Fight corporate tyranny, join Resistance!

January 31, 2001
Issue 

By Bronwyn Powell

All over the world people are taking a stand against the tyranny of big corporations and their governments' international economic institutions. From Seattle to Indonesia, Melbourne to Prague, the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation are being met with resistance to their agenda of putting corporate profits before people's needs — spreading poverty for the profits of a few.

The injustices are too great to be ignored. More than half the world's people live on less than one dollar a day, and yet the combined wealth of the three richest people is greater than the yearly incomes of the poorest 48 countries.

But what can we do? We're told we can't change things; that global poverty will be with us forever. As long as decisions are made by an ultra-rich minority on the basis of profit, human suffering and devastation is inevitable.

We can save a forest here, reduce a poor country's debt there, but we have to go beyond band-aid solutions for what is an incurable disease — the capitalist private profit system. We need to replace capitalism with a system in which society's resources are under the control of the majority of people and planned on the basis of human need, not corporate profits, that is, with socialism.

The world can be changed. But as isolated individuals we are powerless. We need to organise, so as to be able to act together. This is what Resistance is all about. We seek to draw together all the struggles against injustice and to involve as many people as possible in the struggle for a better society.

Resistance formed in 1967, part of the youth rebellion that was inspired by the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. Since then we have grown into the largest socialist youth organisation in Australia, with branches in every major city and clubs on 23 university campuses. Resistance members include high school students, university and TAFE students, workers and unemployed.

Since its formation three decades ago, Resistance has campaigned against racism, sexism and homophobia and has supported international struggles for justice, such as the East Timorese struggle for independence and the fight for democracy in Indonesia.

The struggle against corporate misrule is growing: on one side the capitalist elite, their governments and their police; on the other side the exploited, oppressed and angry.

Working alone we can change some things, but together we can change the world. So get active, fight for global justice and join the struggle for socialism — join Resistance!

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