EN

Education is a right. It should be free and open to all that wish to use it. It should be paid for by a progressive tax system that can really solve the crisis in funding by hitting the rich; taxing their unearned income and massive profits that they gain by robbing the workers of the world.

REVOLUTION fights for the creation of workers councils as democratic organs of working class power. In school, colleges and universities, we fight for students, parents and workers committees to plan education and administration.

The Earth is at risk as never before. The land and rivers are contaminated with toxins, the rivers are a cocktail of poisons and the very air we breathe deteriorates by the day.
Capitalism is inherently unfriendly to the environment. Capitalists need ever greater profits to compete, so resources are used up without regard for peoples? needs and the effects on future generations.

Capitalists are reluctant to conserve resources, control pollution or recycle, as these are often ?expensive? options. It is cheaper to pump pollutants into the environment than clean up.

Global warming

The September 11 massacre was a pretext for the USA to launch its 'war on terrorism'. This bloody campaign has already seen the USA murder more civilians than were killed in the World Trade Centre attacks.

In reality, the 'war on terrorism' is the continuation of globalisation by military means.

Just as capitalism demands the right to enter every area in the world and exploit every people in the world, so the USA now demands the right to take military action anywhere in the world, against anyone it declares a ?terrorist?, including the governments of sovereign nations.

The imperialist powers and their global financial institutions are also super-exploiting the Second World War the states of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and Vietnam.

Since the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorships after 1989, these states have been restoring the capitalist system, bringing mass unemployment, national conflicts and desperate poverty to millions. The IMF, World Bank and WTO play the same role here as in the rest of the semi-colonial world - making sure that these countries re-enter the global capitalist economy in a strictly subordinate position.

The modern Empire of the USA is different from empires that came before. Unlike the colonial empires of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the USA does not try to rule other countries directly.

The former colonies are almost all politically independent, with their own flags and governments. But beneath the mask of self-rule, they remain deeply dependent and subordinate. They are semi-colonies.

Capitalist globalisation has created science and techniques that could feed, clothe, house, educate and care for every single person in the world. But private ownership means a handful become unimaginably rich while hundreds of millions are in poverty.

Far from uniting humanity, capitalist globalisation has been carried out by strong nations conquering the weak. To do this the rich imperialist powers use a variety of weapons, from unfair trade and debt bondage through to B52s and cluster bombs.

Capitalism cannot simply be reformed into a better system. It must be overthrown by mass revolutionary action.

Capitalism cannot simply be reformed into a better system. It must be overthrown by mass revolutionary action.

# What we stand for
# Revolution not Reform
# Globalisation from below
# The 'Third World'
# Former 'communist countries'
# Down with the 'war on terror'

The Youth Assembly of the 2004 European Social Forum declares opposition to the world of war, racism, poverty, and the system that causes it – global capitalism.