Labor must reach out for allies among working farmers, as well. We must join with farmers to demand a halt to all foreclosures. Instead of being driven more deeply into debt slavery, small farmers must have access to government-funded cheap credit. They must receive price-supports from Washington large enough to cover their full production costs and guarantee a decent and secure living for themselves and their families.

The working class and labor movement in the United States must demand that Washington and other imperialist government and financial institutions immediately cancel the foreign debt that has been imposed on the semicolonial countries. Total Third World debt today is over $2 trillion, much higher than at the worst point of the debt crisis of the 1980s.

As international finance capital has squeezed more and more wealth from the toilers of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to bolster their sagging profit rates, one hundred countries--a quarter of the world’s population--have experienced a decline in per capita income over the past fifteen years; in sub-Saharan Africa per capita consumption is 20 percent lower than it was in 1980! More than 45 percent of the population of the earth survives on less than $2 a day, and 20 percent on less than $1 a day.

Workers and farmers in the United States should demand that Washington lift all tariffs and other obstacles to trade and travel erected by the U.S. rulers. This includes the elimination of all "anti-dumping," "fair labor," "environmental protection," and other trade weapons wielded with often devastating consequences by the U.S. government under the banner of "free trade." This must be labor’s demand, not support for the protectionist policies of financial capital and ever more onerous trade restrictions aimed at semicolonial countries and imperialist rivals, as proposed today by union officials and the middle-class leaderships of various environmentalist and so-called antisweatshop organizations.

The elimination of all tariff and nontariff barriers erected by the U.S. government has nothing in common with the rulers’ demagogy about guaranteeing a "level playing field for all"--exploiters and exploited alike. Instead, by demanding cancellation of the Third World debt and opposing all measures used by the propertied classes to magnify the unequal terms of trade intrinsic to the world capitalist market, working people in the United States can strengthen our unity with the toilers of these countries in the international battle against our common enemy, the imperialist ruling families who exploit us all to maintain their wealth and power. We can deepen the effort to transform our unions into revolutionary organizations of the working class that will inscribe these internationalist demands on our battle flag.  
 
 
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