1979: MLN: A general evaluation of the Trilateral System

A general evaluation of the Trilateral System within the framework of the current world crisis of U.S. hegemonist imperialism and against the backdrop of the historical development of capitalism in the 20th Century.

By the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional
(M.L.N)
-1979-

Japanese economies each time there is a price increase in basic commodities, particularly petroleum, the impact is softened by the increasing value of the currencies and the payment of dollars (huge amounts of which are in the hands of Germany and Japan in particular) for the imports of these nations.

U.S. imperialism, however, its hegemony threatened even within the framework of the imperialist center, exerts enormous economic and political pressures on its partners to cut back on their exports to the U.S. Recognizing both the nature of the crisis and its long term impact on the imperialist center, the capitalist countries of Europe, the United States and Japan began a series of studies in 1971 to determine what changes were needed in the structural relations among the imperialist countries and between them and the rest of the world. A number of suggestions made during the 1960s were put to the scrutiny of experts and new areas of world economic and poli-
tical relations came under study.

In 1972, a series of conferences were held in which government, industrial, and academic experts joined to discuss and identify the principal policy issues and identify the sources of friction among the imperialist powers of the center, now called the Trilateral countries. These conferences closed in December of 1972 in Columbia, Maryland
and paved the way for all the studies that followed.

In July, 1973, David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank and one of a handful of powerful capitalists at the helm of U.S. imperialism, called the first meeting of the Trilateral Commission, Some 12 areas of study and 14 task force reports were commissioned by the Trilateral powers in the areas of the gobernability of democracy, the oceans, commodity markets, international institutions, trade with communist countries, and the renovation of the international imperialist system. In all, 14 papers were published between 1974 and 1975 on these and other major topics.