A first step would be to cancel the debt to rich countries and banks, and payments with reparation payments - systematic transfers of capital an
The Great Money Trick part 2 is the global operation of the supermarket-agribusiness nexus. At the heart of this operation too is the global thett of the labour of the poor. There are several variants.
The most direct one is the vertically integrated farmingretailing operation. A supermarket chain owns vegetable farm in Kenya.
It sells dwarf green beans in 200gm packets for £1.20p. The seasonal, temporarilyemployed agricultural workers who picked them get a few pennies.
Other farm and transport costs cost 10p - gross overall profit around £1.05p. After rent payments to finance capitalists and wages in the supermarket itself, total profit was probably around 70p.
Profits in this type of operation are typically hundreds
page 13 of the scan
Global justice movement: permanent pressure on western governments: protestors outside last year's Labour Party conference demand fair trade
barrios and the favellas which
form the outer ring of the
great third world cities.
Millions of these slum
inhabitants have moved from
the countryside as agribusiness seizes control of land and
agricultural production.
Thousands arrive from the
countryside every day How
do they survive?
Millions are fully integrated into the industrial proletariat, producing everything
from cars to clothes. Others
become personal servants to
the rich, at home or in the
rich more than both these cate. a countries. But many gories work in the informal sector, as street traders or in unregulated local sweatshops.
The informal sector is often fully integrated into capitalist production circuits, and is the ultimate in 'outsourcing', providing components for goods produced by major companies, or acting as cheap retail outlets for the products of those companies worldwide.
Millions more however endure a precarious existence, involved in petty crime, prostitution and other activities on the 'margins'. Long-term solutions The problem with charity and Western government 'aid" today is precisely that it fails to address the structures of exploitation which are the causes of poverty - indeed it often contributes to perpetuating the global cheap labour economy, by being tied to 'conditionalities' which demand the destruction of local public services, the privatisation of everything, and priority to cheap exports to Western countries.
Aid from NGOs and charities sometimes does create place debt technology from the es, infrastructure sustainable projects, for example poor farmers' cooperatives, but they are a drop in the ocean of world production, and frequently subject to ups and down of world commodity prices.
Much more fundamental solutions are needed to permanently overcome world poverty. These require striking at the roots of exploitation and the power of the big corporations, on a world scale. Massive economic aid is required from the more advanced countries, but this has to empower and enrich poor countries and communities, not perpetuate their subordination.
It is easy to see from the examples below the kind of structural reforms that would begin to address poverty in a long-term way. Wiard
The fundamental
question is how to
revolutionise social
relations on a world
scale.
A first step would be to cancel the debt to rich countries and banks, and replace debt payments with reparation payments - systematic transfers of capital and technology from the rich contries and the poor, to enable them to develop basic social services, infrastructure and industries.
But of course, to be effective this depends on disempowering and removing the local elites who often expropriate international aid.
Second, the third world water crisis has to be solved. The escape from poverty is impossible without clean, regularly available water for both rural and urban communities. Can it be achieved? The example of Africa shows how it can.
African WaLCI poverty would be eliminated by putting wells about $6000 each) into the 40,000 or so major African villages. The headline cost of such provision is a trifling $240m, the cost of two US Stealth bombers.
Given the thousands of personnel needed to carry out such an operation and the costs of transport, equipment, salaries etc., the overall cost might be Sibn. Compare that with the $300bn US defence budget or the $150bn already spent on the occupation of
Making major inroads into water poverty on a world scale would cost a few billion dollars. Peanuts. What is missing
is the political will on behalf
of the rich and powerful to
make it happen.
Third, it is easily possible to make inroads into the
international health crisis. A first obvious step would be to
make cheap generic drugs to poor countries, and enable those countries to freely make their own drugs, for example. retrovirals for the untold millions affected by the HIV virus.
That means abolishing socalled intellectual property rights' in drugs, which are merely a source of rents and superprofits for the ultra-rich drug companies.
Drug and vaccination technology of course is just one aspect of tackling the world health crisis. malaria in Sri Lanka is a funded malaria clinics be shut spraying of crops and wetsending thousands of its docMozambique and Angola, to Western countries, with infiadvanced countries, because of how it impossible to revolutionise life in the poor countries without changing priorities in the rich countries.
All these measures to end the world health crisis, while making big improvements, would ultimately come up against two major barriers.
First, all the health facilities in the world, including clean water, will not protect the health of communities that are undernourished.
Second, poor communities need basic facilities like electricity, sanitation and decent housing, without which things disease, the weather and inadequate cooking and cleaning facilities will continue to take their toll.
In other words, depends not only on health
African water
poverty would be eliminated by putting
wells (about $6000
each) into the
40,000 or so major African villages. The
headline cost of
such provision is a
trifling $240m, the
cost of two US
Stealth bombers
care, but all-round improvement in the quality of life, which cannot be achieved without overcoming the global low-wage economy.
And there is the problem. Because the power and the wealth of the owners and controllers of capital in the Westand their local allies in the poor countries, 'comprador" elites who play the same role as the 'gang masters' in Britain, corralling and controlling cheap labour depend precisely on maintaining the cheap labour system. Imperialism versus empowerment Overcoming world poverty ultimately revolves round the question of power - power in the rich countries, power in the poor countries.
Structural reforms which address poverty include massive transfers of capital and technology from the North to the South; the abolition of the debt; and paying the direct producers - not the local capitalist elites - much more for their commodities; and sending tens of thousands of doctors, engineers, teachers and other experts to assist reconstruction in the poor countries.
All this hits at the profits and power of the richest few percent of the world's population.
The question then is how to empower the powerless and overcome the entrenched power of the rich. Many have argued that education is the key to empowerment.
The example of the literacy
in Cuba and Nicaragua shows how education can enable people much better to understand their situation, challenge locals hierarchies (including especially male dominance), get better jobs (sometimes) and improve their economic situation (depending on the availability of such jobs).
But it would be terminally naive to believe that on its own the pedagogy of the oppressed' can transform world poverty.
The literacy campaigns in Cuba and Nicaragua occurred after revolutions, not before them. The fundamental question is how to revolutionise social relations on a world scale.
The traditional Marxist term for the global cheap labour is 'imperialism'. In the poor countries, fighting imperialism means conquering real national independence.
That is about controlling their own cconomic resources, giving land to the peasants and meaningful employment to the urban poor.
All that means defeating the local pro-imperialist elites, who frequently entrench their power not just by economic privilege, but the massive use of state and para-state violence.
In the North, a huge global justice movement has grown up. Its immediate demands -an end to sweatshop labour, abolish the debt - are absolutely justified.
This movement acts as a permanent pressure Western governments and the big corporations, which in turn are forced to regularly announce new aid and debtrelief 'initiatives.
But the global justice movement cannot achieve its long-term objectives without developing a more coherent anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist perspective, which understands that an end to global poverty means an end to imperialism, which in turn means revolutionising power and wealth in the advanced countries too.
In Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, George Bush is shown speaking at a dinner of the ultra-rich.
He jovially describes them as an audience of the "haves and the have-mores". "Some people call you the elite" he says "I call you my base".
Not just witty, but true. Without taking power away from these people, poverty is unconquerable.