Socialist
International.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice
president of the Environmental
Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty
International.
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