Re: electricity/water comparisons

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Wow. A water Chubais. If they did that in Russia, they
 would have mass opposition rallies. The very idea of
 paying bills is a novelty here. What are water costs
 like in South Africa? Water is free here (two things
 Russia is not short off -- ater and land).

Hey Chris,

Not through my own techie efforts, but through praxis in a municipal water
war (maybe the world's strongest today - alongside Manila and Accra), we
have a fairly sophisticated answer to that question; the short answer is
US$0.84 per thousand liters. In Feb I did a report posted at
http://www.africafiles.org which sets out the existing water tariff (a
'convex curve') here in Johannesburg, along with the ideal-type concave
curve which gives *everyone* at least a 50 liter/capita/day *free* lifeline,
and penalises hedonistic consumption by my white petit-bourgeois neighbours
(and yeah, myself) through much higher-than-marginal-cost prices when
consumption goes above 150 lcd. As for praxis, our comrades in the
Anti-Privatisation Forum helped with the first 25 lcd in 2001, but as that
graph shows, the next blocs go up very fast and then flatten out, which
means the marginal cost for overconsumption doesn't act as a good deterrent
(the price elasticity is still too low to get a conservation response).

Anyhow, we've found in many of the towns around South Africa that the slope,
shape and convexity of the water tariff is actually a pretty good proxy for
the state of class struggle. Hopefully with the 2005 municipal elections,
which may be contested in several strong lefty pockets by a 'new social
movements' network of folk like the http://www.apf.org.za, there will be
more national focus on this issue. Meanwhile, the comrades in Soweto keep
fighting against pre-paid water meters, shallow sewers, pit latrines, and
other ways in which Suez (the Paris company with the outsourcing contract)
tries to slow consumption, at the cost of worsening HIV/AIDS (water borne
diseases like diarrhoea and cholera becoming fatal opportunistic
infections), gender inequity and other externalities which don't interest
Paris shareholders.

On top of that comes yesterday's news that, thanks to the infamous Lesotho
dams (subject of a recent corruption controversy at the World Bank), the
bulk costs of water are rising faster than anywhere on earth...

Ciao,
Patrick

13 August 2004

SA water price hike 'largest in world'




SA's average water price increase of 10,6% implemented last year was the
single largest in the world, making the country's water charges the
ninth-highest of the 14 major world economies, according to a study.
This emerges as government plans to reduce the cost of doing business in SA.

It means that water utilities, like parastatals in the telecommunications,
transport and electricity sector, could soon be forced to review their
pricing structures in line with the 3% to 6% inflation targeted band.

The survey, released this week by US-based utility cost control and
consulting firm NUS Consulting , found that SA's water prices had increased
10,6% to $0,84/m³ in the 12 months to last month.

This resulted in SA losing its previous position as the country with
third-least expensive water costs, behind the US and Canada.

The single-largest increase in the past year was experienced in Cape Town,
where a water supply shortage led to a price rise of over 16%, George
Rahr, MD of NUS Consulting in SA, said yesterday.

He said widespread drought that plagued the country last year had
contributed to the price increases. Further price increases were expected
next year.

Overall, said Rahr, utilities in the country's interior tended to have
higher price increases due to the scarcity of water resources in these
areas. None of these cities are situated on or near a major primary river,
and therefore must rely upon water from distant dams, he said.

Gauteng's primary storage dam, the Vaal Dam, for example, had its water
levels supplemented from the Lesotho Highlands, a distance of about 250km,
which carried a premium on its price due to infrastructure requirements.

Gauteng's water utility Rand Water, which gets its supplies from the Vaal
Dam, imposed a 5,7% tariff increase last month, attributing the hike to
operating costs and rising demand due to the province's growing population.

The increase was also aimed at offsetting the 6,1% increase on raw bulk
water supplied from the Vaal River by the water affairs and forestry
department.

The survey found that Germany had the highest water costs in the world at
$2,20/m³, while Canada was the least expensive at $0,52/m³.

Business Day

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1679268-6078-0,00.html

electricity/water comparisons

[Patrick Bond]

Nice to be back with y'all again.

- Original Message -
From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Even with the recent price hikes, my monthly
 electricity bill in Moscow (pretty large Stalin-era
 apartment, with two big rooms, kitchen, bathroom,
 water closet) is a whopping $8.

Come to Zimbabwe: for 280 kWh of consumption in July, my bill was US$1. In
Johannesburg, where I normally live, it's about 15 times as expensive per
unit. (At ZNet, my commentary last month explains Mugabe's 'power to the
people' gimmick.)

 BTW even if an apartment dweller simply refuses to pay
 the bill, there is no effective way to disconnect him
 or her, since Soviet apartment blocks are constructed
 in such a way that you either shut power off to the
 whole block or not at all. Ditto for water.

In SA, they've finally stopped the practice of shutting off whole sections
of (black) townships when a large proportion of residents don't pay bills,
but they still do for apartment houses. And that's in a country with a
centre-left regime and a constitutional right to water. Last year, 1.3
million people were disconnected from water because of non-payment, even the
state's chief water bureaucrat recently admitted.

Re: South Africa: WTO strategy

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:47 AM
Subject: South Africa: WTO strategy
 South Africa is likely to act in consent with two main groups in Cancun
 next month: it is a key player in both the African bloc and in the Cairns
 Group of agriculture exporting countries, which also includes Australia,
 Brazil and Chile.

The author of this article, Quentin Wray, is a classical SA hack, trained in
adulating corporate and state power during the apartheid era, with no change
in methodology since. My spin would be different:


FOCUS ON TRADE
NUMBER 90, AUGUST 2003

SOUTH AFRICA'S SUBIMPERIAL TRADE AGENDA:
Splitting Africa to launch a new multilateral round

Patrick Bond*

The September meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Cancun will
again reveal how little the African continent has gained from trade
liberalisation.

This is not a short-term problem, but one that reflects durable problems
associated with globalisation. (1) It also reflects the contradictory
position of
South Africa, whose trade minister Alec Erwin has achieved an exceptionally
important position as a Third World negotiator working against the Third
World's
material interests. Erwin will, as in the previous WTO summit at Doha, be
actively
twisting arms and offering soothing commentary to the international media.
But
on most key issues, if the past few years are any guide, the United States
(US)
and European Union (EU) will bulldoze Africa, with Erwin pointing the way.

There is no debate about the magnitude of the problem, although
interpretations
differ markedly as to whether globalisation's ills are cured with more or
less
globalisation. Africa's share of world trade declined over the past quarter
century, while the volume of exports increased. No continent is as oriented
to
exports as Africa. 'Marginalisation' of Africa occurred, hence, not because
of
lack of integration (as is often alleged by neoliberals), but because other
areas
of the world--especially East Asia--moved to the export of manufactured
goods,
while Africa's industrial potential declined thanks to excessive
deregulation
associated with structural adjustment. (2) In the process, rapid
trade-related
integration caused social inequality, in a manner that is now widely
accepted
even by honest World Bank staff. According to the institution's main
econometrician of inequality, Branco Milanovic, 'at very low average income
levels, it is the rich who benefit from openness... It seems that openness
makes
income distribution worse before making it better.' (3)

Openness since the late 1970s has had a devastating impact. The decline in
the
price index for the main (non-fuel) commodities dropped especially
dramatically
from 1977 to 1982, while the export prices of developed countries increased
steadily. During the 1982-90 global expansion, the terms of trade of Third
World
countries still fell markedly, by 4% per year. Much of the decline was due
to the
drop in oil prices that began in earnest in 1986, but non-oil producing
Third World
countries also witnessed a negative 1.5% annual deterioration in the prices
of
their prices of exports relative to imports. This trend continued after the
1990-92
global recession, leaving commodity prices at their lowest levels since the
Great
Depression. (4)

In broader historical terms, the prices of primary commodities (other than
fuels)
have risen and fallen according to a deeper rhythm. Exporters of primary
commodities, for example, have fared particularly badly when financiers have
been most powerful. The cycle typically includes falling commodity prices,
rising
foreign debt, dramatic increases in interest rates, a desperate
intensification of
exports which lowers prices yet further, and bankruptcy. The trend to
declining
terms of trade was especially devastating because of the continent's
extraordinary dependence upon a few export commodities. The following
countries suffer from reliance upon a single product for at least 75% of
their
export earnings: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Niger,
Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, and Zambia. The only countries which diversified
their exports so that they claim at least 25% of their export earnings from
more
than four products are the Gambia, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland,
Tanzania,
and Zimbabwe. Generally, across Africa, four or fewer products make up
three-
quarters of export revenues. More than three-quarters of all Africa's trade
is with
developed countries.

Export-led growth strategies pursued since the 1970s by virtually all Third
World
countries meant that Africa's market share of world commodity prices also
shrunk drastically. In the 1970s and 1980s alone, the African market share
of
coca fell from 75 to 58%, of palm oil from 58 to 18%, of sisal from 48 to
36%, of
coffee from 35 to 20%, of crude petroleum from 15 to 8%, of cotton from 12
to 7%,
and of copper from 10 to 6%. The most far-ranging study of terms of trade

Re: PK on Big Blackout

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED]
People steal electricity regularly in Turkey (maybe Patrick Bond would
offer some information about a similar phenomenon in South Africa) not
only because they cannot pay for it but also because it is very
difficult to determine who is stealing how much, although you can
determine how much was stolen.

Here's a better source than me:

***

For South Africa's Poor, a New Power Struggle

By Jon Jeter
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 6, 2001; Page A01

SOWETO, South Africa -- When she could no longer
bear the darkness or the cold that settles into her
arthritic knees or the thought of sacrificing
another piece of
furniture for firewood, Agnes Mohapi cursed the
powers that had cut off her electricity. Then she
summoned a neighborhood service to illegally
reconnect it.

Soon, bootleg technicians from the Soweto
Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) arrived in pairs
at the intersection of Maseka and Moema streets.
Asking for
nothing in return, they used pliers, a penknife and
a snip here and a splice there to return light to
the dusty, treeless corner.

We shouldn't have to resort to this, Mohapi, 58,
said as she stood cross-armed and remorseless in
front of her home as the repairmen hot-wired her
electricity.
Nothing, she said, could compare to life under
apartheid, the system of racial separation that
herded blacks into poor townships such as Soweto.
But for all its
wretchedness, apartheid never did this: It did not
lay her off from her job, jack up her utility bill,
then disconnect her service when she inevitably
could not pay.

Privatization did that, she said, her cadence
quickening in disgust. And all of this
globalization garbage our new black government has
forced upon us has done
nothing but make things worse. . . . But we will
unite and we will fight this government with the
same fury that we fought the whites in their day.

This is South Africa's new revolution. Seven years
after voters of all races went to the polls for the
first time, ending 46 years of apartheid and white
rule, churches,
labor unions, community activists and the poor in
all-black townships are dusting off the protest
machinery that was the engine of their liberation
struggle. What most
provokes South Africans' defiance today are what
they see as injustices unleashed on this developing
nation by the free-market economic policies of the
popularly
elected, black-led governing party, the African
National Congress.

Materially, life here has only gotten worse since
1994 as the ANC has pursued a course of piecemeal
privatization of state industries, whittling of
import taxes and
loosening of controls on foreign exchange. The
policies have expanded opportunities for foreign
investors but so far have deepened the poverty
inherited from
apartheid's segregationist policies.

With domestic industries more vulnerable to foreign
competition and the restructuring of public
enterprises, the most industrialized country in
sub-Saharan Africa has
lost nearly 500,000 jobs since 1993, leaving a third
of the workforce unemployed. The poorest 15 million
South Africans have had their annual incomes shrink
by
nearly a fifth of what they were before apartheid's
collapse.

The ANC's top officials, many of whom were initially
Marxists, say their economic policies aim to remedy
the imbalances of the past, which included
protectionist
trade policies and concentration of wealth in the
hands of a relative few. To redistribute wealth, ANC
officials say, they must first expand it, and they
say only the
global market and foreign cash can ultimately do
that, albeit not without some growing pains as the
economy adjusts.

Increasingly, this country of 44 million people is
running out of patience as it endures a financial
crisis that statistically outstrips the Great
Depression. At the same
time, costs of such basic needs as housing,
electricity and water are soaring.

We did not give up our lives and the lives of our
children only to let this brazen capitalist system
exploit us even more, said Shadrack Motau, an SECC
board
member.

In South Africa, the most despised acronym is
arguably not HIV, the AIDS virus that infects nearly
a quarter of the adult population, but GEAR, the
ANC's
economic package -- Growth, Employment and
Redistribution -- which opens the door to global
trade.

Hoping to generate revenue, streamline a bloated
bureaucracy and extend service to blacks ignored by
apartheid, the ANC announced six years ago that the
government would sell public enterprises from the
state-run airlines and the phone company to Eskom,
the acronym for the public electricity commission.
With
encouragement from institutions such as the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund, the government
has so far auctioned off only small portions, while
restructuring the public franchises into profit
centers to showcase their attractiveness to
potential investors.

The alienation felt by many poor blacks

Re: question on finance capital

[Patrick Bond]

Hi Michael; isn't 'finance capital' a problematic phrase, given that
Hilferding meant that various fractions of capital would be bought up by the
banks -- and this is the opposite?

Doug Henwood told me once that the Ford strategy -- which in the 1980s
entailed not only a major emphasis on financing but also the purchase of
hundreds of failed SLs within its Nationwide (?) SL holding company
(making it, at that point, I recall, the world's largest thrift
institution) -- had changed by the mid-1990s. My guess is it won't help you
because it's probably not online, but I did an article on Ford's SL gambit
for Multinational Monitor in July 1989.

- Original Message -
From: michael [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 4:11 AM
Subject: question on finance capital


Business Week describes GM becoming almost entirely dependent on its
finance unit.  I recall seeing something similar about Ford.  Does
anyone recall a source?

Re: Emissions trading

[Patrick Bond]

It's terribly controversial, of course, with many good greens supporting it
as a means to implement Kyoto. The worst aspects must be the Clean
Development Mechanism projects in places like Brazil, Thailand and here in
South Africa. I spent a week in Oxford recently with comrades Rising Tide,
Carbon Trade Watch and The Cornerhouse, who have a fantastic critical
analysis. Let me know if you want a couple of excellent new papers off-list;
they get into the major market-failure and poli-econ issues, essentially
calling this phenomenon by the names it deserves: carbon imperialism and the
privatisation of the air.

Cheers,
Patrick
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

- Original Message -
From: Anders Schneiderman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 4:09 PM
Subject: Emissions trading


Does anybody know where I can find empirical analysis by progressives of
emissions trading?  This weekend, I got into an argument with a conservative
about sustainable development.  When I went to check a number of progressive
enviro web sites, I was surprised to find that I was having trouble finding
information on how this so-called free-market solution has been doing in
the real world.

Thanks,
Anders Schneiderman

Re: WB-corruption

[Patrick Bond]

In Johannesburg, we drink water tainted by WB-supported corruption,
which included a false promise to fund the investigation and
prosecution into Lesotho Highlands Water Project dam-related bribery.
A couple of years ago, the Bank even gave a green light to more work
by Acres Int'l and Lahmeyer -- two big construction companies since
convicted of bribery -- and at least ten others (including the biggie,
ABB) are up for prosecution in coming weeks and months. So instead of
debarring, the Bank actively sabotaged the attempts to stop the
bribery on Africa's largest single project. You can imagine how
incredibly difficult it will be when the WB is faced with pressure to
debar ABB, it's largest contractor.

This is yet another reason for us all to support this excellent
campaign: http://www.worldbankbboycott.org

If any of you have money in your academic pension fund routed through
TIAA-CREF, you'll be happy to know that last week, they officially rid
themselves of the last WB bonds on their books. If that is your money
they were investing in the Bank, you can proudly say that you no
longer profit from global apartheid via the World Bank.


 Does anybody know if the WB publishes the blacklisted corporations?
The
 list is only ...nearly 100 companies and individuals .. 
Pathetically
 short list, but I'd like to see it.

 Gene Coyle

 Eubulides wrote:

 World Bank Focused on Fighting Corruption
 Graft and Bribery, Once Tolerated, Punished by Blacklisting

Re: Monbiot on the WTO

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ... But I'm still not clear on what you're
 advocating as an alternative. 100% autarchy is impossible. But 50%?
 25%?

Give me a case and I'll think about it. Here in Johannesburg, I'd say 100%
delinking from hot money by imposing tight exchange controls. Our currency
has fluctuated from R6/$ in January 2000 to R13.8/$ two years later and it's
now strengthened to R7.8/$ today. I could go on about all the fallout, but
you can imagine. So to hell with portfolio capital flows.

To hell with all international trade in luxury consumption goods, too,
because it exacerbates the wealth skew in the economy. A 100% luxury goods
tarriff would help.

These kinds of policies have actually been applied at various times and are
not utopian or based upon revolutionary power changes.

Then I'd say, be more ambitious and price in eco damage done by minerals and
beneficiation processes, that make SA *twenty times* worse in greenhouse gas
emissions per person corrected for GDP, than even the US. That should limit
the need for huge post-panamax port designs (vast state subsidies are being
prepared for yet another, at a place called Coega) that accommodate the
export of aluminium, steel and other base metals. Then a clever industrial
policy would start a new round of ISI, but this time based on consumer goods
for the masses and mid-range capital goods, not the kind of luxury goods ISI
that were typical during the 1950s-60s. I could go on, but the
deglobalisation capacity is enormous -- probably in excess of 50% -- and the
scope for a set of bottom-up Local Economic Development options are just as
promising, given the backlog in delivery of simple (non-import-intensive)
infrastructure and basic needs. (A version of the argument, in its most
mild-mannered policy-friendly style, is in Occasional Paper #6 at
http://www.queensu.ca/msp)

 You could never have any delinking if there weren't substantial
 solidarity among poorer countries - some kind of trading, financial,
 and technological links.

It all depends on appropriate scale economies and resources, right? It would
be great if oil flowed from Angola on rail lines to Gabarone, Jo'burg and
Harare -- not to New Jersey. The idea of the Southern African Development
Community was precisely to make these kinds of linkages. Didn't work for all
sorts of reasons, but it's not impossible.

 As soon as I say that though, I wonder -
 what common interests are there between Brazil and Zimbabwe?

Unfortunately, capitalists from the two subimperialist powers of the south
Atlantic -- Brazil and SA -- have begun the early stages of a fight over how
best to loot Angola, and Lula has even made noises about his firms investing
much more in Mozambique. Language ties make these penetrations -- best
considered as 'accumulation by dispossession' -- attractive, but not
necessarily inevitable. Keeping SA capital out of the region where it plays
a particularly pernicious role -- banking, breweries, minerals and energy
privatisation -- will be an increasingly tough job for anti-imperialists
here. But the struggles have begun, with regional groups (mainly Jubilee)
finding many opportunities for unity, e.g. in a demo against the World
Economic Forum southern Africa meeting a fortnight ago, and regularly
against the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Zed is coming out with
my update on this theme -- *Against Global Apartheid* -- in September...

 Doug

Re: Monbiot on the WTO

[Patrick Bond]

I partially agree, Peter. George is generally so sensitive to power
relations and so
critical of corporate influence over public institutions that this I was
wrong article really required bizarre distortions.

I have a gut feeling that he is reacting to the rise of deglobalization
discourses, as found in Bello's and Amin's work, and I suspect that his new
book (which I haven't seen yet) punts the globo-parliament idea even more
heartily -- hence leading down the slippery slope of fix-it not nix-it
politics.

That in turn requires him to entirely avoid the obvious questions: a) what
good has come from numerous WTO reform initiatives (from AFL/ICFTU, enviros,
Cairns Group, Like-Minded Group, etc etc)?; b) what manipulations are being
carried out by the new Green Men (Friends of the Chair, including SA trade
minister Alec Erwin, responsible at Doha for WTO rules) who have replaced
the discredited Green Room process?; c) what are the underlying features of
international capitalism that generate both overproduction and protectionist
tendencies?; and d) how could one expect to price in the negative
environmental and social externalities of trade, as Herman Daly et al
suggest (and I guess, Peter, too), in such a politicised forum as the WTO?
Really, reform is thoroughly utopian.

Moreover, his contention that the US is trying to destroy the WTO is a
ridiculous misinterpretation. Zoellick will use the WTO when he can to
defend US corporate interests (e.g. Big Pharma); and he will also set up
bilaterals and hemispheric deals when he can (we're seeing this now with
Africa).

So I'm back with Keynes on that 1933 Yale Review citation that Daly likes:
let goods be homespun whenever reasonably and conveniently possible.
Comrades, let's globalise people, not capital...

Was debating this in Ottawa with public choice poli-scientists from
Harvard/Columbia/Bonn last week: their ancient line -- commerce makes the
manners mild -- is contradicted by many variants of export-oriented output
in this part of the world (oil, diamonds, coltan, gold, timber). I'm
convinced we need a profound shock to the global trading system, on the
order of the payments freeze and transport crises of 1929-45, to allow for a
bit more sanity and balance in the restructuring of economies, and for
peace-building, at least in Africa.

Patrick Bond
phone: (27)83-425-1401 and (27)11-614-8088
fax: (27)11-484-2729
- Original Message -
From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 2:47 AM
Subject: Re: Monbiot on the WTO


 Here are some thoughts on Monbiot and some of the pen-l responses.

 1. I think Monbiot came to the right answer, but mostly for the wrong
 reasons.  He is in grave danger of falling in with Oxfam and other
 internationally minded NGOs who have bought into the notion that what
 poor countries most need is unfettered access to rich country markets.
  From there it is one short step to signing on to the Cairnes group,
 etc.  He hasn't looked deeply enough into *why* poor countries are so
 desperate for export markets.  In other words, he hasn't incorporated an
 understanding of the post-debt-crisis financial framework into his
 analyis of trade.  He is quite right to argue for a transformation of
 poor countries from resource to industrial exporters, but this makes
 sense developmentally only in terms of a coherent domestic
 transformation on all levels: domestic markets, domestic capabilities,
 etc.  If industrialization serves mainly as an export-directed
 phenomenon, bereft of local linkages, for the purposes of servicing
 debt, then free trade in such products is part of the problem, not the
 solution.

 2. Obviously (to me anyway), if the gross financial and trade imbalances
 need to be fixed, and if some unspecified debt reduction and capital
 flow regulatory framework is the answer on the finance side, then an
 international organization that coordinates trade balances -- keeps them
 within acceptable bands that have been openly negotiated -- is the
 answer on the goods and services side.  In my make-believe world, this
 is above all what the WTO would be doing.

 3. The institutional problem of environmental and social standards is
 huge.  The ILO (which I will be working for once again over the summer)
 is admirable in many ways, but only because it is largely powerless.  It
 benefits from the importance of being unimportant.  The WTO is fatally
 flawed because it rests on the foundation of trade ministers, the
 designated corporate gofers within any government.  On top of that, it
 is the product (as are all really important international organizations,
 unlike the ILO, UNESCO, etc.) of global power imbalances.  I cannot
 begin to imagine anything good coming from this organization under these
 circumstances.  The sort of democratic and accountable global governance
 we need will require much more radical changes at the national level in
 the US and other great power countries

Re: Monbiot on the WTO

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 You're doing the same thing that the IMF-Treasury-Wall Street complex
 does - equate trade with capital flows. Keynes said goods, which
 you elide into capital.

Doug, come on, you know the rest of the quote: Above all, let finance be
primarily national.

 And Monbiot was talking about the
 cross-border movement of goods  services, not about portfolio
 investment.

So? He is mistaken, quite simply. Just like Bhagwati.

 Could small countries in Africa ever produce a variety of
 sophisticated industrial goods?

Well, we've been through the colonial-era Zimbabwe story, which was
impressive notwithstanding the self-defeating racism.

But sure, it's very hard to do autarchy. That's why advocates of delinking
like Amin and Bello specify that they are not for 100% autarchy. They
promote delinking from the most destructive circuitry of capital, namely
pure export-led growth based upon primary commodities, and debt repayment.
Join 'em, Doug?

Re: the political economy of branding

[Patrick Bond]

This issue bedevilled the EU/S.Africa free trade talks here a few years ago.
The most obvious point -- that it doesn't matter at all what's inside the
package, profitability depends upon the brainwashing of consumers who
associate a brand name with a product -- was never made.

Let's hope that with militant Idaho potato farmers and maybe a few others
intent on violating branding, that the whole system will break down
faster...

- Original Message -
From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Regions claim rights to Pilsener, bologna

 U.S. food companies say the European Union does little to protect U.S.
 food terms. A state agency representing Idaho Potatoes failed in its
 attempt to challenge a trademark registration given to a French company
 bearing the Idaho name, they said. The reason: Idaho is not part of the EU
 and has no standing with its agencies. Patrick Kole of the Idaho Potato
 Commission said that's unfair to anybody who's not a member of the EU.
 You can't even bring a case. You're shut out.

(Fwd) Zapiro on CNN (non-virus .gif file)

[Patrick Bond]

attachment: zapiro28-mar03.gif

Re: Re: Re: RE: G. William Domhoff replies...Thewhole thing?

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Devine, James wrote:
  Instead of being pelted with petty personal attacks,  Domhoff should be
  given credit for doing excellent research to produce his books.
 re. domhoff, his study of social backgrounds of powerful white men was
significant contribution to wright's 'power elite' theory in indicated
further interlocking directorate of such types...
 still, if origins of this theory were leftist, it was
 attractive and popular enough to be appropriated by
 political right via dye's 'irony of democracy' notion that masses are
asses such that it is 'responsible elite' that guarantees democracy as well
as more generalized rightist claim of 'eastern liberal establishment'...
michael hoover

Or worse, such theory leads to weak politics on the Left. I agree that we've
got to look at this relationship of political theory to personal practices
based on the theorists' implicit assumptions about social change and how
states work. We regularly use Domhoff's work here in Jo'burg at University
of the Witwatersrand -- even last week, when I taught a good group of
comrades from Southern African social movements -- as an exemplar of
power-elite theories, that verge on conspiratorialism. It is terrific
material, because it gets into the black boxes of decision-making and policy
formulation. But without the correctives in the form of structural theories,
this sort of approach takes you directly to a politics of influence-peddling
squarely within the confines of the two capitalist political parties, as
from Lou's post it sounded like Domhoff was endorsing.

Here we're very sensitive to these relations, because our trade minister
Alec Erwin -- once an outspoken marxist, then caught up in the late 1980s'
move by the white left intelligentsia towards French Regulation Theory --
exemplifies how you can promote rampant neoliberalism on behalf on int'l
capital using left-sounding phraseology associated with a post-fordist
fantasy. I think the roots of this problem go quite deep, into the failure
of our 1970s-80s structuralists -- largely at my university -- to put
forward durable material to explain not only state processes, but even the
class-race relationship. Like Domhoff, I just don't think they did a
sufficiently robust job of coming to grips with the accumulation process (in
our seminars, we use as correctives the soc-dem theorist Gosta
Esping-Andersen and papers by Vicente Navarro and Ben Fine -- what do others
rely upon?).

Re: the political ecology of megaprojects

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Ian Murray
Subject: [PEN-L:35339] the political ecology of megaprojects
 Megaprojects and Risk
 An Anatomy of Ambition
 Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius, Werner Rothengatter


Hey I can do free chapters too, on the worst megaprojects in Africa: Lesotho
Highlands Water Project and the Coega port/IDZ/megasmelter. For abuse of
water and energy, these really can't be beat... (available by writing me
offlist at [EMAIL PROTECTED])

Cheers,
Patrick

***

Book Announcement:
http://www.unpress.co.za
http://www.merlinbooks.co.uk

August 2002

UNSUSTAINABLE SOUTH AFRICA:
Environment, Development and Social Protest

by Patrick Bond

with George Dor, Michael Dorsey, Maj Fiil-Flynn, Stephen Greenberg, Thulani
Guliwe, David Hallowes, Becky Himlin, Stephen Hosking, Greg Ruiters and
Robyn Stein

'The nations of the world elected to come to our country', explained
president Thabo Mbeki of the UN's choice of Johannesburg as host city for
the August-September 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 'because
they are convinced that we have something of value to contribute to the
building of a new and more equitable world order that must surely emerge'.

This book offers a critical reflection on the post-apartheid 'sustainable
development' experience. What is of greatest value from South Africa is the
warning not to pursue neoliberal, market-oriented strategies--as did
Pretoria and most SA municipalities since democracy dawned in 1994.

Working with local activists, Bond and his colleagues have researched and
campaigned on behalf of social and environmental justice for years: offering
alternatives to a minerals smelter in the Nelson Mandela Metropole, opposing
Lesotho mega-dams, helping township residents end disconnections of
electricity and water, and advocating for free lifeline services.

Of lasting importance, they insist, are the rising grassroots protest
movements against globalisation, privatisation, unemployment, poverty,
denial of healthcare, decaying social services, and ecological degradation.
Both globally and locally, the human condition and the environment have
worsened not improved, for reasons explained here with remarkably detailed
evidence and compelling vignettes, but with an eye to hopeful alternatives
on the horizon.

***

Contents:
Preface - Introduction: 'A World in One Country'

PART ONE : AN UNSUSTAINABLE LEGACY - Chapter One - The Environment of
Apartheid-Capitalism: Discourses and Issues

PART TWO : UNSUSTAINABLE PROJECTS - Chapter Two - The Development of
Underdevelopment in Nelson Mandela Metropole: Coega's Economic, Social and
Environmental Subsidies - Chapter Three - Lesotho's Water, Johannesburg's
Thirst: Communities, Consumers and Mega-Dams

PART THREE : UNSUSTAINABLE POLICIES - Chapter Four - Eco-Social Injustice
for Working-Class Communities: The Making and Unmaking of Neoliberal
Infrastructure Policy - Chapter Five - Droughts and Floods: Water Prices and
Values in the Time of Cholera - Chapter Six - Power to the Powerful: Energy,
Electricity, Equity and Environment -

PART FOUR: ENVIRONMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL PROTEST - Chapter Seven -
Conclusion: Environmentalism, the WSSD and Uneven Political Development -
References - Index

Patrick Bond is Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Graduate
School of Public and Development Management. His co-authors are academics
and researchers.

KEYWORDS: POLITICS, NEO-LIBERALISM, ENVIRONMENT, ENERGY, WATER, SOUTH AFRICA
9x 6 inches  480pp, Maps, Figures, Tables

Published in Africa by University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg
Published in Europe by Merlin Press, London
Published in N.America by Africa World Press, Trenton

***

'A monumental work. The information is political dynamite, crucial for those
of us who believe the way forward leads from exhausted nationalist politics
to a post-capitalist society where environment is taken seriously'.
--Soweto activist Trevor Ngwane

'Unsustainable South Africa is an eye-opener. It provides a vivid account of
the tragedy of contemporary South Africa, which got rid of apartheid only to
succumb to the forces of global neoliberalism. The ecological, social and
economic consequences have been devastating and are presented here in raw
detail. But Bond also offers us reason for hope.'
--John Bellamy Foster, Coeditor, Monthly Review; author, Ecology Against
Capitalism

'A poorly prepared polemic.'
--Trade and industry minister Alec Erwin, on the book's analysis of Coega



***

Patrick Bond
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone (27)83-633-5548
fax (27)11-484-2729

Re: Africa

[Patrick Bond]

I like Harris' conclusions, and they reflect the arguments of a Harare
group, Afrodad (let me know if you want direct quotes/citations by Africans
calling for an end to debt AND aid). However, a different take is coming out
next month in Z Magazine (though it was drafted in early December, prior to
some important
African Social Forum developments last month). The Observer's false,
self-interested division between the West and African dictators is belied by
the name of its prior owner, Tiny Rowland -- leading to the obvious
question: hasn't Harris ever read Fanon?

- Original Message -
From: Ian Murray
 Online commentary: The Observer's Paul Harris draws on his wide experience
of
 Africa to argue that blaming the continent's ills on colonialism or the
west
 simply allows the real culprits to evade responsibility.

Cultivating African anti-capitalism


When it comes to anti-capitalist resistance, the most
economically-marginalized sites are amongst the most interesting. Not
because the greatest number of militant activists are out in force--but
because the trials and tribulations they overcome along the way, and the
consciousness they express, teach us vital lessons about uneven capitalist
development.

Consider the African continent, where from Accra and Dakar in the West to
Lilongwe, Lusaka, Harare, Mbabane and Johannesburg in the South, growing
movements closely parallel the most sophisticated international protesters.
Their targets are the same--the World Bank, IMF, WTO, particularly venal
corporations and other purveyors of commodification and exploitation--but
because of conflicting legacies of African nationalism, the going is slower
and more careful.


Capitalism's legacy


These were, after all, also sites of intense, bloody resistance to previous
epochs of globalization. The British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, German,
Spanish, Italian and Afrikaner states which ran diverse colonies here during
most of the twentieth century--independence was mainly won during the
1960s--were amongst the most brutal in human history. In earlier centuries,
they accounted for tens of millions of slaves; in Southern Africa alone at
least two million civilian deaths during the last third of the century can
be traced to destabilization by the apartheid regime and allied forces,
including the US.

In the aftermath of formal independence, Cold War politics and patronage
battles broke out in and around many African states, between clients of the
United States and Soviet Union, with Cuba and China playing mixed roles.
Under the circumstances, Africa became a melting pot of war and organized
criminality--hence, an excellent platform for short-term capital
accumulation by extraction-oriented multinational corporations.

Resistance came in waves. The anti-colonial tribal-based uprisings of the
19th century were only suppressed by the Europeans' brutal military
superiority, ultimately requiring automatic weaponry. Twentieth century
settler-capitalism could only take hold through coercive mechanisms that
dragged Africans out of traditional modes of production into the mines,
fields and factories. Rural women had the added burden, then, of subsidizing
capitalism with an infrastructure that reproduced cheap labor, since
schools, medical insurance and pensions for urban families were largely
nonexistent.

Against superexploitation, Africa's rich, interrelated radical traditions
grew and intermingled. They included vibrant nationalist liberation
insurgencies, once-avowed 'Marxist-Leninist' political parties, mass
movements (sometimes peasant-based, sometimes emerging from degraded urban
ghettoes), and powerful unions. Religious protesters, women's groups,
students and youths also played catalytic roles that changed history in
given locales.

In the sense that the imperialist stage of capitalism was a logical outcome
of pressures building up in the early 20th century world system--as insisted
by socialists like Lenin and Luxemburg, and conceded by liberals like
Hobson--these were some of the most important anti-capitalist campaigns
ever.

For example, the 1885 meeting in Berlin that carved up Africa between the
main colonial powers reflected pressures directly related to the 1870s-90s
capitalist crises, particularly in the London and Paris financial centers.
The stock markets reacted as badly to news of, for example, Ndebele raids on
Cecil John Rhodes' mine surveyors in Zimbabwe, as modern brokers did to the
Zapatista uprising and failure of WTO negotiations in Seattle a century
later.

But what kinds of globalized resistance can be retraced? Anti-slavery was
amongst the most important international solidarity movements ever. Later,
an attempt was made by Marcus Garvey to relocate African-Americans to
Liberia. African nationalist movements exiled in London and Paris
established even greater Pan-Africanist visions, as well as solidarity
relations with Northern critics of colonialism, apartheid and racism.

The combined 

Re: guidance for student

[Patrick Bond]

Global Exchange did a book in cooperation with Joan Hecksher recently that,
when I had a glance at it, seemed about the best around...

- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 7:53 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:32436] guidance for student


 A good student wants to know what the possibilities are for doing NGO type
 work abroad.  Is there a good source for knowing the available
 opportunities?

  --
 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 Chico, CA 95929

 Tel. 530-898-5321
 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Ghani

[Patrick Bond]

A member of my PhD committee at Johns Hopkins, ~1987... nailed me on obscure
Ricardo/Marx distinctions... his reputation at JHU was one of the sharpest,
but denied tenure because of his writer's block, so off he went to the WB
for the requisite panel-beating...

- Original Message -
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 1:11 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:32383] Ghani

Re: Black South African capitalists rare

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 NY Times, Nov. 13, 2002
 Rarity of Black-Run Businesses Worries South Africa's Leaders
 By RACHEL L. SWARNS
  In 1998, nearly 35 black-controlled companies were listed on South
Africa's
 stock exchange, accounting for about 7 percent of the market
 capitalization. This year, 23 black companies account for about 2.2
percent
 of the market capitalization, a decline attributed to a stock market
slump,
 spiraling debt and poor management.

Why doesn't she blame capitalism? Her counterparts here do...

Excerpt from ELITE TRANSITION: FROM APARTHEID TO NEOLIBERALISM IN SOUTH
AFRICA
by Patrick Bond
Pluto Press, London and University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, SA


Box 1.4: Black economic disempowerment

There is a tendency in South African political discourse to blame the
victims, and failed black entrepreneurs--an easy target for leftists--are no
exception (ANC MP Ben Turok, for example, was amongst the most regular and
belligerent of white petit-bourgeois critics of an aspirant black
bourgeoisie). At one level, such disdain has been provoked, for the
neuveau-riche character of Black Economic Empowerment (`BEE') means that the
objective sometimes degenerates--as in a 1996 endorsement by then-deputy
trade and industry minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (a former trade
unionist)--into becoming, quite simply, `filthy rich.'(52)
 But matters are always more complicated in South Africa--letting the cat
out of the bag, one Star Business Report journalist observed, `The white
establishment use black faces to gain access to the new government and often
pay the blacks in the form of shares in their companies. So at the end of
the day, it is a handful of black people that are being enriched.' The
actual number? Controversial hawker-entreprenuer Lawrence Mavundla counted
300 people in Mlambo-Ngcuka's `filthy rich' camp (not much of a new `class'
there)--whom he reckoned were already very well off--and argued that BEE as
it was already understood by late 1996 was a `sham.'(53)
 Instead of disdain or envy, a more appropriate sentiment might be pity, for
if ever there was a case that white South African elites laid a neoliberal
ambush for their successors, BEE is it. The trajectory was hinted at by
political scientist Sam Nolutshungu during the early 1980s, when he
described `the inability of the system of dominance to provide terms of
black submission to the social order that collaborating black classes could
themselves uphold, and, in their turn, purvey to others persuasively.' Thus,
he continued, `It is in recognition of this fact that the regime now seeks
to incorporate the black elites, a measure which, at this late hour, and in
the manner of its conception and execution, more resembles a strategy of
counter-insurgency than a commitment to fundamental reform.'(54) At a
political level, the mass democratic organisations prevented Pretoria's
co-option strategy from proceeding very far, and in any event collaborating
classes were given few real opportunities for accumulation aside from
homeland patronage until later in the 1980s.
 At that point in late-apartheid's mutation, the most aggressive of BEE
hucksters took over: white free-market propagandists, desperate for allies.
Billboard images erected during the 1980s by the public-private Small
Business Development Corporation depicted 70,000 kombi-taxi drivers as the
economic motors of the New South Africa. `Free Enterprise is Working!,' the
billboards shouted. The Johannesburg Star newspaper was an important site of
liberal ideological signposting, with journalist Patrick Laurence waxing
eloquent in 1989 that, `The robust, competitive taxi drivers can be seen as
evidence that capitalism is alive and well, and that even within apartheid
South Africa, where for decades Black business was shackled, the capitalist
ethos is strong and growing.' Likewise John Kane-Berman, a director of the
SA Institute of Race Relations (which was in the process of transforming
from a liberal to neoliberal institution, in a manner that later
characterised the Democratic Party), would in 1990 describe the black
kombi-taxi industry as `the most dramatic black success story so
far'--though three years later, after a taxi flareup in Johannesburg's
central business district that left four people dead and terrified the
occupants of downtown financial institutions and mining houses, he admitted
that the industry was better termed a `debacle.' Indeed after that incident,
Financial Mail editorialists finally voiced concern that, `It will be tragic
if many black small businessmen [kombi owners] burn their fingers on their
first encounter with capitalism.'(55)
 The sad reality was that the first organic encounters that many South
Africans had with petty capital accumulation--the sale of goods and services
in township and rural spheres previously unexplored, prohibited or severely
distorted by large-scale capitalists--were of severe

Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk

[Patrick Bond]

After noting on Mark's A-list that I got Robert's excellent book for $15
equivalent in South Africa a year or so ago, I went over to the Johannesburg
Workers Library bookshop and found many many other recent Zeds for $6.
Farouk, great cross-subsidisation (for us who are in the US$1,000/month
range and below), many thanks!

Patrick

- Original Message -
From: Farouk Sohawon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
#[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


 Dear Mark Jones,

 Thanks to you and Lou giving a good account of Robert Biel's book and its
 weaknesses.

 Speaking on Zed's behalf concerning the size and price, 370 pages in Royal
format is not a slim volume
 and US$25.00  is not an exorbitant price for a book of this size, and this
is the
 highest price Zed would charge in the North.  I can point out to you that
we have a
 two-track policy in terms of prices.  In the North we charge a realistic
price, or what
 we consider to be realistic, but this goes a long way to subsidise the
price in the
 South.  You may or may not know that books published by Zed are available
in
 many countries in the South at an accessible price to the local
population.

 Again you may not know that Zed is a workers' cooperative and most of us
working
 here are politically motivated, but as we do not have any sugar daddies,
we need to
 get the political and the economic right.

 I hope this addresses your concerns.  If you need further elaborations,
please get in
 touch.

 In solidarity.

 Farouk Sohawon

Re: Re: RE: Re: r.biel@ucl.ac.uk

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Shiva's biggest fans are among Western NGOs. She has almost no
 followers in India. How does someone get nominated as the authentic
 voice of the oppressed anyway?

Hey comrades, she has lots of grassroots South Africa fans after excellent
hits on big water, food and energy companies over the past couple of weeks.
She pummelled the World Bank Africa water master on a tv chat show Ben
Cashdan ran, which aired yesterday. And she was front-line in the march on
24 August when the police lobbed 8 stun grenades at us, badly injuring one
internationalist.

Re: Re: Anthrax attack in Africa

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
 I don't recall this incident, but it suggests a US connection.  Any
 comments?

In Zim's main weekly, the Financial Gazette, I used to have a column, and
this is what I wrote on this story on 29 January 1993:

 How Rhodesia poisoned SA

 The South African Defense Force and South African Police are capable of
untold horrors, and, via the independent press and the Goldstone Commission,
scandals emerge nearly every week which otherwise should, in a humane
society, lead to the government's resignation.  Yet the origins of the most
contemptible covert operations aimed at civilians or opposition political
groups may never be known, if President FW de Klerk's current plans for a
no-strings-attached amnesty plan are eventually consummated.
 So it is up to insiders to reveal occasional secrets, and to gutsy
researchers to put these into some form of coherent story.  Thus it is
useful to look at fresh allegations about Rhodesian-era contributions to
modern-day South African roguery by Mr Jeremy Brickhill.
 Currently an Oxford doctoral student and filmmaker, Mr Brickhill fought for
ZAPU in the 1970s and in 1987 nearly lost his life when aspiring assassins
carbombed him at the Avondale shopping centre.  His analysis of the role of
Rhodesian chemical and biological experiments in South Africa can be found
in the Winter 1993 issue of the American magazine Covert Action Quarterly,
in an article entitled Zimbabwe's Poisoned Legacy:  Secret War in Southern
Africa.
 For years rumours have circulated about nefarious Rhodesian Special Forces
experiments, including former CIO director Ken Flower's own admission that
poisoned uniforms were planted for ZANU's use, leading to the deaths of
hundreds of cadres.  One case of likely biological warfare, reports Dr Meryl
Nass of the University of Massachusetts in the same magazine, was an
extraordinary outbreak of anthrax in 1978-80:  It affected large areas,
killed thousands of head of livestock, and produced the largest number of
human anthrax cases in one disease outbreak ever reported in the world.  It
caused extensive economic hardship in areas with a predominantly black
population, while leaving white areas unscathed.
 Mr Brickhill reviews a range of evidence of chemical and biological warfare
conducted against ZANU and ZAPU guerrillas in the late 1970s by the CIO and
Selous Scouts.  He discusses the means by which the Rhodesians' Operation
Favour manipulated Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Mr Ndabaningi Sithole to
recruit 5 000 pro-government guerrillas notorious for their undisciplined
and murderous behaviour.  And he suggests how, subsequently, Operation
Winter transferred the Rhodesian lessons and military assets directly to
South Africa under the nose of British transition team and US authorities.
 Mr Brickhill maintains that had the major Western players been so inclined,
much could have been done to halt the migration of trained killers and their
wares down South:  Field testing of chemical and biological weapons by the
Rhodesians must have been of great interest to many other countries.  With
their extensive penetration of the Rhodesian military and intelligence
services, the British intelligence service MI-6 could hardly have failed to
learn the details of the poison war.  Ken Flower himself confirms the close
liaison he maintained with the CIA, MI-6 and other Western intelligence
agencies.
 By the time the Lancaster House deal was negotiated, Mr Brickhill says, the
future of the Rhodesian military was decided:  The South Africans were to
be the principal beneficiaries of the Rhodesian [covert military] assets;
they, after all, had to carry on the fight [against the ANC].  The Rhodesian
assets were happy enough to go to South Africa.  The British and Americans,
while not displeased with the arrangement, were concerned with potential
political and diplomatic repercussions.  Hence the stipulation that the
transfer of the Rhodesian assets should appear to be informal and
unorganised.
 Even Mozambican FRELIMO officials were drawn into the web of deception by
the British, Mr Brickhill insists.  They were told that if they agreed to
help keep ZANU guerrillas under control and committed to the election
process, the MNR would be disbanded.  Mozambique's former Security Minister
Sergio Vierra later told Mr Brickhill:  We were naive.  We were very
naive.
 At the time independence was being celebrated in Zimbabwe, the Rhodesian
Special Forces were already being assimilated into the SADF.  The Recce
Commandos welcomed the Selous Scouts and SAS, and the poisons technology was
incorporated for future use.  Mr Brickhill alleges that the shadowy Civil
Co-operation Bureau of the SADF ─ acknowledged to be the centre of 1980s
death squad activity ─ was originally set up to encourage Rhodesian dirty
tricks operators, and many of the CCB operators were Rhodesians.  The SADF
also established the Directorate of Special Tasks with the Rhodesians, which
organised the 

Re: the bubble fraud: blamin' the profs.

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Ian Murray
 Even those of us at business schools are implicated, Garten
 said. It's not like the educational establishment sounded any
 warning. We were cheerleaders, too.

Is that the slimey-smiley Jeffrey Garten from Yale? Here in Jo'burg we show
the film The Crash (Frontline) where that guy chuckles about all the amazing
destruction he was responsible for within the Clinton Administration, with
the fakest humility I've ever seen... A good lesson in US ruling-elite
mannerisms that he apparently continues in print interviews.

Re: RE: G8 and Africa

[Patrick Bond]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27187] G8 and Africa





  From: Devine, James 
  
  At the seat of empire Africa is forced to take the blame for the devastation inflicted on 
  it by the rich world 
  George Monbiot
Monbiot's work is great. But the emphasis here is 
mainly on Northern domination without picking up that Mbeki is part of 
transnational neolib ruling elite.

That's the point of our new book, "Fanon's 
Warning: A Civil Society Reader on the New Partnership for Africa's Development" 
(order from http://www.africanworld.com and preview at 
http://www.aidc.org.za)

More soon on why this is emblematic of the coming 
failure of the Jo'burg World Summit on Sustainable Development. Just heard an 
excellent talk by Wolfgang Sachs at Wits University this afternoon; his edited 
"Jo'burg Memo" is quite a good demolition job on the sustainable development 
blahblah that is doing the rounds here and 
everywhere...

Re: pro Bono

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Time magazine
The model for a new approach is Jubilee 2000, which campaigned with great
success to reduce developing-world debt.

Come off it, silly mainstream reporter. Jubilee 2000 (North's) campaign was
a great failure. The scams introduced as conditionality for crumbs of debt
relief, plus the failure of such relief to dent the outflow of capital from
lowest-income countries (as even the WB admitted earlier this month), plus
the political distractions caused by claims of Northern governments and the
BWIs, plus the difficulty of converting the churchy single-issue people into
broad-based anti-neoliberal local/global activists, plus the failure to
listen to Jubilee South the whole time (indeed to do the opposite of what
they wanted), plus the explicit cooption of leaders by the World Bank/IMF,
plus the celebrity-chasing style (not just Bono but sweatshop-friendly Sachs
and the Pope), together make Jubilee 2000 -- especially the British, German,
Japanese and pre-2001 US versions -- a model of how NOT to do international
solidarity politics.

Re: Business Week the Nineties by Dean Baker

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Devine, James
Jane, that the dollar was in danger if
 other countries ceased buying new financial assets because they needed
their
 foreign exchange for other uses.

I've known Jane since 1976 when I was a wee lad playing viola in a Bethesda
string ensemble with her son. Every financial-doomsday prediction she has
made since then - actually, from the late 1960s when she learned her trade
on the Hill as Wright Patman's Banking Committee staff guru - has come true,
from REITs to Third World debt crisis to big-bank-bankruptcies and bailouts
to SLs to junkbonds to securitisation to emerging markets to dot.coms to...

Pass it on: Help Soweto protesters in their fight for dignity and justice

[Patrick Bond]

An update, for allies of the struggle for social justice in South Africa:

Last night, well-known Soweto activist Trevor Ngwane and 49 other
progressive community/labour activists were involuntarily moved to one of
apartheid South Africa's most notorious prisons, Diepkloof, to sit another
week while their home addresses are being confirmed by the lethargic
Johannesburg courts. The state appears intent on maximising the persecution
of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, notwithstanding
* growing concern that the justice system is being abused for political
purposes by the ruling party, and
* growing local and international delegitimisation of the host city for the
August-September 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The Soweto comrades are merely asking that the African National
Congress-ruled municipality keep its campaign promises of free basic
(lifeline) services and, in the process, end the evictions,
water/electricity cut-offs and prosecutions of poor people whose only crime
is that they cannot afford water and electricity that are being inexorably
privatised. They arrived to protest nonviolently on Saturday, and were met
with gunfire (live rounds) that wounded two protesters.

Below please find:
* letter from Anti-Privatisation Forum treasurer;
* email addresses for letters to the authorities (please be firm and polite
in demanding the 50 protesters' release!);
* today's press reports (from the big-business media);
* the Anti-Privatisation Forum's latest leaflet.

For more information, stay tuned to http://southafrica.indymedia.org

Trevor and the 49 other comrades will welcome your support, and their
organisations will welcome you to Johannesburg in late August when a
people's summit will unveil the hypocrisies of neoliberal sustainable
development in the allegedly-liberated South Africa.

***

From: Florencia Belvedere [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 2:31 PM
Subject: How people can help

Dear all,

Thanks for your support of the SECC comrades. The APF and the SECC are
currently exploring the possibility of bringing a High Court interdict to
appeal the 7-day extension.  Counsel that we have consulted are also
concerned about the bail hearing coming up on April 16th, as they are
concerned that the state might try to pull all kinds of technicalities to
deny comrades bail.

There is likely to be a drawn out legal case to follow and therefore we will
need financial assistance of whatever kind or sort.  We have some legal
funds, but not enough to cover all costs.  Our lawyer is helping us
pro-bono, but this is not likely to be the case with an advocate.

So, if comrades want to assist, they can deposit or transfer money into the
APF account.   This money will be set aside for the SECC.

The APF's bank details follow.

Account Name: Anti-Privatisation Forum
Bank: First National Bank, South Africa
Branch: Bank City
Bank Address: Block A, #3 First Place, Bank City, FNB, Johannesburg, 2000
Branch Code: 250805(00)
Account Number: 62027851452
Type of Account: Cheque
Swift Code: FIRN ZAJJA046
Telephone: 011 352 1338/492 3321/492 3345
Contact Person: Vanitha Maharaj

Please help us get this message far and wide (both locally and overseas).
We will be holding a mass meeting at Funda Centre in Soweto on Saturday,
April 13th.  See attached flyer for more details.

Yours in struggle to free the Kensington 50!

Florencia Belvedere
Treasurer, Anti-Privatisation Forum

For sending emails to demand the release of the Soweto protesters:
- Original Message -
Subject: Email addresses
 Senior Prosecutor's office in Johannesburg. Prosecuting Attorney's email
address is: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Mayor Amos Masondo's email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

- Original Message -
 Today's NewsTuesday 9th April 2002
 
 The Star9/4/2002

 Electricity protestors to stay in jail for a week

 by Anna Cox

 Fifty Soweto residents who participated in the trashing of the home of
 Johannesburg's executive mayor will spend the next seven days in jail.

 The 50, part of a group of 87 members of the Soweto Electricity Crisis
 Committee (SECC) that were arrested on Saturday, were remanded in  prison
 while the police verified their addresses. Yesterday, 37 protestors,
mainly
 the elderly, youths and the sick were released by the Jeppe Magistrates
 Court.

 On Saturday, more than a hundred SECC members had gathered outside mayor
 Amos Masondo's Kensington home protesting and chanting slogans. The
 protestors trashed Masondo's place, threw rubbish around the garden,
banging
 on te doors and damaged his garage door, while his wife and children were
 locked inside the house.

 The SECC has accused the governmetn of politicising the event and putting
 pressure on court officials not to release the accused.

 SECC spokesperson Phillip Matseoane said this was a mockery of democracy.
 We have child rapists and murderers walking the streets yet a few
 protestors who were 

Join us in Jo'burg, mid-May, to fight services privatisation

[Patrick Bond]

 of analysis and activism.
Join us from 16-18 May in Johannesburg. Overlapping with our conference, a
world-class New Social Movements Film Festival will take place from 15-17
May on evenings in the same venue. Join us for entertaining documentaries
that make the links between local and international campaigns for water,
electricity and a decent environment, and the neoliberal economic policies
which so many campaigns must ultimately confront and defeat. Some resources
are available for low-income organisations outside Johannesburg to send
representatives. Additional events are being planned for visiting
international and regional experts, who will be available in other South
African locations. For further information, please contact Greg Ruiters
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (phone 2711-717-4373) or Patrick Bond
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (2711-717-3917).




Services for All?

Draft Programme of Events, 15-18 May

***

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15: NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS FILM FESTIVAL

7PM RECEPTION for 7:30 SCREENING (UNTIL 10:30) (WITS UNIVERSITY GRADUATE
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT AUDITORIUM, 2 ST.DAVID'S ROAD,
PARKTOWN)

WELCOME FROM DENNIS BRUTUS; SCREENING OF AN INTERACTIVE FILM, SOUTH AFRICA
AND GLOBALISATION: WHICH SIDE ARE WE ON? AND OTHER NEW SOCIAL-JUSTICE
DOCUMENTARIES

***

THURSDAY, MAY 16: BRIEFING FOR INTERNATIONAL VISITORS

9AM-4PM (ACROSS JOHANNESBURG) Orientation for international guests by local
progressive tourguides: Alexandra/Sandton/Soweto tours and Museum
Africa/Workers' Museum/Library visit

5:00PM (WITS PDM AUDITORIUM) CONFERENCE
BRIEFING PLENARY: THE STATE OF SOUTH AFRICAN STRUGGLES FOR STATE
SERVICES

7-10:30PM (PDM AUDITORIUM AND GROUND FLOOR LOUNGES) DINNER, CONTINUATION OF
NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS FILM FESTIVAL, HIGHLIGHTING SA
GRASSROOTS/LABOUR/ENVIRONMENT DOCCIES

***

FRIDAY, MAY 17

9:00-11AM (PDM AUDITORIUM)
PLENARY 2:  THE GLOBAL NEOLIBERAL THREAT

11-11:30AM tea break

11:30-1PM (PDM, FIRST FLOOR)
FIRST WORKSHOPS:   A NEW SERVICES APARTHEID?
  WORKSHOP 1A: WATER PRIVATISATION IN SA TOWNS
  WORKSHOP 1B: CORPORATISED MUNICIPAL SERVICES
  WORKSHOP 1C: WATER/ELECTRICITY COST RECOVERY CONTRADICTIONS
  WORKSHOP 1D: SOUTHERN AFRICAN URBAN WATER PRIVATISATION

1-2PM (PDM COURTYARD) Lunch

2-3:30PM (PDM, FIRST FLOOR)
SECOND WORKSHOPS: WATER, AT WHAT COST?
  WORKSHOP 2A: GAUTENG WATER WARS
  WORKSHOP 2B: WATER PRIVATISATION IN SA CITIES
  WORKSHOP 2C: RURAL WATER SUPPLY CONTROVERSIES
  WORKSHOP 2D: INTERNATIONAL LESSONS OF WATER COMMODIFICATION

3:30-3:45PM Tea break

3:45-5:15PM (PDM, FIRST FLOOR)
THIRD WORKSHOPS:STRUGGLES FOR SERVICES
  WORKSHOP 3A: TRADE UNIONS V. PRIVATISATION
  WORKSHOP 3B: COMMUNITIES V. SERVICES CUT-OFFS AND HARMFUL INFRASTRUCTURE
  WORKSHOP 3C: ENGENDERING SERVICE DELIVERY
  WORKSHOP 3D: ENVIRONMENTALISM AND BROWN POLITICS

5:30-9PM (PDM AUDITORIUM AND LOUNGES)
RECEPTION, DINNER, CONTINUATION OF NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS FILM FESTIVAL,
HIGHLIGHTING INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL JUSTICE DOCCIES

SATURDAY, MAY 18
9:00-10:30AM (PDM AUDITORIUM)

PLENARY 3: ALTERNATIVES FOR SA  THE WSSD:
LABOUR-COMMUNITY-WOMEN-ENVIRONMENT

10:30-10:45AM tea break

10:45-12:15PM (PDM AUDITORIUM)
FOURTH WORKSHOPS:   NEXT STRATEGIES/TACTICS
  WORKSHOP 4A: PUBLIC-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIPS
  WORKSHOP 4B: LIFELINE SERVICES  BLOCK TARIFFS
  WORKSHOP 4C: RESURRECTING PROGRESSIVE MUNICIPAL PLANNING
  WORKSHOP 4D: INFLUENCING THE WSSD, INSIDE AND OUT

12:30-2PM (PDM COURTYARD) Lunch and then travel to rally

2-5PM (FUNDA CENTRE, SOWETO) RALLY, STREET THEATRE, DISPLAYS, MUSIC

(Partners include International Forum on Globalization, SA Municipal Workers
Union, International Labour Research and Information Group of the University
of
Cape Town, Alternative Information and Development Centre, and community,
environmental and women's groups)

The Italian murder

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message - 
From: Franco Barchiesi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Patrick Bond [EMAIL PROTECTED]


 Hi Patrick,
 
 The guy that was killed, Marco Biagi, was a professor
 quite well known in Bologna university environments.
 Defined by people I know there as not so disgusting
 but definitely a moderate reformist, he has been an
 advisor to Labour Ministers in both left and the
 current right-wing governments. Staunch supporter of
 labour market flexibility, Biagi has played a key role
 in drafting amendments to Section 18 of 1970's
 Workers' Statutes (Act 300 of 1970), which, if
 implemented, will among other things eliminate the
 justified cause clause for firing workers in
 establishments with more than 15 employees, and
 greatly reduce the power of Labour Courts in ordering
 reinstatements of unfairly dismissed workers. In
 short, firing workers will become extremely easy (now
 it's nearly impossible in Italy, aside from
 retrenchments). His murder comes just 3 days before a
 massive demo scheduled for 23 March, where more than 1
 million people are expected to protest aginst the
 ultra-neoliberal policies of the Berlusconi
 government, and two weeks before the 5 April general
 strike. While the government (joined by employers'
 organisations) has been quick to blame widespread
 social opposition for determining objective
 conditions leading to the crime, the movement has
 clearly underlined these temporal coincidences to
 advanced suspects that this is another, rather clumsy,
 episode of a decades-long 'strategy of tension' with
 which right wingers and conservative forces have
 always tried to tame emerging popular movements. In
 particular, Luca Casarini (who condemned the
 assassination  -- like all the comrades and the left
 parties -- in the strongest possible terms), has
 released an interview defining this as a state
 murder. Astonishing coincidences seem to support
 these suspects. Last week the weekly Panorama, owned
 by Berlusconi, published an identity of possible
 terrorists' targets which had on top of the list
 academic advisers of government department,
 particularly the Department of Labour. In the same
 week, the Ministry of Interior decided to remove the
 Police escort that Biagi was having. All this is, I
 think, more than suspect. As for the Red Brigades,
 they are basically extinct and albeit some obscure
 groups can appropriate their acronym, it is simply
 ridiculous to resurrect them as the government is
 trying to do in order to stygmatise grassroots
 mobilisations by linking them to the 1970s climate. In
 any event, the movement will be the worst affected by
 this act.
 
 PS You can post this on Debate if you want
 
 Franco
 

Re: observers

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 I think it's time to start building up a
 movement to demand international observers for the 2004 electionin the US.

Hear hear! It would be a fantastic way to do south-north solidarity, esp. in
Florida. In June 2000 I was an observer (for the Southern African
Development Community) in the Zimbabwe parliamentary elections. The
experience leads me to endorse the basics of bourgeois democracy...

Here's something a friend and I did on ZNet last Friday:

Interpreting Zimbabwe's election

by Patrick Bond and Raj Patel

By a vote of 1.69 million for Robert Mugabe to 1.28 million for Morgan
Tsvangirai, the people of Zimbabwe re-elected the Zimbabwe African National
Union (Zanu) president last weekend. The Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), founded in September 1999, lost by more than in the last national
election, in June 2000 when a small majority of parliamentary seats were
taken by the ruling Zanu.

We want to make seven points about the election and its various
interpretations, meanings and implications. But to set the stage, here are
the words of a young organic radical activist, Hopewell Gumbo, formerly the
assistant to opposition leader Gibson Sibanda, subsequently a noted
socialist activist and student anti-privatisation leader:

 What went wrong? There has been massive violence prior to the elections
AND AS A RESULT THE ELECTION COULD NOT HAVE BEEN FREE AND FAIR. Mugabe
survived on an anti-imperialist rhetoric and the land crisis not
withstanding the violence campaign... Mugabe's rhetoric separated the urban
poor from the rural poor. This is one important reality that must be
interrogated. The answer to the MDC loss lies in the explanation of that
massive discrepancy. But Mugabe was not genuine in his rhetoric. He
announced a retreat from the IMF while he went on to privatise education and
other services but manages to get the rural vote on a land ticket that
results in violent farm invasions and occupations followed by a fast track
resettlement program.

1) The election

Mugabe stole this one. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network--mainly
progressive human rights monitors--listed the following obvious violations:

* disenfranchising voters through the voter registration process;

* registration of voters beyond 3 March 2002;

* correcting the voters' roll;

* control of voter education through the Electoral Supervisory Commission;

* drawing election supervisors and monitors from the Ministries of Defence,
Home Affairs and Education;

* disallowing postal voting [i.e. disallowing around a million votes from
Zimbabweans abroad, which would have mainly gone to the MDC];

* constituency-based voting [i.e., instead of allowing anyone to vote for
president no matter where they happen to be, within Zimbabwe];

* simultaneous holding of municipal and Presidential elections;

* restrictions concerning the accompanying of ballot boxes;

* printing of extra ballot papers;

* very restrictive and oppressive Public Order and Security Act;

* unequal access to the state controlled media, in particular the broadcast
media, with a bias towards the ruling party;

* restrictions concerning both local and international observers;

* confiscation and destruction of identity cards by youths of the ruling
party [i.e., thus preventing people from voting because an ID is required at
the ballot box];

* establishment of illegal road blocks by youths of the ruling party;

* political violence, including torture and murders, largely perpetrated by
ruling party supporters against members and supporters of the opposition;

* selective enforcement of the law by law enforcement agents.

Then on the days of the election, March 9 and 10, urban Zimbabweans were
confronted by drastic cutbacks in polling stations, requiring many hours of
queuing in the hot sun. Rural voters witnessed a systematic refusal by
government to allow monitors near the booths, with opposition party
electoral agents unable to reach nearly half the stations, in part because
of pro-Zanu thuggery. Across Zimbabwe, the government refused to abide by an
urgent court order to extend voting for another day, opened only the polling
booths in greater Harare (and five hours late at that), and then chased
those still in long queues away at the end of the day.

2) Free and fair?

Through such means, we believe, easily more than 410,000 votes were stolen.
Most international election monitors--with the notable exception of
ruling-party ministers from neighbouring countries, the Organisation of
African Unity, and 50 official observers from South Africa--recognised this,
declaring the poll unfree and unfair.

But the reports from countries of the North played into Zanu's hands. Mugabe
has been quick to point to imperialist hypocrisy, the stolen election in the
US, and the lack of genuine choice in most rich countries.

In contrast, the state-owned media welcomed the Southern African Development
Community's

Re: Is there a left program at the global level?

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED]


 At first, I was irritated by Uchitelle's assertion that concrete proposals
for change are not coming
 from the streets but from more moderate types like Dani Rodrik.  But then
I thought about it, and it
 seemed to be more or less correct.

Depends where you look, comrade Peter. Each society has its own lefties
arguing for concrete alternatives. A recent book I did (Advert warning!:
*Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the WB, IMF and Int'l Finance*
from University of Cape Town Press, out last October) has a concluding
chapter with all the historic references, int'l comparisons and concrete
proposals floating around for locking capital down. These would be
exceptionally radical in terms of changing the balance of class forces and
the character of capital accumulation in our particular setting, and would
thus set the stage for non-reformist reforms in a variety of other
development spheres.

As for the concrete proposals, they typically flow from the kinds of
underlying principles that Esping-Andersen has documented from the
working-class movements which struggled, over the past century, for
national-scale social policies: decommodification, destratification,
degendering of access to services/goods, and harmonised society/nature
relations. Taking one example, water, look for concrete proposals (e.g. from
the int'l Blue Planet project hosted by the Council of Canadians) along the
following explicitly anti-capitalist lines: constitutionally-guaranted
lifeline access on a universal basis; progressive command/control functions
over national resources management from the central state based upon
nationalised ownership of water resources (instead of Riparian land-based
ownership); demand-side management and penalisation for hedonistic water
use instead of supply-side enhancements like big dams; progressive regional
arrangements for shared water courses; prohibition of
privatisations/corporatisations of municipal supplies; etc etc.

I wasn't in Porto Alegre, but I think that the current epoch of struggle
against neoliberalism has generated so many incredibly good
grassroots/shopfloor comrades who are, perhaps for the first time in recent
history, thinking and acting these through, in large part by making inspired
international links. When our best Soweto leaders swop stories of
privatisation-sabotage with the comrades from Accra, Manila, Cochabamba and
Ontario, as I've witnessed on several occasions, it brings real meaning to
the idea of people's globalisation (against capital's globalisation). If you
come out to both/either our decommodification prepcom at the Jo'burg
Workers' Library in May (soon to be advertised at http://www.queensu.ca/msp)
, and/or the World Summit on Sustainable Development parallel sessions we're
helping with in August-September, you'll really see this synthesis in
research/strategy/protest. Very inspiring!

But you're right to be cautious, insofar as the proposed mechanisms follows
an unresolved debate over fix it or nix it of int'l institutions. If the
goal is to close the World Bank, IMF and WTO (with some people arguing for
global-scale alternatives and others insisting that such would be utopian),
then the concrete mechanisms necessarily are local, national and in some
cases (e.g. following Bello and Amin) regional. If the UN is seen as a site
of reform/regulation (really utopian!), then other mechanisms (like Tobin
Tax) follow logically. That debate remains crucial, and I'm nearly always
convinced that the best grassroots/shopfloor social forces are moving it to
the left by their praxis. Kicking James Wolfensohn out of Porto Alegre was
most encouraging.

 The excellent critiques of the existing system usually end with a
 brief wish list of desired outcomes but not actual proposals, or where
there are proposals they are
 disappointingly nonradical.  (Perhaps the only exception is the demand for
widespread debt relief, but
 isn't this also defined in terms of the outcome and not the concrete
mechanism?)

The mechanism there is repudiation, and the next big push is for reparations
(eco-debt, slavery, colonialism, neoliberalism); Jubilee South's Porto
Alegre Debt Tribunal did lots of work on this... From Argentina to Zimbabwe,
it's on the agenda of the popular groups and in Argentina and Zimbabwe their
are de facto defaults. (Advert warning!: The latter case is documented in
the book -- out next week from Africa World Press and Merlin in
N.America/Europe -- coauthored by myself and Mugabe's 1990s chief economist,
Masimba Manyanya, in *Zimbabwe's Plunge: Exhausted Nationalism,
Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice*).

 I'd like to be wrong.  I would love to say that our side has carefully
thought-out demands to fight for,
 and that the problem is just that they are being ignored or blacked out.
Please convince me that this
 is so.
 (And, no, the Tobin tax does not qualify as a radical proposal.)

Right 

Re: Re: Re: the profit rate recession

[Patrick Bond]

Are you disaggregating the extremely high profits that derive from corporate
interest earnings or financial-asset capital gains, as US firms hollowed out
from the early 1980s and took higher earnings shares from their
financial/treasury operations? They would have paralleled the
interest-payments deduction? (I think Chris Niggle did a study on this
during the 1980s but presumably Bob Pollin or Tom Schlesinger -- or Doug --
have updated the argument?)


- Original Message -
From: Fred B. Moseley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 12:49 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:22073] Re: Re: the profit rate  recession



 On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:

  Devine, James wrote:
 
  the data that Fred Moseley and I are discussing is from the BEA and is
  available at:
  http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/ARTICLES/2001/09september/0901ror.pdf or
  http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/ARTICLES/2001/09september/ror.xls.
  
  These data are not disaggregated by industry.
 
  Ah, but their definition of profits adds interest back in. That's a
  useful measure for some purposes, but money spent servicing debt
  isn't available for investment or dividends.


 The rate of profit defined gross of interest is a broader measure of the
 return to capital for the capitalist class as a whole.  The rate of profit
 defined net of interest is also affected by the division of the gross
 profit into non-financial profit and interest.

 Doug is right that, from the point of view of individual non-financial
 capitals, the money they pay in interest cannot be invested BY THEM.
 However, from the point of view of the capitalist class as a whole,
 the interest collected by financial capitalists can (and usually will) be
 loaned out and invested by someone else in one way or another.

 Doug is also right that the net rate of profit has increased slightly more
 than the gross rate of profit since 1982.  This is because lower rates of
 interest in the 1990s have reduced interest payments and raised the net
 rate of profit relative to the gross rate of profit (i.e. nonfinancial
 capital received a larger share of the gross profit).

 However, from 1965 to 1982, the net rate of profit DECLINED MORE than the
 gross rate of profit, for the opposite reason (increasing interest rates
 and nonfinancial capital received a smaller share of the gross profit).
 So that, for the whole period from 1965 to 2001, the net rate of
 profit declined more than the gross rate of profit.  According to my
 calculations (from the estimates in the SCB article by Larkin and Morris),
 the gross rate of profit in 2000 was 36% below the 1965 peak and the net
 rate of profit was 45% below the 1965 peak.  And if reasonable estimates
 for 2001 are added, the declines for the whole period are 46% for the
 gross rate of profit and 59% for the net rate of profit.

 Thus, by either measure, there was a very significant decline in the rate
 of profit from 1965 to 1982, and a much smaller increase since then, so
 that the rate of profit today is about 50% below its 1965 peak.  As I have
 said, the fundamental problem of insufficient profitability has not yet
 been solved.  It has been masked by accounting tricks, including fraud (as
 Michael P. suggests), but it has not yet been solved.

 Fred

Re: lefties stop your whining

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 9:56 AM
 While the Genoa G8 summit last July was being besieged by violent elements
from Europe's middle
 class on the outside, the voice of Africa's poor was being heard for the
first time inside.
 Britain's Labour Prime Minister had insisted that leaders from South
Africa and Nigeria should be
 invited to put their case for debt relief, fair trade and investment - a
case first heard by
 purposeful campaigners at the Birmingham G8 Summit in 1998 - proof that
the left can succeed through
 targeted and effective protest.

A complicated divide-and-rule gambit here, but it's clear our old
anti-apartheid comrade wants a new line-up of Blair, Mbeki and
Bono/Pettifor. In London on 13 Feb and Washington/NY on 27-28 Feb, I'll be
doing this talk at various lefty locations, so let me know off-list if
you're around and want details...

***

 Thabo Mbeki and Nepad:
 Breaking or Shining the Chains of Global Apartheid?

 by Patrick Bond

1. Introduction

This essay considers Thabo Mbeki's analysis of globalisation, strategy and
demands for global-scale and continental socio-economic progress, and
preferred alliances. These topics arise because of his stated intention, in
the October 2001 New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), to
establish a `new framework of interaction with the rest of the world,
including the industrialised countries and multilateral organisations'--one
that is sufficiently `radical' to lift African GDP growth to 7% per annum.
 It will be clear, both in excerpts from his speeches considered below and
from the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad), that Mbeki's
approach is consistent with the broader problem of compradorism. As Mbeki
himself warned, `Our own intelligentsia faces the challenge, perhaps to
overcome the class limitations which [Walter] Rodney speaks of, and ensure
that it does not become an obstacle to the further development of our own
revolution.'  I will instead arrive at the pessimistic conclusion that the
challenge has already been lost, judging by Nepad and related international
reform efforts. Mbeki and his main allies have already succumbed to the
class (not necessarily personalistic) limitations of post-Independence
African nationalism, namely acting in close collaboration with hostile
transnational corporate and multilateral forces whose interests stand
directly opposed to Mbeki's South African and African constituencies.
 In addition to Rodney, this premonition was recorded explicitly by Frantz
Fanon, in his chapter on `The Pitfalls of National Consciousness,' in The
Wretched of the Earth:

 The national middle class discovers its historic mission: that of
intermediary. Seen through its eyes, its mission has nothing to do with
transforming the nation; it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission
line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which
today puts on the mask of neocolonialism. The national bourgeoisie will be
quite content with the role of the Western bourgeoisie's business agent, and
it will play its part without any complexes in a most dignified manner. But
this same lucrative role, this cheap-Jack's function, this meanness of
outlook and this absence of all ambition symbolise the incapability of the
middle class to fulfill its historic role of bourgeoisie. Here, the dynamic,
pioneer aspect, the characteristics of the inventor and of the discoverer of
new worlds which are found in all national bourgeoisies are lamentably
absent. In the colonial countries, the spirit of indulgence is dominant at
the core of the bourgeoisie; and this is because the national bourgeoisie
identifies itself with the Western bourgeoisie, from whom it has learnt its
lessons...
  In its beginnings, the national bourgeoisie of the colonial country
identifies itself with the decadence of the bourgeoisie of the West. We need
not think that it is jumping ahead; it is in fact beginning at the end. It
is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the
fearlessness, or the will to succeed of youth.

But Mbeki and his internationally-oriented cabinet colleagues--especially
finance minister Trevor Manuel, trade and industry minister Alec Erwin and
their staffs--would no doubt object. They locate not only their own
(national) ambition but also the continent's potential transformation not in
lucrative personal accomplishments or Western-style bourgeois decadence, but
rather in the further integration of Africa into a world economy, they would
also concede, that is itself in need of better regulation and fairer
economic rules. The project, therefore, is to reform interstate relations
and the embryonic world-state system. As Nepad explains,

 While globalisation has increased the cost of Africa's ability to compete,
we hold that the advantages of an effectively managed integration present
the best prospects for future economic prosperity

Re: Mark Jones on JP Morgan

[Patrick Bond]

Back from holiday in sunny Zimbabwe and saw this. While I was away, the
South African currency was beat up massively, falling from around 6 Rand to
the US$ in January 2000 to R13.85/US$ at the low point in late December 2001
(now back to a bit less than R11/US$).

The main villains behind the crash (far worse than Argentina's) are the
local rich white bastards - mainly Anglo American Corp and DeBeers - taking
their apartheid-era money out, but the spectacular falls (9% on December 9
2001) are apparently due to currency shorting teams from JP Morgan and
Deutsche Bank, according to our stunned Reserve Bank governor.

I'm no gold bug. But is there anything to the raid on South Africa, from the
standpoint that our production costs for what remains the world's largest
gold stock, have now effectively been cut in half, with the worst damage
coming in the weeks immediately after Enron's downfall? Gold won't rise
under those supply-inducing circumstances. Anglo American gold is even
trying to take over Newmont in Australia with its new-found cash hoard.

- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 1:27 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:20858] Mark Jones on JP Morgan


 With a rigged gold market and a constantly strong dollar, J.P.
 Morgan Chase built up a 23 trillion dollar derivative rate position that
 is
 ON THEIR BOOKS RIGHT NOW!
 That unfathomable mega-position is one that cannot tolerate interest
 rate
 and general market VOLATILITY as they are SHORT volatility. That is why
 the
 dollar stays around 116.22 and gold is not allowed to rise no matter
 what
 happens in the world. Morgan and fellow bullion bankers that are short
 thousands of tonnes of gold have serious problems at the moment, which
 no
 one in Wall Street is talking about. If the dollar gets hit and gold
 rockets, some of these institutions will be tapicoa. Sound Taps!
 The short gold positions could do some in, but it is increased
 gold/dollar
 and interest rate volatility that could spell doom for J.P. Morgan
 Chase.
 As is, the interest rate volatility in the long bond is higher now than
 it
 was during the LTCM crisis. The highly regarded Jim Bianco of Bianco
 Research in Barrington, Illinois points out the volatility on 30 day
 Treasury options is higher than during the UAL failed buyout in 1989,
 the
 Gulf War in 1991 and during the Orange County risis in 1994.
 In his December report, Bianco also rolls out a chart comparing Primary
 Treasury Dealer Net Borrowings to Equity Margin Debt (he phrases it Net
 Borrowing over Net Lending). In 1990, they were both 20 billion. Around
 midyear 1999, they were both around 275 billion. Today, the Net
 Borrowing
 number has risen to 550 billion, while the Net Lending number has
 dropped
 to 150 billion. Quite a contrast.
 Bianco titled the chart: Speculators: Bonds Vs Stocks with the following

 commentary:
 This means that the Treasury market is a lot more leveraged than it was
 just 10 years earlier. How did this happen? A significant part of this
 leveraging has occurred in the last two years. This coincides with the
 Treasury's buyback operations, which we believe to be no coincidence.
 The
 buy back operations contributed to this leveraging.
 As the deficit started turning into surpluses in the late 1990's, the
 Treasury issued new securities and used this money to back
 higher-yielding
 Treasury securities issued in the late 1970's/early 1980's. This
 operation
 makes economic sense. However, it also has the effect of subsidizing the

 bond dealing community (welfare for bond dealers). The buyback
 operations
 meant issuance was higher than it would be without it. Furthermore,
 investors began to allocate more money to the equity and credit markets
 throughout the bull market of the 1990s. In an attempt to make up for
 these lost investors, the U.S. Treasury further increased their buyback
 operations. In effect, this increase in buybacks kept the number of
 dealers
 higher than it would have been had the Treasury cut back even further on

 their auction schedule. Nonetheless, the number of primary dealers is
 currently at an 18 year low.
 Dealer operations are similar to leveraged hedge funds. This means they
 have a great need to borrow securities. Since the Treasury was
 subsidizing
 the dealer community, the number of dealers grew in relation to the
 amount
 of Treasury securities outstanding. The leverage associated with these
 dealer operations also increased.
 Th effect of this leveraging means that the Federal Reserve are now
 hypersensitive to anything that effects the leverage community,
 including
 the dealer community.
 -END-


 www.lemetropolecafe.com



 --

 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Chico, CA 95929
 530-898-5321
 fax 530-898-5901

South Africa agit-prop

[Patrick Bond]

 and mining executives who refused to pull their investments
out of apartheid-run South Africa for decades.

Similarly, only someone with no sense of timing would have mentioned that,
as the Liberals were making Mr. Mandela an honorary Canadian citizen, they
were also trying to ram through an anti-terrorism bill that would have
sabotaged the anti-apartheid movement on several fronts had it been in place
at the time.

The Canadian anti-apartheid movement raised money for the African National
Congress, which would easily have fit Bill C-36's sloppy definition of a
terrorist organization. Furthermore, anti-apartheid activists deliberately
caused serious disruption to companies that invested in South Africa,
eventually forcing many to pull out. These disruptions would also have been
illegal under C-36.

Only someone with absolutely no sense of propriety would have muttered,
amidst all the self-congratulation last weekend, that many in South Africa
insist that apartheid still exists, and requires a new resistance movement.
But two weeks ago, I met Trevor Ngwane, a former ANC municipal council
member, who says just that. Apartheid based on race has been replaced with
apartheid based on class.

Confronted with a country where eight million people are homeless and nearly
five million are HIV positive, some try to paint deep inequality as a sad
but unavoidable legacy of racial apartheid. Mr. Ngwane says it is the direct
result of a specific economic restructuring program, embraced by the
current government and nurtured by the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund.

When Mr. Mandela was freed from prison, his vision was of a South Africa
that offered economic, as well as democratic, freedom. Basic needs for
housing, water and electricity would be met through massive public works
programs.

But as power came into the ANC's reach, writes South African professor
Patrick Bond in his new book Against Global Apartheid,enormous pressure was
put on the party to prove it could govern with sound macroeconomic
policies. It became clear that, if Mr. Mandela tried genuine redistribution
of wealth, the international markets would punish South Africa. Many within
the party understandably feared that an economic meltdown would be used as
an indictment not just of the ANC, but of black rule itself.

So, instead of its policy of growth through redistribution, the ANC,
particularly under President Thabo Mbeki, adopted the cookie-cutter program
of trying to grow the economy by pleasing foreign investors: mass
privatizations, layoffs and wage cuts in the public sector, corporate tax
cuts, and the like.

The results have been devastating. Half a million jobs have been lost since
1993. Wages for the poorest 40 per cent have dropped by 21 per cent. Poor
areas have seen their water costs go up by 55 per cent, electricity by as
much as 400 per cent. Many have resorted to drinking polluted water, leading
to a cholera outbreak that infected 100,000 people. In Soweto, 20,000 homes
have their electricity cut off each month. And the investment? They're still
waiting.

This is the type of track record that has turned the World Bank and the IMF
into international pariahs, drawing thousands to the streets of Ottawa last
weekend, with a solidarity protest in Johannesburg. The Washington Post
recently told the heart-breaking story of one Soweto resident, Agnes Mohapi.
The reporter observed, For all its wretchedness, apartheid never did this:
It did not lay her off from her job, jack up her utility bill, then
disconnect her service when she inevitably could not pay. 'Privatization did
that,' [Ms. Mohapi] said.

In the face of this system of economic apartheid, a new resistance
movement is inevitable. There was a three-day general strike against
privatization in August. (Workers held up signs that read, ANC We Love You
But Not Privatizations.) In Soweto, unemployed workers reconnect their
neighbours' cutoff water, and the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee has
illegally reconnected power in thousands of homes. Why don't the police
arrest them? Because, Mr. Ngwane says, when the police officers'
electricity is disconnected, we reconnect them, too.

It looks as if the Bay Street executives, so eager to have their pictures
taken with Nelson Mandela last weekend, have a second chance to fight
apartheid -- this time while it's still going on. They can do it not only
through good-hearted charity, but by questioning the economic logic that is
failing so many around the world.

Which side will they be on this time?

***

The book Against Global Apartheid is now available for international
ordering (you
can check it out at http://aidc.org.za). Here are the publishers' details:

NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
Title  : Against Global Apartheid
Author  : Patrick Bond
Publisher : University of Cape Town Press (http://www.juta.co.za)
ISBN  : 1919713565
Size  : 150mm X 220mm
Extent : 302 pages
Binding : Soft Cover
Price  : R149.00 (incl. VAT) (US$15)
Available : Immediately

Re: ANC out to get the SA left?

[Patrick Bond]

- Original Message -
From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [Patrick Bond, if you're 'out there' what's up with this? Ian]
 ANC fears union plot to launch rival party

(Can I advertise my book on this topic of the new ultra-left - we jokingly
call each other, Hey, m'ooltra' to make it sound sexy - which came out this
week from University of Cape Town Press? Against Global Apartheid: South
Africa meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance... details
available if you email me at [EMAIL PROTECTED])

There's no Workers' Party on the way (not for the next 5 years, I'd bet).
Instead, we're seeing a multiple, interlocking set of challenges to the
ruling regime on a variety of fronts. There is great paranoia amongst the
ANC neoliberal clique, because not only are Cosatu comrades very annoyed
about privatisation - and hundreds of thousands took off two-days' pay in
late August for a general strike -but in addition people on the ground are
flexing muscles.

Details around one example, electricity, are revealing. In a couple of hours
I'm off to Soweto to party at the Orlando East Communal Hall with the Soweto
Electricity Crisis Committee, and to see the premiere of the new 1/2 hour
video doccie, People's Power: Sparks Fly in Soweto (soon to be available
more generally, in prep for Rio+10 here in Jo'burg next September). Anyhow,
inspired in part by PEN-Ler Gene Coyle's excellent arguements about
discriminatory pricing in electricity market, the Soweto comrades and their
academic friends (http://www.queensu.ca/msp - see recent documents) argued
for free lifeline services (1 kWh/person/day free), and against the pricing
strategy of Eskom which has led to thousands of disconnections... and in
turn to massive urban rioting... and late last week, to the following
victory:

***

People's Power in Soweto!

 An End to Eskom's Electricity Cuts--
 but Related Struggles to Intensify

 Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10AM, 18 OCTOBER

CONTACTS:  Trevor Ngwane, chairperson, 083-293-7691 and 011-339-4121
Dudu Mphenyeke, media officer, 082-953-9003 Virginia Setshedi, deputy
chairperson, 072-152-4220

 The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee warmly welcomes the suspension of
cut-offs by Eskom. This is a victory for humanity, for development and for
the expansion of our constitutional rights to lead lives of dignity.
 The news comes on the eve of our launching major civil protests and legal
action against Eskom and municipalities which persist in denying
constitutional rights to low-income citizens. We will not rest, but will
intensify the struggle of poor and working-class Sowetans in related
socio-economic grievances. The Johannesburg Metro's iGoli 2002 plan, and
Johannesburg Water Company's plan to cut off water supplies and impose pit
latrines on poor people are now targets in our sights. But we will expand
our work into a variety of other socio-economic rights, including water,
healthcare, housing, the environment, employment and access to food.
 And in doing so, we will join people across Gauteng in our
Anti-Privatisation Forum. In six weeks' time, we will host similar groups
across South Africa in the National Exploratory Workshop. That workshop will
spread the lessons of how people's power can overwhelm unaccountable,
heartless officials from Eskom, other parastatal agencies, national and
provincial government departments, and municipalities. As we approach the
Rio+10 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the lesson will go out to
the whole world: only struggle by the masses for social justice can reverse
the tide of free-market economics and big-business interests that are
corrupting our hard-fought South African liberation.
 Eskom's incompetence when billing Sowetans is one of its most important
apartheid-era legacies. After 1994, the incompetence worsened, and was
accompanied in recent months by the most cruel and unusual measures to cut
peoples' supplies.
 In claiming victory, the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee salutes the
many people who have been shot--at least two dead in the Vaal--by Eskom
security officials and outsourced mercenary companies, and the dozens of
people killed in electrocutions caused by inadequate Eskom and municipal
services.
 We believe that the drive to privatise--by milking more from the
poor--seemed to instill in Eskom the most anti-social, anti-environmental
strategies. We also believe that the tide has turned, internationally,
against privatisation. Renationalisation is now a popular sentiment.
 We also believe that People's Power is responsible for Eskom's U-turn. We
mobilised tens of thousands of Sowetans in active protests over the past
year. We established professional and intellectual credibility for our
critique of Eskom, even collaborating on a major Wits University study. We
demonstrated at the houses of the mayor, Amos Masondo, and local
councillors, and in the spirit of non-violent civil disobedience, we went so
far

Re: WB

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Thu, 23 Aug 2001 15:34:57 +0300
 From:  Michael Keaney [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 If Wolfensohn really is inflicting such damage on the World Bank,
 should he not get some sort of PEN-L award in recognition?

Nah. Since whatever excellent destruction of that institution's 
esprit de corps is accompanied by co-option of both Northern and some 
Southern NGOs and trade unions, and deepening the profoundly 
destructive relations the Bank enjoys with comprador finance 
ministers and other leaders in the South, the overall balance is net 
negative.

Forgive me if you disagree, but I have to start marketing a book that 
will be out in a couple of weeks from Univ.ofCapeTown Press and Pluto 
Press: *Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, 
IMF and International Finance,* which perhaps gives some fresh 
insights into Wolfy-as-huckster.

Meantime, this verified-real memo is an organic expression of bad 
management. More, please!

***

The following memo--in its entirety--was leaked to
the public in early February. It comes from the
WB's Middle East and North Africa staff.

Feedback from MNA staff and managers

The President has asked for staff views on the
reasons for disconnect between external views on
the Bank that he gets when he travels and the
almost fatalistic malaise that prevails inside the
Bank. This note reflects the consensus views that
emerged from discussions among the managers
and staff of the MNA region.
 We all share Mr. Wolfensohn's perception. All
of us feel energized when we are in the field
dealing with real problems for real clients in real
time. But like him, virtually all of us are
demoralized and frustrated when we return to HQ.
There is a deep and growing cynicism and to
some extent even a sense of resignation among
staff. We are overburdened with growing,
uncoordinated and un- or under-funded mandates
that are given to us all the time. We are
disheartened by the lack of any clear direction.
And we are concerned that the management
rhetoric of teamwork, culture, ethics,
accountability are the mantra adopted by senior
management but which we see practiced far too
rarely. These are deep problems that require clear
management and leadership to resolve. They do
not need yet more studies and task forces. These
are not issues of culture as seems to be
suggested by some. It is a problem that can only
be fixed with better management and leadership.
 The Bank has always had a larger degree of
negativity and cynicism than what may be
considered normal for a large organization. But
we feel that the Bank has now reached a low
point of staff morale not seen before. One can
offer many reasons for this state of affairs. Our
discussion highlighted five inter-related reasons:

   President's management and leadership style

   An overload of institutional mandates and a
 lack of clear direction 

   Problems at senior management levels 

   Inadequate resources for the work

These issues are exacerbated by:

   The high degree of negativity among staff

Of these five issues, we believe the first one is by
far the most important and which the President
must deal with personally. The President sets the
tone and style through his personal conduct and
we would not be optimistic about the other issues
being dealt with without the President making a
real effort to deal with this issue. But equally,
Bank staff must make a greater effort to move
beyond skepticism and looking at everything in a
negative light.
 The specific points that emerged in the
discussions under each of these issues are
summarized below.

President's management and leadership style

   The President has put forward many ideas,
 some with great zeal and vigor (CDF, global
 gateway, GDLN, inter-faith dialogue are some
 examples). These ideas, while perhaps
 individually worthwhile, have tended to diffuse
 the Bank's focus. Their importance in
 individual countries often unclear. The ideas
 have not been accompanied by adequate
 resources for implementation. Yet, coming
 from the President, these are treated as
 mandates. These have contributed to the
 Bank losing its focus. There is no honest
 debate on the merits or priorities.

   We do not think that the President receives
 honest feedback from his senior managers. He
 does not welcome criticism or tolerate dissent,
 be it from the Board, or the managers or the
 Staff Association. Managers at all levels live
 under fear. Many have learnt that it serves
 them to agree with him. He is thus isolated
 from reality.

   The atmosphere of fear that now pervades
 the Bank is based on numerous day-to-day
 experiences of staff and managers in their
 interaction with Mr. Wolfensohn. He is quick
 to rebuke and humiliate managers, often in
 open meetings. Such instances generally
 become known quickly around the 

Re: sweatshops, etc.

[Patrick Bond]

 Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 15:45:13 -0400
 From: Liza Featherstone [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 The question is, is it possible for people in rich countries to work in
 useful solidarity with workers in the Third World who wish to be paid more,
 and to improve their work conditions? ...

Yup, that's the question...

 Students investigate worker complaints, and campaign for
 remedies. Most of all, they support workers' own organizing efforts. 

... and that's the answer.

(A rap on the related issue of Social Clauses from ZCommentary, last 
Feb:)

Workers of the world, transcend the wedge!

Southern Africa is also grappling with divisions between
and among union and eco-social movement activists,
writes Patrick Bond from Johannesburg. The only way
forward is to make shutting the WTO, World Bank and IMF
the first strategic priority.

***

Divide-and-conquer is an all too familiar gambit of a
ruling elite under stress. Thus Seattle demonstrators,
together with a growing international movement
struggling in the same spirit in many other sites, have
found themselves subject to both real and invented
splits since stepping up to the world stage last
November 30.
 Every frightened establishment commentator now harps
on about the partially-material, partially-mythical
breach between allegedly protectionist French farmers or
molly-coddled US trade unionists, on the one hand, and
on the other, dirt-poor peasants blocked from export
crop production or low-paid Third World workers
suffering prohibitions on unionizing, a paucity of
safety and health laws, competition from child laborers,
toxic environmental conditions.
 With pernicious intent, this caricatured division
has been sewn and woven into public debates about post-
Seattle world order reconstruction, in a terribly
confusing way. The most disturbing manifestation may be
the manner in which China-bashing has distracted some of
the Washington, DC consumer, environment and labor
leaders who otherwise last November began making
important steps towards internationalism.
 If we take as a first principle that
internationalist solidarity is violated by promoting the
power of an oppressor nation against an oppressed
nation, especially without the consent and indeed
request of the people most affected, then it is easy to
support boycotts against apartheid-era South Africa and
Burma--for whom sanctions called for by popular,
democratic movements translate into a strategic attack
on local oppressors--but impossible to stomach a
moralizing Bill Clinton and those allied labor
aristocrats whose trade interests are imperialist or at
best narrowly protectionist.
 But to notice, to grapple with and to transcend the
establishment's wedge issue strategy, is also to also
recognise and squarely confront the grain of truth here.
For radicals will have to adopt an equally potent
strategy to contend with the many free-trade ideologues
and bureaucrats from multinational corporations, media,
academia, the WTO and likeminded states and agencies who
seek to seduce pliable movement bureaucrats from NGOs,
unions and environmental groups with the offer of a
seat at the table.
 Precisely this conflict of interests emerged in
Southern Africa late last year. In an eerie parallel to
the Sweeney-Hoffa rerouting of the Seattle labor march
away from the Convention Center and their repeated
denials of intent to shut down the WTO, some leaders
of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)
are also going corporatist, espousing utopian notions
of social contracts between big global government,
transnational corporations and the leading fractions of
unions.
 This is surprising, not only because of SA's recent
history of vibrant shopfloor protest, but also because,
at first glance, it would appear that the interests of
the world's workers lie in a concerted programme to
raise the standard of living (including gender equity
and environmental protections) of those at the bottom.
SA is somewhere in the middle, and Cosatu regularly
expresses concern about the flight of jobs to
Bangladesh, Indonesia, China and other sites of ultra-
cheap labor. The goal for Cosatu, just as much for the
AFL-CIO, is to slow relocation and outsourcing by
supporting struggles to raise wages and working
conditions in maquiladores, export-processing zones and
similar settings.
 But to this end, the campaign to include social,
labor, governance and environmental clauses (known
simply as the Social Clause) in trade agreements
became extremely thorny during the 1990s.
 For after a second glance, many progressive African
social movements, NGOs, churches and women's groups,
development agencies, technical think-tanks and
intellectuals--some of them gathered in the Ghana-based
Africa Trade Network--began condemning the way in which
international institutions like the WTO, World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, as well as powerful
Northern governments, impose conditions on what they
argue is already

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 The problem of debt, which you raise about Zim, is simply a red-herring. In
 context, debt, though not trivial, is symptomatic rather than causal. Your
 hopes about renewables are equally illusory.

You're jumping around, comrade. But I agree with these two points.

But not this: 
 Are you now supporting the MDC? Well, yes, you obviously are. 

No, same line: left civil-society critique.

 Is that not
 actually supporting a neoliberal solution in Zim? What do you think,
 realistically, will happen when and if MDC come to power?

More neoliberalism. (I think I made that clear in the article.)

 Finally, the global problem capitalism faces is not over-accumulation, but a
 capital shortage, desperate and bordering on famine. 

Ok, this one I will look forward to with interest, comarde.

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:52:05 +0100
 From:  Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 But fundamentally the enemy is not a policy: it is the blind workings of 
 global finance capital. That is why we need regulation not de-regulation. 
 This may not come through the reform of Bretton Woods organisations, but it 
 needs to come from somewhere, of a global economy that is a highly complex 
 social structure, but is privately owned by finance capital.

Chris, the only vague sense I have that regulation may be on 
the agenda of international elites is the UN Financing for 
Development conference which Ernesto Zedillo is chairing early next 
year in Mexico, and whose main economic advisor is John Williamson, 
who came up with the term Washington Consensus. So there's absolutely 
no hope there at all.

Or am I missing something? Even the new Giddens/Hutton book with 
chapters by Soros and Volcker can't come up with anything really 
convincing, that is going to be on the real world agenda.

We've got quite good progressive momentum, by the way, behind the 
argument -- made by Keynes forcefully in that 1933 Yale Review 
article -- that aside from trade finance, we must stick as much as 
possible to local sources of development finance. No need, we want to 
posit very strongly, for a WB or IMF given the havoc that they've 
caused, the need for Third World debt repudiation (paid for in part 
by drawing down BWI capital), their refusal to truly reform, and the 
hard/soft currency translation problem. (If you want I'll send you 
the paper offlist.)

Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Date:  Fri, 22 Jun 2001 18:28:35 +0100
 Do you even acknowledge as a problem, the global endemic energy
 scarcity which has seen per capita energy consumption stagnant since 1973
 and which is a very real problem precisely in those newly neoliberalised
 zones (S America, E Europe, S Africa) which now suffer chronic energy
 shortages (gasoline famines, brownouts etc) and which cannot hope to find
 the capital to invest in new infrastructure? 

Minor correction from sooty Jo'burg, comrade, where there's still 
a quarter excess electricity generating capacity, even on a cold 
winter day like today...

(Sunday Independent, 27 July 1999)
Power to the powerful:
Ideology of apartheid energy still distorts electricity sector

by Patrick Bond

South Africa's surreal energy problems reflect the
kinds of contradictions you would expect during a
transition from apartheid economic history to a
contemporary electricity pricing system all too often
based on (`neoliberal') market-policy for households,
complicated by massive subsidies for big
corporations, in one of the world's most unequal
societies.
  There are at least three world-class development
disasters here: our economy's skewed over-reliance on
(and oversupply of) pollution-causing, coal-generated
electricity; the lack of equitable access amongst
households along class/race lines (with serious
adverse gender implications); and periodic township
rioting associated with power cuts resulting from
nonpayment.
  Plenty of other challenges for a revitalised
energy policy could be mentioned. But assuming
Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka wants justice to be
done during the ANC's second term (and is less
distracted by shady Liberian consultants or
groundless attacks on the auditor general than her
predecessor), merely addressing electricity
distribution would require a serious challenge to
corporate power and neoliberal ideology. Instead of
praising the filthy rich (who can forget?), the
minister would have to subsidise filthy impoverished
townships currently suffocating under winter coal
fumes.
  An outstanding recent book, The Political Economy
of South Africa by Ben Fine and Zav Rustomjee, puts
this sector into economic perspective. Here we locate
electricity at the heart of the economy's `Minerals-
Energy Complex,' a `system of accumulation' unique to
this country. Mining, petro-chemicals, metals and
related activities which historically accounted for
around a quarter of economic activity typically
consumed 40 percent of all electricity.
  Thus Eskom was centrally responsible for South
Africa's economic growth, but, Fine and Rustomjee
show, at the same time fostered a debilitating
dependence on the (declining) mining industry.
Economists refer to this as a `Dutch disease,' in
memory of the damage done to Holland's economic
balance by its cheap North Sea oil.
  South African electricity consumption (per
capita) soared to a level similar to Britain, even
though black--`African'--South Africans were denied
domestic electricity for decades. To accomplish this
feat, Eskom had to generate emissions of greenhouse
gasses twice as high per capita as the rest of the
world, alongside enormous surface water pollution,
bucketing acid rain and dreadfully low safety/health
standards for coal miners.
  To what end? Today, most low-income South
Africans still rely for a large part of their
lighting, cooking and heating energy needs upon
paraffin (with its burn-related health risks), coal
(with high levels of domestic and township-wide air
pollution) and wood (with dire consequences for
deforestation). Women, traditionally responsible for
managing the home, are more affected by the high cost
of electricity and spend far more time and energy
searching for alternative energy.
  Ecologically-sensitive energy sources--such as
solar, wind and tidal--have barely begun to be
explored, while the few hydropower plants (especially
in neighbouring Mozambique) are based on
controversial large dams that, experts argue, do more
harm than developmental good.
  Some inherited electricity dilemmas stem from a
racist, irrational and socially-unjust history.
Conventional wisdom even before 1948, we must never
forget, was that `temporary sojourners' were in
cities merely to work; they would not consume much--
certainly not household appliances--since their wages
were pitiably low. As Jubilee 2000 South Africa
observes with justifiable bitterness, more than half
of the World Bank's $200+ million in apartheid
credits from 1951-66 were for Eskom's expansion,
including coal-powered stations. But none of the
benefits found their way to the homes of the majority
of citizens. Even by 1994, fewer than four in ten
African households had electricity.
  Meanwhile, corporate South Africa suffered the
opposite problem--an embarrassment of energy riches--
especially when terribly poor planning

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Fri, 22 Jun 2001 17:11:38 -0400
 From:  Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   The expansion of mass consumption  regional linkages (in opposition
   to elite consumption  subordination to financial centers) under the
   Bond program (if ever implemented -- but who bells the cat?) can
   presumably overcome the tendency to overaccumulation inherent in
   capitalism in a fashion unlike neoliberalism, while creating the
   politico-economic foundation for a future socialist transformation
   (should an opportunity ever arise).

Actually I wouldn't be so confident. The early 1990s Growth Through 
Redistribution argument (e.g. of Lawrence Harris when he was still a 
marxist and Ben Fine) was very compelling but still didn't come to 
grips with either the need for a major insurgency to dramatically 
shift power relations, or the quarter-century context of overcapacity 
in luxury goods and heavy industries (e.g. excess electricity 
generation capacity I already mentioned) that still bugger this 
economy, even 12 years after neoliberal restructuring began. A decade 
ago I was sceptical of the GTR approach, which in any case morphed 
into a neolib-friendly post-Fordist strategy of progressive 
competitiveness (a miserable, job-killing failure brought to us by 
the ex-syndicalist trade/industry minister, Alec Erwin, who was 
also recently president of Unctad). Here's the relevant caveat:

Could the Growth Through Redistribution strategy work? The answer
has much to do with the *expectations* of ANC members and
supporters. Business and many liberal whites fear that poor and
working people's expectations will be out of all proportion to
the resources available. In the Zimbabwean experience, civil
society was so poorly organised that expectations and popular
demands were not taken seriously by the government after
liberation. The lack of grassroots pressure permitted economic
power to remain in the hands of a few whites, international
financiers, and a small but important black bureaucratic class...
Some members of Cosatu's Economic Trends group refer to Growth
Through Redistribution as a second best scenario: if socialism
is not on the agenda, it is at least a useful task for
ex-Marxist economists to set out how capitalism can achieve
growth and at the same time provide for more basic human needs
than before. But this pessimism is unwarranted if a different
understanding of the crisis--that is of overaccumulation--is
built into the analysis of how to restructure the economy. Such
an analysis can be empowering, not disempowering, if it rests on
real struggles of activists and a sense of the chaos that the
crisis has produced within the commanding heights... No matter how
progressive their goals and policy statements, ANC and Cosatu
economists have basically accepted the constraints of the
overaccumulation crisis as inevitable, and have tried to
construct an alternative economic strategy *around them.*.. In
these respects, a reformist post-apartheid economic programme
will leave many people from all walks of life severely
disappointed. At core, ANC and Cosatu post-apartheid economic
policy has failed to identify how the overaccumulation crisis
creates new possibilities, especially for disciplining the power
of high finance. (from Commanding Heights and Community Control,
Johannesburg, Ravan, 1991, pp.67-68.)

 My post concerns what I take to be the Bond program for the 
 periphery, so I don't take credit for it.

Hey comrade Yoshie, I like what you wrote below much better. Can I 
call this the Bond Programme? :-)

 Date:  Fri, 22 Jun 2001 18:25:46 -0400
 From:  Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Since the neoliberal solution included debt deflation  
 deindustrialization in the South  the East, naturally we want to
 reverse them, thereby stopping massive capital outflows from the
 South  the East to the North which has helped the ruling class.  

Ok I'll give a taste of the ongoing Zimbabwe debate on how to take 
forward Mugabe's $5 billion foreign-debt payment-standstill, towards 
repudiation, in the next post...

 In the North as well, the working class need to learn to demand more of
 all goods: higher wages, more free time, more social programs, more
 environmental cleanups, etc.  The job of the working class, in the
 North or South or East, in short is to demand more, not because
 doing so is a viable long-term goal under capitalism, but precisely
 because it isn't.  The more the working class organize themselves to
 make demands energetically, the more likely capitalism enters into
 another serious crisis -- in other words, the working class, by
 organized demands, must create a crisis  turn it into its favor (=
 an opportunity to fight for socialism from the position of
 strength).

That's absolutely the right principle. It's happening in 

Re: capitalism's expansion vs. limits

[Patrick Bond]

 seems just as likely, doesn't it?

Let's return to geopolitical problems associated with the economic 
crisis, because I still think that, whether we like it or hate it 
(yeah Doug, we know where you stand!), the nation-state (and maybe 
subsequently the region) is the single most important unit of control 
for defending territorial alliances of those social forces resisting 
the devalorisation of, e.g., NY financial capital... via, 
logistically/mechanically, delinking from the most destructive 
circuits of global K. 

Actually, that's one reason Zimbabwe's quagmire is so fascinating 
right now.

This is draft and not for circulation, possibly to go into Z, but 
I'd love to get a sense of whether the economic argumentation 
associated with aggressive debt management is convincing...

 Zimbabwe's lurch
towards a pauper's burial?

  by Patrick Bond
  (Bvumba mountains, Zimbabwe, 19 June)

  Last year, I spent June rambling the roads of
  Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands mountains.
  The human warmth of the Shona people and
  physical beauty of the rural landscape are
  world-class. My job should have been inspiring: 
  election-observation for a regional team trying
  to document whether the parliamentary vote was
  free and fair.

  But last June was a tragic time (1), because
  of the decay of Robert Mugabe's once-
  liberatory nationalist politics. Exhausted,
  corrupted, desperate and prone to violence,
  the Zimbabwe African National Union
  (ZanuPF) barely held off a challenge by the
  nine-month old Movement for Democratic
  Change (MDC), winning just over half the
  120 contested parliamentary seats.

  Mugabe's socialist vision evaporated long
  ago, although he calls forth radical rhetoric
  periodically to confuse matters. Talk left,
  act right is the chosen formula, as
  Zanu(PF) continually seeks to revive popular
  memory of a time when the party was
  indeed a fish in the sea of the masses, while
  concurrently repressing those who protest
  vigorously from the Left.

  In early June, for example, Zimbabwe
  National Students' Union president
  Nkululeko Sibanda was tortured by
  Mugabe's secret police, the Central
  Intelligence Organisation, after the CIO
  accused him of working with the MDC to
  topple the government. Sibanda is leading
  widespread student protest over unaffordable
  university fees and privatisation of campus
  facilities and services.

  But the topic of the gloomy present was
  replaced, during a recent weekend visit, by the
  question of Zimbabwe's very uncertain
  financial future. I flew two hours from
  Jo'burg to Harare, drove east for four hours
  and joined a dozen civil society strategists in
  a sunny, wintertime seminar up in the
  mountains bordering Mozambique.

  We gathered to debate the country's most
  durable economic problem, the buildup of
  foreign and domestic debt: $5 billion and
  $1.5 billion, respectively. Zimbabwe is
  considered only moderately indebted by
  the World Bank, but the burden of
  repayment is so brutal that Mugabe finally
  said no around a year ago.

  For two NGO activists, Davie Malungisa of
  the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and
  Development (Zimcodd) and Eunice
  Mafundikwa of the African Network on
  Debt and Development (Afrodad), the
  protests they joined at the spring meetings of
  the World Bank and IMF over the past two
  years took on new meaning as we reviewed
  a new debt study. The report's author,
  Masimba Manyanya, was formerly a chief
  economist for Mugabe's finance ministry but
  quit to join the trade union movement in
  1999.

  All three thirty-somethings are progressive
  professionals who, while differing on party-
  political affiliations, share the concern that a
  national debate over economic policy has not
  yet even really begun, and that resolving the
  debt crisis has to be central.

  Zimcodd was founded last year by the main
  organisations in the social justice, church,
  women's, NGO and trade union movements.
  Debt is already genocidal in Zimbabwe,
  insists Malungisa, because so few of our
  urgent social priorities can be met. The last
  budget saw a 26% crash in health spending,
  for instance.

  Indeed, debt peonage couldn't have come at
  a worse time, given that life expectancy is
  falling into the thirties because of
  HIV/AIDS. By cutting living standards so
  dramatically, structural adjustment
  contributed to the opportunistic infections
  and breakdown of the state health system
  through which AIDS flourishes.

  Continues Malungisa, Debt is a threat
  against which all Zimbabweans can and must
  unite. Otherwise we face a pauper's burial.
  Zimcodd is even joining the World Bank Bonds
  Boycott campaign to drive this point home
  where it counts: Jim Wolfensohn's wallet.

  Malungisa and the others are far out ahead
  of the political curve here. In next April's
  presidential elections, the MDC will
  probably win, vindicating

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Fri, 22 Jun 2001 06:32:48 +0100
 From:  Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 To what extent is there still relevance in the ANC/SACP concept of the 
 National Democratic Revolution?

Concept is great. Problem is, some of the key actors are talk-left, 
act-right sell-outs.  

 Is there indeed scope for radical democratic initiatives that take the 
 National Democratic Revolution forward and have a socialist content or 
 prepare the ground for socialism?

Yes but they're not being supported by the ANC. In fact, 
things like the TAC attack on Big Pharma was actively undermined by 
Mbeki and ANC functionaries.

 If uneven development on a world scale and within a country like South 
 Africa, runs into crises of accumulation and if these tendencies have 
 intensified with the international dominance of neo-liberalism, does it not 
 suggest that there is a democratic agenda at a global level as well as at 
 the level of individual countries?

Yes absolutely, to spin that broken record of mine, the international 
democratic agenda can only be, in my view (given the existing 
balance of forces), to rid the world of the most powerful 
transmission agents of neo-liberalism, especially the WB/IMF/WTO, to 
give some breathing space to national-scale movements making demands 
on their nation-states. (We'll agree to disagree Chris.)

 Critical though South African radicals may be about how former 
 anti-apartheid leaders have been bought off, this is also a reflection of 
 the material reality of the balance of forces and the shift of the struggle 
 to one of revolutionary reforms versus reformist reforms.

Hey that's been exactly the line since Kagarlitsky and Saul came 
visiting in the early 1990s. 

 What reforms are most relevant now for South Africa, domestically, *and* 
 internationally?

There's a long list in my book Elite Transition (Ch.3) which we got 
into the Reconstruction and Development Programme (will send it 
offlist). 

 Or should left wingers just rally under the abstract red flag of socialism, 
 and hope others will join them?

Yes, we must do that too.
 
 Chris Burford
 
 London

Re: Re: South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

I've been in Zimbabwe the past five days -- and as a result, I'll 
come back to you folks for advice on debt workouts! -- and just saw 
this compelling thread...

 Date:  Wed, 20 Jun 2001 07:49:02 +0100
 From:  Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Jim Devine:
 Interesting. Very interesting. The commanding heights of the South African
 economy, which produced the foreign exchange and capital necessary to
 create Jo'berg, etc. were non-capitalist. 

(An oft-neglected point: the superexploitation of women in the 
reproduction of labour power was crucial to the process, at least 
until the 1960s or so when remittances from hostel/township-based 
workers began flowing back to the rural homelands.)

 The incomplete overthrow of apartheid (incomplete national liberation 
 struggle) was therefore accompanied by another revolution which all parties 
 had an interest in minimising:
 the overthrow of Boer national capital by US-British international 
 capital/imperialism

Actually in retrospect, the opposite has happened, as Afrikaner 
control of the Jo'burg Stock Exchange has soared since a) 
english-speaking mining/financial capital is in delisting mode 
(running to London since 1998) and b) Black Economic Empowerment 
completely collapsed (black-owned firms fell from 9+% of the JSE to 
2+% over the last three years)...

 ... No doubt Patrick Bond and others may have interesting points to clarify on 
 the nature of the South African economy before and after apartheid

Not to fight with comrade Chris, but there are so many 
organic (unfortunately mainly white privileged radical 
analysis mainly emanating from my university) strains of analysis 
that might be helpful, that I'm not sure where to begin. An article 
that Philip published in his journal last year covers most of the 
recent literature, even if too briefly:

***

I recently wrote two books about South Africa
during the 1990s, a period which everyone
who was fortunate enough to experience has something
original to say. One book is about the overall political
transition, the other deals with urban crisis. I
wanted to locate both in relation to the various
organic traditions of South African Marxism,
combining high theory and applied political
argumentation. I'm not sure I succeeded, but it did
give me an opportunity to survey the work of
comrades both here and writing from abroad.
Here's what I found.
 We can start by considering the last decade's
worth of major books within various Marxian
traditions and move from there to the issues. The
1990s were not good years for publishing, and
virtually all the left-wing bookshops in the
country went out of business, and the small
radical publishers either failed or were taken over
by conservative houses. Changing fashions, the
deradicalisation of petit-bourgeois academics and
NGO staff, rising poverty and greater
geographical fragmentation together mean that
even Johannesburg, home of Africa's most
concentrated, militant proletariat (with a
metropolitan population of eight million), today
cannot support an explicitly left bookshop.
 Nevertheless, a handful of books were
produced over the last decade that I have found
invaluable. One of the best background studies, by
Robert Fine and Dennis Davies, Beyond Apartheid
(London, Pluto, 1991) contemplates the problems
and possibilities faced by nationalist and
communist forces during the 1950s and early
1960s, arguing that the turn to the military
struggle was part of a general lack of confidence
in the mass social struggles of the time. The
failure of the ANC (and SA Communist Party) to
set the stage for transformation during the
subsequent long (1963-90) exile drought is treated
by Dale McKinley (The ANC and the Liberation
Struggle, London, Pluto, 1997), who also links the
conservatism in the ANC Lusaka head office to
Third Internationalist maneuvres (a view hotly
contested by the Soviet Union's main Africa hand,
Vladimir Shubin in his fascinating and maybe
excessively humble The ANC: A View from
Moscow, Cape Town, Mayibuye Books, 1999).
 As for subsequent internal political
developments, political interventions across the
progressive spectrum are worth consideration: by
Neville Alexander, one of the most accomplished
South African left intellectuals and leader of the
small, relatively mild-mannered Workers
Organisation for Socialist Action (amongst his
collections of essays, see Some are More Equal
than Others, Cape Town, Buchu, 1993); by
Canadian political scientist John Saul, the model
scholar-activist of the international solidarity
movement (Recolonization and Resistance in
Southern Africa, Trenton, Africa World Press,
1993); and by the premier Trotskyist critic Alex
Callinicos, whose International Socialist tradition
fragmented and waned (South Africa Between
Apartheid and Capitalism, London, Bookmarks,
1992).
 Each address the first stage of ANC
capitulation to elite pacting temptations. Rebuttals
and interventions on such matters

Re: RE: Re: S. Africa/mode of prod. debate

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 All talk of articulated modes etc, simply misses the point;
 and this is why we insist on (a) uneven and combiend development as the
 characteristic dynamic, the key word being *development* and the key
 descriptor being *imperialist*.

I think that's exactly right. I finished the piece posted yesterday 
with this reference to Neil Smith, whose PhD under David Harvey is 
still, I think, the main theoretical work on unevenness.

...while uneven development dates to the time of
primitive accumulation and the opposition of
capital against pre-capitalist societies, modern-
day global capitalism retains a dichotomous
form. But today it is less an issue of the
`articulation of different modes of production,'
more an issue of development at one pole and
development of underdevelopment at the other
(Smith, 1990, Uneven Development, Oxford, Basil
Blackwell). 

More in the same spirit.

Uneven Development

in P.O'Hara (Ed) (1999), The Encyclopaedia of
Political Economy, London, Routledge.

A useful summary of the process of uneven development, as a
necessary aspect of capitalism, comes from volume one of
Marx's Capital (ch 27, paragraph 15). Here he states that a
major contradiction of capitalism is the simultaneous
emergence of concentrations of wealth and capital (for
capitalists), on the one hand, and poverty and oppression
(for workers), on the other. This general law of capitalist
accumulation, as Marx termed it, highlights capital-labor
conflict, and is one way to ground a theory of uneven
development. But thinking about uneven and combined
development dates further back, at least to Marx's
Grundrisse (1857-58), where unevenness represents the
condition for a transition from one declining mode of
production to another rising, more progressive mode. In
general terms, then, uneven development can relate to
differential growth of sectors, geographical processes,
classes and regions at the global, regional, national, sub-
national and local level. 
  The differing conceptual emphases are paralleled by
debate surrounding the origins and socioeconomic mechanisms
of unevenness. Neil Smith (1990:ch 3) rooted the
equalization and differentiation of capital -- the
fundamental motions of uneven development -- in the
widespread emergence of the division of labor. Ernest Mandel
(1968:210) searched even further back, to private
production among different producers within the same
community; insisting that differences of aptitude between
individuals, the differences of fertility between animals or
soils, innumerable accidents of human life or the cycle of
nature, were responsible for uneven development in
production.

Political Implications.
  Ultimately, it is less the definitional roots of the
concept, and more its political implications and
contemporary intellectual applications, for which uneven
development is known. Leon Trotsky's theory of combined and
uneven development -- established in his book Results and
Prospects (1905) -- served as an analytical foundation for
permanent revolution. Given the backward state of Russian
society in the early twentieth century, due to structured
unevenness, both bourgeois (plus nationalist or anti-
colonial) and proletarian revolutions could and must be
telescoped into a seamless process, led by the working
class. (See Howard and King 1989.)
  In more measured, less immediately political terms, the
debate was revived when Marxist social science regenerated
during the 1970s. Here the phenomenon of uneven and combined
development in specific (peripheral or semi-peripheral)
settings was explained as a process of articulations of
modes of production. In these debates, the capitalist mode
of production depends upon earlier modes of production for
an additional superexploitative subsidy by virtue of
reducing the costs of labor power reproduction (Wolpe 1980),
even if this did not represent a revolutionary or even
transitional moment. Smith (1990:156.141) insists, however,
that it is the logic of uneven development which structures
the context for this articulation, rather than the reverse.
  That logic entails not only the differential (or
disarticulated) production and consumption of durable
goods along class lines (de Janvry 1981). It also embraces
the disproportionalities (Hilferding 1910) that emerge
between departments of production _ especially between
capital goods and consumer goods, and between circuits and
fractions of capital (see CIRCUIT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL). For
example, the rise of financial markets during periods of
capitalist overproduction crisis amplify unevenness (Bond
1997:ch 1). Or as Aglietta (1976:359) remarks: Uneven
development creates artificial differences in the apparent
financial results of firms, which are realized only on
credit. These differences favour speculative gains on the
financial market. Tendencies towards sectoral 

Re: over-investment

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Tue, 05 Jun 2001 09:04:41 -0700
 From:  Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 a key issue is what limits exist that cause over-investment to eventually 
 collapse. 

Jim, here's a poli-econ answer from this neighbourhood. The case of 
Zimbabwe, a land-locked and historically ISI-oriented little economy, 
includes extreme bouts of overinvestment, dating back a century or 
so, in a highly-protected Dep't 2 (and to some extent Dep't 1 due to 
very heavy, capital-intensive mining operations). I did a PhD on the 
ebb and flow of overaccumulated capital (1900s, 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, 
1990s) into spatial and temporal fixes like the built environment, 
financial speculation and so on. (David Harvey was my supervisor.) 
The Zim case showed me a) a very meaningful proxy for 
overaccumulation in the productive sectors was the ratio of 
inventories (stocks) to output (once that ratio-signal rose to 150% 
of normal, it virtually guaranteed an investment strike); b) the 
displacement of overaccumulation into other investment outlets 
created all sorts of tensions that really only got resolved through 
the actions of various political blocs and the state (using, for 
example, extremely sophisticated kinds of fin-capital/trade 
regulation and directed investment); and c) even the heaviest-handed 
financial regulation couldn't prevent periodic (Kuznetsian) real 
estate and financial crashes, in approximately 15-30 year cycles. 
Once political blocs -- mainly associated with different fractions of 
capital -- realigned as a result of the economic tensions, the 
deadwood was invariably cleared away and a new round of accumulation 
could begin. The story is complicated by scale politics (Zimbabwe's 
periodic insertion and delinking from int'l circuits of K) but the 
data are pretty consistent and the political story holds up fairly 
well, I'd argue, even over traumatic incidents like the 1900s 
mineral-speculation crash, the 1930s Depression-related ISI upturn, 
the 1950s FDI boom, the mid-1960s Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of 
Independence, the 1970s guerrilla war, the 1980s alleged turn to 
socialism, the 1990s neoliberal reversion, and the post-1997 
zigzagging associated with the nationalist rulers' exhaustion and 
desperation. So I talk in this thesis about uneven development of 
sector, space and scale, and how each gets amplified by rising 
financial circuitry in relation to productive circuitry...

Does that make sense?

Similar story in SA but of course much more complicated...

Re: Who the hell are these guys?

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Date:  Wed, 6 Jun 2001 10:31:54 -0700
 ICG President Gareth Evans, a former foreign minister of
 Australia.

This is a slick chappie, remembered in these parts as a key promoter 
of financial sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa, but with 
the explicit aim (as he was oft quoted saying a decade ago) of 
ensuring that after financial pressure had squeezed out the Afrikaner 
regime in Pretoria, it would be followed by a period of IMF tutelage 
of the ANC.

Re: African intrigue

[Patrick Bond]

 in the military,
in the final analysis soldiers are human beings and
they feel the same way as any ordinary Zimbabweans. 

Patrick Bond ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
phone:  (2711) 614-8088
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
work email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
work phone:  (2711) 717-3917
work fax:  (2711) 484-2729
cellphone:  (27) 83-633-5548
* Municipal Services Project website -- http://www.queensu.ca/msp

Re: Re: African intrigue

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Thu, 31 May 2001 17:48:25 +
 From:  Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Back in the sixties, when I lived in
 those parts, tribal lines were politically decisive, too.  I wonder if there
 remains a dangerous tension between Shona and N'debele, and if it's still true
 that an acceptable leader would pretty well have to be a Shona, Patrick?

Yaah, probably so. But the opposition Movement for Democratic Change 
has handled the ethnicity issue extremely well. And in a way, so has 
ZanuPF, after a fierce fight against Ndebele folk during the early 
1980s, leading eventually to a unity pact between two 
once ethnic-grounded parties. So there are today few, if any, surface 
hints of ethnic tension (aside from white/black) in politics. And 
there are a few other smaller ethnic groups (tribes), who mainly 
support opposition parties.

  Speaking of white folks' gossip, what do you make of the plot to
  oust Mbeki involving Ramaphosa et al.?
 I thought this story, or at least the 'plot' angle, was of Mbeki's authorship?
  I tend to agree with the Beeb's take on this.  What are state instruments
 doing involving themselves with internal party matters?  And what's so
 illegitimate about Ramaphosa having a go, anyway?  

He knows that he's the lead candidate for president in 2009, but he 
keeps screwing up large companies in the meantime.

 Which way would the unions
 jump, I wonder?  

Probably out of the ANC/SACP/Cosatu Alliance within the next decade. 
For now, they were very angry about the Plot story, as it showed they 
had no real role in the process of affecting internal ANC politics.

 They do seem to have an on-again off-again relationship with
 their old comrade.

Mostly off. But the ANC big tent keeps opening up the left flank to 
let them in for a wee while... but that too will change.

Re: African intrigue

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Keaney Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Date:  Thu, 31 May 2001 11:00:18 +0300
 Patrick's views here would be interesting. I ask this because much is made
 of Ramaphosa's new identity as a successful businessman

Well, Ramaphosa as leader of Black Economic Empowerment is 
farcical, given that he was steering two large corporate ships that 
went down over the past few years (and is now being sued by his 
former partner). I do a long, bitter, twisted argument about 
BEE that goes like this (from the book Elite Transition):

Black economic disempowerment

There is a tendency in South African political
discourse to blame the victims, and failed black
entrepreneurs--an easy target for leftists--are
no exception (ANC MP Ben Turok, for
example, was amongst the most regular and
belligerent of white petit-bourgeois critics of an
aspirant black bourgeoisie). At one level, such
disdain has been provoked, for the neuveau-
riche character of Black Economic
Empowerment (`BEE') means that the
objective sometimes degenerates--as in a 1996
endorsement by then-deputy trade and
industry minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (a
former trade unionist)--into becoming, quite
simply, `filthy rich.'(52)
 But matters are always more complicated in
South Africa--letting the cat out of the bag, one
Star Business Report journalist observed, `The
white establishment use black faces to gain
access to the new government and often pay
the blacks in the form of shares in their
companies. So at the end of the day, it is a
handful of black people that are being
enriched.' The actual number? Controversial
hawker-entreprenuer Lawrence Mavundla
counted 300 people in Mlambo-Ngcuka's `filthy
rich' camp (not much of a new `class' there)--
whom he reckoned were already very well off--
and argued that BEE as it was already
understood by late 1996 was a `sham.'(53)
 Instead of disdain or envy, a more
appropriate sentiment might be pity, for if ever
there was a case that white South African elites
laid a neoliberal ambush for their successors,
BEE is it. The trajectory was hinted at by
political scientist Sam Nolutshungu during the
early 1980s, when he described `the inability of
the system of dominance to provide terms of
black submission to the social order that
collaborating black classes could themselves
uphold, and, in their turn, purvey to others
persuasively.' Thus, he continued, `It is in
recognition of this fact that the regime now
seeks to incorporate the black elites, a measure
which, at this late hour, and in the manner of
its conception and execution, more resembles a
strategy of counter-insurgency than a
commitment to fundamental reform.'(54) At a
political level, the mass democratic
organisations prevented Pretoria's co-option
strategy from proceeding very far, and in any
event collaborating classes were given few real
opportunities for accumulation aside from
homeland patronage until later in the 1980s.
 At that point in late-apartheid's mutation,
the most aggressive of BEE hucksters took
over: white free-market propagandists,
desperate for allies. Billboard images erected
during the 1980s by the public-private Small
Business Development Corporation depicted
70,000 kombi-taxi drivers as the economic
motors of the New South Africa. `Free
Enterprise is Working!,' the billboards
shouted. The Johannesburg Star newspaper
was an important site of liberal ideological
signposting, with journalist Patrick Laurence
waxing eloquent in 1989 that, `The robust,
competitive taxi drivers can be seen as evidence
that capitalism is alive and well, and that even
within apartheid South Africa, where for
decades Black business was shackled, the
capitalist ethos is strong and growing.'
Likewise John Kane-Berman, a director of the
SA Institute of Race Relations (which was in
the process of transforming from a liberal to
neoliberal institution, in a manner that later
characterised the Democratic Party), would in
1990 describe the black kombi-taxi industry as
`the most dramatic black success story so far'--
though three years later, after a taxi flareup in
Johannesburg's central business district that
left four people dead and terrified the
occupants of downtown financial institutions
and mining houses, he admitted that the
industry was better termed a `debacle.' Indeed
after that incident, Financial Mail editorialists
finally voiced concern that, `It will be tragic if
many black small businessmen [kombi owners]
burn their fingers on their first encounter with
capitalism.'(55)
 The sad reality was that the first organic
encounters that many South Africans had with
petty capital accumulation--the sale of goods
and services in township and rural spheres
previously unexplored, prohibited or severely
distorted by large-scale capitalists--were of
severe overtrading (overaccumulation). Loan
defaults, bankruptcies and other evidence of
market failure emerged especially in the high-
profile areas--taxi transport, commerce (spaza
shops), 

Re: African intrigue

[Patrick Bond]

 of the extremist trade
liberalisation process of the World Trade Organisation and African
Growth and Opportunity Act, while hypocritically retaining
protectionist tariffs at home.

The US State Department has a record littered with assassinations,
coups, terror, torture, destabilisation. We remember the murders of
Che Guevara (Bolivia), Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Salvador Allende
(Chile), to mention just a few.

The South African government should be ashamed to welcome Colin
Powell, so soon after the Bush Administration's international
illegitimacy was confirmed by the US' own peers in the United Nations.
Over the past few weeks, the US was stripped of its seats on the UN
international drug monitoring board and the UN Human Rights
Commission. We join human rights activists across the world in
celebrating such rejections of the world's most dangerous rogue
nation, including its main foreign policy representative, General
Colin Powell.

 Issued by concerned staff including Salim Vally and Patrick Bond.

Botswana? No thanks... was Development Question for Brad

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Fri, 11 May 2001 12:16:30 -0700
 From:  Brad DeLong [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 But the ability to successfully run a developmental state appears to 
 be confined to (a) East Asia, (b) Northwest Europe, (c) Mauritius, 
 and (d) Botswana. 

Chiming in from this side (3 hours from Gabarone), my colleague Guy 
Mhone has contributed part of a chapter that I hope gives Brad some 
second thoughts about the difference between growth and 
development:

***

Botswana:
Economic Success, Development Failure

Botswana's success story

Botswana has won international recognition for
consistently high rates of economic growth, the
prudence with which the country's
macroeconomic balances have been managed, and
the political-economic stability (including
relatively deep-rooted democratic traditions)
achieved in the process. Under colonial rule until
the mid-1960s, Botswana's large expanse of
underdeveloped, semi-arid land generated very
little of a marketable character, aside from cheap
migrant labour for export to South African mines,
and livestock as a basis for beef exports to
Europe. The Botswana economy had evolved--as
did those of Swaziland, Lesotho and Namibia--
through peripheral dependency upon South Africa,
from which it imported manufactured and
industrial goods as part of the Southern African
Customs Union. Monetary policy was also set in
Pretoria, through the Common Monetary Area.
Thus at Independence the economy of Botswana
was one of the poorest in Africa and the country's
prospects appeared bleak.
 Botswana has a small population (about 2
million) but occupies an enormous geographical
area. Population density is 2 per square kilometre,
compared to 24 per square kilometre across Africa
as a whole. However, thanks to three decades of
rapid growth, described below, Botswana's Gross
Domestic Product of about US$4.5 billion is
almost equivalent to Zimbabwe's. Per capita
income, at over US$3,000 is higher than that of
South Africa, and more than five times greater
than Zimbabwe. Botswana ranks seventh amongst
fifty African countries on the UNDP_s Human
Development Index (97th overall), behind the
Seychelles (52), Mauritius (61), Libya (64),
Tunisia (81), Algeria (82), and South Africa (90).
 But Botswana's economy remains vulnerable
in a number of ways. Its geographical location in
a semi-arid part of the African continent makes
the country prone to drought. For the rural
majority, scraping out a livelihood is arduous in
the absence of attenuating interventions such as
irrigation. The large expanse of the country,
coupled with the dispersed nature of the
population, also drives up costs (of transport,
service provision and infrastructure construction)
and militates against economies of agglomeration
arising from concentration of population.
Botswana_s economic vulnerability is underscored
by its dependence on mining, particularly
diamonds, which account for about one third of
GDP and about three quarters of export earnings
(and nearly half of government revenue). The
local entrepreneurial class has also developed
based on livestock and particularly on beef
exports to Europe. The economy thus remains far
less diversified than Zimbabwe's notwithstanding
the latter's relative poverty.
 As a consequence of the discovery of
diamonds and judicious economic and political
management based on a calculated predisposition
to the market and adherence to democratic forms
of governance, Botswana elevated itself to one of
the fastest growing countries in the world.
Between 1966 and 1980, Botswana_s GDP grew at
an annual rate of 14.5%, while industrial
production grew at 18% per year, manufacturing
at 23% per year, agriculture at 8.3% per year and
services at 14.5% per year. Per capita GDP
quintupled over the first 20 years of
independence. Throughout this period Botswana
managed to escape the fate of many African
countries. During the 1990s, as global integration
intensified, Botswana_s economic growth slowed.
GDP rose at slightly below 10% per year during
the first half of the decade.
 Botswana fortuitously benefitted from the
discovery of diamonds, which have enjoyed a
relatively sustained demand in the international
market and whose supply has been adroitly
managed by an international selling monopoly
(DeBeers' Central Selling Organization). But
many developing countries also enjoy similar
bonanzas in the form of minerals and oil, for
instance, and others in terms of other non-mineral
commodities, and yet have not been able to
manage such windfalls judiciously to sustain high
levels of increases in GDP and reasonable levels
of social development over such long periods. For
many developing countries with similar windfalls,
the stream of income flows has, soon or later,
been interrupted by secular declines in export
prices of their valued commodity or by declining
terms of trade. Alternatively, the benefits of
primary products have been offset by weak
domestic policies, endemic corruption and 

Re: Re: Re: Botswana? No thanks... was Development

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Sun, 13 May 2001 18:29:59 -0700
 From:  Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Brad wrote:
 But the overall record in terms of improvements in material welfare is 
 astonishing. (Although, alas, Botswana is about to be hit very hard by the 
 AIDS crisis.) 

Although, aas? I.e., no connection? Horrific 
apartheid-esque industrial relations through migrant labour-based 
mining, maybe? And the destruction of social values, norms and 
practices by importation of an artificial, unsustainable, 
commercially-trashy post-colonial model of US/S.African-style 
urbanisation, crappy shelter, inadequate domestic water/energy 
supplies, and sex commodification? And a dramatic upsurge in domestic 
violence that accompanied deracination? I think there are a few links 
here, between rapid growth of Botswana's sort, and the AIDS crisis.

 Botswana doesn't need balance: it needs to find a niche in 
 the southern African regional economy that will sustain further rapid 
 growth, whether or not that niche meets some definition of development. 

Ah, you've surveyed this with the masses? I hate to say, but this 
regional economy has been better known by the moniker Johannesburg 
sub-imperialism, and now that all the major firms are taking the gap 
offered by ANC neoliberalism, so as to relist on the London Stock 
Exchange, we won't even have a subimperial economic base to work from 
in coming years, just a massive drain of dividends and profit 
remittances to those who grew rich from apartheid and richer by 
looting and running.

So much so that the silly Debswana government people (who own 10% of 
diamond mining operations in conjunction with DeBeers) have just come 
in to the Jo'burg Stock Exchange (JSE) a couple of weeks ago to spend 
$200 million in bailing out the obscene bid by Nicky Oppenheimer to 
take DeBeers private (so as to relist soon in London), a 
devastating move which has been opposed by the main business 
newspaper here (http://www.bday.co.za) and by major fund managers who 
realise that this will now inexorably crash the JSE's valuation and 
future prospects. And it'll thereby do severe damage to Botswana's 
own prospects for continuing along its extractive-capitalist 
trajectory.

Jim says:
 but it looks like the Botswana economy is highly dependent on diamonds. If 
 the demand falls -- say, due to a severe world recession --  the Botswanan 
 economy would likely fall too. Unlike Denmark, it doesn't sound like B has 
 a highly-skilled work-force and much to fall back on.

Right. In 1929, jumping NY bankers were the signal for a crashing 
SA diamond market, which ruined large chunks of the dependent 
economy. (Import-substitution industrialisation, a la the dependencia 
story, then revived SA.)

 BTW, aren't a lot of the diamond profits sent abroad? Wouldn't these be 
 reported as a plus in GDP even though they are income somewhere else? 
 wouldn't that help explain the low investment rate relative to the saving rate?

Yes. Plus diamonds are a non-renewable resource. And that's why 
Botswana does need balance. Or it will be seen by historians as a 
minor flash in the pan which did just a bit better than other 
neocolonies in retaining wealth, no matter how poorly invested, in 
such counterproductive ways.

Won't continue this thread, as I am off in a couple of hours to Ghana 
to see whether Tom Friedman was right, after his visit there a 
couple of weeks ago, that Africans like free trade. 

Radical economist job at excellent NGO

[Patrick Bond]

+

Job Announcement

Senior Analyst/Economist

Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy is a
progressive, independent, non-profit think tank engaged in analysis,
research, advocacy, and education-for-action on hunger and poverty,
environmental degradation, and alternative development policies for
the Third World and for the U.S. (http://www.foodfirst.org).

The Senior Analyst/Economist will conduct economic-social research,
analysis, writing, public speaking, media appearances and networking
for our two principles program areas, Economic and Social Human Rights
Program, and Re-Shaping the Global Food System.

Responsibilities include:
* Provide senior level support to both programs.
* Conduct economic-social research on issues such as welfare reform,
hunger, underemployment, agriculture, corporate concentration in the
food system, impacts of trade policy and economic globalization in the
U.S.; and land reform, small farm productivity, trade and agriculture
policy, rural development, poverty, alternative food systems, and
impacts of globalization and structural adjustment in the third world.
* Produce analytical reports putting forth and justifying Food First's
positions on these issues. * Put forth alternative policy options
consistent with Food First values and mission. * Write for a variety
of audiences, from academics and policy makers to activists and the
general public. * Speak on behalf of Food First in a variety of public
foras and in the media. * Help develop networks of collaborators,
partner organizations, funders, etc.

Qualifications include:

Should have substantial experience in similar work, preferably with a
graduate degree in a related field (ideally a Ph.D. or M.A. with
comparable experience in economics), must have a proven record of
excellence in research, analysis, writing for diverse audiences,
public speaking and media work, networking, and substantial experience
as an activist for social change.  Must have demonstrated commitment
to the values and mission of Food First, must be a cooperative,
energetic and collaborative team player, must have leadership
qualities, must be comfortable in writing for and speaking to diverse
audiences, and must be flexible, willing and interested to work on
diverse issues as described above.  Must be able to juggle multiple
projects simultaneously.  Name recognition/reputation as 'expert,' a
plus.

Salary commensurate with experience.   Letter, cv, 3 references and
writing samples to Hiring Committee, Food First, 398 60th Street,
Oakland, CA, 94618, USA.  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: structuralism

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Fri, 23 Mar 2001 07:20:12 -0800 (PST)
 From:  ALI KADRI [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Indeed it was harmful because it was ahistorical; it
 generalised an immediate manifestation of history into
 a rule of historical development. There is a certain
 rigidity that belongs more to physics than to social
 science. This case pertains more to the Latin American
 Structurlist School than it does to Frank ...

From Jo'burg, same shit, different place. There was an explosion of 
Bad Structuralism from the 1960s in left university circuits 
(especially where I teach, at Witwatersrand): from 
Third-Internationalist "Colonialism of a Special Type" to 
"Articulations of Modes of Production" to Poulantzian "Fractions of 
Capital" and later Regulation Theory. All tried to explain the 
apartheid-capitalist conjuncture, but none were particularly 
convincing (fatal chronological flaws or methodological muddles 
prevailed). There was never much of a post-structuralist reaction, 
thank goodness, but the main left scholars retreated into either 
atheoretical social history during the 1980s or policy-wonking 
consultancies during the 1990s. Most dropped their faddish radical 
proclivities in due course. "From the grassroots to the classroots" 
is how we mock our older ex-neomarxist brothers.

Re: Patrick Bond on meta-globalization

[Patrick Bond]

transmission during vaginal and anal
sexual intercourse, because it kills off lots of STD bugs.
It's much more promising, but it's massively underfunded. I
think that so few companies are doing serious work on
microbicides because people who will use it most are poor
women. If the perception within the drug companies is that
the rich, white heterosexual market doesn't need it, you can
expect it to become a fatally low priority.


TABLE: Comparison shopping for life-giving drugs

Product SA Pub.Sector SA Priv.Sector  Thailand
Fluconazole(200mg)   R28.57R80.24  R1.78 
AZT(100mg)   *R2.38 R5.54  R2.38 
ddI(150mg)NAR10.90  R6.00 
d4T(40mg) NAR26.00  R2.75
3TC(150mg)  NAR22.80 R16.30
Nevirapine(200mg)NAR31.75 R12.00 

 (NA: Not Available) (R8 = $US1)
 *Lower cost AZT is the result of activism. The AZT
 price was reduced from R5.54 in the public sector
 following TAC demonstrations and protests. The same
 applies to the lower cost of Nevirapine for mtct. 

 Sources: Thai GPO and Biolab; India CIPLA; South
 Africa Department of Health; Private Discount
 Pharmacy. Prices valid as of 16 October 2000. 
 (Drugs and dosages are used to compare prices rather
 than proposed treatment regimens.)

The following are the holders of the patents on the above
drugs, responsible for the extremely high prices paid by
South Africans:
 Bristol-Myers-Squibb (ddI _ didanosine) 
 Bristol-Myers-Squibb (d4T _ stavudine) 
 Glaxo-Wellcome (AZT _ zidovudine) 
 Glaxo-Wellcome (3TC _ lamivudine) 
 Glaxo-Wellcome (AZT/3TC) 
 Pfizer (Fluconazole) 
 Boehringer Ingelheim (Nevirapine) 


Patrick Bond ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
phone:  (2711) 614-8088
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
work email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
work phone:  (2711) 717-3917
work fax:  (2711) 484-2729
cellphone:  (27) 83-633-5548
* Municipal Services Project website -- http://www.queensu.ca/msp

Re: Capitalism - A Sick System

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 That was one of the slogans on the placards in Pretoria yesterday 

I held that placard.

 The real solution has to be the global socialising of capital in the drug 
 industry. The IMF needs to set up a development fund (with resources, good 
 heavens, perhaps from a Tobin tax - how unrevolutionary!) against which 
 drug companies can bid to supply medication for programmes to important 
 areas of the world that cannot afford them.

Comrade, get with the programme. The IMF should be shut down; even 
the Center for Disease Control has reported that IMF/WB structural 
adjustment are a major contributing factor in Africa's AIDS crisis. 

The demand in Pretoria is far simpler and more coherent: socialise 
medicine by producing generic drugs here in violation of patent 
rights. That's where the focus is. Solidarity entails comrades in 
various cities (e.g. Washington/NY next Monday, and Philly on Monday) 
picketing local targets. Don't confuse things by making the IMF 
or Gordon Brown your white knight, please!

And indeed, the compradors in the SA government are as important a 
target as the pharmacorpos. Their attempt to reform the WTO means 
that they are scared silly to invoke compulsory licensing, as Nader's 
drugs guru Jamie Love reports below.

 Those 39 companies taking on the South African government, badly need a fig 
 leaf to hide behind. We only need a reasonable reform to expose them if 
 they do not cooperate.

Delusional, comrade Chris! The "reasonable reform" is the actual 
demand of the SA masses: tell the pharmacorps to fuck off. We can 
produce the anti-retrovirals here and save millions of African lives, 
if they leave us alone, and if SA government leaders stop licking 
their boots on compulsory licensing...

--- Forwarded Message Follows ---
From:  James Love [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date:  Sun, 4 Mar 2001 18:15:07 -0500 (EST)

Report on court case over South Africa Medicines Act
James Love [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Pretoria, South Africa.  Sunday, March 4, 2001.  I am in South Africa
for Monday's litigation over the South Africa patent act, which is
both an important legal proceeding and a media circus.  I'm start with
a few comments on the case itself, which are not widely understood,
and then explain what I think is depressing news about the
relationship between the case and compulsory licensing in the South
Africa market.

The South Africa Medicines Act was amended in 1997, and the (now 39)
pharmaceutical company lawsuit was filed in 1998.   The 39 companies
in the case are most of the big pharma players, with the exception of
Pfizer.   For this note I will just refer to them as the South Africa
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, or PMA, which is almost but
not the same membership, and much easier to type.

In the beginning, the South Africa government was trying to expand use
of off-patent generic drugs, and also to permit the import of patented
medicines, in cases where the patent owner was selling the medicine
cheaper in another country.  South Africa was then facing higher
prices for several medicines than were found in neighboring countries,
or in several cases, than in the US and European markets.  At this
time, the South Africa government was not pursuing a strategy of
issuing compulsory licenses on patents, and saw the act as a rather
modest effort to introduce US style cost savings from wider use of
off-patent generic drugs, and European style use of "parallel imports"
of cheaper foreign branded products.   This is very important, but
almost entirely misunderstood -- contrary to popular misconception,
parallel imports does not involve buying from generic suppliers, but
rather just shopping around for the best price a company charges
internationally.  For example, if the US actually gets around to
permitting parallel imports of medicines, US consumers could buy
branded and patented medicines from the Canadian and Europe markets,
where prices are often lower. Parallel imports are basically about
free trade versus a company having the right to engage in price
discrimination, by country.   Put another way, if South Africa permits
parallel imports, it will be able to import an Indian version of
Glaxo's AZT, but not CIPLA's generic version of the same drug.

This definition of parallel trade, from a PMA affidavit is a useful
definition.

the expression "parallel importation" is used to describe the activity
which occurs when goods which are available in a country from an
authorized distributor appointed by a manufacturer or licensee of such
goods, are also imported into the country and sold by another
distribution, who is not so authorize by the manufacturer.  The goods
imported "in parallel" by the unauthorized distributor may originate
from the same factory as the goods distributed by the authorized
distributor, or from anther factory of that manufacturer.  Goods so
imported in parallel are "genuine" goods, i.e. 

Re: Re: Walden Bello on dismantling corporations an

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:34:03 -0800
 From:  Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 I appreciate the spirit behind Bello's piece (as exerpted here), but, stripped to
 its elements, it strikes me as much too reformist.  It hearkens back to the pre-1982
 dispensation as a sort-of golden age, and it presents as its agenda all those
 progressive things that governments were supposed to do back then but generally
 didn't or at least not very well.  Its call to dismantle the TNC seems to be hedged
 by support for nationally-based private corporations that are supposedly more
 responsive, and it seeks no discernable management over the global trading system.

Comrade Peter, would this perhaps have something to do with the 
balance of forces? You want Zoellick/Barchefsky or O'Neill/Summers to 
manage int'l trade/finance more than they do now? That's the 
implication of continuing to promote the world-state-building 
project, I fear. Or, as you've pointed out so eloquently, even where 
eco-regulation is vital at the global scale, we get Kyoto emissions 
trading that just makes matters worse...

Re: Tom Kruse on de Soto

[Patrick Bond]

Hear hear!!! to everything Tom says. I've had much the same 
experiences on microcredit in Zimbabwe (it occupies a chapter in my 
1998 book Uneven Zimbabwe, but the attached magazine article picks up 
some of my line of argument).

Actually, the broader political project Tom describes as an 
alternative to marginal change ("shining the chains of global 
apartheid, not breaking them!")--which in Jo'burg we are terming, in 
our techie-seminars, "decommodification, destratification, 
degendering and harmonising society-nature relations"--applies 
extremely well to water, in part because of the international 
leadership that Tom's friends are giving in Cochabamba.

Our own version of a heroic, charismatic, humorous "Subcom Marcos" 
of Soweto (a rastaman and former ANC city councilor, Trevor Ngwane, 
who was booted out of the ANC 18 months ago for fighting municipal 
privatisation) reminded me of this yesterday. He just met 
Oscar Oliveira (same role in Cochabamba) last week in Porto Alegre. I 
gather they continued strategy sessions against the rapidly-spreading 
INTERNATIONAL commodification/stratification/gendering/ecodamage in 
the field of water (both bulk and retail). (Look to the World Bank 
and UNDP World Water Forum for the most pernicious trends.)

It was inspiring to see this relationship start out at the big A16 
demo at the WB/IMF spring meeting in Washington last year. (It began, 
in fact, at a trendy DuPont Circle coffeehouse, where Tom translated 
Trevor's questions to Oscar about how they avoid water authorities
cutting off supplies to poor households, which still today is a 
phenomenal problem in SA, in spite of a rethink on national policy in 
the wake of 40,000 cholera cases, with 1,000 new cases every day!). 

Then Trevor and Oscar were featured in two fabulous films about 
fighting the WB on this issue (and others), and then last October did 
a wonderful tour of US cities (joined by others from Center for 
Economic Justice and other South Africans), to promote the World Bank 
Bonds Boycott (http://www.worldbankboycott.org) 

This sort of linking local-global-local is incredibly inspiring, and 
puts microcredit blahblah to shame. (I gather Pluto has a new book 
trashing microcredit but I haven't seen it yet...)

***

 Trendy women's finance scheme not necessarily effective

Patrick Bond questions the World Bank's new microlending facility
for low-income borrowers.

published in AFRICAN AGENDA, OCTOBER 1995

It was only two years ago that World Bank microeconomist Sababathy
Thillairajah, studying donor-driven loan schemes in sub-Saharan
Africa, bluntly told his colleagues:  "Leave the people alone. When
someone comes and asks you for money, the best favour you can give
them is to say `no'."

Added Thillairajah, "We are all learning at the Bank. Earlier we
thought that by bringing in money, financial infrastructure and
institutions would be built up -- which did not occur quickly."

But the learning curve must have become too steep at some stage. In
need of good publicity at a time the US Congress was chopping its
budget request by half, the Bank's self-publicity machine has gone
into overdrive.

The Bank announced a $200 million line of credit aimed at poor
women in August, just prior to the Beijing gender conference,
leading critics to suggest this was merely a new "fashion
statement." Replied Bank gender expert Minh Chau Nguyen, "Fashion
comes and fashion goes but I don't think it is a fashionable area.
Investing in women, particularly in credit for micro-enterprises,
is a very effective way for reducing poverty."

The Bank's emphasis on group credit schemes primarily for women,
while not new, is important. Group lending is based on the
principles that risk can be reduced through peer pressure, and that
many of the administrative costs of microlending can be passed to
the group of borrowers itself. It has proven effective under
certain circumstances, with reported large-scale success in
Bangladesh (Grameen Bank), Indonesia (Bank Rakyat Indonesia-Unit
Desa System) and Bolivia (PRODEM), among other places.

But the terms of these arrangements -- especially the issue of
subsidies and the level of interest rates -- remain highly
contested. "Market-oriented" proponents of group lending rarely
mention that Grameen's highly publicised group lending philosophy
relies upon subsidies of over $5 million per year, and that its
interest rates are far below those available from other banks. 

In most schemes, interest rates for small loans are much higher
than usual, since not only are costs of granting the loans higher,
but a generous cushion for potential defaults is usually added. The
result is typically a rate 15-20% above the "prime rate" that big
companies expect to pay for credit.

Some proponents of microcredit, notably the US-based NGO Accion
International, are positively religious about the d

Re: Re: Re: Congo

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Who benefits by the death [of Laurent Kabila]?

A lot of Zimbabweans think they do, but it's premature to think the 
12,000 troops will come home...

 We are right on the faultline that we debate in different forms: how much 
 should the democratic deficit be overlooked in a country struggling against 
 the dominant imperialism, or when is the dominant imperialism more 
 progressive in that

Are you factoring in the dominant subimperialism here? That's 
looting by Mugabe and his generals, of DRC's copper and cobalt, and 
use of Zim's troops, effectively, as a national mercenary team...

 a) it is accelerating the tortuous process towards world government

Hope not!
 
 b) it is defending bourgeois democratic rights within the country?

Still dreaming, comrade Chris!
 

Re: RE: RE: Hernando de Soto

[Patrick Bond]

I haven't got to De Soto yet. But what's the conceptual difference, 
here, between this orientation to property rights, and the 
old-fashioned modernisation theory strategy of invoking "native land 
husbandry" (their words) in the form of commodified titles to land, 
in what were previously tributary-based (and often quite communal) 
systems of land tenure?

The basis for this in at least one setting, "Soutern Rhodesia" 
(Zimbabwe), was the attempt by a liberal manufacturing-based ruling 
elite of white settlers to ensure a steady supply of labour in the 
cities, and by the post-war era the standard mechanisms of coersion 
(e.g., hut taxes, outright pillage and other acts of colonial 
civilisation) had been exhausted or were frowned upon; getting people 
off their lands had to be accomplished by other means. Giovanni 
Arrighi's work on this topic, by the way, has been seminal.

The effect of the land-commodification strategy, at least in 
Southern Africa, has been pathetic since at least the late 1950s when 
the World Bank began funding Rhodesian provision of titles to 
peasants (via their local chiefs). The traditional "commons" 
disappeared (hence grazing land was bitterly contested); 
concentration of land holdings worsened; commodification worsened 
other social tensions; debt rose to unbearable levels for those 
who got credit from suppliers or state financing agencies; and 
most importantly, eventually serious riots broke out (resulting in 
the whole process being abandoned for quite some time). Meanwhile, 
where implemented, the silly strategy didn't even work on its own 
terms, given the other related, very hostile, market relations 
(overproduction of outputs, as well as high-cost inputs like credit, 
fertiliser, pesticides, as well as the difficulties faced in bringing 
produce to market).

Today, mostly micro-credit hucksters are pushing property 
rights to rural land in this neck of the woods. Virtually all the 
progressive rural social movements oppose further commodification of 
the most basic form of dignity that many of their constituents 
possess.

But maybe there's lots more to it?

 From:  "Max Sawicky" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject:   [PEN-L:7743] RE: RE: Hernando de Soto
 Date:  Sun, 4 Feb 2001 09:58:40 -0500
 Importance:Normal
 Reply-to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 . . .  De Soto, in other words,
 emphasizes the lack of a rational and functioning legal system of contract
 and property rights as the impediment to the poor.   David Shemano
 
 
 JD's precis makes DeSoto sound very much worth
 reading, a developing world form of populism.
 
 mbs
 
 

Re: Re: IMF, WORLD BANK CRY UNCLE ON MOZAMBICAN C

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Wed, 31 Jan 2001 09:53:26 -0800
 From:  Brad DeLong [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 I always thought that successful industrial policies were built on 
 *subsidizing* exports. I've yet to understand why the hell *taxing* 
 Mozambique's exports is going to make anyone (except the owners of 
 cashew processing plants) better off...

That's 'cause you still owe us a visit down thisaway, comrade. It 
would shake you up, I predict.

(If it's too far off the beaten track, then check Joe Hanlon's long 
article on the topic last year in the Review of African Political 
Economy.)


Patrick Bond ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
phone:  (2711) 614-8088
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
work email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
work phone:  (2711) 717-3917
work fax:  (2711) 484-2729
cellphone:  (27) 83-633-5548
* Municipal Services Project website -- http://www.queensu.ca/msp
* to order new book: Cities of Gold, Townships of Coal -- 
http://store.yahoo.com/africanworld/865436126.html 

Re: Re: Buck Fush

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Mon, 29 Jan 2001 21:17:05 -0500
 From:  Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Yes, family planning is important.  The question is who runs family 
 planning programs.  I don't like the idea of "international family 
 planning organizations" running them.  I'd rather see Indian women's 
 movement or Indian leftist movement (like the CP) running them.  The 
 same goes for women of any other poor nation.

Right on. I have in Zimbabwe, many times, witnessed the ludicrous, 
outrageous sight of US AID flunkees (with local hires, at about 
$2/day) wandering out to rural (peasant) areas to push family 
planning in isolated villages as a discrete, once-off primary 
healthcare intervention. Meanwhile other US AID flunkees were pushing 
structural adjustment in Zim, whose effects on the health budget were 
devastating. So utilisation rates in once-vibrant rural clinics fell 
dramatically as central budgets declined and futile cost-recovery 
began. As a result, visits by those well-resourced int'l NGOs--driven 
by Malthusian conviction--were the only healthcare interventions 
experienced by most villagers. But because it was funded by US AID, 
the family planning cadres never did anything to promote PHC and 
instead just carried on with their once-off, disconnected 
interventions, effectively setting up a parallel system while the 
state withered away. (Unfortunately, the ban on abortion advocacy 
won't change matters, as it also existed under the Reagan 
Administration, when this problem became noticeable.)

The new line from more advanced progressive technical folk based in 
Harare, indeed, is to cancel debt and also cancel aid. I bet it'll 
catch on as a general line of (Jubilee 2000-type) argumentation...

Economists, defund the World Bank!

[Patrick Bond]

e Workers of
America; several socially responsible investment firms, including
Citizens Funds and Calvert Group; and several churches and religious
organizations have passed resolutions or otherwise committed not to
purchase World Bank bonds. The growing endorsement of the boycott by
institutions serving the public interest is generating pressure on the
World Bank to live up to its new rhetoric of sustainability.

Academic institutions can lead by example and sign a socially
responsible investment resolution forbidding the future purchase of
World Bank bonds. (Labeled "International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development," these bonds might be the subject of direct investments
by a university, or might be grouped in with other bond purchases by
mutual funds.) The World Bank Bonds Boycott is not a demand for
"divestment" from currently held bonds, so universities will incur no
financial loss from endorsing the resolution. And even if a university
does not currently hold World Bank bonds, a resolution against their
future purchase would confirm its commitment to socially responsible
investment.

For these reasons, and because it was initiated by social justice
movements in the Third World (and endorsed in December 2000 at the
Jubilee South conference in Dakar, Senegal), we view the World Bank
Bonds Boycott as a progressive initiative. We endorse it, and
encourage readers of this letter to do the same.

Signed,

Joseph Adjaye, Professor, Department of Africana Studies, University
of Pittsburgh

Julia M. Allen, Department of English, Sonoma State University

Srgio Almeida, Director, Federation of Engineers' Unions, Brazil

Samir Amin, Director, Third World Forum, Dakar, Senegal

Julie Andrzejewski, Professor of Human Relations at St. Cloud State
University

Rosemary A. Barbera, Assistant Professor, Social Work Department, West
Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania

Franco Barchiesi, Lecturer, Department. of Sociology, University of
the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Marc Becker, Assistant Professor of History, Truman State University

Alejandro Bendaa, Director, Centro de Estudios Internacionales,
Managua, Nicaragua

Peter Bohmer, Professor of Economics, Evergreen State College,
Olympia, Washington

Edna Bonacich, Depts of Sociology and Ethnic Studies, University of
California, Riverside

Patrick Bond, Associate Professor, School of Public and Development
Management, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Merle Bowen, Professor, University of Illinois, Champagne/Urbana and
Co-Chair, Association of Concerned Africa Scholars

Michael Brand, Assoc. Prof. of Mathematics (ret), Essex Community
College, Baltimore, MD

Paul E. Brodwin, Department of Anthropology, Univ. of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Hank Bromley, Associate Professor, Dept. of Educational Leadership and
Policy, State University of New York at Buffalo

Dennis Brutus, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh

George Caffentzis, Co-Coordinator, Committee for Academic Freedom in
Africa (CAFA), Professor of Philosophy, University of South Maine

Aurora Camacho de Schmidt, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin
American Studies, Swarthmore College

John Cameron, Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science, York University,
Toronto, Canada

Timothy Canova, Assistant Professor of Law, University of New Mexico
School of Law

Camille Chalmers, Professor of Economics, Universit d'Ett, Port au
Prince, Haiti

Lic. Mara Eugenia Chaves, Ph.D.Candidate, History, Gteborg
University, Sweden

Eric Cheyfitz, Professor of English, Urban Studies, Adjunct Professor
of Law, University of Pennsylvania

Jennifer N. Collins, Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science, UC  San Diego

Sheila Collins, Professor, Department of Political Science, William
Paterson University

Joanie V. Connors, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of
Arkansas

Mary V. Dearborn, independent scholar, New York

Silvia Federici, Co-Coordinator, Committee for Academic Freedom in
Africa (CAFA), Professor of Philosophy, Hofstra University, New York

Dennis Fox, Associate Professor of Legal Studies, University of
Illinois, Springfield

Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and
Sociology, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Abigail Fuller, Department of Sociology, Manchester College, Indiana

Zelda F. Gamson, Senior Associate, New England Resource Center for
Higher Education, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Diana Huet de Guerville, MA Candidate, Environmental Studies, York
University, Canada

Susan Heald, Department of Women's Studies, University of Manitoba,
Canada

Angela Hewett, Department of English, The George Washington
University, Washington, DC

K. Etty Jehn, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia

Bruno Jetin, Maitre De Conferences En Sciences Economiques; Faculte De
Droit Et De Sciences Politiques, Universite Paris Nord, France

June Jordan, African American Studies, University of California,

Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: needs

[Patrick Bond]

 (i remember (classic guitarist) Julian Bream saying, "I have a 
 hard time keeping up to my recordings!")  

Yeah, but that's because he is a notoriously erratic performer 
anyhow... and I bet he said that before the era of CDs.

Re: Re: Lucky USA prepares for a soft landing

[Patrick Bond]

 Meanwhile possible schemes for greater global democratic control of the 
 world economy are criticised by ultra-leftists, some in the name of 
 Marxism, as reformist, even though they have no strategy for precipitating 
 the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism.
 Chris Burford

Ultra-left?

No, mate, those of us who want to nix the embryonic world 
state just think you fix-it folk don't have a serious analysis of the 
balance of forces.

Lou's mom does, at least.

Where's this "greater democratic control" these days?!

Re: Questions from Russia

[Patrick Bond]

 Date:  Mon, 20 Nov 2000 15:44:39 -0800
 Can I ask you about works, in which established positive relationship
 between financial development and economic growth (for example, works by
 Ross Levine (World Bank)). What is you opinion about it? And can I find
 anywhere neomarxist critics of such works (I know some postkeynesian
 critics (Ph. Arestis, P. Demetriades)?

It's been about a decade since I looked hard in the literature. The 
best marxian overview of the financial deepening issue probably comes 
from Gary Dymski, right? or additionally, post-1980 studies by Robert 
Pollin, Simon Clarke, Alain Lipietz, Gary Green, Paul Burkett? or 
going to wider and more dated sources, Mandel, de Brunhoff, and of 
course Grossmann...?

Ahem, in a Third World context, my own meagre contribution to the 
marxian theory of finance and *uneven* development (a PhD thesis 
under David Harvey) is in Uneven Zimbabwe: A Study of Finance, 
Development and Underdevelopment (Trenton, Africa World Press, 1998); 
I can forward, offlist, my theory chapter to the comrade if 
desired...
Patrick Bond ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
phone:  (2711) 614-8088
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
work email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
work phone:  (2711) 717-3917
work fax:  (2711) 484-2729
cellphone:  (27) 83-633-5548

Re: Re: The New ANC

[Patrick Bond]

 Perhaps Patrick Bond or others in South Africa might comment on this.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
 Patrick is in NYC right now. He just gave a talk at the Brecht Forum on
 "Can Thabo Mbeki Change the World" which mentioned John Saul favorably. I
 will put Patrick's talk up on the web when he gets back to South Africa.
 Louis Proyect

John's fabulous. Check out the coming NLR for his longer rap. 
Meanwhile, the short version of the Mbeki talk gives you a core 
argument...

--- Forwarded Message Follows ---
The Sowetan newspaper, South Africa
22 August 2000

Can Thabo Mbeki change the world?

In this excerpt from the first Frantz Fanon
Memorial Lecture, delivered August 17 at the
University of Durban-Westville School of
Governance, Patrick Bond debates Pretoria's
global strategies, tactics and alliances.

***

In a formidable speech on August 11,
President Thabo Mbeki, quoting Shakespeare,
publicly attacked not only a senior white
politician for alleged racism and arrogance
over the AIDS-treatment tragedy. He also
castigated the section of the "native petit
bourgeoisie, with the native intelligentsia
in its midst, that, in pursuit of well-being
that has no object beyond itself, commits
itself to be the foot-lickers of those that
will secure the personal well-being of its
members."
 Cynics may be tempted to view Mbeki's
own recent pronouncements on global
governance in a similar vein: the uncritical
embrace, during a May trip to the US, of
president Bill Clinton's corporate-designed
Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, of
highly-conditional debt "alleviation"--not
cancellation--by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and of
renewed World Trade Organisation
negotiations.
 In each case, the 1960s-era radical
intellectuals whom Mbeki cited repeatedly in
his speech--Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral,
Walter Rodney, Malcolm X--would have called
for revolution against, not reform of, the
Washington-centred world economy.
 At the Havana meeting of the G-77
countries which Mbeki addressed in May, for
example, Cuban president Fidel Castro
proposed the IMF's closure, due to the
brutal effect of its policies on the
developing world.
 Yet soon thereafter, Mbeki chided
African National Congress leaders gathered
at the Port Elizabeth National General
Council meeting: "There is nobody in the
world who formed a secret committee to
conspire to impose globalization on an
unsuspecting humanity." But in the next
breath, Mbeki denounced Fifa's decision to
grant the 2006 soccer World Cup to Germany
instead of an unsuspecting SA: "As the ANC,
we therefore understand very well what is
meant by what one writer has described as
the globalization of apartheid."
 On the one hand, thus, Mbeki displaces
Third World problems from the (untouchable)
economic to the moral-political terrain,
which in turn evokes calls for revision--not
dismantling--of existing economic systems
and institutions. But on the other hand, he
maintains a relentless campaign to persuade
his constituents that "There Is No
Alternative" to globalization, and likewise
to the failed Growth, Employment and
Redistribution programme.
 Is there, however, a more nuanced
reading of the global strategy? Mbeki, after
all, was introspective in his talk last
week: "Our own intelligentsia faces the
challenge, perhaps to overcome the class
limitations which Rodney speaks of, and
ensure that it does not become an obstacle
to the further development of our own
revolution."
 There can be no doubt that the further
development of South Africa's liberation,
deep into the hostile socio-economic
territory where class apartheid has been
cemented since 1994, does and will require
global social change.
 What is the programme, then? Will it
work? Who are the friends and enemies?
 At least four strands of a strategy
have emerged from Pretoria since Mbeki's
rise to the presidency:
 * leading the launch of a new
"developmental" World Trade Organisation
round, in cooperation with four semi-
peripheral allies (Egypt, Nigeria, Brazil
and India), to contest Northern
protectionism;
 * promoting more democracy in the IMF
and World Bank (with less power in the hands
of the US);
 * rejuvenating the United Nations,
partly, it seems, through seeking a
permanent seat on the Security Council; and
 * confronting, even if tentatively,
transnational corporate prerogatives, at
least when it comes to emergencies such as
pharmaceutical drug pricing.
 In Port Elizabeth, Mbeki noted the
ANC's role as "an agent of change to end the
apartheid legacy in our own country. We also
sought to examine the question of what
contribution we could make to the struggle
to end apartheid globally." The answer, he
told the opening session of parliament this
year, is that "we have an obligation
ourselves to contribute to the construction
of a better world for all 

Re: What's left in South Africa?

[Patrick Bond]

 on 10 
August will announce a fairly sweeping new privatisation policy. 
That too will generate cries of impending splits in the Alliance. 
But some minor patronage will then be offered to the small and 
increasingly incestuous crew of labour leaders to stop their yacking, 
and they will, in time for the 1 November elections to retain the 
"unity" of the Alliance. Yesterday's Mail and Guardian 
(http://www.mg.co.za ) has a depressing story of how the main 
organic lefty in the once formidable National Union of Metalworkers 
(home of many trots) has just been drummed out of his job as nat'l 
education secretary. Stalinism in the SA union movement is getting 
worse and worse, I'm reliably informed.

 But a larger problem exists in the longer term. A fundamental
 division exists within the ANC between free-traders, who occupy
 many top government posts, and old socialists, who carry much
 weight with the rank-and-file. This division is deep, ideological,
 and unlikely to be bridged easily. It may be enough to split the
 ANC.

Yes this is true, but in the short term, it means that the technique 
adopted is what we call "Talk Left, Act Right" (my other new book, 
Elite Transition, documents this tendency within the ANC "left" in 
terrible detail).

Actually, along these lines, here's what Mbeki is really worried 
about--a Zambia or Zimbabwe post-nationalist political turn led by 
trade union dissidents--hence his endorsement two months ago of the 
election campaign of our venal northern neighbour, Robert Mugabe. I 
think this is SA's future as well:

***

Radical Rhetoric and the Working Class during
Zimbabwean Nationalism's Dying Days

by Patrick Bond
Presented to the Rand Afrikaans University
Department of Sociology Zimbabwe Seminar
28 July 2000

1. Introduction: Political Turmoil Continues

Zimbabwe remains in "crisis"--a situation
whereby socio-economic equilibrating mechanisms
have broken down, and some force external to the
prevailing systematic logic must be invoked to
restore stability. We return to this definition
(from Robert Cox's Power, Production and World
Order) at the conclusion, for it suggests the
need for a much more radical process of social
change than even the country's recent upsurge of
working-class and nationalist rhetorics suggest.
For on the one hand it may be true, at the
time of writing, that political differences are
significantly less prone to displacement via
violence than was the case before the June 2000
parliamentary elections, the run-up to which saw
more than three dozen politically-motivated
murders. On the other hand, nevertheless, the
society faces profound contradictions that will
not be easily resolved over the coming months.
The contestation of political rhetoric and
reality remains profound.
 At surface level, sites of crisis include a
massive fiscal deficit that emerged this year as
part of Robert Mugabe's election-patronage
strategy. The country is still hampered by
foreign exchange shortages, with the normal six
months of import cover reduced to a few days'
worth. Both city and countryside are vexed by
fuel shortages that have dragged on for months.
The army is overcommitted in a hopeless war,
faraway in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Zimbabweans grieve lost family and friends in
the midst of an horrific AIDS pandemic. The
economy suffers unprecedented price inflation
and soaring interest rates, and is losing
businesses and shedding jobs at a rapid rate.
Income inequality has risen to amongst the
world's worst levels, especially with respect to
control of good farming land. Rife with
corruption, the Zimbabwe African National Union
(ZANU) government appears to be in death-throes
stage, with internecine conflict between old-
and new-guards on the horizon for the next two
years. The country's 12 million people are
restless and often furious.
 However, none of these symptoms have really
been explored, yet, in relation to the
underlying character of the struggle, confused
as it is by ideological fudging. The June
election did not clarify much, with ZANU taking
48% of 2.5 million votes, against 46% for the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
a difference of just 70,000. ZANU thus gained 62
of 120 contested seats, with an additional 30
appointed directly by Mugabe according to an
outmoded, unpopular constitution. Likewise, the
February 2000 referendum on a new constitution
promoted by Mugabe revealed an impressive
mobilisation of MDC supporters (who voted 55-45%
against government proposals) and an apathetic
turnout from peasants who normally champion the
ruling ZANU party, but was interpreted merely as
another "yellow card" for Mugabe. The MDC hopes
and plans on using its trademark "red card" in
the presidential election scheduled for 2002.
 Mugabe, 76, has regularly hinted that he
won't stand again, but there is no obvious
successor in the wings of his fractious,
crisis-ridden party.

Re: Re: KRUGMAN WATCH: PK vs. RN

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Paul Krugman informs me that this sounds conspiratorial, as if he takes 
 orders from the editorial board of the NY TIMES.

Well who ARE his little helpers, then? The ones in Jo'burg are 
certainly leading him astray...

***

24 July 2000

Letters to the Editor
New York Times
(email and also via fax, 091-212-556-3622)

To the editor,

Paul Krugman is wrong in implying that Ralph Nader opposed
post-apartheid South Africa's new constitution ("Reckonings," July 23,
2000). At our behest, four years ago, Mr. Nader urged revision of a
particular provision only, which grants corporations the same bill of
rights protections as real persons (not just "some legal status as
individuals," as Mr. Krugman writes).

From Mr. Nader, South Africans learned how similar protections in the
United States -- not embedded in the U.S. constitution, incidentally
-- undermine efforts to control tobacco advertising and restrict
corporate campaign contributions. Although our constitutional
challenge to that clause failed, the Constitutional Court in
Johannesburg has left the door open to later consideration of whether
real people's constitutional protections should trump those of
"juristic persons." Even if does not please Professor Krugman, a great
many people here will continue to support the jurisprudential route
urged by Mr.Nader, of prioritizing people's rights over those of
corporations.

Signed,

Patrick Bond (Associate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand)
Darlene Miller (Research Associate, University of the Witwatersrand)
Langa Zita (Member of Parliament)

__

July 23, 2000
RECKONINGS / By PAUL KRUGMAN
Saints and Profits

Saints," wrote George Orwell, "should always be judged guilty until
proved innocent." I don't think he was talking about garden-variety
hypocrisy -- although many supposed ascetics do turn out to have
something to hide. The more important point is that there are other
temptations besides those of the flesh. And those who renounce small
pleasures may be all the more susceptible to monomania, to the urge to
sacrifice the good in pursuit of the perfect. In other words, beware
the cause of the rebel without a life. 

Some commentators have made much of the secrecy shrouding the accounts
of Ralph Nader's organizations, of the revelation that speaking fees
and stock market investments have made him a multimillionaire, and of
hints that his lifestyle might not be quite as austere as it seems.
But what should worry those sympathetic to Mr. Nader are not his
vices, if he has any, but his virtues -- and his determination to
impose those virtues on the rest of us. 

Mr. Nader did not begin as an extremist. On the contrary: in the
1960's, when he made his reputation, the striking thing about Mr.
Nader was his relative moderation. Fashionable radicals were preaching
revolution; he was demanding safer cars. And because his radicalism
was practical and realistic, it left a lasting legacy: our tradition
of consumer activism, a tradition that rightly honors Mr. Nader as its
founding father, makes this country a better place. One might even
give Mr. Nader some credit for our current prosperity: if Japan had
shared our healthy distrust of claims that what is good for General
Motors is good for America, its current economic morass might have
been avoided. 

But somewhere along the way the practical radical disappeared. The
causes that Mr. Nader and his organizations have pursued in the last
couple of decades seem to have less and less to do with his original,
humane goals. Everyone knows about Mr. Nader's furious opposition to
global trade agreements. But it is less well known that he was equally
adamant in opposing a bill removing barriers to Africa's exports -- a
move that Africans themselves welcomed, but which Mr. Nader denounced
because of his fear that African companies would be "run into the
ground by multinational corporations moving into local economies."
(Most African countries would be delighted to attract a bit of foreign
investment.) Similar fears led Mr. Nader to condemn South Africa's new
Constitution, the one that ended apartheid, because -- like the laws
of every market economy -- it grants corporations some legal status as
individuals. 

Or consider another example, one closer to home -- my home, in
particular. When my arthritis stopped responding to over-the-counter
remedies, I brought it back under control with a new regime that
included the anti-inflammatory drug Feldene. But Mr. Nader's
organization Public Citizen not only tried to block Pfizer's
introduction of Feldene in the 1980's; it also tried to get it banned
in 1995, despite what was by then a firm consensus among medical
experts that the drug's benefits outweighed its risks. 

If you look for a unifying theme in all these causes, it seems to be
not consumer protection but general hostility toward corporations. 

Re: Re: Zimbabwe post election

[Patrick Bond]

Fair point, Charles. I guess my strategy was to start with 
conventional wisdom and wratchet it left. Sorry, won't do that again!

  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/00 08:25PM 
 With a nod and a wink, Thabo Mbeki stood by
 him, alone amongst respected world leaders. 
 CB: Who are some of the other respected world leaders ?
 

Re: Zimbabwe post election

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Interesting to see Patrick Bond tonight in a heavily clipped interview on 
 BBC 2 Newsnight about the Zimbabwe elections. Patrick was suggesting, if I 
 got the point correctly, that Morgan Tsvangirai was boxing Mugabe in by 
 offering some sort of compromise with the implicit risk in the background 
 that if Mugabe imposed a more open dictatorship he would suffer the 
 probable fate of other dictatorial opponents of the world bank. Perhaps I 
 got that wrong.

It's been a strange few days duelling with the bourgeois media, 
trying to make difficult arguments in soundbites. Too hard for me. 
The NYT even requested the following piece from me, but then just 
decided not to run it. Maybe it sets up the context a bit better, 
Chris... and I'll be doing some reporting for Red Pepper next week on 
struggles within the struggle (over the MDC's heart and mind)...

***

Post-Election Zimbabwe Showcases
Power of World Bank/IMF

HARARE--Now comes financial crunch time for
Robert Mugabe. The barest of parliamentary
election victories--against the newly-formed
Movement for Democratic Change, led by a
popular trade unionist--sets the stage for what are
likely two more years of political bickering, social
strife and economic decline, before the next
presidential election.

Four harsh months of brutally populist
campaigning are behind him, and Mugabe must
now bite several bullets at once. He upped the
rhetorical stakes with threats to redistribute 804
white-owned commercial farms (many occupied by
several thousand liberation war veterans), and
indeed vowed to confiscate all white-held land and
even white-owned mining companies.

With a nod and a wink, Thabo Mbeki stood by
him, alone amongst respected world leaders. One
carrot the South African president dangled to
persuade Mugabe to lift his paramilitary-style
intimidation blanket in the days preceding last
weekend's election was another bite at the
IMF/World Bank apple, probably when an IMF
team visits in early August. Mbeki's "softly-softly"
diplomacy may have worked, for political violence
declined dramatically last week (though not
entirely).

Access to Bretton Woods funds, just a few months
after Zimbabwe's first major default on World
Bank credits, would be an offer Mugabe shouldn't
logically refuse. There is practically no foreign
exchange in the Reserve Bank's coffers. As a
result, the economy is periodically paralysed by
fuel and imported energy shortages, a semi-official
black market in hard currency with a 50% spread,
the highest nominal interest rates ever, and even a
bread shortage looming by year-end.

Ironically, just five years ago, Zimbabwe was
Washington's newest African "success story," as
Harare embraced macroeconomic policies
promoted by Bank and IMF lenders, and even
conducted joint military exercises with the
Pentagon. But will taking on new loans--plus the
standard menu of harsh conditions--require the
psyche of a political chameleon less conceited than
Mugabe? Mugabe excels in IMF-bashing, after all,
famously telling Fund staff to "Shut up!" late last
year.

In reality, though, from independence in 1980 until
quite recently, he followed their advice unfailingly.
And that is a large part of the problem Mugabe
faces today.

From the outset, Zimbabwe made bad policy
choices and succumbed to armtwisting by
Washington. Finance minister Bernard Chidzero,
who was head of the IMF/Bank Development
Committee during the late 1980s, borrowed
massively, figuring that repayments--which
required 16% of export earnings in 1983--would
"decline sharply until we estimate it will be about
4% within the next few years."

The main lender, the World Bank, fully concurred
with the prediction. Instead, however, Zimbabwe's
debt servicing spiralled up to an untenable 37% of
export earnings by 1987.

Meantime, the IMF began imposing fiscal
constraints, forcing cuts in education/health
spending and food subsidies. Also in the mid-
1980s, the World Bank showered peasants with
unaffordable micro-loans, as a substitute for
genuine land reform.

Hampered by "willing-buyer, willing-seller"
constraints on land and without structural change
in agricultural markets, the Bank strategy
floundered. Fully 80% of borrowers defaulted by
1989 and the best farms continued to fall under
white control whenever they came on the market.
(The few good farms redistributed went to
powerful Mugabe cronies.)

Chidzero then persuaded Mugabe to ditch controls
on prices, trade and financial flows, liberalizing
the economy through an Economic Structural
Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in 1991. ESAP
was supposedly "homegrown," but World Bank
staff drafted much of the document, which was
substantively identical to those imposed across
Africa during the 1980s-90s.

ESAP brought immediate, unprecedented increases
in interest rates and inflation, which were
exacerbated (but not caused) by droughts in

Re: boring IO profs

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 This may have made them boring, sort of, much of 
 the time, but I think they were worthy of respect anyway.

Hear hear, re FM Scherer.

Film: Two Trevors return to scene of the crime

[Patrick Bond]

If in Washington Thursday, this Washington protest video is not to be 
missed! 

--- Forwarded Message Follows ---
From:  "Michael Albert" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:   ZNet Commentary / May 29 / Patrick Bond / South Africa
Film

If you pass this comment along to others, please include an
explanation that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors
of Z/ZNet and that to learn more about the project folks can consult
ZNet (http://www.zmag.org) and specifically the Sustainer Pages
(http://www.zmag.org/Commentaries/donorform.htm.

And here is today's ZNet Commentary Delivery from Patrick Bond.

-

New Film Projects South African Anti-Globalisation Struggle Onto
Washington

By Patrick Bond

Those in the Z community anxious to hear organic voices from the South
debating global socio-economic injustice are probably aware that South
African rhetoric is especially hot these days. For evidence, check out
the documentary "Two Trevors Go To Washington," which gets its US
premier at noon on June 1 at the Institute for Policy Studies in
Washington.

The stars, Trevor Ngwane and Trevor Manuel, are both elected officials
of the South African government, but their perspectives on the
mid-April World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) protests are
antithetical.

Ngwane is a humanist, rastafarian, street- fighting socialist from
Soweto who can claim two decades of intensive organising in unions,
community groups, the student movement and the African National
Congress.

Likewise, Manuel is a former activist from Western Cape townships who
boasts only a community- college degree in civil engineering but who
became so exceptionally talented at talking the talk that he was
recently named chair of the Board of Governors of the IMF and World
Bank. As SA finance minister since 1996, Manuel is credited with
jawboning African National Congress (ANC) constituents into
acquiescence to a failing structural adjustment programme which was
partially designed by Bank economists.

Independent filmmaker Ben Cashdan followed the two around for a week,
and in the process recorded a titillating, Pilgeresque unveiling of
global-local power relations.

The documentary may therefore serve as an antidote to SA president
Thabo Mbeki's US tour de force last week. Mbeki's appearances at
Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, Howard and Georgetown Universities in
Washington, the White House and the Bay Area received rave reviews, in
part because the news from Africa is usually filled with images of
barbarism.

And indeed Mbeki did two good things: attacked the World Bank, IMF and
World Trade Organisation at the World Affairs Council in San
Francisco, and finally began a partial climb-down on the indefensible
AIDS-drug policy adopted in the wake of his previous health minister's
courageous anti- corporate stance on pharmaceutical pricing last year
(watch this space in a month for more).

Mbeki told several hundred business executives, "Many of us are
punished by the development and trade structures in place, which
benefit the wealthy countries that wrote them and continue to impact
negatively on us." Yet in the same breath he also called for a
"broad-based development round at the WTO to address these issues"--in
direct contrast to African WTO delegates and social movements who have
consistently opposed any new round prior to an assessment and
"turnaround" on numerous existing disputes.

Mbeki's and Manuel's "talk-left, act-right" approach is a source of
enormous frustration for local activists. Ngwane, Jubilee 2000 SA and
the Campaign Against Neoliberalism in SA are debating how to implement
strategies and tactics similar to those described so well for US
activists in Bob Naiman's Z- Net commentary last week.

To this end, the documentary serves as a great educator and
confidence-builder. Filmed for SA Broadcasting Corporation's
investigative show "Special Assignment"--and screened nationally here
in early May (and at Covent Garden's Africa Centre in London on May
22)--the story takes us from Soweto's dusty Pimville district,
represented by city councillor Ngwane, to what are now weekly activist
workshops on globalisation in decaying central Jo'burg, to Manuel's
office suite in Cape Town, to myriad sites of confrontation in
Washington.

Any of the 30,000 folk who supported the Mobilization for Global
Justice will recognise and celebrate the drama of protest preparation
and the human-scale commitments evoked by demonstrators from both
South and North. The radical-participatory democracy in the
spokescouncil meetings and the Convergence Center creativity had
Ngwane gasping in delighted disbelief, "This is where the revolution
is being constructed, man!"

In return, he teaches crowds the uniquely South African activist
war-dance, the toyi-toyi, to his chant: "The World Bank! Haai! Is the
Devil! Haai haai!"

Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: EPI Paper on U.S. FDI in C

[Patrick Bond]

I've seen a couple of longer things Marty has done that spell out 
the argument. One is a superb new book on Japan/East Asia with Paul 
Burkett (St Martin's Press), whose last chapter blew me away, as it 
really tackles the problematic of progressive social/labour-movement 
organising against neoliberalism... when Kism has to be more firmly 
in our sights. Another is a forthcoming MR article which contrasts 
China-bashing with a more durable, anti-capitalist strategy: to 
shorten the working day. It's a shame email is not a particularly 
good medium for getting deep into these debates and interrogating a 
complex line of argument. Maybe Marty wouldn't mind, anyhow, sending 
whatever relevants bits of these pieces he can. They really convinced 
me...

 Date:  Sat, 13 May 2000 17:23:58 -0700 (PDT)
 From:  Martin Hart-Landsberg [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject:   [PEN-L:18903] Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: EPI Paper on U.S. FDI in China
 Reply-to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Max says:
 
  Capital will go wherever the State permits it to go.
  Hence the laws of and among States are the logical
  target.  Trade agreements  the workings of the WTO
  are part and parcel of these laws.
 
 Somehow that is translated into a politics that says we need to focus on
 the actions of the Chinese state or China and not the actions of the U.S.
 state.  The problems facing US workers from highly mobile capital go
 beyond China, but focusing on China and the actions of the Chinese state
 narrow the politics in a way that is self-defeating if our aim is to
 illuminate what is happening and build a radical movement for change. 
 
 Max adds: 
  
  
  Rather than labor's present campaign, MHL proposes
  that we "focus our attention on US capital and the
  logic of international capitalism."  But that's not
  politics; it's a seminar.  Or a book.  Getting up
  in front of a crowd and saying, "I denounce
  capitalism" is not politics.  It's a potential
  component of politics, but one that lacks any
  referents in current events or practice.
  
 I guess we have a difference of opinion on what politics is about.  The
 issue is not short-run "victories" which are really non-victories. Keeping
 China out of the WTO will only ensure the status quo.  At issue is first
 determining what kind of political understanding we want to promote and
 then figuring out how to effectively promote it.  
 
 I think that in this period ideological struggle is very important.  Real
 politics is finding a way to help people understand the nature of the
 system that they live in and move as quickly as possible to embrace
 actions to transform that system in appropriate ways.  If the problem is
 capitalism and the role of the US state and US MNCs, then we need to think
 creatively about how to promote that understanding.
 
 Saying that the issue is china and its lack of human rights for workers is
 not some how any more or less a lecture than saying that the issue is
 capitalism and the actions of US MNCs.  The difference is that the first
 is just a bad lecture, from which confused politics is bound to come.  And
 the second   well you can guess.
 
 Marty
 
 

Naiman v Krugman: the cashew round

[Patrick Bond]

--- Forwarded Message Follows ---
From:  "Robert Naiman" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:   PEN-L and Mozambique cashew nut case
Date:  Thu, 27 Apr 2000 13:16:32 -0400

Patrick:

I'm only half-on PEN-L at the moment, but I see there's been some discussion
on the cashew nut case. I think it's important for people to know that
Krugman didn't bother to read the details of the case; we have him on the
economics. No reference to capitalism necessary, Krugman is just wrong. As I
said in my letter to the NYT -- they refused to run this part -- Krugman's
sloppiness shows why it's a bad idea to let foreign economists dictate
economic policy to developing countries.

Could you post something on the list -- like the link to the article by Joe
Hanlon that set Krugman off -- the article clearly shows why the World
Bank -- and Krguman in defending it -- were wrong on the economics.

http://www.a16.org/resources/cashew.txt

And here is FAIR's page on the dispute.

http://www.fair.org/articles/naiman-krugman.html

-bob

Re: query on cashews

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 I don't think it's worth my time forwarding the articles on Mozambican 
 cashews to Krugman, since he's already staked his reputation on the cashew 
 question in the NY TIMES and is unlikely to back down.

Joe Hanlon's the english-language guru on the topic, here in two 
posts dated mid 1997 and mid 1999:

***

CAN MOZAMBIQUE MAKE THE WORLD BANK
PAY FOR ITS MISTAKES?

By Joseph Hanlon, Maputo, Mozambique
Gemini News Service, September 29 1997

Cashew nut processors in Mozambique are demanding $15
million in compensation from the World Bank, in a
ground- breaking attempt to force the World Bank to
pay for its mistakes. The claim follows the release
earlier this month (September) of a World Bank study
which said that a policy the Bank imposed on
Mozambique was totally wrong and should be
"abandoned". 

More than 7000 people have been thrown out of work
this year, and the newly privatised cashew industry
virtually bankrupted. Kekobad Patel, head of the
Mozambican Cashew Industry Association, warns that
even if the policy is now reversed, most of the
factories cannot be reopened without financial help. 

This will be a personal test for James Wolfensohn,
president of the World Bank, and his efforts to make
the bank less macho. The new study was carried out at
his personal request after he visited Mozambique in
February (this year) when he was met by objections to
Bank policy on cashew from government, industry and
trade unions.

NOT JUST A SNACK

To Mozambique, cashew nuts are not just nibbles that
go with beer -- they are the country's second largest
export. Tens of thousands of individual peasants
cultivate cashew trees. But the cashew has a hard and
acidic outer shell which must be hit with a hammer or
cut with a saw to expose the kernel we eat.
Mozambique developed a relatively sophisticated
processing industry employing 9,000 people, mainly
women, to take the kernels from the shells. 

At World Bank insistence, these state-owned factories
were privatised in 1994-5. High bidders at US$ 9
million for the cashew factories were local
businesses and not transnational corporations, as had
been expected by the World Bank and many outside
observers. 

But as soon as the local business people took over,
the World Bank revealed a secret study which claimed
the processing industry was so inefficient that the
country lost money on every nut processed, and that
peasants would earn a higher price for their cashews
if raw nuts were exported. 

The Bank said that raw cashew nuts should be exported
to India, where the kernels are removed from shells
by families working at home in poor conditions. In
particular, the shells contain an acid which damages
the fingers of workers, which is why Mozambique has
always used mechanical processing with large hammers
or saws rather than Indian hand processing.
Furthermore, India subsidises its industry. 

Mozambique had imposed an 20% export tax on
unprocessed cashew nuts to compensate for Indian
subsidies. Government and industry had already agreed
a phased reduction down to 10% over five years, as
the new owners repaired war damage and modernised
their factories. But this was not enough for the
World Bank, which demanded that the tax be removed
over three years and exports of unprocessed nut be
"liberalised". 

There was an outcry from the government, industry and
trade unions, who demanded reconsideration. They
said: 1) the study had been done without talking to
people in the industry, and had fundamental flaws; 2)
globalisation was forcing a lowering of standards of
health and safety at work; 3) it was a myth that
peasants would gain; and 4) buyers of the newly
privatised factories had been cheated because they
had an implicit (and in some cases explicit) promise
that there would be protection until they got the
industry back on its feet.

CONDITIONALITY AND WORLD BANK REFUSAL TO TALK

Despite the strong and detailed case put forward by
the industry, the World Bank refused to discuss the
subject. Instead, the Bank made it a test of
strength. 

The 1995 World Bank "Country Assistance Strategy"
made free export of cashew a "necessary condition" of
its programme to Mozambique -- the only "necessary
condition" linked to such a detailed policy point.
The 1996 joint IMF-World Bank "Policy Framework Paper
for Mozambique" also required the removal of the
cashew export tax. 

According to the World Bank's "World Development
Report 1997", Mozambique is the poorest and most aid
dependent country in the world. This is because
Mozambique was subject to a 12 year war waged by the
old apartheid government in South Africa. This war
killed 1 million people and did an estimated $30
billion in damage, which shattered the economy. 

As a result of this huge destruction, Mozambique is
now receiving more than $500 mn per year in aid. But
all of this aid is "conditional" on Mozambique having
programmes with the IMF and World Bank. With no World
Bank 

Run on the Bank

[Patrick Bond]

Comrades, is this at all helpful?

--- Forwarded Message Follows ---
From:  "Michael Albert" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Here is today's ZNet Commentary Delivery from Patrick Bond.

If you pass this comment along to others, please include an 
explanation that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors 
of Z/ZNet and that to learn more about the project folks can consult 
ZNet (http://www.zmag.org) and specifically the Sustainer Pages
(http://www.zmag.org/Commentaries/donorform.htm.

Here then is today's ZNet Commentary...

---

Run on the Bank
by Patrick Bond

"We can't REALLY aim to shut down the International Monetary Fund and 
World Bank, you know, Patrick. What would we do without them? What 
would take their place?"

I hear this too much in the run-up to the mid-April Mobilization for 
Global Justice in Washington, DC. Are activists getting the detailed 
information needed to take on the IMF and Bank with the militancy 
that Seattle-East deserves?

Even some well-intentioned, smart progressives involved in defining
international movement strategy don't have the imagination to think of a
world free of an enemy they have grown perhaps a bit too comfortable with,
or alternatively too fearful of to consider life without. Worse, some in the
Jubilee 2000 US movement view the current debate as an opportunity to lobby
for a greater, not lesser role, for the IMF, Bank, their discredited "Highly
Indebted Poor Countries" debt relief initiative, or the new IMF "poverty
reduction" scam.

The comradely criticism below is meant to bolster the folk who'll be on the
streets of Washington and who may want, in contrast, a few good reasons to
shut down the IMF and World Bank--not just for a couple of days, but for
good.

For the specter haunting the Bank was remarked upon by its president, James
Wolfensohn, in a speech to Western Hemisphere finance officials in Mexico
last month: "Let us not let radicals in Seattle scare us from the task of
adjusting to globalization and giving greater opportunities to our people."


_Fix it or nix it?_

Should we adjust the IMF/Bank, or instead seek to abolish these big,
undemocratic, inefficient, corporate-oriented dinosaurs? While retaining
unity in the upcoming mass protest, it's still useful to clarify strategic
differences, so that lines of demarcation don't occur over trivia such as
whether or where to break windows, but instead over the arguments we deploy,
and the demands we make.

The right is also mulling this over. A gaggle of conservative economists in
the congressional Meltzer Commission pronounced, earlier this month, that
the IMF, Bank and three regional development banks in Asia, Africa and Latin
America are so badly warped that they must shrivel, quite dramatically,
before being straightened out.

On the left, the choices have been reduced-- crudely but helpfully, I'd
say--to the slogans "fix- it" versus "nix it."

Fixers correctly argue that the IMF and Bank have been pressured to adopt
reforms over the past 15 or so years. Nixers rebut that these must be
measured against the worsening scale of eco-socio-economic damage done by
the terrible twins over the same period.

In five areas--environmental protection, gender awareness, 
transparency, community participation and post-Washington Consensus 
economics--the reformers can claim victories, yes. But those very 
wins have allowed the Bank, especially, to whitewash itself, 
disguising a thorough-going commitment to hardcore neoliberalism with 
happy talk about sustainability, in the process dividing opponents 
and hiring famous ex-critics. Empowered by the Bank's plagiarism of 
NGO rhetoric, some inside-Beltway policy wonks are even suggesting 
that Wolfensohn switch the focus of lending to sectors like basic 
education. The slogan invoked from time to time--"Public funds for 
public good"--is fundamentally misguided, I will conclude below.

How far can reform go? Reflecting the realpolitik of institutional
constipation, it is now widely acknowledged that late last year, maverick
Bank chief economist Joe Stiglitz--who during his 1997-99 term was roundly
despised by IMF and US Treasury bigwigs-- got pushed overboard. (Stiglitz
diplomatically claimed to have jumped ship, in order to have more freedom to
launch his critiques.)

According to a reliable Bank insider quoted in the February issue of Doug
Henwood's Left Business Observer, "Summers made it clear that if Wolfensohn
wanted a second term as World Bank president--to start on June 1,
2000--Stiglitz had to go."

Serious campaigners acknowledge the point: reforms won to date are 
deeply unsatisfying. But matters get more complicated yet.


_Inside-Beltway strategy_

Straddling the reform/abolition fence is a "fix-it or nix-it" faction, who
make demands on the international institutions that are going to be awfully
difficult, if not i

Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Regressivity of FI

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Joel Blau [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Then, you are trying to find a way to do targeting within universalism, and we
 agree. I thought for a long time that something like what you are doing is the
 way out of the dilemma I described, so I'd be interested in seeing what you
 come up with.

From a long distance away (in a place where virtually everything in 
the way of welfare and social goodies the state provides is 
stratified, means-tested and subject to stigma), we've got a good 
group of activists and intellectuals pushing hard on the twin themes 
of decommodification and destratification. One of the main fights now 
is access to a free lifeline water supply of 50 litres potable water 
per person per day (I use that much the first 15 minutes after 
waking, on the loo and in the shower--so after that the block tariff 
should start rising fast... but given residual apartheid-era power 
relations it doesn't yet).

  This is the classic problem of universalism vs. targeting efficiency, but
  I'm
  not sure I come down on the same side you do. On the universalistic side,
  money for the poor requires, as a kind of informal political blackmail,
  money
  for the rich (or at least the more affluent). Targeting focuses the
  benefits,
  but risks the stigma of welfare and has all the other problems that you and
  Nathan have been debating. Under ideal circumstances, I would prefer
  universalistic benefits that are taxed differentially, because I think they
  encourage the formation of more durable political coalitions. 

This is the point made again and again by Gosta Esping-Andersen in 
studies of The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, as well as Vicente 
Navarro in a 1999 Jn'l of Int'l Health Services defense of the 
welfare state as a class project.

That's what it's all about, right? Class consciousness, 
the demand that basic needs must be human rights, alliance-formation 
and intelligent advocacy politics... which in turn takes us as far as 
capitalism is willing to concede such transfers (from the standpoint 
of reproducing labour power and state legitimation), and 
into the realm of challenging capitalism itself...
Patrick Bond
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729

Re: Re: Protectionism, free trade and socialism

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  "Mathew Forstater" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Has anyone heard that Angola and South Africa were nominating Stanley
 Fischer to head the IMF???  (I hadn't known that he was born in "Northern
 Rhodesia.")  Ouch.

Hey, it's deeply embarrassing. All we can say from Jo'burg today is 
that it looks like the yanks (Brother Summers to be precise) yanked 
those strings.

So, for being a good puppet, SA's finance minister (Trevor Manuel, 
formerly a self-described socialist from the Cape Town ghettoes) gets 
to chair the April 16 IMF/World Bank Board of Governors meetings.

Bob N., is that next creampie ready to fly?

Re: Re: reparations

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ... if this is the same 
 Robinson who was interviewed on US National Public Radio the other day, 
 he's not calling for reparations in the form of checks to those who were 
 superexploited or their descendants. He was talking about aid in the form 
 of education grants, below-market business loans, and the like. He was 
 clearly against reparation checks.

The South African debate on this issue is heating up, with 
progressive activists taking this latter route, advocating 
reparations receipts be put into a radical reconstruction/development 
fund (distinct from ordinary neolib social policy programmes). The SA 
Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced late last year that it 
will dole out very token amounts (avg. of US$500) to families of 
victims of torture and murder during the 1960-94 period. (This 
doesn't include anyone murdered by Pretoria or its agents in 
Mozambique and other frontline states, so is already conceptually 
suspect.)

My impression is that the cutting edge of the argument is coming from 
a great combination of pan-Africanists (who've put up a claim against 
slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism), South 
African radical Jubilee 2000 types (led by Dennis Brutus, a U.Pitt 
emeritus poet who served time on Robben Island with Mandela and is 
doing terrific work on the World Bank Bond Boycott and similar 
projects), and other local anti-apartheid activists (especially 
ex-prisoners) who are justifiably dissatisfied with the 
"reconciliation" deal struck here in SA.

In the second camp, J2000 South comrades who met from across the 
world in November here in Jo'burg, are trying to distinguish 
themselves from terribly self-limiting Northern debt-"relief" 
advocates by a) pushing towards a post-debt-cancellation development 
perspective (in Africa, it's being called the "Africa People's 
Consensus" to distinguish from Wash-Con and Post-Wash-Con); and b) 
trying to reconceptualise debt by saying, i) the South has paid its 
debt many times over (when interest capitalisation and declining 
terms of trade are considered), and ii) the ecological debt the 
industrial North owes the South is massive. 

Our public policy school will be doing a seminar on the broad topic 
of reparations at the end of April in Jo'burg; anyone from Pen-L who 
wants to play any kind of role would be welcome, I'm assured by the 
organisers (who include our friends at the radical thinktank AIDC, 
http://aidc.org.za where you can find the Jubilee South statement 
around reparations). 

I'll try to post some of the innovative arguments and estimations.

But Louis is dead right: this is about power, including conceptual 
power to help explain the ongoing degradation of life on this 
continent.

After all, we're still repaying apartheid-era debt here in South 
Africa. Diabolical, eh? I was just hearing that one of the many 
vibrant post-Seattle campaigns may target Citibank... With some great 
Swiss and German activists now going after their banks for the debt 
they owe black South Africa in view of their generous apartheid-era 
loans, it's time for solidarity activists in the US to look at how 
Citi's balance sheet has reflected and continues to reflect the 
spoils of debt peonage. And to ensure Citi makes amends.

Patrick Bond
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729

[PEN-L:12948] Re: South African nukes

[Patrick Bond]

Yes indeed, SA's nukes were destroyed by FW de Klerk's regime, 
in 1992 I believe. It was probably out of fear that the ANC was too 
close to Libya and Cuba. But who knows what really went on... 
(SA exploded a nuke in 1979.) (The country's nuclear energy 
reactor, near Cape Town, which was a front for the nuke 
programme, remains...) 

(Shall we talk chemicals weapons, next?)

(And Mandela? Anything to raise export revenues, including gun 
sales to Rwanda, DRC, Algeria, Columbia and Turkey: just go go 
go. Gotta pay back the NY bankers who lent money to PW Botha, 
after all...)
 
 On 24 Oct 99, at 18:20, michael perelman wrote:
 
  I thought that SA disabled the weapons before the ANC took over.
  
  Jim Devine wrote:
  
   Before the abolition of apartheid in South Africa, it was pretty much known
   that the R of SA had nuclear weapons. Was this knowledge accurate? what is
   Mandela's attitude toward these nukes, if they exist? what is the SA
   state's attitude?
  
   Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
   http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
  
  --
  Michael Perelman
  Economics Department
  California State University
  Chico, CA 95929
  
  Tel. 530-898-5321
  E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  
Patrick Bond
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729

[PEN-L:12891] Re: Re: Re: WTO North vs South strategies

[Patrick Bond]

ounts be 
explicitly abandoned as incompatible with the lessons of several 
recent financial crises.  

7.  That a global commission with over half its members 
representing civil society organizations (with others from 
governments and the United Nations) be immediately convened to 
determine whether the IMF shall continue to exist and, if so, what 
role it should play.  


Signed in Taegu by the following, with the understanding that 
organizations not able to be in Taegu will be asked to endorse the 
statement in the following weeks.  

Focus on the Global South * Bangkok, Thailand (Walden Bello)

ECONIT Advisory Group * Jakarta, Indonesia (Arif Arryman)

International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) * 
Jakarta,
Indonesia  (Tony Waworontu / Arif Arryman)

Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) * Quezon City, Philippines  
(Jean
Enriquez)

50 Years Is Enough Network * Washington, USA  (Soren Ambrose)

APRO-FIET (International Federation of Commerical, Clerical, 
Professional 
Technical Employees) * Singapore  (Christopher Ng)

Third World Network * Penang, Malaysia  (T. Rajamoorthy)

World Economy, Ecology  Development (WEED) * Bonn, 
Germany  (Peter Waldow)

Korean Federation of Bank  Financial Labor Unions (KFBU) * 
Seoul, South
Korea  (Lee Yongdeuk)

APRO-FIET (International Federation of Commerical, Clerical, 
Professional 
Technical Employees)  - Korea Liaison Council * Seoul, South 
Korea  (Jay
Choi)

Association pour une Taxation des Transactions financières pour 
l'Aide aux
Citoyens (ATTAC) * Paris, France   (Christophe Aguiton)

Pacific-Asia Resource Center (PARC) * Tokyo, Japan  (Yoko 
Kitazawa)

SOLAGRAL * Paris, France  (Elsa Assidon)

People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) * Seoul, 
South Korea
(Hee-Yeon Cho)

Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM) * Seoul, 
South Korea
(Kim Choon-y / Choi Yul)



Endorsers not present at Taegu:

Preamble Center * Washington, USA (Mark Weisbrot)

Just Act: Youth Action for Global Justice * San Francisco, USA  
(Colin
Rajah)

Committee for Health Rights in the Americas * San Francisco, 
USA  (Shannon
Coughlin)

Eighth Day Center for Justice * Chicago, USA  (Mary Kay 
Flanigan/Kathleen
Desautels/Dolores Brooks)

NICCA * Berkeley, USA  (Diana Bohn)

Casa Baltimore/Limay * Baltimore, USA  (Barbara Larcom)

Michigan Coalition for Human Rights * Detroit, USA  (Joanette Nitz)

Nicaragua-U.S. Friendship Office * Washington, USA (Rita Clark)

Development VISIONS * Lahore, Pakistan (Khalid Hussain)

Rainforest Information Centre * Lismore, Australia (John Seed)

Partizans * London, UK  (Roger Moody)

Humanitarian Law Project * Washington, USA  (Patricia Krommer)

Campaign for Labor Rights * Washington, USA (Trim Bissell)

Nicaragua Network * Washington, USA (Chuck Kaufman)



Individuals:

Patrick Bond * University of the Witwatersrand  * Johannesburg, 
South Africa

Frieder-Otto Wolf * Ex-Member, European Parliament (Green 
Group) * Germany

Stefano Monti  Katheryn H. Seiders * Pittsburgh, USA

Mark M. Giese * Racine, Wisconsin, USA

Paul Kesler * Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, USA

***

Jubilee as Social-Movement Model

by Patrick Bond
for Land and Rural Policy Digest, November 1999

The most important accomplishment of the
Jubilee 2000 movement to date has not been
the series of minor debt relief concessions
from G-7 powers since around 1996 (HIPC, the
Cologne Initiative, Clinton's Bilateral Debt
Cancellation, etc). Nor has it been the
resounding success of J2000-North chapters
in finding allies such as the Pope, Harvard
economist Jeffrey Sachs, and a series of
entertainers (Bono from U-2, Mohammed Ali,
Netaid) who together make vocal, trendy but
ultimately unsatisfying appeals to northerners'
sense of charity.
 Instead, in this article I insist that the J2000
chapters across the Southern Hemisphere--
and similar movements working on trade,
investment, labour rights, human rights,
environmental protection, the landmine ban
and many other issues--have made a much
greater contribution to social progress:
innovative analysis, ideology and strategy.
 They have by and large analysed problems
of debt and development from a structural
perspective, not stopping with superficial
explorations for debt, but looking at the entire
development model associated with the
discredited "Washington Consensus." This is
a term that describes the neoliberal, free-
market economic strategy pushed by
Washingtonians like Bill Clinton, the US
Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve,
and of course the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
 From the early 1980s, World Bank and IMF
macroeconomic and social policy advice has
overwhelmed organic priorities and strategies
in indebted Third World countries. Critics
argue that Washington's advice is both
immoral--in that it typically seeks export-led
growth at the expense of the poor, workers,
women and the environment--and incompetent,
in that it rarely is rooted in local rea

[PEN-L:12889] Re: WTO North vs South strategies

[Patrick Bond]

Goals: Moving Toward a Post-Washington
 Consensus,' WIDER Annual Lecture, Helsinki, 7
 January 1998; `Towards a New Paradigm for
 Development: Strategies, Policies, and Processes,'
 Prebisch Lecture, UN Conference on Trade and
 Development, Geneva, 19 October 1998. 

 James Tobin, `A Proposal for International
 Monetary Reform,' The Eastern Economic
 Journal, July/October 1978. 

 James Wolfensohn, `A Proposal for a
 Comprehensive Development Framework (A
 Discussion Draft),_ Washington, DC, World Bank,
 29 January 1999.

3. Critical (often radical, nonreformist-reformist) statements about 
world economy/finance:

 Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of
 Globalization, London, Zed, 1997.

 Giovanni Arrighi, Terence Hopkins and Immanuel
 Wallerstein, Anti-Systemic Movements, London,
 Verso, 1989.

 Robert Blecker, Taming Global Finance,
 Washington, DC, Economic Policy Institute, 1999.

 Terry Boswell and Chris Chase-Dunn, The Spiral
 of Capitalism and Socialism, Boulder, Lynn
 Reiner, 1999.

 Robert Brenner, Turbulence in the World
 Economy, London, Verso, 1999.

 Catherine Caufield, Masters of Illusion, London,
 Macmillan, 1997.

 Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of
 Poverty, London, Zed, 1997.

 William Greider, One World Ready or Not,
 London, Penguin, 1998.

 Robin Hahnel, Panic Rules!, Boston, South End,
 1999.

 Doug Henwood, Wall Street, London, Verso,
 1997.

 Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalisation and the
 Postcolonial World, London, Macmillan, 1997.

 Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet, San
 Francisco, Sierra Club, 1997.

 Jomo K.S. (Ed), Tigers in Trouble, London, Zed,
 1998.

 John Maynard Keynes, `National Self-Sufficiency,'
 Yale Review, 22, 4, 1933.

 Michael Lowy, `Globalization and
 Internationalism: How Up-to-date is the
 Communist Manifesto?,' Monthly Review,
 November 1998

 Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann, The
 Global Trap, London, Zed, 1997.

 Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World, London,
 Verso, 1997.

 Harry Shutt, The Trouble with Capitalism,
 London, Zed, 1999.

 Kavaljit Singh, A Citizen's Guide to the
 Globalisation of Finance, London, Zed and Delhi,
 Madhyam Books, 1998.

 Mrinalini Sinha, Donna Guy and Angela
 Woollacott (Eds), Feminisms and Internationalism,
 Oxford, Blackwell, 1999.

 Robert Wade, The Gift of Capital, London, Verso,
 1999.

 Peter Waterman, Globalisation, Social Movements
 and the New Internationalisms, London, Cassell,
 1998.

 Linda Weiss, The Myth of the Powerless State,
 Cambridge, Polity, 1998.

 Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy,
 Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Patrick Bond
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729

[PEN-L:12832] Re: Re: Re: WTO and commodity fetishism

[Patrick Bond]

Regrettably yes, there is a diametric opposition between North and 
South strategies (though to pose it in these terms, rather than 
class terms, is terribly misleading). It's mainly between those who 
want to shut down embryonic forms of the global state (not just 
WTO, but IMF/WB etc), and those who want to reform the 
embryonic global state institutions and make them slightly nicer. 
Aristocratic Federation of Labour leader John Sweeney testified to 
Congress last week that he thinks closing the IMF "would be a 
mistake." Most of the rest of the South movements would disagree. 
Sweeney will be flying business class to Seattle and will sleep well 
in a luxury suite before going hat in hand to Summers, Barshefsky 
and Moore, to beg for a seat at the table so as to impose 
labour/social/eco clauses, about which he has done no real 
consultation with the people affected in the South. In contrast, 
Peoples Global Action and allies will be doing a bus tour with 
radical Third World and other international folk, arriving in Seattle, 
camping on friends' floors, and hitting the streets to call for No New 
WTO Round, and in fact to network amongst themselves about 
what pressure points can be applied to forcibly withdraw their 
national elites' support for the WTO more generally.

The week before in Johannesburg, I am reliably told, a similar group 
to PGA--Jubilee South--will gather the best forces from the Third 
and Second and Fourth Worlds to discuss how to take forward the 
fantastic momentum on debt relief and remove the vicious 
conditionalities, the half-hearted reforms and the right-wing allies 
(Sachs), and replace them with a genuine development strategy. I 
believe this will ultimately have to entail an amplification of the 
Focus on the Global South campaign against the IMF, and the 
World Bank Bond Boycott campaign to defund the Bank.

That'll further open up the key lines of debate between CoOpted 
NGOs (CONGOs) and AFL-CIO opportunists inside the Beltway on 
the one hand, and radical social, environmental and labour 
movements of the South on the other. The WTO meeting is another 
chapter in the same story, I would guess.

My rhetoric aside, does this sound like a reasonable analysis of 
the way the array of social forces is developing? How does this 
look from the Northwest?

On 20 Oct 99, at 10:09, Anthony D'Costa wrote:
 So Patrick is there a diametrically opposite position between "organized"
 workers in the North and South and those that are not organized in
 the "South"?  The AFL-CIO types want labor clauses (a protectionist
 posture) against cheap imports.  The unions in the South are anti
 WTO because of its "free market" implications.  The exporters from
 the South (capitalists) see the leftist anti-WTO of the North position
 tantamount to non-tariff barriers.  And unorganized "export" sector workers from the
 South see WTO as an avenue for economic survival.  What kind of
 configurations are we talking about around WTO this time?  

[PEN-L:12741] Re: Julius Nyerere dies

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ...An uncharacteristically humble and modest national leader 

This rings absolutely true. My only contact was at a conference 
commemorating his 75th birthday in 1997. After he had the first 
comment on a paper on post-apartheid S.African subimperialism 
(in a huge auditorium whose electricity supply, including microphone, 
had just cut out), about a dozen other people (including undergrads) 
were allowed to ask questions before the chair recognised a patient 
Mwalimu (whose hand had been up steadily) for his second comment. 
Nowhere else in Africa would that happen. And he was, at the end, 
apparently making serious gestures of reconcilation to the scattered 
and battered Tanzanian left, which he had played the key role 
in repressing during the 1970s.

There was talk of Mwalimu joining the Jubilee South conference in 
November in Johannesburg, where the comrades were expecting to 
revisit his 1983 call for a Third World debtors' cartel. His passing 
is a great loss to that movement, and to committed African 
nationalists.

[PEN-L:11675] Re: RE: Jubilee 2000 critique

[Patrick Bond]

When I was briefly in Brazil, meeting anti-racism comrades a few 
years ago, I got the distinct sense from them that church support 
for the PT and other movements was understood as based in part 
upon a desire to control the movements' potentially redistributive 
impulses, particularly regarding church land, in the wake of the 
hierarchy's repression of liberation-theology catechists.

On 24 Sep 99, at 20:55, Lisa  Ian Murray wrote:
 A former Philosophy professor who just moved to Seattle from Brazil told me
 [through his new wife who translated] that the Rentier Class in Brazil has
 no intention of ever paying off the debts and that if you want real reform
 in Brazil the left should go after the Church's economic holdings [now
 there's an old set off accounting books]...all of them.
 
 ian

[PEN-L:11677] Re: Re: Jubilee 2000 critique

[Patrick Bond]

Right, Peter. That's why the Jubilee Southern Hemisphere 
movement is so interesting. There's a strong recovery from these 
mistakes now underway, in part because the contradictions really 
broke to the surface at the Cologne protests. Check Dot Keet at 
http:\\aidc.org.za (no www needed, thanks Chris), and encourage 
your contacts to come to Johannesburg in mid-November for the 
J2000South gathering.

Patrick

On 24 Sep 99, at 12:35, Peter Dorman wrote:
 Chris, you might check the pen-l archives.  We had a brief flurry on the
 Jubilee 2000 campaign.  Gist: they took a big step backward by focusing solely
 on the poorest countries.  The global debt overhang is a serious problem both
 for the countries directly involved and for the world economy (debt pressure
 leading to increased export pressure leading to competitiveness mania).  Jub
 2000 has adjusted its goals downward to be "realistic" in the face of
 neoliberal hegemony and the lack of effective institutions for managing
 international trade and capital flows.  Too bad.

[PEN-L:11678] Re: Re: Re: Jubilee 2000 critique

[Patrick Bond]

Forgive me for just another point. Not stated in the article below, 
but now in motion in Washington at the 50YearsEnough 
conference, is that J2000SA is also joining a couple of excellent 
movements -- from Haiti and Focus on the Global South/Bangkok -- 
to defund, respectively, the World Bank and IMF. In the WB case, 
you'll begin to hear of SA anti-apartheid-style "divestment" tactics, 
aimed at getting sell-off of World Bank bonds from municipal, 
pension and university portfolios. Join us, comrades!

 Africa: Jubilee 2000 campaign intensifies 
 
 The MailGuardian (South Africa)23. September 1999 
 
 By Brian Ashley 
 
 Johannesburg - As the "100 days to the millennium" approaches, 
the anti-debt
 campaign, Jubilee 2000, has entered a period of intense activity. 
A campaign
 to collect 100 000 signatures by the end of the year for its petition
 calling for the cancellation of apartheid debt has been launched. 
 
 The Jubilee 2000 movement has become a source of irritation to 
G7 leaders
 and officials of the World Bank and the International Monetary 
Fund (IMF).
 The campaign to cancel Third World debt has received major 
attention,
 especially because of its ability to greet these leaders with mass
 demonstrations. 
 
 In South Africa, Jubilee 2000's slogan --"Won't pay for apartheid 
twice!
 Cancel the apartheid debt" -- sums up the basis of the campaign. 
 
 Holocaust victims and people used as slave labour by major 
German companies
 have had to wait more than 60 years for reparations and justice. 
The victims
 of apartheid should not have to wait so long, says Jubilee 2000. 
 
 It is also campaigning for the cancellation of apartheid-caused 
debt in
 Southern Africa, and the debt burden of all Third World countries. 
 
 The movement acknowledges that the South African government 
is in a
 difficult position regarding the call to cancel the apartheid debt. 
As the
 Jubilee 2000 publication Apartheid Debt: Questions and 
Answers, released on
 September 10 1999, points out, the mere perception of such 
support can be
 expected to have a negative effect on financial markets initially. 
 
 However, the publication concludes "if our government's fears are
 well-founded, if it is the faceless financial markets, the selfish
 profit-seekers from abroad who ultimately tell our government 
what to do,
 then the struggle for national liberation has still to be won". 
 
 Jubilee 2000 media officer George Dor stresses the importance 
of the
 booklet. "The booklet takes on the public debate and, in 
particular, many of
 the statements by the Department of Finance; and articulates 
our argument
 that debt cancellation will release significant resources for 
development." 
 
 International banks financially rescued the apartheid regime 
during its debt
 moratorium crisis in the 1980s. At the time, states Jubilee 2000, 
the
 African National Congress publicly condemned the banks' role in 
rescheduling
 the debt as an act of inhumanity and said that "when the time 
comes, the
 South African people will not be unmindful of the role of banks in 
making
 profit out of the misery of our people". 
 
 Recent research from Switzerland and Germany puts the total 
apartheid
 foreign debt at about $26-billion. The campaign argues that this 
is an
 odious debt and therefore repayment is not the responsibility of 
the new
 democratic government. It is a call that has been taken up by 
campaign
 groups in Europe and the United States who are targeting 
apartheid's
 creditors. The campaigns call not only for the cancellation of the 
debt, but
 also for reparations from those who supported the machinery of 
apartheid. 
 
 Jubilee 2000 estimates apartheid-caused destruction and 
destabilisation (not
 taking account of human death and suffering) to have cost $115-
billion in
 Southern Africa, excluding South Africa. 
 
 At the its national committee meeting in Johannesburg on 
September 10,
 campaigners launched the scrapping petition. 
 
 "Collecting signatures will go hand in hand with educating people 
across the
 country on the debt issue and mobilising people to engage in 
activities
 demanding debt cancellation," said Dor. 
 
 The petition is directed at the South African government, G7 
leaders, the
 World Bank, the IMF and the creditors of apartheid. 
 
 The campaign is targeting 100 000 signatures in the 100 days 
from September
 23 to the end of the millennium. Jubilee 2000 has established 
organisational
 structures in eight provinces, and will launch its Northern Province
 campaign on September 22. Key activities and dates to intensify 
the campaign
 towards the end of the millennium were identified at the meeting. 
 
 Jubilee 2000 announced plans to host a Jubilee south-south 
summit in
 Johannesburg from November 18 to 21, involving activists from 
Africa, Latin
 America and Asia. 
 
 The summit will be held primarily to discuss conditions in 
countries in the
 southern hemisphere and strategise the shift of the 

[PEN-L:11679] Korean radical poli-econ

[Patrick Bond]

Are there comrades on these lists from South Korea, or
involved in solidarity work? I'm making my first trip
there next week, and am curious about political-intellectual
traditions behind -- and practical implications of -- the
following excellent excerpts from movement leaders there: 

 The intensification of the fantastic and
 imperialistic neoliberal offensive and the economic
 crisis is the dual expression of one entity: the
 overaccumulation (overproduction) of capital since
 the 1970s. The global economy is characterised by
 overproduction and a decline in the rate of profit.
 Efforts of capital are concentrated on increasing
 the rate of profit, leading to greater
 monopolisation. And the global monopolies and their
 metropoles are intent on driving out state
 intervention in the process of reproduction. This is
 what is undertaken under the name of "deregulation."
  Furthermore, the decline in the rate of profit
 due to overproduction has meant that capital can no
 longer find sufficiently profitable areas for
 investment in production or distribution. This has
 forced capital to turn to speculation. The birth of
 mammoth speculative capital, fostered by the changes
 in global financial practices, has transformed the
 system into a "casino capitalism."
 Koh Young-joo
 General Secretary, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions
  March 1999

 The ship of Korean economy was wrecked in the high
 sea of capital globalization. We have tried to
 repair the ship prior to anything else, only to
 realize that it is hardly enough to rectify the
 problematic situation. The high sea exonerating no
 ship to remain safe, we cannot help but think of
 having such safety systems as a typhoon-alarming
 equipment or pirate-defensive armaments ready for
 any upcoming disaster. It is a time, in other words,
 to direct our attention not only to the
 restructuring of domestic economy but to that of the
 world financial system.
  In the rapid currents of globalization, which
 effectively erase the traditional demarcation
 between the inside and the outside, a fire beyond
 the river turns itself quickly enough into a fire on
 our own houses. The credibility game of borderless
 capital drastically narrowing down policy choices of
 national governments, the potential power of the
 world citizens is the only hope left for the
 renovation of the current, deeply destabilizing,
 world financial order. Now is a time, therefore, for
 the citizens of the world to put the question of the
 world economic justice on the agenda of global civic
 movement. It is not only a mandate of our own age
 but also an important focus of global civic society.
Kim Young-ho
  Chairperson, Taegu Round Korea Committee
      September 1999


Patrick Bond
(Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management)
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg
office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus
mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050
phones:  (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729
emails:  (h) [EMAIL PROTECTED]; (o) [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:11606] Re: Nzimande on capital and transformation of the state.

[Patrick Bond]

Chris, this is a bit unfair, really. On our e-debate list in South  Africa, we've had a lot of pondering around this problem of why a  particularly conservative faction of the SACP -- including several  national ministers and a parliamentary committee head -- are  promoting (as reflected in the final 'graf) "public private  partnerships," a confused concept but often used here as a  euphamism for privatisation.  

The more vibrant, activist wing of the Party is moving very quickly,  hand-in-hand with Cosatu and especially the superb SA Municipal  Workers Union, to block (not "engage," often a codeword for  retreat) the privatisation of Johannesburg municipal services. You  get a much clearer sense of SA working-class militancy in the  following call to arms. (Not to say Cde Nzimande isn't with the left  flank -- but the extract you reprint, Chris, is obviously mealy- mouthed compromise wording. If you want some more on this, join  us at e-debate: write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and then  say in the body, subscribe debate your-email, for roughly a half- dozen posts a day)

From:   	"Anna Weekes" samwu= @wn.apc.org>
Subject:	South A= frican Municipal Workers Union  (SAMWU) international appeal - Help stop the privatisation of  Johannesburg!
Date sent:  	Thu, 2= 3 Sep 1999 11:39:03 +0100

STOP THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IGOLI 2002 - the plan to  privatise Johannesburg by 2002!

The Johannesburg Council is implementing the Igoli 2002 plan:

They are privatising:
*Metro Gas, Rand Airport and Johannesburg Stadium.

They prepare to turn departments into independent companies:
* Electricity, water and sanitation, waste removal, zoo, Metro bus,
Civic
Theatre, property and the fresh produce market.

The Igoli 2002 plan calls this corporatising and utilities. The council
will
employ richly paid managing directors at these firms to run them  like
private bosses making profits. The council has appointed advisory
committees, consultants and managers to prepare these  companies.

They prepare to turn departments into companies in the council:
* Roads, stormwater, parks and cemeteries - called agencies.

They continue to contract out:
* Municipal work goes to private companies e.g. roads and grass  cutting.

Council implements Igoli 2002 even though:
* Samwu and Imatu tabled serious problems at the negotiations;

Cosatu and Samwu say the Igoli 2002 struggle is a national issue:
* If Igoli 2002 succeeds other municipalities will do the same.
* Already Cape Town wants to retrench ten thousand workers in a  similar
restructuring plan!
* Workers and communities will suffer. There will be job loss and  higher
service prices but bigger salaries and profits for the bosses.

At negotiations with the council Samwu told the council:
* Stop implementing the Igoli 2002 plan or we will declare a dispute;
* Transform existing departments for better service delivery.
* Allow workers and communities to participate in transformation.

* Start from the needs of workers and communities and not the  needs of
banks, managers and the rich.

* Agree to a short-term programme for transformation that will  reduce
wastage and inefficiency whilst we negotiate our disagreements.
At the negotiations on the 10th of September Samwu and Imatu  said that
there
was nothing we can agree on with the council. This must be  reported to
the
plenary of the bargaining council on the 30th September.

Programme of action to stop Igoli 2002 (Branch ShopStewards  Committee
meeting 15/9):

1. Hold general meetings of members before the 24th September

* Shop stewards to give proper reportbacks
* Workers are the foundation of the union - give your mandate!
* Tell us the way forward!
* Tell us your existing problems!
* Tell us what kind of municipality you want!

2. Call members to a mass rally in Johannesburg on the Thursday  30th
September

* The rally will bring together all our members.
*  It is the place to consolidate the united voice of workers from the
general meetings.

3. Declare a dispute with the council on the 30th September at the
Bargaining Council Plenary.

4. Build support amongst the community and Cosatu affiliates.

5. Mobilise the international community to send e-mails of protest
against
this unilateral restructuring to:

Ketso Gordhan (City Manager)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


Kenny Fihla (Head of the Transformation Lekgotla drivi= ng the  process)

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Makgane Thobejane (Labour Relations Manager)

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Trevor Fowler (Provincial Minister in charge of Local = Government)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

International friends should copy their e-mails to the= se journalists:

Xolani Xundu, Business Day  ,8000,000= 0[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Prince Hamnca, Star newspaper  

[PEN-L:11569] Re: Re: Re: IMF to become autonomous?

[Patrick Bond]

On 22 Sep 99, at 8:36, Chris Burford wrote:
 It is quite true that the reformatory strategies under consideration are in
 themselves inadequate, partial and limited. Like all reforms they have a
 dialectical dual aspect - they may help the onward process of change, or
 they may restabilise the basic structures...
 It is true the "breaking of the chains of debt" campaign is in one sense
 reformist. It does not address the process of the uneven accumulation of
 capital which perpetually enforces these debts, but patronisingly seeks to
 annul them every so often.

No, I would say a dramatic debt cancellation with no strings 
attached -- qualitatively different than the WB/IMF/Clinton HIPC 
schemes (including the $1 bn announced yesterday) -- could be a 
profound non-reformist reform, in the spirit of the first 'graf above. 
But the various times this has periodically happened in world 
history have been times of revolt from below, with nation-state 
elites declaring default against weakened, often fragmented 
creditors. For that to happen in the near future -- incidentally, a 
demand for an African debtors' cartel came through strongly in the 
May 1999 "Lusaka Declaration" of leading NGO/church debt 
activists, and will probably be amplified at the Jubilee Southern 
Hemisphere meeting in Johannesburg in a couple of months -- 
requires a dramatic lessening of global financial power, especially 
the power of the two coordinating institutions, the IMF and WB.

 Indeed the petition had some unhappy phrase about putting the past behind
 us as if charitable blindness could solve the problems of capitalism. My
 petty bourgeois squeamishness about political purity made me hesitate to
 sign, and in fact I never did. 

No Chris, it's J2000 North's dalliance with Jeff Sachs -- including at 
a meeting with the Pope yesterday -- that should have brought up 
the bile. The religious angle and some of the associated rhetoric 
are the least of the problems; again, check Dot Keet on the 
divergent campaigning principles and strategies (http:\\aidc.org.za).
 
 However, that campaign opened the political space for a more determined
 group of campaigners who laid siege to the City of London itself on June
 18. 

I'm curious about the connection to J2000. Was there one, 
seriously?

 ... Well I missed that debate, and I appreciate you linking this thread up to
 it. I can see it is an arguably effective political stance to rally opinion
 around an abolition of the IMF and the World Bank and calling for a
 people's global network.

Good. Shall we leave it there then? Others seem disengaged...

(By the way, Chris, the beltway is the ringroad around Washington. 
Buckled inside, awed by that ghastly city's phallocentric power 
structures, and aware of ancient but increasingly public traditions 
of cocksucking, many previously good people part with previously 
strong principles... present PEN-L company excepted of course.)

[PEN-L:11528] Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Fw: EH.R: Kondratieff Cycles]

[Patrick Bond]

No, not satisfying, Doug.

There's an issue here about methods. Of course, Kism valorises 
and devalorises continually. Isn't it in the least interesting to 
explain why and how and where and with what temporal rhythms? If 
there are particular moments in the business cycle where this 
becomes frenetic, and if it coincides with the restructuring of elite-
politics, with geopolitical tensions and with the possibility for 
informed resistance, you don't want to just deny the process, do 
you?

On 22 Sep 99, at 14:27, Doug Henwood wrote:
 Patrick Bond wrote:
 For the early 1990s, take away half the value of
 the Tokyo stock market,
 An event whose real world effects are...?

The catalyst for all manner of 1990s problems in Japan, and part of 
the capital-push factor into East Asia?
 
  a huge chunk of real estate values in
 world cities not to mention backwaters,
 What world cities outside Japan are you talking about?

E.g. a million families in England suffering negative equity because 
the 30% crash of their real estate asset-valuation put them below 
the value of their mortgage bonds. The early 1990s downturn of the 
global Kuznets property cycle was nothing to sneer at; 
gentrification in NYC even came to a grinding pause. In 
Johannesburg, the very rich and the black working-class witnessed 
a 30% property market crash from 1991-94, whether in snazzy 
Houghton (where Mandela lives) or Soweto (where he used to).

  more downward commodity
 price pressure,
 Except for the 1970s, commodity prices have been either in relative 
 or real decline for decades.

I know, the post-1973 non-oil index dropped something like 80% 
BEFORE 1989. My understanding, though, was that the drop 
intensified during the early 1990s. (I don't have data handy; do you?)

  (my favourite, Zimbabwe, witnessed a 40% fall in volume of
 manufacturing from 1991-95), rising bankruptcy rates, SL asset
 write-downs, etc etc.
 The SL crisis was 10 years ago! 

But the workouts of property portfolios hit peak around 1989, 
serving as one basis for intense little crashes of local real estate 
markets in southern California, Texas, parts of Florida, as I vaguely 
recall.

Meanwhile, real and financial values 
 are both many times higher than they were when the Resolution Trust 
 Corp. was formed. 

Right, but a) it didn't look pretty during the early 1990s (the point of 
this discussion); and b) it could be said (and I'm just 
hypothesising, not putting forth a Domhoff-type analysis) that this 
asset-price recovery reflected the next logical step in the argument: 
the ability of one set of territorially-grounded capitalists (including 
US real estate interests, but particularly financiers who draw the 
bulk of their funds from the US) to withstand, displace or delay the 
broader devalorisation of capital, in part by the kinds of alliances -- 
huge campaign contributions to Democratic Party neoliberals for 
example -- that have encouraged the US to visit its vast economic 
problems onto the rest of the world during the 1990s.

In any event, even if you don't like the story, do you not concede 
the idea of adding valorisation/devalorisation processes to your 
GDP and profit data (and are the latter not of dubious scientific 
merit anyhow after the past few months' corporate accounting 
revelations)?

Patrick Bond
(Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management)
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg
office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus
mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050
phones:  (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729
emails:  (h) [EMAIL PROTECTED]; (o) [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:11484] Re: Re: [Fwd: Fw: EH.R: Kondratieff Cycles]

[Patrick Bond]

On 21 Sep 99, at 12:35, Doug Henwood wrote:
 ... The 1989-92 period was unusual for the 
 length of its stagnation, but GDP was 3% higher in 1992 than in 1989, 
 which hardly makes it the worst recession since the 1930s.

Comrade Doug, isn't it time to go beyond marginal changes in GDP 
and profit rates for these kinds of "proofs" of K's alleged virility... 
and into valorisation/devalorisation processes? No, the data 
wouldn't be easy to construct, but for Marxist economists, isn't that 
the way in which these cycles tend to really work themselves out? 
Once enough overaccumulated K is devalued the animal spirits can 
get back to investing? And in the process, how about factoring in 
global processes? For the early 1990s, take away half the value of 
the Tokyo stock market, a huge chunk of real estate values in 
world cities not to mention backwaters, more downward commodity 
price pressure, Eastern Europe unravelled, more African countries 
trashed (my favourite, Zimbabwe, witnessed a 40% fall in volume of 
manufacturing from 1991-95), rising bankruptcy rates, SL asset 
write-downs, etc etc.

Gunder Frank is right to remind us,
   if this is not a super disasterous decade of WORLD DEPRESSION,
   I would like to be told what it has been, eg by Russians, East Europeans,
   East Asians, Central Asians, West Asians, South Americans,
   North/West/East/South Africans, and and...
Doug: 
 There have been horrible social disasters in these parts of the 
 world, but they're not accurately described as recessions or 
 depressions in the economic sense except for the former USSR. Africa 
 shows positive GDP growth in the 1990s

After someone has suffered a knockout punch, a wee flicker of the 
eyelid may indeed seem like positive GDP growth. But last time I 
looked around the continent, I mainly saw 1950s per capita GDP 
land.


Patrick Bond
(Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management)
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg
office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus
mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050
phones:  (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729
emails:  (h) [EMAIL PROTECTED]; (o) [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:11426] Re: Progressive Nationalism

[Patrick Bond]

h African Trade Unions in 1996).
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions' spinoff
Movement for Democratic Change is also
constructing this kind of programme at the
moment. 

Such broad development policies should, naturally,
follow directly from programmatic and project
work being carried out by progressives in the field,
because virtually all non-reformist reforms will run
into strong opposition from economic policy-
makers who are excessively committed to fiscal
discipline, deregulating labour markets and
promoting exports at all costs. Thus grassroots
ownership of alternative strategies is vital to
assuring they have popular durability under
Washington Consensus duress. If that's a similar
principle to what you're arguing in the US, these
groups should be talking to each.

Which they'll do this week at UDC, at the 50 Years
is Enough! parallel conference to the IMF/WB
annual meetings. Wish I was there! Our AIDC 
and Jubilee2000 SA comrades will be there in 
force (you can get to know them first, at 
http:\\aidc.org.za )


Patrick Bond
(Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management)
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg
office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus
mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050
phones:  (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729
emails:  (h) [EMAIL PROTECTED]; (o) [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:11375] Re: Re: Re: IMF to become autonomous?

[Patrick Bond]

nal) and  keep the
> nationalists from fighting each other (and thus dividing and  conquering
> themselves for international capital).

So Jim, aren't "international and national goals" spelled out even by  Keynes--in favour of the globalisation of people, against the  globalisation of capital--pretty clear as first principles?
 
> Progressive nationalism would have a hard time keeping its  progressive
> credentials in an imperialist country like the US (assuming that  by
> "progressive" we mean pushing what's good for the international  working
> class and other oppressed groups). 

Yes, that's not a minor worry. When Nader and Buchanan do  tactical alliances, a) will these slip into strategic territory, and b)  who calls the shots when the deals get done (as the IMF  recapitalisation fiasco demonstrated last October)... ?

Again, the answer is largely within the balance of forces, once  clarity is gradually achieved on these broader strategic problems.



Patrick Bond
(Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management)
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg
office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus
mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050
phones:  (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729
emails:  (h) [EMAIL PROTECTED]; (o) [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:11187] Re: IMF to become autonomous?

[Patrick Bond]

 From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 But could you explain the apparent discrepancy between this remark
  Go for the nation-state, man, it is the only hope.
 and this remark in your post on Jubilee 2000
 this movement is about neither a "final" or a 
 "short" burst of activity up to 2000. An excellent network has 
 launched a variety of superb campaigns out of this, and I would guess
 that not just the debt, but the very existence of the IMF and WB will
 soon come under the spotlight.
 Do you mean that you the IMF and the WB will not be reformed, but actually
 abolished?

Chris, yes, to get back nation-state sovereignty over capital flows, 
the IMF/WB must be radically disempowered (I would say 
abolished, yes). I see three types of arguments coming through in 
the key int'l social movement debates on this matter:

a) an international reformism aimed at merely improving (around the 
edges) the embryonic world-state institutions, as was done with 
the WB over the past decade or so, namely making them more 
green, more gender-friendly, more transparent, and more oriented 
to participatory processes (critics say this plus Stiglitzism and 
what euphamistically is termed "debt relief" makes the WB a more 
effective Trojan Horse for just-as-nasty and in many cases nastier 
policies);

b) a "progressive internationalism" (as it was termed on PEN-L a 
few years ago) aimed at establishing a world-state but not in any 
way based upon the IMF and WB; indeed, acknowledge these folk, 
shutting down the IMF/WB is a prerequisite for the power shift 
needed to establish global democracy (the philosopher Iris Marion 
Young, in her forthcoming book, and other cosmopolitan-
democracy theorists are putting their hope in the UN); and

c) a "progressive nationalism" (again, a PEN-L phrase) which, in 
advocating WB/IMF defunding, takes heart and strength and 
knowledge from the potential unity of the variety of particularistic 
struggles against local forms of structural adjustment, malevolent 
"development" projects and Bretton Woods interference in social 
policies (e.g., the IMF deciding last month to micromanage 
Zimbabwe's exchange control, import tariff and staple-good pricing 
systems because Mugabe was a bit naughty and dirigiste after the 
1997-98 crisis), and which hence motivates for a return to national 
sovereignty over capital flows (and with it, less balance-of-
payments support from hot money or IMF loans, and for trade 
finance purposes improvement of int'l export credit agencies). This 
latter argument takes seriously John Maynard Keynes' proposition 
that "Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel -- these are the 
things which should of their nature be international. But let goods 
be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible 
and, above all, let finance be primarily national"

You can find me there in group c, with a growing number of the 
better South groups interested in opening up space for their own 
radical democratic and proto-socialist development work, and for 
strengthening international civil society linkages to these ends. 
Some strong voices from the South -- e.g. SA poet Dennis Brutus, 
Haitian economist Camille Chalmers, Nicaraguan ex-dep.foreign 
minister Alejandro Bendana, and Filippino political scientist 
Walden Bello -- are more and more explicit in advocating that 
Northern solidarity activists help defund the BWI boot now so 
heavily placed upon the Southern neck. But there is also, here, a 
recognition of the integrity of those in group b who can tell the 
difference between a potentially democratic institution (the UN, if 
enormous enormous energies are directed there) and the WB/IMF --
 and there is a growing gap between group b and the myopic inside-
the-beltway-NGO folk who for professional and funding reasons 
remain the main coordinators of group a.

This is part of the balance of forces argument that I was hoping 
from your London experience, Chris, you'd invoke. I will have to 
defer to Bob Naimann for inside-the-beltway critique. I hope at least 
you're making your way to group b where some reasonable 
discussion can be had about the UN (or an Eatwell-Taylor style 
World Financial Authority). You might check out the World 
Systems theorists (e.g. Chase-Dunn and Boswell) who posit how a 
world state could actually be established. I think that's where the 
most interesting debates are going; those seeking "reform" of the 
IMF tend to be opportunistic and in trying to do good, they are 
making life more miserable by giving Washington a more human 
face.

[PEN-L:10997] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist

[Patrick Bond]

  Charles Brown wrote:
 On the other hand, the industrial plants established  in Korea, 
 Mexico, Brazil, China (et al ? South Africa) in the last 20 years 
 continue the export of capital trend that Lenin (Hobson ?) marked. 

If anyone's interested in South Africa, the 1980s witnessed TNC 
disinvestment, for reasons we can all be proud of. The 1990s 
witnessed FDI stagnation because the late-apartheid regime and 
the first democratic government both adopted demand-dampening 
macroeconomic policies, including the highest real interest rates in 
SA history.

Two 'grafs from a recent paper:

Virtually all FDI into post-apartheid South Africa
has been of the merger/acquisition variety, instead
of into greenfield projects entailing the import and
establishment of new plant, equipment and job
opportunities. Moreover, since the financial rand
(SA's dual exchange rate) was lifted in 1995, more
than R10 billion more has been exported through
South African firms' direct investment out of the
country, than new FDI into South Africa (today
R6=US$1).

In SA, Foreign Direct Investment is measured as
foreign equity purchases of 10% of a company's
voting rights. Notwithstanding the large (30%) sale
of Telkom to a US-Malaysian consortium in 1997,
1990s FDI inflows have been substantially less
than the direct investment abroad of South African
firms (mainly mining houses). In 1994, for
example, FDI was recorded at R1,1 billion, with SA
outward investment R4,2 billion. In 1995, both
increased: FDI to R4,2 billion but outward SA
investment to R9,0 billion. In 1996, FDI was R3,5
billion and outward SA investment was R4,2
billion. In 1997, FDI rose on the basis mainly of
the Telkom and Sun Air privatisations to R17,6
billion and outward SA investment rose to R10,6
billion. In 1998, FDI fell dramatically, to R3,1
billion, while outward SA investment fell slightly,
to R9,6 billion. In the first quarter of 1999, FDI
was R2,0 billion and outward SA investment was
R4,3 billion. In nominal terms, the 1994-99 direct
investment flow, therefore, included R31,5 billion
FDI and R41,9 billion in outward SA investment,
for a net negative R10,4 billion.

[PEN-L:10928] Jubilee 2000's final push to drop the debt

[Patrick Bond]

Not to dispute the imporance of the J2000UK comrades' work and 
success in mobilising so far, but there's an interesting debate about 
anti-debt strategies, tactics and analysis, including whether to call 
G-8 Koln reforms "a great step forward." Many in Jubilee South argue 
precisely the opposite: the IMF comes out stronger; the rich-country 
politicians smell a bit nicer; and conditions associated with this 
"relief" are in fact going to kill many more Third World people.

I'll say all this, in as open and constructive way as I can here, not 
as someone with any responsibility for J2000 campaigning, and with no 
intention of knocking the very very hardworking folk in London and 
other northern sites--but as a petit-bourgeois intellectual (in 
Johannesburg) who is worried that, as in the case of anti-apartheid 
solidarity organising, too small a goal (by southerners and 
northerners alike) leads to less critical analysis than need be, and 
partly as a result, a potentially unsatisfying outcome.

I'll give you details, if you like, from Mozambique, the BWIs' 
poster-child. (Much more is available if this is not convincing, in 
large part from J2000UK's Joe Hanlon.) There, 1998 debt "relief" (of 
US$10 mn on a $110mn annual repayment burden) came at the cost of a 
World Bank condition (signed by the great Wolfensohn himself) 
demanding that the Mozambique parliament quintuple public health 
cost-recovery rates and privatise all municipal water with "dramatic" 
increases in consumer tariffs. The 1999 debt relief deal, just after 
Koln, amounting to another $28 mn (still leaving far more in annual 
repayment requirements than is spent on education and health in this, 
the world's poorest country, ravaged for 15 years by an 
apartheid/US-induced civil war), and calls for an end to any rural 
water initiative driven by the state, in favour of full-cost-recovery 
privatisation.

For the implications of more power to the IMF, e.g. through the 
gold-sale additions to reserves, check PEN-Ler Bob Naiman's powerful 
attack on IMF ESAF devastation of Africa, worth getting off the 
Preamble website (Bob is it http:\\www.preamble.org )?

J2000 South chapters have been trading critical position papers about 
how to deal with "reforming" the G-8/BWI proposals. In Johannesburg 
in mid-November, I gather that a terrific conference will take 
further at least one JSouth position: that it is not just "debt" but 
"development" that must be questioned. A new "Africa Consensus," for 
example, is being devised by some terrific NGOs and churches to pick 
up on all the critiques of Wash-Con and Post-Wash Con, and to advance 
into far more radical development territory. Similar discussions are 
underway in Asia and Latin America.

In other words, this movement is about neither a "final" or a 
"short" burst of activity up to 2000. An excellent network has 
launched a variety of superb campaigns out of this, and I would guess 
that not just the debt, but the very existence of the IMF and WB will 
soon come under the spotlight.

Check the following website for a really stimulating paper on these 
debates by Dot Keet of the University of the Western Cape:  
http:\\aidc.org.za

And no J2000 South chapter that I know of works closely with Jeff 
Sachs, either. Consistency in this kind of longer-haul campaigning is 
terribly important.

P.

 Reply-to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 From:  "Alan Freeman" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To:"pen-l new listmembers (E-mail)" [EMAIL PROTECTED],
"OPE-L list (E-mail)" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject:   [PEN-L:10896] FW: Support Jubilee 2000's final push to drop the debt 
by the millennium
 Date:  Mon, 13 Sep 1999 06:00:00 +0100
 Importance:Normal

 Apologies if there are any cross-posts. I thought this worth forwarding - AF
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Jubilee 2000 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
 Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 1999 7:02 PM
 To: List Member
 Subject: Support Jubilee 2000's final push to drop the debt by the
 millennium
 
 
 7 September, 1999
 
 Dear Friend,
 
 I am writing to you as the Director of Jubilee 2000 Coalition in the UK.
 Were on the brink of an historic achievement and I'm writing to ask your
 help for the final push to the millennium.
 
 We have achieved so much in the last few months.  At the G8 Summit in
 Cologne, we won up to $100 billion in debt cancellation for the poorest
 countries.  An IMF report in the spring credited us with mobilising world
 public opinion in support of the poorest nations, at a time when the
 people of these nations had been pushed to margins of the international
 agenda. We have won plaudits from commentators around the world.
 Journalist Polly Toynbee, in the UK Radio Times, said, Jubilee 2000 has
 been one of the most brilliantly successful campaigns of our times.¶
 
 But plaudits are worth little.  Even the British Prime Minister admitted
 the need to go further still on debt¶ after Cologne.  The reality 

[PEN-L:10926] Re: Re: Re: IMF to become autonomous?

[Patrick Bond]

 From:  Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ... Some Marxists consider an analysis
 of the balance of forces essential. 

Ok, so where is it?

What, in all of the chatter about the up-and-coming global state, are 
you saying about Our Team's capacity to survive it, Chris?

 ... Brown, a declared advocate of the
 reform of international finances, on a key IMF committee.

That lackey of the City? Keep him OUT of reforming, please, Chris! 
Really, this is an elementary responsibility of UK comrades.

...
 What are the arguments for making the Fed less independent? Elected
 governments come to learn that it is very difficult to buck the financial
 markets. And a leftist government will get blamed for every decision it
 makes. So why not let a committee of experts take the flak?

Why not use the little energy and resources we have on a 
series of national campaigns instead? Surely we have more hope of 
promoting Mahathir-style nationalist reactions to IMF excesses, 
and more possibilities for "development," than from fruitless 
efforts to have IMF economists (and their City sponsors) behave like 
human beings?

...
 I would like to hear a serious argument about how even a mildly progressive
 social democratic government could manage interest rates.

Again, try capital controls. Hopefully our Congress of SA Trade 
Unions will be making this argument within days. Sure beats an 
unwinnable global Tobin Tax.

...
 I was not aware I was particularly arguing to increase the power of the
 IMF. I was supporting a Swiss report that argued for reducing the power of
 the USA over the IMF.

No, "independence" increases the power of banks over politics. That's 
the same as amplifying the power of Summers over the IMF.

...
 There are many anti-democratic and anti-working class forces run by
 capitalism. I would have thought that an IMF accountable as a world organ
 to the world as a whole 

Huh?

 ... World government, even capitalist world
 government, would be preferable to US hegemony.

Not the way we're going to see world government, Chris: it'll BE 
yankee hegemony. Can you not admit that possibility?

 Demonstrations against IMF programs, political organizing, strikes, etc.
 are needed, combined with international solidarity. In other words, the
 same thing is needed with an autonomous IMF as with a explicitly
 US-dominated IMF.
 
 Absolutely!

The demand for this, still emerging but taking form from the Bangkok 
conference Walden Bello sponsored, is to shut the IMF. That's 
rather the opposite of what your Swiss friends say.

 We should be trying to struggle on an agenda that world government should
 be democratic and not a government for the interests of finance capital.

But since given the actual balance of forces, this is a utopian 
fantasy, and since we'll get an even worse globalised financial world 
government than actually-existing Summersville, we shouldn't even 
try. Go for the nation-state, man, it is the only hope.

P.

(Ok Chris, you can trash my somewhat more pessimistic array-of-forces 
perspective if you like, which is here:  
http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol5/num2/v5n2a11.htm )

Patrick Bond
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729