 |
| Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah |
Leaders of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and
Nkrumaist organisations in the country gathered at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial
Park in Accra to pay glowing tribute to the Founder of the modern state of
Ghana.
The event was to mark the 45th anniversary of the death
of the Osagyefo in faraway Romania on April 27, 1972.
Also present at the event was Professor Francis Nkrumah,
oldest son of the Osagyefo who represented the family.
Speaker after speaker emphasised the point that though
Nkrumah’s body was buried at the Park his ideas live on and continue to inspire
all those struggling for an end to exploitation and domination.
Professor Edmund Delle, National Chairman and leader of
the CPP said the party remains faithful to the ideas of the Osagyefo.
He spoke out against the imposition of the neo-liberal
agenda which has imposed considerable hardship on working people across the
world.
Comrade Kwesi Pratt, Jnr of the Socialists Forum of
Ghana (SFG) called on the Government of Ghana to rehabilitate the Kwame Nkrumah
Memorial Park.
He said the sorry state of the Park spoke volumes about
the neglect of the lofty ideals of the Osagyefo.
He called for the unity of all progressives in the
pursuit of the Nkrumaist agenda of African Unity under a broad socialist
banner.
Professor Nkrumah thanked the CPP for organising the
event on behalf of his family.
Editorial
NKRUMAH NEVER DIES
As we mark the 45th anniversary of the death of Osagyefo
Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Founder of the Morden Republic of Ghana, we recognise that
the masses have come a very long way from February 24, 1966.
It was on this day that the forces of imperialism aided
by local reactionary forces sought to roll back the progress of the African liberation
movement led by the Osagyefo.
They did not just overthrow his government but they even
went to the extent of criminalising the display of his photographs and reading
of his books.
That today a political party can name itself the
Convention Peoples Party (CPP) is more than adequate proof of the failure of
the imperialist to destroy Nkrumah and everything associated with him.
Today Nkrumah’s books are available in book shops across
the country and many people proclaim their acceptance of Nkrumaism as the way
forward for Africa.
We have made some very significant gains but are most
certainly not enough.
The struggle needs to be intensified until capitalism is
completely defeated by the forces of socialist transformation.
Local News:
Working For Gov’t Frustrating –
Former Agric Extension Officer
By
Godwin Akweiteh Allotey
A
former agric extension officer, Joseph Bekoe, has disclosed that he makes more
money working as a private person than working for government.
According
to him, he gave up his role as an extension officer because it was frustrating.
He
lamented on the Citi Breakfast Show on Wednesday that, getting access
to logistics from government was very difficult.
“If
you evaluate the energy and the effort you put into government work and then
compare it to you being on your own, you will realize that it is good to be on
your own than working for government. When it comes to logistics, sometimes you
operate from your pocket, you need fuel and other tools to visit farms, but it
does not come, and at the end of the month, you have to send a report to your
directorate on the work you’ve done. And then they expect you to write a report
on your activity while they have not given you fuel for your motorbike.
Sometimes it takes between six to seven months before you get logistics,” Mr.
Bekoe explained.
When
asked whether his superiors were aware of his predicaments, the former
extension officer replied in the affirmative.
“They
are very much aware of our problem,” he said, adding that “the extension
officers’ inactivity is not because they do not like the job, but it is because
logistics do not get to them on time.”
“If
I am in a locality at Afienya and I am working as an extension officer and I do
not have fuel or money for transportation, what do I do? I would walk to the
areas that my legs could carry me and do my work there, while other areas that
require my services are denied. So these are our challenges,” he added.
Mr.
Bekoe, who now operates a poultry farm at Afienya, told Host of the Citi
Breakfast Show, Bernard Avle, that he is doing very well in his private
business.
“If
I have about 1000 layers and they are laying every day, I make about 250 cedis
each day, taking aside their feeding cost. Eggs are products that we don’t look
for marketers; people come to you so far as you have the eggs,” he noted.
Mr.
Bekoe also noted that, he could make about GHc5,000 within a month operating as
a poultry farmer.
Planting for Food
and Jobs launch
Mr.
Bekoe’s revelation comes on the back of government’s plan to launch an an agric
sector initiative dubbed “Planting for Food and Jobs.”
The
President, Nana Addo Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to launch the project today,
Wednesday, at Goaso in the Asunafo municipality of the Brong Ahafo Region.
The
project is expected to be rolled out in all 216 Metropolitan, Municipal and
districts across the country, and will involve the supply of farm resources
such as high yielding and improved seedlings to participating farmers.
Peasant farmers
skeptical
Meanwhile,
ahead of the launch, the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana is skeptical about the project.
According
to the Association, the mode of selection of beneficiaries for the project was
wrong, and will eventually collapse the programme.
The
Programme Officer for the Association, Charles Kwowe Nyaaba, in a Citi
News interview said the current plan excludes over 70% of peasant farmers.
“The
target beneficiaries in the first place are wrong. They are targeting the
large-scale farmers, and not small scale farmers, but we all know that the
farmer population in Ghana, we have over 80% being small-scale farmers.”
Mode of recruiting
extension officers wrong
He
also lamented that, the approach of recruiting service personnel as agric
extension officers was not the best.
“If
you go to the Ministry of Agriculture at the district level, you have the
extension officers there who are not able to visit farming communities because
of lack of logistics. You leave all these people hanging there and you say you
are bringing National Service personnel to train them to go and train the
farmers. At the end of the day, if you don’t take care, they would rather go
and be learning from the farmers and that is not going to give us the impact
that we are looking for,” he said.
Source:
citifmonline
Quality of education
will improve in VR - Letsa
Dr.
Archibald Yao Letsa, Volta Regional Minister, has said efforts were being made
to improve the quality of education and academic performance of pupils and
students in the Region.
Speaking
at a durbar in his honor at Klefe, his hometown, he said quality education was
key to harnessing the potentials of the people and promised to work towards its
improvement.
Dr.
Letsa expressed gratitude to the chiefs and people of Klefe Traditional Area
for the honor and asked for their support and prayers.
Togbe
Koku Dzaga XI, Paramount Chief of Klefe, earlier bemoaned the fallen standard
of education the Region and said the time to act was now and also called for
investments in the Region’s tourism sector.
The
durbar was attended by chiefs, government appointees and directors of public
and private institutions.
Dr.
Letsa received citations from the chiefs and people of Klefe, Klikor and his
1973 middle school year group.
GNA
Protect
Adolescent Reproductive health
By
Alexander Nyarko Yeboah
Mrs.
Grace Eddy Amewu, Focal person for adolescent health, Tema Metropolitan Health
Directorate, has called on parents to help protect the sexual and reproductive
health of their adolescent children by opening up to them.
She
said that even though the teenage pregnancy rate within the Metropolis was
decreasing, the menace had the potential to destroy the life of the Ghanaian
adolescent and the future of the country.
In
a presentation to the Assembly Members of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA),
she hinted on the need to join forces to protect young people from unhealthy
sexual practices.
She
told a story of a teenage boy who started having sex at the age of ten and had
been engaging in the practice for the past four years.
According
to her, such cases come to them every day, and they are making efforts to help
the children come out of them.
She
said teenagers had confidence in talking to health workers instead of their
parents the adolescents see them as willing listeners and not judgemental
adding that “teenagers complain that their parents ignore them anytime issues
of sex and sexuality come up, and therefore are forced to seek help from wrong
people.”
According
to her, “Adolescents have a lot of issues, and until they become your friends
you will not understand them. Those who have wet dreams, struggle a lot; so if
you are not there to help them go through that stage of development, they end
up taking advice from other people. They have issues with sexuality,
masturbation, menstruation and non-drug
addictions.”
She
disclosed that Tema Newtown had more teenage pregnancies in the Metropolis and
said” it could be due to poor standards of living in that community.
“I
was at Manhean Health Center and saw two adolescents in the labour ward. One
was seventeen and the other was fourteen years, and they were lying there
crying whilst waiting to deliver,” she informed.
According
to her, “Adolescents are not left out of the maternal death
trail.
2015 and 2016 had two cases each of such deaths due to unsafe abortions.”
Mrs.
Amewu appealed to Assembly Members to join the campaign to save young people
from risking their health through unsafe sexual practices adding that
adolescent health
issues
were not only for health workers because it was also a social problem that
needed the intervention of all community members”.
She
hinted that her outfit had reading materials and a platform where knowledge is
shared and discussed.
She
therefore appealed to the members to provide her with spaces in their
communities to host health and communication centres to share ideas on health
issues.
GNA
Corbyn makes election pledge to end Syria airstrikes
Airstrikes should be suspended and all parties should get back to the negotiating table in a bid to end the Syrian war, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said.
Corbyn told the BBC Monday that he supported an end to the UK’s airstrikes in the war-ravaged country, and said that it was in the interests of all parties to return to the negotiating table.
“I would say to President Trump ‘listen, it’s in nobody’s interests for this war to continue. Let’s get the Geneva process going quickly,” he told the interviewer.
“In the meantime, no more strikes. Have the UN investigation into the war crime of the use of chemical weapons in Syria and take it on from there.”
“I want us to say ‘listen, let’s get people around the table quickly.’ A way of achieving that – suspend the strikes? Possibly. The point has to be to bring about a political solution.”
As Labour leader Corbyn opposed extending bombing to Syria in the 2015 vote on the issue, but gave his MPs a free hand to decide for themselves.
In the end, 66 Labour MPs backed the bombing.
Asked if he would use the UK’s extrajudicial drone assassination program to go after terrorist leaders like Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Corbyn asked: “What is the objective here?
“Is the objective to start more strikes which may kill many innocent people, as has happened, or is the objective to get a political solution in Syria? Approach it from that position,” he said.
“I think the leader of Isis not being around would be helpful. I am no supporter or defender in any way whatsoever of Isis. But I would also argue that the bombing campaign has killed a large number of civilians who are virtually prisoners of Isis, so you have got to think about these things.”
Corbyn’s comments came as Defence Secretary Michael Fallon took to the airwaves to blast the Labour leader.
In an interview with Sky News, Fallon said Corbyn’s approach to defense was “staggeringly irresponsible” and “chaotic” and would risk the security of the country if he was elected.
Asia:
CHINA
Man Rescues 1,000 Dogs From Dog Meat Festival in China
Animal activists saved more than a thousand caged dogs
from slaughter at the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China, where people buy dog
meat for consumption, believing that it helps ward off the heat.
The controversial annual Dog Meat Festival kicked
off in China's Yulin city on Tuesday. About 10,000 dogs and cats
spent their last days in tiny cages to be slaughtered and eaten
in the course of 10 days.
It is estimated that 10 to 20 million dogs are
killed for their meat every year in China. The tradition
of eating dog meat dates back some 500 years. The locals believe that
eating dog meat helps cope with the heat; however, the Yulin festival is a
relatively new one, having begun only in recent years. According
to the local government, the festival does not even have official backing
and is instead run by private businesses. The cruel event has faced
widespread domestic and international opposition, and over 11 million have
signed a petition calling for it to be banned forever.
American activist Marc Ching travelled to Yulin
before the start of the festival on his seventh mission
to Asia, and started work trying to rescue the frightened caged dogs.
By the end of Tuesday, Ching and his companion had managed to save
over a thousand dogs from six slaughterhouses.
The activist has employed different ways to shut
down the slaughterhouses: sometimes he pretended to be a buyer and
shipped exhausted animals back to the US for rehabilitation,
in other cases he managed to persuade the slaughterhouse owners
to give up the trade for a chance to make a new start
with Ching's help.
The Humane Society International arrived to support
the Yulin slaughterhouse dog rescue effort, Ching wrote on his Facebook
page. They will help dogs find a new life free from darkness and
suffering, in some of the best homes around the world.
Dead alien found on
Mars
Ancient
remains of an extraterrestrial creature were found on Mars. The
creature died millions of years ago, ufologists believe.
According
to them, the alien was a representative of the civilisation that
once existed on Mars. The sensational statement was made by a group of American
scientists from the National Space Agency, who could see outlines of an alien
creature on a photo of the surface of Mars.
The
body of the alien creature was crushed by a stone slab. According to the
researchers, the creature's leg and arm are sticking out from the slab. The
photo currently undergoes further analysis.
Pravda.Ru
Korean Peninsula
Brinksmanship
 |
| President Trump (L) fearless leader of North Korea (R) |
By Stephen Lendman
For a day at least, Washington and Pyongyang stepped
back from the brink.
The DPRK refrained from conducting an expected sixth
nuclear test, likely postponed, not cancelled.
Trump showed restraint by not belligerently reining
on North Korea’s Day of the Sun commemorative parade, honoring its
founder Kim Il-sung’s 105th birthday.
All quiet on the eastern front held on Saturday,
fireworks perhaps coming later at a time of Trump’s choosing.
Potentially devastating Korean peninsula war threatens
the entire region, catastrophic if nuclear confrontation erupts.
The weekend wasn’t entirely calm. Early Sunday, the DPRK
launched an unidentified ballistic missile. Reportedly it plunged into the sea
after exploding.
South Korea’s military believes it was a Pukguksong-2
intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of traveling up to 1,000 km.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry called the test a threat
to regional security. The Pentagon’s March 14 B61-12 gravity nuclear bomb test
was practically unnoticed until the US National Nuclear Security Administration’s
April 13 announcement, saying:
“This event is the first of a series that will be
conducted over the next three years to qualify the B61-12 for service. Three
successful development flight tests were conducted in 2015.”
No furor followed the test or announcement. US imperial
madness is humanity’s greatest threat.
North Korea threatens no one. Throughout its history, it
never attacked another country – at war from June 1950 to July 1953 in
self-defense after being attacked.
Pyongyang justifiably fears another US war, believing
its nuclear deterrent is its best defense. If America normalized relations long
ago, the DPRK never would have developed nuclear weapons.
Washington’s rage to dominate overrides prioritizing
world peace and stability – anathema notions for a nation always at war,
enemies invented to justify waging it on humanity.
Korean affairs analyst Cui Zhiying said
“North Korea is now under immense pressure, especially
from the US, and Pyongyang wanted to show a united front without making another
nuclear test (at this time), a move deemed intolerable by the international
community and that might trigger military conflict.”
China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
researcher Xu Guangyu believes Pyongyang’s Saturday weapons display and
missile test showed its military strength and “capability to fight back (if)
necessary.”
Its commemorative parade showed “restraint. It is
reluctant to fire the first shot and shoulder the responsibility for provoking
conflict on the peninsula.”
Refraining from a nuclear test on Kim Il-Sung’s
birthday doesn’t mean future ones aren’t coming. Five were conducted earlier,
likely more ahead, perhaps delayed for now given current heightened tensions.
On Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang
Yi told Sergey Lavrov
Beijing “is ready to coordinate closely with Russia to
help cool down as quickly as possible the situation on the peninsula and
encourage the parties concerned to resume dialogue.”
He also warned Pyongyang and Washington that if war
breaks out, both sides will share blame “and pay the corresponding price.”
Trump is at his Florida residence for the Easter
weekend. Congress is in recess until April 23.
Pyongyang’s Day of the Sun commemoration passed without
imminent threat of war erupting.
Korean expert Bruce Cumings explained North
Korea has around “15,000 underground facilities of a national security
nature,” the world’s fourth largest military, about “200,000 highly
trained special forces,” 10,000 artillery pieces, mobile missiles able to
hit all US regional military bases, and nukes more than twice as powerful as
the Hiroshima bomb.
While no match against America’s military might, it’s
able to cause enormous damage if attacked.
“Why on earth would Pyongyang not seek a nuclear
deterrent,” Cumings asked? “(T)his crucial (logic) doesn’t enter mainstream
American discourse,” he explained.
“History doesn’t matter, until it does – when it rears
up and smacks you in the face.”
The Korean peninsula remains a hugely dangerous
tinderbox. Trump’s rage for warmaking could ignite an uncontrollable firestorm.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled
“Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Globalization and
Neoliberal Policies. Are there Alternatives to Plundering the Earth, Making War
and Destroying the Planet?
By Prof. Claudia von Werlhof
This article by renowned author and political scientist
Professor Claudia von Werlhof was first published by GR in 2008.
Are there alternatives to plundering the earth, making
war and destroying the planet
This text is based on a panel presentation together with
Ferdinand Lacina, former Austrian Minister of Finance and Ewald Nowotny,
President of the BAWAG-Bank during the “Dallinger Conference”, AK Wien,
November 21, 2005.
Original German Title: “Alternativen zur neoliberalen
Globalisierung, oder: Die Globalisierung des Neoliberalismus und seine Folgen,
Wien, Picus 2007.
Claudia von-Werlhof is prominent writer and academic,
Professor of Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of
Innsbruck, Austria.
(Translation: from the German by Gabriel Kuhn)
Introduction
Is there an alternative to plundering the earth?
Is there an alternative to making war?
Is there an alternative to destroying the planet?
No one asks these questions because they seem absurd.
Yet, no one can escape them either. They have to be asked. Ultimate absurdity
has taken hold of our lives. We are not only headed towards the world’s
annihilation – we are headed towards it with ever increasing speed. The reason
is the “globalization” of so-called “neoliberalism”. Its motto is TINA: “There
Is No Alternative!” It is the deal of deals, the big feast, the final battle –
Armageddon.
Wrong? Exaggerated?
Let us first clarify what globalization and
neoliberalism are, where they come from, who they are directed by, what they
claim, what they do, why their effects are so fatal, why they will fail, and
why people nonetheless cling to them. Then, let us look at the responses of
those who are not – or will not – be able to live with the consequences they
cause.
1. What Is “Neoliberal Globalization”?
1.1 TINA – Supposedly without Alternative
Before talking about the topic of this panel –
alternatives to neoliberal globalization, or: the globalization of
neoliberalism – one has to acknowledge that there is indeed a problem here. And
not only that. One also has to define what the problem is exactly.
This is where the difficulties begin. For a good twenty
years now we have been told that there is no alternative to neoliberal
globalization/the globalization of neoliberalism, and that, in fact, no such
alternative is needed either. Over and over again, we have been confronted with
the TINA-concept: “There Is No Alternative!” The “iron lady”, Margaret
Thatcher, was one of those who reiterated this belief without end – it is an
embarrassment to women when one of their own displays such a politics of
callousness once she has gained power.
The TINA-concept prohibits all thought. It follows the
rationale that there is no point in analyzing and discussing neoliberalism and
so-called globalization because they are inevitable. Whether we condone what is
happening or not does not matter, it is happening anyway. There is no point in
trying to understand. Hence: Go with it! Kill or be killed!
Some go as far as suggesting that neoliberalism and its
globalization – meaning, a specific economic system that developed within
specific socio-historical circumstances – is nothing less but a law of nature.
In turn, “human nature” is supposedly reflected by the character of the
system’s economic subjects: egotistical, ruthless, greedy and cold. This, we
are told, works towards everyone’s benefit.
The question remains, of course, why Adam Smith’s
“invisible hand” (which supposedly guides the economic process towards the
common good, even if this remains imperceptible to the individual, Binswanger
1998) has become a “visible fist”? While a tiny minority reaps enormous
benefits of today’s economic liberalism (none of which will remain, of course),
the vast majority of the earth’s population, yes the earth itself, suffer
hardship to an extent that puts their very survival at risk. The damage done
seems irreversible.
All over the world media outlets – especially television
stations – avoid addressing the problem. A common excuse is that it cannot be
explained (Mies/Werlhof 2003, p. 23ff, 36ff). The true reason is, of course,
the media’s corporate control. Neoliberalism means corporate politics.
Unfortunately, this still evades the public. In most
Western countries – as, for example, in Austria – “neoliberalism” is not even
commonly accepted as a term, and even “globalization” struggles to find
recognition (Salmutter 1998, Dimmel/Schmee 2005). In the Austrian example, a
curious provincialism reigns that pretends the country was somehow excluded
from everything happening around it. If one listened to former chancellor
Schüssel, it sounded like Austria knew no problems at all. The logic seems that
if there is no term, there is no problem either. Unnamable, unspeakable,
unthinkable: non-existing. Felix Austria.
Although Austria’s decision to join the European Union
in 1995 bore the same consequences that neoliberalism bears everywhere, the
connections remain ignored. This despite the fact that the European Union is –
next to, and partly even ahead of, the US – the main driving force behind
neoliberalism and its globalization. But let us take one step at a time…
1.2 What Does the “Neo” in Neoliberalism Stand for?
Neoliberalism as an economic politics began in Chile in
1973. Its inauguration consisted of a US-organized coup against a
democratically elected socialist president and the installment of a bloody
military dictatorship notorious for systematic torture. This was the only way
to turn the neoliberal model of the so-called “Chicago Boys” under the
leadership of Milton Friedman – a student of Austrian-born Friedrich von Hayek
– into reality.
The predecessor of the neoliberal model is the economic
liberalism of the 18th and 19th century and its notion of “free trade”.
Goethe’s assessment at the time was: “Free trade, piracy, war – an inseparable
three!” (Faust 2)
At the center of both old and new economic liberalism
lies “self-interest and individualism; segregation of ethical principles and
economic affairs, in other words: a process of ‘de-bedding’ economy from
society; economic rationality as a mere cost-benefit calculation and profit
maximization; competition as the essential driving force for growth and
progress; specialization and the replacement of a subsistence economy with
profit-oriented foreign trade (‘comparative cost advantage’); and the
proscription of public (state) interference with market forces” (Mies 2005, p.
34).
Where the new economic liberalism outdoes the old is in
its global claim. Today’s economic liberalism functions as a model for each and
everyone, all parts of the economy, all sectors of society, yes, of life/nature
itself. As a consequence, the once “de-bedded” economy now claims to “im-bed”
everything, including political power. Furthermore, a new, twisted “economic
ethics” (and with it a certain idea of “human nature”) emerges that mocks
everything from so-called “do-gooders” to altruism to selfless help to care for
others to a notion of responsibility (Gruen 1997).
This goes as far as claiming that the common good
depends entirely on the uncontrolled egoism of the individual and, especially,
on the prosperity of transnational corporations. The allegedly necessary
“freedom” of the economy – which, paradoxically, only means the freedom of
corporations – hence consists of a freedom from responsibility and commitment
to society. In turn, the rational cost-benefit calculation aiming at maximized
profit not only serves as a model for corporate production and the associated
service industry and trade, but also for the public sector that has so far been
exempted from such demands (in fact, it has historically been defined by this
exemption). The same goes for the sector of reproduction, especially the
household.
The maximization of profit itself must occur within the
shortest possible time; this means, preferably, through speculation and
“shareholder value”. It must meet as few obstacles as possible. Today, global
economic interests outweigh not only extra-economic concerns but also national
economic considerations since corporations today see themselves beyond both
community and nation (Sassen 2000). A “level playing field” is created that
offers the global players the best possible conditions. This playing field
knows of no legal, social, ecological, cultural or national “barriers”
(Mies/Werlhof 2003, p. 24). As a result, economic competition plays out on a
market that is free of all non-market, extra-economic or “protectionist” influences
– unless they serve the interests of the “big players” (the corporations), of
course. The corporations’ interests – their maximal “growth” and “progress” –
take on complete priority. This is rationalized by alleging that their
well-being means the well-being of small enterprises and workshops as well.
The difference between the new and the old economic
liberalism can first be articulated in quantitative terms: After capitalism
went through a series of ruptures and challenges – caused by the “competition
of systems”, the crisis of capitalism, post-war “Keynesianism” with its social
and welfare state tendencies, internal mass consumer demand (so-called
“Fordism”), and the objective of full employment in the North – the liberal
economic goals of the past are now not only euphorically resurrected but they
are also “globalized”. The main reason is indeed that the “competition of
systems” is gone. However, to conclude that this confirms the victory of
“capitalism” and the “golden West” over “dark socialism” is only one possible
interpretation. Another – opposing – interpretation is to see the “modern world
system” (which contains both capitalism and socialism, Wallerstein 1979, 2004)
as having hit a general crisis which causes total and merciless competition
over global resources while leveling the way for “investment” opportunities,
i.e. the valorization of capital.
The ongoing globalization of neoliberalism demonstrates
which interpretation is right. Not least, because the differences between the
old and the new economic liberalism can not only be articulated in quantitative
terms but in qualitative ones too. What we are witnessing are completely new
phenomena: Instead of a democratic “complete competition” between many small
enterprises enjoying the “freedom of the market”, only the big corporations
win. In turn, they create new market oligopolies and monopolies of previously
unknown dimensions. The market hence only remains free for them, while it is
rendered “unfree” for all others who are condemned to an existence of
dependency (as enforced producers, workers and consumers) or excluded from the
market altogether (if they have neither anything to sell or buy). About 50% of
the world’s population fall into this group today, and the percentage is rising
(George 2001).
Anti-trust laws have lost all power since the
transnational corporations set the norms. It is the corporations – not “the
market” as an anonymous mechanism or “invisible hand” – that determine today’s
rules of trade, for example prices and legal regulations. This happens outside
any political control. Speculation with an average 20% profit margin (Altvater
2005) edges out honest producers who become “unprofitable”. Money becomes too
precious for comparatively non-profitable, long-term projects, or projects that
“only” – how audacious! – serve a good life. Money instead “travels upwards”
and disappears. Financial capital determines more and more what the markets are
and do (Altvater/Mahnkopf 1996). In fact, it has by now – through Nixon’s separation
of the dollar from the gold standard in 1971 – “emancipated” from productive
capital und forms its own “fiscal bubble” multiplying the money volume that is
covered by the production of the many (Lietaer 2006, Kennedy 1990). Moreover,
these days most of us are – exactly like all governments – in debt. It is
financial capital that has all the money – we have none (Creutz 1995).
The consequences of neoliberalism are:
Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed
out of the market, forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations
because their performances are “below average” in comparison to speculation –
rather: spookulation – wins. The public sector, which has historically been
defined as a sector of not-for-profit economy and administration, is “slimmed”
and its “profitable” parts (“gems”) handed to corporations (“privatized”). As a
consequence, social services that are necessary for our existence disappear.
Small and medium private businesses – which, until recently, employed 80% of the
workforce and provided “normal working conditions” – are affected by these
developments as well. The alleged correlation between economic growth and
secure employment is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of
businesses, jobs are lost (Mies/Werlhof 2003, p. 7ff);
If there are any new jobs, most are “precarious”,
meaning that they are only available temporarily and badly paid. One job is
usually not enough to make a living (Ehrenreich 2001). This means that the
working conditions in the North become akin to those in the South and the
working conditions of men akin to those of women – a trend diametrically
opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations now leave for the South
(or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor without “union
affiliation”. This has already been happening since the 1970s in the “Free
Production Zones” (FPZs, “world market factories” or “maquiladoras”), where
most of the world’s computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods are
produced (Fröbel/Heinrichs/Kreye 1977). The FPZs lie in areas where century-old
colonial-capitalist and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the
availability of the cheap labor needed (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies/Werlhof 1988).
The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to armaments is
a particularly troubling development (Chossudovsky 2003).
It is not only commodity production that is “outsourced”
and located in the FPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of
the so-called “Third Industrial Revolution”, meaning the development of new
information and communication technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely
due to computerization, also in administrative fields (Fröbel et al. 1977). The
combination of the principles of “high tech” and “low wage”/“no wage” (always
denied by “progress” enthusiasts) guarantees a “comparative cost advantage” in
foreign trade. This will eventually lead to “Chinese salaries” in the West. A
potential loss of Western consumers is not seen as a threat. A corporate
economy does not care whether consumers are European, Chinese or Indian.
The means of production become concentrated in fewer and
fewer hands, especially since finance capital – rendered precarious itself –
controls asset value ever more aggressively. New forms of private property are
created, not least through the “clearance” of public property and the
transformation of formerly public and small-scale private services and
industries to a corporate business sector. This concerns primarily fields that
have long been (at least partly) excluded from the logics of profit – e.g.
education, health, energy, or water supply/disposal. New forms of so-called
“enclosures” emerge from today’s total commercialization of formerly
small-scale private or public industries and services, of the “commons”, and of
natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity or
geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc. (Isla 2005). As
far as the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing
frantic efforts to bring these under private control as well (Hepburn 2005).
All these new forms of private property are essentially
created by (more or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they
are a modified continuation of the history of so-called “original accumulation”
(Werlhof 1991, 2003a) which has expanded globally following to the motto:
“Growth through expropriation!”
Most people have less and less access to the means of
production, and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The
destruction of the welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can
rely on the community to provide for them in times of need. Our existence
relies exclusively on private, i.e. expensive, services that are often of much
worse quality and much less reliable than public services. (It is a myth that
the private always outdoes the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply
formerly only known by the colonial South. The old claim that the South will
eventually develop into the North is proven wrong. It is the North that
increasingly develops into the South. We are witnessing the latest form of
“development”: namely, a world system of underdevelopment (Frank 1969).
Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand (Mies 2005). This might even
dawn on “development aid” workers soon.
It is usually women who are called upon to
counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”)
in the household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on
horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid
“housewifized” work outside (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1988). Yet,
commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework
becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial
benefits for the women who do the work (Werlhof 2004).
Not least because of this, women are increasingly
coerced into prostitution (Isla 2003, 2005), one of today’s biggest global
industries. This illustrates two things: a) how little the “emancipation” of
women actually leads to “equal terms” with men; and b) that “capitalist
development” does not imply increased “freedom” in wage labor relations, as the
Left has claimed for a long time (Wallerstein 1979). If the latter was the
case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism once it
reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely.
Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than
ever before, exist in the “world system” (Bales 2001). The authoritarian model
of the “Free Production Zones” is conquering the East and threatening the
North. The redistribution of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated
speed – from the bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has
never been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are
facing.
It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end
of colonialism but, to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new
“colonization of the world” (Mies 2005) points back to the beginnings of the
“modern world system” in the “long 16th century” (Wallerstein 1979, Frank 2005,
Mies 1986), when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation and colonial
transformation allowed for the rise and “development” of Europe. The so-called
“children’s diseases” of modernity keep on haunting it, even in old age. They
are, in fact, the main feature of modernity’s latest stage. They are expanding
instead of disappearing.
Where there is no South, there is no North; where there
is no periphery, there is no center; where there is no colony, there is no – in
any case no “Western” – civilization (Werlhof 2007a).
Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly
becoming a corporate colony (particularly of German corporations). This,
however, does not keep it from being an active colonizer itself, especially in
the East (Hofbauer 2003, Salzburger 2006).
Social, cultural, traditional and ecological considerations
are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global resources
that we still have – natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools – have
turned into objects of “utilization”. Rapid ecological destruction through
depletion is the consequence. If one makes more profit by cutting down trees
than by planting them, then there is no reason not to cut them (Lietaer 2006).
Neither the public nor the state interferes, despite global warming and the
obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining rain forests will
irreversibly destroy the earth’s climate – not to even speak of the many other
negative effects of such action (Raggam 2004). Climate, animal, plants, human
and general ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of
the corporations – no matter that the rain forest is no renewable resource and
that the entire earth’s ecosystem depends on it. If greed – and the rationalism
with which it is economically enforced – really was an inherent anthropological
trait, we would have never even reached this day.
The commander of the Space Shuttle that circled the
earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning”. She meant the
Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without
it there will be no more rain clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it
needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo’s
natural resources that are the reason for the wars that plague the region
today. After all, one needs petrol, diamonds, and coltan for mobile phones.
The forests of Asia have been burning for many years
too, and in late 2005 the Brazilian parliament has approved the clearing of 50%
of the remaining Amazon. Meanwhile, rumors abound that Brazil and Venezuela have
already sold their rights to the earth’s biggest remaining rain forest – not to
the US-Americans, but to the supposedly “left” Chinese who suffer from chronic
wood shortage and cannot sustain their enormous economic growth and economic
superpower ambitions without securing global resources.
Given today’s race for the earth’s last resources, one
wonders what the representatives of the World Trade Organization (WTO) thought
when they accepted China as a new member in 2001. They probably had the giant
Chinese market in mind but not the giant Chinese competition. After all, a
quarter of the world’s population lives in China. Of course it has long been
established that a further expansion of the Western lifestyle will lead to
global ecological collapse – the faster, the sooner (Sarkar 2001).
Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities,
i.e. everything becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which truly
means “liquidation”: the transformation of all into liquid money). In its
neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less
cost-intensive and preferably “wageless” commodity production. The objective is
to transform everyone and everything into commodities (Wallerstein 1979),
including life itself. We are racing blindly towards the violent and absolute
conclusion of this “mode of production”, namely total
capitalization/liquidation by “monetarization” (Genth 2006).
We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of the
market – we are witnessing what can be described as “market fundamentalism”.
People believe in the market as if it was a god. There seems to be a sense that
nothing could ever happen without it. Total global maximized accumulation of
money/capital as abstract wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity.
A “free” world market for everything has to be established – a world market
that functions according to the interests of the corporations and capitalist
money. The installment of such a market proceeds with dazzling speed. It
creates new profit possibilities where they have not existed before, e.g. in
Iraq, Eastern Europe or China.
One thing remains generally overlooked: The abstract
wealth created for accumulation implies the destruction of nature as concrete
wealth. The result is a “hole in the ground” (Galtung), and next to it a
garbage dump with used commodities, outdated machinery, and money without
value. However, once all concrete wealth (which today consists mainly of the
last natural resources) will be gone, abstract wealth will disappear as well.
It will, in Marx’ words, “evaporate”. The fact that abstract wealth is not real
wealth will become obvious, and so will the answer to the question which wealth
modern economic activity has really created. In the end it is nothing but
monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually or on accounts) that
constitutes a “monoculture” controlled by a tiny minority. Diversity is
suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive. And
really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production nor
money?
The nihilism of our economic system is evident. The
whole world will be transformed into money – and then it will “disappear”.
After all, money cannot be eaten. What no one seems to consider is the fact
that it is impossible to re-transform commodities, money, capital and machinery
into nature or concrete wealth. It seems that underlying all economic
“development” is the assumption that “resources”, the “sources of wealth”
(Marx), are renewable and everlasting – just like the “growth” they create
(Werlhof 2001 a). The treachery of this assumption becomes harder and harder to
deny. For example, the “peak” in oil production has just been passed – meaning
we are beyond exploiting 50% of all there is.
Ironically though, it seems like the prospect of some
resources coming to an end only accelerates the economic race. Everything
natural is commercialized in dimensions not seen before, with unprecedented
speed and by means of ever more advanced technology. The ultimate goal remains
to create new possibilities of investment and profit, in other words: new
possibilities of growth able to create new accumulation possibilities – future
ones included. The material limits of such a politics become clearer day by
day: the global ecological, economic, monetary, social, and political collapse
(Diamond 2005) it inevitably leads to has already begun. “Global West End.”
How else can we understand the fact that in times when
civilization has reached its alleged zenith, a human being starves every second
(Ziegler 2004)? How can such a politics be taken seriously? It is in every
sense a crime. Unfortunately, the facade of trivial “rationality” – what Hannah
Arendt called the “banality of evil” – behind which it operates, still makes it
invisible to many. People do not recognize its true character. This is a result
of the enormous crisis of spirit and soul that accompanies the material crisis
that many of us remain unaware of; namely, the annihilation of matter through
its transformation into commodity, which we, in delusion, call “materialism” (I
call it “patriarchy”, Werlhof 2001 a). The original richness of mat(t)er
(“mother earth”) is now giving way to a barren wasteland that will remain
unrecognized by many as long as their belief in “progress” will block their
views. The last phase of patriarchy and capitalism is not only without sense
but it will soon be without life as well: kaputalism.
It seems impossible not to ask oneself how the entire
economy came to follow one motive only: the monism of making money. Especially
since this does not only apply to the economy, but also to politics, science,
arts and even our social relations.
The notion that capitalism and democracy are one is
proven a myth by neoliberalism and its “monetary totalitarianism” (Genth 2006).
The primacy of politics over economy has been lost. Politicians of all parties
have abandoned it. It is the corporations that dictate politics. Where
corporate interests are concerned, there is no place for democratic convention
or community control. Public space disappears. The “res publica” turns into a
“res privata”, or – as we could say today – a “res privata transnationale” (in
its original Latin meaning, “privare” means “to deprive”). Only those in power
still have rights. They give themselves the licenses they need, from the
“license to plunder” to the “license to kill” (Mies/Werlhof 2003, Mies 2005).
Those who get in their way or challenge their “rights” are vilified,
criminalized and to an increasing degree defined as “terrorists”, or, in the
case of defiant governments, as “rogue states” – a label that usually implies
threatened or actual military attack, as we can see in the cases of Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe Syria and Iran in the near future. US President
Bush has even spoken of the possibility of “preemptive” nuclear strikes should
the US feel endangered by weapons of mass destruction (Chossudovsky 2005). The
European Union did not object (Chossudovsky 2006).
Neoliberalism and war are two sides of the same coin
(Altvater/Chossudovsky/Roy/Serfati 2003, Mies 2005). Free trade, piracy, and
war are still “an inseparable three” – today maybe more so than ever. War is
not only “good for the economy” (Hendersen 1996), but is indeed its driving
force and can be understood as the “continuation of economy with other means”.
War and economy have become almost indistinguishable (Werlhof 2005 b). Wars
about resources (Klare 2001) – especially oil and water – have already begun.
The Gulf Wars are the most obvious examples. Militarism once again appears as
the “executor of capital accumulation” (Luxemburg 1970) – potentially
everywhere and enduringly.
Human rights and rights of sovereignty have been
transferred from people, communities and governments to corporations (Clarke
1998). The notion of the people as a sovereign body has practically been
abolished. We have witnessed a coup of sorts. The political systems of the West
and the nation state as guarantees for and expression of the international
division of labor in the modern world system are increasingly dissolving
(Sassen 2000). Nation states are developing into “periphery states” according
to the inferior role they play in the proto-despotic “New World Order”
(Hardt/Negri 2001, Chomsky 2003). Democracy appears outdated. After all, it
“hinders business” (Werlhof 2005 a).
The “New World Order” implies a new division of labor
that does no longer distinguish between North and South, East and West – today,
everywhere is South. An according International Law is established which
effectively functions from top to bottom (“top-down”) and eliminates all local
and regional communal rights. And not only that: many such rights are rendered
invalid both retroactively and for the future (cf. the “roll back” and “stand
still” clauses in the WTO agreements, Mies/Werlhof 2003).
The logic of neoliberalism as a sort of totalitarian
neo-mercantilism is that all resources, all markets, all money, all profits,
all means of production, all “investment opportunities”, all rights, and all
power belong to the corporations only. To paraphrase Richard Sennett (2005):
“Everything to the Corporations!” One might add: “Now!”
The corporations are free to do whatever they please
with what they get. Nobody is allowed to interfere. Ironically, we are expected
to rely on them to find a way out of the crisis we are in. This puts the entire
globe at risk since responsibility is something the corporations do not have or
know. The times of social contracts are gone (Werlhof 2003 a). In fact,
pointing out the crisis alone has become a crime and all critique will soon be
defined as “terror” and persecuted as such (Chossudovsky 2005).
I.3 Neoliberal Politics in Action
The logic of neoliberalism does not remain in the
economic sphere alone. Instead, it enters and transforms politics and hence –
since the events in Chile in 1973 – creates global injustice. The injustice’s
executors are Western governments, corporate entities (like the International
Chamber of Commerce, ICC, the European Round Table of Industrialists, ERT, the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, the European
Services Network, ESN, the US Coalition of Service Industries, USCSI, etc.),
and the post-WW-II Bretton-Woods institutions like the World Bank (WB) the
International Monetary Fond (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO – the
continuation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT, abolished in
1994) (Perkins 2004).
The theory of capitalism embodying a “natural law”
receives massive support in the neoliberal era. This helps not only to
globalize capitalism’s power, but also to accelerate the globalization of
neoliberalism. “Speed kills” is the obscene slogan used to describe this
development by many Western politicians. This confirms that they are aware of what
is going on and of what they are doing. The slogan hints at the fact that once
neoliberal “reforms” (which actually “deform”) gain a certain momentum, it
becomes impossible for the people affected to keep up with what is happening –
the reforms are decided above their heads and implemented behind their backs.
Once the consequences kick in – which usually happens with a short delay –
those responsible are long gone and/or there is no legal way to “rectify”
anything (Werlhof 2005 a). Due to such foul play, protest and resistance are
always late. Once they arise, everything has already become irrevocable reality
– it appears as if a “natural” catastrophe has taken place.
It is the same politicians who tell us that there is no
stopping globalization and that their “reform politics” are the solution and
not the problem, and who have, in fact, introduced and enforced the global
neoliberalism they describe as an inescapable part of history. They have done
this within nation state policies as well as through participation in the
bodies of the EU and the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. Of course we have
never heard any proper explanation as to why they have done this (and, in fact,
continue to do so). This goes seemingly for all political parties – without
exception (?) – that retain some kind of power or nestle in its proximity
(Dimmel/Schmee 2005). Some of them even appear to have forgotten that just a
short while ago they still knew alternatives and held opposite views. What has
happened to them? Were they bought? Threatened? Extorted? “Brainwashed”?
One thing is clear: The politicians do not suffer from
the misery they create and justify every day. They act as employees of
corporations and take care of the everyday political business the corporations
cannot or do not want to take care of themselves. But again, let us take one
step at a time…
Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment
Programs, SAPs, of the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of
neoliberalism. These programs are levied against the countries of the South
which can be extorted due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military
interventions and wars help to take possession of the assets that still remain,
secure resources, install neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush
resistance movements (which are cynically labeled as “IMF uprisings”), and
facilitate the lucrative business of reconstruction (Chossudovsky 2002, Mies
2005, Bennholdt-Thomsen/Faraclas/Werlhof 2001).
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
introduced neoliberalism in Anglo-America. In 1989, the so-called “Washington
Consensus” was formulated. It claimed to lead to global freedom, prosperity and
economic growth through “deregulation, liberalization and privatization”. This
has become the credo and promise of all neoliberals. Today we know that the
promise has come true for the corporations only – not for anybody else.
In the Middle East, the Western support for Saddam
Hussein in the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, and the Gulf War of the
early 1990s, announced the permanent US presence in the world’s most contested
oil region.
In continental Europe, neoliberalism began with the
crisis in Yugoslavia caused by the SAPs of the World Bank and the IMF. The
country was heavily exploited, fell apart, and finally beset by a civil war
over its last remaining resources (Chossudovsky 2002). Since the NATO war in
1999 (Richter/Schnähling/Spoo 2000), the Balkans are fragmented, occupied and
geopolitically under neoliberal control. The region is of main strategic
interest for future oil and gas transport from the Caucasus to the West (for
example the “Nabucco” gas pipeline that is supposed to start operating from the
Caspian Sea through Turkey and the Balkans by 2011, Lietaer 2006). The reconstruction
of the Balkans is exclusively in the hands of Western corporations.
Many European Union contracts – for example those of
Maastricht and Amsterdam – are blatantly neoliberal (Boulboullé 2003). They
declare Europe a neoliberal zone and leave no alternative. All governments,
whether left, right, liberal or green, accept this. There is no analysis of the
connection between the politics of neoliberalism, its history, its background
and its effects on Europe and other parts of the world. Likewise, there is no
analysis of its connection to the new militarism.
If we take the example of Austria, approximately 66% of
its population voted for joining the EU in 1995 without having received any
information about what this actually meant. As a consequence, we first had the
so-called “austerity package”, an SAP equivalent, that started the
redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. Then tax reforms followed,
privatizations, the reform of the pension system. Finally, the Euro caused an
inflation of more than 30% and an according loss of income overnight (a fact
that is still officially denied). Today, the unemployment rates are rising and
working conditions deteriorate across the country (Sozialministerium 2005). 80%
of all laws regulating life in Austria are passed in Brussels. The Austrian
government’s actual power is minimal and it has practically given up its
responsibility for the population. However, more than ten years after joining
the EU, there is still no public debate on what neoliberalism has to do with
the EU, or what Austria has to do with Chile or the Congo.
When the WTO was founded in 1995, the EU member states
adapted all WTO agreements on neoliberal enforcement unanimously. These
agreements included: the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), the
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and the Agreement on
Agriculture (AoA) which has meanwhile been supplemented by the Agreement on
Non-Agricultural-Market Access (NAMA). All these agreements aim at a rapid
global implementation of corporate rule.
THE MAI, for example, demanded at a total liberation of
all corporate activities (defined as “investments”). These activities were to
be freed of all interference, legal bindings or state regulations. This should
have first applied to all 29 OECD member countries, and then be extended to all
150 countries assembled in the WTO (Mies/Werlhof 2003). It actually proved
impossible to implement the agreement in the form it was planned. Most of its
contents, however, have later been implemented by other means (see II).
Never before, not even in colonial times, have those in
power so completely been “freed” from all responsibility for their actions. No
wonder the MAI negotiations had been kept secret for years. However, the trade
unions knew, since they were part of the negotiations through the Trade Union
Advisory Committee (TUAC) that took part at the OECD conferences in Paris when
the MAI was discussed.
Information about the MAI was leaked to the public in
1997. Still, even then many political bodies, like the Austrian Ministry for
Economy, simply tried to play it down and accuse its critics of “cowardice”
(since they were supposedly afraid of “something new”), “xenophobia” (towards
the multinationals!) and “conspiracy theories”. No one ever spoke of
“theories”, though: the contents of the MAI – which truly transcend the wildest
imaginations – are no theories but the praxis of neoliberalism. And no one
spoke of “conspiracies” either – because there were none: governments were part
of the agreement, certain NGOs were, of course corporations, and even trade
unions. Then again, if all representatives of power can form their own
conspiracy, then this truly was one. In any case, the people of this planet,
who bear the agreement’s weight, were not informed – leave alone invited to
participate.
To a large degree, the contents of the MAI have become
reality through bilateral treaties and the North American Free Trade Agreement,
NAFTA, signed by the US, Canada and Mexico in 1994. The attempt to turn all of
the Americas into a Free Trade Zone, the FTAA, has so far failed, due to the
resistance of most Latin American governments – this, without doubt, provides
hope.
Negotiations of the GATS, the so-called General
Agreement on Trade in Services, have also been kept secret since the late
1990s. The GATS stands for total corporate “privatization” and
“commercialization” of life, and for the transformation of all of life’s dimensions
into “trade-related”, meaning: “commercial”, services or commodities
(Mies/Werlhof 2003, p. 7ff). The GATS can be understood as a global process of
successive “liberalization” of services. Suggestions are collected from all WTO
member countries and according demands directed back at them. It often enough
proves impossible to gain insight into what these demands actually contain.
“Sensitive” areas like education, health or water supply are reputedly excluded
from the negotiations, which is a proven lie. In Austria, for example, the
foundation of medical universities is a clear indication for the privatization
of health services, and the University Law of 2002, the UG02, is an indication
of the privatization of education at the tertiary level (Werlhof 2005 a). Such
privatizations have already been happening internationally for years. Many in
Austria saw the development as an expression of the conservative-right
“black-blue”1 coalition government and not of neoliberal politics – as if we
could have expected anything else from a “red-green”2 government. In any case,
consequences were, among others, the abolition of free university access,
democratic student rights, and tenure jobs. Instead, university fees and
authoritarian corporate structures were introduced – the latter demonstrating a
well hidden neoliberal absolutism.
Funding for the humanities was cut and an academic
“evaluation” system modeled after private business criteria implemented
(Progress 2002-2004). The re-organization und economization of academic
research and teaching in the name of higher investment possibilities and the
profitability of the transnational education industry are in full swing. The
rationale that has entered our universities is that good research is research
that brings money. This is truly a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy
(Werlhof 2003 b).
Privatization has been a main feature in Austrian
politics for many years now, especially concerning the country’s
infrastructure. The development is exemplified in the Cross-Border Leasing
(CBL) contracts which have been signed between many Austrian towns and US
investors (Rügemer 2004, Oberhöller 2006). The contracts gave the towns the
so-called “Barwertvorteil” (“present value advantage”), an immediate payment
the US investors provided as a cut from their tax exemptions for direct foreign
investment – in return, parts of the towns’ infrastructure were “leased” to
them. However, these parts were immediately “leased back” because it was still
the towns that were expected to maintain the infrastructure – but now for
foreign proprietors. Whatever happened with the payments, no one knows. What
one does know is that the loophole in the US tax law that made them possible
has been closed and that all CBL contracts have retroactively been declared
illegal in early 2004 (Der Standard 2005). It seems fair to assume that many
more such deals will eventually be revealed. Austrians then might finally get
to know about all the silverware that has been sold, as well as about the
extent and forms of corruption involved – a characteristic feature in
privatizations (Barlow/Clarke 2003, Shiva 2003).
In the GATS, services are defined as “everything that
cannot fall on your foot”, as someone once remarked ironically. This means that
they are no longer reduced to traditional services, but now extend to human
thoughts, feelings and actions as well. Even the elements – air, water, earth,
fire (energy) – are increasingly turned into commodities (in some places this
process is already completed) in order to make profit from the fact that we
have to breathe, drink, stand and move (Barlow 2001, Isla 2003).
In Nicaragua, there exist water privatization plans that
include fines of up to ten months’ salary if one was to hand a bucket of water
to a thirsty neighbor who cannot afford her own water connection (Südwind
2003). If it was up to the water corporations – the biggest of which are French
and German (Vivendi Universal, Suez, RWE), which means that the privatization
of water is mainly a European business – then the neighbor was rather to die of
thirst. After all, compassion only upsets business.
In India, whole rivers have been sold. Stories tell of
women who came to the river banks with buffalos, children and their laundry, as
they had done for generations, only to be called “water thieves” and chased
away by the police. There are even plans to sell the “holy mother Ganges”
(Shiva 2003).
Fresh water (just about 2% of the earth’s water
reserves) is as such neither renewable nor increasable and of such essential importance
to local ecosystems that it seems utterly absurd to treat it is a commodity
that can be traded away (Barlow/Clarke 2003, Shiva 2003). Nonetheless, this is
already happening. The effects, of course, are horrendous. Coca-Cola has left
parts of the southern Indian state of Kerala a virtual desert by exploiting
their entire ground water reserves.
According to the intentionally “weak” corporate
definition of the term, even “investments” can nowadays count as “services”.
There is, for example, much talk about “financial services” – which also means
that the MAI has basically been incorporated into the GATS. The GATS is, so to
speak, the MAI for the whole world. (There are also current attempts to
reintroduce the MAI on the OECD level.)
The so-called “Bolkestein Directive” (named after the
former EU Commissioner Bolkestein, cf. Dräger 2005) can be seen as one of the
GATS’ latest versions. It aims at a sort of privatization of salaries within
the EU. This means that migrant workers in the EU are paid according to the
salaries of their countries of origin, irrespective of the salary standards of
the countries they work in. Once this directive is in effect, all obstacles to
“Chinese labor conditions” are gone, and European trade unions will basically
be rendered obsolete. This makes the fact that they have shown so little
resistance against neoliberalism ever more curious.
The GATS can be considered the most radical expression
of militant neoliberalism so far because it formulates its ultimate ambition in
a way it has not been formulated before; namely, that no social, cultural,
public or natural sectors should remain outside of economic control and
exploitation – without exception. The GATS has hence to be understood as the
attempt to turn absolutely everything in this world into “commodities” or
commercial “services” in order to extract profit. This applies to all of nature
(animals and plants as much as natural elements and landscapes), the entire
human being (including its skin, hair, etc.) and all aspects of human life:
work and leisure, sexuality and pregnancy, birth and death, sickness and
distress, peace and war, desire and will, spirit and soul (Frauennetz Attac
2003).
What will happen when there are no non-commercial areas
left? What if the division between “life with value” and “life without value”
becomes normal social praxis? (This division was first heralded in National
Socialism as a quasi futuristic concept, Ruault 2006. No backwardness here!)
What if the way to deal with humans as so-called “human capital” starts to
define everyday life? What will happen when everything has become a commodity?
Is this even possible?
If it is, then life would essentially stop. Nothing
could be turned into commodities anymore and the commodified world would collapse
and decease – including us humans. This would mean general death – a death
without new life to follow. Since the commodity has no life of its own but is
only “life that once was”, it cannot produce new life (Werlhof 2006).
It is only because of thousands of years of patriarchal
“alchemical” thought (Werlhof 2001 a) that the (allegedly “creative”)
transformation of nature and living creatures into (partly or completely)
artificial things is not conceived as the destruction it is. Instead, it is
understood as producing something “higher”, “more noble”, “better”. Due to its
global and potentially complete enforcement, the latest stage of this
transformation, namely modern commodity production, reveals how most people did
indeed fall for this “alchemical belief in miracles” and its so-called
“progress”. It is a form of religious belief that we are describing here – one
that has been able to prevent many from recognizing the violence that is an
imminent part of the process it supports. Hence, we have been unable to stop
it. Let us take the GATS as an example: not even completely implemented yet, it
is already responsible for enormous – and partly irreparable – damage done to
the earth and all of us.
The TRIPS overlaps with the GATS insofar as it tries to
co-opt the thought and experience of thousand-year old cultures, meaning: their
spiritual legacy. The goal, of course, is to get paid. Formerly persecuted
cultures now become interesting as a source of corporate profit. Ironically,
“trade-related” intellectual property rights are established not to protect
these cultures’ legacies but their corporate exploitation. And not only that:
The same intellectual property rights are also used to force Western thought
and experience onto others – if necessary, by violence.
Patent rights are used to protect all related interests.
So-called “patents for life” take on special meaning in this context as they go
hand in hand with the rapid development of genetic engineering (Shiva 2004).
What happens is that once a genetic manipulation has occurred, something “new”
has been invented that someone can lay a legal claim on. Sometimes, however,
one does not even deem this necessary. The genes of plants, animals, even
humans, are sometimes stolen, claimed as “discovered” and made one’s own legal
“property”. This “bio piracy” (Thaler 2004) exploits the profit potentials of
all resources by charging others monopoly prices for using them. There is now a
patent on “Basmati” rice. A patent claim to the Indian neem tree did almost
pass.
The best known example for a company selling its
“inventions” is the case of Monsanto. Monsanto tries to make all peasants and
farmers of the planet dependent on its genetically modified seeds that are,
intentionally, only fertile once (“terminator seeds”). This means that the
farmers have to buy new seeds from the company every year. This is already
happening in most parts of India where many thousands of peasants have been
forced to give up farming which, in turn, led to a shocking number of suicides
(Shiva 2004). The Indian physician, ecologist and globalization critic Vandana
Shiva calls this process “trading our lives away” (Shiva 1995). In Korea, “WTO
kills farmers!” has become a popular slogan amongst many farming communities.
The transnational agro-industrial corporations now even
discuss a general prohibition of “traditional” farming methods (arte 2005).
Iraqi farmers have already been forced to burn all their seeds since the US
invasion and use “terminator seeds” instead – this in Mesopotamia, the “cradle
of agriculture” (Junge Welt 2004). What these developments make clear is that
genetic engineering is not about a better life but about installing global
monopolies. This becomes most obvious in the current attempts to implement
monopoly control on basic products and services which each human being’s life
depends on. Now we understand the meaning of the rally cries “Agrobusiness is
the Biggest Business!” or “Wheat Becomes a Weapon!” (Krieg 1980)
Meanwhile, problems with genetically modified organisms,
GMOs, are on the increase everywhere. Genetically modified seeds, for example,
are expensive, vulnerable and of poor quality (Grössler 2005). They constantly
need more – instead of less – pesticides. They also “pollute”, which means that
they destroy the non-modified species (while not being able to reproduce
themselves – or only partially, Verhaag 2004). It becomes harder and harder to
deny that GMOs cause irreversible destruction of a still unknown part of flora
and – depending on how they are used – fauna. A new infertility enters the
world instead of a new creation. The consequence is an artificially created
death – a death with no life to follow. No one seems to know how to prevent
this (Werlhof 2006).
All this sounds like a nightmare. Unfortunately, it is
reality. For example, there is no more natural rapeseed in Canada. In Argentina
and China, millions of hectares are sown with GMO seeds. Emergency deliveries
to regions affected by famine consist almost exclusively of such seeds. In
Germany, cows that were fed with GMO feed died a horrible death after
two-and-a-half years (Glöckner 2005). Even in Austria, where people take pride
in being environmentally conscious, no GMO free animal feed remains on the
market, and GMO rapeseed is being planted despite all negative experiences
(Karg 2005).
It is hard to grasp what is happening. Food is produced
that kills – yet people are forced to eat it. And not only that: they have to
pay a lot of money for it too! A grosser distortion of life is hardly
imaginable. Amongst the most ludicrous examples is the idea to distribute
contraceptive GMO corn, developed by the Swiss company Syngenta, in regions
that suffer from so-called “overpopulation” (Reiter 2005). This means genocide,
murder and business, all in one!
The idea of a technological progress that follows the
notion of a machine technology can never offer any prospects – even when people
mean to do good instead of kill. The destruction of life cycles and the
manipulation of some of their components can never create a substitute for
non-manipulated life – in any case, none that would be superior (Werlhof 1997).
Characteristically, the cows that died in Germany died of different forms of
circulatory collapse. They had, in a sense, lost the bodily (and spiritual?)
cycles on which their existence is based (we may also think of the symptoms of
BSE, the so-called “mad cow disease”). What confused their owner most, however,
was that neither politicians nor scientists were interested in what had
happened.
Meanwhile, the US have achieved that the EU can be
forced to introduce and use GMO products (Felber 2005). Certain politicians,
like the current German Minister of Agriculture; Seehofer; already work hard on
implementing these demands (Alt 2005). By doing so, they simply ignore the fact
that the majority of European consumers have so far clearly rejected GMO “food”
(Greenpeace 2004).
The AoA, the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, is a prime
example for how “free trade” sure does not mean the same for everyone. On the one
hand, it allows the North to force its agricultural surplus onto the South by
means of highly subsidized dumping prices, thereby destroying the national
markets and sale opportunities for local farmers; on the other hand, products
from the South are kept from Northern markets by tax barriers. Since three
billion of the world’s people still work as small farmers (Amin 2004), the AoA
threatens the survival of more than half the world’s population. This not only
because the AoA changes the markets in favor of the agricultural corporations;
the AoA also erodes – in combination with the TRIPS – the existential basis of
the world’s farmers by other means. To begin with, much of their land is – ever
more rapidly – acquired by foreign companies. These implement their new seeds,
and often only focus on luxury goods (such as shrimps and flowers) for the
markets of the wealthy without giving any consideration to local needs
(Widerspruch 2004). The reality resembles that of colonial times, only that the
damage done now is worse since subsistence production itself falls victim to
neo-colonial destruction (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies/Werlhof 1988). After all, no
profit is to be made with subsistence production. As a consequence, more and
more farmers turn to commodity production for the world market. However, this
does not help them either. The profit is always made by others (Shiva 2004).
The NAMA negotiations featured strongly at the WTO
Summit in Hong Kong in December 2005. In line with all other WTO agreements,
every nature-related activity was defined as economically exploitable even when
it did not immediately relate to agriculture, but, for example, fishery,
forestry, or even the control of oxygen (Isla 2005). In short, total
commercialization was proclaimed. One of the most immediate consequences was
the loss of living space for indigenous people. Meanwhile, their resistance was
criminalized and they were accused of trying to “expropriate” corporations and
of “violating” their rights (Goldman 1998).
It is safe to call all WTO agreements malicious. They
are all exclusively based on corporate interests. They have no regard for life.
Life exists only for exploitation and annihilation.
When they concern corporate interests (investment,
service, intellectual property), all WTO regulations are vague, widely
accommodating and open to interpretation – when they concern challenges to
these interests (“obstacles” of whatever sort, or “creeping expropriation”),
they become very definite and unbendable.
Branding people who take the corporations to task as
“expropriators” is of course only cynical. In reality, it is the corporations
that expropriate the people. On top of this, the only safeguards the
corporations are concerned about are their own. In any other case, safeguards
are deemed “protectionism” and harshly condemned. The same goes for customs
duties or subsidies. The corporations’ “liberalism” consists of expecting
others to drop all guards. There is no liberalism outside the one that serves
corporate interests.
Today, the rights of corporations are better protected
than those of human individuals. We might even say that “human rights” only
apply to corporations. After all, individuals will always claim their rights in
conflicts with corporations in vain. Only corporations have the power to
effectively sue everyone who jeopardizes their interests.
The WTO itself demonstrates how to prevail against
resistance by such means. It contains the so-called “Dispute Settlement
Mechanism”, a kind of international court that allows to enforce its agreements
and resolutions, when necessary by means of harsh punishment, especially
financially. At this court – which, exactly like the WTO as a whole, has no
democratic legitimacy – corporations and their representatives can claim the
“rights” that the WTO agreements grant them against state governments and other
national or communal bodies. They usually win. Reverse procedures are
impossible: no state government or other national body – not to even mention
communities not defined by a nation state – even have the right to sue
corporations. So, essentially, this means that no rights other than those of
the corporations even exist any longer – not even on paper (Werlhof 2003 a).
How can one explain such a politics to people and have
them agree with it? Not at all, of course. This is why nothing ever is
explained. Neoliberalism does not bother with ideology. Neoliberalism is a
conscious betrayal of the interests of 99% of the people on this planet. It
justifies robbery and pillage. It is, both in intention and effect, a true
“weapon of mass destruction” – even when no immediate wars are fought. How many
lives are sacrificed to neoliberalism? Some estimate that the numbers already
go into hundreds of millions (Ziegler 2004, Widerspruch 2004).
Paradoxically, the WTO and its agreements are anchored
in international law while they rob and pillage the people whose rights are
supposed to be protected by this law. Violations against the WTO agreements
count hence as violations against a law that stands above all national and
regional regulations. As a consequence, legal cases challenging the
compatibility of WTO (or EU) law with national constitutions have repeatedly
been rejected – in Austria as recently as in 2005.
The WTO and its agreements act effectively as a global
oligarchic constitution. They are the first attempt at installing
neo-totalitarian “global corporate governance” – or even a “global corporate
government”. It feels like despotism is establishing itself again, but this
time globally. What we are witnessing might be dubbed a new kind of “AMP”, the
so-called former “Asiatic Mode of Production” – only that its origins are now
American instead of Asiatic.
I think a more accurate name for the WTO would be WWO:
“World War Order”. Or, alternatively, W.K.O.: “World Knock Out”. In any case,
the organization sweeps across the globe like a tsunami, taking everything with
it that promises profit.
I.4. European Union Neoliberalism and Militarism
On a European level, the EU functions as the continental
equivalent to the WTO. The EU constitution treaty – a legal basis for a
centralized European government – follows standard neoliberal principles. It
is, in fact, the first constitution treaty that includes a legal commitment to
a specific economic order – the neoliberal – as well as to engagement in
armament and military operations (Oberansmayr 2004).
Once again, neoliberalism and militarism appear as
Siamese twins (Lechthaler 2005). Economy is understood as a kind of war (both
internally and externally), and military “defense” as part of the economy. This
applies, in the words of the former German Minister of Defense, Struck, “even
to the Hindu Kush”. Not that we should be surprised…
The draft of the EU constitution promises to be part of
an effort to secure peace. This follows a peculiar logic, namely one that
refers to acts of war as “humanitarian intervention” (or, alternatively, as
“acts of defense” – even if there has never been an aggression), allows to
claim that wars like the NATO war against Yugoslavia were none, and is able to
portray the EU as an “order of peace” (Attac EU-AG Stuttgart und Region 2005).
All this against the background that there will soon be deployable nuclear
weapons in Europe (Galtung 1993, p. 145, Oberansmayr 2004, p. 114ff).
Meanwhile, any resistance at government levels against harboring nuclear
weapons has subsided, especially in France, but also in Germany. Austria keeps
silent too. Politicians everywhere have given up a notion that was once
sacrosanct (guernica 2006).
A particularly shocking example for the European way of
blending neoliberalism with war was exposed in the documentary film “Darwin’s
Nightmare” (Sauper 2005). The film depicts the development of a modern fishing
industry – financed by the EU – at Lake Victoria in Tanzania.
The Nile perch, a fish growing to the size of a human
being, was released into the lake in the 1950s. By now, it has all but
extinguished the lake’s other species, and it is only a question of time when
the world’s largest tropical lake will be dead. The majority of local fisher
folk are without work and income. Women are forced into prostitution, HIV and
AIDS are rampant, and youths organize in gangs. Pilots from the regions of the
former Soviet Union fly the factory-packaged fish filets to their European
consumers in huge Ilyushin planes. When they return, they bring weapons that
are smuggled into the Congo and other African regions rattled by military conflict
– forget about so-called “tribal wars”!
The deceiving self-portrayal of the EU as an “order of
peace” has curious implications. It allows, for example, the Austrian
government to pretend that Austria is still a neutral country. In fact, the
50th anniversary of the country’s neutrality was celebrated in 2005.
This despite the fact that already in 1998, §23f was
added to the Austrian constitution: a paragraph assuring Austria’s commitment
to contribute soldiers to military action carried out by the EU (some call it
the “war authorization paragraph”, Oberansmayr 2004, p. 46f). The public hardly
took notice of this. The Eurofighters3 are played down as a mere means to
protect Austrian airspace, while the prospect of future Austrian engagement in
wars all across the globe is described as a commitment to “peace missions”
(carried out, ironically, by so-called EU “battle troops”). Military expenses
in Austria have grown by 30% between 2004 and 2007 (Werkstatt Frieden und
Solidarität 2005). At least in this case it is hard to argue that a lot of
money has been made. However, it means that Austria contributes significantly
(in fact, since 2001) to making the EADS, the European Aeronautic Defence and
Space Company, a European armament giant and a huge power player on the
continent (Oberansmayr 2004, p. 126ff). It seems like the common trick here is
to simply claim the opposite of what is true. The meanings of words are turned
upside down.
The draft of the EU constitution also contains
references to citizen’s “basic rights”. How these can be claimed against the
constitution’s cornerstones – neoliberalism and militarism – remains unclear,
however, to say the least. Hence, listing these rights appears as little more
than a facade (“tinsel”) that tries to win public approval for what happens
behind it and no one really knows about. Otherwise, an approval would be very
hard to come by. The idea seems to make a curse appear like a blessing so that
even the cursed will consent.
Of course no one seems to have an answer to what will
happen if the neoliberal economic politics fail since no one even has ever
thought about an alternative. What though, if, for example, the military will
be used internally?
The rejection of the EU constitution by the people of
France and the Netherlands is all the more remarkable considering the fact that
the EU prevents all general critical discussion and has always played down the
constitution’s significance. In Austria or Germany, the people’s opinion has
not even been asked. One wonders what the results in these countries would have
been. In any case, the EU’s 2007 Lisbon Declaration decided to turn the
declaration into European law anyway – approved by the national parliaments
only.
Why an Austrian constitution that has long been rendered
ineffective still needs to be “reformed”, is another question that remains
unanswered. The idea probably is to hide its actual ineffectiveness by adapting
it to EU and WTO principles.
How deep is the crisis of the EU? Can its neoliberal
politics reach its limits (Widerspruch 2005)? How many more than 30 million
unemployed can it handle? How many more than 70 million who live below the
poverty line (Armutskonferenz)? And how many more failures of privatization,
like the one of the British railway system, can be saved by a so-called “Public
Private Partnerships” (PPPs) that channel tax money into corporations? What
will happen once the assets of all nations have been sold? How far can the EU
go with its destruction of the middle classes? How is it going to deal with the
frustrated young men who have lost all perspective – even when they are white?
Do the 2005 revolts in the French suburbs mean that the civil war in the
European North has already begun? How is the EU going to approach the danger of
the extreme Right? What is the EU going to do when oil and gas prices explode?
What is it going to do when oil and (as is already the case in Southern Europe
due to global warming) drinking water become rare? What it is going to do when
neither industry nor agriculture, neither transport nor nuclear power stations
can be maintained any longer, especially as long as solar power remains no
viable solution to the energy crisis (Sarkar 2001)? How will the EU, given its
proclaimed “ethical values”, explain possible military action not only outside
but within the union? Will it have to justify its own politics by terror
(Chossudovsky 2003)? The EU is not unaware of all these pending problems. At
the European Security Conference 2005, it already discussed scenarios of poor
people’s revolts (Genth 2006).
Today, we are facing a threat no smaller than a possible
nuclear war of the West against Iran (Chossudovsky 2006, Petras 2006). This war
would be fought to gain Western corporate control over the oil and gas reserves
of Central Asia – a control that is today not only challenged by Russia, but
India and especially China as well.
How long will it be possible to appease the population
while imposing one’s interests upon it behind closed curtains?
II. Alternatives to the Gobalization of Neoliberalism
It seems ironic that the magistrate of Vienna invites us
in November 2005 to discuss “Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization” when no
one has even officially acknowledged a problem yet. Unsurprisingly, the
discussions do not go very far, even though the 300 people assembled here would
have sure been interested in hearing heartening ideas. They experience in their
daily lives what neoliberal politics mean, they search for an explanation and
hope for change. None of this will come from those “at the top”, however. So
much is clear. Nothing positive ever comes from those “at the top”.
The real debate about alternatives to neoliberal
globalization began on the 1st of January 1994 with the uprising of well
organized Indios of the Southern Mexican jungle (Topitas 1994). Men, women and
children of the so-called “Zapatista National Liberation Army”, named after the
Mexican peasant and successful leader of the Mexican Revolution of 1910,
Emiliano Zapata, occupied without force some central areas of the state of
Chiapas. They declared to fight Mexico’s integration into the neoliberal NAFTA,
the North American Free Trade Agreement, alongside the USA and Canada. NAFTA
was inaugurated the same day. One of the movement’s speakers, the now world
famous “Subcommandante Marcos”, declared that neoliberalism was a “world war
waged by financial power against humanity” and an expression of the worldwide
crisis of capitalism, not its success. The Indios had decided not to be part of
this. They chose to resist. Their idea of an alternative life was clear and
they practiced it despite the hostility they received from the government and
the military (Rodriguez 2005). Their resistance was based on an indigenous
version of “good governance”: direct democracy, egalitarianism and a
non-exploitative subsistence economy entrenched in local independence and a
respect for every individual’s dignity (Werlhof 2007 a) – a concept derived
from pre-colonial experience, from the so-called “deep Mexico”, a cultural and
spiritual heritage maintained throughout centuries.
In the North, it was not before 1997/98 that the social
movement against neoliberalism gathered momentum with the struggle against the
ratification of the MAI. The movement’s first success was the failure of the
MAI due to France’s refusal to ratify it.
The movement then spread wide and fast across the globe
and mobilized a total of up to 15 million people for protests against the wars
in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In 2002 and 2003, the struggle focused on
the “Stop GATS!” campaign, led by international groups like Attac. Support was
widespread. “Social Forums” began to be organized and every year individuals,
groups and organizations critical of neoliberal globalization met regionally,
nationally, continentally, and globally. The “World Social Forums” gathered up
to 100.000 people and more from all over the world under the motto: “Another
world is possible!”
Activists also came together regularly at the summits of
the WTO, the WEF (World Economic Forum), the G8 or the World Bank. They managed
to cause two WTO conferences, in Seattle and Cancún, to fail, which dealt a
strong blow to the organization (Shiva 2005).
Still, euphoria would be out of place. An alternative to
neoliberalism is not created through analysis and protest alone. An alternative
to neoliberalism has to be practiced. Opinions on how to do this differ. Some
discuss “alternatives” that are none: a reform of the WTO; a “control” of
globalization through NGOs; a return to Keynesianism; a restoration of “social
market economy”; or even a revival of socialism. Such ideas ignore reality and
trivialize the problem. Much more is at stake – neoliberalism shows this every
day.
Neoliberalism is an apocalypse, a “revelation”. There is
no way to deny this any longer. It is impossible for neoliberalism to justify
itself by the reality it creates. No one can be fooled anymore by calling the
corporations harmless “players” either. Things have become serious. There is no
ambiguity. As a consequence, the perpetrators of neoliberal politics simply lie
about what is happening.
In a way, we can say that the only good thing about
neoliberalism is that it reveals the truth about “Western civilization” and
“European values”. This means that people now have the chance to draw the right
conclusions about what is really needed.
What is really needed, of course, is nothing less than a
different civilization. A different economy alone, or a different society or
culture will not suffice. We need a civilization that is the exact opposite of
neoliberalism and the patriarchal capitalist world system it is rooted in. The
logic of our alternative must be one that completely undermines the logic of
neoliberalism (Werlhof 2007 b).
Neoliberalism has turned everything that would ensure a
good life for all beings on this planet upside down. Many people still have a
hard time understanding that the horror we are experiencing is indeed a reality
– a reality willingly produced, maintained and justified by “our” politicians.
But even if the alternative got half-way on its feet – no more plundering,
exploitation, destruction, violence, war, coercion, mercilessness,
accumulation, greed, corruption – we would still be left with all the damage
that the earth has already suffered.
The earth is not the paradise it was (at least in many
places) 500 years ago, 200 years ago or even 100 years ago. The devastation has
been incredible: large parts of our drinking water are disappearing mainly due
to the melting of the glaciers and polar caps; our climate has changed
dramatically, causing turbulences and catastrophes; our atmosphere is no longer
protected against ultraviolet radiation (“ozone layer problem”); many species
of our fauna and flora are extinguished; most cultures and their knowledge are
destroyed; most natural resources exhausted. And all this happened within what
only comes to a nanosecond of the earth’s history.
We have to establish a new economy and a new technology;
a new relationship with nature; a new relationship between men and women that
will finally be defined by mutual respect; a new relationship between the
generations that reaches even further than to the “seventh”; and a new
political understanding based on egalitarianism and the acknowledgment of the
dignity of each individual. But even once we have achieved all this, we will
still need to establish an appropriate “spirituality” with regard to the earth
(Werlhof 2007 c). The dominant religions cannot help us here. They have failed
miserably.
We have to atone for at least some of the harm and
violence that has been done against the earth. Nobody knows to what degree, and
if at all, this is even possible. What is certain, however, is that if we want
to have any chance to succeed, we need a completely new “cultura” for this: a
“caring” relationship with the earth based on emotional qualities that have
been suppressed and destroyed in the name of commodity production and
“progress”. We need to regain the ability to feel, to endure pain, to lose fear
and to love in ways that seem inconceivable today (Anders 1994, Vaughan 1997).
If this happens then a new life on and with our earth might really be possible.
In any case, it is the only earth we have.
Fortunately, there are signs pointing in the right
direction. In many regions in the South, indigenous movements have arisen
following in the footsteps of the Zapatistas (Esteva 2001). Especially the
Indios in Latin America have returned (or, at the same time, “advanced”) to
ways of agriculture and subsistence that had been practiced for millions of
years and produced a diversity of concrete wealth. Indios have also established
mini-markets to trade products they themselves do not need. By doing this, they
secure both the social and ecological survival of their immediate (and
extended) environment (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies 1999,
Bennholdt-Thomsen/Holzer/Müller 1999). The global peasants’ movement “Via
Campesina” defends the rights of small farmers all across the world. It counts
millions of members today. The “localization” (Norberg-Hodge 2001) of politics
and economy is on the rise everywhere. New communities, as well as new
“commons” and new cooperatives, are being formed. Local councils organize and
network regionally. In India, this is called “living democracy” – a democracy
that includes the earth and that we can hence call an “earth democracy” as well
(Shiva in Werlhof 2001 b).
In the North, thousands of local networks exist in which
“free money” replaces money that comes with interest, accumulates value and
serves as a means for speculation rather than trade (Lietaer 1999). A
“solidarity economy” and a “green economy” expand globally and challenge the
prevailing “profit economy” (Milani 2000). In the North as well as in the
South, people experiment with so-called “participatory budgets” in which the
inhabitants of neighborhoods or whole towns decide on how to use tax money.
Even the concept of an economy of giftgiving in a post-capitalist and
post-patriarchal society is discussed (Vaughan 2004, 2006). In any case,
fundamentally new communal experiences beyond egoism are sought. Communities
are being created in which people support each other, allowing every individual
to think, feel and act differently.
No alternatives have ever come from “the top”.
Alternatives arise where people, alone or in groups, decide to take initiative
in order to control their destiny (Korten 1996). From the bottom of society
(Mies 2001), a new feeling of life, a new energy and a new solidarity spread
and strengthen each and every one involved. As a result, people are able to
free themselves from a notion of “individuality” that reduces them to “sentient
commodities” or, even worse, “functioning machines”.
The mentioned examples of resistance and alternatives do
truly undermine neoliberalism and its globalization. People who are engaged in
them reach a completely different way of thinking. They have lost faith in
“development” and have seen through the game. To them, “development” has become
an affront or an object of ridicule. Politicians are expected to “get lost”, as
we have recently seen in Argentina: “Que se vayan todos!” It has become clear
that no one wants to have anything to do with conventional politics and
politicians anymore. People have realized that politics as a “system” never
serves but betrays and divides them. Some people have developed almost allergic
reactions to conventional politics. They have experienced long enough that
domination inevitably negates life.
Of course there are alternatives to plundering the
earth, to making war and to destroying the planet. Once we realize this,
something different already begins to take shape. It is mandatory to let it
emerge before the hubris’ boomerang finds us all.
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