Tag: Global South

Awareness of capitalists’ use of colonialism invites rethinking of solidarity commitment / By W. T. Whitney Jr. 

Mural by Dan Manrique Arias | Photo by Terence Faircloth, CC BY-SA 4.0

South Paris, Maine

Studying capitalism, Karl Marx examined the Industrial Revolution in Europe. He explored conflict between worker and employer. In their book Capital and Imperialism (Monthly Review Press, 2021), authors Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik emphasize that Marx’s followers believed that, with the onset of capitalism, “accumulation [has] occurred only on the basis of the generation of surplus value.” (Surplus value signifies that part of a product’s commercial yield which labor generates and employers keep.)

Many U.S. political activists oppose the overseas wars and interventions their government uses to maintain worldwide political and economic domination. More than a few know about stealing in the peripheral regions of the world at the hands of capitalism. They are aware of U.S. imperialism.

The stolen goods include: land, bodies, raw materials, food crops, forests, water, extractable underground resources, exorbitant interest on debt, and funding owed the world’s poor for subsistence. Non-payment for social reproduction is a kind of stealing.

The more these activists learn that capitalism from its start did call for oppression in the undeveloped regions of the world, the more likely might be their inclination to build an anti-capitalist international solidarity movement. The book authored by the Patnaiks contributes to this end by documenting that colonialism and, implicitly, imperialism have been essential to the development of capitalism.

In describing India’s colonial experience, their book – by no means reviewed here in its entirety – provides an explanation taken from Marx as to why capitalism needed colonialism. It details the workings of capitalist-inspired colonialism in India.      

The Patnaiks declare that, “not only has capitalism always been historically ensconced within a pre-capitalist setting from which it emerged, with which it interacted, and which it modified for its own purposes, but additionally that its very existence and expansion is conditioned upon such interaction.” Capitalists sought “appropriation of surplus by the metropolis, under colonialism.” (“Metropolis” is defined as “the city or state of origin of a colony.”)

They explain that “Marx’s basic concept of capitalism [as expressed] in Capital is of an isolated capitalist sector … consisting only of workers and capitalists,” also that an isolated sector implies a capitalism “stuck forever in a stationary state or a state of simple reproduction … [and] with zero growth.” They insist that “a closed self-contained capitalism in the metropolis is a logical impossibility.”

There is “nothing within the system to pull it out of that state.” The economy “will necessarily get to that state in the absence of exogenous stimuli.” 

The Patnaiks envision three kinds of exogenous stimuli: “pre-capitalist markets, state expenditure, and innovations.” The first of these represents the colonialism that would be essential to capitalists as they built the economies of European industrial centers. 

Inflation a concern

Outlining how British capitalism dealt with colonial India, the authors highlight money as a device for holding and transferring wealth. The object has been to preserve its value. The system had these features:  

·        Officials in London used the surplus derived from Indian exports of primary commodities to finance the export of capital to other capitalist countries.

·        British officials taxed the land of small producers in India, using the revenue to pay the colony’s administrative expenses and purchase commodities for export to Britain; some were re-exported to other countries.

·        Britain exported manufactured goods. The flood of them arriving in India led to “deindustrialization of the colonial economy.” Displaced artisan manufacturers became “petty producers” of commodities.

·        British officials dealing with “increasing supply prices” for commodities exported from the colonies, faced “metropolitan money-wage or profit margin increases.” Seeking to “stabilize the value of money,” they imposed “income deflation … [on Indian] suppliers of wage goods and inputs to the capitalist sector.”

·        The claims of heavily-taxed agricultural producers in India were “compressible” especially because they were located “in the midst of vast labor reserves.”  

Colonialism provided British capitalists the option of cutting pay or jobs in India so as to carry out the currency exchanges the system required and to “accommodate increases in money wages” in Britain, both “without jeopardizing the value of money.”

Global economy

The book outlines post-colonial developments. Colonial arrangements persisted throughout the 19th century and collapsed after World War I, due in part, say the authors, to a worldwide agricultural crisis that peaked in 1926. The circumstances gave rise to the Great Depression. Spending for World War II led to recovery, mostly in the United States.

These were “boom years” for capitalism. The United States, confronted with increasing military expenses, turned to deficit financing. Western European countries took up social democracy and the welfare state. Some former colonies, now independent nations, sponsored agricultural and industrial initiatives aimed at relieving economic inequalities.

At that point, the centers could no longer impose income deflation on working people in the periphery to ward off loss of monetary value. Bank holdings increased and lending pressures mounted. In 1973 “the Bretton Woods system collapsed because of the emergence of inflation.” “The capitalist world of the stable medium of holding wealth …[through] the gold-dollar link” took a hit.

Next came worldwide take-over by global finance capital and neoliberalism. The Patnaiks explain that, with “barriers to capital flows” down, “state intervention in demand management becomes impossible.” “[A] regime of income deflation on the working people of the periphery” returned in order to “control inflation and stabilize the value of money.” 

Concluding

This story is of continuities. One is capitalism at its start taking up with colonialism. Another is capitalism using colonialism to preserve the value of money in cross-border commercial and financial dealings. One more is the oppression and beggaring of the world’s working people to prevent inflation.

Karl Marx may have found data and other information on colonialism scarce as he studied capitalism. Additionally, his life of research and political activism may have been so full as to distract him from investigation of the colonial connection. Even so he championed international worker solidarity.  

He and Engels supported India’s independence struggle. Marx defended “heroic Poland” beset by Czarist Russia. He writes to Engels that, “In my view, the most momentous thing happening in the world today is, on the one hand, the movement among the slaves in America, started by the death of [John] Brown and on the other the movement of the serfs in Russia.”

Addressing the International Working Men’s Association – the First International – in 1864, Marx reported that events “have taught the working classes the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective governments.”

The wreckage of people’s lives caused by capitalism now extends widely. The venue of capitalism is global, by its nature. Political support for workers and their political formations in the Global South hits at the essence of capitalist power. The promise of basic change lies in that direction, and that’s so too with alternatives to the capitalist system.

Those struggles for social justice and equality that are confined to the world’s industrial centers do target aspects of capitalism, but without far-reaching expectations. The full effort consists of: pushing for reforms that ease burdens placed upon working people, building mass opposition, and – crucially – advancing the international solidarity movement.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Migration as Sign of Climate-Change Impact in the Global South / by W. T. Whitney Jr.

Source: The African Union Mission in Somalia

U.S. government programs for migrants who crossed the U.S. southern border are punitive and disjointed. Left-leaning political groupings may criticize, but they too have fallen short in conceptualizing lives of dignity for migrants in the United States. Nor do they adequately take into account adverse circumstances weighing on migrants’ lives in their home countries.

First among forces pushing masses of people northward is the environmental crisis. The role of climate change in reducing soil productivity and food availability and in predisposing already beleaguered people to migrate is of great concern.  

One assumption here is that capitalist systems of production and consumption have been central to causing the climate to change for the worse. Another is the need for war on capitalism so as to stave off more climate change and cope with its fallout. That hasn’t happened in the industrialized northern countries.

Southern regions may be different. The excesses of capitalist globalization have hurt masses of people there. They were never afforded the relief northern peoples gained from welfare-state remedies. They may be ready to take up the climate-change fight.

Northern climate-change warriors who are anti-capitalist ought to be establishing linkages of support with their southern counterparts. One precedent for them is Spain.  Anti-fascists in 1936 joined the International Brigades to defend the Spanish Republic.  Now, in one way or another, northerners would be joining a faraway fight, this time against climate change.  One locality is Guatemala. 

Storytelling

Author Ilka Oliva Corado describes herself as an “indigenous, undocumented immigrant in the United States.” An English-language version of her story, which is situated in Guatemala and titled “The Plum,” appears here. Excepts follow: 

Guillermina leaves the grocery bags on the table and hurriedly takes out a plum, washes it and takes a bite … She is grateful for the hands that cared for it from the time the seed of the tree was planted. Ever since she was a child, her peasant grandparents taught her to be thankful for the labor of those who work on the land.

She was from Parramos, Chimaltenango, in Guatemala. When she arrived in the United States, she was speaking only her mother tongue, Cakchiquel. … She spent 20 years working as a domestic worker in New York. … Guillermina left Guatemala with her brother Jacobo to help her parents raise her younger siblings … She was on the eve of her fifteenth birthday when she left her indigenous clothing behind and packed two pairs of pants and two T-shirts in her backpack …

(Oliva Corado writes that the traffickers sexually abused Guillermina and her brother as they traveled in Mexico, from Chiapas to Tijuana.) “She doesn’t know what happened to her memory. But she managed to block all recall of the journey after they arrived in Tapachula [in Chiapas].” (The author writes that Jacobo was similarly abused. He remembers, has nightmares, and sleeps fitfully at night.)  

He works three jobs. Every Friday they collect their money so that Guillermina can send off the remittance. Neither of the two will allow their younger siblings to emigrate. At home … they work the land of their grandparents, but Miguel, the youngest, didn’t listen to them and emigrated with another group of friends. He wanted to leave to help his older siblings deal with the economic burden of the house. Now he’s been missing for three years. 

Guillermina bites into the plum that takes her back to remembering the bean fields, shade from the avocado and orange trees, and furrows in the cornfields.  It was there she saw her younger siblings beginning to walk while her parents were working.

Plum juice drips from the corner of her lips. … But tasting the fruit that Miguel loved so much sets off the pain that for three years has been knotted in her throat and she begins to cry inconsolably.

It was in the supermarket that she received the call from Jacobo. There is news of Miguel. A forensic team did tests and they have confirmed his identity. A humanitarian rescue team searching months ago for a missing migrant woman found his bones in a dry river in Sonora. Her parents will be able to bury their young son in the town cemetery, finally.

Context

The family’s land may not have been producing enough food to satisfy nutritional needs, nor enough to sell and provide cash. International agencies concerned about food shortages use a scale that registers severity. It consists of phase 1 – no significant problem; phase 2 – stress; phase 3 – crisis; phase 4 – emergency; and phase 5 – widespread acute malnutrition.

The 2022 Global Report on Food Crises, assembled by United Nations agencies, reported on trends in Guatemala, population 16.9 million. In November, 2018, 2.12 million Guatemalans were classified as experiencing food “crisis.” The corresponding figures in August, 2000 and in May, 2021 were 3.24 million and 3.29, respectively.  As of those dates, there were 4.67 million, 7.21 million, and 7.78 million people, respectively, who endured food stress. A recent report indicates that, as of September 2021, 4.6 million Guatemalans were facing food crisis (phase 3) or food emergency (phase 4).

The World Meteorological Organization, reporting in July on the impact of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean, points out that, “Droughts, heat waves, periods of cold, more tropical storms and floods have led to loss of life, serious damage to agricultural production and infrastructure, and displaced populations.” 

The authors of another detailed report on the region’s “Climate Change Emergency” state that, “the present bimodal pattern of precipitation in Central America may be distorted in the coming decades … Extreme phenomena like droughts, hurricanes, and the Niño Southern Oscillation will be recurring … and their intensity will increase with climate change .. These phenomena magnify social-economic vulnerability in the region.” 

A survey of the impact of changing climate in Guatemala claims that drought “mostly afflicts the semi-arid region of the country known as the “dry corridor,” and that “in the coming years, that area is expected to extend to higher elevations.” Recently rain has been uncharacteristically scarce or absent during heat waves.

Rural families in Guatemala grow or produce food from their own land. Family members may also work seasonally on big farms to be able to purchase additional food, or they fish or hunt. High poverty rates underscore the vulnerability of their lives – 70% in Guillermina’s Chimaltenango department and nearly 80 percent among Guatemala’s indigenous population. Now the impact on food supplies of droughts, storms, and floods – which are more severe now because of climate-change – adds to their plight.

Many Guatemalans and others in the Global South have to move. They go to big cities or they cross national borders to begin new lives, and/or earn money to support families at home. Plenty of other reasons to migrate do exist such as land grabs, governmental chaos, and violence from criminals, gangs, paramilitaries, and soldiers. 

But migration undertaken in response to climate-change effects is highly significant, so much so that victims are everywhere, and in the millions. On that account, the prospect emerges of mass political mobilization and of growing awareness along the way of capitalism as enemy.

Capitalist-inspired intrusions already fill the landscape with mines and oil-extraction facilities, dams and flooded rivers, pollution, mega land-holdings and mono-culture farming operations. U.S. political interference, debt owed foreign banks, privatizations, and cuts in social spending have provoked opposition movements.  Growing appreciation of linkage between these manifestations of global capitalism and capitalism’s contribution to climate change may serve to stimulate anti-capitalist resistance movements that are ready to take on the environmental crisis.

This possible scenario in the Global South ought to resonate with anti-capitalist activists in the North. The great need is for international solidarity. Author, editor, and eco-socialist John Bellamy Foster offers perspective in his recently published article titled “Ecology and the Future of History.” Excerpts follow:

“The agent of revolution is increasingly a class that is not to be conceived in its usual sense as a purely economic force but as an environmental (and cultural) force: an environmental proletariat …[and] Most of the major class struggles and revolutionary movements over the centuries of capitalist expansion have been animated in part by what could be called ecological imperatives – such as struggles over land, food and environmental conditions.”

He adds: “In general, Third World liberation movements have been aimed at both the environment and economy and have been struggles in which peasants and Indigenous peoples have played central roles, together with nascent proletarian and petty bourgeois forces …[and] All material struggles are now environmental-class as well as economic-class struggles, with the separation between the two fading.”

Finally, “The objective consequence of the changing social and ecological environment, the product of uncontrolled capitalist globalization and accumulation, arising from forces at the center of the system, is inevitably to create a more globally interconnected revolutionary struggle: a new eco-revolutionary wave emanating primarily from the Global South.”

W. T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.