South Letter, No. 16, winter 1992-93.
CLAUDIO SCHUFTAN
schuftan@gmail.com
1. The recent political events in the world are not a reason for despair in the South. The bottom is not falling under our feet.
2. The collapse or crumbling of systems of government associated with one of the two major competing ideologies in the world is not to be understood or interpreted as that ideology failed.
3. A treatise could be written about the causes that lead to such collapses, but for sure the failure of grassroots participation in those systems of government – resulting in an unpopular often militaristic and bureaucratized minority-driven democratic centralism – will figure prominently among the causes. Although the system guaranteed everybody a job and low prices for essentials, workers did not basically participate in shaping it. (D. Ost)
4. What we are witnessing in Eastern Europe today is a swinging of the pendulum towards an all-out market economy and free enterprise in an action/reaction response. It is only to be hoped that the pendulum’s swing to the right will not lead to a totalitarian backlash before settling somewhere more in the middle. The post-Communism syndrome with its economic crises can threaten rather than promote democracy. (D. Ost)
5. In what situation and with what alternatives are the countries in the South left under such a state of affairs? Exclusively in the hands of the now believed almighty Capitalism and of the so often exhausted and corrupt representative (?) democracies that stand for it as a cure-all panacea? Certainly not! Elections that are said to be the pillars of such democracy are more often than not viciated or, at best, the % of the population bothering to vote – having given up on real chances for change through the ballot box – has been shrinking even in the U.S.
6. Despite the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe, it is important to remark that the principles of historic and dialectical materialism .are not dead and still apply to social scientific analysis. Class formation and class struggle are there to stay as well and are not – all of a sudden – dirty words.
7. On the other hand, the trickle down assumptions of bare-bone Capitalism have failed to materialize. Capitalism, as the be-all and end-all of society has failed to deliver on this promise.
8. Moreover, Capitalism – where in full swing – is not functioning so well either and has a fair share of serious flaws and problems. It will not be able to survive itself, if not drastically changed. It is just a matter of time. And little is seen in the attitude of the North – that calls most of the shots on Capitalism – that shows their concerned and compromising support for towards minimizing, for example, the grave social and environmental impacts resulting from Capitalism’s ruthless application both in the North, as well as in the South.
9. A new, better world order will only be ultimately accepted by the power-wielding elites in the North (and South) when the threat factors that endanger their affluence and self-serving behavior take intolerable proportions.
10. Small scale free enterprise and the free play of some market forces can be healthy pursuits. And the most successful market transformations occur, it is proven, where workers help plan them. Worker-friendly reforms – and not necessarily a string of privatizations – can, further, make big enterprises more competitive. There has been a widespread call for an across-the-board privatization of state enterprises; what is actually needed is increasing these enterprises’ efficiency by introducing management principles fully responsive to market forces; the latter is what actually counts, not the trespassing of ownership! Parastatals thus need dramatic face lifts; otherwise, they should be disposed of.
11. The market, quite obviously, unevenly rewards individuals with capital. Leaving everything to the silent forces of the market to sort out can and does thus spell untold hardship for those individuals who don’t have it. Considerations such as the national wellbeing are easily put aside when it comes to pursuing the desire for profits. The market has never particularly cared for women, for the environment, for the poor, for sustainability, for justice, for human rights, or cared about the depletion of resources or about cultural diversity…
12. What happened in Eastern Europe does not necessarily put the countries in the South in a new major paradigmatic crossroad. It does put them in front of hard choices granted. But the frames of reference are not necessarily so greatly changed, as these countries are made to believe. The poles of contradiction remain virtually unchanged in most national and international contexts. The strategic options for the resolution of such contradictions also still remain greatly the same especially in and for the South.
13. In short, the recent changes certainly do not leave one option open only for the South, namely Northern-style or Northern-led (and North-favoring) Capitalism. For the reasons already pointed out here and surely for many other, the latter is not such an attractive or hot model to follow after all, despite widespread allegations to that effect.
14. The fact that some states in the South were striving to (or in different stages of achieving) socialist government systems does not mean that – learning from the mistakes now more evident – they cannot change tactics and let the action of selected market forces streamline their economics. But in doing so, they do not have to compromise an inch in their commitment to equity as preferably exercised through people’s controls exerted either directly or through the state.
15. There is a need in the South for popular organizations (labor unions, women’s organizations, consumer groups, grassroots NGOs) to internationalize and to renew their fight for the same social and economic reivindications they have fought-for in the past. (These reivindications are as valid today as they were before). In the process, they need to build up global alliances to further fight for social justice. If anything, popular parties are now more needed than perhaps ever. Demobilization could prove to be a costly mistake. From what we still see happening in the South – despite the “new world order” – who or what can convince us otherwise?
16. More than perhaps ever, there is a need for the countries in the South to stick together in view of the deflection of attention and the siphoning of aid funds to Eastern Europe due to strong and self-serving political reasons: The West fears a lack of success in the conversion process there at least as much as the new East European governments do themselves. The Non-Aligned Group, the Group of 77, the Group of 15, the South Commission and others must join forces as perhaps never before to find and stick to common platforms at the same time that they tighten South-South solidarity. BUT the South is not to alienate itself from these Eastern European countries and pitch itself as their sworn enemy. These countries are our potential strategic allies of tomorrow in our confrontations with the North!
17. The ideological dimension and the underpinnings of underdevelopment (or maldevelopment) in the South – I insist – remain mostly unchanged, as well as the options left open to its countries in today’s world. The battle for the redistribution of wealth and for economic and social justice is a battle popular organizations need to continue to tight inside and/or outside market economies. Elite-controlled governments are not going to do it for them. Keep in mind that the people in most of the countries in the South already – and for quite some time now – live in capitalist-dependent market economies. And looking forward to more of the same as a solution to maldevelopment is no realistic prospect in the years to come. In the South, we no longer have governments; we have caretakers for the IMF… (V. Shiva)
18. Propaganda and sloganeering about the collapse of communist states and of the ideology they espoused or stood for has been intense and very effectively used by interested groups. The issue has been charged emotionally on purpose by individuals and by the media. The man in the street has half-swallowed this notion with little critical analysis. (People tend to react to events – not to processes.) This fact is creating a myth out there that needs to be debunked and “de-emotionalized” at all cost, mainly because such claims are simply not true.
19. Some have even implied that the market economy itself is an ideology and that it has gained supremacy over all other ideologies (??). Falacies like this one are simply not to be allowed to grow into myths… Others have called for working out a new system from the basics of Capitalism (implying more humanitarian principles?) – not from its practices (implying dirty tricks?). The collapse of the same communist regimes is touted to have given the ideology of neoliberalism a new prominence and an absolute supremacy as a single viable Ideology; it is implied that from now on, we can only consider alternative forms of capitalist development. Does this imply that development can only be achieved through the strengthening of an entrepreneurial class? Where does this leave the workers? One has to be en-garde; times like these are ripe for charlatans and empty prescriptions that simply muddle the issues. Successful prescriptions depend on accurate, unemotional and comprehensive diagnoses!
20. Ignacy Sachs thought there is a need for a more comparative historic analysis. – a kind of histoire raisonee of the present taking a more holistic view of the political processes we are witnessing. Such a view must take into account more integrally the interests and present alternatives of the South in its battle against underdevelopment.
21. In sum, I contend that an ideological opposition to Capitalism applied wholesale (or at least to some of its key principles and widespread practices) is still as valid today as it was before Michail Gorbachov. Practices that take away hardly fought-for and won workers’ and peasants’ freedoms and reivindications have to be vigorously opposed, as much nowadays as in the past.
22. We have an obligation to do what we can to avoid that progressive forces in the South and in the North fall into a state of paralysis in analysis while figuring out how the new world order (which nobody denies exists) should affect their strategies and tactics in their continued work to revert underdevelopment. Reinventing the wheel will not help; we have to start putting the wheels on the wagon.
Nairobi February 29, 1992.
Acknowledgements:
My thanks to Dr Vicente Sanchez for his valuable suggestions to the early drafts of this manuscript.
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
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