Neo-Liberalism And Globalization

by MRTA

Extreme Poverty

In Latin America, the wave of privatizations demanded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have ended up as a recipe for unemployment, throwing thousands of workers out onto the street to join what is already an army of the unemployed. The largely unresolved contradictions of our continent have become polarized. We believe that South America is the weak link in the transnational imperialist chain in the era of "globalization".

The political and economic ideas diffused by the imperialist bourgeoisie and their intelligentsia have no other purpose than to annihilate a section of our society. We will attempt to analyze these ideas in a scientific fashion. A task to which the "progressive and revolutionary" intelligentsia should contribute again, as it seems they entered into a period of self-censorship some time ago. As a political organization which has developed in the heart of the people, we will attempt to express these ideas in a language which is as simple as possible, without losing their scientific rigor. This method, and our practical actions, keep us in the hearts and minds of the people, despite the wishes of many who are still trying to make themselves believe the cries of victory for Fujimoriism, and others who announced our destruction at every possible opportunity, while apologizing for the dictatorship. It is not our intention to fall into using "fashionable terminology", but we consider it an obligation to clarify concepts, which some people formerly active in "revolutionary" and "progressive" circles starting using, thereby only creating confusion and false hopes in our people.

At a time when the so-called "neo-liberal model" is showing its true self, there have been a series of violent social protests, as in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, etc. , which proves that did not achieve the results they claimed it would, and that they can no longer sell false hopes to the millions of poor people pushed into conditions of extreme misery, in Peru, in our Andes, and in the whole of the continent.

"The Statements Of Intentions"; Or A Program For The Neo-Colonies

In the shadows of the "Statements of Intentions" developed by the International Monetary Fund, they are proceeding to privatize the land, natural resources, and that which remains of our industry. These "Statements" are the real programs of the (neo-colonial) governments of Latin America and have been the cause of massive unemployment, poverty, and extreme misery, and they condemn millions of people to death through starvation, like in Somalia. It is in these conditions that the people of Peru and Latin America, and their revolutionary organizations, must plan a scientific and objective alternative to this murderous and genocidal system.

The Peruvian people have struggled against and survived the greatest economic genocide conceived by the ruling classes since the conquest. From 1975, the ruling class has been trying to put their neo-liberal plan into action, but the organized response of the masses has impeded this. However, in 1990, despite popular resistance, shock tactics were employed and we are now living with the brutal consequences.

Liberalism And Neo-Liberalism

This "model", theoretically originating from the theories of the liberal classics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, is being applied in the age of globalization. However, if we emphasize our class differences with the classics of bourgeois economics, that does not mean to say that we overlook their contribution to general economic theory: the theory of work-value, which with other class elements serves as the basis by which the injustice of capitalist economic theory is revealed, where those who create the wealth which circulates in the world do not have access to it. Aside from the subjective question of justice and injustice, this system created the revolutionary class: the proletariat, which by its capacity to create wealth and by its form of social organization within the productive precess is the only one capable of forging a radical alternative to capitalism. The crisis of capitalism is not created by the scarcity of goods, like in the economies before capitalism, but by their excess. From this point of view, the so-called "neo- liberals" are further from Smith and Ricardo than Marxism; their bourgeois apologists are neither willing nor able to enter into a debate about the "theory of value", and instead they attempt to reduce the creation of products and wealth to the omnipotent power of capital and the market. Maybe they do not want to know that capital exists as a product of the value accumulated and created by the workers, which is then concentrated and appropriated into private hands. On this point, which is the backbone of liberalism, there is no convergence with the neo-liberals. In the same way, the "free trade" proposed by the liberals has no connection with the commercial monopoly exercised by the globalizers, or multinational monopolists (imperialists). According to Jonathan Elliot in 1987: "It is calculated that on the world-market level, 40% of trade does not go through a free market' but through internal trading (within the same companies)". In 1994, Jules Kagian said in "Middle East International" that: "In the United States, more than 80% of the income from goods sold abroad, quantified in dollars, does not come from exports but from sales by affiliated companies."

Globalization: The New Mask Of Imperialism

The deification of the market is nothing other than the product of a development of national capital onto international levels, breaking down its physical barriers. This phenomena was studied at the start of this century and was named "imperialism" by Lenin. In this way the globalization of the economy is just the concentration of value created by world society in the multinationals. That is to say the upward fusion of productive, financial, and banking capital.

The number of multinational companies has risen from 7,000 in 1970 to 37,000 in 1992; i.e. former national companies have been merging with those from other countries and they maintain a dependance on the largest ones. The economic power of multinational companies is greater than that of many national states. Their sales for example have risen to 5.5 billion dollars, 90% of which are made in the imperialist (northern) countries and just 10% of which are made in the producer (southern) countries. The economic power of the multinationals gives them an unlimited political power over national states.

A Little Bit Of History

The development of production created an antagonistic contradiction between the private ownership of the means of production and the socialization of production itself between capital and labor, and this resulted in many crises and two world wars. These wars allowed the victors to carve up the world markets again, and by so doing bury their crisis.

At the end of the Second World War, the fusion of capital via the multinationals permitted largely North American capital, through the Marshall Plan, to absorb that which remained of European and Japanese capital. The multinationals made the most of the high level of development achieved by labor in these countries. However, despite the fact that the workers were selling their labor in good conditions, due to the influence of competition from the socialist countries, it was possible to transcend neither the antagonistic contradictions between capital and labor, nor those between the socialized nature of production and the private appropriation of its products. Without this insight it would be impossible for us to explain the discontent and strikes in countries such as France.

It may be that the imperialists, or globalizers (to use the new terminology), have invested huge quantities of money to investigate how to avoid crises and violent uprisings, and that they have achieved a degree of mind control through the mass media, but they have not succeeded in curbing the discontent, which is growing day by day, and every time it becomes more difficult for them to make people believe that this system is not responsible for world problems; in the north they see the waves of immigrants and millions of dollars are sent as humanitarian "aid" to the "under- developed" countries. In the post-war era, they secured an internal market in the north, which increased in depth but not in extension. This has lead to the development of consumerism. This resulted in a bourgeoisfication of the working classes, dividing them from their historic task. The reasoning being that he who can satisfy his basic needs has no interest in social change. Even though they are conscious of the fact that their high standard of living comes from the extermination of whole peoples, after the natural resources of these nations have been plundered. The imperialist governments justify this by saying that the peoples of the south are lazy and ignorant. Despite this, they too have been affected by an incessant rise in unemployment, which although it may be concealed by the manipulation of statistics is still undeniably the case and removes an important sector of the population from the consumer market.

Another way by which they attempt to avoid or recover from their crises is by developing regional wars far from their centers, such as those based on religion, racism, territory, etc. These provide excellent markets for weapons.

But something terrible is happening in the world of globalization. Year by year profits are going down and the only way they have of recovering from this is by cutting wages and social benefits, and this has led to massive waves of redundancies, first in the countries of the south and more recently in their metropoles in the north. This tendency has no chance of being reversed. The difference is that in the north the social effects of these tendencies are dulled by the welfare state, something we do not have in the south.

The welfare state is deteriorating in the north, at the same time as the middle classes in Latin America are disappearing, increasing the flow of external and internal migration in an attempt to improve their living conditions.

The international proletariat and its organizations entered into a period of decline due to the influences of "welfare statism" and "reformism". This postponed the practical and theoretical development of world socialism for a long time. However, the enormous increase of the forces of production was not accompanied by an alternative program, which would not just have curbed the disproportionate increase in the exploitation of the forces of labor and the pillaging of the earth's resources. It is, for example, impossible to ignore the fact that today, despite the fact that the forces of production have been doubled many times since the last century and we have entered the phase of a revolution in information technology and cybernetics, people still work an eight hour day in the north and much longer in the south. It is therefore logical that there should be unemployment when one person is forced to do the work of two or three. It is within the capacity of any worker to realize that if the working day is not decreased by at least a third or even a half, then his destiny as redundant is assured. In Latin America, the famous privatizations, demanded by the IMF and World Bank, have been nothing more than a cause of unemployment. However, through the level of development of the forces of production achieved in Latin America and through the politicization of our working class, who have been forced into unemployment and are now in transit (including back to their old communities in the Andes), there has been a polarization of the unresolved contradictions in our continent.

We are the weak link in the imperialist chain. Our continent has passed through many ways, we have made many mistakes from which we believe we have learned and we now propose to construct a socialist alternative, because otherwise, if we stay in the realms of imperialist globalization, we are condemned to unemployment, misery, and extermination.

Against Neo-liberalism And Globalization!!
Socialism Or Death!!
Venceremos!!

Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) - 1996