ABSTRACT
The commencement of the second millennium is an exciting time. Across the world, people from an immense variety of backgrounds are refusing, in increasing numbers, to accept that a world dominated by corporations and by imperialist wars and occupations is the only world that is possible. In what was once called ‘the Third World’, people are rejecting squalor, deprivation and poverty as inevitable conditions of their lives; they are using the new power they have found from employment in the urban, commercial and industrial sectors to make their voices heard. In the developed world of Western Europe and North America there is a new mood of resistance to welfare cuts, privatisation, casualisation, insecurity and worsening wages and conditions and pensions. In rich and poor countries alike, people are refusing to accept environmental despoliation as a condition of economic development, and are prioritising their health and the sustainability of their communities over corporate profitability. Whether protesting against the neoliberal agendas of the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, or demonstrating in millions across the world against the imperial adventures of the US and Britain in Iraq and elsewhere, the oppressed of the world are, for the first time in decades, rediscovering their role as the agents of history. These struggles are against war and imperialism, against the neo-liberal agenda being imposed on the world by the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organisation, and against the pro-market policies being adopted by national governments across the world.
