VENEZUELA
NEWS
BULLETIN
PRÁXIS AND THEORY AND
EMANCIPATION
Cosmos AND
Einai
AND Nothing
SEE -- VER
In
Times of Universal Deceit, Telling
the Truth will be a Revolutionary Act.
(George
Orwell)
No.
1213
July 17, 2006
BIENVENIDOS!!
WELCOME!! WILLKOMMEN!!
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El
presidente de la República Islámica de Irán ha advertido que “si el
régimen ocupador de Qods [Jerusalén] comete la estupidez de agredir a
Siria, ello será considerado como un ataque a todo el mundo musulmán,
por lo que ese régimen obtendrá una respuesta demoledora.”
Mahmud Ahmadineyad lanzó advertencia en una conversación telefónica que mantuvo con el presidente de Siria, Bashahr al-Assad, según ha informado la oficina de Prensa de la Presidencia de Irán, que ha añadido que durante la conversación entre ambos mandatarios se habló de las últimas novedades habidas sobre los ataques del régimen sionista al Líbano y a las zonas de la Palestina ocupada, especialmente la franja de Gaza.
Ahmadineyad
mostró su desazón por los brutales ataques de los
soldados sionistas a zonas civiles, sobre todo, contra mujeres y niños,
y por el silencio internacional ante esta barbarie, diciendo: “Estas
alocadas agresiones son una muestra de la gran debilidad e impotencia
de las que adolece este régimen artificial, que se encuentra en la
pendiente de la decadencia.”
Tras aseverar que la nueva ronda de hostilidades iniciadas por Tel
Aviv son la consecuencia del enfado de los sionistas por su cada vez
mayor debilidad y por haberse puesto en entredicho la filosofía de su
existencia, agregó: “El mundo musulmán, especialmente, los países de la
zona, hoy más que nunca necesitan concordia, unidad de criterio y
cohesión, sobre todo en el escenario del Líbano y Palestina, algo que
secundará la república islámica con toda su capacidad diplomática.”
Ahmadinejad tuvo palabras de elogio para con las “inteligentes
gestiones” del su par sirio, para anunciar a continuación la
disposición de Teherán para hacer llegar ayuda urgente a las víctimas y
damnificados por esta barbarie sionista.
This paper was originally presented at the 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference.
Let me start with a provocative claim, which is contrary to all the conventional wisdom. The claim I want to make is that this historical moment, the one we're living in now, is the best not the worst, the most not the least appropriate moment to bring back Marx. I'll even claim that this is the moment when Marx should and can come fully into his own for the first time—not excluding the historical moment when he actually lived.
I'm making this claim for one simple reason: we're living in a moment when, for the first time, capitalism has become a truly universal system. It's universal not only in the sense that it's global, not only in the sense that just about every economic actor in the world today is operating according to the logic of capitalism, and even those on the outermost periphery of the capitalist economy are, in one way or another, subject to that logic. Capitalism is universal also in the sense that its logic—the logic of accumulation, commodification, profit-maximization, competition—has penetrated just about every aspect of human life and nature itself, in ways that weren't even true of so-called advanced capitalist countries as recently as two or three decades ago. So Marx is more relevant than ever, because he, more effectively than any other human being then or now, devoted his life to explaining the systemic logic of capitalism.
So Marx's Capital derives its distinctive character from this simple fact: that it is about one capitalist system, as if it were a self-enclosed system, and about the internal logic of that system. Now I'll come back to this in a minute, and to why, paradoxically, the localized quality of Marx's analysis makes it more, not less, relevant to our current condition, even though, or precisely because, capitalism is so universal. But first, I want to say some things about the development of Marxism after Marx, and also about the new forms of left anti-Marxism that have followed.
My main point is this: nearly every major development of Marxism in the 20th century has been less about capitalism than about what is not capitalist. (I'll explain what I mean in a second.) This is especially true of the first half of the 20th century, but I would argue that the tendency I'm talking about here has affected Marxism ever since. What I mean is that the major Marxist theories, like Marx, proceeded on the premise that capitalism was far from universal; but where Marx started with the most mature example and abstracted from it the systemic logic of capitalism, his major successors started, so to speak, from the other end. They were mainly interested—for very concrete historical and political reasons—with conditions that, on the whole, weren't capitalist. And there was an even more basic difference: whatever Marx may have thought about the global expansion of capitalism, or the possible limits on its expansion, that wasn't his primary concern. He was mainly interested in the internal logic of the system and its specific capacity to totalize itself, to permeate every aspect of life wherever it did implant itself. Later Marxists, besides being concerned with less mature capitalisms, generally started from the premise that capitalism would dissolve before it matured, or certainly before it became universal and total; and their main concern was how to navigate within a largely non-capitalist world.
Just think about the major milestones in 20th century Marxist theory. For instance, the major theories of revolution were constructed in situations where capitalism scarcely existed or remained undeveloped and where there was no well developed proletariat, where the revolution had to depend on alliances between a minority of workers and, in particular, a mass of pre-capitalist peasants. Even more striking are the classic Marxist theories of imperialism. In fact, it's striking that the theory of imperialism in the early 20th century almost replaces or becomes the theory of capitalism. In other words, the object of Marxist economic theory becomes what you might call the external relations of capitalism, its interactions with non-capitalism and the interactions among capitalist states in relation to the non-capitalist world.
For all the profound disagreements among the classical Marxist theorists of imperialism, they shared one fundamental premise: that imperialism had to do with the location of capitalism in a world that wasn't—and never would be—fully, or even predominantly, capitalist. Take, for instance, the basic Leninist idea that imperialism represented "the highest stage of capitalism." Underlying that definition was the assumption that capitalism had reached a stage where the main axis of international conflict and military confrontation would run between imperialist states. But that competition was, by definition, competition over division and redivision of the world, that is, a largely non-capitalist world. The more capitalism spread (at uneven rates), the more acute would be the rivalry among the main imperialist powers. At the same time, they would face increasing resistance. The whole point—and the reason imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism—was that it was the final stage, which meant that capitalism would end before the non-capitalist victims of imperialism were finally and completely swallowed up by capitalism.
The point is made most explicitly by Rosa Luxemburg. The essence of her classic work in political economy, The Accumulation of Capital, is to offer an alternative to Marx's own approach. It is meant to be precisely an alternative to Marx's analysis of capitalism as a self-enclosed system. Her argument is that the capitalist system needs an outlet in non-capitalist formations—which is why capitalism inevitably means militarism and imperialism. Capitalist militarism, having gone through various stages beginning with the straightforward conquest of territory, has now reached its "final" stage, as "a weapon in the competitive struggle between capitalist countries for areas of non-capitalist civilization." But one of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, she suggests, is that "Although it strives to become universal, and, indeed, on account of this tendency, it must break down—because it is immanently incapable of becoming a universal form of production." It is the first mode of economy that tends to engulf the whole world, but it is also the first that can't exist by itself because it "needs other economic systems as a medium and soil."1 So in these theories of imperialism, capitalism by definition assumes a non-capitalist environment. In fact, capitalism depends for its survival not only on the existence of these non-capitalist formations but on essentially pre-capitalist instruments of "extra-economic" force, military and geo-political coercion, and on traditional forms of colonial war and territorial expansion.
And so it goes on, in other aspects of Marxist theory too. Trotsky's notion of combined and uneven development, with its corollary notion of permanent revolution, probably implies that the universalization of the capitalist system will be short-circuited by capitalism's own demise. Gramsci was writing very consciously in the context of a less developed capitalism, with a pervasive pre-capitalist peasant culture. And this surely had a lot to do with the importance he attached to ideology and culture, and to intellectuals, because something was needed to push class struggle beyond its material limits, something was needed to make socialist revolution possible even in the absence of mature material conditions of a well developed capitalism and an advanced proletariat. In a different way, the same is true of Mao. And so on.
What I'm saying, then, is that non- or pre-capitalism permeates all these theories of capitalism. Now all of these Marxist theories are profoundly illuminating in various ways. But in one way, they seem to have been proved wrong. Capitalism has become universal. It has totalized itself both intensively and extensively. It's global in reach, and it penetrates to the heart and soul of social life and nature. This doesn't, by the way, necessarily mean the disappearance of the nation-state. It may just mean new roles for nation-states, as the logic of competition imposes itself not only on capitalist firms but on entire national economies, which, with the help of the state, conduct their competition less in the old "extra-economic" and military ways than in purely "economic" forms. Even imperialism now has a new form. People like to call it "globalization," but that's really just a code-word, and a misleading one at that, for a system in which the logic of capitalism has become more or less universal and where imperialism achieves its ends not so much by the old forms of military expansion but by unleashing and manipulating the destructive impulses of the capitalist market. Anyway, though this universalization of capitalism has certainly exposed some fundamental contradictions in the system, we have to admit that there's no sign of its demise in the near future.
So what theoretical response has there been to this new reality? Well, to begin with, you could say that there's been a real paradox here: the more universal capitalism has become, the more people have moved away from classical Marxism and its main theoretical concerns. This is certainly true of post-Marxist theories and their successors, but I suppose you could argue that it's true even of more recent forms of Marxism—say, the Frankfurt School, or the tradition of Western Marxism in general. For instance, the famous shift from the traditional Marxist concern with political economy to culture and philosophy in some of these cases seems to be related to the conviction that the totalizing effects of capitalism have penetrated every aspect of life and culture—and also that the working class has been thoroughly absorbed into that capitalist culture. (I happen to think, by the way, that there may be another explanation for this shift, which has to do not with the universalization of capitalism but, on the contrary, with the ways in which pre-capitalist forms still pervade the consciousness of thinkers like the Frankfurt School—but I don't have time to go into that here, and anyway, I'm far from being able to make a coherent argument about it.)2
The point I want to make is this: there are, I think, two possible ways of responding to the universalization of capitalism. One is to say that if, contrary to all expectations, capitalism has after all become universal instead of dissolving before it had a chance to totalize itself, this is truly the end. This can only be the system's final triumph. I'll come back to the other possible response, but this one, the defeatist one, the one that represents the other side of the coin of capitalist triumphalism, is the one that has generally taken hold of the left today.
This is where post-Marxist theories come in—and I think that to understand them, it's useful to consider them against the background of the Marxist theories I've been talking about here. If you look at the history of so-called post-Marxism, you'll find that it started from the premise that capitalism has indeed become universal. In fact, for post-Marxists the universality of capitalism is precisely the reason for abandoning Marxism. You might think this is a bit odd, but the reasoning goes something like this: the universal capitalism of the postwar world is dominated by liberal democracy and a democratic consumerism, and both of these have opened up whole new arenas of democratic opposition and struggle, which are much more diverse than the old class struggles. The implicit—though sometimes more explicit—conclusion is that these struggles can't really be against capitalism, since it's now so total that there really is no alternative—and it's probably the best of all possible worlds anyway. So in this universal system of capitalism, there can be, can only be, lots of fragmented particular struggles within the interstices of capitalism.
Post-post-Marxist—or maybe postmodernist—theories have gone one step further. Now, it's not even just a question of a universal capitalism. Now, capitalism is so universal that it's basically invisible, as air is to us human beings, or as water is to fish. We can play around in this invisible medium, and maybe we can even carve out little enclaves, little sanctuaries, of privacy, seclusion, and freedom. But we can't escape—or even see—the universal medium itself.
So is this the right conclusion to draw from the universality of capitalism? I don't suppose I'll surprise anyone if I say that I'm convinced it's precisely the wrong conclusion. I happen to think that the disposition to reach that conclusion has something to do with the historical roots of the generation—admittedly my own generation—which has produced these varieties of post-Marxism and postmodernism. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that these people are still rooted in the golden age of the long postwar boom. I've been very impressed for some time with the degree to which the theorists of the so-called 60s generation, and even their students whose recent experience has been very different, have been shaped by the assumptions of the postwar boom. In other words, they haven't yet learned to dissociate the universality of capitalism from capitalist growth, prosperity, and success, or apparent success, and they take for granted its total hegemony.
But if these theories seem to have bought into capitalist triumphalism, it may also be partly because of the intellectual background of 20th century Marxism. Against that background and its assumptions about the limits of capitalism, maybe it's hard to imagine any other measure of success than its capacity to spread throughout the world. It's as if the limits of capitalism can be measured only by the limits of its geographic expansion. And if it proves itself capable of breaching those geographic limits—as it now apparently has—it must surely be judged an unchallengeable success.
But suppose we go back to Marx and to his internal analysis of capitalism as a self-enclosed system—which I think the very totality of capitalism actually entitles us to do. We really can begin to look at the world not as a relationship between what's inside and what's outside capitalism but as the working out of capitalism's own internal laws of motion. And that might make it easier to see the universalization of capitalism not just as a measure of success but as a source of weakness. Capitalism's impulse to universalize itself isn't just a show of strength. It's a disease, a cancerous growth. It destroys the social fabric just as it destroys nature. It's a contradictory process, just as Marx always said it was. The old theories of imperialism may not have been strictly right to suggest that capitalism can't become universal, but it's certainly true that it can't be universally successful and prosperous. It can only universalize its contradictions, its polarizations between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. Its successes are also its failures.
Now, capitalism has no more escape routes, no more safety valves or corrective mechanisms outside its own internal logic. Even when it's not at war, even when it's not involved in the old forms of inter-imperialist rivalry, it's subject to the constant tensions and contradictions of capitalist competition. Now, having more or less reached its geographic limits and ended the spatial expansion that supported its earlier successes, it can only feed on itself; and the more successful it is on its own terms—in other words, the more it maximizes profit and so-called growth—the more it devours its own human and natural substance. So maybe it's time for the left to see the universalization of capitalism not just as a defeat for us but also as an opportunity—and that, of course, above all means a new opportunity for that unfashionable thing called class struggle.
NOTES
Los nuevos gobiernos "progresistas", han abrazado el programa de Keynes como una alternativa a la crisis, al desempleo masivo y al desmantelamiento del Estado de Bienestar. Pero ¿son una alternativa viable las recetas del keynesianismo para resolver la crisis capitalista? ¿Constituyen el programa por el que la izquierda y el movimiento obrero deben luchar?
A partir de la aparición de gobiernos "progresistas", en sectores de izquierda, tanto en el frente sindical como en algunos partidos obreros, se aboga por políticas expansivas, gastos e inversiones públicas y restablecimiento del papel del Estado en la economía de mercado. Estas corrientes han abrazado el programa de Keynes como una alternativa a la crisis, al desempleo masivo y al desmantelamiento del Estado de Bienestar. Pero ¿son una alternativa viable las recetas del keynesianismo para resolver la crisis capitalista? ¿Constituyen el programa por el que la izquierda y el movimiento obrero deben luchar?La crisis del Sudeste Asiático y, más recientemente, la recesión de la economía japonesa han reabierto bruscamente el debate sobre las perceptivas para el capitalismo. En un mercado mundial interdependiente en el que las economías nacionales han alcanzado el mayor grado de integración de toda la historia del capitalismo, la crisis de sobreproducción en Asia amenaza el ciclo alcista de la economía, tanto en Europa como en EEUU.
Voces muy ponderadas se alzan previniendo sobre una recesión mundial, y no esta descartado que pudiera transformarse en la caída más importante de la economía desde la II Guerra Mundial.
También en el movimiento obrero el debate está abierto. En sectores de izquierda, tanto en el frente sindical como en los partidos obreros, se aboga por políticas expansivas, gastos e inversiones públicas y restablecimiento del papel del Estado en la economía de mercado. Estas corrientes han abrazado el programa de Keynes como una alternativa a la crisis, al desempleo masivo y al desmantelamiento del Estado de Bienestar.
Pero ¿son una alternativa viable las recetas del keynesianismo para resolver la crisis capitalista? ¿Constituyen el programa por el que la izquierda y el movimiento obrero deben luchar? Ambas preguntas abordan cuestiones teóricas, en concreto la naturaleza de la crisis del capitalismo, y prácticas, la alternativa que debe levantar la clase obrera para acabar con ella.
El auge de la posguerra
La característica más importante de la posguerra fue el largo período de auge que se prolongó hasta finales de los años 60. Representó la mayor explosión de inversión, producción, comercio, ciencia y técnica de toda la historia de la Humanidad, y puso su sello en los acontecimientos políticos de todo el mundo. El auge de los países desarrollados superó los niveles de entreguerras y tuvo efectos en relanzar las ilusiones en el capitalismo como sistema viable.
Todo período de desarrollo que ha atravesado el capitalismo tiene rasgos comunes y aspectos diferentes. El marxismo explica, y empíricamente se ha demostrado, que el movimiento de la economía de mercado se realiza a través de ciclos de booms y auges y también de recesiones y depresiones.
Desde el auge de 1871 a 1912 el capitalismo no experimentó un período de crecimiento tan importante como el que se prolongó de 1948 hasta principios de la década de los 70. Toda una serie de factores influyeron en este proceso:
• El fracaso de la revolución en Europa Occidental al final de la guerra, especialmente en Francia, Italia y Grecia, donde los trabajadores armados −partisanos y resistentes al nazismo− y encuadrados en los partidos comunistas y socialistas pudieron haber tomado el poder. Este desarrollo estabilizó políticamente la situación y favoreció el auge: fue su precondición política.
• Los efectos devastadores de la guerra, con la destrucción de una cantidad formidable de fuerzas productivas, tanto bienes de capital como de consumo, que crearon un gran mercado.
• La actitud de EEUU respecto a Europa, muy diferente de la mantenida tras la I Guerra Mundial con la firma del Tratado de Versalles. Ante la amenaza del bloque soviético, los EEUU contribuyeron con el Plan Marshall a relanzar la economía europea. Las fuerzas productivas de EEUU se mantuvieron intactas durante la guerra.
• El enorme aumento de la inversión en bienes de capital. El surgimiento de nuevas industrias al calor de la guerra (aplicación del plástico, aluminio, electricidad, energía atómica, informática).
• Aplicación de los inventos desarrollados en el ámbito militar a la producción civil. El rápido incremento de la producción en las industrias más nuevas.
• La sustitución del viejo patrón oro para el comercio, por el dólar como moneda de cambio, impuesta por EEUU y, en menor medida, por Gran Bretaña, condujo a una enorme expansión del crédito y del capital ficticio.
• La expansión del crédito, utilizada para superar las limitaciones reales del mercado.
• El nuevo mercado para los bienes de capital en los países en vías de desarrollo. El aumento de la demanda de materias primas en los países avanzados por el desarrollo de la industria favoreció además el crecimiento −también las desigualdades− en los países subdesarrollados.
• El aumento del comercio, especialmente de bienes de capital, entre los países capitalistas avanzados actuó como un gran estímulo para la actividad productiva.
• El papel de la intervención del Estado en la economía.
Todos estos factores interactuaron y favorecieron un desarrollo sin precedentes del capitalismo. Pero si tenemos que destacar en este proceso un factor, el decisivo, fue el aumento de la inversión de capital, que es el principal motor del desarrollo capitalista.
Las grandes inversiones en la industria, el giro hacia la mecanización y la automatización, la productividad del trabajo, aumentaron decisivamente, incrementándose al mismo tiempo la cantidad de capital constante en proporción al capital variable, es decir la proporción del capital invertido en maquinaria, edificios, plantas, etc., aumentó en relación a la cantidad invertida en fuerza de trabajo, lo que más tarde o temprano debía conducir a una caída en la tasa de beneficios.
Inevitablemente, la caída en la tasa de beneficios, que se aceleró durante la década de los 70, tuvo su reflejo en la caída de la inversión y en la recesión de los años 70.
Como Marx explicó, la causa fundamental de la crisis es inherente a la propia sociedad capitalista, y reside en la inevitable aparición de sobreproducción, tanto en bienes de capital como de consumo. Lenin, en su artículo Observación sobre el problema de los mercados, combatió la idea de que las crisis eran originadas por la desproporción entre la producción y la capacidad de consumo, asignando a este fenómeno real (la existencia de un déficit de consumo) un lugar secundario, como un hecho que sólo se refiere a un sector de toda la producción capitalista. Para Lenin "este hecho no puede por sí solo explicar las crisis, puesto que responde a una contradicción más profunda y fundamental del sistema económico vigente: a la contradicción existente entre el carácter social de la producción y el carácter privado de la apropiación".
¿Y el Estado?
La tendencia innata de las fuerzas productivas a sobrepasar los límites de la propiedad privada obliga al Estado a intervenir más y más en la "regulación" de la economía. La intervención estatal fue un factor que contribuyó al auge pero no fue el decisivo, de la misma manera que no evitó la recesión en los años 70 ni actualmente en Japón, a pesar de las gigantescas inversiones estatales realizadas desde 1992.
El aumento del papel jugado por el Estado en la moderna economía capitalista se explica por el crecimiento de las fuerzas productivas, de las multinacionales y el desarrollo del capital monopolista. Lenin ya trató estos aspectos en su libro El imperialismo, fase superior del capitalismo. La fusión del capital monopolista con el Estado, que actúa como el agente directo de los grandes monopolios, no tiene nada que ver con la "regulación" o la "planificación" de la economía en el sentido socialista que toma el término bajo un Estado obrero, ni tampoco, y esto es fundamental para contestar a aquellos que tienen ilusiones en el papel del Estado en la economía capitalista, supone la eliminación del papel dominante del mercado.
El Estado, durante las décadas posteriores a la II Guerra Mundial, se hizo con el control de industrias que se habían convertido en poco rentables, debido al desarrollo de nuevas ramas industriales y nuevas técnicas de producción, y debido también a los grandes gastos de capital que exigían su modernización cuya rentabilidad, por tanto, a corto plazo no era atractiva para los capitalistas privados.
La intervención del Estado en estos sectores no alteraba las leyes básicas ni las contradicciones en que se mueve el capitalismo. Estos sectores estatalizados de la economía (ferrocarriles, minería, siderurgia, eléctricas, etc.) proporcionaban materias primas y servicios baratos a los capitalistas privados que se beneficiaban de esta manera de los subsidios y las inversiones estatales.
Pero el factor clave del auge de posguerra fue el aumento de la inversión de capital que ya hemos señalado anteriormente.
Al comienzo de la década de los 60, el 10% de la economía de Gran Bretaña estaba en manos del Estado, como una palanca para favorecer el crecimiento del sector privado. Lo mismo se puede decir de Alemania, Francia, Italia o el Estado español, donde la aparición del Instituto Nacional de Industria (INI) jugó un papel similar.
Incluso cuando la actividad económica de las empresas estatales supuso un porcentaje importante del PIB, siempre fue una cifra insuficiente para determinar el movimiento básico de la economía. No era la industria estatal la que dictaba el movimiento de la industria privada sino a la inversa.
El papel del gasto público
¿Por qué no puede el gasto público del Estado capitalista solucionar los problemas de la economía capitalista? En la economía capitalista la producción se realiza por y para el mercado. Una parte decisiva de los recursos del Estado, vía impuestos, provienen del propio mercado: o bien de los beneficios de los capitalistas o bien de los salarios de los trabajadores. Si se aumentan los impuestos a los capitalistas se reducirá su tasa de beneficios, con las implicaciones que tiene para la inversión y la producción.
Por el contrario, una mayor presión impositiva sobre el salario de los obreros reduce el mercado de bienes de consumo. El Estado no puede resolver esta contradicción por su carácter de clase y por eso los capitalistas, en cuanto tienen oportunidad, reducen los impuestos que les afectan, aumentando la presión sobre los trabajadores.
¿Cuál era la solución keynesiana? Para Keynes y su escuela se podía superar "el ciclo recesivo" alimentando la demanda aunque fuera artificialmente. En este punto el papel del Estado era decisivo. No importaba el déficit si esto suponía un incremento de la actividad. En parte esto podía funcionar temporalmente durante una época de auge de la economía, aunque fuese a costa de un endeudamiento agónico del Estado.
Sin embargo, la situación cambió dramáticamente cuando se produjo una caída en la economía con la recesión de 1973. En ese momento el déficit del Estado se transformó en una gran losa, inaceptable para los capitalistas, que veían cómo al cólera del endeudamiento le acompañaba la peste de la inflación −alimentada por la financiación del déficit−.
La caída de la economía, como se comprobó traumáticamente, afectó y arrastró a la industria pública. Lo que era una ventaja temporal −la intervención del Estado en la economía− se transformó dialécticamente en un factor extraordinariamente negativo para la economía capitalista.
La crisis de los 70 reveló el auténtico carácter de las contradicciones del sistema. Primero, comenzando con una caída en la tasa de beneficios que bajó durante un período de años en los que continuaron las inversiones, hasta tal punto que no era compensada por el aumento de la plusvalía, incluso en un período en el que hubo un aumento sensible de la productividad del trabajo. Esta caída en la tasa de beneficios indujo a su vez a una caída en la inversión, posteriormente en la producción y, finalmente, provocó una explosión del desempleo. La inflación y el déficit público alimentaron las llamas del incendio.
Monetarismo versus keynesianismo
Las contradicciones surgidas entre el ascenso de las fuerzas productivas por un lado y la propiedad privada de los medios de producción y el Estado nacional por otro, condujeron a la crisis de sobreproducción y al descrédito del keynesianismo por parte de todos los gobiernos, tanto de derechas como de "izquierdas".
En un proceso prolongado en el tiempo, empezando por EEUU y Gran Bretaña, las viejas recetas del monetarismo, con sus presupuestos equilibrados y las privatizaciones masivas de empresas públicas, dejaron un reguero de miles de puestos de trabajo destruidos y provocaron el desmantelamiento, en el caso británico, de la industria y la minería pública. Estas recetas se completaron con la precarización del mercado laboral y el incremento de los beneficios empresariales sobre la base de la explotación extrema de la clase obrera, el ataque a los gastos públicos y el expolio del Tercer Mundo.
Sin embargo, la curva de desarrollo de la economía marca una clara tendencia descendente desde 1973.
El boom de los 80, que significó más explotación obrera en los países avanzados y en los subdesarrollados, no evitó el incremento de los déficit públicos y la expansión del crédito. Los grandes poderes imperialistas, asustados ante la perspectiva de una recesión, recurrieron entre 1985 y 1987 a medidas económicas que chocaban con su propia experiencia. Para prolongar el boom coordinaron sus políticas financieras, saquearon aun más a los países subdesarrollados y recurrieron al crédito masivo o de nuevo al gasto público, haciendo crecer el déficit y el endeudamiento.
Los efectos fueron evidentes en el siguiente ciclo recesivo −1990-1991 para EEUU y Gran Bretaña y 1992-1993 para el conjunto de Europa−. La caída fue la más importante desde los años 70 y en algunos casos, como en Europa Occidental, superior en términos de destrucción de empleo, caída de la inversión y la producción.
Desde entonces la burguesía ha sintonizado un programa de ataques a los salarios, desregulación del mercado de trabajo, aumento de la plusvalía absoluta y relativa y guerra sin cuartel al déficit público, con el consiguiente desmantelamiento del estado del bienestar en Europa. El capitalismo, enfermo y decadente, está sosteniendo su crecimiento consumiendo una parte fundamental de las reservas sociales creadas en el período precedente, lo que conducirá a nuevas contradicciones y explosiones de la lucha de clases.
Una crisis orgánica del sistema capitalista
No hace tanto que el FMI, en su reunión de Hong Kong en septiembre de 1997, predecía un crecimiento sostenido de las economías asiáticas y sorprendentemente vaticinaban que Japón y la UE relevarían a EEUU y Gran Bretaña como líderes de la recuperación.
La crisis del Sudeste Asiático (SA) ha devuelto realismo a las previsiones delirantes de los gurús del FMI y del BM. No cabe duda que el crecimiento que los "Tigres" experimentaron durante la segunda mitad de los 80 y primera de los 90, permitió amortiguar la recesión en Occidente y proveer de mercados para los bienes de producción a las grandes economías capitalistas. No obstante, el desarrollo de los "Tigres", especialmente China, alimentó nuevas contradicciones, creando competidores poderosos en el mercado mundial para las economías de EEUU, Europa y Japón.
Las grandes inversiones en capital, que durante décadas se realizaron en Corea, Indonesia o Tailandia, chocaron con los límites del mercado mundial y de nuevo la sobreproducción hizo su aparición. Demasiada abundancia de chips, ordenadores, cemento, petróleo, plástico y, por supuesto, de bienes de consumo baratos. La crisis de la economía real se combinó y agudizó con el crash financiero, provocando la devaluación histórica de sus monedas y el endeudamiento masivo de estas economías −y en correspondencia un grave problema para los bancos occidentales que prestaron el dinero para financiar el crecimiento−, la caída de la producción, quiebra de empresas y explosión del desempleo. La recesión más importante de la historia de estos países, que se agudizará aun más por las recetas salvajes del FMI.
En Indonesia la "estanflación" ha hecho su aparición: el alza de los precios alcanzó un 52% interanual en mayo de este año, el mayor nivel en 23 años, y la contracción del PIB puede alcanzar este año un -10%. En Tailandia la inflación supero en mayo el 10.2% interanual, la cifra más alta en los últimos 17 años y la contracción del PIB se situará entre el 4,5% y el 5%. En Corea del Sur, el PIB en el primer trimestre de este año registró una caída del 3,8%, la primera contracción en 18 años.
Las consecuencias políticas y sociales de esta recesión no han tardado en manifestarse. En Indonesia la subida de los precios de los productos básicos, la escasez y el desempleo desataron una oleada de protestas que se transformaron en un auténtico movimiento revolucionario contra la dictadura. La caída de Suharto no es más que el primer acto del proceso. En Corea del Sur se han organizado tres huelgas generales contra los despidos masivos en los chaebols (conglomerados industriales), a pesar de los primeros intentos de llegar a pactos sociales entre el gobierno y las direcciones sindicales.
Como siempre, los capitalistas quieren poner la carga de la crisis sobre la espalda de los trabajadores.
Japón en recesión
La
recesión en la economía japonesa es una advertencia seria, muy seria,
de la gravedad de la crisis. Japón es la segunda potencia económica
mundial y domina casi un tercio del comercio mundial. La crisis del
Sudeste Asiático ha acelerado la caída que ya venía incubándose por las
propias contradicciones de la economía japonesa desde los años 80.
"Hace
escasas semanas" citaba Pablo Bustelo en un artículo de El País
(25/5/98) "el presidente de la compañía Sony, Ohga Norio, declaró que
la economía japonesa estaba al borde del colapso…".
"La economía japonesa está atravesando su peor momento del último cuarto de siglo (…) En primer lugar, se trata de una recesión fuertemente deflacionaria, que a la caída de la producción suma un descenso considerable de los precios de bienes (…) La merma en los beneficios empresariales (-45% en el año fiscal de 1997) ha provocado una menor inversión un estancamiento de los salarios y, por vez primera, un incremento sustancial de la tasa de desempleo, que alcanzó un 3,9% en marzo [4,1% en abril], máximo histórico desde 1953. En suma, la economía japonesa está inmersa en un círculo vicioso: la escasa demanda interna hace caer la producción y los precios, pero, al desanimar la inversión, impide un aumento suficiente de los salarios reales y destruye puestos de trabajo, lo que deteriora aun más el consumo privado".
El 35% de las exportaciones de productos manufacturados japoneses se destinaba a Asia, por lo que la crisis del SA ha tenido efectos directos en los beneficios y la producción. Igual ocurre con el sistema bancario: cerca de 30 billones de pesetas −según fuentes oficiales, según otras fuentes serían 100 billones− tienen los bancos japoneses comprometidos en créditos de dudoso cobro.
La crisis japonesa se hunde en las mismas causas de siempre: sobreproducción, burbuja financiera, endeudamiento del sistema bancario, límites del mercado mundial y en el hecho decisivo de la enorme interpenetración de la economía mundial. ¿Cómo se puede afirmar que la recesión japonesa no afectará a EEUU ni a la Unión Europea? ¿Por qué entonces tanto miedo a que continúe la caída del yen y a una posible devaluación del yuan chino? La explicación no es tan difícil. EEUU ha visto caer sus exportaciones en el primer trimestre un 3% y además sabe perfectamente cómo empezó el crash del 29: recesión de la economía agraria e industrial combinada con devaluaciones competitivas y crash bursátil.
Evidentemente, cuando Clinton viaja a China nueve días no es sólo para hacer turismo en la Gran Muralla, algo tendrá que ver el afán de los capitalistas americanos para obtener de los dirigentes estalinistas chinos un compromiso firme de que no devaluarán el yuan y evitar así una guerra comercial, que bien podría ser el accidente que desatase una recesión mundial.
En cualquier caso, el neokeynesianismo no salvó a Japón. Desde 1992 se han inyectado 70 billones de pesetas por parte del Estado en la economía japonesa, orientados especialmente a salvar de la quiebra el sistema bancario, y en obras públicas, con el objetivo de reactivar la demanda interna. No sirvió de mucho, porque el movimiento real de la economía de mercado está sometida a contradicciones que el Estado capitalista no puede evitar.
Una alternativa socialista
Si el keynesianismo fracasó, la política monetarista y neoliberal está fracasando, produciendo efectos todavía más perniciosos. Basar el crecimiento en la sobreexplotación de la clase obrera, el empobrecimiento de la sociedad, la precarización del mercado laboral, el desmantelamiento de los servicios sociales (sanidad, educación, subsidios de desempleo y a los marginados), y el paro masivo, sólo preparan una reacción aún más enérgica de las masas hacia la izquierda, pero no evitarán la crisis, en todo caso aumentarán su profundidad y violencia.
Los marxistas rechazamos que el keynesianismo o el monetarismo sean una alternativa para los trabajadores. Obviamente defendemos todas las conquistas de la clase obrera: la sanidad y la educación públicas, gratuitas y universales, las viviendas sociales, le empresa pública y los puestos de trabajo, logros que hoy son atacados sin escrúpulos. Y subrayamos que la única forma de defenderlas consecuentemente es con la movilización más amplia, masiva y decidida de la clase obrera, los parados y los jóvenes, tarea que es responsabilidad de los sindicatos de clase y de las organizaciones políticas de los trabajadores. Al mismo tiempo, señalamos que estas conquistas chocan hoy con los intereses del capital y con la crisis de su sistema.
Una sociedad con pleno empleo, en la que aplicando los enormes avances tecnológicos al proceso productivo hiciese posible la reducción de la jornada laboral a 30, 25, 20 o menos horas semanales, con vivienda accesible, con sanidad y educación dignas, es absolutamente posible a condición de que nos liberemos del control reaccionario que un reducido número de monopolios, bancos y grandes capitalistas ejercen sobre la riqueza del mundo; y eso pasa por luchar por un programa socialista, por la nacionalización de la banca, los monopolios y los latifundios bajo control obrero y sin indemnización salvo en caso de necesidad comprobada, para planificar la economía en beneficio de la Humanidad, y acabar de una vez por todas con las crisis del capitalismo.
Globalization
Is An Issue, The Power
of Capital Is The Issue
by William
K. Tabb
This paper was originally presented at the 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference.
The globalization hypothesis asserts that there has been a rapid and recent change in the nature of economic relations among national economies which have lost much of their distinct claim to separate internally driven development, and that domestic economic management strategies have become ineffective to the point of irrelevance. Internationalization is, in this view, seen as a tide sweeping over borders in which technology and irresistible market forces transform the global system in ways beyond the power of anyone to do much to change. Transnational corporations (TNCs) and global governance organizations, such as the World Bank and the IMF, enforce conformity on all nations no matter their location or preferences. The corollary to such thinking is that radical alternatives are not possible, and that in Margaret Thatcher's memorable phrase, TINA, "There is no alternative."
There is certainly evidence of an increased importance of the international economy over the last decades. The ratio of exports to GDP roughly doubled from 1960 to 1990 among the OECD countries (the richest 24 nations) from under 10 percent to over 20 percent. The stock of international bank lending rose from 4 percent of OECD GDP in 1980 to 44 percent in 1990, and daily turnover in currency markets of well over a trillion dollars dwarfs the reserves of central bank regulators. The fear of plant closings and job loss are a daily reality for working people everywhere and "globalization" has become the all purpose explanation.
There is a great deal of difference however between the strong version of the globalization thesis which requires a new view of the international economy as one that "subsumes and subordinates national-level processes," and a more nuanced view which gives a major role to national-level policies and actors, and the central position not to inexorable economic forces but to politics. In the second perspective, current changes are considered in a longer historical perspective and are seen as distinct but not unprecedented, and as not necessarily involving either the emergence of, or movement toward, a type of economic system which is basically different from what we have known.
It is important to see that the first version of the globalization thesis is based on a myth, has profound political implications which are defeatist, and is not based on a sound analysis of what is a more complex and contestable set of processes.1 Thus the discussion of globalization is best undertaken as a two step process. The first need is to critique the strong version of globalization which has disempowered much of the left. That is the task of this essay. The second step is to look more carefully at what is new in the present conjuncture. Capitalism is an ever changing system, and it is necessary to base political strategy on an awareness of the nature of developments in the present period. But first we must address the defeatist acceptance of inexorable global capital hegemony.
Much of the U.S. labor movement has embraced the strong version of globalization, placing almost exclusive emphasis on runaway shops and the threat of low wage production venues in the Third World to American workers. Capital will go anywhere in the world seeking the lowest possible wages. But this is at best an oversimplification. It misrepresents the actual investment patterns of transnationals. Three-fourths of foreign investment and production by U.S.-based multinationals is in Western Europe, Canada and other high wage countries and this investment is overwhelmingly to service these markets from local production sites. As for capital leaving the United States, it is important to recognize that since 1990 the United States has been a net importer of foreign direct investment, as the TNCs of other nations have located production in this country and employed American workers. The huge American balance of payments deficit is largely a result of borrowing and the U.S. role as consumer of last resort, the market which absorbs imports paid for with borrowed money. The United States absorbs almost half of manufactured exports from what is anachronistically still called the Third World. U.S. corporations have benefitted from such policies and from the popular confusion between national well-being and the competitiveness of U.S.-based companies.
Production by TNCs outside their country of origin is important, yet 85 percent of industrial output is produced by domestic corporations in a single geographic location. The multinationals account for about 15 percent of the world's industrial output. Moreover, while much of the Left focuses on runaway shops to low wage venues, transnational capital avoids really low wage production sites, and indeed avoids investing in most developing countries. Nearly two-thirds of the world's population is basically written off as far as foreign investment is concerned. Growing inequality is a result of the marginalization of most of the world's population.2 Between 70 and 100 countries are worse off now than they were in 1980, according to UN figures. Greater incorporation into the international economy even for the so-called miracle economies does not necessarily last. A decade ago the development journals all produced special issues on Korea, the most successful of the New Industrial Economies. Today they carry stories about the parlous state of the Korean economy and the growing bankruptcies of the over leveraged chaebols. The fragility engendered by uncontrolled competition produces uncertainty at best, and often disaster for workers everywhere.
In any event direct labor costs are not a big part of the price of many products and low wages alone are rarely decisive for most producers (although they are important in particular industries, for examples for garment producers and electronics assembly.) The major factor in the loss of manufacturing jobs is technological change. Domestic U.S. manufacturing output today is five times what it was in 1950 even as fewer workers are needed by the manufacturing sector. This is overwhelmingly the result of labor displacing technology, not of runaway shops. The lack of unionization in the fast growing high tech industries weakens all workers. The importance of such growth has also contributed to growing inequality in the U.S. economy.3
The Longer Perspective
Capitalism has always been a global system even if the particular ways the world economy affects workers in particular places changes over time. Economic historians ask us to see the present in such a perspective. The world's political economy is not more globalized than it was a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. Rereading The Communist Manifesto makes the point.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country ... In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations ... In a word, it creates a world after its own image.
Such integration was clear even before cross oceanic telegraph cables integrated world markets and steel hulled steamers replaced wooden sailing ships; and such innovations in historical perspective were certainly more important in reorienting global production than air freight and containerization a century later. From such a large historical perspective one can conclude that: "If the theorists of globalization mean that we have an economy in which each part of the world is linked by markets sharing close to real-time information, then that began not in the 1970s but in the 1870s."4 As to the huge sums of money moving around the globe at the push of a computer terminal button, economic historians find greater openness to capital flows at the beginning of the 20th century (before World War One) than in the present period at century's end. Researchers find no increase in openness between 1875 and 1975, but rather a relative decline in capital movements. Bob Zevin concludes after a review of the evidence: "All these measures of transnational-securities trading and ownership are substantially greater in the years before the First World War than they are at present. More generally, every available description of financial markets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that they were more fully integrated than they were before or have been since."5 Nontradables have grown as a proportion of total output between the beginning and end of the present century with the ever growing importance of locally consumed services (including those produced by governments).
Multinational manufacturing firms appeared in the middle of the 19th century and were well established by the beginning of the 20th century. Two world wars and a great depression created what Eric Hobsbawm in his work on the "short" 20th century has described as an interlude of national economics between eras of internationalized economics. In this reading, once recovery from world war and global depression were complete, what took place was not some new departure but a return to trend. Capital flows do not today influence economic development to the extent they did in the 19th century, and the world, as we have seen, is not more globalized today than a century ago. It is however in basic ways different than it was a half century ago and it is this lived memory which is the general referent for much of the discussion today. It is useful to see the ways in which the national Keynesian Welfare State political economy which emerged out of the trauma of war and global depression has eroded, and the extent to which we are back to pre-Keynesian economics and the ideological hegemony of laissez faire.
The Postwar Nationalist Political Economy
The Great Depression and the exigencies of war each in their own way discredited the market system and led to the acceptance of state planning and a major role for government in allocating resources. In the countries of the core, left-center social democratic regimes to one extent or another prevailed and liberal (in the American usage of the term)—labor alliances governed. A class compromise predominated in which capital was forced to accept unions and the role of the state in stabilizing the economy. This led to a post-war structure of accumulation in the context of successful economic rebuilding from wartime damage in Europe and Japan, and to U.S. global hegemony. Through the Marshall Plan and then through military alliances the United States "contained" both the "really existing" socialist states and the mass Communist movements of France and Italy. Non-capitalist regimes were isolated in the mutual militarized stand off of the Cold War, and concessions were made to labor in the advanced capitalist nations. In the newly independent former colonies a local bourgeoisie used nationalism to build its own position vis-a-vis former colonial masters, and kept the masses at bay with nationalist rhetoric and a purported commitment to planning and forms of socialist development, which, in practice seemed to strengthen national elites rather than empower the masses.
As global growth rates slowed down in the economic dislocations of the 1970s, Third World elites found accommodations as junior partners to transnational capitalism. Privatization and export oriented development replaced import substitution and nationalization, strategies which had run up against the limits of the size of domestic markets given the stark inequalities of income and wealth. In the advanced nations, once the recovery from the depression and the Second World War was achieved, excess capacity and intensified competition led to a new low wage strategy that replaced the national Keynesian one of finding markets in higher domestic income and government deficit spending. Globalization reasserted itself as TNCs looked to interpenetrate each other's markets, and the high cost of product development and faster product cycles led to pressure to market globally.
Accompanying this shift from national Keynesianism to a global neoclassical economics was an undermining of the restrictions on capital which had been put in place in the crisis of the inter-war period. These restrictions developed to protect capitalism from the self-destructive logic of the system itself. As Karl Polanyi, and more recently George Soros among others have pointed out, true laissez faire capitalism means a degree of instability and insecurity which is intolerable to most people, and finally undermines the ability of the system to reproduce itself. The reforms from the 1930s which stabilized U.S. capitalism are all now under attack. These include social security, regulation of banking and the security markets, labor laws (such as the requirement that employers pay time and a half for overtime), and antitrust laws.
The New Triumphs of Laissez Faire Ideology and Policy
The current offensive of capitalist logic into all realms of social life undermine many of the legitimation functions of the state which have provided citizen loyalty for the accumulation patterns of the capitalist system. The demand that everything be done through the market (that college tuition not be subsidized by the state, that legal aid should be abolished, public housing discontinued, and health care provided through the market) all represent attacks on programs which have broad support. But the self confidence with which market ideologists attack any sense of public space, of solidaristic provision of services and shelter from the relentless individualistic values of the market, represents a measure of the defeat of democracy. Similarly, the devolution of service provision in the United States from the federal to the state to the local levels, and then to individual procurement based on ability to pay, undermines the limited solidarities which hold society together. These processes have little to do with globalization, and a great deal to do with the victories of capital over labor, and the resulting damage to the rights of citizenship.
After thirty years during which wages have lagged behind prices, for the head of the Federal Reserve to claim that job insecurity is easing and so it is time to slow the economy is one of the clearest indicators of the triumph of capital in our era.6 In point of fact, America's corporations, whose profits adjusted for inflation have gone up by 50 percent since 1991, continue to both lay off and hire new workers. The defeat of progressive social policies and the decline in union strength means U.S. capitalism can have lower unemployment without rising wages. Even though jobs are relatively plentiful, new jobs are mostly bad jobs. They pay less than old ones; on average workers who get laid off and find new jobs receive fourteen percent less pay in their new jobs.
In 1993 27 percent of all U.S. workers were in jobs that didn't pay them enough to live above the poverty level, and only a little over a third of all workers had wholly employer financed medical insurance. The problem is not only high disguised unemployment and the growth of part time work, but the reality that full time jobs do not pay enough to live on. The working poor work harder, live in substandard housing, and lack health coverage. Twenty percent of all full time workers have no retirement or medical coverage. The fast growth of temps and part timers means growing insecurity. Meanwhile the average CEO, who in 1960 earned 40 times the income of the average U.S. factory worker, in 1993 got 149 times the income of the average U.S. factory worker. Welfare benefits to families with children which were 71 percent of the poverty line for a family of three in 1970 were 40 percent of the poverty line by 1992, and are less today. The real value of the minimum wage in 1994 was lower than in 1950. Real hourly wages in the United States were lower in 1994 than in 1968. The top one percent of American households have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Between 1977 and 1989 that top one percent enjoyed 60 percent of all the gains in after tax income.
A recent report by the advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi advised investors to follow a Tiffany/Wal-Mart strategy in light of "the continuing erosion of our traditional mass market—the middle class." That is, avoid investing in companies which serve the shrinking middle. The richest one percent pays a smaller share of their income in taxes today than in 1979, while their share of the national income has doubled. "Americans," as Michael Mandel, the Business Week writer notes, "are living with a combination of growth and uncertainty they've never seen before."7 The stock market boom fuels upper class consumption. Over half of all new cars are sold to the top 20 percent of the income distribution. Class division is everywhere more visible. And even as the salience of marxist economics becomes ever more obvious, official economics has returned to pre-Keynesian orthodoxies.
It's Capitalism, Not Globalization
In this context the idea that the state is powerless to stop these trends is a powerful tool of capital. The idea that "globalization" has weakened the state ignores the continuous technical ability of the state to regulate capital. Money can flee to tax havens and to offshore banking centers only if the core countries allow it to do so. If the United States penalized banks (and depositors) in jurisdictions which do not allow regulators access to information necessary to tax capital transfers, most tax haven banks would shut down. There is no reason regulators cannot impose transfer taxes and other regulations. It is the governments of the advanced nations, especially the United States and Britain which have encouraged deregulation. This was a political choice, not a technical necessity.
By insisting on basic workers' rights, the United States (which has done so much to undermine those rights) has the power to raise wages and improve working conditions everywhere. It is a political choice that the United States, in the name of free trade, encourages a race to the bottom. A counter hegemonic outlook of solidarity and social justice points to a very different set of rules. It is the ideological and organizational weakness of the Left which has lent power to the claims of globalists. It is not that U.S. employers do not routinely threaten to close plants and move to Mexico and elsewhere. They do, and such threats are effective in the current climate of labor regulation in the United States.8 But it is not international trade per se that is the problem but the political conditions under which that trade takes place.
Robert Blackburn in his new book, The Making of New World Slavery, informs us that by 1770 profits derived from slavery furnished a third of British capital formation. In what might be called a new international division of labor, slaves produced rice, coffee, sugar and other products central to the living standard and personal fortunes of many Europeans. What is interesting is not how much globalization changes things but the continuities in capitalist mentality and practices. As Eric Foner has written: "Today's Chinatown sweatshops and Third World child labor factories are the functional equivalent of colonial slavery in that the demands of the consumer and the profit drive of the entrepreneur overwhelm the rights of those whose labor actually produces the saleable commodity."9 Working people have always resisted such demands. At the end of the 20th century resistance will be stronger to the extent to which we do not allow the scarecrow of "globalization" to disempower us. The system is the same, its logic is the same, and the need for workers of the world to unite has never been greater. It is time for greater clarity in our critique of the basic workings of what are called "free markets" but are in reality class power. We need to counterpoise the need to control capital and to have the economy serve human needs rather than accept the continuous sacrifice of working people to such ideological constructions as competitiveness, free markets, and the alleged requirements of globalization.
NOTES
WILLIAM K. TABB is professor of economics and political science at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of The Postwar Japanese System (1995).
Cuba calls the shots; and Venezuela pays the bills. That is the major premise underlying the Report made public last Monday by the U.S. State Department concerning Cuba. Its findings are as much about the Bush Administration's plans for regime change in Cuba, as they are about the alleged threat that Venezuela poses to U.S. national security interests.
The ninety-three page Report was prepared by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, co-chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. Its recommendations were accepted by President George W. Bush. They include a budget of $80 million during the next two years to ensure a transition, rather than a succession of leadership, in Cuba. The Report also contains a classified attachment that contains a secret plan for regime change in Cuba.
Although the Commission's Report and its recommendations are ostensibly about Cuba, Venezuela is a featured star player in the drama. It mentions Venezuela at least nine different times, always emphasizing Washington's perception that the Chávez government is bankrolling the Cuban government: "Cuba can only meet its budget needs with the considerable support of foreign donors, primarily Venezuela," says the Report.
Subversion in Latin America
Besides keeping the Cuban government afloat, Venezuelan money is allegedly also responsible for subversion in Latin America. The first paragraph of the Report boldly proclaims that "there are clear signs the regime [Cuba] is using money provided by the Chavez government in Venezuela to reactivate its networks in the hemisphere to subvert democratic governments." We are not told which countries the Bush Administration thinks Cuba and Venezuela are subverting, nor are we ever told how.
A good guess may be Bolivia. The South American country recently elected Evo Morales as President. Washington considers him to be a friend of both Cuba and Venezuela. What have Castro and Chávez been up to in the Andes?
Cuba has 719 medical doctors in Bolivia. They go where Bolivian doctors fear to tread. In the most remote areas of the Andean country, Cuban doctors have treated more than 776,000 patients and saved 326 lives. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has pledged $1.5 billion in energy investment to Bolivia. Venezuela is also investing in projects to produce organic tea, coffee, dairy and legal coca products there. The Chávez government recently also donated computers to schools in the remote Chapare region of Bolivia.
Cuban doctors and Venezuelan investments: they are a lethal recipe for subversion in Latin America according to the Bush Administration.
"The Castro-Led Axis"
The Bush Administration Commission compares the Cuba´s relation to Venezuela with its "earlier failed relationship with the Soviet Union, only this time not as the junior partner: Fidel Castro is calling the shots." It of course offers no evidence to support its thesis that President Chávez is anything other than his own man. The Report simply posits the myth as fact.
This "Castro-led axis," the Report finds, "undermines our interest in a more democratic Venezuela and undermines democratic governance and institutions elsewhere in the region. Together, these countries are advancing an alternative retrograde and anti-American agenda for the hemisphere's future and they are finding some resonance with populist governments and disenfranchised populations in the region."
From these flawed premises flows the Bush Administration's foreign policy toward Cuba and Venezuela. The Bush Doctrine is clear: in order to protect its interests in Latin America, Washington must overthrow the Cuban government and replace it with one more akin to U.S. interests. To help overthrow the Cuban government, it is necessary to cut off its money supply. That's where Venezuela comes in.
The Report that the State Department released to the public this week makes it abundantly clear that Washington considers Cuba and Venezuela to be two peas in a pod, and that their relationship constitutes an axis of evil that is detrimental to U.S. interests.
The Threat of Using Title III of Helms-Burton Against Venezuela
One of the more troublesome of the Commission's recommendations is the threat to apply Title III of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Solidarity Act, known as "Helms Burton", to Venezuela.
Title III gives the United States unprecedented authority over property within another nation's borders. It permits lawsuits in U.S. courts brought by individual citizens against businesses that operate on property the Cuban government nationalized after the 1959 revolution. Concerned about the chilling effect on U.S. relations with foreign governments if it were to implement it, successive U.S. Presidents have suspended Title III since Helms-Burton was enacted ten years ago.
According to the Commission's Report, the White House is now prepared to apply, for the first time, Title III to individual countries that are "engaged in a process of support for regime succession (with Cuba)." This is a not-so-veiled threat to Venezuela, as well other nations who maintain normal relations with Cuba.
Were the United States to apply Title III to Venezuela, it would have profound and long-lasting implications on U.S.-Venezuela relations. Trade between the two nations in 2005 amounted to almost $39 billion. The specter of Miami Cubans suing Venezuela over nationalized pre-1959 property will loom heavily over any future trade ventures between the United States and Venezuela.
President Chávez, reflecting on the U.S. threats against Venezuela contained in the Report, said that "there are no threats that will discourage Venezuela from supporting the Cuban revolution and the Cuban people." "Rather than thinking of a transition plan for Cuba, he added, "the United States ought to elaborate a transition plan for themselves because this is the century that will see the end of the U.S. empire."
The Bush Doctrine for Regime Change
The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba lays down the gauntlet to Latin America. Under the Bush Doctrine, Cuba's government must be overthrown. Moreover, the United States foreign policy towards other nations in the Hemisphere will be measured by whether these nations support U.S. efforts for regime change in Cuba. Governments that support Cuba risk the wrath of the U.S. government and may be overthrown as well.
The Bush Doctrine makes it clear that legal, political and military options remain at the disposal of the United States government to overthrow the government of Cuba, as well as the governments of the "friends of Cuba." Some of these options are sealed, and we can only suppose their magnitude.
We don't know whether they include another coup d'état such as the one the U.S. launched in 2002 that almost succeeded in deposing President Chávez, or whether Washington intends to activate its Miami-Cuban "assets" to carry out terrorist attacks, or whether an outright invasion is a possibility, or even whether the assassination of President Hugo Chávez is in the cards.
The Bush Doctrine is premised on arrogance and mendacity, but it is consistent with U.S. "diplomacy" in the region. Recent history tells us that it is the United States, not Cuba or Venezuela, that subverts democracy in Latin America. The United States overthrew the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 in Guatemala and replaced it with a military dictatorship that left more than 200,000 dead and disappeared. The United States is now shamelessly promoting Guatemala as a prime candidate for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The Pinochet government with which the United States replaced democratically elected President Salvador Allende in Chile left a bloody trail of terror from Santiago to the streets of Washington, D.C. where Cuban-American terrorists working for the Chilean secret service murdered Chilean exile Orlando Letelier in cold blood.
Who have been Washington's friends and allies in Latin America? The Salvadoran governments that brutally murdered over 75,000 of their own citizens, the Argentinean military junta that tortured, disappeared or murdered over 30,000 men, women and children, the Uruguayan and Paraguayan dictatorships that participated in Operation Condor with zeal, even kidnapping the babies of some of the clandestine prisoners they were torturing.
To help subvert democracy, the United States recruited, trained and employed terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles, known as the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America. He was "our man in Latin America," as he helped train the Nicaraguan Contras, as well as the Guatemalan and Salvadoran death squads. In violation of its own international legal obligations, Washington refuses to extradite him to Venezuela to stand trial for 73 counts of first degree murder in relation to the downing of a passenger plane. Instead, the Bush White House shelters Posada in Texas, as the terrorist threatens to tell how he was just following orders.
The Bush Doctrine was formulated by politicians who are not listening to the winds of change in America. The banana republics of yesterday are being replaced by independent and sovereign nations, free of U.S. interference. This continent will soon see a monumental regime change, but that change will come in Washington--not in Havana or Caracas.
José Pertierra is an attorney. He represents the government of Venezuela in Washington, D.CClick
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