t
— Sean Griffin photo

WILLY BRANDT . . . opens Socialist International Congress.

Special report ponders
_ curb on multinationals

A call on member governments
and parties of the Socialist In-
ternational to counter the power of
the multinational corporations by
pressing for ‘appropriate
measures in the fields of planning,
economic democracy, public
ownership, finance, labor
regulation and research’ was
voiced by delegates to the SI
Congress in Vancouver les
weekend. :

The congress call, which also
condemned strongly the ‘‘ex-
ploitation of cheap black labor by
multinational corporations which
continue to collaborate with the
minority racist regimes in
southern Africa’, was part of a
resolution recommended by a
special study group- on
multinationals established by the
SI in 1976.

The report, prepared under the
chairmanship of Belgian Socialist
Party representative Oscar
Debunne, was equivocal in
assessing the role of multinational
corporations in future economic
development but did point out that
“the growth and behavior of
MNC’s has had many - adverse
effects and has given rise to great
concern.”

The operations of multinationals
tend to undermine national
sovereignty, the report noted,
while several corporations have
interfered ‘‘directly in the internal
affairs of the host country.

Moreover, the report said, the
MNCs have disrupted economic
relations by restrictive trade
practices and shifts in capital
across national boundaries; they
have helped to perpetuate the
disparity between the in-
dustrialized nations and the
developing countries; and they
have engaged in operations which
have resulted in the waste of
scarce resources and_ the
despoilment of the environment.

The report called for cooperation
with international agencies such as
the UN in compiling information on
multinationals and working

towards international controls

based on “international codes of
conduct.”

It also detailed the areas of
governmental action including
such controls as planning, to en-
sure that MNCs observe and
contribute to objectives set by the
country; economic democracy, to
develop proposals to extend

economic and industrial
democracy; and public ownership,
to extend the use of public en-
terprise to challenge the
dominance of MNCs in key in-
dustrial sectors.

The effects of multinational
corporations in creating high
levels of unemployment in the
Canadian economy and in propping
up regimes such as that in Chile
were also the focus of addresses to
the congress by federal NDP
leader Ed Broadbent and Canadian
Labor Congress president Dennis
McDermott although neither
advanced any specific policy or
program to combat the
multinationals’ economic power.

McDermott singled out Noranda
and Brascan for their role in Latin
America in providing much needed
investment for repressive regimes
in Chile and Brazil and for their
role in devastating the economies
of their host countries.

But multinationals have also had
a devastating impact on the
Canadian economy, the CLC
president noted, particularly in
creating high unemployment.

He cited INCO and Northern
Telecom as primary examples of
corporations which received huge
amounts of money in tax con-
cessions and subsidies but then,
“as soon as the opportunity arises,
they flee to low wage markets.”’

‘No alternative to detente’

Brandt tells SI Congress

By SEAN GRIFFIN

Warning that arms expenditures
“are running at more than $1
billion a day” making “a nuclear
or even a thermonuclear castrophe
a mightmarish possibility,”’
secretary-general Bernt Carlsson
told the congress of the Socialist
International in Vancouver last
weekend, ‘‘No_ topic in in-
ternational politics can be more
important than the very survival of
mankind.”’

Carlsson’s comments, contained
in a wide-ranging report detailing
the activities of the International
since 1976, marked the opening of
the world gathering of social
democratic parties and
organizations, held for the first
time outside Europe.

Although the SI traces its history
back to the International
Workingmen’s Association, it was
founded in its present form in 1951
and now includes most social
democratic parties in western
Europe as well as in other coun-
tries including the Israeli Labor
Party and the People’s National
Party in Jamaica. This year’s
congress was hosted by the New
Democratic Party.

The SI secretary’s blunt warning
to the opening session underscored
the organization’s dominating
concern with issues of disar-
mament and detente as the 185
delegates and 200 observers ad-
dressed themselves to the congress
theme of peace and development.

“Time and again over the past
two years,” Carlsson told the
meeting, “‘we met together in the
framework of the International to
consider ways of promoting
armament control.”’

A key meeting in those two
years, he said, was the conference
on disarmament held in Helsinki in
April, 1978 at which represen-
tatives from the U.S. and the USSR
were invited to present their
countries’ views on disarmament.

“One the one side, ambassador
James Leonard, deputy U.S.
representative at the UN, em-
phasized the role that Socialist
International parites, particularly
those in western Europe, can play
in detente and disarmament.

“Speaking for the Soviet Union,
Boris Ponomarev welcomed the
deep involvement of the Socialist
International in the disarmament
process.

“The Soviet spokesman came to
Helsinki with several invitations
for the International,’ Carlsson
noted, “ranging from a suggested
visit by a high-level Socialist In-
ternational delegation to Moscow,
to proposals for setting up the

machinery for permanent joint
actions by Communist and
Democratic Socialist parties on
disarmament questions, and to
joint meetings of journalists, ex-
perts and research groups.

“These proposals are indeed
controversial from our point of
view,”’Carlsson told the congress in
commenting on the invitations.
“But they should be discussed in a
Serious way. The time is past when
such proposals could be treated
just by silence.”

That movement away from cold
war positions towards active ad-
vocacy of disarmament and
detente, begun in the Geneva
Congress in 1976 and continued in
Vancouver, was also emphasized
by SI president Willy Brandt whose
main address to the meeting
welcomed the fact that ‘“‘the will to
Cooperate has become, in many
cases, stronger than the tendency
to confront.

“T have always been and am still
quite convinced that there is no
reasonable alternative to detente,”’
he said.

The former West German
chancellor warned, however, that
it would be a “serious mistake to
assume that a deterioration of the
general climate between East and
West could be acceptable without
any risk to necessary and possible
agreements which will serve the
vital interests of all concerned.”

The comment was in response to
recent statements by U.S. ad-
ministration officials who have
insisted that curtailment of U.S.-
Soviet trade and U.S. hostility over
the issue of dissidents should not be
seen as obstacles to detente.

In an apparently direct
reference to U.S. president Car-
ter’s campaign on the Soviet
dissidents, Brandt stated: ‘The
contrast between basically dif-
ferent political systems — similar
to that between alleged or actual
power interests — cannot simply
be resolved by compromises based
on formulas nor by incantations.

“The respect of severeign rights
and the renunciation of in-
tervention in the internal affairs of
other nations — that is, as things
Stand in the world, of the govern-
ments representing the nations in
one way or other — are part of the
essential constituents of the Final
Act of the Helsinki Agreement,” he
said.

The theme of- East-West

relations ran throughout Brandt’s
lengthy address as he touched on a

number of topics including the ‘

liberation struggle in Southern
Africa and the relations between
the developing and the in-

Socialist and Communist cooperation
‘could guarantee peace’, says Kashtan

Cooperation between the
Socialist International and the
world Communist movement could
“transform the world and
guarantee peace’’, Communist
Party of Canada general secretary
William Kashan told a_ press
conference last Friday as the
Socialist International opened its
conference in Vancouver.

Kashan said that cooperation
with the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, which earlier this
year appealed to the International
for joint action on peace issues,
with other Communist Parties and
with the national liberation
movements -‘‘are the great
challenges facing the conference.”

In spite of philosophical dif-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—November 10, 1978—Page 4

ferences, Kashtan said, there is
room for agreement on issues such
as the support of the liberation
movements in Africa and Latin
America, and on disarmament and
the banning of the neutron bomb.
“The Socialist International
represents an important section of
world society,” he said, ‘‘So too
does the world Communist
movement. Together they could
transform the world situation and
guarantee detente and peaceful
coexistence.,”’

The CP leader, in Vancouver to
speak at a rally marking the 61st
anniversary of the Russian
revolution, welcomed the con-
ference to Canada and the par-
ticipation of the representatives of
a number of national liberation
groups at it. ‘‘The holding of this

conference for the first time. out-
side of Western Europe and with
these participants is recognition of
the serious mistake that the
Socialist International has made in
its attitude towards the developing
world,” he said.

Kashtan was critical of NDP

federal secretary Robin Sears,
however, for public statements to
the effect that the African and
Latin American delegates were
invited to work out a ‘‘democratic
socialist alternative for the
liberation movements.”’
_ “What is he referring to? What
alternative is there for the
liberation movements?’’ Kashtan
asked, ‘“‘The question shouldn’t be
democratic socialism, but full
support to the national liberation
movements.” :

dustrialized countries. And he
returned repeatedly to the issue of
peace and international
cooperation.

“The task before the In-
ternational, as I understand it,” he
told the congress delegates, “is
never to tire of making clear that
we have no: monopoly on what is
true and what is right, but together
with all men and women of
goodwill we want to find, suitable
ways leading towards a lasting
peace within our borders and
without, a peace which will
guarantee the lives of people and
their development and give to
every nation the place it deser-
ves.”

The congress resolution, adopted
by delegates at the close of the
final session stressed that the
Helsinki Final Act and the sub-
sequent Belgrade Conference
“have provided a basis for future
progress towards detente in
Europe.”

The extensive resolution, which
also dealt with economic
development and human rights,
urged promotion of “‘every effort to
speed up the process of in-
ternational negotiations for the
limitation of nuclear arms, for a
ban on the use of nuclear weapons
and for a ban on the development
of nuclear weapons technology;
support for UN initiatives in
disarmament and arms control;
support for cooperative efforts to
extend nuclear-fee zones; and
encouragement of ‘a significant
and planned diversion of resources
from the armaments sector to that
of development cooperation.”

Although the resolution made no
specific reference to the threat
posed by the neutron bomb — a
British Labor Party delegate, in
fact, suggested that the In-
ternational ‘‘should not be
sidetracked into discussions about
this or that weapons system” —

_representatives of three western

European parties singled out the
campaign against the N-bomb as a
main area of emphasis for their
respective parties’ disarmament
initiatives.

“We must repeatedly voice our
protest against the neutron bomb,”
Swedish Social Democratic Party
delegate Inga Thorsson, one of the
introductory speakers on the
disarmament theme, told the -
Congress. She added that the N-
bomb was “perhaps the most
perverted result so far of the
restless efforts in armaments
research and development.”

Her call was echoed during the
debate by Dutch Labor Party
delegate Jaap van den Doef who
emphasized that he was also
speaking for the Belgian Socialist
Party in stating, ‘‘we will do our
utmost to stop further production
and ultimate deployment of the
neutron bomb.”

Van den Doef countered the
notion, advanced by Pentagon
strategists, that the N-bomb could
be a “‘deterrent’’ since it would
render obsolete existing weapons.
He warned that it would be “a
demonstration of the worst
madness”’ to introduce a new
weapons system as a means of
getting rid of an old one.

Declaring that the campaign to
stop N-bomb production would be
stepped up, the Dutch delegate
said, “If the U.S. president con-
tinues with the production of the
neutron bomb — and we hope he
doesn’t — then we will oppose N-
bomb deployment in Europe.”

f